Five Important Spiritual Thoughts from the Liturgy of the Word
…and follow up for the Secular Franciscan
August 4 – August 10
1 – “Who do people say
that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13)**…Is Jesus the pattern and measure for everything we do?
2 — Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,* take up his
cross, and follow me.” (Mt 16:24)**
(…from the Secular Franciscan
Gathering 2022)Extended meditation
There are three elements
to the following of Jesus: denial of self, taking up the cross each day, and
following Jesus’ steps. If one of the
three is missing, then the following of Jesus is imperfect and incomplete and
may bring about evil rather than good, even if the disciple is a Franciscan.It is intriguing to look
at the scenario if one of the three is missing for a Franciscan disciple.+ If we leave out the denial of self, what happens?
The chances are that even
as we take up the cross and follow Jesus’ thoughts, we will do it in a selfish
way. We become very self-righteous in
our approach to what should be and will not admit the possibility of any
involvement in evil on our parts. We
become judgmental of others and refuse to admit any fault ourselves. We justify ourselves since we argue that we
are taking up the cross and following Jesus.If we do not attack
selfishness (the number 1 cause of sin), we will create evil, no matter how
religious (Franciscan) we might think we are.+ What happens if we leave out “taking up the
cross”?The chances are here, that
even though we admit our selfishness and try to follow Jesus’ ways, we will not
face the crosses that are part of this world, that is, the pain and suffering
which are always present in one form or another. And we go into the “pity party”—the “poor me”
syndrome—criticizing God and everyone else for making us suffer. We won’t look on the every-day living as
something that we must work at, and accept the crosses which are there every
day, and work with them.There was a great line in
the true life adventure of the movie “Apollo 13”. When everything was going wrong, the Director
of Operations, Gene Frantz said, we have to “work the problem.” He took
everything that the trapped astronauts had in their capsule, threw them on a
table in front of his engineers, and said those words—work the problem—figure out
from what you have, exactly what they have to do. That is, “Do
the best you can with the circumstances that you are given as a Franciscan—what
might be called the prime directive of the spiritual life. (Television series:Star Trek)The person who is not
accepting the crosses of daily life are not “working the problems” of daily living.+ And, what if we leave out “following Jesus’ steps”?
Here, we have denied
ourselves, and we have taken up the crosses of every-day living, but we don’t
have a guide—namely, Jesus and consequently Francis.We will not consciously do
this since we are indeed Franciscans, but it is something that happens because
of our busyness. We just don’t take the time that we should. We don’t do the meditation, we don’t do the
spiritual reading that we should.Bishop
Weisenburger a couple of years ago in one of his writings said that we are
spending the majority of our time pursuing these five things, and therefore
following them instead of following the Lord:– busyness—we follow our work, play, the
things that make up day-to-day living;– materialism—we want more and more
things even though we do not need them at all;– revenge—we follow the thought of
getting back at people;– individualism—I follow what I want;
– entitlement—I want what I think I
deserve in life.Another problem in our
Christian world is ignorance. And in the same way, one of our major
problems might be Franciscan or spiritual ignorance. We don’t do the spiritual reading that we
should. We should be reading the
thoughts about spiritual development and Christian theology every day in one
form or another, and from every point of view, conservative as well as
progressive.The exaggeration of John
the Evangelist to close his Gospel is a great one to think about as we think of
the reading that we must do: “There are also many other
things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not
think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”
3 – “It is good that we are here.” (Mt 9:33)**
…Do I have a positive
attitude in my life right now?
4 – “This is my chosen
Son; listen to him.” (Mt 9:35)**…Do I read the
Scriptures with the intention of letting them affect my thoughts, words and
actions?
5 – “Where your treasure is, there also
will your heart be.” (Lk 12:34)**…Is my treasure the
presence of God in my life?
A free new formation resource on the Gospel life of Francis based on the Early Rule is available for download from St. Bonaventure University.
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Fr. David Couturier, OFM Cap., talk about the Secular Franciscan role in today’s world. (photo by Bob Stronach, OFS)