{"id":21404,"date":"2022-06-12T14:33:20","date_gmt":"2022-06-12T18:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21404"},"modified":"2022-06-13T09:57:25","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T13:57:25","slug":"21404","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21404","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L4lhh5p74Dw\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Ministry of Action and Contemplation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This week\u2019s Daily Meditations focus on the Franciscan unified vision of contemplation and action. Father Richard recounts an early story about Francis of Assisi\u2019s (1182\u20131226) vocational path: &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the foundational charisms of St. Francis of Assisi was the way he integrated contemplation and action. Early on, he is attracted to contemplation and to living in silence out in nature. But he\u2019s not sure if this is what God wants him to do. So Francis sends two brothers to Sister Clare and Brother Sylvester to ask each one to pray for an answer: should he live in prayerful seclusion, or should he travel through Italy and minister to people as a preacher?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the brothers return, Francis is ready to do whatever they say. Both give the same reply: Clare and Sylvester each said that it was God\u2019s will \u201cthat the herald of Christ should preach.\u201d Francis gets up, and quickly takes to the roads in obedience to God. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis\u2019s eagerness to serve God by preaching did not limit his deep love for meeting God in prayer. When he needed rest from the crowds who gathered to hear him, it was customary for Francis \u201cto divide the time given him . . . to spend some of it to benefit his neighbors and use the rest in the blessed solitude of contemplation.\u201d [2] &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard describes how Francis desired the same combination of contemplative and active ministry for his friars<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Franciscan worldview is that the Christ is everywhere. In fact, this was my Bachelor of Arts thesis in college. I wrote it on the quote from Francis where he says, \u201cDon\u2019t speak to me of Benedict; don\u2019t speak to me of Augustine! The Lord called me to a different way.\u201d [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis didn\u2019t need to create a monastery, as the Benedictines and Augustinians had done. He didn\u2019t want us to be enclosed monks. He wanted us to be friars, living in the middle of the people. To this day, Franciscan friaries are in the heart of most major European cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over thirty-five years ago, when we named our organization the Center for Action and Contemplation, I was just being a good Franciscan. It was St. Bonaventure (1221\u20131274) at the University of Paris who had to debate the secular (diocesan) priests who said that the Franciscan way of putting action and contemplation together would not work. They wanted Franciscans to choose one or the other. The secular priests worked with the people in the parishes, while the \u201ctrue\u201d religious people went off to monasteries. Francis and his followers thought there had to be a way to do both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was unique. It\u2019s almost like human consciousness just couldn\u2019t imagine that anyone could find God except by going into the desert, into the monastery, away from troubles, away from marriage, away from people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And eight hundred years later, we\u2019re still trying to learn how to balance contemplation and action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><br>Living the Gospel without Gloss<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard writes about how a radical change in lifestyle is at the heart of Franciscan spirituality and the gospel of Jesus:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since Jesus himself was humble and poor, Francis made the pure and simple imitation of Jesus his life\u2019s agenda. In fact, he often did it in an almost absurdly literal way. He was a fundamentalist\u2014not about doctrinal Scriptures\u2014but about&nbsp;<em>lifestyle Scriptures<\/em>: take nothing for your journey; eat what is set before you; work for your wages; wear no shoes. This is still revolutionary thinking for most Christians, although it is the very \u201cmarrow of the Gospel,\u201d to use Francis\u2019s own phrase. [1] He knew that&nbsp;<em>humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living.&nbsp;<\/em>(This is one of the CAC\u2019s Core Principles.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen we are weak, we are strong\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:10) might have been the motto of the early Franciscans. In chapter nine of his First Rule, Francis wrote, \u201cThey must rejoice when they live among people considered of little value. . . .\u201d [2] Biblically, they reflected the primitive and practical Christianity found in the Letter of James and the heart-based mysticism of the Eastern Church. While most male Franciscans eventually became clericalized and proper churchmen, we did not begin that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The more radical forms of Christianity have never thrived for long, starting with Pentecost itself and the first \u201csharing of all things in common\u201d (Acts 2:44\u201345): the desert fathers and mothers, the early Celtic monastics, and faith communities on through history, down to the Catholic Workers and the Sant\u2019Egidio Community in our own time. Unless such groups become strongly institutionalized\u2014even juridical\u2014they tend to be short-lived or very small, but always wonderful experiments that challenge the rest of us. They are always like&nbsp;<em>a new room with a new view<\/em>, offering the rest of us an essential viewpoint that we have lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The early Franciscan friars and the Poor Clares wanted to be&nbsp;<em>Gospel practitioners&nbsp;<\/em>instead of merely \u201cinspectors\u201d or \u201cmuseum curators\u201d as Pope Francis calls some clergy. Both Francis and Clare offered their Rules as a&nbsp;<em>forma vitae,&nbsp;<\/em>or \u201cform of life,\u201d to use their own words. They saw orthopraxy (\u201ccorrect practice\u201d) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to mere verbal orthodoxy (\u201ccorrect teaching\u201d) and not an optional add-on or a possible implication. History has shown that a rather large percentage of Christians never get to the practical implications of their beliefs! \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you doing what you say you believe?\u201d the prophet invariably asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Franciscan school found a way to be both very traditional and very revolutionary at the same time by emphasizing practice over theory. At the heart of their orthopraxy was the practice of\u00a0<em>paying attention to different things\u00a0<\/em>(nature, people on the margins, humility, itinerancy, mendicancy, mission) instead of shoring up the home base. They tried to live the Gospels \u201cwithout gloss,\u201d as Francis put it. [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"271\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2-500x271.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21407\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2-500x271.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2-300x163.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2-768x417.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-2.png 1702w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Ministry of Action and Contemplation This week\u2019s Daily Meditations focus on the Franciscan unified vision of contemplation and action. Father Richard recounts an early story about Francis of Assisi\u2019s (1182\u20131226) vocational path: &nbsp;&nbsp; One of the foundational charisms of St. Francis of Assisi was the way he integrated contemplation and action. Early on, he [&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\/21404"}],"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=21404"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21409,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21404\/revisions\/21409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}