Franciscan Quote of the Day

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

If we exalt money, status, or sex above the Word of God, we are living in idolatry. Every time we inwardly submit to the strongholds of fear, bitterness, and pride, we are bowing to the rulers of darkness. Each of these idols must be smashed, splintered, and obliterated from the landscape of our hearts.

~ Francis Frangipane via Flowing Faith

It doesn’t matter how far away we are from everyone, it doesn’t matter if they take everything away. Nobody can ever take away the faith we carry in our hearts. This is how we build an altar in our own hearts.

Bl. Maria Restituta via Kissing the Leper

A Franciscan’s life, therefore, is to be marked by continual contemplation, reflection, and emulation of the Gospel. The way of life is not about particular tasks, responsibilities, duties or rules (although they certainly exist and rightly so), but about the style of living in whatever context one finds him or herself.

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

God without priests. Churches without authority. Faiths that are optional. It’s wonderfully liberating. The divine can’t get his hands on us anymore! Now we can be spiritual without being religious. It’s the luxury good human beings have always wanted: bespoke worship, idols made to spec.

R.R. Reno, “Freedom from Religion” | First Things

[Editor's note: this may be one of those quotes that benefits greatly from reading the piece that the quote was taken from. Just in case the tone of this fragment isn't clear because it is a mere fragment, R.R. Reno isn't advocating a religion as described above but is describing what, in some sense, has become what currently passes for religion.]

I cannot help but wonder what remains behind when Christianity’s power over culture recedes? How long can our gentler ethical prejudices [toward the vulnerable—the diseased, disabled, or derelict among us], many of which seem to be melting away with fair rapidity, persist once the faith that gave them their rationale and meaning has withered away? Love endures all things perhaps, as the apostle says, and is eternal; but as a cultural reality, even love requires a reason for its preeminence among virtues. And the mere habit of solicitude for others will not necessarily long survive when that reason is no longer found. If . . . the human as we understand it is the positive intervention of Christianity, might it not be the case that a culture that has become truly post-Christian will also, ultimately, become posthuman?

~David Bentley Hart via Maureen Mullarkey | A First Things Blog

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.

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

A Christian response to worldly wisdom, to the factors of popular, civil, and political influence on memory, is to question what might at first seem wise and appropriate in order to allow God to illuminate the true wisdom.

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

At every moment God’s will produces what is needful for the task in hand, and the simple soul, instructed by faith, finds everything as it should be and wants neither more nor less than what it has.

~Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence

Faith is not a thing of the mind; it is not an intellectual certainty or a felt conviction of the heart. It is a sustained decision to take God with utter seriousness as the God of my life. It is to live out each hour in a practical, concrete affirmation that God is Father and he is “in heaven.” It is a decision to shift the center of our lives from ourselves to him, to forego self-interest and make his interests, his will, our sole concern. This is what it means to hallow his name as Father in heaven.

~Sister Ruth Burrows, O.C.D. in Magnificat via Shirt of Flame

To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.

~Hermann Hesse (via The Hammock Papers)

Lord,
may our evening prayer come before you
and let the faith our lips profess
live in the prayerful thoughts of our hearts.

~Liturgy of the Hours, Evening Prayer for Tuesday in Ordinary Time, Week IV

Trust in God experienced—not contemplated—is the most liberating thing in the world.

~Marion Fernandez-Cueto, Surrender the Choosing: A Lenten Journey Toward Trust

We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend on material success; nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries, but on Jesus alone.

– Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (via Saint Quote of the Day)

If we had faith, we would be grateful to all creatures, we would bless them and inwardly thank them for contributing, under God’s hand, so favorably to our perfection.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Faith gives the whole earth a celestial aspect; by it the heart is transported, enraptured to commune with heaven. Each moment is a revelation of God.

~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment