Summer Meditations Now Available: Weekly Message for 05-24-16

Dear Fellow Digital Pilgrim, pax Christi:

Here in Rome spring is full swing.  And as I prepare to administer final exams, everyone is already thinking about summer… Isn’t that just how it goes?  One season flows into the next, and everything happens so fast, and our calendars get so full.  Sometimes we need some encouragement – and some help – to simply slow down and enjoy the gifts that God has given us, like the gift of the seasons.

That was the main idea behind the seasonal mediation books that Liguori Press asked me to write this year.  We have already received very satisfying feedback from Spring Meditations.  And I wanted to let you know that Summer Meditations is available as well.

As I mentioned before, in these books I try to bring out the spiritual meaning behind some of the characteristics of the natural seasons.  And I illustrate my points not only with scriptural references, but also with personal anecdotes.  Then I offer some mini spiritual exercises that you can do to allow the virtue or the value to sink deeper into your mind and heart.  The spiritual values treated in Summer Meditations include playfulness, modesty, endurance, hospitality, and eight more.  

These are perennial values that even non-practicing Catholics can relate to.  And that was one audience I kept in mind as I wrote these little books. Even though veteran pray-ers have given excellent feedback on them, I also hope that they will find their way into hands of people who don’t have a prayer life, and who maybe have drifted far away from the Lord.  I truly believe that the simple but profound beauties and meanings that we find in the natural world can be an effective bridge to help jumpstart a spiritual life.  

So if in your own faith pilgrimage you run into someone who seems to be spiritually stalled, think about giving them a copy of Spring Meditations or Summer Meditations, and then invite them out for coffee to talk about their impressions.  It could be a simple, non-threatening way to bring a wandering heart back onto the path of grace.

God bless you and keep you!  

In Him, Fr John Bartunek, LC, SThD

contact@rcspirituality.org

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