Franciscan Quote of the Day

They must be careful not to be angry or disturbed at the sin of another, for anger and disturbance impede charity in themselves and in others.

~St. Francis of Assisi, The Later Rule

Here’s how you know your life in Christ is bearing fruit:

In spite of your own suffering, loneliness, and pain, you’re welcoming. You’re warm. You’re kind (or you’re at least shooting for those things, and not just toward the people who can “do” something for you, but everyone). You’re in immediate, intimate contact with a few active drunks, someone who’s headed into or has just emerged from a psych ward, an incarcerated felon or two, several porn addicts, a young girl who’s pregnant out of wedlock, several women who have had abortions and are in silent, excruciating mourning, at least one stripper, several people in desperately unhappy marriages, about to be evicted from their apartments, or dying, a minimum-wage worker or two, at least three people who are certifiably insane, at least one U.S. Army chaplain and one peace activist (even better if they’re both priests and the latter is in solitary confinement in a federal prison), several homeless people (the more the better) and a whole TON of gay people, transgender folks, and sex and love addicts of all stripes…

If that’s not part of your circle–in my case, that IS my circle–you’re not getting out enough. If you aren’t sharing your struggles and heart with that circle, at the very least in prayer, something is wrong. Because those are the people Christ hung out with. Because “those people” are us: the people, the only people, suffering, struggling humans. Because if we’re going to be inviting people to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience, we sure as hell better be inviting each other into our homes, our tables, our hemorrhaging, conflicted hearts.

If you’re afraid all that is going to “lower your standards,” you’re very much mistaken. There’s no lower standard than self-righteous fear.

Heather King, Shirt of Flame, The Homily I’d Give if I were a Priest

Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw His Mercy from us?

~Saint Vincent de Paul via OH……….. FRANCESCO

To be forgiven when we know we don’t “deserve” to be forgiven is radically transformative in a way violence can never be. To be forgiven does another kind of violence: to our whole tit-for-tat notion of crime and punishment. To be forgiven makes us realize that, unbelievable as it may seem, God needs us for something. We have a mission.

Heather King, SHIRT OF FLAME: THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL

I think forgiveness is one of the surest signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is incredibly difficult, often scandalous, and yet it is the thing God absolutely demands of us if we are to have any hope whatsoever of having our own sins forgiven. Our strategies for avoiding it are numberless and becoming a Christian often only leads people to come up with ingenious theological rationales for explaining why they don’t need to do it. But Jesus is stark and plain-spoken: If you do not forgive you will not be forgiven.

~Mark Shea, Catholic and Enjoying It!

A Franciscan voice will insist on loving one another as God has loved us to an extravagant and foolish degree because it is how, as Francis explains in his Canticle, we give glory back to God. Having been created in the image and likeness of God, unlike trees or flowers or fire or the moon, we are most fully human when we love, forgive, and work toward peace. To be violent, vengeful, or selfish is to be un-human!

~Francis of Assisi and the Future of Faith by Daniel Horan OFM

Human beings are called to love, to forgive, and to work for peace just as the purpose of fire is to provide heat and light and the wind is to be serene and provide the weather. To worldly wisdom, this might seem absurd. Isn’t the purpose of being a human to earn lots of money or be successful in the business realm? Shouldn’t people strive to care for their families? What do love, forgiveness, and peace have to do with being human? Francis answers in the way of Christ: it has everything to do with being human.

~Francis of Assisi and the Future of Faith by Daniel Horan OFM

Preaching love, forgiveness, and peace is a dangerous and risky business for those who have forgotten (literally do not have a memory of) what it means to bear the name of the Prince of Peace. But this is the business of the Franciscan voice nonetheless.

~Francis of Assisi and the Future of Faith by Daniel Horan OFM

Some people find these late-in-life turns to religion suspect, a sign of weakness or of one’s “losing it.” But nothing focuses the mind as much as death. There is a long tradition going back to ancient times of memento mori, remember death. Why? I suspect that in facing death one may at last see soberly, whether clearly or not, truths missed for years, what is finally worth one’s attention.

~Mark Henninger, Alfred Hitchcock’s Surprise Ending – WSJ.com.

The reason that following the Gospel is so challenging, that engaging the world from a Franciscan perspective is so difficult, is that in a world that organizes its thoughts and responses according to the logic of violence and the possible, the Good News of Jesus Christ is communicated in the poetics of the Kingdom of God, which is an expression of the impossible experience of love, forgiveness, and peace.

~Francis of Assisi and the Future of Faith by Daniel Horan OFM

The final cure for this sickness is to realize that we must not become angry for any reason whatsoever, whether just or unjust. When the demon of anger has darkened our mind, we are left neither with the light of discrimination, nor the assurance of true judgment, nor the guidance of righteousness, and our soul cannot become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Finally, we should always bear in mind our own ignorance of the time of our death, keeping ourselves from anger and recognizing that neither self-restraint nor the renunciation of all material things, nor fasting and vigils, are of any benefit if we are found guilty at the last judgment because we are the slaves of anger and hatred.

~St John Cassian

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

~C. S. Lewis, Essay on Forgiveness

Remembrance of wrongs is the consummation of anger, the keeper of sins, hatred of righteousness, ruin of virtues, poison of the soul, worm of the mind, shame of prayer, cessation of supplication, estrangement of love, a nail stuck in the soul, pleasureless feeling cherished in the sweetness of bitterness, continuous sin, unsleeping transgression, hourly malice.

~St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent via Scott’s Catholicism Blog

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we did during World War II. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue; it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of thing makes me sick.’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death or torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find, ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it.

~ C. S. Lewis, via a post on the Little Portion Hermitage blog.