{"id":19384,"date":"2020-10-07T09:31:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T13:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19384"},"modified":"2020-10-07T09:31:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T13:31:44","slug":"taking-a-step-towards-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19384","title":{"rendered":"Taking a Step Towards Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>St. Francis:<br>\nA Message for Our Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Taking\na Step Towards Simplicity<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, October 7, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jhnJXDGfPiE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>As\nyou announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your\nhearts. . . . For we have been called to heal wounds, to bind up the broken,\nand to call home any who have lost their way. \u2014<\/em>Francis of Assisi<em>&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nam convinced that the world and the Church need the message of St. Francis\ntoday!&nbsp; The true Gospel always leaves us both fragile and vulnerable, or\nas Jesus said, \u201cas sheep among wolves\u201d (Matthew 10:16). Yet this is exactly what\nthe world wants and expects from Franciscans, and for what Jesus freed us, so\nwe cannot lose heart. I find that people today are quite ready to hear\nFranciscans give messages of simplicity, nonviolence, humility, love of animals\nand \u201cenemies,\u201d and care of the earth. In fact, they are deeply disappointed\nwhen we are merely priests in brown robes who reflect current cultural values,\nupward mobility, and church more than Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nwas once told that two Christian groups carry the least negative baggage in Western\ncivilization: Franciscans and Quakers! It seems to me that if Franciscans go\nback to the simplicity of our contemplative and peace-making foundations, we\nmight again look like the Catholic version of the Quakers and the Amish, who\noften initially resembled us. The world expects and longs for a truly unique,\npositive, and inviting message from the followers of St. Francis. True\nFranciscan evangelization is not preaching at or to people, but just making the\ntruth beautiful, attractive, and also challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Truth\nbe told, both Jesus and Francis were revolutionary and radical. Those are not\nbad words. Radical comes from <em>radix, <\/em>which means the <em>root.<\/em>&nbsp;Both Jesus and\nFrancis were prophets; and like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures and John\nthe Baptist, they struck at the roots of evil (Matthew 3:10). These are the\nvery systems of the world that have lost their way, robbing us of the \u201cstraight\npath and open highway\u201d (Matthew 3:3) to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis and\nClare were not so much prophets by what they said as in the radical,\nsystem-critiquing way that they lived their lives. The \u201cdirty rotten system\u201d\nthat Dorothy Day critiqued is the very one that Francis and Clare avoided. When\nFrancis said, \u201cI left the world, [1] after being among lepers, he was saying\nthat he was giving up on <em>the usual\npayoffs, constraints, and rewards of business-as-usual <\/em>and was choosing to live in\nthe largest Kingdom of all. To pray and actually mean \u201cThy Kingdom come,\u201d we\nmust also be able to say \u201cmy kingdoms go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St. Francis: A Message for Our Times Taking a Step Towards Simplicity Wednesday, October 7, 2020 As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. . . . For we have been called to heal wounds, to bind up the broken, and to call home any who have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/19384"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19385,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19384\/revisions\/19385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}