Franciscan Quote of the Day

Begun by the preceding stages, the formation of the brothers and sisters takes place in a permanent and continuous way. It should be understood as an aid in the conversion of each and everyone and in the fulfillment of their proper mission in the Church and in society.

~General Constitutions of the Secular Franciscan Order (Article 44):

A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in.

~Archbishop Oscar Romero, via Pax Christi USA

The worst error is to imagine that a Christian must try to be “sane” like everybody else, that we belong in our kind of society.

~Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (via the post “The Real Christian” on the blog A Capuchin Journey.

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

~Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz