{"id":24229,"date":"2024-09-30T10:13:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T14:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=24229"},"modified":"2024-09-30T10:48:26","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T14:48:26","slug":"24229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=24229","title":{"rendered":"Opening to Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Make Me A Channel of Your Peace | Prayer of St. Francis Song | Choir with Lyrics | Catholic Hymn\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fYz14jEoaeU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I only know that I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>\u2014Christian Wiman,&nbsp;<em>My Bright Abyss<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard Rohr describes the \u201ceagerness to love\u201d that characterized the life and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi (1182\u20131226):<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If our only goal is to love, there is no such thing as failure.<\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>Francis of Assisi succeeded in living in a single-hearted way, in which his only goal was\u00a0<em>to love<\/em>. This intense eagerness to love made his whole life an astonishing victory for the human and divine spirit and showed how they work so beautifully together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That eagerness to love is the core and foundation of Francis\u2019 spiritual genius. He encountered a love that just kept opening to him, and then he passed on the same by \u201copening and opening\u201d to the increasingly larger world around him. He willingly fell into the \u201cbright abyss,\u201d [1] as poet Christian Wiman calls it, <strong>where all weighing and counting are unnecessary and even burdensome.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After his conversion, Francis lived the rest of his life in an entirely different economy\u2014the nonsensical economy of grace, where two plus two equals a hundred and deficits are somehow an advantage. Such transformation of the soul, both in the inflowing and in the outflowing, is the experiential heart of the gospel for Francis. He then brought the mystery of the cross to its universal application, for <strong>he learned that both the receiving of love and the letting go of it for others are always a very real dying to our present state. <\/strong>Whenever we choose to love <strong>we will\u2014and must\u2014die to\u00a0<em>who we were before we loved<\/em>.<\/strong> So, we often hold back. Our <strong>former self is taken from us by the object of our love.<\/strong> We <strong>only realize this is what\u2019s happened after the letting go<\/strong>, or we would probably always be afraid to love.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard points to the simplicity that makes Francis\u2019 ministry special:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Francis, the <strong>medium had to be the same as the message<\/strong>\u2014or the message itself would get quickly lost. Only love can search for, give, or receive love. It\u2019s almost that simple. Francis created a very different classroom for his followers, sort of an underground seminary, if you will, where we <strong>Franciscans had to live faith before we talked about faith<\/strong>. Our Rule was initially just \u201ctips for the road,\u201d an itinerant and mendicant lifestyle, both an urban plunge and total solitude in nature,\u00a0<em>where love could be tasted and touched<\/em>, much more than a formal seminary classroom where it might just be defined.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Franciscan reading of the gospel, there\u2019s <strong>no reason to be religious or to love God except in recognizing\u202f\u201cThe love of [God] who loved us greatly is greatly to be loved,\u201d\u202f<\/strong>as Francis said. [2] Religion is not about\u202fheroic willpower or winning or being right. This has been a counterfeit for holiness in much of Christian history.\u202fT<strong>rue growth in holiness is a growth in willingness to be loved and to love<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Practicing the Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard identifies a radical change in lifestyle at the heart of Franciscan spirituality and the gospel of Jesus:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Francis and Clare of Assisi, <strong>Jesus became someone to actually imitate, not just to worship. Since Jesus himself was humble and poor, Francis made the pure and simple imitation of Jesus his life\u2019s agenda<\/strong>. In fact, he often did it in an almost absurdly literal way. He was a fundamentalist\u2014not about doctrinal Scriptures\u2014but about\u00a0<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\u2019 own phrase. [1] He knew that\u00a0<em>humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living.\u202f<\/em>(This is one of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-euyodl-tlkriywur-r\/\">CAC\u2019s Core Principles<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/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 his First Rule, Francis wrote, \u201cThey must rejoice when they live among people considered of little value.\u201d [2] Biblically, they reflected the early, 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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The early Franciscan friars and the Poor Clares (women who followed Clare of Assisi) wanted to be\u00a0<em>gospel practitioners\u00a0<\/em>instead of merely \u201cinspectors\u201d or \u201cmuseum curators\u201d as Pope Francis calls some of today\u2019s clergy. Both Francis and Clare offered their Rules as a\u00a0<em>forma vitae,\u202f<\/em>or \u201cform of life,\u201d to use their own words. They saw orthopraxy (correct practice) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to mere verbal orthodoxy (correct teaching) and not an optional add-on or a possible implication. History has shown that <strong>a rather large percentage of Christians never get to the practical implications of their beliefs<\/strong>! \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you doing what you say you believe?\u201d the prophet invariably asks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the heart of Franciscan orthopraxy is <strong>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<\/strong>. His early followers tried to live the gospel \u201csimply and without gloss,\u201d as Francis told them. [3]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author Jon Sweeney describes how Franciscan preaching took place in everyday circumstances:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis \u2026 was a person of action and movement. Spiritual practice was paramount. He made preaching mandatory for all who joined him in his way of life, but <strong>preaching was not always done from behind a pulpit. The earliest Franciscan sermons were more like open-air discussions, encouragements, inspirations\u2014usually while the preacher or another friar were on the road walking, beside the road begging, in hospitals caring for the ill and accompanying the dying, repairing crumbling churches, acting as intermediaries between people in trouble and people in power, and touching with tenderness the creatures and creation around them.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>==============================><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following is from John Chaffee regarding Mysticism<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quote of the Week:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Very truly I tell you, whoever believes&nbsp;in me will do the works I have been doing,&nbsp;and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.&#8221; &#8211; John 14:12<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus is the original mystic, the main mystic, the high exemplar of what faith is supposed to look like. \u00a0Even Brennan Manning, the former Franciscan turned author of Grace talks of him as such. \u00a0For our purposes, though, we will understand the term <strong>&#8220;mystic&#8221; as someone who has experiential knowledge of the deep mystery that we call God. <\/strong>\u00a0Modern understandings of the word associate it with all kinds of things that the first usages of the word did not have. \u00a0So let us begin by affirming that <strong>Jesus had that deep experiential knowledge of God.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That being said&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During his ministry, Jesus fulfilled many roles for people. \u00a0As a teacher, healer, prophet, priest, king, and messiah, he was many things to many people. \u00a0However, we <strong>sometimes gloss over the reality that Jesus was a\u00a0traveling or itinerant rabbi<\/strong>. \u00a0Often, we associate the role of a rabbi with being equal to or similar to that of being a pastor today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In ancient Near Eastern culture, though, a rabbi was more unique than we may realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jewish children were raised to memorize the entire Torah by pre-teen age, that would be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. &nbsp;Then, if they were deemed to be good students, they might continue and memorize&nbsp;the rest of the Hebrew&nbsp;Scriptures from Joshua to Malachi. &nbsp;If they did not prove themselves worthy, they would simply start learning their family&#8217;s trade instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, at the end of possibly memorizing the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures a student might have the opportunity to sit and talk with a rabbi. \u00a0The rabbi would then give them question after question to test their memory, their acuity, their rhetoric, etc. \u00a0If at the end of that time, the rabbi was impressed with the student, <strong>they would essentially say, &#8220;I\u00a0believe you can do what I do, come and follow me.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Jesus calls his disciples in the Gospels, he says, &#8220;Follow me.&#8221; &nbsp;Knowing the background context, it was a heavily loaded statement of possibility.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;I believe you can do what I do, come and follow me&#8230;&#8221; sounds like,&nbsp;&#8220;Very truly I tell you, whoever believes&nbsp;in me will do the works I have been doing,&nbsp;and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.&#8221; &#8211; John 14:12<br><br>Jesus, as a traveling itinerant rabbi, is not interested in a passive existence for his followers, in their spectator spirituality of watching him heal the world alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, he says, &#8220;Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these&#8230;&#8221; \u00a0<strong>What is true of Jesus is true of us. \u00a0<\/strong>The mystic wisdom of Jesus that comes to us here is that the Incarnation is an <strong>infinite mystery that invites us into the infinite mystery of being &#8220;little incarnations&#8221; of the Christ in our own life and lifetime.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cosmic redemption of God is that of one Christ with many &#8220;little Christs.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why? &nbsp;Because Christ says, &#8220;I believe you can do what I do, come and follow me.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Prayer<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Lord, help us to be more than spectators of your work in the world. \u00a0Help us to be &#8220;little Christs&#8221; in our families and communities. \u00a0And, may we <strong>have the courage to actually believe that you believe in us, and that we can do what you did: live and love well.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I only know that I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening.&nbsp;&nbsp;\u2014Christian Wiman,&nbsp;My Bright Abyss&nbsp; Father Richard Rohr describes the \u201ceagerness to love\u201d that characterized the life and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi (1182\u20131226):&nbsp; If our only goal is to love, there is no [&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\/24229"}],"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=24229"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24236,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions\/24236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}