Francis: Attempted Dialogue During the Crusades

Francis is what some call a “prime attractor”—one who moves history and humanity forward just by being who he is.

More than any other follower of Jesus, Francis of Assisi has been called a “second Christ.” He is taken seriously by all world religions. When Pope John Paul II wanted to gather the leaders of all the world religions to have a respectful interfaith dialogue in the 1980s, the only city that they could agree to meet in was Assisi, because the memory of St. Francis does not carry any negative baggage, even to other religions.

.. He is the only Christian man ever known to attempt two or three trips to dialogue with the “enemy” during the tragic Crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land, telling the Christians they were wrong for crusading and persecuting these children of God!

Richard Rohr: Francis: Depth and Breadth

Saint Francis stepped out into a world being recast by the emerging market economy. He lived amid a decaying old order in which his father was greedily buying up the small farms of debtors, moving quickly into the new entrepreneurial class.

.. Third, and most radically, he looked to the underside of his society, to the suffering, for an understanding of how God transforms us.

.. Francis set out to read reality through the eyes and authority of those who have “suffered and been rejected”—and, with Jesus, come out resurrected. This is the “privileged seeing” of those who have been initiated by life. It is the true baptism of “fire and Spirit” with which, Jesus says, we must all be baptized (see Mark 10:39).

.. Finally, he had to be poor (to be able to read reality from the side of powerlessness). He realized that experiencing reality from the side of money, success, and power is to leave yourself out of sympathy with 99% of the people who have ever lived.

Once You Are in an Authority Position in any Institution, Your Job is to Preserve That Institution

Francis knew that once you are in an authority position in any institution, your job is to preserve that institution, and your freedom to live and speak the full truth becomes limited.

.. The early Franciscans said the first Bible was not the written Bible, but creation itself, the cosmos.

.. The job of religion and theology is to help us look in the mirror that is already present. All this “mirroring” eventually effects a complete change in consciousness.