Posts from:
God’s creative will is an eternally sustaining will, namely, that my existence will not end, summons me to humble acquiescence and dialogue—or to proud, illusory self-sufficiency, which is a kind of hell because it severs the bond of love and results in a turning in upon oneself.
The mystics teach us that one who tries to know and love God sooner or later becomes aware that God is unknowable, but one can love God intimately despite God’s ultimate unknowableness.
Francis follows in the footsteps of Jesus, and that is where most of us falter. We want to follow Jesus’ footsteps, but we know ahead of time where they lead, and we are afraid. We hold back. In his writings Francis never uses the word imitate in relation to Christ; instead he uses the phrase, “to follow in the footsteps of Christ”; Christ’s invitation was to “follow me” (Matthew 10:38), not “imitate me.” In following Christ the self one thinks has been lost is actually found, so that as one walks in the footsteps of Christ a whole and realized true self begins to emerge.
Interior peace is the awareness that God is and dwells in all of creation, and from that awareness flows the other three necessary elements of Pope Francis’s statement, namely, concern for nature, justice for the poor, and commitment to society.
Francis was aware that they were a strange, perhaps frightening sight—twelve unkempt beggars walking purposefully along like a band of robbers. But he hoped their singing and their joy, the blessings they freely gave disarmed all fear and hostility.
Following the ways of Jesus: That was how Saint Francis and his brothers were to live their lives, and they would do it by being poor like Christ; by being men of the road like Jesus and his Apostles; by preaching God’s word as Jesus did; by being brothers to one another, to others, and to all creatures; and by the penance of their lives, emptying themselves for love of him who had emptied himself for love of them.
Francis and and his brothers could have been killed spreading the Gospel. In bringing near the kingdom of heaven, the brothers were engaging in one of the oldest of dramas in which the battle between darkness and light is played out. It was not so much a battle in which they fought the darkness, as it was the ongoing battle with themselves to keep bearing the light, to keep bringing near the kingdom and not giving up, even when they were rejected. For even in rejection they are bringing near the kingdom.
