Living with Contradictions

Today is the feast of St Augustine - who often gets a poor press these days.  But he was a man whose life's journey forced him to look at the contractions within himself, and to finally live in peace with the profound paradox that is every human person. 

God has endless patience for the confused messiness that makes up our lives - but we have to learn, often the hard way, that compassion for self and others is the core of the Gospel and the path to serenity.

Richard Rohr, OFM, offers a reflection for this feast day that speaks to this spiritual dynamic.

"Jesus is giving us a win-win worldview (which is why it is called Good News!), but what the ego invariably does with the Gospel is make it into a win-lose game. That’s the only way the dualistic mind can think. You’re either in or you’re out. It defines itself largely by what it is not. The mystical or non-dual mind is alone capable of win-win.

Yet we don’t know how to include, how to forgive, how to pour mercy and compassion and patience upon events as God apparently does. Augustine of Hippo, a man filled with contradictions, was a master at holding those contradictions within himself and before God. He describes the power and simultaneously the deep powerlessness of true God experience. 

Faith absolutely knows and yet it does not know at all—and is content with this! Thus true believers are very humble and yet quietly confident in the same moment."

A Family Gathering

Last Sunday over 200 hundred members of the Franciscan Family in Ireland gathered in the ancient (founded 1268) and beautiful friary at Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath. Friars of all sorts, Poor Clares, Franciscan Sisters and Secular Franciscans came together to celebrate the life and charism of  St Clare as the Year of St Clare draws to a close.

On the night of Palm Sunday in 1212 a young, courageous woman left her parents' home in Assisi and walked through woods to reach the little chapel of Our Lady of the Angels where Francis and his brothers awaited her. There she consecrated her life totally to God in her desire to follow Christ poor and crucified. Her act of faith and love was the seed that flowered, by God's Spirit, into the Poor Clare Order.

On Sunday it was a joy to celebrate this Gospel woman. We were refreshed and encouraged in our own personal vocations as we shared her story and vision.

But what stands out for me was the deep sense of happiness in our being together. The chat and laughter, the sharing of stories and food, our very ease together - all spoke of family. 

Family implies belonging, acceptance, common roots, and shared identity. 

There is but one Gospel, one Spirit who calls all, one faith we cling to - this is true for the whole community of believers. But within that wide community there are families formed by a particular charism, a specific perspective on the mystery of Christ, a common story and spirit.

Francis exhorts us: "Where ever they meet let them show that they are members of one family" 

On Sunday I experienced anew the gift of belonging to the Franciscan Family.

History keeps us humble!

I have found  that knowing a bit of Church history helps to give me perspective and keep me humble!

History shows us that as a community of faith, the Church, we often need to relearn or rediscover some truth that got forgotten or was denied because it was too uncomfortable, inconvenient or clashed too strongly with the prevailing culture.

Richard Rohr, OFM, writes of one such area of the Gospel that was ignored and got explained away for centuries

'I’m told that the word “nonviolence” did not exist (at least in the English and German languages) until the 1950s. There’s a reason for that: the notion didn’t exist in our consciousness. We didn’t create a word for it because we didn’t get it yet! When Gandhi came along, he pointed out that every religion in the world knows that Jesus of Nazareth taught and lived nonviolence except one religion - Christianity. In very short order, after Gandhi, this became obvious to many wise people throughout the world.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the one who most influenced western culture regarding nonviolence. That’s why I speak of it as a recovery of nonviolence. We had it, but we couldn’t hear it, especially after Christianity became the imperial religion. When you’re imperial, you can’t hear any talk of nonviolence. You have to be violent to be an empire. So after 313 AD, we pretty much lost the nonviolent teaching of Jesus and it was not recovered until the twentieth century. It’s sort of unbelievable, but in between, nonviolence was almost universally forgotten, denied, or ignored as Christianity needed to justify its own violence.'

In fact, God did raise up prophets within the Church over the centuries who lived and proclaimed the Gospel of non-violence, foremost among them was St Francis. But the Church, at all levels, did not listen. 

Francis was honoured as a great saint, but his commitment to actually live the Sermon on the Mount was considered unrealistic and undoable - which of course it is - without deep conversion of heart and mind and the grace of Christ's Spirit to empower us.

This is but one area of Christian discipleship that has to 'rediscovered' and accepted generally within the Church. 

It is humbling to recognise that the tendency to water down the Gospel is so constant in the life of the Church, and, if we are honest, in our own Christian living.

May the Lord give us ears to hear and hearts to respond to his full Word!

People of the Way

I always find that Jim Wallis, the American Christian and social activist, has something worthwhile to share. For many years he has been able to combine a deep personal commitment to the Lord within community, along with dedicated work for the transformation of the society in the light of Christ's teaching.

We can be 'tempted' as the Lord's disciples to focus on merely the private and the devotional or to get caught up in 'churchy' matters such as liturgical niceties.

In his book, Call to Conversion, he speaks both of the practical and communal nature of our Christian discipleship.

'The early Christians were known for the way they lived, not only for what they believed. For them, the two were completely intertwined. The earliest title given to them reflected the importance of their kingdom lifestyle. They were not called the people of "the experience" or the people of "right doctrine" or even the people of "the church." Rather, they were the people of "the Way." It is equally significant that the Christians were known as "the people" of the Way. More than just individuals who had been converted, they were now a people, a new community of faith, which had embarked together on a new way of life. To follow Jesus meant to share Jesus' life and to share it with others.'

This approach resonates with the Franciscan perspective: the most frequent verb in Francis' writings is 'to do'. Obviously Francis was not advocating senseless activism. But there is the realisation that we truly believe, not what we say we believe, but what we seek to put into practise in daily living with the help of God's grace.

The Church: Called to Mediate Grace

 Ours is a searching God. St Catherine of Siena spoke of God being pazzo d’amore and ebro d’amore – crazed with love for us, drunk with love for us. She was right. How far has the Lord’s foolish love compelled Him to come in search of us. And at what a cost to Himself does He carry us home.

Look at the Gospels. The worse a person felt about himself or herself, the more likely they saw Jesus as a refuge. In His loving companionship lost souls knew themselves to be more than they had dared to imagine. Jesus brought these people, trapped in their tortured lives, a message of hope – anyone, anyone at any moment can start a new future by the sheer goodness of God.  

In God’s grace we grow to love ourselves as He wants – all of ourselves, even the parts we wish were not there, the parts of us we wish God hadn’t made, the parts of us we lament.

“Zacchaeus, come down, I am staying with you today!”

The Church exists to mediate that free, transforming love we call grace. The Church’s primary role is to share the Gospel of God’s grace – that unrestricted gracious love that, when it is accepted with joy, lifts up and changes lives. Such grace comes from beyond, as a gift not an achievement.

Gordon MacDonald wrote: “The world can do almost anything as well or better than the Church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or care for the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.”

Philip Yancey, reflecting on his own spiritual journey, said: “I rejected the Church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”


Francis lived in a time when the Church was shaken by scandals and tensions - far worst than in our own time. However, he was clear that his calling meant remaining firmly within the family of the Church, staying open and available to God's graious action himself, and working to make the Church more clearly, more effectively a sacred space where the grace of God's goodness can be experienced by a seeking world. 


It is a faith persepective that enables us to stand steadfast.

St Francis and the Eucharist

 As the Church in Ireland celebrates the International Eucharistic Congress (10-17 June), we see how for St Francis the Eucharist was at the heart of the Gospel way of life.

For Francis the Eucharist is the major way in which he sees Christ in this world. He had an intense reverence and love for the Lord "hidden" in the sacrament of his body and blood.

For Francis this sacrament was a sign of the complete self-emptying of Christ. In the first of his Admonitions, which is about the Eucharist, Francis stresses that the sacrament is a symbol of the poverty and humility of Christ. He writes: “Behold, each day he humbles Himself as when he came from the royal throne into the Virgin’s womb; each day He himself comes down to us, appearing humbly; each day He comes down from the bosom of the Father upon the altar in the hands of the priest. As he revealed himself to the holy apostles in true flesh, so He reveals himself to us now in sacred bread.”

And in the Letter to the Entire Order Francis writes in poetic vein: “Let everyone be struck with fear, let the whole world tremble, and let the heavens exult when Christ, the Son of the living God, is present on the altar in the hands of a priest! O wonderful loftiness and stupendous dignity! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! The lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles himself that for our salvation he hides himself under an ordinary piece of bread! Brothers, look at the humility of God, and pour out your hearts before him! Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him! Hold nothing back of yourselves for yourselves, that he who gives himself totally to you may receive you totally!”

Forgiving others - being good to ourselves.

Some days after I had given a talk on forgiveness recently, a man told me that he had being putting into practice what we had shared on Christian forgiveness. He had realised that he was carrying hurts and anger about people in the past. The talk had uncovered hidden resentments, and he had begun to pray for those people. And as he continued to do so he said he felt emotional and the tears came - a frequent sign of grace working deep within - and he experienced great peace. To be able to put down the burdens of the past is always a precious gift.

God does not ask the impossible from us. Jesus tells us: "Pray for those who treat you badly; bless and do not curse them."   So taking the Lord at His word and trusting in His grace we do just that. We don't have to like someone before we pray for them. Nor do we have to wait till our emotions are no longer raw before doing so.  We can simply say: "Lord bless him/her and grant me peace!"  It is very hard to hate someone y0u are praying for. Such a choosing of forgiveness opens a space for the Spirit of the Lord to bring us healing and peace.

Feelings follow the action. Forgiveness is not firstly about our emotions; it is a choice, a decision, an act of the will. If the wound is deep we may need to make that choice again and again until the heart is free.

Resentment keeps the hurt alive in our hearts, controls our moods and extends our pain. We are being very good to ourselves when we make the decision to let go of any bitterness we are nursing. Resentment is an acid that destroys its container. The container is our own heart!