At
first glance, it may seem incongruous to follow a reflection on
patience with a reflection on QUICKENING. But actually,
patience and its fruits - endurance, serenity, stillness, calm -
actually provide the best spiritual ground for QUICKENING to
flourish. What does it mean to be among the spiritually
QUICKENED, to have a QUICKEN-ABLE spirit? The synonyms
for QUICKENED illustrate why it is so important in the
Franciscan (and the Christian) quest for virtue. Energized,
motivated, fortified, galvanized, invigorated - QUICKENED
souls are all of these as they strive to respond to God's grace in
their lives. Revitalized, refreshed, restored - QUICKENED
souls draw their strength from something greater than themselves;
they allow grace to lift them up, to renew them and to propel them
forward on the path of holiness.
It may seem obvious - but the QUICKENED are
QUICKEN-ABLE. They are people who are open to grace, docile to
divine prompting, ready to receive and respond to God's inspiration,
no matter where and how it comes to them. One does not need to be
naturally quick in order to be QUICKEN-ABLE. One only needs
to be sensitive to the workings of grace and willing to leave self
behind in order to follow the Lord wherever He leads.
St. Francis of Assisi ranks high among the QUICKENED, He
was a man who, even before his conversion, was eminently
QUICKEN-ABLE - moved by the plea of a beggar or the promise of
greatness. For Francis, QUICKENING involved both feeling and
action, He was interiorly stirred - to pity, in the case of the
beggar, to chivalry, in the case of future glory. But Francis did
not leave matters there. He leaped over the counter of his father's
cloth shop to find the beggar who had asked him for alms for the
love of God. He set out, a well-equipped, would-be knight, to do
battle and gain glory. And when God showed him that "something more"
was needed. Francis retraced his steps and awaited the Lord's
revealing hour.
All his life, the Little Poor Man cultivated his spiritual
QUICKEN-ABILITY. That is why he was able to respond so fully
both to the Lord's large plan for his life - to be the founder of a
great religious family - and to God's so-called "little" plans for
his day-by day growth in holiness. It was in the Eucharist that
Francis found the ultimate source of spiritual QUICKENING.
QUICKENED by Jesus' Real Presence, nourished by the Bread of
Life, he was ever refreshed, restored and renewed for more energetic
and invigorated responses to God's call in his life - whether it was
to preach the Gospel to the Sultan, to give his tunic to a beggar or
to console a struggling friar.
Francis knew that if we are not QUICKENED by Jesus, we
only too quickly fall prey to spiritual sluggishness and the
ever-ready onslaughts of temptation. It is a lesson he wishes us to
learn - as soon as possible - so that we too might be counted among
the QUICKENED who have the interior quiet needed to hear the
still, small voice of God and the quickness to rise up in ready
responding to that call. For the QUICKENED, every
invitation to love, to service,
to self-sacrifice and to prayer, each summons to do good, to uphold
the truth and to witness to God's mercy is a response to One who
ceaselessly calls out: Make haste, My beloved, and come! Let us go -
quickly!