SHAPING THE FRANCISCAN FOOTPRINT – September 15 – September 21 2022

(PDF article attached for printing)

 

Five Important Spiritual Thoughts from the Liturgy of the Word

…and follow up for the Secular Franciscan

September 15 – September 21

 

 

1 — “Woman, behold your Son.” (John 19:26)**

…Am I truly following “Mary’s prime directive” to study carefully the attitude of Jesus and adopt it in my life?

 

 

2 –“Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women.” (Lk 8:1-2)**

GOD DON’T MAKE JUNK

To Jesus, everyone is important.

We must all listen to that teaching. In the Gospels, Jesus is actually making everyone think by getting them to look closely at what they were doing.

Evil does not like that. The devil, or Satan, or however we look at the dark side of life would much rather cause dissension and chaos by making us feel that we are better than someone else and hiding the fact from ourselves.

That fact—that everyone is important—was brought home to me in a striking way a number of years ago. Thinking that I knew something about his school, the administrator of a school asked me to speak to his teenagers about rock music. Since I had done it a number of times in other schools, I said “yes” to his request. The administrator met me at the door, and I realized immediately that it was not a regular school at all. I noticed first of all that there were severely handicapped young people in wheelchairs around the hallway. Then he took me to a ward, a very big room, with portable beds around the walls, and nothing in the main body of the room. My talk on leadership and music involves activity, eye-contact, and there was nothing like that. I was totally distressed and embarrassed, completely out of sync with what I wanted to do. I rushed through the presentation, and afterwards, wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could, knowing that I had failed in my efforts miserably.

But before I left, the administrator told me that one of the young people wanted to talk to me, and so I followed him to a little alcove where there were five or six young people in wheelchairs who could not talk at all. They were in front of computers, and the way they “talked” was by using a head band with a pointer, hitting the computer and writing to me what they wanted to say. The young man realized how uncomfortable I was, and he wrote his message: “Thank you for coming. Don’t feel bad. Remember—God don’t make junk.” It was difficult to keep from crying: here was a person whom many in our society consider “junk” telling me that just because I did not think that I did well on a program, that I was not junk.

God don’t make junk. From the most insignificant person who died during this minute to the child who was just conceived by a man and a woman, everyone is important because God don’t make junk.

One of the movies that I think everyone should see is “Seabiscuit,” the story of a horse who could have been junk, and turned out to be a magnificent animal. One line keeps going through the movie that is very apropos here and something that we can learn from: “You don’t throw away a whole life just because it’s banged up a little.”

 

 

3 — You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Lk 16:13)**

…Has the things of this world taken on more importance for me than the things of heaven?

 

 

4 — “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” (Lk 8:21)**

…For a Franciscan, a daily reading of Scripture is a must.

 

 

5 — He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard. (Proverbs 21:13)

…Francis was concerned about the poor around him; am I as concerned as I should be about the poor around me?

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Juan de Padilla