Franciscan Quote of the Day

It seems to me most Christians “preach” one gospel and live another. We preach the Good Samaritan and ignore the poor. We preach the gospel of trust but lock our church doors. We preach the lilies of the field and allocate large amounts of our monthly paychecks to pension and insurance plans. We preach the gospel of peace but plot to destroy our enemies. We preach the gospel of forgiveness but build prisons. We preach the gospel of tolerance but are rigid and judgmental. We preach a gospel of unity but live in ghettos of separateness. We preach the gospel of simplicity but live in mansions. We preach the gospel of service but we want to be served. We preach the gospel of prayer but prefer to be entertained. We preach the gospel of love but easily succumb to hatred.

~ Gerry Straub, “Divisive Times”

Humility is a pathway to prayer. Prayer is the doorway to the heart, the center of our being, the place where we can let go, let go of pretense, pride, ego and a host of things blocking us from the true source of life, the true source of love, God. In the innermost chamber of the heart we see the dissonance between the Spirit of God and our spirit; it is here we struggle to dissolve that disharmony.

~ Gerry Straub, Humility is Holiness

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

Our souls are like wood: the more they imbibe the oil of submission and humility the more they are set on fire with divine love.

~St. Clare of Montefalco

If you don’t pray often, you won’t gain a love for praying. Prayer is work, and therefore it is not very appealing to our natural sensibilities. But the simple rule for prayer is this: Begin praying and your taste for prayer will increase. The more you pray, the more you will acquire the desire for prayer, the energy for prayer, and the sense of purpose in prayer.

~Leslie Ludy, via Little Portion Hermitage

So it’s not a matter of being right on social justice and wrong on sex (nor of celibacy being a higher calling than marriage): it’s a matter of the ground of existence, whatever our station in life, being love. It’s a matter of worshiping an entirely different Master than the world, whose gods are security, comfort, efficiency, power, property, prestige and control. I wanted to say to my friend, Haven’t you ever wanted to bow your head in wonder? Haven’t you ever looked around for Someone to thank? In so many words I did say those things, and then I wrenched my hands, for I could feel her embarrassment for me and my “archaic” views, and stammered: “I actually believe it…I believe Christ is the Savior of the world”….

Heather King, Shirt of Flame, “Pope Francis”

Secular Franciscans develop love in full measure so that it becomes their natural reaction to life and people and problems and celebrations. The SFO Rule is clear on this when it states: … In these fraternities the brothers and sisters, led by the Spirit, strive for perfect charity in their own secular state (SFO Rule – #2).

~ Lester Bach, OFM Cap, The Franciscan Journey: Embracing the Franciscan Vision

Christ’s perfect humility was rooted in His complete confidence in God’s love and perfect plan. God’s perfect plan for our redemption gives us, in turn, the courage to trust Him. That trust is the basis upon which we strive for humility.

If we were all able to be as humble and obedient as Christ, the world would be a very different place. When we are open to God, we are open to grace and the Holy Spirit. We are open to accept God’s guidance in learning from our mistakes and fulfilling the potential for which He created us. We leave behind pride and open the way for joy, generosity, love, and all the other fruits of the Spirit. Those gifts can change not only our own lives, but the lives of everyone we know.

~The Power of Humility, Christopher News Notes

The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.

~Dorothy Day, The Mystery of the Poor

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

To dare to believe that we are truly loved, not for anything we have accomplished, earned, produced, learned, achieved, or sacrificed for, but simply for existing is a reality that can hardly be borne. We want that love more than anything; we search for that love all our lives. Yet we’re somehow not able, not equipped to see it, perhaps, except by prolonged, sustained suffering—and uniting our suffering to Christ’s. Thérèse did seem to be able to experience herself as fully loved—because she loved so much herself—and in the end that was perhaps her greatest gift: to God, to us.

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

But I do know that we don’t need and can’t afford maintainers of the status quo.  I do know that we need visionaries; missionaries; leaders who will burn up every atom of themselves in the furnace of God’s service, so that nothing remains but the light and warmth of Jesus Christ blazing out to touch  the lives of others. We Catholics – you, me, all of us — need to be and to make a fire on the earth that consumes human hearts with God’s love.  We can’t “teach” that.  It doesn’t come from books or programs.  We need to embody it, witness it, live it.

~Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap., Young adults and ‘secrets of the heart’, address to the Catholic Campus Ministry Association’s national convention, Clearwater, Fla., Jan. 10, 2013, via God and the Machine

One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now. We contribute to a better world only by personally doing good now, with full commitment and wherever we have the opportunity, independently of partisan strategies and programmes. The Christian’s programme —the programme of the Good Samaritan, the programme of Jesus—is “a heart which sees”. This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly.

~Deus Caritas Est – Encyclical Letter, Benedict XVI.

Peace is needed. This refers to inner peace, peace of the conscience freed from all the fragmentation caused by sin and open to the true good. It also means peace with others, in mutual respect and friendship made of truth and love.

~Blessed Pope John Paul II, via A Catholic Cappuccino, Please! Catholic Blog

A Franciscan voice will insist on loving one another as God has loved us to an extravagant and foolish degree because it is how, as Francis explains in his Canticle, we give glory back to God. Having been created in the image and likeness of God, unlike trees or flowers or fire or the moon, we are most fully human when we love, forgive, and work toward peace. To be violent, vengeful, or selfish is to be un-human!

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

Preaching love, forgiveness, and peace is a dangerous and risky business for those who have forgotten (literally do not have a memory of) what it means to bear the name of the Prince of Peace. But this is the business of the Franciscan voice nonetheless.

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

The reason that following the Gospel is so challenging, that engaging the world from a Franciscan perspective is so difficult, is that in a world that organizes its thoughts and responses according to the logic of violence and the possible, the Good News of Jesus Christ is communicated in the poetics of the Kingdom of God, which is an expression of the impossible experience of love, forgiveness, and peace.

~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

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving You.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, You, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love —a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now You have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything You are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless You as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

via Ragamuffin Ramblings…

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