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“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words when necessary,” is another quote attributed to Francis of Assisi that he almost certainly didn’t say. Francis used words aplenty to preach the Gospel; in fact, he used all the clubs in the bag, all the tools in the toolbox, all the metaphors in the idiom to
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So I cheated. A little. I identified “worship” as a key Franciscan theme, though I think you could make a better case for “prayer”. But I didn’t want a framework with 3 Ps (with poverty and peace), 2 Cs (creation and community) and a random W (witness). So here we are. But using “worship” as
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G.O.A.T. stands for Greatest Of All Time. Sports fanatics like to argue about who deserves this honorific in different categories, like greatest player or team or comeback or mascot. Usually, it’s just a way to pass time during commercial breaks or blowouts. For kids, and frankly, for a lot of people, Christmas is clearly the
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We’re at the week in Advent with the rose (don’t call it pink) candle, which is when the people in the Church talk about joy. Up until now, my Franciscan Advent examination of conscience has been pretty, well, dark and joyless. Rejecting St. Francis of Assisi’s radical examples on poverty, peacemaking, love of creation and
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I love you all, but only to a point. Although the other dimensions of Francis’ life so far – poverty, peacemaking, creation – are starkly challenging yardsticks, his version of community is actually the hardest for me to write about. That’s because, with those others, the gap between his lived example and the world we
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What would Francis do? So as I mentioned before, Francis of Assisi is mostly known as a nature lover. Lots of statues in gardens. Lots of statues holding up birdbaths. Stories of him preaching to birds. Stories of him saving earthworms from the road. Stories of him negotiating peace between a wolf and a city.
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“Most of the quotes attributed to famous people are wrong.” — Abraham Lincoln You probably know the Prayer of St. Francis – you make have heard the hymn version, “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace”, which has been arranged many times (my favorite is in the Broadway musical Come From Away). I’ll post the
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My parents were traditional Midwestern Protestants who had several close friends who were Catholics, but who understood Catholicism as a separate faith from theirs. (This seems to reflect the way Catholics thought of Protestants before the Second Vatican Council, to be fair.) I never heard it directly from them, but through back channels I picked
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This was a dumb idea, God. Advent, the 4-week liturgical season that leads up to Christmas, is the beginning of the Church’s new year, so it’s a good time to reflect and repent and reform, or at least to start working up momentum to your New Year’s Resolutions. I had just finished re-reading one of
Reading Francis 