which,
after all, is meant to be the final goal of every Christ-follower, of every
Franciscan, - as much in the Third Millennium as it was in the thirteenth
century.
One can
scarcely think of St. Francis without thinking of joy. His
Christ-seeking, his quest for virtue, his pursuit of perfection, his
dedication to prayer, his determination in penitence, his generosity in
responding to God's call and his overflowing gratitude for God's gifts,
were the infallible ingredients for real, lasting happiness. And the
wonder of it is that these very same ingredients are readily available to
us in the here-and-now of everyday living, if only we open ourselves to
the Holy Spirit and respond faithfully and humbly to His holy way of
working. Growth in humility, happiness in the knowledge that we are
the beloved,
redeemed, forgiven children of God sets us securely on the
path of. . . . .
Having scaled the peaks of
penitence, prayer and praise, we arrive at yet another triad of Franciscan
family traits, dear to the heart of our SERAPHIC Father and to all who
follow after him on his holy Gospel way.
For, full-hearted living of
the Franciscan ideal brings us to.......
HUMILITY, HAPPINESS and HOLINESS.
The
S*E*R*A*P*H*I*C Order.
How to describe the spirit of our
Franciscan charism?
We can discover a whole range of life-imitable
traits contained in the letters of the title which Holy Church herself has
attributed to the spiritual family of St. Francis of Assisi.
PART 6
is intimately connected with Truth.
I am the Truth, Jesus Declared.
Learn
of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart. It is a lesson,
Francis discovered, that one can never stop learning. And the truth
of it is, one never wants to stop learning, for every deepening in truth,
every refashioning of our lives in humility brings us that much closer to
Christ, who is Truth, who
is Humility. It is little
wonder, then, that in the grand sweep of the Seraphic vision, our Father
St. Francis coupled a profound desire to be both "the herald of the
Great King" and the "last and least in the Church of
God." The "lesser brothers" was the appellation he
gave to his sons; the "tiny, poor people" to his spreading
religious family.
HUMILITY
