PRESENTATION FOUR Opening to the Invasion of the Spirit Slide 1 and - - PDF document

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PRESENTATION FOUR

Opening to the Invasion of the Spirit Slide 1 and 2 – no notes Slide 3

The Experience of the Spirit in the Franciscan Tradition by Dominic Monti, 1998 When we think of Franciscan theology and spirituality, we normally think of  The absolute primacy of Christ  A radical imitation of Christ that involves –

• reproducing an idealized model of Gospel life
• Francis as the perfect imitator of Christ
• The rule and constitutions as embodying a plan of perfection, and
• abdication of all individual personality in order to assume the personality of

Christ The role of the HS was minimized and almost completely passed over in post-Tridentine Catholic theology and spirituality in general in favor of  God, Christ,  The establishment of the Church, & the Church as means of salvation, and  Authoritative teaching about sacraments which communicate divine life. Many authors prior to 1960 gave theoretical acknowledgement of the Spirit as the source of sanctifying grace, but little in the truly transforming activity of the Spirit or in creating models of Gospel life appropriate to the needs of our times. This began to change in the late 60s as scholars doing critical research on Francis and Clare came to discover the vital role of the Spirit in their lives.

Slide 4

Summary from Nancy Schreck: “To Catch the Stirring of the Spirit”, Franciscan Federation 1998 Briefly, let us remind ourselves of some primary biblical concepts of the Spirit that the scriptures speak about concerning the transcendent presence of God and creative activity in the world. RUAH: the wild wind with the root meaning of air

• ver time the word acquired other nuances such as “wind in motion, the storm, the raging blast
• f the desert”, like the one that divided the Red Sea
• The word is used when the writer wants to convey something about the power of God’s

strength.

• A sense of God’s energy let loose
• It could also mean tumult or hot air, which seems always ready to enter our reality.

NEPHESH: meaning “the holy breath of God”

• It’s about the power of life-giving breath hovering over chaos to bring forth life.
• God is as near and necessary and as intimate of our breath. The result is life.

SHEKINAH: meaning “to dwell”

• It’s a feminine symbol, used in rabbinic writings as a synonym for divine presence among the

people.

• It is manifested in clouds, fire, or radiant light that descends, overshadows, or leads the people.
• It gives rise to hope and encouragement in the midst of darkness; a sense of divine fidelity.
• Early Christian depictions in found in a hovering mother bird, and eventually the dove.

2 PARACLETE: one who urges and prompts into action, who gives comfort.

• This Spirit is first seen in Jesus, then promised by Jesus, and finally in the glorification of Jesus is

passed over to the believers who follow after him.

• The Spirit’s post-resurrection role is to be the personal presence of Jesus after his historical

absence due to death – to abide with the disciples teaching, reminding, maintaining, and completing the work of Jesus; leading the followers to truth The biblical images don’t form a single pattern. They express God’s outward reach and contact with the created world – directing, purposing, bringing into being, sustaining and guiding the cosmos and everything in it. Hildegaard of Bingen: Scivias Chapter 1, No. 12 The Spirit is the life of the life of all creatures, the way in which everything is penetrated with connectedness, a burning fire who sparks, ignites, inflames, kindles hearts; a guide in the fog, a balm for wounds; a shining serenity, an overflowing fountain that spreads to all sides. She is life, movement, color, radiance, restorative stillness in the din. Her power makes all withered sticks and souls green again with the juice of life. She purifies, absolves, strengthens, heals, gathers the perplexed, seeks the

• lost. She pours the juice of contrition into hardened hearts. She plays music in the soul, being herself the

melody of praise and joy. She awakens mighty hope, blowing everywhere the winds of renewal in creation.

Slide 5

1960-1998

• We seemed to react against any formalistic approach to the Spirit
• Even Joe Chinnici in his 1994 rendition of the “Prophetic Heart” said we preferred a religious

eclecticism.

• “Spirit” was understood as
• a prevailing tendency or
• general intent, instead of
• an activating essential principle

How did we get to that boring place after all that Hildegaard wrote about the Spirit?

Slide 6

But gradually things began to move. In 1976 “To Have the Spirit of the Lord” was a letter of 4 General Ministers upon the 150th anniversary

• f the death of Francis. It stated:

Anyone who reads the writings or lives of St. Francis attentively will easily see that the following elements are of central importance:

• to follow in the footsteps of the poor, humble crucified Christ
• under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Slide 7

Another letter of the Ministers in 1998 echoed some of the same ideas. Kajetan Esser said: [quoted by Optatus von Asseldonk, in the landmark work, “The Spirit of the Lord and its Holy Activity in the Writings of Francis,” [Greyfriars Review 5 (1991): 105-158 and its companion, “The Holy Spirit in the Writings and Life of Clare,” Greyfriars Review 1 (1987): 93-104. ] said:

3 With Francis it is not simply a question of an external following of the life of Christ, but rather, first of all, that Spirit of Christ must be alive and active in the followers. Few saints have experienced the invasion

• f the Spirit in their life as did Francis.

Here is where I get the title of this reflection, the invasion of the Spirit.

Slide 8

The life of Francis reveals decisive moments when he was led to creative action by the Spirit of God. . .

• When he decided to enter a life of penance: The Most High revealed to me that I should live

according to the form of the Holy Gospel.

• In overcoming his natural repugnance to lepers leading him to work among them
• The faith he had in churches in a time when sectarian movements rejected the institutional

church and when . . .

• Faith in priests who were often ignorant and immoral and corrupt, he could say I discern the

Son of God in them.

• In going about the world as humble messengers of reconciliation: the Lord revealed to me a

greeting: ‘May the Lord give you peace.’

• And he observed that the same Spirit had led others to a transformed life.

Slide 9

There were many other indications that highlighted how the same Spirit led others to a transformed life.

• in giving the form of life to Clare, he wrote:
• By divine inspiration you have made yourselves daughters and servants of the most

High King. . . and taken the Holy Spirit as your spouse. . .

• to those choosing to do penance while remaining in the world
• How happy and blessed when they do these things and persevere in doing them,

since the Spirit of God will rest upon them and will make [her] home and dwelling among them.

• to those enter Francis’ form of life:
• welcome them as this move is of divine inspiration
• the brothers who request to live among the infidels:
• by divine inspiration
• All must recognize that any accomplishments within their ministries must be attributed to

the Spirit of the Lord who does or says or works these goods in and through them.

Slide 10

Le Celle near Cortona, Italy

This beautiful icon of the Francis and Clare within the Life of the Trinity is found at Le Celle. I believe it expresses how intimately the life the Trinity was to both Francis and Clare.

4 This Franciscan hermitage is just five kilometres from Cortona at the feet of Mount Sant’Egidio. In 1211 St Francis along with a few of his followers built the first nine cells of the hermitage and the place has taken the name of Le Celle ever since. Before their arrival there were only a few small hermit’s cottages and peasant dwellings, along with a small chapel that had been built during the Longobard invasions and dedicated to the Archangel Michael. This is believed to be the place where, in May 1226, four months before his death, St Francis dictated his Will. Divine inspiration, as Francis called it, is a an aspect of God – the Spirit of the Lord Jesus who dwells within us, the bond of love between Jesus and Abba Father that creates the same bond between each

• f us and our God and between us as brothers and sisters.

The RULEs of both Francis and Clare safeguarded the primacy of the Spirit in these words: the brothers and sisters are to obey their ministers in all things that were not contrary to their own inner spirit. It is this right to follow one’s call by the Spirit to lead a Gospel way of life that Francis referred to as “divine inspiration”. In other words, in the heart of each of us is the foundation of one’s vocation which takes priority even over a command of the superior.

Slide 11

We find the term “Spouse of the Spirit” in the primitive Form of Life for Clare in the words: You have made yourselves daughters and servants of the heavenly Father and taken the Holy Spirit as your spouse. (Rule of Clare 6.2) The metaphor seems to have been created by Francis, since earlier ascetic traditions referred to consecrated women as being spouses of Christ. (Gregory IX had stated it as such.) Francis tried to say something foundational about the role of the Spirit within us. In the image of espousing, two become

• ne. For Francis . . .

Slide 12

 We become one with the Spirit when we are completely open and responsive to the working of the Spirit, as in Paul to the Corinthians. . .  Anyone united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him. (1 Cor 6: 16-17)  The Spirit permeates the deepest reality of what the person is.  Those who become spouses of the Spirit become brothers & sisters of Christ who do the will of the Father;  and thus we give birth to Christ through the holy working of the Spirit in our lives of witness and

• service. Those who are wedded to the Spirit have the capacity of re-incarnating Christ afresh in

every age. Thus Francis decided to go among the lepers, Clare chose to follow the life of evangelical poverty, and Anthony wanted to go and preach among the infidels. It was God that inspired and led them to do these things because they had discovered and expressed their own deepest selves.

Slide 13

What are the implications of this founding Franciscan tradition of the Spirit?  It will be difficult to embody in institutional structures.  This kind of renewal cannot be legislated or programmed.

5  The gift of the Holy Spirit involves attitudes/movements that are called for and demanded by what we are. (Ives Congar)

Slide 14

Obstacles that block the invasion of the Spirit

• A spirit of rigidity and security
• In Francis’s 7th Admonition and in 2 Corinthians 3:6, we read: The “letter” kills, but the

Spirit gives life. Francis said the Rule was to be observed spiritually (8 times). This meant that the Spirit is the “inner law of the Rule” – which is both liberating and demanding, a call to be open and emptying to the other in loving service. The way that this demand is lived must be a creative response of each generation to its own world.

• Putting glosses on the Rule that reduce its observance to bare minimums. (never riding a horse

for fear of sin, or driving a luxury sedan in a working-class)

• Pharisaic nit-picking and the literalism of reproducing a way of life from the past; for example. .

.

• Literal poverty of Jesus; “selling everything”
• Itinerant preaching; “carrying nothing for the journey”
• Francis was not so much concerned with these facts of Jesus’ life, but with the Johanine

emphasis on the relationship of Jesus to the Spirit

• The “flesh” – that unconverted, unspiritual self that will not surrender to the Spirit
• Division, tearing down

Slide 15

The central theme of the Franciscan way of life is in surrendering oneself in faith to the working of God’s Spirit of love, holding nothing back; giving totally to the God who has surrendered all to us. Francis and Clare received the Gospel as a whole. . . the words, the life, the teachings of Jesus who “humbled himself for us”. This impels us to see the . . .

• Self-emptying of God for our sake.
• This must be the reason for their focusing on the stories of the nativity and the

crucifixion; the humble God becoming one of us and to love us to death.

Slide 16

Spirituality of “following”

FOLLOWING

• An ever-newness of our

faith journey

• Creatively living the
• bedience of Jesus in a

radical way for this 21st century

• Making the journey our
• wn
• A certain pluriformity

IMITATION

• Preoccupation with the

Christ of history “back there”

• Re-presenting discrete

aspects of the life of Jesus

• Selling everything
• Taking nothing for the

journey I have followed my road. May Christ teach you yours.

2 Cel 214

Following in the footsteps of Jesus was the approach of Francis, rather than the imagery of the “imitation of Christ” which Francis never used.

6 A spirituality of FOLLOWING (vs “imitating”) will give evidence to . . .

• the ever-newness of the disciples’ faith journey, rather than re-presenting discrete aspects of

the life of Jesus in imitation; not to model oneself on the Christ of history out there or back there, but to possess the Spirit of the Lord Jesus within . . .

• to creatively live out Jesus obedience to the Father in a radical way for this 21st century
• Making the journey our own, knowing deeply that the same Spirit which led Jesus,

Francis and Clare now leads us

• The charter of creative fidelity for Franciscans is: I have followed my road. May Christ

teach you yours. (2 Cel.214); This provides for a certain pluriformity of response.

• Francis and Clare both urged their followers to pursue what they must desire above all

things: to have the Spirit of the Lord and His holy manner of working.

Slide 17

We can cite in the Rules of Francis and Clare principles of DISCERNMENT that indicate whether a person is truly in possession/invasion of the life of the Spirit (RegNB 22:26, RegB 10.8; RCl 10.7)

• A willingness to serve others humbly; liberation for God and one another
• The unity of mutual love
• Perseverance in prayer with a clean heart and a pure mind, and the space/time

necessary to hear the Spirit moving in our lives

• Patience in the face of opposition and human weakness
• Candidly admitting one’s failures
• Humble and charitable correction of one another
• Affirmation and reconciliation
• Sharing the contemplative elements of our life (group spiritual direction)
• Developing structures and disciplines that assist the tasks of working on common

projects or attitudes (the task of the Chapter) The movement set in motion by Francis was perhaps the most charismatic movement in the history of the church. Franciscans stand for evangelical freedom, called to be a freeing presence in the church who can recognize and unleash the gifts of all its members. (1976 Above all, Seek the Spirit of the Lord,

• No. 3)

Slide 18

As you now move into the official deliberations of your 2014 Chapter, may you bring to your own persona and communal reality the tincture of Francis and Clare. Like them, we desire to be clear and clarifying expressions of the Spirit who works in the hearts of men and women in mysterious ways.

• Francis was a reformer of the inner heart.
• In whatever life situations confronted the brothers, Francis urged new sensitivity to the

Spirit, new fidelity to the Spirit’s leading.

• For Francis, life was always a tasting ever more deeply of the Divine Reality; hence, his

constant questions: Who are you, O God? And who am I?

• Francis was in awe of the mystery of God’s poverty through the indescribable self-giving
• f love poured out in Christ.
• Francis wanted simply to live in constant faithfulness to the love of a faithful God.

I wish for you this clarity and the empowerment of the invasion of the Spirit.

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Slide 19

We reflected yesterday that what Jesus has in mind about this Scripture is a complete mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. His most beautiful symbol for this is in the teaching in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you.” The TOR Rule of Life (25) requires that we willingly serve and obey each other with that genuine love which comes from each one’s heart. This is the true and holy obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the obedience that is required of us as we move into Chapter deliberations and decisions. Jesus asks his disciples and us, do we love enough to seek and know and live the will of God?

Slide 20

POPE FRANCIS gives us some caveats for living in the present and for moving into our future.

• Keep watch over our hearts (Pope Francis)
• Feeling encouraged to ask questions (Cardinal Semeraro, Head of the Council of Cardinals)
• Developing structures of reconciliation (Pope Francis with liberation theologians)
• Engaging world concerns (at the center & at the periphery)
• Being “sisters of the streets” (Pope Francis’ missions of mercy to persons found irregular with

the law [baptizing a child of civilly married parents in the Sistine chapel, burying the gays & lesbians, washing the feet of women and Muslims])

Slide 21 Slide 22

“There’s a thread you follow.

It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.”

William Stafford ~ The Way It Is ~