Jim Wallis, the American Christian activist and writer, believes that the Christian community needs to be very clear what dimension of the Gospel the world most needs to hear and experience in our time.
Writing in his book The Call to Conversion, he holds that the greatest need is “not simply for kerygma, the preaching of the Gospel; nor for diakonia; service on behalf of justice; nor for charisma, the experience of the Spirit’s gifts; nor even for propheteia; the challenging of the King. The greatest need of our time is for koinonia, the call simply to be church….to offer to the world a living, breathing, loving community of church. This is the foundation of all answers.”
"A living, breathing, loving community" - he is so right! It is within a community that expresses the faith in worship, love, service and action that Christ is encountered and the Spirit is active.
My experience has been that people who have experienced the church in their lives, at a local level, as a vibrant, loving church, are the people who "catch" what it is all about. This experience of church as communion can take place in a dynamic parish, a prayer group, a bible study group, a social justice group, or any of a myriad such small communities.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI, puts it bluntly: "In the end, people are as agnostic about faith, Christ, and the church as they are about the experience of community. When there is a strong experience of community there is generally a strong faith... Christianity, in the end, is a communal endeavor. We believe in it when community works, we stop believing in it when community and family break down. Our primary task today is to live community. If we can do that, then the visible body of Christ, the Church, will have an incredible resurrection."
The most quoted passage from the Gospel in the writings was not any of the famous hard sayings of the Gospel about poverty or renunciation. Seven times Francis cited the “golden rule” of human relationships: “Whatever you would wish a person to do you to do, do you also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Francis did not present an ascetical system for his friars.
Jordan of Giano was a novice at the Pentecost Chapter of 1221 in Assisi. He tells in his Chronicle how Francis he went among the friars removal of the instruments of penance from among them. The saint knew it was easier to wear a hair shirt than live in patient kindness with others. Francis went straight to the Gospel. In his writings, love, humility, meekness, forgiveness, mutual service and courtesy were exalted to priority while programmes of ascetical exercises were lacking.
The friars’ approach must be to draw by attraction. In an exhortation to the friars Francis told them: “Since you speak peace, all the more so must there be peace in your hearts. Let none be provoked to anger or scandal by you. But rather may they be drawn to peace, goodness and unity by your gentleness. We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and bring home those who have lost their way.”
They were to be brothers who make credible in their lives the truth of the Gospel, who manifest in their deeds, great and small, the compassion of the God Jesus has made known and the beauty of the Christian, Catholic faith.
Throughout the month of October I am reflecting on the life and message of St Francis. As I wrote in the last post this is not an exercise in nostalgia. Yes, we look back with gratitude but we look forward with hope. The purposes of God, the faithfulness of Christ and the presence of the Spirit have not changed.
Pope John Paul was definite that the particular Franciscan experience and understanding of Christ and the Gospel are still more than relevant. Speaking to a Chapter gathering he said: “Franciscanism has much to say to contemporary civilisation, especially to those who are seized by consumerism and neglect the suffering of millions who die in hunger, to those, who, instead of building peace, are preparing for war, and to those who, rather than defending nature, of which Francis sung so wonderfully, contaminate it. It falls to you Franciscans, in the first place and because of who you are, to give an answer to the people of today, educating them to a correct vision and a proper use of things. You are the best interpreters of the message given by Francis to the people of his age, a message which is still relevant because of its capacity to renew consciences and society. It is up to you to proclaim it once again with Franciscan courage and daring.”
When we Franciscans celebrate the gift of Francis - it means rejoicing in the Gospel calling that has blessed our lives, responding to that call ever-more deeply, and recommitting ourselves to share joyfully this Christ-centred vision with others.
One of the risks in trying to live the Christian life as a Franciscan friar is indulging in a form of Romanticism about St Francis and the ''Franciscan Spring". This can lead to a certain nostalgia about the past, and a failure to see how God is working just as definitely in our own day.
Eight hundred years is a long time. Franciscans can look back with thanksgiving for the grace of God manifested in our story. But the story goes on and we are invited to continue that open-ended story. What was once, cannot be relived.
We are faced with our own choices and decisions. We cannot afford a rose-tinted nostalgia for the past. Our time is as much a time of the Holy Spirit as any previous age. So to copy slavishly the ways and methods of the past is to fail the people and Church of our day.
We want to go into the future with fire not with ashes. We are not caretakers of a Franciscan museum. Francis himself gives us this freedom. At the end of his life he told his brothers: “I have done what was mine to do – may Christ teach you yours.”
The questions asked of the Franciscans by a recent Minister General, Hermann Schaluck, get to the heart of living with hope in turbulent times. Indeed, they could also be asked of the Church in Ireland and many other parts of the world at this time.
“The present situation of crisis can be seen as a threat of death or as a test of faith in the Lord of history and in His unfailing presence. In a time of great transition and rapid change, the need is all the more urgent to read the sign of the times. Are we seeing the signs of collapse or the signs of a New Pentecost? Or both? Is a New Pentecost still possible today in the Church, in our communities or in ourselves?"
"Of one thing I am certain: if we are able to read these signs, to contemplate them from a perspective of faith, we shall discover many tracks of life – footprints of God and of the living Spirit. And we shall finally realise that the signs of crisis can be transformed into invitations to a new beginning and harbingers of new life. By placing the person of Jesus Christ at the centre of everything, by seeking above all to live the Good News of the Kingdom of God and its justice, we wish to reiterate our conviction that the following of Jesus Christ will open our eyes to a new vision, to new values, new priorities and new criteria. Our achievements will never exhaust the splendour and potential of the Kingdom of God.”
I am reminded of the Jewish Hasidim definition of hope: “Living joyfully when there are no easy answers.”
St Francis knew that men and women cannot be harangued or bullied into the Kingdom of God. Rather Francis knew that people cannot only be loved into the Kingdom. What condemnation and accusation cannot do, gentle kindness, courtesy and understanding can achieve.
G.K. Chesterton said that Francis “walked the world as the Pardon of God.” It was as if, in him, their little brother, people could glimpse the smile on the Father’s face, see how much they were accepted and cherished, and so felt free to come home. This is the approach of redemptive compassion that Francis wanted the friars to adopt – revealing a compassion that lifts people up with the hope of change, that life can be different.
The Rule told how the friars are to go among the people as humble brothers. “I counsel, admonish and exhort my bothers in the Lord Jesus, that, when they go about the world, that they do not quarrel, or fight with words, or judge others. Rather, let them be meek, peaceful and unassuming, gentle and humble, speaking courteously to everyone, as is becoming.”
Francis, in choosing to side with the outcasts, the lepers, ascended low enough so as to discover the Incarnation writ everywhere. The Franciscan vision is about the dignity of the human person. It is about making the language of the human community a language of “brother and sister.”
Francis called us to bend low in love, to find the humble goodness of God in the simple and oftentimes broken hearts in the world.
In one of his admonitions to the friars St Francis described evangelisation as using “the most holy words and deeds of the Lord” to lead “people to the love of God in joy and gladness.” Francis’ experience of Christ flowed with great energy into mission. He told the friars that they had been called by the Lord “not for themselves alone but for the sake of others.” God had sent them “into the entire world for this reason that in word and deed you may give witness to his voice.”
The way Francis viewed Christ had an impact on how he and the friars exercised their ministry of evangelisation.
Francis knew that the friars were in the communication business, meant to be bearers of Good News, as is the whole Church. We forget that at our peril. The friars were called to be “heralds of the Great King” and “troubadours of the Lord.”
God’s pastoral strategy was Francis’ guide. He recognised a progression whereby God enters into ever deeper communion with men and women, accommodating himself to our needs:
- The image and action of God impregnates all creation
- The Son of God took upon himself our flesh
- The glorified Christ becomes Bread for the life of the world.
Francis saw that the Eucharist is the last step in the long path of God’s humble “condescension” towards us – creation, revelation, incarnation, Eucharist.
Francis wanted the way of ministry, of witnessing to the Gospel, to be rooted in how God works among us - drawing close to us, adapting to our needs.
