Finding Saint Francis

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iloveangels said:
But I didn’t turn my brain off when I walked in the door. . . .

In my experience, being open to the Holy Spirit is a disposition, not necessarily an act of throwing your books out the window and shutting off your mind. People tend to forget the real history of the Franciscan order which includes a lot of ways of being Franciscan.
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Oh, I totally agree with you. My favorite SFO has a mind like a steel trap and 6 degrees under his belt, including two masters and a PhD. And he’s as open to the Spirit as anyone I’ve ever met.

I do think, though, that Franciscans have a bit more tolerance for people who are less capable in some ways, as well as for our own foibles and weirdnesses that sometimes pop out.
 
EvelynEVF said:
Oh, I totally agree with you. My favorite SFO has a mind like a steel trap and 6 degrees under his belt, including two masters and a PhD. And he’s as open to the Spirit as anyone I’ve ever met.

I do think, though, that Franciscans have a bit more tolerance for people who are less capable in some ways, as well as for our own foibles and weirdnesses that sometimes pop out.
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Well, yes, tolerance is the key. The good Lord made people of all kinds and abilities and honestly, no one is responsible for their own wiring anymore than they’re responsible for their athletic skill or their pretty face. It is what it is. It’s an asset to the SFO to have a lot of variety in its members. Keeps things from getting boring!

What would the world be like if we were all identical. Yikes. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
 
JReducation said:
**]I’m a firm believer that part of finding Francis and living the Gospel as Francis lived it requires that one learn to live with uncertainty and ambiguity. Uncertainty and ambiguity require that one become poor. One has to let go and trust God and man. **

I have always said that the greatest treasure to which we hang on to is not money. It’s our need for control. Uncertainty and ambiguity force us to live without controlling everything around us.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
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This is perfect, fratello. It is absolutely the hardest thing for me to do, but I am better than I was, and still working on it.
 
JReducation said:
I’m a firm believer that part of finding Francis and living the Gospel as Francis lived it requires that one learn to live with uncertainty and ambiguity. Uncertainty and ambiguity require that one become poor. One has to let go and trust God and man.

I have always said that the greatest treasure to which we hang on to is not money. It’s our need for control. Uncertainty and ambiguity force us to live without controlling everything around us.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
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I have printed this out to put in my “important documents” file. May I share it at my next SFO meeting?
 
And anyway, my point isn’t to talk about the differences between people. That’s neither here nor there, it just is.

My point is that “vague” is different from “open.”

For example, I became Catholic in the first place because of grace and cooperation with it which included understanding. This is a pretty common story if you talk to people in RCIA classes. This involved open-ness because it it involved listening and personal change, but it wasn’t vague. Not at all. In becoming Catholic, I came out of something much more vague and self-indulgent. I think many converts would agree with this.

That said, ambiguity is part of life, and it can be a large part of life at times. But there’s necessary ambiguity which is good and fascinating and human; then there’s ambiguity just because something is vague, not defined, unattended to, run amok, not necessarily a good thing.
 
More to the point of Franciscanism, maybe I’ve misunderstood St. Francis.

My intuition was that he wasn’t a proponent of uncertainty for the sake of uncertainty, but rather, accepted uncertainty in his life for the sake of a crystalline moment of recognition that was as clear as anything he’d ever known. That moment defined his life.

Yes, he accepted uncertainty and poverty with a gusto, but not for itself. It was the amazing power it had for making things clear for him that attracted him so powerfully to it. That and his recognition that God had accepted the human state as an act of sheer humility. But I’m very sure he never submerged the clarity completely in the poverty and called it good. For uncertainty sheerly for the sake of uncertainty isn’t Christian. It’s quite pagan, in fact.

The spiritual life contains a lot of ambiguity; it’s not altogether human even on the end of the one doing the praying, and it can be difficult. But there is a point to it even if you can’t identify everything. To really lose the object of the spiritual life, which is God, is disastrous. God never really makes himself absent, all of our “antennae” to the contrary. To realize this in the depths of one’s being is how faith grows.

Have I misunderstood St. Francis?
 
Or perhaps, you’re saying something much more mundane and everyday, like why do I have to ask so many questions? Sorry.

Thank you for what you’ve taught me so far, Br. JR.
 
iloveangels said:
Br. JR,

Let me ask you about this:

There have been many Franciscan scholars and theologians. Bonaventure himself was one of them. They lived in community first, but understood their work to be the work of the mind. What of them?

It’s a little known thing that some of the ideas that paved the way for the modern scientific world came from Franciscan scholars. Roger Bacon was an OFM.
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Scholarship has always been part of Franciscan life. Many people don’t know that Bonaventure and Aquinas were working together on the Summa until the general chapter ordered Bonaventure to leave the work at the University of Paris and take up Franciscan theology. The chapter ordered him to write about Francis, precisely because he was a scholar and the friars wanted a scholarly work on the founder.

Anthony of Padua was a scripture scholar. Br. Elias was a lawyer. The man who came up with the Big Bang Theory is a Franciscan Friar. I believe that he was OFM. The Conventuals became “conventuals” in order to live in convents. These houses imitated the monastery. They had large libraries and housed schools of theology, philosophy, science and politics. During our time we have Franciscan scholars such as Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Doctor of Physics and a Doctor of Theology. He was absolutely brilliant and wrote some very interesting pieces on science. In the USA we have to of the brightest Franciscan scholars as bishops: Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap and Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap. Sean is a scholar in Portuguese and Spanish Mysticism. Charlie is a scholar in Political Science and History. You have Brother Daniel Sulmassy, OFM. Daniel is a Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Philosophy and a practicing MD. He is an expert in Medical Ethics, one of the leading experts in the country. He was told not to become a priest, because God needed physicians, so he went on to become a physician.

The Franciscans founded colleges and universities around the world: Oxford, Paris, Salamanca, Rome, South America, North America, Japan and the Middle East. We have a very long tradition of teachers and scholars in many areas.

The Secular Franciscans have had hundreds of scholars: Pasteur, More, Pius X, John XXIII, Dante, and many others.

Francis’ concern was that scholarship has the potential to extinguish the spirit of prayer. He has legitimate reasons for this. Scholars in his day, like our own, become so absorbed by their subject that everything else becomes secondary.

His other concern had to do with obedience. He was very afraid that his friars would become American. He was right. This was long before the Europeans knew of the existence of the American hemisphere, much less even thought about the USA. But he foreshadowed exactly what has happened in the USA with Catholics and Protestants. People place their ideas, their ability to think and their intelligence on a rung above obedience.

Trying to anticipate this, he writes in one of his admonitions that one must obey, even when one believes that his idea is better than that of the superior. It’s interesting when he says that this is “pleasing to God and man.” Francis does not leave pleasing human authority out of the equation. To an American, that sounds abominable. That’s because our Founding Fathers were arrogant, self-righteous, pompous and greedy for power. That’s a side of American history that one learns when one reads their letters and their journals. They were not the righteous men that we’re taught in school. They were more concerned about their interests than they were about the common man. This is evidenced by the way that they set up the electoral system. Only white wealthy males could vote.

From the very early days of this country, there has been a resistence to pleasing any man except oneself. That’s how we expanded to the Pacific coast. It was through rugged individuallism. Rugges individualism does not allow for pleasing another person, even if that person is mistaken.
 
You see, the idea “I don’t hang up my brain at the door” is a very Protestant notion, not a Catholic one at all. The Protestants did not mean this as it sounds. In Protestantism, charity is very insignificant, because it’s to closely related to works. We know that Protestant theology misunderstands the relationship between good works and faith. That’s a topic for another thread.

However, pleasing another person, often requires that one put aside his ideas and his opinions. It may require that we hang up our brain on a particular issue, because it’s the humble or the charitable thing to do. Humility and charity take precedence over being right. To the Protestant mind, this is unnecessary, because salvation is achieved through faith. Works have a very queer relationship with faith.

In Catholic tradition, we would never say, “I don’t hang up my brain at the door.” Because that expression is so Protestant and has a lot of arrogance built into it. The Catholic tradition is that the mind is given to man to know him who is the the origin and end of all Truth. The mind is not to be used to find loopholes in the rules, nor to win a contest against those in authority and much less to do harm.

With the passage of time, the origins of this saying, “hanging up one’s brain” has been lost. To the Catholic scholar, this is a horrible thing to say. The the Catholic in the pew it sounds OK. We end up with these two groups of Catholics who speak past each other. That’s what often happens with the Franciscans and the average Catholic. They speak past each other. They’re in the same conversation, but not on the same sheet of music.

The Franciscan scholar accepts ambiguity as part of the way things are and believes that whatever he can’t answer or resolve, someone else will do so in the future. The layman wants very concise and direct answers today. He feels uncomfortable leaving an unanswered point for some future generation to resolve. I believe it’s because the American layman is too American. You don’t see as much of this in the developing nations where people have grown up dependent on each other. These people find it easier to depend on future generations to resolve what they can’t resolve today.
Luigi_Daniele said:
I have printed this out to put in my “important documents” file. May I share it at my next SFO meeting?
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Yes you may. Remember, it’s Ex Cathedra. I was sitting in my chair when I wrote it. I guess that makes it Motu Proprio too. 😃

Happy New Year!

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
 
JReducation said:
You see, the idea “I don’t hang up my brain at the door” is a very Protestant notion, not a Catholic one at all. The Protestants did not mean this as it sounds. In Protestantism, charity is very insignificant, because it’s to closely related to works. We know that Protestant theology misunderstands the relationship between good works and faith. That’s a topic for another thread.

However, pleasing another person, often requires that one put aside his ideas and his opinions. It may require that we hang up our brain on a particular issue, because it’s the humble or the charitable thing to do. Humility and charity take precedence over being right. To the Protestant mind, this is unnecessary, because salvation is achieved through faith. Works have a very queer relationship with faith.

In Catholic tradition, we would never say, “I don’t hang up my brain at the door.” Because that expression is so Protestant and has a lot of arrogance built into it. The Catholic tradition is that the mind is given to man to know him who is the the origin and end of all Truth. The mind is not to be used to find loopholes in the rules, nor to win a contest against those in authority and much less to do harm.

With the passage of time, the origins of this saying, “hanging up one’s brain” has been lost. To the Catholic scholar, this is a horrible thing to say. The the Catholic in the pew it sounds OK. We end up with these two groups of Catholics who speak past each other. That’s what often happens with the Franciscans and the average Catholic. They speak past each other. They’re in the same conversation, but not on the same sheet of music.

The Franciscan scholar accepts ambiguity as part of the way things are and believes that whatever he can’t answer or resolve, someone else will do so in the future. The layman wants very concise and direct answers today. He feels uncomfortable leaving an unanswered point for some future generation to resolve. I believe it’s because the American layman is too American. You don’t see as much of this in the developing nations where people have grown up dependent on each other. These people find it easier to depend on future generations to resolve what they can’t resolve today.

Yes you may. Remember, it’s Ex Cathedra. I was sitting in my chair when I wrote it. I guess that makes it Motu Proprio too. 😃

Happy New Year!

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
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There’s at least one other piece to the puzzle too. “Hanging the brain up at the door,” is just a saying and can casually mean both the protestant (or worldly) arrogant version, or it can mean recognizing that a person is a composite, as Aquinas would have said. He would also have said that it wouldn’t be wise to simply abrogate one faculty for the sake of abrogating it. To be faithful is another kind of “knowing,” as is obeying proper authority, which of course, is what I consented to and what is proper for a Catholic to do, in the spirit of faith. Faith is even a sort of “knowing” with all your self, different of course from the kind of knowing we usually talk about which is more like memorization or something very one-dimensional like that, using primarily one faculty.

I’ve been catholic 26+ years, and it took me a long time to realize that God doesn’t need me to fight his battles for him, however I’m finally mostly there. Liturgical nonsense doesn’t bother me much now and I don’t get upset about much anymore. It’s enough to try to be faithful and follow along with what he gives, which is more than plenty. Not to say that I can just give up and surf along, never having another thought or emotion or inspiration. I’m not dead yet.

I bolded a sentence in your post above. That is almost a statement of the scientific method. I’ve spent my life in science and I couldn’t help but notice. Science isn’t a castle so much as an enterprise.
 
iloveangels said:
There’s at least one other piece to the puzzle too. “Hanging the brain up at the door,” is just a saying and can casually mean both the protestant (or worldly) arrogant version, or it can mean recognizing that a person is a composite, as Aquinas would have said. He would also have said that it wouldn’t be wise to simply abrogate one faculty for the sake of abrogating it. To be faithful is another kind of “knowing,” as is obeying proper authority, which of course, is what I consented to and what is proper for a Catholic to do, in the spirit of faith. Faith is even a sort of “knowing” with all your self, different of course from the kind of knowing we usually talk about which is more like memorization or something very 1 dimensional like that.
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This is what is meant by using the mind to know rather than to win.
I’ve been catholic 26+ years, and it took me a long time to realize that God doesn’t need me to fight his battles for him, however I’m finally there.
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This is a very Franciscan notion. For this reason the Traditionalist movement hates Franciscanism. It perceives Franciscanism as passive. In fact, Franciscanism is hopeful. It teaches us to trust that God will fight and win his own battles. Our role is to be faithful and invite others to be faithful. We do that by example more than words. Words can get lost in translation.
I bolded a sentence in your post above. That is almost a statement of the scientific method. I’ve spent my life in science and I couldn’t help but notice. Science isn’t a castle so much as an enterprise.
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Could it be because the Scientific Method was created by Franciscans? 😃

Bet you didn’t know that.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
 
JReducation said:
This is what is meant by using the mind to know rather than to win.
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Because the mind is not for winning. It’s for knowing. In fact, all the faculties are for that. And you have to obey what you know. Even if it leads you to God, which it did. I got an MA in philosophy over this. It was a big fight and God won. No, I won. No God won. No… 😛
JReducation said:
This is a very Franciscan notion. For this reason the Traditionalist movement hates Franciscanism. It perceives Franciscanism as passive. In fact, Franciscanism is hopeful. It teaches us to trust that God will fight and win his own battles. Our role is to be faithful and invite others to be faithful. We do that by example more than words. Words can get lost in translation.
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It took a long time. But God is really in charge and that’s the bottom line. I have no idea why it took me so long to get the point. It’ll all come out okay.
JReducation said:
Could it be because the Scientific Method was created by Franciscans? 😃

Bet you didn’t know that.
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I bet I did. The final paper of that master’s degree in philosophy was on it. In a secular university too.
 
JReducation said:
You see, the idea “I don’t hang up my brain at the door” is a very Protestant notion, not a Catholic one at all. The Protestants did not mean this as it sounds. In Protestantism, charity is very insignificant, because it’s to closely related to works. We know that Protestant theology misunderstands the relationship between good works and faith. That’s a topic for another thread.

However, pleasing another person, often requires that one put aside his ideas and his opinions. It may require that we hang up our brain on a particular issue, because it’s the humble or the charitable thing to do. Humility and charity take precedence over being right. To the Protestant mind, this is unnecessary, because salvation is achieved through faith. Works have a very queer relationship with faith.

In Catholic tradition, we would never say, “I don’t hang up my brain at the door.” Because that expression is so Protestant and has a lot of arrogance built into it. The Catholic tradition is that the mind is given to man to know him who is the the origin and end of all Truth. The mind is not to be used to find loopholes in the rules, nor to win a contest against those in authority and much less to do harm.

With the passage of time, the origins of this saying, “hanging up one’s brain” has been lost. To the Catholic scholar, this is a horrible thing to say. The the Catholic in the pew it sounds OK. We end up with these two groups of Catholics who speak past each other. That’s what often happens with the Franciscans and the average Catholic. They speak past each other. They’re in the same conversation, but not on the same sheet of music.

The Franciscan scholar accepts ambiguity as part of the way things are and believes that whatever he can’t answer or resolve, someone else will do so in the future. The layman wants very concise and direct answers today. He feels uncomfortable leaving an unanswered point for some future generation to resolve. I believe it’s because the American layman is too American. You don’t see as much of this in the developing nations where people have grown up dependent on each other. These people find it easier to depend on future generations to resolve what they can’t resolve today.

Yes you may. Remember, it’s Ex Cathedra. I was sitting in my chair when I wrote it. I guess that makes it Motu Proprio too. 😃

Happy New Year!

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
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Very interesting reflection!

Grazie 😃
 
Actually did know that, and will be studying it in great deal this Spring term in the Holy Apostles course entitled “British Franciscans” which will focus on the work of Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Roger Bacon, among others. It’s a rather rare offering at Holy Apostles.
JReducation said:
This is what is meant by using the mind to know rather than to win.

This is a very Franciscan notion. For this reason the Traditionalist movement hates Franciscanism. It perceives Franciscanism as passive. In fact, Franciscanism is hopeful. It teaches us to trust that God will fight and win his own battles. Our role is to be faithful and invite others to be faithful. We do that by example more than words. Words can get lost in translation.

Could it be because the Scientific Method was created by Franciscans? 😃

Bet you didn’t know that.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :snowing:
Click to expand...
 
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