A Blog by LeRoy Friesen
O Lover, Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226) exemplified “theophanic nature mysticism,” writes Bernard McGinn, the historian of Christian spirituality. As a devotee of the Feast of the Epiphany (“show time!”) and, serendipitously, the father of...
[Si comprehéndus, non est Deus (“The deity understood is not God”) is found in Sermon #117 of Augustine (354-430).] O Lover, Of late an emerging insight has been surfacing in my voyage into fuller...
[The text and musical score of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum composed in 1151-8 by Hildegard von Bingen, OSB (1098-1179) includes the phrase “I am a feather on the breath of God.”] O Lover,...
O Lover, As well You know, I have occasionally flirted with wildly varying spirituality hypotheses involving everything. One such variant has been that You simply are not, at least no more than as projected...
O Lover, In chapters 43-45 of II Isaiah the prophet, engaging exiles in the Babylonian and Persian empires, has You repeatedly proclaiming that there are no gods but You. An example would be 45:18:...
O Lover, In the recent 2nd Sunday of Advent homilist Fr. Daniel Groody, CSC, an international authority on immigration and faculty/administrator at Notre Dame, cited an image which remains with me. He related how...
O Lover, In an earlier post I wrote that all prayer is somehow response to what I called Your “seizing.” Variously exemplified, this dynamic also occurs in liturgy. More than in timeless themes of...
O Lover, In a recent conversation a friend raised a question as old as faith: what is prayer? Although this is a query the answering of which finds a lifetime too brief a time,...
[Duruflé, Maurice (1902-86), Requiem (Op. 9, 1947); performance (with organ) by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Stephen Layton (cond.), Saint-Eustache, Paris.] O Lover, In the face of the darkness encroaching on Advent and...
O Lover, Last week signaled the end of liturgical year #2023. We have now crossed into Advent (“coming” or “arrival”), a four-sunday season characterized by anticipation, waiting, silence, attentiveness, penitential preparation, and hope of...