Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Just last week we celebrated the feast of Saint Bonaventure, an early-day Franciscan friar. Now the Franciscans, of course, were an order founded by Saint Francis to encourage Catholics to return to the simplicity of the faith. Franciscans wanted to be like Jesus and then like Francis—humble and poor and holy. That is an important Catholic ideal. It does seem that the more we have—sometimes—then the more distracted we are by those things and by the acquisition of more things. Anyway, the Franciscan ideal was to be so poor—and prayerfully so—that they were to beg—beg for their living—beg for their food—beg for their lives. This begging in turn would form them in humility by which God could work His grace in their souls. Poverty could create the space in their souls by which there would be so much less of them that there would be room for God.
Imagine the embarrassment that a person feels who must hold out his hand and ask for a crust of bread or a glass of water. It is hard to do that. But that’s how seriously they took their poverty. It was not to be poor in name only—but as an intentional way of life—to be hungry and plainly dressed and not to be sitting at the heads of tables or even to be well thought of. The early day Franciscans—and we hope it would be the case with today’s Franciscans—were poor, and their humility was part of the program. The irony of Saint Bonaventura was that while he was a Franciscan—poor and humble and simple—he was also one of the most famous and brilliant men of his time. He was a hugely influential philosopher and theologian and teacher. They even made him a cardinal. Pretty unlikely for a poor humble Franciscan friar. But he did not let any of it go to his head. Part of the greatness of Bonaventure was that everything he studied and wrote about—from the Bible or from the philosophers or saints that had gone before him—every lesson he ever taught was in the context of his humble love of Our Lord and of God’s unfathomable love for us. He figured it this way—the world, having come from God’s love, is saved by God’s love and returns to God. And this is most beautifully understood when we see Jesus, the Son of God, dying for us on the Cross.
The love of the Cross
One of the most beautiful paintings that Zurbaran—the great Spanish master—ever painted was for a Franciscan monastery. In the painting two saints, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas are facing each other and we see Bonaventure drawing back a curtain to reveal a crucifix. Thomas Aquinas looks on—a bit dazed. The title of the picture explains the scene: “St. Bonaventure Revealing to St. Thomas Aquinas the Source of His Learning.” That of course being the cross. It is as if Bonaventure is saying to Thomas—“Thomas, you will find the secrets of the universe not in the thoughts of Aristotle, but in the love Jesus.” Of course, Thomas knew that. This was how orders used to rib each other. What Bonaventure is saying is that just as we need to be holy and humble and poor in spirit, we need also to study and read and discover all about the world all around us. And we will find—in faith—that all wisdom, all learning, all knowledge revolves around God’s great act of love—the Cross. This, of course, is the Franciscan example.
Each of us must be humble and holy and poor according to our own vocation in life. A father and mother must work for their family—bring home a salary—and make enough money to spend wisely and even be able to save some for a rainy day. That’s what a father does—that’s what a mother does. There is nothing that says that we cannot own things—a decent house—and good food enough for our family—and a little extra to put away. Poverty and holiness and humbleness for most of us will not be radical poverty as it is for the Franciscans. Poverty of spirit can involve owning things—and taking care of things—as long as we do it for the sake of those we love and never love things nor let them distract us from the love of God.
But Bonaventure’s life as a scholar teaches us that in our quest to be humble and poor and holy, we must also be serious about our religion. We must study it and learn it everyday. We cannot ever say “We know all we need to know about Catholicism and the Bible and Jesus. That’s why we went to Catholic school!” We have a duty—if we are serious Catholics—(as was Bonaventure) to study our faith—study the catechism, the Bible—and then study everything about the world and use our faith to measure that world. We must see the world with a Catholic eye. That means that we need to read the newspaper—we need to keep up with current events—we need to listen to the news. And when we even watch TV or go to the movies—we must look at what is happening—or what we are watching—with a Catholic eye to see how it either conforms to God’s will and that which we believe—or does not.
They even charge us for water
We must not go through life in a daze letting the politicians tell us what we value or what we must pay attention to. We can see everything that is happening and judge it as Catholics. And our judgment will be pretty accurate. There is some pretty bad stuff out there that is threatening to overturn our happy little boats. Let me give an example. We Americans—with the encouragement of our politicians—fund an organization called Planned Parenthood. We have all heard of Planned Parenthood. It is in the news all the time. It is one of those hero organizations— we never know quite what they do—but we are assured that it is wonderful! You have to do a little research but you will discover that our taxes give 500 million dollars every year to Planned Parenthood. And what do they do with the money that you and I give them? They abort almost a half a million babies a year. They wont give me two cents to educate the children of this neighborhood. They even charge us for water. But the politicians give Planned Parenthood half a billion dollars to kill our babies.
You might as well know that they set up their clinics mostly in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood does not like minorities—and the more they kill, the less of them they have to deal with. And now comes the news that Planned Parenthood not only kills those babies—but it sells their organs as well. They sell livers, hearts, kidneys, brains and legs and they make up to a hundred dollars a baby. This is the most evil thing you could have ever imagined. And the people we vote for election after election are the ones who send our taxes to Planned Parenthood so they could do these kinds of things. That is why we need to be aware of the world around us—to know of the evils that are being done in our name. But also we need the faith to put that evil in context.
Our faith gives us the key to interpret the world. We must look at all of it—the politics—and economics—and world events—even what we see in the movies or on television or what we hear in popular music—in the light of what we believe as Catholics. And we have to do that—otherwise they will have succeeded in convincing even us Catholics that our Catholic faith is irrelevant to the real world. And they would dearly love us to believe that our faith has nothing to do with reality—or history—or policy. They would love us to keep our religion within these doors. So we have a twofold task—to know our faith and be aware of what is happening in the world. In other words: We need to pay attention to what it is being said and who is saying it and why are they saying it—and how all of that corresponds to our beliefs as Catholics. Like Saint Bonaventure, we need to see the world through the lens of our faith and in the shadow of the cross. And then—and only then—are we serious Catholics.