Franciscan Quote of the Day

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

Because he lived in such a perfect state of humble existence among his sisters and brothers, Jesus was able to meet those he encountered as they were and treat them with the inherent dignity rightly deserved by virtue of their humanity. For Francis, this became a major component of his way of life and remains a characteristic of Franciscan ministry today.

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

He may say (what means very little) that St. Francis was in advance of his age. He may say (what is quite true) that St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property.

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

I know this isn’t a quote, but if you want to keep up with what’s going on at the Q, they have set up a website (http://www.quinquennial.org/).

More than 500 Franciscans converge on Chicago July 3-8 for the U.S. Secular Franciscan Order’s Quinquennial Congress. Held every five years to bring Secular Franciscans, friars and sisters together as a family from across the U.S., the Quinquennial this year focuses on gaining insight into the call by St. Francis of Assisi to live the Gospel in one’s everyday life.

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

And so we must all keep close watch over ourselves or we will be lost and turn our minds and hearts from God, because we think there is something worth having or doing, or that we will gain some advantage.

~St. Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221

Walking, sitting, eating, or drinking, St. Francis was always intent upon prayer. He would go alone to pray at night in churches abandoned and located in deserted places, where, under the protection of divine grace, he overcame many fears and many disturbances of mind.

~St. Francis of Assisi, Celano, First Life, Chapter XXVII (thanks to Portiuncula: the Little Portion)

Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.

~St. Francis of Assisi

If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

~St. Francis of Assisi

Preach the Gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.

~St. Francis of Assisi