Franciscan Quote of the Day

Prayer, in Francis’ view, is so central to life that nothing finite is to extinguish or interfere with this Spirit of life.

~Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

The lives and writings of the Franciscan men and women in this volume demonstrate the adaptability of Francis’s vision across cultures and throughout history. Each entry underscores the poverty at the crystal center of Francis’s spirituality. If nothing material matters, then only the immaterial—the spirit living within each and every one of us—is what must be most revered and reverenced. Then and only then will the promise of Franciscan spirituality—universal brotherhood and peace—be recognized and received.

~ Regis Armstrong, The Franciscan Tradition (Spirituality in History)

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

As a result, his life became a continuous process of allowing the words of the Gospel to enter profoundly into every fiber of his being: their sound, articulation, imagery, and meaning.

~Regis Armstrong, The Franciscan Tradition (Spirituality in History)

Francis’s emphasis on poverty and non-possession was a prophetic rejection of the nascent capitalism of the late twelfth century symbolized by the success of his own father.

Lawrence S. Cunningham, Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel of Life

The “most high, all-powerful, Lord” is above all “good”: this is what Francis never tires of reiterating. It is this that liberates him from the petty moments of life, enabling him to rise above human frailty and to trust in God alone.

~Regis Armstrong, The Franciscan Tradition (Spirituality in History)

Looking back on his experience of lifelong conversion and discernment, Francis recognized that he was not in control of his circumstances. He found himself wrestling with what it meant to live in a way pleasing to God, while at the service of others. It is at this nexus of evangelical life and humble service that Francis encountered his authentic self.

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

The name symbolizes “poverty, humility, simplicity and rebuilding the Catholic Church,” Allen said. “The new pope is sending a signal that this will not be business as usual.”

~CNN Vatican analyst John Allen via Michael Martinez’s article Pope Francis’ name choice ‘precedent shattering’ – CNN.com

Francis embodies the Gospel journey from violence to nonviolence, wealth to poverty, power to powerlessness, selfishness to selfless service, pride to humility, indifference to love, cruelty to compassion, vengeance to forgiveness, revenge to reconciliation, war to peace, killing enemies to loving enemies. More than any other Christian, he epitomizes discipleship to Jesus. His witness continues to shine throughout the world.

~John Dear, You Will Be My Witnesses Saints, Prophets, and Martyrs, via Catholic Peace Fellowship

The invitation to follow Christ which Francis heard during Mass became for him a life-long commitment which would be translated into concrete gestures, like that of leaving behind him all things which would hinder him from being an itinerant disciple of the Lord. It was a question of seeing the celebration of Mass not only as a moment of  prayer or mystical union with the Lord, but also as an invitation to act, which is born out of the Word proclaimed and believed during the celebration of Mass. Here we find the novitas, the newness, of Saint Francis, who inaugurates a new way of religious life in the Church, namely that of the apostolica vivendi forma. It was a new way which was born during the celebration of Mass in a wayside chapel, and after listening to the explanation of the Gospel from the mouth of an impoverished priest of this world.

~Noel Muscat O.F.M., Look at the Humility of God: The Eucharist in the Writings and the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi via website of the Five Franciscan Martyrs Region

We can affirm that the Gospel calling which Francis felt to the apostolic life was born exactly within the context of the celebration of Mass. He was not a deaf hearer of the Gospel, and therefore he opened his heart, and in the living presence of Christ who speaks in His Word, Francis felt his inner calling, strengthened by the context in which he was finding himself at that moment, namely the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

~Noel Muscat O.F.M., Look at the Humility of God: The Eucharist in the Writings and the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi via website of the Five Franciscan Martyrs Region

This approach to ministry is one that places relationship and community above one’s personal faith journey and conversion. In fact, one’s own conversion, if indicative of a Franciscan hue, should lead toward humanity and away from only one’s self. It is for precisely this reason that Francis insisted that the friars were to remain mendicants and not monks, to live as if the whole world were a cloister and not be limited to the four walls of private religious life.

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

A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep. This vision of the devout soldier is credible, not only by reason of the sanctity of him that saw it, but by reason of the miracles which afterwards confirmed its truth.

~St. Bonaventure,  Life of St. Francis of Assisi

Read Part 1 here.

The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem.

~St. Bonaventure,  Life of St. Francis of Assisi

Read Part 3 here.

It happened in the third year before his death, that in order to excite the inhabitants of Grecio to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion, [St. Francis] determined to keep it with all possible solemnity; and lest he should be accused of lightness or novelty, he asked and obtained the permission of the sovereign Pontiff. Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed.

~St. Bonaventure,  Life of St. Francis of Assisi

Read Part 2 here.

Francis sprang up and went. To go and do something was one of the driving demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it before he had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. In any case what he had done was something very decisive and immediately very disastrous for his singular social career.

~G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi

He said: “If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.” That sentence is the clue to the whole policy that he pursued.

~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi

He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearance without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song.

~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi

He was a poet whose whole life was a poem. He was not so much a minstrel merely singing his own songs as a dramatist capable of acting the whole of his own play. The things he said were more imaginative than the things he wrote. The things he did were more imaginative than the things he said. His whole course through life was a series of scenes in which he had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful crisis.

~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi

And Francis trailed back in his sickness to Assisi, a very dismal and disappointed and perhaps even derided figure, with nothing to do but to wait for what should happen next. It was his first descent into a dark ravine that is called the valley of humiliation, which seemed to him very rocky and desolate, but in which he was afterwards to find many flowers.

~G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi