If Christian faith is to be meaningful to twenty-first-century individuals and play a positive role in healing the earth and its peoples, Christians must choose the way of loving relatedness and not the path of coercive power. We must imitate the humility of God, described by Francis of Assisi, and not the arrogance of Caesar too often used by political and religious leaders.
Although Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure grew up in a world of strictly defined hierarchies related to God, ecclesiastical and political decision-making, and family life, they proclaimed an alternative vision of God and the world, in which God’s love invited people to cherish warm and affirmative relationships among all people as well as between humankind and the nonhuman world. Order and law, whether ecclesiastical or political, are gifts of God and need to be honored, but we also need to recognize that their purpose is to serve humanity, not control it.
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure
by Bruce G. Epperly
