Without a forgiveness great enough to embrace even the obscure side of things, we are burdened (and I do mean burdened) with our own need to explain and to judge everything. Who is right now? Who was wrong there? These are eventual and important moral questions, but we cannot, we dare not, lead with them. If we do, we make love and compassion impossible. This is the centrality, and yet unbelievability, of Jesus’ words, “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1).
Without the true sacred, we are all at one another’s mercy and subject to one another’s whimsical judgments. Under the true sacred, we are at the mercy of One Who Is Mercy. No wonder Jesus gave all his life to proclaim such a monumental liberation! Humanity has been waiting for such freedom with Messianic hope. It is the only way out of our revolving hall of mirrors, our own war of all against all, and is rightly called salvation. For Jesus, God’s judgment is good news for the nations—and for the individual too. How different this is than how most of us think about judgment.
Jesus’ teaching is summarized in one line: “The time is fulfilled, and the Reign of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). Conversion is not a learning as much as it is an unlearning. Conversion is an unlearning that comes like a dove descending (see Mark 1:10) once the old world order is unmasked and the Great Lover is revealed. No wonder we had to use phrases like falling from a horse, scales falling from our eyes (see Acts 9:18), and the crowing of the cock (Luke 22:61).
I believe that Jesus is the great reconciler. Picture two lines, one going vertically, the other going horizontally: That’s the cross. Pioneer psychologist Carl Jung stated that Jesus was killed in an “agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites.” Whenever we try to hold opposite energies together—liberal/conservative, masculine/feminine, right/wrong, black/white, anything that’s conflictive—we are going to get crucified.
When viewing the cross, picture a collision of opposites, the coming together of opposing energies, both of which invariably think they’re the whole truth. Paul saw this clearly, thirty years after Jesus died: “God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross” (Colossians 1:19–20).
The most unsettling aspect of his alternative wisdom, and perhaps the most consistent, is that the outcast is in the head-start position, precisely because he or she has been excluded from the false sacred system—the only game in town. Jesus thus begins with a most incredible statement: The poor are the blessed ones! (See Matthew 5:3.) Life has already freed them from the lie that the rest of us cannot see. They are potentially turned around and given a symbolic advantage in hearing the truth: “I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the Reign of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). If the system is a mess, those outside of it are at a significant advantage.
We are encouraged to welcome strangers, for by doing so, many people have entertained angels unaware (see Hebrews 13:2). As Jesus put it in his only description of the final judgment, “in so far as you did this to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). I wonder what else could save us from our fear and accusation of one another, except one whose judgments are both upside-down and true—and whose mercy is everlasting. Fortunately, they are one and the same, a God who is both sanctuary and stumbling stone (see Isaiah 8:14).
Jesus is teaching that right relationship is the ultimate and daily criterion. If a social order allows and encourages, and even mandates, good connectedness between people and creation, people and events, people and people, people and God, then we have a truly sacred culture: the Reign of God. The world as it would be if God were directly in charge would be a world of right relationship. It would not be a world without pain or mystery, but simply a world where we would be in good contact with all things, where we would be connected and in communion. Conversely, the work of the Evil One is always to separate, divide, and throw apart (dia-bolical).
Right relationship is all about union and communion, it seems, which means that it is also about forgiveness, letting go, service, and lives of patience and simplicity. Who can doubt that this is the sum and substance of Jesus’ teaching? He makes right relationship desirable, possible, and the philosopher’s stone by which everything else is to be weighed and judged.
We will not appreciate Jesus’ loyalty to the Law and the Prophets if we do not accept his deeper understanding of freedom. I’m afraid that the cry of the French Revolution, “Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” has formed us much more than the Jesus Revolution. His cry might instead be “Identity, justice, and community.” Think about the difference. We also tend to think of freedom as freedom of movement and the liberty to choose between options. This is surely a good and important freedom. There is no indication that the great spiritual teachers, Jesus included, see it as essential, however. They seem to recognize that the world of preferences and possibilities does not of itself lead to wisdom, truth, or even depth of experience. In fact, in the spiritual life, the rule seems to be that less is more. There is almost no correlation between the number of options and the amount of truth or goodness that one attains.
The Franciscan tradition is more than eight hundred years old, with followers from many walks of life. Understanding the rich history of St. Francis and his early brothers and sisters in the context of a fascinating and complex religious movement can greatly enhance our understanding of this thirteenth-century saint, his impact on medieval society, his enduring influence on our contemporary world, and his universal appeal to all faiths. St. Francis of Assisi, as a patron and model in living the Gospel, is a hero for our times. His humble yet charismatic personality is as dramatic today as it was for his own day, even as it continues to change the world.
The Franciscan intellectual tradition and the compelling story of Francis of Assisi seem to have a never-ending fascination for scholars, novelists, dramatists, screenwriters, and storytellers of every age, language, and culture. It is my hope that this text can provide the vocabulary to effectively communicate Franciscan values and insights to followers of this saint. In the last ten years we have experienced rapid changes in our world, Church, society, politics, and cultural realities. But the human heart does not change in its fundamental longing for peace, kindness, justice, friendship, and heroes who inspire us to seek the good and to love and serve God in one another. St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi have universally touched hearts by always breathing new life into these dreams in every age.
In the thirteenth century the religious movement that Francis of Assisi inspired emphasized minority, poverty, penitence, and work with the poor and marginalized. It began as a lay movement, and Francis called himself a “Lesser Brother,” never intending to become a priest in the Church. In the plan of God, Francis became an instrument to revitalize Christianity in the Middle Ages, inspiring men and women, clerics and laity, single and married, wealthy and poor. Francis, by his example and preaching, invited everyone to respond to God’s universal call to holiness by embracing a penitential life focused on living the Gospel.
