Franciscan Quote of the Day

My wish is that all of us, after these days of grace, will have the courage, yes, the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Lord’s Cross; to build the Church on the Lord’s blood which was poured out on the Cross; and to profess the one glory: Christ crucified. And in this way, the Church will go forward.

~The Holy Father Pope Francis,  Homily, Thursday, 14 March 2013

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

~Mother Teresa via OH……….. FRANCESCO

If the poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta via Chris Dickson

The point of the Third Order is to accept with humility the task of one’s secular profession and its requirements, wherever one happens to be, while directing one’s whole life to that deep interior communion with Christ that Francis showed us.

–Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 1 via Saint Clare of Assisi Fraternity’s Website.

The late, great John Cardinal OConnor of New York once told a suffering woman, “Christ could have saved the world by His miracles, but He chose to save the world by His suffering.”

~Leila Miller, Little Catholic Bubble.

As if to take St. Paul’s reflection to heart, Francis identified human foolishness, what appeared to be stupid in the eyes of the world, to be acceptable and perhaps unavoidable if one was to really follow Christ. Love of enemies, forgiveness of sins, embracing the poor, and shirking the lure of personal gain all appear counterintuitive to those who are concerned with things described in the language of the possible. Yet, Francis was not so interested in what at first appeared logical and sensible; he instead made it his business to follow the Gospel, which is expressed in the poetic language of the Kingdom of God where the first will be last, where the sinful will be forgiven, and where the dead will be raised.

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

“Christ, poor and crucified”, victor over death and risen, the greatest manifestation of the love of God for humanity, is the “book” in which the brothers and sisters, in imitation of Francis, learn the purpose and the way of living, loving, and suffering. They discover in Him the value of contradictions for the sake of justice and the meaning of the difficulties and the crosses of daily life. With Him they can accept the will of the Father even under the most difficult circumstances and live the Franciscan spirit of peace, rejecting every doctrine contrary to human dignity.

~Article 10, General Constitution of the Secular Franciscan Order

I wonder whether, when the desire for Christ burns bright enough and hard enough, loneliness isn’t the inevitable ash. I wonder whether to follow a Savior who subverts all power systems—social, political, economic, even familial—does not lead us into a kind of necessary and terrible exile.

~Heather King, Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux

The world laughs at such people but as a friend who is undergoing a genuine conversion observed the other day, “Christ’s love is…extravagant, isn’t it?”  That Christ’s love is extravagant means that it is always better to err on the side of hungering too much, rather than too little; better to wear our hearts on our sleeves rather than let them harden from cynicism and despair; better to be willing to let our hunger make us look like fools  than to pretend we have life under control and that our hunger doesn’t matter. To love Christ is to suffer the full unanesthetized pain of not being in control, not being able to “make” things go our way, not being able to make the edges of life match up. To attend Mass is to bow to mystery, not certainty.

~Heather King, “Vespers”

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

~C. S. Lewis, Essay on Forgiveness

But let no one suppose it possible to form true Christian virtues, and to serve God as he ought, unless he is ready in good earnest to do violence to his own inclinations, and to endure the pain of giving up all the things which pleased him, both great and small, and to which he had clung with earthly affection.

~Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat

“Take up thy cross,” the Savior said,
“If thou wouldst My disciple be;
Deny thyself, the world forsake,
And humbly follow after Me.”

Take up thy cross, let not its weight
Fill thy weak spirit with alarm;
His strength shall bear thy spirit up,
And brace thy heart and nerve thine arm.

Take up thy cross, nor heed the shame,
Nor let thy foolish pride rebel;
Thy Lord for thee the cross endured,
And saved thy soul from death and hell.

Take up thy cross then in His strength,
And calmly sin’s wild deluge brave,
’Twill guide thee to a better home,
It points to glory o’er the grave.

Take up thy cross and follow Christ,
Nor think til death to lay it down;
For only those who bear the cross
May hope to wear the glorious crown.

To Thee, great Lord, the One in Three,
All praise forevermore ascend:
O grant us in our home to see
The heavenly life that knows no end.

~Charles W. Ev­er­est, Vi­sions of Death, and Other Po­ems

Jesus has always many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who care for trial. He finds many to share His table, but few to take part in His fasting. All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for Him. Many follow Him to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion. Many revere His miracles; few approach the shame of the cross. Many love Him as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless Him as long as they receive some comfort from Him. But if Jesus hides Himself and leaves them for a while, they fall either into complaints or into deep dejection.Those, on the contrary, who love Him for His own sake and not for any comfort of their own, bless Him in all trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if He should never give them consolation, yet they would continue to praise Him and wish always to give Him thanks. What power there is in pure love for Jesus—love that is free from all self-interest and self-love!

~Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter XI.

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.

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.

~St. Francis of Assisi

You see, the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be, and somewhere, to love reality and then discover that God is present.

~Jean Vanier, via Pax Christi Facebook Page

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)

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

~C. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

And then I thought: I’ve been getting this all wrong. Christ is not just in the comfortable, familiar places, like my hometown and among my neighbors. He is here, too, amid the roads clogged with traffic, the miles of strip shopping malls and clearance racks. God knows we have to live in a material world. He knows we need to clothe and care for our children. Christ has found a way to show Himself to me, in this present moment, in the shoe department of the East Brunswick Kohl’s.

~Allison Salerno, “Because Christ is Everywhere—Even in the Shoe Department” (on the blog Why I Am Catholic)