Franciscan Quote of the Day

As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that you have greater peace in your hearts, thus no one will be provoked to anger or scandal because of you. Let everyone be drawn to peace and kindness through your peace and gentleness. For we have been called to this: to cure the wounded, to bind up the broken, to recall the erring. Many who seem to us members of the devil will yet be disciples of Christ.

~ St. Francis of Asissi

That is Francis’ formula for peace: You have to come out from behind your defenses and risk embracing what is seemingly repulsive and dangerous. Only then will there be peace, and only love can make it happen. For Francis peace is inseparable from peace of soul, and neither can be achieved without the risk of loving your supposed or real enemies.

~Murray Bodo, O.F.M. — The Way of St. Francis: The Challenge of Franciscan Spirituality for Everyone

If any one begins to argue with you, and you wish to gain — yield; otherwise, when you believe yourself to have triumphed, you will have lost all.

~Bishop  Egidius Junger

I’m lucky as a Franciscan to do my Lent in a hermitage every other year. During that time, I am cut off from the news, and I’m struck on my return how I haven’t missed anything, how nothing at all was necessary to know.

~Richard Rohr, Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer

I choose patience… I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes my place, I’ll invite him to do so. Rather than complaining that the wait is too long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clinching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage.

~Max Lucado via Flowing Faith.

‎How necessary it is – both for the lives of individuals and for the serene and peaceful coexistence of all people – to see God as the center of all there is and the center of our personal lives.

~Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, Munich, Germany, 10Sep06 via St. Francis of Assisi – Poverello (Facebook Page)

Never be in a hurry, do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.

~St. Francis de Sales

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

The distracted mind is running wild with things of the world: fame, fortune, passion, possessive love, alcohol and drugs, sex, riches, and out-of-control emotions. Out of this distraction, craving and desire emerge, and the mind is disturbed. The mind is attracted by what it sees, giving birth to cravings, and subsequently the desire to satisfy those cravings. Slowly, the forces of earth become stronger than the forces of Heaven. Yet, out of our worldly desire and craving, stress and anxiety emerge, and the peace of heaven is hidden. This may all sound over-simplistic, yet out of this notion arises the understanding the saints had of the importance of detachment.

~Gerry Straub, Unplugging My Television

Anxiety and frustration invariably follow when the desires of the heart are centered on anything less than God, for all pleasures of Earth, pursued as final ends, turn out to be the exact opposite of what was expected. The expectation is joyous, the realization is disgust. Out of this disappointment are born those lesser anxieties which modern psychology knows so well; but the root of them all is the meaninglessness of life due to the abandonment of Perfect Life, Truth, and Love, which is God.

Peace of soul comes to those who have the right kind of anxiety about attaining perfect happiness, which is (found only in) God. A soul has anxiety because its final and eternal state is not yet decided; it is always at the crossroads of life. . . As St. Augustine has said, “Our hearts were made for Thee. They are restless until they rest in Thee, O God.

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul

If you cannot go into the desert, you must nonetheless ‘make some desert’ in your life, every now and then leaving men and looking for solitude to restore, in prolonged silence and prayer, the stuff of your soul. This is the meaning of ‘desert’ in your spiritual life. One has to be courageous not to let oneself be carried along by the world’s march; one needs faith and willpower to go cross-current towards the Eucharist, to stop, to be silent, to worship.

~Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert via Gerry Straub’s Blog.

The temper of modern times tends to enfeeble our sense of the supernatural. If we would maintain undiminished our spiritual vigour we must withdraw occasionally from its influence and endeavour to dwell for a time in a more healthy religious atmosphere.

~Laurence Costelloe, Saint Bonaventure The Seraphic Doctor Minister-General of the Franciscan Order

To speak with a Franciscan voice, which is to be foolish for peace in the world that seeks violence, is to model a new way of living in the world. It is a way of living that needs to be embraced and so modeled for each generation to come. This new way of living is what Jesus demonstrates for us time and again in his words and deeds; it is the Kingdom of God: Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done.

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

Peace is needed. This refers to inner peace, peace of the conscience freed from all the fragmentation caused by sin and open to the true good. It also means peace with others, in mutual respect and friendship made of truth and love.

~Blessed Pope John Paul II, via A Catholic Cappuccino, Please! Catholic Blog

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

A waiting person is a patient person. The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her womb.

~Henri Nouwen, Eternal Seasons, via Gerry Straub’s Blog

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

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

Advent is about waking up to what people or situations we need to accept and embrace as part of making straight the way for the Lord, that frees us to open our arms to receive God’s great gift of the fullness of life.

~Reflections of a Franciscan Gardener –  “Advent Wisdom from the Stranger in the Bathroom Mirror”.