Déus Méus et Ómnia!
O Lover, Across the last decade I have periodically been drawn to this meditational prayer mantra attributed to Your poveréllo, Francis of Assisi (c.1182-1226). Curiously, the impact of this cryptic phrase has seemed to...
Prayers in Winter Blog
Source and Summit
O Lover, In the Lenten seasons of this my November I am being shown that my most important “giving up” is not regarding this or that, but reductionist depictions of You. At no time...
The “Living Water” Well at the Center of Everything
O Lover, The gospel reading for the third Sunday of Lent (Jn 4:3-43) describes the encounter of Jesus with a Samaritan just outside the city of Sychar (now Nablus). The case can be made...
Transfiguration as Mystical
O Lover, The gospel reading at the head of the second week of Lent was the Marcan take on the transfiguration of the Christ (9:2-10). Ever within Your Presence, whether with or without my...
May the Lover “Submerge You”!
[“May God make known to you, . . .who he is and how he deals with his servants, and especially with his handmaids—and may he submerge you in him. Where the abyss of his...
“When Gods Die”
[Jack Welch, OCarm, When Gods Die: An Introduction to John of the Cross. Paulist Press, 1990.] O Lover, Part of my encounter in the mid-1990s with the spirituality of Juan de la Cruz was...
“Shall We Gather at the River?”
[“And he showed me a crystalline river of the water of life . . . coming forth out of the throne of God and of the lamb” (Apoc 22:1).] O Lover, All of it...
“Theophanic Nature Mysticism”
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...
The Apophátic Heart
[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...
“A Feather on the Breath of God”
[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,...