Included are two weeks of meditations.

Fourteenth Week in the Year, July 7-12, 2009

Monday

Matthew 9.18-26

"While he was thus speaking to them … "—Christ’s voice sounds and resounds and his words are heard by people in an action of their real life.  A father presents his dead child; a woman offers her grave illness.  My prayer is in the word of God in the surrender of my consciousness into the meaning of the word as given in Scripture.  The meaning is ever beyond me, inexhaustible in its divine origin and always beyond me in my creaturehood and sinfulness.  My prayer is the temerity that the grace of the Spirit gives to reach into God through Jesus and to hope that the divine words will become real in the action of my life.  Illness, death and the actuality of my sins are brought into the Presence and in the action of the Spirit of Christ they become health, life and redemption.  The silence of my prayer is itself a word that speaks into the fullness of Christ to heal and give life.  Prayer in the word of Christ is never only an intellectual thing but fruitful in the re-actions that occur in my life because of the word which has entered into me.

Tuesday

Matthew 9.32-38

"The harvest is plentiful."  When we look out on the world and the condition of humanity we often see chaos and desolation, what appears to be defeat and death of God.  Jesus sees it all as the harvest.  When I go to pray, I am a laborer sent out to bring in the harvest.  “The Father works until now, and I work.”  My prayer is part of the work of the Kingdom.  The Kingdom grows out of the Mystery of Christ.  As the seeds grow and become plants bringing forth fruit, and nobody sees the plant’s inner workings, so the power of the risen Christ is moving in all things and people.  My prayer, deep silent, loving, is part of the rhythm of this transformation.  “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. “ I will pray and I will cooperate in all that my vocation and human condition call forth from me.  Not to see the harvest of the mysterious work of transformation is to see the prince of chaos at work in everything.

Wednesday

Matthew 10.1-7

My silent, interior prayer is never separate from the inner life of the Church,  “the fullness of Him who fills all things.”  At the center of the Church is the Mystery of Christ, the ever present and working relationship of the Son to the Father in the Spirit.  "And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every disease and infirmity."  Called into Him so that they, in their visible, institutionalized, corporate entity, might become the bearers of the Mystery of Christ.  Through their successors they are the signs and reality of the Church.  It is not necessary to rehearse this aspect of the Revelation each time I pray, but it is the foundation of my life in Christ.  “They who see you see me.”  “Blessed are those who have not seen me but believe because of your word.”  "I do not pray only for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word …."  The Church in her sacraments and dogma is the sure door by which I enter into the Mystery of Christ, into divine union with the Holy Trinity.  This is the essence of my prayer.

Thursday

Matthew 10.7-15

It's all about preaching as you go along.  The content and object of the preaching and of the apostolic power and commission is the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom is at hand.  It's right here at your hand in the place you are standing, in the words of your mouth and your behavior toward the other.  The Kingdom is all about simplicity.  Don't complicate it with a lot of embellishment.  God wants me to be completely His.  The response then is simple: Belong to God through the power of Christ's Mystery.  There's no fooling around.  There's no soft talk of "all are welcome--come as you are."  To accept the Kingdom there's a cost.  The cost is losing my own self orientation.  I strip naked at the entrance to be clothed anew at the Kingdom's banquet.  It will bring peace.  But if the invitation is rejected then I am rejected, and the peace is taken back.  Christ will shake off the dust from his feet.  My prayer must reflect this simplicity and directness.  Nothing is to be preferred to the coming of the Kingdom of Christ.

Friday

Matthew 10.16-23

The fruit of my prayer is real relationship that incorporates me into the life of the Holy Trinity.  The Spirit of Jesus enables me to live experientially in the Father.  Prayer intensifies this living knowledge of love and relationship that only God in grace can impart.  But it is in trials, in persecutions and tribulations, indeed in the face of death, that this experience of the Spirit becomes real.  So Jesus says in the Gospel, that we should not be anxious what to say or do in those moments.  It is the Spirit of the Father who speaks through me.  It is the habit of prayer that makes me to recollect that inward presence of strength that articulates, in the midst of the problem, the logic of Christ's Kingdom.  The voice of the Spirit is heard above the tumult of the many waters.  Our salvation is to persevere in that Spirit that is given to us.  Our salvation is to persevere in grace, even to the end of the ages, when Christ will come in glory.

Saturday

Matthew 10.24-33

Am I to expect anything less from the world than what Jesus received?  Again the foundation of the Trinitarian experience resounds.  Fidelity to the Gospel word of Christ is fidelity to the union of the Father and the Son.  Faithful to our witness to the Son is to share in the fidelity of the abiding life of the Trinity.  With gentleness and courage, with the simplicity of the dove and the steady eye of the serpent, my confession of Jesus is in the sight of the Father so that, in return, Jesus presents us in the Spirit to the Father.  Here is my beloved brother in whom I am well pleased.  So I fear not.  All creation, like the little sparrows, lie sin the divine hand of the Father.

The Fifteenth Week of the Year, July 14-19, 2008

Monday

Matthew 10.34-11.1

"You are not worthy of me."  My prayer must look into the face of Christ and be able to understand those words of Christ.  You are not worthy of me.  Jesus.  If I do not set You as the absolute of my life then I am not worthy of you.  The sword that cuts to the marrow of the bone is this absolute demand of Jesus upon my whole person and upon all the minutes and spaces of my life.  There is no peace without the sword of divine love cutting deep within me.  Each day it is relentless.  Each day the cross.  Each day the following after.  Yet there is no other way.  Jesus would be less than he is, if it were not this absolute surrender that God demands as creator and as the only source of all my being.  God would not love me if He were not the end for which I was created.  Holy Mary, pray for me that I become worthy of the promises of Christ.

Tuesday

Matthew 11.20-24

Confirmed modern secularists mock the hell and brimstone aspects of Scripture.  Avid Christians are mostly portrayed in the character of the fanatical Christian preacher ranting on about Sodom and Gomorrah and the terrible punishments God will visit upon sinners; or in the character of small-minded, mean people who bring harm to others.  And I would not want to be characterized as a fanatical fundamentalist.  My prayer must deal with the fact that God judges me, my society, all of humanity.  It will not be tolerable situation for me if my love for the Kingdom is not supreme.  Rather to plunge now, in this present time, into the burning fire of Jesus' divine love and be consumed in it and be transformed in it and follow Him each day in grace.  Meanwhile, my prayer is also the hope that in that day all will come through the fire of judgment.  The sword of Christ, however, must not be disregarded because of an watered-down version of the Gospel.  Modern secularism must not be my standard or the light of my prayer.  That would be intolerable.

Wednesday

Matthew 11.25-27

As soon as I seek in my prayer the mind of the little one who trusts in the absoluteness of God. And as soon as I do not allow one rook or cranny of my consciousness to be puffed up in modernity's skepticism of the Kingdom, then I begin to experience in my prayer the hidden mystery of the Kingdom.  This is the pleasure of the Father to reveal to me the Son and the Son reveals the Father.  And what a gift is given!  The Trinitarian life!  No one knows the Son but the Father.  No one knows the Father but the Son.  Into this intimacy of Presence I am called. What am I learning in my prayer?  Holy Spirit of the love-knowledge of the Father and the Son, come and teach and re-form me into the image of the Son.

Thursday

Matthew 11.28-30

Four action words: come, take, learn and find.  Prayer is my participation in these actions of the Spirit.  When I pray I come into Christ.  When I pray my heart takes upon itself the gentle yoke of Christ and His Gospel.  When I pray the Spirit reveals and I learn the secrets of the Kingdom.  Finally prayer is finding.  It is the opening up into God's life.  It is here that I take shelter in the heart of Jesus. This is the yoke and burden of Christ: The divine Presence.  Here is rest for my soul.  The burden on my back, the struggle and labor of living all become light and gentle in the humble and meek heart of Jesus.  Prayer then is about learning and finding once we come and take with open hands.

Friday

Matthew 12.1-8

Our prayer pushes past the rabbinical argument and brings me to a vindication of the true purpose for the Sabbath.  I want to adore the Lord of the Sabbath.  I want to dwell within the Presence which envelopes me.  The Temple is the Presence.  And the One who is greater than the physical Temple is here.  I in Him and He in me.  Here is where I wish to dwell.  That is my prayer.  It is only in absolute adoration that the Savior will teach us that he desires mercy more than sacrifice and fidelity more than observance.  It is prayer that gives me courage like David to eat the bread of the presence because I am hungry and God is the bread of my soul's subsistence, nay more, of my life and love and freedom.  It is all consummated in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

Saturday

Matthew 12.14-21

Jesus follows the path of hiddenness and withdrawal at this time.  He is a lamb among wolves but he is shrewd and prudent as a serpent.  His is not to be on the offensive but ultimately to be obedient to the Father.  Behold, my servant.  The Son becomes the Servant.  He gives his life for the victory of justice.  My prayer is a participation in this hidden way of redemption.  In my prayer I am the servant of the Kingdom and give myself for the redemption of all peoples.

--William C. Fredrickson, Obl. OSB, D.Min.

Comments and reactions are welcome: Fredrickson46@msn.com