Franciscan Quote of the Day

In the little parlour of the Convent, Hercule Poirot told his story and restored the chalice to the Mother Superior.

She murmured: “Tell him we thank him and we will pray for him.”

Hercule Poirot said gently: “He needs your prayers.”

“Is he then an unhappy man?”

Poirot said: “So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.”

The nun said softly: “Ah, a rich man . . . ”

Hercule Poirot said nothing—for he knew there was nothing to say.

Agatha Christie, “The Apples of the Hesperides” via First Thoughts

Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many of the suffering poor, sick and dispossessed, and people thrown out of their miserable slums; Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many years without a mother’s kiss on their foreheads … Christ is without a home! Shouldn’t we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children? “What you do to the least of me, you do to me,” Jesus said.

~St. Alberto Hurtado, S.J.

As a Franciscan my home is everywhere, but also nowhere in this world. It’s a gospel challenge, but it’s also a gospel freedom.

~Brother Charles, “First Spanish Mass“.

We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.

~Tim Jackson, Prof. Of Sustainable Development, University of Surrey as quoted on the blog Wrestling with Angels…

What good am I if I’m like all the rest
If I just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I?

What good am I if I say foolish things
And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die
What good am I?

~Bob Dylan, from “What Good Am I?“

This attitude of soul towards poverty is in truth the supreme test of the genuine Franciscan spirit whether in life or in art.

~Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., “St. Francis and Poverty” from Franciscan Essays

He would tell his sons that she was the way of perfection, the pledge and earnest of eternal riches. No one was so greedy of gold as he of poverty; no one more careful in guarding a treasure than he in guarding this pearl of the Gospel.

~Thomas of Celano, The Second Life of St. Francis of Assisi

He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.

~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi

The man who is filled with the Holy Spirit speaks in different languages. These different languages are different ways of witnessing to Christ, such as humility, poverty, patience, and obedience; we speak in those languages when we reveal in ourselves these virtues to others.

~St. Anthony (via Beauty for Ashes)

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve -
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for help, that I might do greater things -
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy -
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life -
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for -
But everything that I had hoped for.
Despite myself, my prayers were answered.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

~Prayer/poem written by an anonymous Confederate soldier during the Civil War via Michael Wade blog Execupundit

Pita: Dear God, I do not ask for health or wealth. People ask you so often that you can’t have any left. Give me, God, what else you have. Give me what no-one else asks for. Amen.

~Man on Fire (A 2004 film directed by Tony Scott)

We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people — whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth — is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure.

~Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted by Leo Hindery, Jr. in “America’s Dirty Little Secret: Who’s Really Poor in America?“

In Jesus Christ, God has given away everything it means to be God, and has lavishly bestowed upon us every blessing of the divine life. And we are called to imitate God by wasting the best of ourselves on each other, to give of ourselves for the life and happiness of the other. That’s what it means to give up your life for the life of the world, just like Jesus does on the Cross.

Brother Charles, in his blog post: “The Gospel of Prosperity“

For, I am sure that you know that the kingdom of heaven is promised and given by the Lord only to the poor, because as long as something temporal is the object of love, the fruit of charity is lost.

~St. Clare of Assisi, First Letter to Agnes of Prague

It is when we attribute to ourselves and try to hold onto what is in reality God’s gift that we are of the flesh, appropriators who violate holy poverty.

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