Franciscan Spirit Fall 2018

The Lord revealed to me that this is to be our greeting: “The Lord give you peace.”

—ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

VOLUME TWO ISSUE ONE

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from the publisher

“Peace to this house” is the greeting that Jesus gave to the twelve apostles when he sent them out. He instructed them about what to do if people did not listen nor accept the peace that was proffered. They were to shake the dust off their feet.

In his Testament, Francis told the friars they should work and when they receive nothing for their work they could beg alms from door to door. Francis testifies that “God revealed a form of greeting to me, telling me that we should say, God give you peace.” It was not the pax Romana, imposed by force upon conquered people. No, it was totally different. It was the harmony, flowing from the realization that every sister and brother is a child of God, the Father of us all.

We here at Franciscan Media, a nonprofit ministry of the Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province, work hard to continue the work of St. Francis in spreading the Gospel to all.

But the way in which Francis preached the Gospel has dramatically changed. It is our mission to adapt to those changes so that we can carry on the work of Francis. And we have.

This magazine, for example, is just one more way in which we can reach out to people. Of course, there is our 125-year-old magazine St. Anthony Messenger, but we also offer a wide range of free online resources, such as our daily Saint of the Day and Minute Meditations. Currently, we are working on reworking and expanding the family resource section of our website to help families as they work to grow and pass on the faith to their children and grandchildren.

Yes, the way we communicate the Gospel is very different, but we are sharing the same message as St. Francis did so many years ago. Your support and generosity help us do that. For that, we are extremely grateful.

As we move forward, we hope you will join us and follow in the footsteps of St. Francis to spread the Gospel to all.

Peace and all good,

Dan Kroger, OFM Publisher Franciscan Media P.S. Your donation is necessary for our mission to succeed.

Thank you in advance for your support.

in this issue 2 Friars of the Future

by John Feister 4 After We Say Yes

by Casey Cole, OFM

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6 A Simple Map for Living

by Murray Bodo, OFM 8 A Revolution of Christ’s Love

by Kerry Walters 11 Believe in the Power of Love

by Alicia von Stamwitz 14 Franciscan Prayer is a High-Risk Enterprise

by Ilia Delio, OSF 16 Advent: A Time of Turning

by Diane Houdek 18 St. Clare’s Journey

by Susan Hines-Brigger 20 Running the Good Race

by Kathleen Carroll 22 The Francis Effect

by David Dault 24 Becoming a Living Prayer

by Daniel P. Horan, OFM 26 Connecting the Gospel and the Twelve Steps

by Richard Rohr, OFM 28 The Power of Saintly Witness: An Interview with Robert Ellsberg

by Christopher Heffron 32 The Radical Peace of Letting Go

by Amanda M. Roberts 34 Living in Just Relationship with Animals

by Charles M. Camosy 36 St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio

by Murray Bodo, OFM 38 The Prayer Everyone Knows

by Albert Haase, OFM

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Friars of the Future An excerpt from St. Anthony Messenger

by John Feister

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e hear all sorts of statistics about the closing and merging of parishes, the

crisis of priestly vocations, the shrinking of religious orders. Those things are happening, but there’s new life brewing too. Ask a young or new Franciscan today about the future, and you hear a lot of hope. “We’re not thinking, It’s going to be terrible around here. What are we going to do?

No, we just have to work all together,” says Abel Garcia, OFM. Friar Abel lives at St. Joseph Friary, near Catholic Theological Union, one of the largest Catholic theology schools in the English-speaking world. There are 18 friars from various states at St. Joseph’s, a thriving community where, in a large red brick house-turned-friary, they gather early in the morning and again in the evening,

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between ministry, classes, and study, for Liturgy of the Hours and daily Eucharist. It’s a far cry from the isolated, huge institutions of the past.

Thirteen friars-in-training, guided by the example of the other five, are learning their new lifestyle among the people of God, in the heart of a bustling city.

What is it about being a Franciscan? We gathered a group of four relatively new friars at a table in the corner of St. Joseph’s basement recreation room and asked them. Three of these men are in their 20s and 30s, and one is just over 50, all of them in the Order of Friars Minor (OFM). All have completed the earliest stages of formation and now are professed for one year at a time as they move through this program of study and further discernment. At each man’s final, solemn profession, he will promise a lifetime of poverty, obedience, and celibacy, in Franciscan community, for one purpose: spreading the good news of Jesus in word and deed.

Friar John Boissy is an aspiring lay brother—24 years old, a woodworker by interest who hopes to

PHOTO: Karen Callaway

continue in that direction. He was on a waiting list to go to furniture-making trade school and working two jobs (ski instructor and parking garage assistant) when he responded to a deeper calling.

Among the Franciscans, Friar John sees a place where he will be appreciated for who he is: “The friars respect each individual’s gifts.” That didn’t seem always to be the case when he looked at other orders. “The friars were definitely the most open to me and my desire for woodworking and furniture making.” So, in future Franciscan life, Friar John sees a place for simplicity, for working with his hands with the respect of the friars around him. He’s a member of Cincinnati’s St. John the Baptist Province.

Friar Jim Bernard, at age 51 the oldest of the friars at this table, was a New York banker. His home parish is St. Francis of Assisi in lower Manhattan. In his pre-friar days, he walked by it each day on his way to work as an executive, managing 30 people at a multibillion-dollar banking firm. He found time to do volunteer

work at the parish, including serving on a Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults team and working in some of the community outreach programs, among them the friars’ famous St. Francis Soup Kitchen. “I was inspired by the friars who I worked with there,” he says.

“I think the idea is that we need to strategically position ourselves where the people are who have the most need.” There are many different populations at this point who are suffering social injustices, he observes. “That is something that’s very close to our Franciscan hearts, and so we want to be there for those people.” Especially in a political climate that has created an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and division among people, he says, Franciscans are “about being bridge builders and about being instruments of peace.” Those are places where he sees a Franciscan future.

Friar Abel Garcia, tall and energetic, draws on his family experience most deeply. He is Salvadoran by birth, an immigrant, also from New York’s Holy Name Province. He came to the United States, to North Carolina, at age 19

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(he’s now 36) “like many immigrants, to help the family and provide a better life for them.”

What he sees in the future of the Franciscans is not so much a what as a how. Francis challenges all of us to step into the unknown on our own journey, he says, and along the way, to be hospitable. “I say that because I’m an immigrant— one of them—and I know what that means, the experience. I know what it is to live with uncertainty. You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.”

Finally, there’s Friar Joshua Critchley, a member of Immaculate Conception Province, also based in Manhattan. He is steering toward parish ministry as a priest, possibly with some role as a teacher too. He’s 23 years old and wears a thin, rust-colored beard. He’s from Connecticut and now five years a friar. Immaculate Conception friars do some of their formation in Italy (a strong European ethnic identity remains at the core of that province). He visited Assisi occasionally while studying in Rome. There he came to appreciate the sense of beauty that surely will continue to drive Franciscans.

That spirituality, along with collaboration with laity, will be key in the order’s future, says Friar Joshua. First will come each friar’s identity as a Franciscan. “For the Franciscan life, in particular, maybe it’s not a new challenge, but it’s going to be how we balance our fraternal life—our life together as brothers—with our ministry.” That will be especially important, he says, “maybe with fewer numbers than we have today.”

Simplicity, solidarity, trust, beauty—all in the context of the how, the Way of the Gospel—these will be key values driving who the Franciscans will become in the hands of this next generation.

“I think my future is really going to be something like a priest in transition or in motion,” says Friar Jim. “I kind of feel like I’m going to be pulled and moved to where people need me.... I think it’s kind of exciting—sort of an adventure, really.”

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After We Say Yes An excerpt from Called: What Happens After We Say Yes to God

by Casey Cole, OFM

S

ix years ago, I said yes to God. The culmination of much discernment and prayer over a number of years, I found myself sitting alone in a chapel no longer afraid of what I was going to do with my life. Finally confident in who I was and comfortable with who God wanted me to be, I was ready to begin living completely for God rather than myself. In that chapel so many years ago, I accepted what I believed that meant: I was going to be a Franciscan friar, serving the poor and living in prayerful community for the sake of the kingdom of God. And I did. The following year, I joined the formation program of the Order of Friars Minor, and six years later, I publicly professed my solemn and lifelong vows to live the rest of my life as a friar. I said yes, and I meant it.

From a certain perspective, I could definitely understand how some might perceive my moment of surrender in that chapel so many years ago as the effective end of my journey of discernment.

At the time, I probably would have said so myself.

No longer held back by my old sense of self or clouded by an infinite number of possible futures, I was ready to be who God was calling me to be.

After my profound and initial yes to God, I could on that day only see my solemn profession as a further formality in cementing what I had already accepted. The tough part was over—I knew what I wanted to do—now all I had to do was live it.

Ha! If only it were that easy.

Almost immediately after joining the friars and all throughout my years of formation, I realized that this was not going to be the case. As much emphasis as I had put in answering the initial question, and as profound as it was for me to

I said yes, and I meant it.

accept what God had prepared for me, I have been reminded almost every day since then that saying yes is just the beginning of a life with God. Life did not get easier when I turned my will over as I had expected. No, the journey of faith, to my surprise, became much more difficult.

My guess is that I am not alone in this experience. No, I can actually state with tremendous confidence that I am not alone because this experience is universal to each and every Christian who feels called in the silence of his or her heart to be a disciple of Christ and is inspired to say yes.

Accepting the call to go on the journey, no matter how difficult or self-sacrificing it may be, does not guarantee a safe or successful trip. In fact, as a Christian, it most assuredly means that there will be bumps along the road.

Why is that? Why, when we are finally able to turn from our own desires and begin to do what God wants, does God make everything so much more difficult? I think that our ability to grapple with this question, to move beyond our initial yes and deal with what comes next, is the most essential task we have if we want to be able to continue to say yes with any conviction.

Called What Happens After Saying Yes to God

by Casey Cole, OFM

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A Simple Map for Living An excerpt from Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis

by Murray Bodo, OFM

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t was the very closeness of God that moved him to the depths of his being. He was no longer

alone. God was with him and with the whole world. God was in him and God was in every creature, and all was blessing.

St. Francis was not a medieval theologian, but a wisdom figure, a teacher of wisdom who used sayings, stories, and rituals to show us how we can allow God to transform our lives. In this, as in everything else, he was following in the footsteps of Jesus, who is the mystery of the fullness of God among us.

The wonder of the incarnation is the first and central teaching that St. Francis left us. And from that core teaching six other teachings cascade:

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The paradox of evangelical poverty and how it unites us to God leads to living the Gospel in our time and place. This living the Gospel leads to how we are to go and repair God’s house, and we repair God’s house by making peace.

Peacemaking leads to the realization that God’s house is all of creation. These first six teachings all involve a going down in order to rise. Then, in the fullness of time, our living of these teachings is brought to completion in the joy of humble praise and service of God by embracing and serving all of God’s creatures. This joy, then, accompanies our final rising in a symbolic return to paradise. All seven teachings are rooted in the love of God; the teaching of teachings is Love.

This simple map for living is why St. Francis is still listened to and followed today in our fractious and divided world. What he teaches, if lived out, brings joy, which is the result of union with God who lives with us and within all of creation. God lives in creation but is also apart from creation as its Creator who existed before the existence of the universe.

The experiences and choices of St. Francis resulted in lessons that, when we act upon them today, continue to unfold as counter valences to the negative, immature “acting out” that has led and continues to lead to the divisions and hatreds that split us apart. The teachings of St. Francis enable us to imagine another future that gives us hope; for hope is the grace to imagine a future more positive, more loving, and more joyful than the world we now find ourselves in. As St. Francis used to say to his brothers, “Let us begin to do good, for up to now we have done nothing.”

Saint Francis began a new evangelization in his own time, not by trying to be social reformer.

He simply loved Christ and lived the Gospel, and he and his brothers became thereby catalysts for social change. They became “Holy Fools” who turned the world upside down by simply living the truth of the Gospel of Christ.

Like Francis and his brothers, we all can learn to love again, even in the midst of division and war.

And the map Francis gave us for learning to love is the Gospel and his own life of following in the footsteps of Christ. This map has been summed up beautifully in his Peace Prayer, a prayer he did not write but certainly is the way he prayed and lived and taught by example. It is a prayer that outlines everything that made Francis the peacemaker that he was and the model for peace that he is for us today. It is a prayer that shows us how to find the truth again, if we’ve lost it, or to continue living in the truth we’ve already found and are trying to live.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Surrounded by Love Seven Teachings from Saint Francis

by Murray Bodo, OFM

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An excerpt from Saint Oscar Romero: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr

by Kerry Walters

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o one but God could’ve seen that Oscar Romero, a timid, introverted, and very traditional priest would evolve into the heroic saint he became. His origins were humble and his performance as a seminary student unremarkable. For the first twenty-five years of his ordained life he was a conscientious pastor and diocesan administrator. But nothing extraordinary stands out. His understanding of his priestly calling was solidly traditional: celebrate mass, administer sacraments, organize catechism classes, collaborate with Catholic relief agencies, and offer spiritual counsel and consolation to the people he shepherded.

And yet the Spirit blows where it will, moving each heart in unfathomable ways. Even as Romero fulminated against the “red” priests of El Salvador, the oppressiveness of his nation’s political and economic structure and the uptick in violence became increasingly apparent to him and burdensome to his conscience. Gradually over his last five years of life, and especially the following the 1977 government-sanctioned murder of his friend Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit who lived and worked with campesinos, something that had been stirring in Romero finally clicked.

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He realized that fidelity to Christ required more than he’d hitherto given, that the Church and her priests are called to care for society’s most vulnerable members even if that means defying unjust legal, economic, and social structures that oppress them. He perceived that this wasn’t a politicized repudiation of the gospels or of Christ, but a return to both by a Salvadoran Church that historically had lost its way by aligning itself with the powerful against the powerless. Romero came to see that salvación integral, the total salvation of body and soul advocated by liberation theologians, was entirely consistent with the teachings of the Lord.

A “revolution of Christ’s love” perfectly expresses the new vision that transitioned Romero from a conscientious but unremarkable (and at times curmudgeonly) priest to a heroic prophet. A revolution motivated by the power of love instead of arms, a revolution that seeks not the overthrow but the conversion of society: this became Romero’s focus during his final three years as archbishop of San Salvador.

Romero’s newly embraced prophetic ministry was dismissed by critics then and now as political ideology masquerading as piety. He was accused of being a communist, an agitator, a Soviet stooge, a gullible fool, imprudent, unintelligent, and a bad priest. The calumny hurled at him soured his relations with the Vatican, leading to humiliating curial scolding during his lifetime and stonewalling on his canonization after his death. But Romero was clear in his own mind and conscience that he was doing Christ’s work, not playing power politics.

PHOTO: Brother Octavio Duran, OFM

A Revolution of Christ’s Love

Carry on, always seeking truth, justice, peace, and freedom.

Christ will give us strength so that we won’t lose heart along the way. —St. Oscar Romero

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The face of Christ is among the sacks and baskets of the farmworker; the face of Christ is among those who are tortured and mistreated in the prisons; the face of Christ is dying of hunger in the children who have nothing to eat; the face of Christ is in the poor who ask the church for their voice to be heard. How can the church deny this request when it is Christ who is telling us to speak for him? —St. Oscar Romero One way to appreciate the dynamics and cumulative effect of Romero’s spiritual journey is to view it through the lens of folklorist Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the hero’s journey. Each of the journey’s waystations is crucial to the heroic quest. The pilgrim must leave home, run up against unexpected and discombobulating challenges, and die to his or her old self. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no sudden transformations.

Romero’s own journey from priest to prophet to martyr follows this pattern. The comfortable and safe home he left, a departure that took him several years, was his traditional view of what it meant to be a priest. The monsters he encountered and battled along the way were, initially, of his own making—liberation theology’s new mode of evangelization—but then the very real ones of state-sponsored terrorism and institutionalized injustice. Finally slain once and for all to his old self by the shock of Grande’s murder, Romero rose from the grave—Grande’s grave, as it turned out—to take on the mantle of heroic prophet and offer total, integrated salvation to all Salvadorans, the oppressed first, but their oppressors as well.

No one is outside the reach of the returned hero’s beneficence. Even those who do evil are embraced if they repent and convert.

And yet the story of Romero’s heroic journey seems to end anti-climactically for the obvious reason that he was killed—not the symbolic dying to self which is one of the stages of the hero’s

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journey, but an actual snuffing out of his life by an assassin’s bullet. Moreover, twelve brutal years of civil war erupted in El Salvador immediately after his death. Doesn’t this suggest that Romero’s journey ended in failure? Doesn’t his martyrdom reveal him to be a vanquished hero and silenced prophet?

No. The priest’s task is to bring the people to God, and the prophet’s to bring God to the people. The martyr’s unique role is to display a devotion to God and the Kingdom so boundlessly loving that it reignites in the rest of us faith that may have grown tepid or even cold. We look to the martyrs to remind us that some things are worth sacrificing our lives for, but that the love which motivates us to make those sacrifices is more powerful than death itself. This is the great truth embodied in the Resurrection, and every individual martyrdom, including Romero’s, is a reflection of it. Martyrdom is a victory, not a defeat, a loud proclamation of God’s glory, not a silencing of God’s word, an affirmation, albeit a bittersweet one, that human wickedness can never win in the end. Therefore, St. Oscar Romero, priest, prophet, and martyr, lives on.

Saint Oscar Romero Pastor, Prophet, Martyr

by Kerry Walters

Believe in the Power of God’s Love

Jesuits, he worked as a janitor at a stocking factory and studied chemistry. Early in his seminary days, he was lovestruck by a young woman he met at a family wedding. Her beauty and intellectual radiance

by Alicia von Stamwitz

dazzled him and left him sleepless for a week.

In the end, as we know, Jorge chose religious life

T

he heart of the human being aspires to great things, lofty values, deep friendships, ties that

are strengthened rather than broken by the trials of life. The human being aspires to love and to be loved.

This is our deepest aspiration: to love and be loved; and definitively. —Pope Francis, July 5, 2014

over marriage. But his rich and varied life experience has served him well as pope. When he speaks about the universal human desire “to love and be loved,” listeners sense a genuine understanding of human nature. His voice rises with excitement. He becomes animated, and a world of emotions plays across his face. Joy. Tenderness. Hope. Rage against

Long before Jorge Bergoglio was elected to the

hatred and injustice. Delight in kindness and good-

papacy, he was an ordinary person trying to live a

ness. Confidence that “all will be well,” because

Christian life in a complex world. He was the eldest

God’s love will triumph in the end.

of five children, born to first-generation Italian

Shortly before his thirty-third birthday and his

immigrants in Argentina. He played soccer and

ordination as a Jesuit priest, which took place on

basketball, liked to dance, cook, and play the piano,

December 13, 1969, Jorge Bergoglio made an eight-

and had a lively sense of humor. Before joining the

day retreat and penned this heartfelt credo.

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GOD CALLS YOU BY NAME God calls each one of you by name. All of you are the “you” of God, precious in his eyes, worthy of respect and loved (cf. Isaiah 43:4). Welcome with joy this dialogue that God offers you, this appeal he makes to you, calling you by name.

MESSAGE TO YOUTH, FEBRUARY 11, 2018

GOD TAKES THE FIRST STEP The first step that God takes towards us is that of a love that anticipates and is unconditional. God is the first to love. God does not love because there is something in us that engenders love. God loves us because he himself is love, and, by its very nature, love tends to spread and give itself. God does not even condition his benevolence on our conversion. If anything, this is a consequence of God’s love.

GENERAL AUDIENCE, JUNE 14, 2017

GOD’S DREAM FOR US We were created to love and to be loved. God, who is Love, created us to make us participants in his life, to be loved by him and to love him, and with him, to love all other people. This is God’s “dream” for mankind.

ANGELUS, OCTOBER 29, 2017

THE POWER OF A CHANGED HEART Love is the greatest power for the transformation of reality because it pulls down the walls of selfishness and fills the ditches that keep us apart. This is the love that comes from a changed heart, from a heart of stone that has been turned into a heart of flesh, a human heart. And this is what grace does, the grace of Jesus Christ which we have all received.

ADDRESS, JUNE 17, 2013

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LET GOD’S LOVE WARM YOU Let me ask you: Are there moments when you place yourself quietly in the Lord’s presence, when you calmly spend time with him, when you bask in his gaze? Do you let his fire inflame your heart? Unless you let him warm you more and more with his love and tenderness, you will not catch fire.

GAUDETE ET EXSULTATE, 151

GOD WILL COMFORT YOU How often do I think that we are afraid of the tenderness of God and because we are afraid of God’s tenderness, we do not allow it to be felt within us…. The Heart of Christ is the tenderness of God. “How could I fail you? How could I abandon you? When you are alone, disoriented, lost, come to me, and I will save you, I will comfort you.”

HOMILY, JUNE 12, 2015

THE LORD IS WAITING FOR YOU I would like to say—sincerely—I would like to say to those who feel far from God and from the Church—I would like to say respectively—to all those who are fearful or indifferent: the Lord is also calling you to be a part of his people and he does so with deep respect and love! The Lord is calling you. The Lord is seeking you. The Lord is waiting for you. The Lord does not proselytize, he loves, and this love seeks you, waits for you, you who at this moment do not believe or are far away.

And this is the love of God. ANGELUS, JANUARY 6, 2014

‘I Believe’ Personal credo of Jorge Mario Bergoglio I want to believe in God the Father who loves me like a child, and in Jesus, the Lord who infused my life with His Spirit, to make me smile and so carry me to the eternal Kingdom of life.

I believe in the Church. I believe in my life story, which was pierced by God’s loving gaze, who on that spring day of 21st September, came out to meet me to invite me to follow him.

I believe in my pain, made fruitless by the egotism in which I take refuge.

I believe in the stinginess of my soul, which seeks to take without giving.

I believe in the goodness of others, and that I must love them without fear and without betraying them, never seeking my own security.

I believe in the religious life.

I believe I wish to love a lot.

I believe in the burning death of each day, from which I flee but which smiles at me, inviting me to accept her. I believe in God’s patience, as good and as welcoming as a summer’s night.

And I believe in the surprise of each day, in which will be manifest love, strength, betrayal, and sin, which will be always with me until that definitive encounter with that marvelous face which I do not know, which always escapes me, but which I wish to know and love.

Amen.

This credo is the springboard for the quotes gathered in Believe in Love: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis. In this collection are his most intimate thoughts about the purpose and promise of love, “the greatest power for the transformation of reality.”

Let your experience and curiosity be your guide.

Trust your instincts, trust yourself, and trust that the message you most need to hear will find you.

Whether you are at the beginning, middle, or end of your spiritual journey, may Pope Francis’s words open your eyes to true love: the kind of love that will never end.

Believe In Love Inspiring Words From Pope Francis

I believe that Dad is with the Lord in heaven.

I believe that Fr. Duarte is there, too, interceding for my priesthood.

I believe in Mary, my Mother, who loves me and will never leave me alone.

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Franciscan Prayer Is a High-Risk Enterprise An excerpt from Franciscan Prayer

by Ilia Delio, OSF

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ranciscan prayer is dynamic because it is about participation in the mystical Body of Christ. Prayer in this tradition is decisively incarnational; it is centered on the person of Jesus Christ. According to Franciscan theology, Christ cannot be separated from the Trinity because Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, the One through whom all things are made and in whom all things find their completion. To enter into the mystery of Christ through prayer, therefore, is to enter into the mystery of the Trinity, and to live in the Trinity is to live in relationships

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of love. Because Franciscan prayer is focused on the person of Christ, it is affective. It is prayer of the heart rather than head, and it seeks to center one’s heart in God. The heart that is centered in God views the world as the place where God dwells.

Franciscan prayer is contemplative and cosmic.

It is a type of prayer that impels one to find God in the vast corners of the universe. Because of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, all of creation is holy; all of creation is the sacrament of God. Prayer is that relationship with God which opens the eyes of believers to the sanctity of all life—from earthworms to humans, from quarks to stars.

Everything that exists reflects the goodness of God. Prayer is the breath of the Holy Spirit within us that opens our eyes to the divine good which saturates our world. Finally, Franciscan prayer is evangelizing. It is an awakening to the Good News of Jesus Christ and to the love of God poured out

for us in Christ. Those who seek God along the path of Franciscan prayer are to be transformed by the one they seek, the one they claim to love.

Prayer centered on relationship with Christ, the Word of God incarnate, cannot help but change the life of the believer and the way one lives.

Those who enter into Franciscan prayer, therefore, must be ready for change; they each must be willing to become “another Christ,” for this is where the path of prayer leads, to a new birth of Christ in the lives of the believers. The Russian Orthodox liken prayer to entering the cave of a tiger—the experience is uncontrollable. Risk is involved and yet, too, a certain level of trust.

Prayer that leads to real participation in the mystery of Christ, or we might say, prayer that allows the mystery of Christ to change our lives, is a high-risk enterprise—an uncontrollable experience. Yet, the power of God’s grace is such that one who, like Francis of Assisi, is able to trust God sufficiently can enter into the “cave” of the heart, the place where Incarnation takes place, and be transformed into the triumph of love. Franciscan prayer, therefore, is Christ-centered, affective, contemplative, cosmic and evangelizing. The goal of prayer is to make Jesus Christ alive in the believer. To bring Christ to life is the way to peace.

Franciscan prayer is about relationship with a God of overflowing love. It is discovering the God of love at the center of our lives and of our world and finding the truth of our identity in God. To enter into this relationship one must be a person of desire. God does not force us into a relationship of love but freely gives us the grace to respond to his invitation of love. Spiritual desire is the longing of the heart for relationship with God that brings happiness and peace. Francis of Assisi was a passionate person, a dreamer, a lover and a person of desire. When he felt his desire filled in hearing the gospel, he found the answer to his deepest longings and changed his life accordingly.

He became a follower of Christ. Francis’ life shows

us that we must be attentive to our desires if we are to find the fulfillment of our lives in God. The Franciscan path of prayer that leads to peace is a path of transformation and witness.

Christ is proclaimed not by words but by the example of one’s life, one’s willingness to suffer or perhaps offer one’s life for the sake of another.

Christ lives in that Christ lives in us—in our bodies, our hands, our feet and our actions. We are called to be vulnerable to grace so that we may be transformed into the living Christ. Franciscan prayer, lived to its full, is to set the human heart on fire. It is to transform one’s body into a body of love and one’s actions into actions of love. In this transformation is the fire that can set the earth ablaze—the fire of light, peace, justice, unity and dignity. It is to see the wounds of suffering humanity and bind them with mercy and compassion. It is to see and feel for all creation—to love by way of self-gift. It is to live in the mystery of Christ, the mystery of God enfleshed. The mystery of being human lies in the mystery of desire, which shapes our lives and can change us. Prayer is the Spirit of the Word that transforms our flesh into the body of Christ. It is an awakening to who we are in Christ and to the fact that we are the path to peace. The Franciscan path of prayer leads one to proclaim by example and deed: Jesus Christ lives!

Franciscan Prayer

by Ilia Delio, OSF

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Advent: A Time of Turning An excerpt from Simple Gifts: Daily Reflections for Advent

by Diane M. Houdek

Prepare in the wilderness a highway for our God. —Isaiah 40:3

A

dvent calendars have become quite a commodity in secular culture, and they’re far more sophisticated than the simple paper and cardboard doors with hidden pictures for each day that I had as a child. Chocolate is a popular daily treat. There are coloring books with a design for every day leading up to Christmas. For the last several years I’ve knit scarves with a daily lace motif accompanied by a meditation. I’ve also seen ads for gin, whiskey, and single malt scotch Advent calendars. For many people, Advent is synonymous with counting down the days of December from the first to the twenty-fifth.

Advent is far more than just preparation for Christmas. It has beauty and inspiration in its own right. It’s a fresh start, an invitation to enter into the silence and the mystery of whatever is waiting to be born or reborn in our lives.

Paradoxically it’s an invitation to slow down, to come away to the quiet, at the very time our daily lives are immersed in activity—shopping, parties, baking, cleaning. It’s a reminder that the promise of Christ is “already but not yet.” The Church begins a new liturgical year. The Scriptures for the season describe the apocalyptic end of time and the Second Coming, but they also remind us of the minutely precious details of the First Coming.

Advent is a time of turning, because as Christians we are always in a process of conversion, turning away from sin and toward the light of Christ. We are called to prepare a place for

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Jesus in our hearts and our lives in the same way the people of the Hebrew Scriptures longed for the Messiah and in the same way Mary and Joseph made preparations for the birth of their first child.

Life as we know it is going to change if we live Advent well.

Many years ago, an Advent reconciliation service turned my life around and set me on an incredible journey toward the life I’m now living.

This might be why Advent has always held a special place in my heart and in my spirituality.

People have asked me what it was that made such a difference, hoping to create a service in their own parishes that would change people’s lives. But I know that the truth is the ritual only created the opportunity for the spirit to appear. My life had been broken open by stress and exhaustion and in that place of vulnerability, simple words took root and began to grow: “You are loved and lovable simply because God has created you.” Once I began exploring the truth of that sentence, my life changed. I stopped trying to prove myself and my worth. I let myself love and be loved. I discovered a new and renewed creativity and confidence.

I had been on the edges of church life between childhood and my young adult years, but suddenly I wanted to go deeper into the faith I had taken for granted. What had seemed like a revelation out of the blue I now discovered throughout the Scriptures. The writings of the prophets and the message of the gospel tells us again and again that we are loved by God, that we’re held in the palm of God’s hand. The story of the storm at sea tells us that God can calm the storms of our lives—and if the storm continues to rage around us for whatever reason, then our loving God holds us and calms us and keeps us safe in his care. In time I was able to see how that simple phrase applies to everyone and everything. We are loved and loveable simply because God created us. All of creation pours forth from the eternal love of God, and it is marvelous in his eyes.

You are loved and lovable simply because God has created you.

The change didn’t happen overnight or even

move to a place of increasing light both indoors

in a season or a year. It’s an ongoing conversion

and in our hearts. Instead of adding more things

that I expect will last a lifetime. Anyone who has

to do and and more challenges to meet in an

ever struggled with spiritual or psychological

already busy time, Advent calls us to rest, to step

healing (and isn’t that everyone on some level?)

back, to learn to appreciate the small events and

knows that the initial revelation or insight is only

simple gifts that flow through our days.

the beginning. But each year when Advent rolls around on the calendar, I remember and I reflect

Let this Advent be a simple gift you give to yourself!

and I nurture that belief until it grows stronger and brighter and more reliable. The peaks are a little less intense, perhaps, but the valleys aren’t quite as deep and dark.

Simple Gifts Daily Reflections for Advent

by Diane M. Houdek

Advent doesn’t make the same demands on us that Lent does. It begins quietly, with the lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath. As the days grow shorter in the northern hemisphere, we

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St. Clare’s Journey An excerpt from Advent with Saint Clare

by Susan Hines-Brigger December 6—First Thursday of Advent “Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow.”

—Letter to Ermentrude of Bruges So often, the peace of Advent takes a back seat to the rush of Christmas. Quiet and solitude are difficult to come by. After joining Francis and embarking on a new life with her sisters at San Damiano, Clare fully embraced the quiet and solitude of the convent, becoming wholly and completely focused on serving the Lord. She and her sisters lived a simple life, with their sole purpose being to live out the Gospel message.

What a stark contrast to our modern-day take on this season.

Prayer “I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and have been my savior.”

—Psalm 118:21 ••• December 8—First Saturday of Advent “May you go forward securely, joyfully, and swiftly, on the path of prudent happiness.”

—second letter to Agnes of Prague Though Clare never left San Damiano, she still managed to spread the Gospel message beyond the walls of the convent. One way she did so was through her letters. For 19 years, Clare maintained a correspondence with Agnes of Prague, the daughter of King Ottokar I. Agnes had heard of Francis and Clare from the missionary brothers

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who visited her country and reached out to Clare because she desired to live a similar holy life as that of Clare and her sisters. Through the letters, Clare was able to provide Agnes with spiritual direction and inspiration, while never leaving San Damiano.

Prayer Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.”

—Ephesians 1:3 ••• December 11—Second Tuesday of Advent “Cling to His most sweet Mother who carried a Son whom the heavens could not contain; and yet she carried Him in the little enclosure of her holy womb and held Him on her virginal lap.”

—third letter to Agnes of Prague Much like Mary, Clare was a strong woman who was willing to answer “yes” for Christ. They both could have taken the easy road but knew in their hearts what they were being called to do. In many ways it is hard not to look at the lives of these two women and draw some parallels. Even St. Francis noted the similarity between the two in his writings. Perhaps in Mary, Clare found a kindred soul, someone who had the type of all-consuming love for Christ for which she strived.

Prayer Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all you lands.

Sing to the LORD; bless his name; announce his salvation, day after day.

—Psalm 96:1-2 •••

December 14—Second Friday of Advent “Truly in a field of faith, this woman planted and cultivated a vineyard of poverty, from which abundant and rich fruits of salvation have been gathered.”

—Bull of canonization Much like a stone thrown into water extends ripples far and wide, Clare’s holiness and faith helped spread the vision of St. Francis to many— even to this day. Each woman she joined in community with, each brother of Francis that she counseled, each cardinal or pope she challenged, each was changed as a result of Clare’s living example. May we all be such devoted followers of Christ that we are able to touch even just a fraction of those St. Clare has.

Go forward, the spirit of our God has called you.

—Prayer of St. Clare

Prayer “I, the LORD, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go.”

—Isaiah 48: 17 ••• December 21—Third Friday of Advent “What you hold may you always hold. What you do, may you always do and never abandon. But with swift pace, light step and unswerving feet, so that even your steps stir up no dust, Go forward, the spirit of our God has called you.”

—Prayer of St. Clare Perhaps the most important line of this prayer is the final one, which calls us to go forward as we have been called by God. For Clare, that meant to stay exactly where she was. She had been called to San Damiano, to a life of community, poverty, and prayer. Others, however, are called in different ways. Our challenge is to discern our path and follow where God is calling us.

Prayer “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

—Luke 1:45

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I love how much the Franciscan outlook is shaped by the Incarnation.

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Running the Good Race

by Kathleen M. Carroll

F

ranciscan Father Daniel P. Horan grew up in a Catholic family that went to Mass regularly and valued Catholic education. His Catholic school attendance meant that he knew a little bit about St. Francis. However, he says, “It wasn’t until I went to college at St. Bonaventure University, a college founded by the Franciscan friars, that I really came to know anything about who St. Francis and St. Clare were and what the Franciscan tradition was really all about. Almost immediately, it was the rich and diverse spiritual and theological tradition that attracted me to the Franciscan charism—it was both intellectually engaging and spiritually enriching for me. I love how much the Franciscan outlook is shaped by the Incarnation.”

Father Dan is the author of a popular blog (DanHoran.com) and several successful books.

Writing is not his first passion, though. He shares, “Writing is something that just sort of happened to me, rather than something I set out to do. I studied both theology and journalism in college, so I had some training in writing, but I was always more drawn to photojournalism than being a reporter. After I became a Franciscan friar I found myself writing about the Franciscan tradition and theology and spirituality more broadly. I have never felt drawn to writing for writing’s sake nor am I interested in writing fiction. Writing has always been an expression of where faith and life meet for me, and I’m grateful to be able to share that with others.”

St. Francis is certainly an inspiration, but so is the twentieth-century monk and author Thomas Merton. Father Dan serves on the board of directors of the International Thomas Merton Society,

sharing, “Thanks to Merton’s prolific writing, we get a firsthand glimpse at a brilliant mind, a profoundly spiritual soul, and a person deeply committed to social justice. I really appreciate his transparency, which puts on display both his struggles and his joys. He is the kind of Christian model that one can easily relate to, which is not always the case with our typical saints.”

Along with his writing pursuits, Dan can often be found putting in long hours in his academic work and long miles preparing for marathons. He describes his scholarly pursuits as “a hobby that grew out of control. I was never particularly interested in school, especially in high school and even college. But after becoming a friar I found myself diving more and more deeply into research about theology and spirituality.” This hobby has earned Dan the master of divinity degree required for ordained ministry, as well as an MA in systematic theology, and a PhD in theology.

As for the running, Dan says, “I tend to be someone who operates at high-energy and so running helps bring balance to my life; it clears my mind and gives me peace. I also love the spirit and energy that the running community has and that so many different people with different skill levels can participate and compete in the same event. There are very few sports where you can regularly take part in the same event as Olympians, cross the same finish line and say, “I did that too!”

For Father Dan, running and the spiritual life share the same formula—one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. “I just try to do what I can do each day. St. Francis told his fellow friars that they should not do anything that gets in the way of their ‘spirit of prayer and devotion.’ I think that is the foundation that governs my activities.”

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The Francis Effect An Experiment in Catholic Communication

by David Dault

I

t started, as most adventures do, over lunch time.

I spent 2017 moonlighting in the communications department at Catholic Theological Union, which was a few blocks from my apartment in Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago. I had just left a full time job as an executive director at a local nonprofit, and I was gearing up to launch my new business as a freelancer and consultant in audio production. I had a lot of friends at CTU, and it was a great place to work while I figured out my next steps.

Since 2012, I have produced a weekly radio show called Things Not Seen. The show is similar in format to NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross—the major difference being that on my show we focus on matters of faith, and explore how belief impacts my guests’ daily lives. Over the years, I’ve talked to authors, politicians, artists, musicians, and even a priest or two.

It was late summer, and I was thinking about the slate of guests I wanted to line up for my show for the coming fall. On my short list was a charismatic young Merton scholar who had recently joined the faculty at CTU, the Franciscan priest, Dan Horan.

We had struck up some good conversations over my first months at CTU, and I knew he had a new book (or two) in the works.

There’s a spacious atrium on the third floor of CTU’s main classroom building. It’s full of sunlight and big round tables. Most days, this is where the staff and faculty gather for lunch. I was

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finishing my sandwich when Father Dan came and sat down at the table. As the mealtime wound down, I lingered, and soon he and I were catching up about the week and various projects around the school. I asked Dan about his new book, and he filled me in on its progress.

I saw my chance. I pitched him the idea of coming on my show to talk about the new book.

He readily agreed, and soon we were on a tangent talking about podcasting. It turns out that, several years back, Dan had run a podcast himself based off one of his early books, Dating God. He had loved the format, but had to abandon it due to the time it took to produce it.

He missed it.

I think we both had a light bulb go off at the same time.

Over the next couple of weeks, we had more conversations, and a plan began to take shape.

We decided we wanted to create a podcast together—one that would engage with contemporary cultural and political issues, as seen through a lens of our shared Catholic faith. That was our “unique value proposition”: this wasn’t going to be just another beltway pundit show; it was going to be a show that embraced Catholicism as a meaningful reference point for navigating our current civic and political moment.

We batted around a few possible names, but we both kept coming back to one in particular—The Francis Effect. It spoke to us, not only because of Dan’s vocation as a Franciscan friar, but also because of the shifts we were seeing in the Church as a result of the papacy of Pope Francis.

We didn’t come up with the name, obviously. It had been used in several contexts, most particularly by Salt + Light Catholic Media. We wrote to

them to ask if they would be willing to let us use the name for the new project, and received back a most gracious yes.

The show currently airs in “seasons” of eight episodes apiece, spaced out over the course of sixteen weeks. In the first season, which stretched through the fall and winter of 2017, we used each episode to talk about three topics, usually chosen from the news cycle.

In one of those early episodes, we decided to talk about the recent eruption of the #MeToo movement. We were later approached by a Catholic journalist who was writing about responses to the movement within the Church. We were surprised to learn that we were one of the only shows in Catholic media that presented a sympathetic male perspective in response to #MeToo. According to the reporter, many other male commentators simply remained silent on the subject.

This moment helped us realize that we were navigating into some uncharted waters, and we had an opportunity to be advocates and allies for members of our audience. Soon after this, both Dan and I began “owning” our social location as white male Catholics, naming it explicitly as a limitation for the program.

As a result, in the latter half of our first season and on into our second season, we became intentional about inviting women and persons of color to be guests on the program. As we look to the start of our third season, we both have expressed our interest in continuing to experiment with the format of the show, and to create a platform

where we can welcome minority (at least for the American context) Catholic voices in increasing variety.

Speaking personally for a moment, while there have been many blessings involved in producing this show, by far the greatest for me has been the friendship I have forged with Dan Horan.

Through him, I have gotten a glimpse of the world of the vowed religious. I have also become more acquainted with the many facets of Franciscan spirituality. I have delighted in these opportunities to learn and explore this rich tradition, and it is one of the aspects of the show I most look forward to when we are preparing our episodes.

The other great blessing for me— and I know, for Dan, too—has been the response of our listeners. It is clear that there was a need for a show like this, and we are honored by the messages of encouragement we receive in person, through social media, and through email.

We are very thankful that Franciscan Media has partnered with us as a sponsor of the show, and we look forward to finding new ways to engage our growing group of listeners with the wisdom of both Pope Francis and St. Francis in seasons to come.

You can listen to all the episodes of The Francis Effect podcast at our website, www.

FrancisFXpod.com, or through your favorite podcast platform. Follow us on Twitter: @FrancisFXpod

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Becoming a Living Prayer

by Daniel P. Horan, OFM An excerpt from Prayer in the Catholic Tradition: A Handbook of Practical Approaches

T

he heart of the Franciscan way of life (vita evangelica ) is living after the pattern of the Holy Gospel by walking in the footprints of Jesus Christ. Recognizing the central place of divine-human relationship that occasioned the eternal Word’s becoming flesh in the Incarnation, Francis of Assisi was drawn to the kenotic model of humility and poverty exhibited by Christ.

Poverty for Francis was not simply an end in itself but a means to becoming more like Christ in terms of entering into relationship more deeply with God, neighbor, and all creation. Evangelical poverty is always tied to the Incarnation, which for Francis most fully symbolized God’s desire to draw near to humanity in creation. This same pattern was evident in Francis’s strong devotion to the Eucharist, which also occupied a particularly central place in the poverello’s own spirituality.

In a letter to the entire order, Francis wrote that the friars should not only adore the Eucharistic

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species or receive them with devotion. Instead, they are to recall the ongoing kenotic action of God in the celebration of the Eucharist, which should serve yet again as a model for Franciscan life and prayer.

Francis’s memorization of, reflection on, and constant reference to sacred Scripture led to his being imbued with the very narrative of God’s self-disclosure. In turn, he was inspired to draw on passages from the Bible, especially the psalms, to compose his own psalmody and prayers. This is seen most clearly in his creative Office of the Passion, which was modeled on the personal devotional offices commonly found among monastic communities. Here Francis weaves together various psalms from the Hebrew Bible with his own devotional interludes and psalm-like additions. The importance of Scripture in prayer was not limited to Francis’s private devotional life alone, but seen by him as an essential element of evangelical life.

St. Augustine of Hippo famously remarks at various points in his expansive corpus that God is the one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. This experience of divine immanence, of the presence of God among and within creation, was the keystone of Francis’s whole approach to prayer, though it is safe to say that he did not realize this overnight. It is always important to

remember the lifelong experience of ongoing conversion when calling to mind Francis’s spirituality and form of prayer. As noted earlier, he began his renewed commitment to Christian living in early young adulthood with what we might anachronistically call a “literal” approach to discipleship. His focus was on the externals of affective religiosity, such as attending Mass and physically rebuilding churches. The increasing number of relational encounters—the living among lepers, the unsolicited brothers and sisters, the reception of Clare, the protection and approval of the clerical hierarchy, the embrace of the Muslim Sultan, the increasing awakening to his part in the cosmic family of creation, and so on— shifted, over time, the poverello’s vision of prayer. In the beginning, as Thomas of Celano notes, Francis of Assisi was one who merely “said” prayers, but over time became a “living prayer.”

If prayer is, as we might all agree, always a form of “communication with God,” then we are in some sense always praying because God is always already present to us (again, Augustine’s insight about God’s immanence and proximity to us). It is, in a sense, a form of hubris to think that we can simply turn on or turn off the prayer channel, as if we had the ability to select when God is able to receive our missives. In truth, not only what we say or think, but how we act, what we prioritize, how we love,

how we care for one another, and so on all combine to communicate something to the God who is at all times nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

Prayer for Francis was always a journey of growing more deeply in relationship with God and neighbor, including his nonhuman neighbors in the great family of God’s creation. There is no explicit strategy or instruction manual proposed as a means to achieve this mystical awareness. And yet, Francis’s own narrative of lifelong conversion and his model for how to prioritize the elements of one’s life—never extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion, embrace regular solitude, and so on—provides us with a pattern of life, a guide for our own journeys, a series of points for reflection. The goal of prayer (if prayer can ever be said to have a goal) in the Franciscan tradition, put simply, is nothing more than for each of us, in our own way and in our own contexts, to become more and more a living prayer.

Prayer in the Catholic Tradition A Handbook of Practical Approaches General Editor, Robert J. Wicks

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Connecting the Gospel and the Twelve Steps An excerpt from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

by Richard Rohr, OFM

T

he New Testament called it salvation or enlightenment, the Twelve Step Program called it recovery. The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation of the self. We have all been the losers, as a result—waiting around for “enlightenment at gunpoint” (death) instead of enjoying God’s banquet much earlier in life.

The Twelve Step Program parallels, mirrors, and makes practical the same messages that Jesus gave us, but now without as much danger of spiritualizing the message and pushing its effects into a future and metaphysical world. By the fourth century Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, which left us needing to agree on its transcendent truth claims instead of experiencing the very practical “steps” of human enlightenment, the central message of our own transformation into “the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and bringing about a “new creation” on this earth (Galatians 6:15). It became theory over practice.

Endless theorizing, and the taking of sides, opinions about which we could be right or wrong, trumped and toppled the universally available gift of the Divine Indwelling, the real “incarnation” which still has the power to change the world.

When Christianity loses its material/physical/ earthly interests, it has very little to say about how God actually loves the world into wholeness. In

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endless arguing about Spirit, we too often avoided both body and soul. Now we suffer the consequences of a bodily addicted and too often soulless society, while still arguing the abstractions of theology and liturgy, and paying out an always available Holy Spirit to the very few who meet all the requirements.

There is no side to take in the Twelve Step Program! It is not a worthiness contest. There is only an absolutely necessary starting point!

The experience of “powerlessness” is where we all must begin. And Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) is honest and humble enough to state this, just as Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were “worthy.” As if any of us are. Is it this human pain that we are afraid of?

Powerlessness, the state of the shipwrecked, is an experience we all share anyway, if we are sincere, but Bill Wilson found we are not very good at that either. He called it “denial.” It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious.

So it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance.

Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking. We all take our own pattern of thinking as normative, logical, and surely true, even when it does not fully compute. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it is not working for us. That is the self-destructive, even “demonic,” nature of all addiction and of the mind, in particular. We

We are all spiritually powerless.

think we are our thinking, and we even take that thinking as utterly “true,” which removes us at least two steps from reality itself.

On the other hand, the Twelve Step Program often became a program for mere sobriety from a substance, and never moved many toward the “vital spiritual experience” that Bill W. deemed absolutely foundational for full recovery.6 If we can speak of the traditional Christian stages of the spiritual journey as (1) purgation, (2) illumination, and (3) union, too many addicts never seem to get to the second or third stages—any real spiritual illumination of the self—and even fewer get to the rich life of experienced union with God. In that, they mirror many mainline Christians, I am sad to say. The Twelve Step Program has too often stayed at the problem-solving level, and missed out on the ecstasy itself—trustful intimacy with God, or what Jesus consistently called “the wedding banquet.”

It is my experience after over forty years as a priest that we could say the same about many wellintentioned Christians and clergy. Their religion

has never touched them or healed them at the unconscious level where all of the real motivation, hurts, unforgiveness, anger, wounds, and illusions are stored, hiding—and often fully operative. They never went to “the inner room” where Jesus invited us, and where things hid “secretly” (Matthew 6:6).

We have our work cut out for us, and the Twelve Step Program made it very clear that it is indeed work, and not fast food or cheap grace. Gospel people need to do their honest inner work, “Steppers” need to “do the steps”; and they both need to know that they are then eating from the very rich and nutritious “marrow of the Gospel.”

Breathing Under Water Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

by Richard Rohr, OFM

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The Power of Saintly Witness: An Interview with Robert Ellsberg

By Christopher Heffron

R

obert Ellsberg has always had a love for heroes. The saints fall neatly into that category. That curiosity and admiration fueled his books All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Times, Blessed Among All Women, The Saints’ Guide to Happiness, and Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses. His most recent title, The Franciscan Saints, is a plunge into the holy men and women who devoted their lives to the charism established by St. Francis of Assisi.

“I guess from an early time I was always fascinated by great souls—people who set a heroic standard of moral witness, or just seemed to exemplify the highest measure of what it means to be human,” he says.

Robert sat down with us to discuss his book, his love for the saints, and the people who helped him on his spiritual path.

You grew up in the 60s, a time of civil unrest across the country. How did that inform your interest in social-justice work?

Growing up, my father, Daniel Ellsberg, was a defense analyst working for the government, especially on Vietnam. He returned from two years in Vietnam passionately opposed to the war and determined to help stop it. In 1969, inspired by the example of young men who were going to jail for refusing military induction, he asked himself what he could do. In October of that year, he asked me if I would help him copy a set of top-secret documents on the history of the war. I was 13.

Two years later, those documents—which became known as the Pentagon Papers—were published in

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the New York Times and other papers. My father was put on trial and faced 115 years in prison, though the charges were ultimately dismissed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It’s safe to say that this experience shaped my conviction that each of us has a responsibility to work for peace and justice in the world, and that there are situations where that might entail a certain risk and sacrifice.

How did your years at the Catholic Worker Movement come about? What was that time like for you as a young man?

In 1975, I decided to take a year off from college and made my way to the Catholic Worker (CW) in New York City. I had been reading the CW newspaper and I felt attracted to a community where the kind of moral questions I was struggling with didn’t seem odd or eccentric. The Catholicism of Dorothy Day and the CW held no special attraction to me. (I had grown up in the Episcopal Church.) I was just drawn to a community of Christians who seemed serious about living out the radical challenge of the Gospel. I ended up staying there for five years—two years as managing editor of the CW paper. Life at the CW was very improvisational. On any day you might be preparing soup for the morning “soup line,” begging for vegetables at the wholesale market, folding newspapers to be mailed out, or walking on a picket line. You never knew. I learned lessons there that have lasted a lifetime.

Dorothy Day was fascinating. What were the parallels between her and the Franciscan charism?

Dorothy Day spoke constantly of the saints—not as distant figures from long ago, but as friends and companions. There were a number of saints who figured prominently in her conversation: St. Thérèse, St. Benedict, St. Teresa of Avila.

But I think she felt a special connection with St. Francis—particularly for his solidarity with the poor and his own embrace of poverty. The Franciscan lens offered a distinctive perspective on the Gospel—highlighting Jesus’ poverty and his special attraction to those on the margins.

Like Francis, Dorothy remained a lay person. Like Francis, she believed that the essential meaning of being a Christian was found in simply following Jesus and living as if his teachings were true.

She took seriously Jesus’ command to love our enemies. She believed in the power disguised in what is small and apparently worthless. I think she is an example of the way that the Franciscan charism lives far beyond the boundaries of the official Franciscan family.

How has your friendship with Day and her legacy affected you to this day?

Dorothy called the Catholic Worker a kind of school where young people come to find their vocation. That was certainly the case for me. It would be hard to think of anything in my life that wasn’t an outgrowth of that experience that began when I was 19. Among other things it was at the Catholic Worker that I became a Catholic—and that particular entryway into the faith made a huge difference in how I have spent my life. I went on to study theology and then to become the editorial director (and later publisher) of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll. My work as a writer and editor has been rooted in Dorothy’s original invitation to serve as the editor of the CW. As it turned out, I would end up as Dorothy’s editor—the editor of her Selected Writings, her Diaries, and her Letters. And now I find myself

part of the process preparing her cause for canonization.

You’ve said in the past how you’ve been drawn to the saints. What is it about them that intrigues you?

I remember my own experience of coming across The Little Flowers of St. Francis when I was in high school. I was struck by this idea that to be a Christian is not just about going to church or reading the Bible, but about trying to be more like Jesus. During the Vietnam War, that drew my attention to figures like the Berrigans, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. But it was really from my time with Dorothy that I began to learn about saints like John of the Cross, St. Thérèse, and St. Martin de Porres. I learned that saints were not superheroes, but human beings who tried to respond faithfully to the challenge of faith in their time—often in ways that were not recognized by their contemporaries.

I learned that there were many holy men and women beyond the list of officially canonized saints. And most importantly, I learned that we are called to be saints—perhaps not necessarily canonized saints, but in our own way. All of this eventually inspired me to begin writing books about “saints, prophets, and witnesses for our time.” I combined official saints with other holy witnesses—writers, martyrs, activists, theologians, religious, and lay people. Not everyone gets the point in this eclectic list. But I think it reflects the spirit of the Beatitudes—the list of attributes by which Jesus identified his disciples: the poor in spirit, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers.

What did you learn in the process of writing The Franciscan Saints? Any new discoveries?

It was striking, when I put all these figures together, to see what a clear family resemblance there was among all these sons and daughters of Francis and Clare. Here were men and women from different centuries inspired by Francis’ reading of the Gospels and infused with a similar

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evangelical zeal, humility, simplicity of life, closeness to the poor, and a certain freedom from the cares of a world preoccupied with greatness, power, and grandiose ambitions. St. Francis proclaimed a vision of a world that honors the poor and those on the margins, that promotes peace and understanding among peoples, that rejoices in the sacredness of creation. All of this has such deep relevance to our world today. And it struck me that the Church is living through its own Franciscan renewal under our current pope, who in taking the name Francis was invoking a certain agenda, a vision of reform and renewal that is badly needed today.

What are your hopes for people who read your book?

I think few people are really changed by reading a book on ethics. But we all know what it is like to be inspired by a living witness who shows us that there is another way of living—a way that puts love and compassion before selfishness. One of the things that has always marked the Franciscan way is the spirit of joy. Francis seemed to have found the secret of happiness, and his example had a subversive impact on so many of the young men and women of his own town. Later, that spirit spread like wildfire throughout Europe.

Princes and princesses were particularly susceptible. These were people who had every kind of material advantage—but they sensed that there was something more. Francis had found the key.

They wanted to experience it for themselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a Franciscan.

St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, was converted through reading a book about the saints. It made him wonder, “What would it be like if I lived like St. Francis or St. Dominic?” I will be very happy if some readers of this book find themselves asking that kind of question.

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Blessed John Duns Scotus Franciscan Theologian (ca. 1266–1308) John Duns, later known as the Subtle Doctor, was called Scotus on account of his birth in Scotland.

He entered the Franciscans at the age of fifteen and was later ordained a priest. After studies in Oxford and Paris, he went on to hold teaching positions in Paris and Cologne, where he was acclaimed as one of the greatest of the Scholastic theologians. His mystically charged theology held particular charm for the Franciscans, rendering in philosophical terms the creation-centered spirituality of their holy founder.

Like other scholastic theologians, Duns Scotus tried to present a philosophical “proof” for the existence of God. In his case, he focused on the observation that all things require some prior cause for their existence. From this, he predicated the existence of a primary infinite cause which owes its existence to itself alone. Yet he drew a distinction between what could be “proved” by reason and what could be known only by faith.

There was a difference between a rational knowledge of the existence of God and a saving knowledge of the love of God. Duns Scotus defined God as infinite love.

He taught that the incarnation was not required as payment for sin; it was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love, and hence God’s desire for consummated union with creation. Our redemption by the cross was likewise an expression of God’s love and compassion rather than an appeasement of God’s anger or a form of compensation for God’s injured majesty. He believed that knowledge of God’s love should evoke a loving response on the part of humanity.

He wrote, “I am of the opinion that God wished to redeem us in this fashion principally in order to draw us to his love.” Through our own loving selfgift, he argued, we join with Christ in becoming

“co-lovers” of the Holy Trinity. Unlike philosophers in the line of Plato, Scotus did not value the ideal at the expense of the real. Created things pointed to their Creator not only by their conformity to an ideal pattern but by their individuality and uniqueness—what he termed their “thisness” (haecceitas). Thus, the path to contemplation should proceed not only through the mind but through the senses.

This insight of Scotus especially endeared him to the most highly distinctive of Catholic poets, the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins. He paid tribute to the Subtle Doctor in one of his poems: Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller; a not Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece.

Duns Scotus died on November 8, 1308. He was beatified in 1993.

O Lord, our God…. Teach your servant to show by reason what he holds with faith most certain, that you are the most eminent, the first efficient cause and the last end.

—Blessed John Duns Scotus

St. Elizabeth of Hungary Princess, Third Order Franciscan (1207–1231) St. Elizabeth, the daughter of Hungarian royalty, was betrothed at the age of four to Ludwig, the nine-year-old prince of Thuringia in southern Germany. Despite the arrangement, in which they had no say, the two children established a close friendship that eventually blossomed into a loving marriage. Elizabeth bore three children.

But Ludwig’s family disapproved of her piety and especially her “inordinate” charity toward the poor and sick. The young princess, it was said, dressed too simply; she was too profligate in her almsgiving.

After Elizabeth established several hospitals she aroused scandal by nursing the sick, even lepers,

with her own hands. Nevertheless, her instinctive spirit of poverty was only magnified upon the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries in Germany. Elizabeth was captivated by the story of Clare and Francis (from whom she received the gift of his cloak), and she eventually embraced the rule of a Franciscan tertiary. During a time of famine, while Ludwig was away, she opened the royal granaries, thus winning the people’s devotion. Such generosity, however, only increased the scorn of elite members of the court.

In 1227, Ludwig died on his way home from a crusade. In a paroxysm of grief, Elizabeth cried out, “The world is dead to me, and all that was joyous in the world.” Without her husband’s protection, she was at the mercy of her in-laws.

They banished her from the court, forcing her to leave the palace on a wintry night, carrying nothing but her newborn child. She who had embraced the spirit of poverty now found herself happy to accept shelter in a pig shed.

Eventually, to avoid scandal, she was provided with a simple cottage, where she supported herself by spinning and fishing. She continued to visit the sick in their homes or in the hospices she had endowed. Over time, her reputation for holiness spread, and she earned the grudging respect of those who had persecuted her. In 1231, she fell ill and announced calmly that she would not recover. She died on November 17 at the age of twenty-four. She was canonized less than four years later.

We must give God what we have, gladly and with joy. —St. Elizabeth of Hungary

The Franciscan Saints

by Robert Ellsberg

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The Radical Peace of Letting Go An excerpt from Saints Off the Pedestal: Real Saints for Real People

by Amanda M. Roberts

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rancis of Assisi is probably one of the most popular and well-known saints. Commonly portrayed as a gentle lover of animals and nature, statues of him can be found adorning gardens around the world. But this is a gross domestication of Francis’ real character. Born to wealth and privilege, Francis hungered for more and was initially determined to one day become a nobleman. Instead, he turned away from the comforts of his life and embraced the life of a mendicant itinerant preacher who owned nothing but his clothes and who worked daily for food.

Francis never veered from his chosen path and inspired many to follow in his footsteps. Immersed as we are in a consumerist, materialistic society, Francis’ choice for radical poverty can seem extreme, but because of this very reality we live in, his example and the spiritual advice he gave his followers has a deeply relevant message we need to hear today more than ever.

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We live in a consumer society. We all say it, we all talk about it, we all know it, and we’re all part of it. On a daily basis we are bombarded by advertisements for the latest gadgets and gizmos we must have to be happy, flaunt our economic status and get what we want out of life. We’re told that money makes the world go round, and the more of it we have, the better off we will be. Assailed as we are by these messages, they do sink in to a lesser or greater degree. We don’t all necessarily become heartless capitalists engaged in the blind pursuit of wealth, but most of us come to like the stuff out there, to enjoy having it and to getting more of it.

In light of this, Francis’ choice to give up his wealth and material possessions for a life of hardship and poverty seems pretty out there. His desire to live in radical dependence on God might be admirable, but the need to do so by rejecting all material goods seems unnecessarily radical and difficult to fathom, especially today when embracing the practices of fasting and abstinence seem archaic and passé even among those who practice their faith. What is so wrong with wanting and getting the good things in life—the fabulous vacation, the designer clothes, the car with all the bells and whistles, the monster TV? We work hard for them. Why shouldn’t we enjoy them and get as much of them as we want?

Too busy striving for the dream of striking it rich or working hard to keep the dream attained, few of us take a moment to stop and look at the person we are becoming in the process. If we did, we would see that even with the money and stuff we are not happy; rather, we feel a profound emptiness and dissatisfaction when we allow ourselves to feel anything at all. When we look at our relationships, we realize no one really knows us, and we don’t really know anyone else; doing so would mean letting someone else see our weaknesses, and weaknesses in a competitive environment can be used against us. When we stop to look at ourselves and what we’ve become, we realize we’ve been holding on so tightly to what we have that the fear of losing it has been keeping us from opening ourselves to any new gifts and possibilities that might come our way.

As Francis began his journey of letting go of the wealth and position into which he was born, he began to experience an interior transformation that deepened and grew, as did his embrace of poverty. The more Francis let go of his material possessions, the greater was his compassion for others, his ability to appreciate the created world, his own joy and desire to help others find and follow the true path that leads to it. When asked for guidance on this path by those who could not embrace poverty as he did, Francis shared advice that even today can help us avoid the pitfalls of consumerism. The heart of his path as presented to the average person was celebration of the sacraments. This answer might seem formulaic to us today and irrelevant to the question of money, materialism and consumerism. But embracing a truly sacramental life can have everything to do with helping us overcome the negative effects of the sometimes toxic culture we live in, for it is a path that helps us see people and things in a new and richer way.

The celebration of the sacraments is about recognizing the divine light in the people and the

stuff of the world in the context of a supportive community. When we truly begin to live our lives sacramentally, we begin the slow process of discovering the light of God at work in us and in our environment. Carrying this vision into our daily lives can help awaken in us the recognition of the inalienable dignity of those with whom we interact and of all things in creation, calling us to treat them with reverence and respect.

Living through this sacramental lens invites us to recognize that we are not in competition with each other or the world, but rather, are deeply connected in the Spirit of God, and as such our fates are intertwined, rising and falling together.

As we begin to walk this sacramental path, we experience the same transformation Francis did, a transformation that makes us more compassionate, more caring, more human. Rather than approaching everyone and everything as a means to our ends, we begin to see others in his or her own right. Rather than approach every situation as a win-lose competition, we begin to approach them as opportunities where we can all benefit.

Rather than living in fear of losing what we have, we live with the freedom of knowing what we have cannot be taken away. Rather than living in a distant future, we start to truly enjoy and appreciate the present we realize we are blessed to have.

Like many of Francis’ contemporaries, we may not all be able to embrace poverty or may simply not be ready for such a radical step. But his advice still offers us the insight that can help us become more Christ-like in a society that needs us to be so.

Saints Off the Pedestal Real Saints for Real People

by Amanda M. Roberts

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Living in Just Relationship with Animals An excerpt from For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action

by Charles Camosy

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bout ten years ago I became convinced that, if I wanted to be authentically and consistently pro-life, I should give up eating meat.

Few people in our culture think about justice for animals, but that may be because few people think about what justice is in the first place.

Perhaps we prefer one kind of species of animal over another because it is “cute” or because we find it easier to connect with its suffering. But if it is an injustice to treat dogs with cruel violence, then it is also an injustice to treat pigs with cruel violence. And our buying and eating pig meat is participation in this serious injustice. Christians must actively name and resist the violence and consumerism present in modern day factory farming both in our own personal lives and in our culture as a whole.

Some people, even if they are convinced that they should change their own practices to avoid speciesist and unjust treatment of animals, will nevertheless argue that they should not impose this belief on others. They might say, “It is wrong for me, but who am I to judge another’s behavior?”

But if we have a Christian conception of justice, this will not do. Recall that Christians are skeptical about appeals to autonomy and freedom when the issue at stake is one of justice. When we retreat into our own lives and do nothing more to change our social structures, vulnerable and marginalized populations get “othered”—especially when justice runs counter to the interests of the powerful. As Pope Francis said during the homily of his installation Mass on the Feast of St. Joseph, Christians have a moral duty to be protectors—not only for

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fellow human beings, but for all creation. If we are to stand for justice for animals we must do so not only in our own lives, but also by protecting them from the choices of others.

Some readers, especially if they have never really thought about these questions before, may find their heads spinning at this point. Even if you are generally convinced by the arguments presented so far, their implications may seem too overwhelming to consider. Living in just relationship with animals in our culture is not easy, but the challenges are not all that different from other challenges presented to us in other parts of our lives. Being a Christian isn’t easy in our culture— period. This is especially true given that our culture is dominated by violence, consumerism, and autonomy.

It was part of an early Christian worldview that nonhuman animals could at least sense, and perhaps even understand, goodness and holiness. Fordham University’s eminent early Church historian Maureen Tilley explains that we can see this especially in the stories of the martyrs.

In two separate incidents, though saints Paul and Thecla were thrown to the lions to be eaten, the lions recognized their holiness and refused to harm them. Other stories include a bear brought to torture some Christian prisoners, but who refused to come out of its cage; and a boar who not only refused to attack Christians, but who turned against the Romans instead. When some animals could not prevent Christian martyrdom, they could at least reverence the bodies of the martyrs: hence the amazing stories of martyrs’ bodies being returned home by dolphins and other animals for proper burial and veneration. Tilley also recalls that nonhuman animals and early Christian holy persons had close relationships, especially in the desert. She describes stories of hyenas bringing their cubs for monks to heal, monks calling on snakes to guard their cells, and crocodiles ferrying monks across rivers. Hundreds

of years before Francis of Assisi preached to the birds, we learn of monks preaching to some violent nonhuman animals. Inspired by their words, the animals ceased ravaging the countryside. Tilley argues that the common Christian belief of the day would have been that these nonhuman animals knew exactly what they were doing and with whom they were dealing. Thus they acted appropriately in the presence of a holy person of God. Let us conclude this discussion with the great St. Francis of Assisi and his love and concern for nonhuman animals. Along with being the most beloved saint in the Christian tradition, Francis is the patron saint of nonhuman animals.

Beyond the famous stories of him preaching to (and otherwise interacting with) many kinds of animals, the order he founded—the Franciscans— has maintained this special concern for animals throughout the centuries. Even today, the Catholic feast day celebrating the life of St. Francis is also the day on which Catholics around the world bring their animals to Church to have them blessed. On his World Day of Peace address in 1990, Pope John Paul II invoked St. Francis in the following way: Saint Francis invited all of creation—animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon—to give honour and praise to the Lord…. It is my hope that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help us to keep ever alive a sense of “fraternity” with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created.

And may he remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care.

Being a Christian isn’t easy in our culture.

For Love of Animals Christian Ethics, Consistent Action

by Charles Camosy

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St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio An excerpt from Surrounded by Love: Seven Lessons from Saint Francis Retold by Murray Bodo, OFM

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n the countryside near Gubbio there was a large and fierce wolf that was so famished that it had been killing not only animals but human beings, too. The citizens of Gubbio were living in terror because the wolf often stalked those coming out of the city gates.

Then God, wishing to show the citizens of Gubbio the holiness of St. Francis, moved the saint to go as God’s messenger and meet the wolf.

But when St. Francis told the people what God had told him to do, they protested saying, “Brother Francis, Beware! Don’t go outside the gate. Some armed citizens have tried to confront the wolf, and they never returned. He’ll surely kill you, Brother Francis, poor unarmed beggar that you are. He’ll bare his sharp teeth and attack you.”

But St. Francis had already put his hope in Jesus Christ who is Lord of all creatures. And so it was that St. Francis, armed only with the sign of the cross, strode bravely out of the town with one of his brothers. He told his companion that all they needed to do was to put their faith and trust in the Lord who said that those who believe in Him would walk among asps and basilisks and even among wolves or lions or dragons. And with that the two of them strode forth to meet the wolf.

Just then, in the sight of the people who were standing on the city wall watching, the wolf came rushing, its large mouth open, right toward Francis and his companion. But St. Francis stood still and unflinching and made the sign of the cross over the wolf. And the power of God, flowing now not only from St. Francis but from

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his companion brother, as well, checked the wolf in his tracks, and it suddenly closed its ravenous mouth and began to slow down to a walk. Then St. Francis called to the wolf: “Come to me, Brother Wolf. In the name of Christ I command you not to hurt me or my brother or anyone else.”

And, marvelous to tell, the wolf lowered its head and lay down like a meek lamb at the feet of St. Francis who said gently but firmly, “O Brother Wolf, Brother Wolf, you’ve done great harm in this region, and you’ve committed horrible crimes by killing your fellow creatures without mercy.

You’ve been killing not only your fellow animals but humans, too, who are created in the image of God. You deserve to be put to death like the worst thief and murderer. And right now the whole town is your enemy. But, my brother, God wants me to make peace between you and them so that you won’t harm them anymore, and they will in turn forgive you all your past deeds, so that neither humans nor dogs will hunt you down ever again.”

The wolf showed it agreed with this plan by wagging not only its tail but its whole body and by nodding its head.

Then St. Francis spoke again: “Good Brother Wolf, since you are willing to keep this peace pact, I promise you the people of Gubbio will feed you every day for as long as you live. You will never again suffer hunger so great that you will be tempted to kill or maim to satisfy your hunger. But I need your promise, Brother Wolf, that in return for this favor you will never again harm any animal or human. Can you promise me that?”

And the wolf nodded its head as a promise.

But St. Francis said, “I need a further sign and pledge that you will keep your promise.” And St. Francis held out his hand.

The wolf then raised its front paw and gently placed it in St. Francis’s open palm as a sign of its pledge to keep its promise.

Then St. Francis said, “Now, Brother Wolf, in the name of Jesus Christ, come with me into the

God wants me to make peace.

town and have no fear because the people will now make their peace with you and give you their pledge.”

And they walked in together, the wolf at St. Francis’s side padding along as gentle as a lamb.

The news of this sight spread quickly so that the whole town began to assemble in the market place to see this amazing work of God’s saint.

“Listen, everybody! Brother Wolf who is standing here among us has given me his pledge to live in peace with you and never hurt you if you promise to feed him every day. And I pledge myself as guarantor of this pact between you.”

Then all the people spoke in a loud voice promising and pledging to feed Brother Wolf. And St. Francis turned to the wolf and said, “And you, Brother Wolf, do you promise to keep your pledge not to hurt any animal or human being?”

The wolf then knelt down and, bowing its head, wagged again its whole body and wiggled its ears to show he would keep his part of the bargain.

But St. Francis, wanting to assure the people, said, “Brother Wolf, you gave me your pledge outside the gate. Now I want you to give it again in front of all these good people.”

And Brother Wolf once again raised its paw and placed it in the hand of St. Francis.

Then all the people rejoiced and gave thanks to God for sending St. Francis to them to make peace between them and the wolf and to restore the joy and tranquility of their town.

Surrounded by Love Seven Lessons from Saint Francis

by Murray Bodo, OFM

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The Prayer Everyone Knows An Excerpt from Instruments of Christ: Reflections on the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

by Albert Haase, OFM

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he Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi is prayed in Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. Even my Muslim friend from the Sudan, Mohammed, once told me that he, his wife and two children pray it on occasion.

This prayer has been cross-stitched or written in fine calligraphy, mounted on plaques, framed and memorized. It has been prayed in formal settings such as the United States Senate and the inauguration of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. It has also been prayed in times of sorrow such as the funerals of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Diana, Princess of Wales. One of its numerous musical versions has been sung on joyful occasions—at weddings, anniversaries and ordinations.

The Peace Prayer is truly a prayer for all times and all peoples. What is it about this prayer that casts such a magical spell upon us? Why do princess and pauper, bishop and bellhop, saint and sinner turn to it in emotionally charged moments of life? Most of us know this prayer by its popular title, “The Peace Prayer of Saint Francis.” And yet, Saint Francis did not write the prayer and no one quite knows how it became attributed to the saint.

The French scholar Christian Renoux has done extensive research into the history of the prayer and aptly calls this “a riddle to be solved.” Though a French prayer similar to the first part of the Peace Prayer can be traced back to the early eleventh century and thus, two hundred years before Francis of Assisi, according to Renoux, the prayer

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as we know it has its roots in the twentieth century.

In 1901, a French priest, Esther Bouquerel, founded La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (“The Holy Mass League”) and began publishing a small magazine called La Clochette. The first appearance of the Peace Prayer was in 1912 when Bouquerel published it in his magazine under the title “Belle priere a faire pendant la messe” (“A Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass”). Though there was no

author’s name attached to the prayer, Renoux leaves open the possibility that it might have been Father Bouquerel himself. According to Renoux’s research in the Vatican Archives, the French Marquis Stanislas de La Rochethulon sent this French prayer to Pope Benedict XV in 1915. In January 1916, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published it.

As World War I raged in Europe, that week’s editions of the newspaper published certain prayers for peace addressed to the Sacred Heartand encouraged by the Pope. Around 1920, a French Franciscan priest printed the prayer, now called “Priere pour la paix” (“Prayer for Peace”), on the back of an image of Saint Francis. However, he did not attribute the prayer to the saint. The

oldest attribution to the saint appears to be in a French Protestant publication in 1927. During the two world wars, the prayer circulated in Europe and was translated into English. According to Renoux, the first English translation—but not the most common version of the prayer as we know it—appeared in 1936 in Living Courageously, a book by Kirby Page, a Disciple of Christ minister.

Page clearly attributes the prayer to Saint Francis.

Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman, archbishop of New York from 1939–1967, seems to have had a special devotion to the Peace Prayer. At the celebration of his installation as archbishop on May 23, 1939, he handed out copies of “The Peace Prayer of St. Francis.” And when Pope Paul VI visited the United Nations and New York in 1965, Spellman asked for the prayer to be sung during the Papal Mass in Yankee Stadium. After the Mass, Spellman offered a medallion to the

Pope with the first sentence of the prayer engraved on it.

Though Saint Francis of Assisi did not write the Peace Prayer, it still encapsulates who Francis was and whom Jesus calls us all to be. For over one hundred years, people have turned to the Peace Prayer, attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, for inspiration and guidance. Perhaps we are attracted by its utter simplicity. Perhaps we pray it because consciously or subconsciously, we are only too aware that its words carry the entire weight of the teachings of Jesus.

Instruments of Christ Reflections on the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

by Albert Haase, OFM

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A Lasting Legacy

By Judy Zarick, Director of Devlopment Will your legacy nurture the spiritual journeys of people just like you? It can. When you make a gift of any size to Franciscan Media through your will or living trust, you create a personal legacy to spread the Gospel in the spirit of St. Francis around the world to people just like you. Making a charitable bequest to further the mission of Franciscan Media is simple to arrange, remains in your control and—as it does not require giving away current income or assets you depend on— costs nothing to make now.

Since 1893, Franciscan Media has sought to inform and inspire Catholics and others in the

United States and across the world. Through St. Anthony Messenger, the leading national Catholic family magazine, and many other communications online and in print, Franciscan Media shares the Good News of Jesus Christ in the spirit of Saint Francis with millions of people every day.

By providing a vital source of support for the future, gifts made through wills and trusts help to ensure Franciscan Media can continue to be a steadfast source of information and inspiration, enriching the spiritual lives of people just like you.

To learn more about Franciscan Media or other ways you can support our mission, contact Judy Zarick at 513-241-5615 or jzarick@franciscanmedia.org

Franciscan Spirit Franciscan Spirit is published two times per year and is available in both print and digital formats.

For more information, please visit franciscanmedia.org/spirit.

Our Mission Franciscan Media is a nonprofit ministry of the Franciscan friars of St. John the Baptist Province. Our mission is to spread the Gospel in the spirit of St. Francis. By supporting us through your purchases and donations, you share in our efforts to create a kinder, more compassionate world. Together, we can touch the hearts of people all over the world.

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A Prayer Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Help us to recognize the evil latent in a communication that does not build communion.

Help us to remove the venom from our judgments.

Help us to speak about others as our brothers and sisters.

You are faithful and trustworthy; may our words be seeds of goodness for the world: where there is shouting, let us practice listening; where there is confusion, let us inspire harmony; where there is ambiguity, let us bring clarity; where there is exclusion, let us offer solidarity; where there is sensationalism, let us use sobriety; where there is superficiality, let us raise real questions; where there is prejudice, let us awaken trust; where there is hostility, let us bring respect; where there is falsehood, let us bring truth.

Amen.

—Pope Francis MESSAGE FOR WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY, JANUARY 24, 2018

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