HOLY POVERTY AND THE HOLIDAYS (Advent reflections for Franciscans based on an article by Br. JR)- Part III

Christmas draws near. It is but proper to meditate on how Francis celebrated Christmas and on his deep devotion to the child Jesus. To remember that he set up the first live nativity scene in history or that he saw the live Christ child in the crib is a moving thought, but these are ordinary meditations for every Roman Catholic.

What is exclusively Franciscan is the poverty that Francis observed as he celebrated the Christian holidays. His joy and his faith always strengthened his resolve to live as Christ said, to empty himself of everything – property, attachments, surplus, sharing with the poor, trusting that Christ would provide from day to day.

As Franciscans, we think ahead toward Christmas and ponder how we will show our gratitude to God for everything that he has given us. We reflect on how much our Heavenly Father loved the world that His only begotten son became flesh and dwelt among us for the sole purpose of dying for us. Let us keep in mind that our celebrations must reflect Gospel poverty, not worldly consumerism.

HOLY POVERTY AND THE HOLIDAYS (Advent reflections for Franciscans based on an article by Br. JR)-Part II

For the Secular Franciscan, he must gently remind himself that he does not own everything that is within his means, just because he does not live in a religious community. This is not the way of Francis. He did not live in a religious community when he embraced poverty and the Gospel. He was alone. The community came later. The Holy Rule came later. He wrote the rule the manner of life he lived in solitude as a secular man.

Francis designed a simple tunic with a hood and wrapped a rope around his waist. This was the only garment that he kept as his own. He did not possess a closet full of clothing that he never wore. This he had left at his parents’ home or had given away. The only garments he had were what he needed for his daily life and work.

If we are married, have children, older parents or both, charity and justice require that we provide for our families. Providing for our families should not prevent us from practicing real poverty when it comes to ourselves. On the contrary, the family is the domestic Church. Every effort, every talent, and every possession should be spent on making the domestic Church a reflection of Christ’s Mystical Body.

Every cent or material resource that a Secular Franciscan has really belongs to his family and to the poor, NOT TO HIMSELF. Let us observe how Francis returned his clothes to his father while standing naked at the square in front of the bishop’s home. Francis begins his life with Holy Poverty by returning to his family what is rightfully theirs and more. HE KEEPS NOTHING FOR HIMSELF. He is but a good steward.

When the first secular men and women asked to be admitted to the Order, Francis gave them the Rule of Penance. These men and women have stood out through the centuries by their lives of poverty and their generosity toward their families and the poor. They have stood out for their simplicity in entertainment, dress, living conditions and associations. The many Secular Franciscans brothers and sisters who became saints or blessed were committed to poverty as Christ taught it in the Gospel. Their fidelity to this commitment, led them down the road to peace, joy and a deeper relationship with God, just as it did for Francis.

HOLY POVERTY AND THE HOLIDAYS (Advent reflections for Franciscans based on an article by Br. JR)-Part 1

As Advent dawns upon us, we begin to think of the holidays – Christmas is just around the corner. Many are thinking of the gifts to receive, the dinner parties they are going to host, how they will decorate their homes, who to invite, where they are going to travel. This may seem normal, but there is something that must be considered but is often forgotten. Anyone wanting to imitate Francis of Assisi’s Gospel Life must consider his plans to be consistent with the evangelical counsel of poverty as Francis understood and taught it.

Francis’ spirituality is a moral commitment. The Gospel still calls us to ‘leave everything and follow Christ.’ These words moved our holy father Francis to begin a new life, and nothing has changed in 800 years.

The Gospel still says ‘Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me.’

This was exactly what Francis and his brothers did. They denied themselves of many things – family, property, comfort, money, and sometimes, food. They worked for what they had. They kept what they needed and the rest were given to the poor. They put their talents to serve the brotherhood and the poor. Nothing was kept for themselves.

The Gospel still says, ‘If you want to be perfect sell all that you have; give it to the poor, then come and follow me.’

This was exactly what Francis and Brother Bernardo did on the town square the day after they heard these words from the Holy Gospel.

Fraciscan Prayer - Implications of Franciscan Prayer .. Last Part

How does this theology of the word play out in Francis’ journey of prayer? For Francis, God loves us where we are—with our frailty, weaknesses and insecurities. This is the meaning of his encounter with the God of compassionate love as seen in the cross of San Damiano.

Francis understands that while God is incomprehensible and ineffable, he is at the same time ‘bent over’ in love for us, in and through the Son, Jesus Christ. God is infinite in love and intimate in love, far beyond us yet intensely
By following in the footprints of Jesus Christ, we are led to the Father of incomprehensible love through the Spirit, who joins us to Christ, who in turn leads us to the Father. For Francis, Christ is the center of the Trinity and the center of our relationship to God.

For Francis, prayer is not a flight from the world toward a transcendent God; rather it centers on the mystical body of Christ and our participation in this mystery. God took on our flesh that we might discover his eternal face in ourselves. This is the good news of Jesus Christ and of our lives in Christ. Prayer channels us into the depths of the Christ mystery where the fullness of our humanity—and our happiness—lies.

In her Second Letter to St. Agnes of Prague, Clare directed her toward a relationship with the God of self-giving love. Take some time to meditate on the following words of Clare and consider whether or not your relationship with God is leading you more deeply into the mystery of Christ:

‘Gaze upon [Him]; consider [Him]; contemplate [Him], as you desire to imitate [Him]. If you suffer with Him, you shall reign with Him, [if you] weep [with Him], you shall rejoice with Him, [if you] die [with Him] on the cross of tribulation, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendor of the saints and, in the Book of Life, your name shall be called glorious among people.’


Group Sharing II: Guide Questions for Reflection:

-Who is God to whom you pray?

-Where do you find God? In silence? In other people? In liturgical prayer?

-Is God ‘up above’ you, transcendent and distant to you? Or do you experience God’s intimate presence in your life?

-How do you envision the journey to God? Does a ladder, a spiral or another image capture your relationship to God?

Franciscan Prayer - Franciscan Journey

For Franciscans, the journey to God is a journey inward, toward a new relationship with God in which God takes on flesh anew in one’s life. The Good News of Jesus Christ, as the Franciscans understand it, is that we do not ‘go to God’ as if God sat in the starry heavens awaiting our arrival; rather, God has ‘come to us’ in the Incarnation.

‘The eternal God has humbly bent down,’ St. Bonaventure wrote, ‘and lifted the dust of our nature into unity with his own person’ (Sermon II on the Nativity of the Lord). We move toward God because God has first moved toward us: This is the Franciscan path of prayer.

The journey of prayer for Franciscans is the discovery of God at the center of our lives. We pray not to acquire a relationship with God as though acquiring something that did not previously exist. We pray to disclose the image of God in which we are created, the God within us, that is, the one in whom we are created and in whom lies the seed of our identity.

We pray so as to discover what we already have—’the incomparable treasure hidden in the field of the world and of the human heart’ (Clare of Assisi, Third Letter to Agnes of Prague). We pray not to ‘ascend’ to God but to ‘give birth to God’—to allow the image in which we are created to become visible. We pray to bear Christ anew. In prayer, therefore, we discover what we already have—the potential for the fullness of life, and this life is the life of Christ.
Next...Implications of Franciscan Prayer

Franciscan Prayer- Jesus – Revelation of the Father

In his writings, Francis showed less a personal relationship to Christ than to the Father—the source of all goodness and the Most High. Yet Francis realized that the Son is the beloved of the Father; thus the deepest reason for clinging to Jesus is that he reveals the Father. Francis believed that Christ alone is the One in whom the Father takes delight because the Son satisfies the Father in everything.

Instead of relating to Jesus in a personal way, Francis often used the expression ‘Word of the Father’ when speaking about the person of Christ. This is surprising for one who was considered a ‘second Christ’ in the Middle Ages. Yet we have evidence of this understanding in Francis’ writings.

In the second version of his Later Admonition and Exhortation, for example, he states that, ‘Through his angel, St. Gabriel, the Most High Father in heaven announced this Word of the Father, so worthy, so holy and glorious, in the womb of the holy and glorious Virgin Mary’ (4-5).
Francis saw God as communicative and expressive—perhaps like a divine cell phone! The Father’s self-expression is his word. Jesus is the word of the Father. Francis saw a connection between the divine word, which is entirely worthy, holy and glorious, and the Incarnate word, which assumed our fragile human nature.

Francis emphasized to his followers that the word of the Father left his divine riches in order to accept the poverty of humanity. God expresses himself by giving himself away in love. The Incarnation is where the word of the Father ‘descends’ to embrace us in love. This movement of descent, shown to us in Christ, is a daily event that we see and touch in the Eucharist:

‘Behold, each day he humbles himself as when he came from the royal throne into the Virgin’s womb; each day he himself comes to us, appearing humbly, each day he comes down from the bosom of the Father upon the altar in the hands of a priest’ (Admonition One).

The descent of the word into humanity reminded Francis of the humility of God—not simply the humble circumstances of Jesus’ earthly beginnings and life but rather another name for God, who is, above all, love. In his Praises of God, Francis exclaimed, ‘You are love...You are humility.’

Francis called God ‘humility’ because he perceived the love of the Father in the descent of the Son in the Incarnation. In Bonaventure’s terminology, the Father bends low in love to embrace us fragile human beings in and through the Son, the Word of God. The Word incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, expresses the humble love of God.
Next...Franciscan Journey

Franciscan Prayer...The Journey of Francis

Disillusioned as a valiant knight after being wounded in battle, Francis had a profound experience of God in the broken–down church of San Damiano, which he visited one day. Face–to–face with the wounded and glorified Christ on the cross, Francis met the God of compassionate love, a God ‘bent over’ in love in the wounds of the crucified Christ.

Bonaventure describes this encounter in his Major Legend (1.6) where he writes: ‘While [Francis] was praying and all of his fervor was totally absorbed in God, Christ Jesus appeared to him as fastened to a cross.’ He indicates that there was no exchange of words. ‘His [Francis’] soul melted at the sight, and the memory of Christ’s passion was impressed on the innermost recesses of his heart.’

This encounter with the crucified God changed Francis in the very core of his being. Bonaventure states: ‘From then on he clothed himself with a spirit of poverty, a sense of humility, an eagerness for intimate piety.’ The expression of God’s self–giving love on the cross, impressed Francis in such a way that he began to change, marking the start of Francis’ spiritual journey.

The God whom Francis discovered in the cross of Jesus Christ was a God ‘who delights to be with the simple and those rejected by the world’ (Thomas of Celano, First Life, 12.31). Impressed by the love of the Crucified, Francis could no longer remain alone in his search for God. Rather, he had to find God in others: his neighbor, his brother and even the tiny creatures of nature.

The necessity of the other for Francis thrust him into radical poverty whereby everything that hindered his relation to the other was stripped away. Seeing God in the wounds of the Crucified drew Francis to a new level of compassion and to sharing his goods, his very self, with others.

Bonaventure writes that ‘to poor beggars he wished to give not only his possessions but his very self, sometimes taking off his clothes...ripping them in pieces to give to them’ (1.6). The encounter with Christ gave Francis a new openness and freedom. Embraced by the compassionate love of God, Francis was liberated within and went out to embrace others in love.

According to Bonaventure, Francis discovered his own identity through encountering the crucified Christ, that is, he discovered his own wounded–ness in the image of the crucified man. This self–knowledge enabled him to go out to the poor and sick.

Describing Francis as the truly humble person, Bonaventure writes: ‘As Christ’s disciple he strove to regard himself as worthless in his own eyes and those of others. He used to make this statement frequently: ‘What a person is before God, that he is and no more’’(6.1).

Naming the truth about himself before God freed Francis to make the journey to the other person and back again. Only in relation to the other did his weaknesses become strengths, for it was in naming his weaknesses that Francis matured in authentic human love.

Because of the mystery of Christ and the embrace of God’s compassionate love in the wounded Christ, Francis grew spiritually as a person, finding his true self to be a relational self. The deeper he grew in relationship with Christ, the deeper he grew in relationship with others.

As Francis deepened his relationship with Christ, the other became less for Francis an object and more a brother. Community became the concrete expression of the Christ mystery for Francis. The deeper he entered into the mystery of Christ in his own life, the more he recognized Christ in the world around him, in his brothers, the lepers, in the sick and in the tiny creatures of creation.

‘In all the poor,’ Bonaventure wrote, ‘Francis saw before him a portrait of Christ’ (8.5). Even animals represented Christ to him. Seeing the birth of a lamb, for example, Francis exclaimed, ‘Alas, brother lamb, innocent animal, always displaying Christ to people!’ (8.6).

Bonaventure highlights the idea that the one who dwells in Christ dwells in the other, because the fullness of who we are in Christ can only be found in the other. The difference of the other, therefore, was not an obstacle for Francis in his search for God but rather a celebration of God. For he found his own identity in God and he found God in the fragile, wounded flesh of his brothers and sisters.

It is prayer, according to Bonaventure, that impelled Francis to see the world with new vision, a contemplative vision that penetrated the depths of reality. The world became Francis’ cloister because he found it to be permeated with the goodness of God. Next....Jesus - Revelation of the Father