St. Bonaventure

   I celebrated Mass this morning at St. Peter the Fisherman  in Eagle River, WI.  Today is the feast of a great Franciscan saint, St. Bonaventure.  I asked the 20 or so people who were there if they knew anything about Bonaventure.  Only three raised a hand.  That experience reminded me that this great man and doctor of the Church is so well known in Franciscan circles, but not outside of it, so I thought that I would present a little about him on this blog.

   St. Bonaventure hails from a small town in Italy called Bagnoreggio in 1221. he died in 1274.  After entering the Franciscans around 1240 he was eventually ordained, became a professor of theology at the University of Paris and was a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas.  He became Minister General of the Franciscans and eventually was ordained a bishop and became a cardinal.

   It is a difficult challenge to sum up his great theological work in a few paragraphs, but I will try.  The life of Francis of Assisi was the source of his theological reflection.   Basically he looked at Francis and developed a systematic theology based on his understanding of the great saints' life.  He developed what is called a Christocentric view of the universe.  This term means much more though than Christ-centered in the sense that any Christian theology or spirituality must be that.  On a deeper level he gives emphasis to what is pointed out in the prologue of John's Gospel (Jn 1, 1-5)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

 The same thought is expressed in the letter to the Collosians (See Col, 1, 15-16).

Basically what this tells us is that in the mind of God Christ is the first creation in the mind of God and that Christ was ordained to become human right from the beginning, even if humans had not sinned.  How different this is from the thought the Jesus was a type of divine intervention made necessary by sin.  Bonaventure and later Franciscan theologians like Scotus don't deny sin and the need for redemption.  They stress that the coming of Christ is the center and high point of human history, the punctuation mark on it that God planned from the beginning. These thoughts are rooted in Scripture and also in several theologian of the early Church such is Iranaeus of Lyon.  In this theology Jesus was not sent to get crucified. he was sent to proclaim the reign of God and to love us unconditionally.  When that love met sin the cross resulted.  Bonaventure sees the Cross as central and as the ultimate expression of God's unconditional love. Creation itself reflects Christ in whom all is created and the cross in which all discord and opposition are overcome. 

 

   Another aspect of Bonaventure's thought is being looked at today in light of our ever growing understanding of the universe.  He stresses not only that all is created in Christ, but that all will return to Christ, very much in line with our sense of the expanding and contracting universe.

   This theological vision is what animates all of us Franciscans.  Francis lived it.  Bonaventure reflected on it and today I am grateful to God for both of them.  I rejoice with my brother friars at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY and with Franciscan theologians all over the world.  I pray that any readers who are not Franciscan will have been enriched by this reflection,

  

The Good 'Ol Summertime

Proclaiming the Gospel at St. Peter the Fisherman, Eagle River, WI, on the feast of Corpus Christi

 After a whirlwind of travel in the  past few months I've settled into my summer ministry at Eagle River, Phelps and Land "O'Lakes here in Wisconsin. My celebration of my fortieth anniversary of ordination has become a kind of moveable feast with the three parishes here all graciously celebrating this with me. As many of you know my summer times here are special to me for several reasons--wonderful people, a chance to experience parish life, a chance to sing in a choir and to offer some adult faith formation are at the top of the list.

   It is a blessing that I have been able to be in touch during my travels via this blog and Facebook especially.   As I've done that I've heard several comments about internet use--friendly kidding about being the "techie friar", accolades from people who urge me on with this, and while no one has said anything negative to me about my internet use I have run into folks who express concern or fear about our modern high tech world or who say things like "that stuff's not for me."   I would like to address these concerns.

   The internet and the social networking tools that have arisen with it are media, forms of expression and communication.  As such they are morally neutral tool.  You can find everything from the evil to the trivial right on up to the amazing and edifying.  I strive to fit into the latter category.  Over the past two months I have brought followers into things such as my experience in Assisi, my fortieth Anniversary of priesthood and offered several reflections.  On Facebook I share interesting places and experiences that I have had. What has been really amazing to me though is the opportunity to connect in prayer.  Now I don't like these requests that come out of nowhere and try to make you feel guilty if you don't pass on an e-mail about some situation.  That having been said I have had the opportunity to pray for several situations passed on to me from good friends  that I might never have learned about had it not been for the social networking that goes one.  Just this morning I said Mass for a woman in Arizona who is facing very grave illness.  There have been similar request during this time whether I was in Assisi, Florida, Michigan or now Wisconsin.  This past Sunday we celebrated Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.his was a feast  the Eucharist to be sure, but also a feast of the Church which is the Body of Christ.  To me the social networks, with all their capacity for triviality or even evil, are also a means of allowing the members of the Body of Christ to stay in touch, to pray, to teach and to affirm and support one another in living our faith.  I say a big Amen to that.

Beginning of Mass, June 26, 2011

Pentecost:Too Good to be True?

  This Sunday the Church celebrates the feast of Pentecost.  Pentecost is also a Jewish feast.  The word simply means "50 days" in Greek, 50 days after Passover, and fifty days after Easter.  We celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and with that the birth of the Church, though it can be said that the Church was born on the Cross or even at the Annunciation.  I won't enter into debate over that issue. There is truth in all 3 approaches. Suffice it to say that it is one of the three major feasts of the Church along with Holy Week/Easter,  and Christmas.
  
   For the former two feasts the Churches are full, drawing even those who do not come to Church regularly.  Why is this?  While there are probably many answers for this I think that deep down even those of us who believe find it too good to be true. We can believe that God took human flesh in Jesus, or that Jesus rose from the dead,but Pentecost calls us to believe that the Holy Spirit not only descended on the apostles, but that the Holy Spirit dwells in you and me, and brings the mysteries of Christmas and Easter to life in us over and over again.

   I think that somewhere deep inside of us we like to keep God at a distance-in past history, in an ark, in a temple, in a Church, in the tabernacle.  Now don't get me wrong, it would be heresy to deny the presence of god, of Christ, in the above mentioned places.  The point is that we can more readily believe in those things than we can believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, dwells in me, in you, in the Church as the Body of Christ. When this happens we get caught up in externals, in what direction the altar should face, what language music and what to use.  Now I don't deny that  Eucharist and the other sacraments should be celebrated properly and with the right combination of reverence and joy, of common unity blended with local cultural expression, but when we put so much energy and even anger into this discussion we are not a calling on the presence of the Spirit among us.  When we put too much emphasis on the business affairs of the Church while the world around us is torn by war, violence and injustice, we are not attending then to the Spirit dwelling amongst us.We argue that we are not worthy.   Of course we're not.  The Spirit  comes as gift in spite of our unworthiness.  The challenge for us is what do we do with the gift.

   The answer is that we allow the Spirit to work in us, each according to his or her gifts, to make a difference in the world, through prayer, action and witness, and at the same time to build a vibrant Church, not one according to our own likes and tastes, but the Church that the Spirit is striving to build through us. Let us make our own on this  wonderful feast the ancient prayer of the Church--"Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. En-kindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth  your Spirit among us and renew the face of the earth."

   I invite you to click on the link below for a rendition of the traditional hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, sung in Latin with English translation.  It beautifully expresses what this Feast is about.

Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Holy Spirit)

  By the way in many parishes people are invited to wear red to Church this week.  That is the liturgical color for the feast, the color of the tongues of fire which descended upon the apostles.  I think that this is a great custom

Thanksgiving For Forty Years of Blessings

With Bishop Nicholas D'Antonio, OFM,

 my ordaining bishop, on the day of my ordination, May 22, 1971

As you have been made aware earlier on this blog I will mark an important milestone this Sunday--40 years of priestly ministry.   I want to take this opportunity to thank God for using me as His instrument in so many ways, ways that are beyond my own abilities and that have to do entirely with His Grace--be that with preaching, counseling and spiritual direction, or in the confessional. I also want to thank all those who have sent me cards and prayers for the occasion, and to thank the many people who have become part of my life--from Boston, to New York, the Bronx, Buffalo, Camden, NJ, the many places where I have preached missions in English and Spanish, in the US and Canada, the people of Bolivia, especially the campesinos, who left a permanent mark on my life, and the people of Eagle River, Phelps and Land O'Lakes, WI.  I could not have imagined 40 years ago the number of folks who would become part of the fabric of my life.  I would add to the list the people whom I touched and who touched my life through Marriage Encounter, many of whom have become lifelong friends.

   One of the real joys of these 40 years was the day I was preaching a mission in Spanish in Hialeah, FL in 2002.  I was approached by a young man from Cuba, Erick Lopez, who expressed interest in joining the order.   I will travel to New york tomorrow to participate in his ordination.  What a blessing.

   I just returned from a wonderful time in Assisi which was basically a retreat, but also a vacation.  It was a time of reflection, thanksgiving and re-dedication to my life as a friar and as a priest.  I pray that in whatever years I have left I will be an even better priest and servant of the needs of God's people.  I know that God and God's people will continue to bless me in ways beyond my wildest imagination.

St. Francis, Man of Peace and Non-Violence

I am winding up a ten day retreat/vacation here in Assisi and feel renewed in every aspect of my life as a friar and priest.  I look forward to quietly celebrating my 40th anniversary as a priest one week from today after participating in the ordination of two friars on Saturday, May 21.

   What is very much on my mind these days is the figure of St. Francis as the saint of peace, the peace of Christ. As a young man he was a soldier, but a soldier who became disillusioned with war.  After heading off to battle he returned to Assisi in disgrace because he failed to pursue the military career for which his father equipped him.  He later went to the middle east, along with the crusaders, not to fight, but to preach to the Sultan, who while not converting to Christianity, came to respect Francis as a truly holy man.

   What is keeping this aspect of Francis' life before me is the debate that has been going on since the death of Bin Laden.  People have been asking "Was this the right way to go about things?  Could there have been another way instead of just killing him?"  All of this against the background of the entire situation since 9/11 regarding our dealings with the Muslim world.

   When I talk of non-violence or even of dialogue with the Muslims I often get a lot of grief.  "Come on Fr. John, get real, look what these people have done to us," say some.  Others say, "When they dialogue with us we'll dialogue with them."  Yet, my friends, I belong to an order founded by a man of non-violence and entrusted by the Church with outreach to the Muslims.  My task is religious before it is political, and yes it is unreal because it calls us to move beyond where we are, to think outside the box when it come to dealing with conflict.   From one point of view it is quite rational to say that we must defend ourselves against random and irrational terrorists, and indeed we must. The question is how. Non-violence does not mean that we let people walk all over us. It means that like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. we learn to resist and defend in a non-violent way.  Dialogue does not mean just play nice.  It means finding common ground on the one hand, but also asking the hard questions on the other.  Believe me there are some challenging questions I would have in dialoguing with Muslims and I assume that they would have hard questions for me and other Christians.  But that is how progress is made.

  I believe that it is important to realize that it is easy to pontificate about what world leaders should do and to challenge them on various issues.  At the same time we need to ask where we are personally   A little incident from my own personal life highlights that point.  I still need to grow.If I'm honest I have to admit that  I'm not there yet.  As a youngster fighting never made much sense to me.  In the back of my young mind when other kids talked about needing to use your fists to be a man I never bought it.  I thought of myself as superior to the "thugs" who were always getting into fights.  Nonetheless there were a few times when I had to stand up to them and I got into a few fights for that reason.  One time however I told one kid who challenged me that I preferred to use my brains rather than my fists to settle things in life.  He walked away sneering not knowing what to do.  Was this non-violence?  Maybe, but I also felt smug and arrogant, so not quite.  About 10 months ago I was threatened at knife point on the streets of St. Petersburg by man who didn't like the way I looked at him.  As he approached my I gave him a punch and he fell back.  The police came and that was the end of it.  I did tell them that he was drunk or high and needed help.  I did not press charges.  I went home and thought about what happened. I had not struck anyone with my hands since I was a teenager. I did not feel guilty or think that I had sinned, but I asked myself, "Could I have done better?  Could I have handled it in another way?"  I still need to learn the way of non-violence.

   As I leave Assisi, feeling at peace and full of the spirit of Francis and  more importantly of Christ, I think that the question for all of us in this violent and conflicted world is "Can we do better?  Is there another way?"  We Franciscans must always be raising that question.

   For some further great reflection on this topic click on the link below to the blog by my brother friar, Dan Horan, OFM
 Bro. Dan Horan's Blog--article on Thomas Merton

Assisi Alive with Tradition

City of Assisi today seen from OL of the Angels

I'm writing from Assisi today.  It is a wonderful spring morning and the place is bustling with activity.  I went to morning prayer and Mass in Italian with the friars here, then after breakfast I visited the Basilica of Our lady of the Angels.  This is the place where the Franciscan movement really began.  The Baslica was built in the sixteenth century and houses the little chapel of Or Lady of the Angels (beleived to be built in the mid 4th century) one of several small churches rebuilt by St. Francis and his early followers after Francis heard the call to "Rebuild my House."  It was here that Francis and his companions first gathered as a community, a brotherhood.  It was from here that they were first sent out to preach.  It is here that to this day most of our general chapters are held.

   Assisi is rich in tradition, but it is not locked into the past.  Instead it honors and commemorates the past, yet brings it forward.  Today the city sports modern buildings, festooned not only with Italian flags but also with TV satellite dishes.  The friary has internet outlets in most rooms, including the one I'm writing from, but most importantly the basilica is filled with young people from all over the world enthusiastically singing hymns and praying in the chapel or "Portiuncula" (Little portion) as we Franciscans call it.

  This brings me to the point of this blog entry.  Tradition is, I believe, one of the most misunderstood words in the Catholic vocabulary.  It is too often expressed as a clinging to the past and the old and a rejection of the present and the new.  People who do this are called "traditionalists."  Tradition is also often confused with customs.   Customs are not the tradition, but ways of expressing the tradition.  Throughout the centuries the Church has always found new external expression to bring alive the ancient tradition.  Tradition then is the living and growing body of faith and belief, rooted in the past, but alive in the present and waiting to grow into the future.  It needs new expression to continually do this.  Here in Assisi today the 800 year old tradition of living the Gospel begun by Francis of Assisi in 1209 is very much alive in ways that Francis never could have dreamed of.  Francis himself began his movement as a new way of living the old faith. The friars, sisters and lay people who have followed him continue to do the same.

Basilica of OL of the Angels, Assisi

The Portiuncula inside the Basilica

   Today I rejoice in the fact that I prayed in a 15th century basilica that houses a 4th century chapel refurbished by a 13th century saint.  Most of all I rejoice that 20th century youth are there now keeping the whole thing very much alive.  As for myself I smile when friends comment to me that seeing a friar in his Franciscan habit holding an iphone is a shock to their senses.  I think it is very traditional.

Response to the Death of Osama Bin Laden

  Very briefly rather than writing myself on the death of Osama Bin Laden I invote you to click on the links below for some thoughtful commentary.  I welcome your comments as well

Statement from John O'Connor, OFM, provincial of Holy Name Province of the Franciscans

Vatican Response to Death of Bin Laden