The Call to Holiness and the
Secular Franciscan Order (ofs)
Pope
St John Paul II regarded the call to holiness as the most important message of
the 2nd Vatican Council, not only important but also urgent, for the
Lord Jesus said: “You must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”.
(Matthew 5:48). His word goes on to say startlingly: “Without holiness, no one
can see God” (Hebrews 12:14) and God “chose us in Him before the foundation of
the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4) –
that is to be permanently in a state of grace and free from all attachment to
sin, even venial sin. But most arresting of all: “In this way we distinguish
the children of God from the children of the Devil: anyone not living a holy
life is no child of God”. (1 John 3:10)
The Tau:
Long
before the Vatican Council the beloved St Francis of Assisi noted the words of
Pope Innocent III at another Council, the Lateran Council. The Pope quoted from
Ezekiel: “Go through the city and mark a tau on the forehead of all who deplore
and disapprove of all the filth practised in it”. (Ezekiel 9:4)
“Pope
Innocent was calling for a total reform in the Church. He pointed out that the
Tau, a Hebrew letter, is of the same form as the Cross on which Christ hung on
Calvary and that only those will be marked with the sign who have conformed
their lives to that of the crucified Saviour. The Pope’s words echoed long in
the ears of Francis. He resolved to adopt the Tau as his distinctive personal
ideal, pledging himself to perfect conformity with Christ crucified, and even
used it as his signature. In thus embracing the Cross, Francis struck the
keynote for himself and his brethren in all three Orders”. So it has been up to
today.
The
time of Pope Innocent III was a time of a very low ebb in the Church and evil
seemed to be increasing dramatically. “At that time the Church had a
superficial faith which did not shape or transform life, a scarcely zealous
clergy and a chilling of love. It was an interior destruction of the Church
which also brought a decomposition of unity with the birth of heretical
movements.” (1) (Pope Benedict XVI General Audience, 27/1/2010)
Vatican 2
Over
700 years later in our times we have had another Council, the 2nd
Vatican Council. Nearly 3000 bishops from all over the world gathered at the
Vatican 1962 – 65 to address, amongst other things, what Cardinal Suhard of
Paris in 1948 stated was a “dying Church”, “a shadow of her old self”, a
“Church disappearing with a dying world” and he alluded to the “apostasy of the
masses.”(2) (Church today: Growth or Decline? Foreword by John
Courtney Murray S. J. Fides, 1948)
St
Francis was called by God to “rebuild my Church which is falling into ruin”. As
a man of the Council of his time St Francis was totally oriented to this great
end. We too should be people of the 2nd Vatican Council, totally
motivated like St Francis to renewing the Church in holiness. But wasn’t the 2nd
Vatican Council the cause of all our malaise? No! George Sim Johnston makes
some interesting comments in this regard: George Sim Johnston makes these
points:
1. The
average pre-Vatican II Catholic was concerned more with having the faith than
living it. The Council was a call to full spiritual maturity. It was time to
take off the training wheels. The Council urged us to rise above a minimalist,
rules- orientated Catholicism and to embrace full discipleship of Jesus.
2. Cardinal
Ratzinger has suggested that what devastated the Church in the decade after the
Council was not the Council itself, but the refusal of so many to accept it.
The Church was ill-equipped, both clergy and laity, to receive teachings of
Vatican II.
3. It
is safe to say that most of the bishops attending the Council had little idea
how to implement its decrees. They returned to business as usual, and the
teachings of the Council remained on paper only. This allowed the so-called
progressives to hijack the Council for their own purposes.
4. The
great French philosopher, Jacques Maritain, maintained that a malaise had been
building in the Church for half a century, a lack of motivation on the part of
the Catholic people to enter into a deeper relationship with the Lord. The call
to sanctity was far from catching on. (3)
The
Vatican Council is often portrayed as an overly optimistic Council, even naïve.
But this is far from the truth because people are ignorant of the Council
documents. See below the section on Sacrosanctum Concilium the very first
of the documents produced by the Bishops but ignored by liberal elements in the
Church.
Gaudium et Spes:
In
this Vatican document subtitled A Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, our bishops refer throughout to the need for spiritual warfare
and to mankind’s “monumental struggle against the powers of darkness”: “… the
whole life of man, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle
and a dramatic one between good and evil, between light and darkness… But the
Lord himself came to free and strengthen man, renewing him inwardly and casting
out the “prince of this world.” (John 12:31; G.+S.13) “The Christian is
certainly bound both by need and by duty to struggle with evil through many
afflictions and to suffer death”.… (G.+S. 22).
Most
chilling of all is paragraph 37: for “a monumental struggle against the powers
of darkness pervades the whole history of man. The battle was joined from the
very origins of the world and will continue until the last day, as the Lord has
attested. Caught in this conflict, man is obliged to wrestle constantly if he
is to cling to what is good. Nor can he achieve his own integrity without valiant
efforts and the help of God’s grace.… Hence the Church… feels called upon to
echo the words of the Apostle: ‘Do not be conformed to this world’ (Romans
12:2)”
Even
the General Catechetical Directory produced immediately after the Vatican
Council warns parents that “the life of Christians… is a warfare” (no. 57), not
a walk in the park!
Alert not Indifferent:
St
Augustine in a hard-hitting homily to pastors, exhorts them not to promise
‘prosperity’ and “the happiness of this world” to people but to prepare them
for ‘imminent temptations’. (4) And this is what the Vatican fathers
did as we can see from the above warnings and also the warnings of Pope Paul
VI. He has stated that “today there is a very large number of baptised people
who for the most part have not formally renounced their baptism but who are
living entirely indifferent to it”. He stated that many in the Church need to
be evangelised for the first time. No wonder that the Council stressed that the
work of God accomplished in Christ should be received by people consciously,
freely and gratefully and shown forth in their whole lives”. (Pres. Ordinis no.
2)
Unhappy Situation Overcome:
But
it is not all doom and gloom! In no. 37 Gaudium et Spes states: “To the
question of how this unhappy situation can be overcome, Christians reply that
all these human activities… must be purified and perfected by the cross and
resurrection of Christ. Redeemed by Christ and made a new creature by the Holy
Spirit… Conformed to the image of the Son who is the firstborn of many
brothers, the Christian receives the first fruits of the Spirit (Romans 8:23)
by which he is able to fulfil the new law of love. By this spirit who is the
‘pledge of our inheritance’ (Ephesians 1:14) the whole man is inwardly renewed…
(no. 22) The followers of Christ… have the fruits of the spirit for their
sanctification. (cf. Galatians 5:22; Romans 6:22)” (Lumen Gentium 40) – for
their sanctification or making holy.
Fruits of the Holy Spirit:
The
fruits of the Holy Spirit are what makes Christianity really enjoyable: Love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. (Galatians 5:22) We have all received these at Confirmation but for
many they lie dormant and unused. You have to stir up or “fan into flame the
gift that God has given you”. (2 Timothy 1:6) If we have these, especially the
first three: love, joy and peace, we are already in Heaven! Did Jesus not say:
“I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10) -
experiencing life with joy, purpose and fulfilment. We can gauge our progress
in holiness by examining the fruits operating or not in our lives.
This
last sentence is from Chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium entitled: The Call to
Holiness. This wonderful chapter makes it quite clear that the Holy Spirit
is the Sanctifier who makes holy, perfects, sanctifies, divinises, transforms a
person to be permanently in a state of grace and this is an imperative as
“without holiness no one can see God”. (Hebrews 12:14) But isn’t this boring,
unexciting? On the contrary. The Psalmist says “to be near God is happiness”
(Psalms 73:28). Pleasure is short lived, happiness is long lived. “Pleasure is
short, punishment is everlasting” (St Francis).
Third order Secular:
The
Franciscan Third Order Secular (ofs) is one of the best means of growing in
holiness and perfection. There are many third orders but the OFS is the only
one connected by a special bond to the Roman Pontiff from whom it has received
the approval of its Rule and the confirmation of its mission in the Church and
in the world as an International Public Association. It has produced an amazing
number of holy men and women who have been canonised as saints (i.e. holy
ones). And we are all called to be saints as “anyone not living a holy life is
no child of God” (1 John 3:10). One of the most recent OFS saints is martyr
Blessed Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943), husband and father who died rather than
join the Nazi army. A movie entitled “A Hidden Life” was made of his life.
Before he died he wrote: “neither prison nor chains no sentence of death can
rob a man of the faith and his own free will. God gives so much strength that
it is possible to bear any suffering, a strength far stronger than all the
might of the world. The power of God cannot be overcome”.
Eucharist:
OFS
members are exhorted to participate in the Eucharist as frequently as possible.
How could it be otherwise? Jesus says in John 6:52 “anyone who eats me will
draw life from me”. The Vatican Council saw the Eucharist as the “source and
summit” of the Christian life. (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10)
St
Francis loved the Eucharist and wrote: “let everyone be struck with fear, let
the whole world tremble, and let the heavens exalt when Christ, the Son of the
living God, is present on the altar in the hands of a priest. O stupendous
dignity! O humble sublimity, that the Lord of the universe, God and Son of God,
so humbles himself that for our salvation he hides himself under an ordinary
piece of bread”. (Letter to the Chapter General)
In
his famous and delightful celebration of Christmas at Greccio, Francis had the altar
placed over the crib to show the connection between the Eucharistic bread and the
babe of Bethlehem since both are the body and blood, soul and divinity of the
Lord. Francis preached, but he could not say Jesus, but only ‘the Babe of
Bethlehem’ bleating ‘Bethlehem’ like a sheep. St Bonaventure wrote that “no
human tongue could describe the passionate love with which Francis burned for
Christ”. (Bonaventure, Major Life, Ch. IX). Celano writes: “Indeed he was
always occupied with Jesus, Jesus he bore in his heart, Jesus in his mouth,
Jesus in his ears, Jesus in his eyes, Jesus in his hands, Jesus in the rest of
his members… Indeed many times as he went along the way meditating on and
singing of Jesus, he would forget his journey and invite all the elements to
praise Jesus” (1 Celano 115)
Word of God:
“The
rule and life of the Secular Franciscans: to observe the Gospel”. (Rule no. 4)
and article 5 of the OFS Rule states that they “should seek to encounter the
living and active person of Christ… in Sacred Scripture”. St Francis is
thoroughly biblical in his writings. He quotes the Bible over 200 times and
alludes to 14 books of the Old Testament, and all in the New Testament. Seven
phrases in the Canticle of the Creatures are taken from the book of Revelation
(Apocalypse). St Francis said: “I wish my brethren to be Gospel students and to
advance in knowledge of the truth” (L. M. 11) and “it is good to read what
Scripture testifies, good to seek out our Lord in it. (2 Celano 105). He
exhorts his followers to “hold fast to the words, the life, the teaching and
Holy Gospel of Christ”.
Archbishop Charles Chaput O.F.M Cap. wrote that St Francis
used the word “sine glossa” or without gloss in his Testament “for theologians
of his day had written commentaries called glossses. And these glosses were
very good at either explaining away the hard parts of the Gospel, or
diminishing our need to follow Christ’s demands”. (5)
The Vatican Council strongly emphasised that the Word of
God is superior to the magisterium: “the magisterium is not above the Word of
God” (Dei Verbum 10) echoing the words of Aquinas: “no ecclesiastical law can
dispense from divine law”. (Aquinas, Summa, 11–11, Q88, A11). “When the Pope
and bishops define a doctrine, they make the definition in conformity with
Revelation itself… they do not however admit any new public revelation as
pertaining to the divine deposit of faith (Lumen Gentium 25). So for example
sodomy can never become a right eventually as the Church can’t bless sin! The
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) calls sodomy one of “the sins that cry
to heaven” (1867, 2357-9). There are heterodox people who would like those
anti-sodomy versus removed. But the thousands of bishops who produced the
Catechism are best followed as they put the teaching of Christ in first place
and from the opening Prologue stress that “There is no other name under heaven
given among men by which we must be saved – than the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:12)
Prayer:
The OFS are encouraged “to find times of silence and
recollection dedicated exclusively to prayer”. (No. 14). John Michael Talbot,
the Franciscan musician and author, in his bestselling book the Lover and
the Beloved writes that “many think St Francis spent as much as 75% of his
time pursuing the contemplative life within the Hermitage”. (p. 87) St Francis
wrote that “where there is quiet and meditation there is neither worry or
dissipation”. St Teresa of Avila said that “the devil knows he has lost the
soul that perseveringly practices mental prayer” – that is meditation.
There is a wonderful reference to St Francis’ meditation or
mental prayer in Celano: “Often without moving his lips, he would meditate
within himself and drawing external things within himself, he would lift his
spirit to higher things. All his attention and affection he directed with his
whole being to the one thing which he was asking of the Lord, not so much
praying as becoming himself a prayer”. (2 Celano 95). In Celano’s First Life
Francis “would recall Christ’s words through persistent meditation and bring to
mind his deeds through the most penetrating consideration”. (84)
Prayer:
Liturgy of the Hours:
The OFS are exhorted to giving priority to the celebration
of this prayer, for St Francis never tired of extolling the recitation of the
Hours or Divine Office. It is a set of prayers and readings used by Catholics
to sanctify the day. It is a beautiful way to unite with the Church’s prayer
throughout the day inspired by Psalm 119:164 – “seven times a day I praise
you”. Jesus loved the Psalms and quoted them frequently. Adam Blai, the
deliverance expert, says “the Psalms cause a particular rage and fear in
demons, likely because they encourage the reader to stay close to God and trust
in Him”. (6)
So all the more reason to pray them regularly!
Mary:
“Towards the Mother of Jesus he [Francis] was filled with
an inexpressible love, because it was she who made the Lord of Majesty our
brother. He sang special praises to her, poured out prayers to her, offered her
his affections, so many and so great that the tongue of man cannot recount
them. What is a very special source of joy is the fact that he [Francis] chose
her as the Patroness of his Order, and he entrusted to her shielding mantle his
children whom he was to leave that she might guard and protect them unto the
end. (2 Celano CL)
St Francis believed that it was due to Mary’s intercession
that he received from God the Great Indulgence or Great Pardon of Assisi by
which all who being contrite and having confessed their sins, would visit the
little Portiuncula sanctuary of St Mary of the Angels would receive a full
pardon for their sins. OFS members should try to obtain as many indulgences as
possible.
So the brothers and sisters should cultivate intense love
for the most Holy Virgin, imitation, prayer and childlike surrender. (Article
16)
Good
Works
In Mathew 25 we read of the Last Judgement where the goats
are condemned entirely for their sins of omission – omitting to help the hungry
and thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned. Since “the rule and
life of the secular Franciscans is to observe the Gospel”, it is especially
incumbent on them to perform works of charity to the poor and needy to hear the
Lord on Day of Judgement:
“Come you whom my Father has blessed, take for your
heritage the Kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world”.
(Mathew 25:34)
St
Francis’ Love of Nature:
St Francis loved all of creation because God created it. St
Paul says of Jesus: “All things were created through Him [Jesus] and for Him”.
Celano writes of Francis: “In every work of the artist he
praised the divine artist; whatever he found in the things made he referred to
the Maker. He rejoiced in all the works of the Lord and saw behind things
pleasant to behold their life-giving reason and cause. He beheld in fair things
Him who is most fair” [that is Jesus] (2 Celano CXXIV).
But now after Vatican II the call to holiness is still as
elusive as ever in spite of all the Biblical references to it as being an
imperative. St Paul doubles down on the need for us to be dead to sin… “and
then you get a reward leading to your holiness and ending in eternal life.
(Romans 6:22). People are just not willing to give up their attachment to sin,
even venial sin, mostly venial sin, and so miss out on the abundant life and all
the indulgences that can be obtained daily by a soul in a state of grace. St
Francis certainly saw indulgences as important as we have seen from his ardent
desire for the great Assisi Indulgence.
In Ghana they have a story of how to catch a monkey using
the old style tomato boxes that consisted of wooden slats and wire. A large
banana is put in the box and closed. The monkey puts its hand in the box and
grabs the banana but cant remove it due to the wires and slats. It refuses to let
go of the banana even if it puts its life in danger. Our attachment to sin is
so marked that we can perish by our refusal to let go of it. So endangering our
eternal life.
The Secular Franciscan Order appealed to the Holy See in
the 1970’s for a revision of its Rule and has been working industriously ever
since for holiness, often in the face of opposition from entrenched but wrong
opinions, emphasising the wrong things.
Laypeople need to wake up to their empowerment with the
Vatican II espousal of Parish Councils and to their need to read the more
important documents. There is no excuse as many spend hours on the social media
every day. Many of the abuses in the Novus Ordo masses could be removed if
people familiarise themselves with the documents like Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Sacrosanctum
Concilium:
1. “No
other person, not even a priest, may add, remove or change anything in the
liturgy on his own authority”. (no. 22)
2. “The
use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law is to be
preserved in the Latin Rites”. (36)
3. Gregorian
chant “should be given pride of place in liturgical services”. (116). Mother
Angelica’s daily mass on EWTN is a good example of what can be done.
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) has 18
references to the need for silence times at Mass! How could it be otherwise? In
Acts 13:2f. we read “while they were engaged in the liturgy of the Lord… the
Holy Spirit spoke”. Today the Holy Spirit doesn’t get a chance to speak as he
is often crowded out by the celebrant’s loquaciousness! Best to use the words
given in the missal than interpolations that are often jejune. Kneeling to
communicate and reception on the tongue of both permitted in the GIRM not
proscribed. If greater reverence was preserved for the Liturgy, then possibly
less people sick of wordiness would jump ship for the Tridentine Mass. The
great philosopher and war hero Dietrich von Hildebrand OFS (1889-1989) said
that reverence is “the mother of all moral life”. His great contemporary and historian
Christopher Dawson “deplored the draining away of all sense of reverence from
the life of the Church” (R.C. Zaehner in Religion and World History: a
selection from the works of Christopher Dawson, p.11)
The purpose of this little excursus on the Liturgy is to point
up the importance of being a well informed Catholic not just a pew warmer. The
OFS helps in some way to reach this goal.
The
Exhortation of our Holy Father Francis:
O Most beloved brethren, and internally blessed children,
hear me, hear the voice of your father.
We have promised great things, still great things have been
promised us:
what we have promised let us observe, what we have been
promised let us look forward to.
Pleasure is short, punishment everlasting.
Suffering is slight, glory is infinite.
Many are called, few are chosen.
But all shall receive their due.
Amen
References:
References to Celano,
Bonaventure et cetera are from Marion Habig, Omnibus of Sources.
1. Pope
Benedict XVI, General Audience, 27/1/2010
2. Church Today: Growth or Decline? Foreword by
John Courtney Murray S. J. Fides, 1948
3. George Sim Johnston. Crisis, July/August 2004
4. Divine Office Vol. III. p.555
5.
Speech at New York University, 25 April
2014
6. Adam C. Blai, Hauntings, Possessions and
Exorcisms, Emmaus Road, Steubenville 2017 p. 113
