SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 5 - N. 4 - 1999 - January - IV
From: CIOFS Secretariat
(Part II)
10. The richest pages where Francis speaks of God as Father are not addressed to a privileged category (Friars Minor or Poor Sisters), but to all Christians -- men and women, clerics and lay(1), and even to "all peoples everywhere on earth, present and to come".(2) Francis was not afraid that his words might appear remote from people's lives. On the contrary, his discovery of what it means for God to be Father gave to everyday life a firm foundation and a wide horizon.
The Father at the heart of the life of faith
11. All too often our view of God is vague and abstract. Francis however, on the basis of what the Gospel taught him, shows us the mystery of Father, Son and Spirit, not as a complex problem, but as the overflowing of a living relationship, of communion and sharing. In his first Admonition he tells us, simply and profoundly, how the Lord Jesus, as the way, the truth and the life, leads us to the Father. But in order to reach Jesus and discover who He really is as Son, we need the Holy Spirit, who alone can give us eyes to see what is unseen.
12. Yes, the heart of Franciscan spirituality, around which everything else is harmoniously arranged and structured, is found here, in this faith dimension which can rightly be called the contemplative dimension of our life. Francis boldly puts forward for everyone so lofty a goal, and in this he is faithful to the Gospel (cf. Jn 14,23). (3) Inspired and enlightened by this teaching, we are invited to take up the "Our Father", meditate upon it, study it in depth and recite it once more in the spirit of Francis' commentary. This will stop us "babbling as the pagans do" ( Mt 6,7) the prayer taught to us by our Lord, which we so often pray inattentively.
The human being, image of God as communion
13. Francis insists that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, and that their bodies are modelled on that of the beloved Son.(4) But since God, at the very heart of His oneness, is difference, otherness, relationship and communion, we human beings who bear His image are not condemned to live in solitude, closed in on ourselves. We too, created male and female from the beginning, are otherness, difference, complementarity, called to share in a communion of love and to transmit the life we have received. We are community beings because we reproduce the divine "society" of Father, Son and Spirit, and thereby experience fatherhood-motherhood, filiation and fraternity. And this is just as true for a couple, a family, the communities we form, the community of the Church, and for society in its different forms. It is even true, up to a certain point, of all living things (animals, vegetable life...). This world with its abundance of life forms has one unique origin -- the unseen Father, source of all that is, through the free movement of "his holy love".(5)
To be Father means going out of oneself, giving oneself... and serving...
14. Human parenthood and filiation have never been lived without tension, rebellion and even murder. Even Francis' relations with his father were not always tranquil. As we know, they eventually broke up altogether. Today, fatherhood has a bad image, it is often weakened or non-existent, often challenged. Its authority is rejected as far as its preventative function is concerned, and also because it is accused of claiming superiority, domination and being an obstacle to autonomy, freedom and growth. There is no doubt that it is frequently exercised in such a way. But the true fatherhood of God, which the Gospel claims to be unique ( Mt 23,8), is not of this kind, and it alone must be the model of all fatherhood and authority.
15. The Father we hear about in the Gospel of John and other biblical texts, the Father contemplated by Francis, is the one who begets a beloved Son, to whom He gives all that He is and has, and whom He associates with the Spirit- Paraclete in the work of creation and redemption, and when delivering him up to his Passion and death, He awaits his free consent(6) before taking him by the hand and raising him in the glory of the Resurrection and the Ascension(7) ( Ps. 6, 12).
16. We who experience fatherhood and motherhood in their most varied forms, and exercise functions involving power, authority or "superiorship", need to turn our eyes to our "Father in heaven". His "almighty power" is that of an unconditional, self-giving love; it goes out of itself and seeks the life, growth and freedom of the other. His demands and prohibitions are only warnings against anything that threatens or destroys the person's dignity and value. Jesus, following His Father's example and in His name, lived and taught aspects of the exercise of authority -- one of the Father's attributes -- which we find in the writings of St. Francis: being simple servants,(8) lowly,(9) washing one another's feet,(10) not dominating, but serving.(11) All of this points the way for us and shows the true meaning of fatherhood and real authority according to the Gospel.
(to be continued)
Notes:
1) Second Letter to the Faithful, 1.
2) Rnb XXIII,7.
3) Rnb XXII, 27; Second Letter to the Faithful ,
48.
4) Rnb 23,1; Adm 5.
5) Rnb 23,3.
6) Second Letter to the Faithful, 11.
7) Office of Passion, Ps 6,12
8) Rnb 11,3; 23, 7.
9) Rnb 6,3.
10) Rnb 6,4.
11) Rnb 5, 10-12.