{"id":18321,"date":"2019-10-02T09:52:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T13:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18321"},"modified":"2019-10-02T10:00:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T14:00:01","slug":"franciscan-way-part-one-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18321","title":{"rendered":"Franciscan Way: Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vEa0OGZ7VwY\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>To Live Lightly<\/strong><br>Wednesday, October 2, 2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Today, we will continue with my Franciscan brother and long-time friend John Quigley\u2019s summary of Franciscanism. I\u2019ve added my thoughts in italics within brackets.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Francis] knew that we share this earth, our loves and work with all of God\u2019s creatures, our brothers and sisters. Unlike the monastic life, which strove to domesticate nature and to bring it under control, Francis expected to live lightly on the earth, a burden neither to the earth nor to those who fed and clothed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<em>Jesus never told us to separate ourselves from the world. That\u2019s why Francis would not be a monk. The friars were a totally new religious movement. Francis wanted us to live in the middle of the cities right with the people and not to separate ourselves. That\u2019s because he didn\u2019t hate the world. He said you have to find a way interiorly to love and have compassion for the world, which may mean going apart for a time for the purpose of prayer and contemplation.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many lively legends about Francis and Clare [<em>which soon took philosophical and theological weight through luminaries like Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus<\/em>]. These seminal stories and the insights that arise from them have given emphasis to specific themes in Franciscan philosophy and theology. They include the idea that Jesus did not assume flesh to correct Adam and Eve\u2019s sin; rather, Jesus would have taken flesh whether we had sinned or not. Love by its very nature wants to be one with its beloved, so our salvation has been announced and realized in an Incarnate God. The suffering and death of Jesus confirms for us how deep and committed is God\u2019s love in the Incarnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[<em>The Franciscan view is that Creation is the first Incarnation. The Christ Mystery was the blueprint of reality from the very start (John 1:1). Francis saw all of creation, including all humans, as part of the one family of God. That\u2019s why he called them Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Duns Scotus gave this a theological explanation by saying, in essence, that God\u2019s first \u201cidea\u201d was to pour out divine, infinite love into finite, visible forms. The Big Bang is the scientific name for that first idea, \u201cChrist\u201d is Christianity\u2019s theological name, and it is all about Love flowing outward in all directions.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each individual existence\u2014person, plant, stone, amoeba\u2014is absolutely precious. Each has a certain unique \u201cthisness,\u201d which cannot be completely shared or described by another. [<em>Duns Scotus called this&nbsp;<\/em>haecceity,&nbsp;<em>from the Latin \u201chaec\u201d or \u201cthis.\u201d<\/em>]<em>&nbsp;<\/em>Each creature of God must attain the full measure of its&nbsp;<em>own<\/em>&nbsp;uniqueness, its \u201cthisness\u201d before the full expression of God\u2019s love can be realized in creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simplicity is another Franciscan theme and sign of God\u2019s love. We should multiply words, explanations, and actions only when necessary, he tells us. [<em>You have probably heard the axiom that summarizes part of our Franciscan Rule: \u201cPreach the Gospel at all times; and when absolutely necessary, use words.\u201d Francis was all about orthopraxy, or living the Gospel, rather than orthodoxy, or merely verbal beliefs.<\/em>]<em>&nbsp;<\/em>Others may say that we come to understand God by analogies. The Franciscan perspective is that we can have a direct effect and univocal understanding of God by reflecting and understanding our experience of ourselves as human beings. [<em>\u201cWho are you, God? And who am I?\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>[1]&nbsp;<em>was Francis\u2019 unending prayer. Some have said it is the perfect prayer because it is both humble and honest. Franciscans believe we all participate in God\u2019s Being. Duns Scotus called this the univocity of being. Our being is not just analogous to God\u2019s being, but we may speak of our two supposedly different beings \u201cwith one voice.\u201d<\/em>]<em>&nbsp;<\/em>Finally, everything, every Scripture, every law, every action, history itself is to be interpreted in light of the primacy of Love and Christ over all [<em>the cosmic or universal Christ<\/em>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To Live LightlyWednesday, October 2, 2019 Today, we will continue with my Franciscan brother and long-time friend John Quigley\u2019s summary of Franciscanism. I\u2019ve added my thoughts in italics within brackets. [Francis] knew that we share this earth, our loves and work with all of God\u2019s creatures, our brothers and sisters. Unlike the monastic life, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18321"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18323,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18321\/revisions\/18323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}