Father Richard explains how religious orders, positioned on the edge of the inside of the Catholic Church, have helped the church to survive:
While the mainline Catholic Church organized itself around structural charity and almsgiving, it lost a deeper sense of solidarity, justice, simplicity, and basic understanding of the poor. Christians were no longer called to become poor like Christ but simply to help poor people through charity. It became acceptable to get rich personally, even for the clergy, with the idea of passing on that wealth to the poor. But as good as charity is, it largely became an avoidance of a basic concern for justice.
This is certainly a step or two removed from what Jesus lived and invited us into. We are no longer the poor ones whom Jesus called blessed; from our position of comfort, we take care of poor “others.” This is good and necessary, but not exactly what he taught.
Even though the Catholic Church didn’t remain a church of the poor, it sometimes became a church for the poor, usually through specialized groups called religious orders. About two-thirds of Catholic religious orders were founded by wonderful women and men who saw poor boys who were not being taught, poor girls who were not being protected, poor orphans who were not being taken care of. Then one heroic Irish woman would go off and take care of them, and soon we had the Sisters of Mercy, thousands of them.
I’m convinced that one of the only reasons Roman Catholicism has lasted is because we have these satellites of freedom on the edge of the inside—religious communities of Benedictines, Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy, and many more. Bishops have their questions of concern, and we have different questions, as do most of the laity. Structurally, the church survived because the religious orders and most of the laity just got on with trying to live the gospel.
Father Richard reminds us that a practice of contemplation allows us to remain on the edge of the inside with love:
The fruit of meditation is that we ask new questions, not in reaction, rebellion, or opposition to religion or the church. We don’t have time for that. It’s a waste of our life to bother with any oppositional or negative energy, because soon it becomes another form of righteousness, and that would be the death of our contemplative life.
So now we hope to keep one foot in our historic denomination and tradition, grateful for all it gave us, and we put the other foot in prayer groups, service groups, support groups, and meditation groups. That is a rather creative, positive, and hopeful way of renewing the church: no longer seeking to be right, but getting down to the practical work of our own transformation and the transformation of our suffering world.
Father Richard explains how religious orders, positioned on the edge of the inside of the Catholic Church, have helped the church to survive:
While the mainline Catholic Church organized itself around structural charity and almsgiving, it lost a deeper sense of solidarity, justice, simplicity, and basic understanding of the poor. Christians were no longer called to become poor like Christ but simply to help poor people through charity. It became acceptable to get rich personally, even for the clergy, with the idea of passing on that wealth to the poor. But as good as charity is, it largely became an avoidance of a basic concern for justice.
This is certainly a step or two removed from what Jesus lived and invited us into. We are no longer the poor ones whom Jesus called blessed; from our position of comfort, we take care of poor “others.” This is good and necessary, but not exactly what he taught.
Even though the Catholic Church didn’t remain a church of the poor, it sometimes became a church for the poor, usually through specialized groups called religious orders. About two-thirds of Catholic religious orders were founded by wonderful women and men who saw poor boys who were not being taught, poor girls who were not being protected, poor orphans who were not being taken care of. Then one heroic Irish woman would go off and take care of them, and soon we had the Sisters of Mercy, thousands of them.
I’m convinced that one of the only reasons Roman Catholicism has lasted is because we have these satellites of freedom on the edge of the inside—religious communities of Benedictines, Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy, and many more. Bishops have their questions of concern, and we have different questions, as do most of the laity. Structurally, the church survived because the religious orders and most of the laity just got on with trying to live the gospel.
Father Richard reminds us that a practice of contemplation allows us to remain on the edge of the inside with love:
The fruit of meditation is that we ask new questions, not in reaction, rebellion, or opposition to religion or the church. We don’t have time for that. It’s a waste of our life to bother with any oppositional or negative energy, because soon it becomes another form of righteousness, and that would be the death of our contemplative life.
So now we hope to keep one foot in our historic denomination and tradition, grateful for all it gave us, and we put the other foot in prayer groups, service groups, support groups, and meditation groups. That is a rather creative, positive, and hopeful way of renewing the church: no longer seeking to be right, but getting down to the practical work of our own transformation and the transformation of our suffering world.
We begin this week’s meditations with a foundational teaching from Richard Rohr on what it means to be “on the edge of the inside”:
The biblical prophets, by definition, were seers and seekers of Eternal Mystery, which always seems dangerously new and heretical to old eyes and any current preoccupations with status and security. The Hebrew prophets lived on the edge of the inside of Judaism. John the Baptist later does the same with Temple Judaism, and Paul then sharply disagrees with Peter and the new Christian establishment in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1–14). Francis and Clare continued this classic pattern in their own hometown of Assisi as they physically moved from upper Assisi among the majores to the lower side of town and the minores. There they had nothing to prove or defend. It offered the most opportunities to have fresh and honest experience, and to find their True Center. [1]
The starting point for the biblical prophet is an amazing positive experience of theophany (as we see in Isaiah 6, for example) that fills their heart, not with cynicism, not with sarcasm, not with negativity, not with opposition, but with ecstasy that has to be shared. That one experience of the absolute is so absolutizing that it has the effect of relativizing everything else. It even relativizes the institutions of religion, which receive the prophets’ most constant and continuous criticism.
We see this almost perfectly replicated in Jesus. Jesus is constantly critiquing religion and being fought by religion. The prophets come out of religious experience, and yet they find themselves fought most by religion itself. Often, like Jesus, they are killed by the religious establishment. Why is that true? [2]
People hiding inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control. Christians call this place “the Reign of God.” When one has found one’s treasure elsewhere and is utterly grounded in the passion and pathos of a transcendent God, they are both indestructible and uncontrollable by worldly systems.
If we look at some who have served the prophetic role in modern times, like Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Pope John XXIII, Simone Weil, and Óscar Romero, we will notice that they all held this exact position. They tended to be, each in their own way, orthodox, conservative, traditional clergy, intellectuals, or believers; but that truly authentic inner experience and membership allowed them to critique utterly the exact systems of which they were a part. We might say that their enlightened actions clarify what our mere belief systems really mean. These prophets critiqued Christianity by the very values that they learned from Christianity. [4]
Inside/Outside People
Father Richard describes prophets as “inside/outside” people, another way of saying they lived on the edge of the inside.
None of the prophets held highly established or institutional roles within Israel. They were by definition inside/outside people. I’ve heard it said that in the world of business and management, after we’re in a company for about two months, we begin to lose our ability to criticize that business or company because we’re a part of it. Unless we somehow retain our distance, and have healthy and balanced outside voices, we become an insider and start protecting the institution. We start shoring it up and building it up. That’s what happens to all of us in any system we get into. Once we accept these rules and this game, to a certain degree, we lose the ability to creatively criticize it anymore.
There are also those people who forever stand outside criticizing. Such people never participate and never become involved. There are those kind of people in every prayer group, and every parish, and every family, and every church. They go to services, but they never lay down their lives. They critique from without, and that doesn’t work either.
We can only criticize something if we walk the narrow line of being an inside/outside person that the prophets dared to walk. I find so few people can do that. I think only the Spirit can create it. There are a few prophets who can love their church, their country, or their company so much that they see it clearly and deeply and are free to criticize it. But there’s a difference when critique comes from anger and rebellion and spite, and when it comes from love. All of our actions and prophetic words must come out of an experience of gratitude for what is given. Only out of the joy and the fullness of what is given can we dare to speak against what is not given. Because if we speak against what is not given merely out of our own resentment and compulsion, we’ll destroy ourselves and probably others too.
How many cynical and bitter people do we know in the church and religious life? How many clergy have lost the ability for that creative balance? No one has taught them how to walk that narrow road of being inside/outside people. Maybe the church didn’t allow many examples to stay around to show us, because for years we’ve eliminated the prophets. Anyone who didn’t speak the party line was deemed a heretic. Anyone who didn’t say it in the one and only orthodox and appropriate way to say it was kicked out. So, we lost those creative models to show us how to be inside and yet creatively speaking from an outside perspective. That’s the wisdom we need. The model of the prophet is one who can love and yet criticize, and who can speak words of correction out of an experience of gratitude.
Love and Criticism
Dorothy Day (1897–1980) lived on the edge of the inside, and the deep love she had for her church and nation expressed itself in passionate critique. Writer Julie Leininger Pycior describes a moment of prophetic challenge Day offered during a conference session on Women and the Eucharist:
Nearing eighty, and long plagued by heart ailments along with arthritis, [Day] was felled by a serious heart attack in September 1976 [not long] after giving a talk to eight thousand people at a Eucharistic congress in Philadelphia. One also could say, however, that that event broke her heart….
As they made their way to the session, Day confided to [her friend Eileen] Egan that she was sick at heart. The congress included a Mass in honor of the U.S. military, and, like the women’s session, was scheduled for August 6, which happened to be the anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The Catholic Worker leader felt obligated to decry that military theme, even though she considered the Mass more important than life itself, containing within it that most precious of gifts: the Eucharist—and even as the congress, of course, was dedicated to the Eucharist.
For Day, a devout Catholic, her love of the Eucharist compelled her to speak out about war as a sin for which penance is needed, especially with the anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear attack in her heart and mind:
[Day’s] remarks, which she titled “Bread for the Hungry,” [1] opened with a devoted evocation of the Eucharist. Day shared with her listeners her deep, abiding “love and gratitude to the Church” as nothing less than a mother “who taught me the crowning love of the life of the Spirit.” But love in action can be a harsh and dreadful thing, and now she plunged ahead, noting that this mother “also taught me that ‘before we bring our gifts of service, of gratitude, to the altar—if our brother has anything against us, we must hesitate to approach the altar to receive the Eucharist.’”
Speaking with an anguish made even more dramatic by her careful, understated manner, Day said, “And here we are on August 6th.” Acknowledging other holocausts, notably the Turkish attacks on the Armenians and the Nazi persecution of Jews, “God’s chosen people,” she then sounded like a prophet. “It is a fearful thought that unless we do penance, we will perish,” she firmly stated, reminding her listeners that, at that very moment, military leaders were processing into the cathedral nearby.… She called for “fasting, as a personal act of penance, for the sin of our country, which we love.” Asking why that religious service could not have been held on a different date, “I plead,” she said, “that we will regard that military Mass, and all our Masses today, as an act of penance, begging God to forgive us.” That her audience broke into resounding applause only partly salved Day’s wounded heart, which suffered an actual physical attack a few weeks later.
A Franciscan Renaissance would be ecological, nonviolent, economic, and inclusive. —Brian McLaren and Patrick Carolan
CAC teacher Brian McLaren joins with Catholic activist Patrick Carolan to call for a renewal of the Franciscan way in Christianity:
We have a proposal that addresses both the crises in the world at large and the crises in the Christian church: the possibility of a Franciscan Renaissance….
First, at this time of ecological crisis, the Franciscan legacy is powerfully ecological…. We need a spiritual vision that integrates love for God and love for our neighbor with love for the earth….
The ecological vision of Francis was about … the interconnectedness of all creation, so that we see every creature as sister or brother.…
Second, in this time of violence, this time of school shootings and war in Europe, this time when many politicians seem to believe that the more guns we have the safer we’ll be, or the more bombs we have the safer we’ll be, we need St. Francis’ message and example of nonviolence as never before….
Over the centuries, many forms of Christianity have become religions of fear. But Christianity wasn’t always like that. It began as a nonviolent peace movement, a community known for love, a community gathered around a table of fellowship and reconciliation, a people armed with the basin and towel of service, not the bomb and gun of violence. A Franciscan Renaissance would invite us to become, in the language of St. Clare, not violent warriors, but nonviolent mirrors of Christ for others to see and follow.
Third … the Franciscan vision is deeply economic. Today, a larger and larger percentage of wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and families…. St. Francis arose in the early stages of modern capitalism, and he saw its potential dangers. He exemplified an alternative value system where the poor, the leper, and the outcast matter more than money, luxury, and power. Our current economic model places no intrinsic value on creation, except as a source for raw materials that we consume…. A Franciscan Renaissance would help us “redeem”—which means to re-assess and revalue—everything, so we rediscover the priceless beauty of the earth and its creatures, including our neighbors and ourselves.
Fourth, we live in a time of exclusion, division, classism, racism, and religious prejudice. We need the example of St. Francis and St. Clare, who clearly modeled deep inclusiveness and solidarity…. In this spirit of solidarity, I see that my life and your life are interconnected. I refuse to settle for my own happiness, because my life is in solidarity with yours as my neighbor.
The relationship between Francis and Clare modeled this: we’re all equal—male and female, rich and poor, healthy and sick, well-clothed and clothed in rags, Pope and Bishop and lay person. Francis even teaches us to refuse to discriminate between Christian and Muslim, Jew and Atheist, for we all are beloved by God.
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Jesus Gets Us
Jesus Let His Hair Down Too
Jesus was no stranger to joy. He went to weddings. He shared lively meals with his friends. He drank with them. He had so much fun and acted so freely around the dinner table that the uptight religious leaders called him a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus was joyful. But what does that mean?
These days it’s very easy to conflate joy and happiness, but Jesus hardly ever used the word happiness (or at least the Aramaic equivalent), and he frequently used the word we translate as joy. That word? In Greek, it’s “chara,” and it means a feeling of inner gladness, delight, or rejoicing. You see, the joy Jesus talked about and lived out isn’t dependent on circumstances, and it isn’t a reactionary feeling — it’s a lasting emotion, a deep-seated assurance, and a way of life.
That gives a different perspective to the picture of Jesus eating and drinking with friends and strangers. It wasn’t the food, drink, or company that brought Jesus joy — he already had it. It’s actually the other way around. It was his joy that gave him the freedom to hang out with people that others thought were shady. It was his joy that allowed him to be uninhibited in his pursuit of compassion. It was his joy that let him throw worry about his reputation to the side as he lived life to the full. And it was that same joy, that deep-seated emotion that works inside out, that allowed him to forgive his captors on the cross.
In good times and bad, Jesus was joyful, and he wanted the same for the people who would listen to him. During his last meal with his disciples, Jesus shared plenty of wisdom. After a good chunk of it, he was sure to explain that he was sharing it all “so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” And then, without pause, he continued: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” If you’re looking for the secret to Jesus’ joy, try starting there. He knew what he was doing.
Scripture References:
John 2:1-11,
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. 3 And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
4 Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
6 Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it.9 When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom. 10 And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”
11 This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and [a]manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.
Matthew 11:19, The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.
John 15:11-12; I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. —Philippians 2:5–8
Franciscan sister Ilia Delio considers how Francis mirrored God’s humility:
I think Francis of Assisi grasped something of the mystery of God and, in a particular way, the mystery of God’s humility…. Francis did not study theology. He did not try to figure out what God is through reason. He simply spent long hours in prayer, often in caves, mountains or places of solitude, places where he could distance himself from the busy everyday world. Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of Francis, wrote: “Where the knowledge of teachers is outside, the passion of the lover entered.” [1] What Thomas perceived is that love, not knowledge, allowed Francis to enter into the great mystery we call “God.” As he entered into this mystery he discovered two principle features of God—the overflowing goodness of God and the humility of God…. Francis came to know the God of humble love by meditating on and imitating the poor and humble Christ. [2]
Theologian Bruce Epperly shares how Francis modeled God’s humility revealed in Jesus:
Francis patterned his life … after the gospel simplicity and humility of Jesus, whose self-emptying and letting go of power and prestige was at the heart of his divinity. Divine power is found in downward mobility and identification with human suffering, not in weaponry, status, or comfort. God’s love for the world is expressed in solidarity with the least…. Jesus embodied a radically different lifestyle than that of the heads of church and state. In Francis’s time, some church leaders dressed in the finest clothing, lived in comfortable homes, and managed vast fortunes despite the poverty of most worshippers. In contrast, Francis discovered that the glory of God is found in identification with the salt of the earth, the most vulnerable people, the poor, disabled, and leprous. The incarnation of Christ means that Christ is one of us, not lording it over like presidents and prelates, but living among the poor and dispossessed. A poor Christ reveals what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as “the divine pathos,” [3] God’s intimate experience of the world’s pain and suffering. God feels our pain and rejoices in our celebration. Foolish by the world’s standards, Francis, Clare, and their followers sought the way of holy poverty or spiritual simplicity that breaks down walls and builds bridges with all God’s creatures. Better than none, equal to all in need of God’s grace, and depending on God’s gifts for life itself, Francis and Clare found God in the least of these. They served Christ by letting go of power in order to become siblings of all creation.
The most direct route between the present and your goals and hearts desires in your life journey is your surrender. I will bring you closer to your goals if you simply surrender to Me.
Isaiah 26:4; 4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
Psalm 25:4-5; 4 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
Proverbs 3:5-6; 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart. and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
The essence of the prophetic task is to articulate a vision of the common good that has the power to capture the imagination of the people as a goal worthy of struggle and sacrifice. —St. Francis and the Foolishness of God
The book St. Francis and the Foolishness of God describes Francis of Assisi’s prophetic call to “change sides” and embrace relationship with those on the margins, as Jesus did.
For Francis, the order of things was turned upside down, just as it had been for the apostles…. Jesus, whom they followed and called friend, embraced, mingled with, touched, loved, cured, and broke bread with the outcasts, the marginal, the unclean of his day…. In a social structure shaped by exclusion of the leprous, the ritually unclean, the “non-chosen,” the women, the possessed, tax collectors, sinners—Jesus embraced them all, both individually and as social groups. In fact, Jesus’s very identity was as one who proclaimed the good news to the poor, who announced the inbreaking of the reign of God, and who lived the announcement by being at the side of the poor himself.
In Francis’s new upside-down order, his encounter with the leper was indeed an encounter with this Jesus in a person who was marginalized…. As Francis embraced a vivid example of human misery, he tasted great joy; the sweetness he experienced revealed God’s presence pervading his meeting with the outcast.
The witness of St. Francis and Jesus inspires us to a solidarity that mourns with people in poverty:
Encountering the impoverished, walking for a while in the world of the marginalized, and being with the have-nots of our world is a necessary aspect of the discipleship journey. Our vision thereafter is shaped by this encounter. We realize, and never forget, the privileged perspective of impoverished people who see reality with a clarity of vision that we may never achieve. Our souls are touched by the encounter as well, and sorrow over the pain and injustice of impoverishment and marginalization fills the crevices of our being….
Deep mourning over the social conditions that make people poor may be the first step we non-poor can take to internalize the beatitudes: “Blessed are you who are now weeping; you shall laugh” [Luke 6:21]. Mourning implies a terrible sense of loss, of regret, an acknowledgment of the real, and a feeling of pain in the face of that reality. Weeping and mourning emerge from our affective side and are profoundly healthy emotions for those of us who are more privileged, who will never fully share the lot of those who are impoverished by the system that creates our wealth, but who at least can weep over the tragedy of human suffering. Emotions help describe us as whole people and, if joined with righteous indignation at the injustices that cause marginalization, can lead us toward a relinquishment of the power and privilege that maintain injustice, and toward a solidarity with those who are poor in their claim on justice.
Franciscan alternative orthodoxy emphasized incarnation more than redemption. Franciscans did not believe that God sent Jesus to earth to die as a substitutionary atonement* for our sins. Father Richard summarizes:
In the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and the Dominicans were the church’s debating society, as it were. We were allowed to have minority positions in those days. We invariably took opposing positions in the great debates in the universities of Paris, Cologne, and Oxford, and neither opinion was kicked out of the church at that time.
In these debates, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and the Dominicans were being true to the Scriptures, the Jewish temple metaphors of sacrifice, price, and atonement. Many passages can give the impression that a ransom is required. But our Franciscan teacher, Blessed John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), who founded the theological chair at Oxford, said that Jesus’ crucifixion didn’t solve any problems with God or change God’s mind about us. God’s mind didn’t need changing. Rather, Jesus was changing our mind about God!
Duns Scotus built his argument on a New Testament understanding of the pre-existent Cosmic Christ in Colossians, Ephesians, and John’s Gospel. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), who came forward in a moment of time so we could look upon “the One we have pierced” (John 19:37) and see God’s unconditional love—and at the same time, see what humans do to almost everything—and God’s unconditional love-response to that. [1]
Duns Scotus firmly believed that God’s freedom had to be maintained at all costs. If God “needed” or demanded a blood sacrifice to love God’s own creation, then God was not freely loving us. Duns Scotus taught that Christ was Plan A from the very beginning (see Colossians 1:15–20; Ephesians 1:3–14; John 1:1–18). Christ wasn’t a Plan B after the first humans sinned, which is the way most people seem to understand the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Great Mystery of Incarnation was not motivated by a problem but by love.
The Franciscan view grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning. It creates a coherent and positive spirituality, which draws us toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal at-one-ment, instead of any notion of sacrifice, which implies an angry God who needs to be bought off. [2]
On the cross, Jesus bears the consequences of hatred publicly, but in an utterly new way that consists of forgiveness and letting go. We finally call it “resurrection,” not just for Jesus’ body, but for all of history. A new and possible storyline is set forth. If God and Jesus are not hateful, violent, punitive, torturing, or vindictive, then our excuse for the same is forever taken away from us. Jesus’ entire journey told people two major things: that life could have a positive storyline, and that God was far different and far better than we ever thought. [3]
Richard Rohr explains that Francis of Assisi (1182–1226)paid attention to different things than the Catholic Church of his time. Eventually, his prophetic witness and emphasis became an “alternative orthodoxy” through the Franciscan tradition. Richard begins:
In the Legend of Perugia, one of the earliest accounts of his life, Francis offers this instruction to the first friars: “You only know as much as you do.” [1] His emphasis on action, practice, and lifestyle was foundational and revolutionary for its time and remains at the heart of Franciscan alternative orthodoxy. For Francis and Clare, Jesus became someone to actually follow and imitate.
Up to this point, most of Christian spirituality was based in desert asceticism, monastic discipline, theories of prayer, or academic theology, which itself was often based in “correct belief” or liturgical texts, but not in a kind of practicalChristianity that could be lived in the streets of the world. Francis emphasized an imitation and love of the humanity of Jesus, and not just the worshiping of his divinity. That is a major shift.
Throughout history, the Franciscan School has typically been a minority position inside of the Roman Catholic and larger Christian tradition, yet it has never been condemned or considered heretical—in fact, quite the opposite. It simply emphasized different teachings of Jesus, new perspectives and behaviors, and focused on the full and final implications of the incarnation of God in Christ. For Franciscans, the incarnation was not just about Jesus but was manifested everywhere. As Francis said, “The whole world is our cloister!” [2]
Francis’ starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness, and God’s identification with that suffering in Jesus. That did not put him in conflict with any Catholic dogmas or structures. His Christ was cosmic while also deeply personal, his cathedral was creation itself, and he preferred the bottom of society to the top. He invariably emphasized inclusion of the seeming outsider over any club of insiders, and he was much more a mystic than a moralist. In general, Francis preferred ego poverty to private perfection, because Jesus “became poor for our sake, so that we might become rich out of his poverty” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
I sincerely think Francis found a Third Way, which is the creative and courageous role of a prophet and a mystic. He basically repeated what all prophets say: that the message and the medium for the message have to be the same thing.And Francis emphasized the medium itself, instead of continuing to clarify or contain the mere verbal message; this tends to be the “priestly” job, one which Francis never wanted for himself.
Both Francis and Clare saw orthopraxy (“correct practice”) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to verbal orthodoxy (“correct teaching”) and not an optional add-on or a possible implication. “Why aren’t you doing what you say you believe?” the prophet invariably asks.
Letting Go of Churchiness
In the CAC online course The Franciscan Way, Richard Rohr explains several different emphases in Franciscan alternative orthodoxy: incarnation instead of redemption, cosmos instead of churchiness, poverty instead of perfection, the bottom instead of the top, the humility of God, and an emphasis on the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus instead of just his divinity. In response to the question “Which one of these do you think the world is most ripe for at this time?” Richard replies:
I wonder if it isn’t “cosmos instead of churchiness.” There is such a universal disillusionment with churchiness, which is the building and maintenance of churches and services. We’ve overplayed the church card for much of the last thousand years. It’s like the messenger overtook the message. Once we divided Christianity into Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, all of the individual churches had to prove they were the one true church. All that did was preoccupy us with the churchy conversation, while taking our eyes off the cosmos, off of what was right beneath our feet, in front of our eyes, and the very whole of which we are already a part.
We naturally participate in the universe. We have the reptilian brain, we have the mammalian brain, we have the neocortex. We have the sensate connection with the plant world and the animal world. We’re just involved at every level with this entire universe around us. I’m told that the atoms and molecules that existed at the Big Bang are the same atoms and molecules here right now, and all they’ve done for 13.8 billion years is change form, that nothing dies.
Nothing dies; it just keeps changing form. So, we have a natural foundation for what we call resurrection that isn’t a unique belief of Christianity—it is in the very shape of the cosmos. What this leads us to is a whole new partnership with what we used to negatively dismiss as “mere science.” Sadly, we split the universe when we did that. We said that our form of knowledge was the only true form and all those other knowers were ignorant unbelievers. We can’t do that anymore. We now know that truth is one, and we’re all seeing it from different angles and at different levels. Just because one group uses the vocabulary at one level, and those in our group use the vocabulary at a different level, what right do we have to say our vocabulary is the only true description of the universe?
Religion is no longer a spectator sport, an observing of some distant, far-off truth, but it’s an observing of what is true in me, and what is true in me is true of the cosmos. It’s all one reality. Frankly this makes the job of evangelization—if we want to use that Christian word—much easier because we’re not bringing in an extraneous message. We’re simply naming what is.
James Finley encourages each of us to continue on the contemplative path:
Through our renewed fidelity to our contemplative practices we learn to discern and take steps to correct any tendencies to drag around dust-gathering trophies of things past…. Sitting silent and still in meditation, walking with attentive gratitude at sunset, reaching out to cup the beloved’s face in our hands, we find ourselves once again at the never ending origins of the one unending present moment in which our lives unfold.
We know by experience that in a relative, but very real sense, we are the arbiters of our journey, that we must take responsibility to cooperate with the grace of being faithful to our contemplative practices. If we do not meditate there will be no meditation in our lives. If we do not patiently work through the obstacles encountered along the way, we can lose our way and lose ourselves in the process. But at a deeper level, the entire journey is one in which we are called over and over again to surrender to a self-transforming process not of our own making. Each time we give ourselves over to our contemplative practices, whatever they might be, we find ourselves, once again, one with the communal mystery in which there is no separate self. [1]
Finley reminds us that solitary contemplative paths simultaneously invite us to respond with compassion to real world needs:
Let me emphasize … the need to discern and take steps to correct the ways in which our contemplative self-transformation is hindered by our failures to compassionately love others. Ideally speaking, a commitment to contemplative living is synonymous with a heightened awareness of and response to the real suffering of real people. The difficulty however, is that our own wounded ego can circle about contemplative experiences in ways that make us less, not more sensitive to our own real needs and the needs of those around us. Religious faith, artistic inspiration, romantic-sexual love, the process of psychological healing, and all other arenas of contemplative experience and self-transformation, can and should be arenas of heightened compassionate sensitivity to the real needs of those around us….
Contemplative wisdom discerns that we hinder ourselves in our ongoing self-transformation when we catch ourselves expounding, through clenched teeth, the principles of a dance that our own self-absorbed rigidity will not let us dance. But no matter how foolish and broken we may be, compassionate love is always ready to drain the fear-based rigidity out of the situation to the point that we might begin to recognize our ever-present invitation to join in the general dance of God, one with us in our brokenness. The dance never ceases to stir within us, beating “in our very blood whether we want it to or not.” [2] The dance is deathless, childlike, and free; an infinite Presence wholly poured out in and as the concrete immediacy of who we simply are, beyond grasping in any way whatsoever. [3]
Seek Me with your whole being. I desire to be found by you, and I orchestrate the events of your life with that purpose in mind. When things go well and you are blessed, you can feel Me smiling on you. When you encounter rough patches along your life journey, trust that My Light is still shining upon you. My reasons for allowing these adversities may be shrouded in mystery, but My continual Presence with you is an absolute promise. Seek Me in good times; seek Me in hard times. You will find Me watching over you all the time.
Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Psalm 145:20 The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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