Today’s One-Liner (#215)
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful. –Saint Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Sun, translated by Bill Barrett from the Umbrian…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Perfect Joy
ONCE when St. Francis was coming from Perugia to Santa Maria degli Angeli with Friar Leo in the winter, and the very great cold vexed him sore, he called Friar Leo, who was going before,…
Today’s One-Liner (#210)
Where there is hatred, let me sow love. –St. Francis of Assisi
From Rules to Virtue
Reimagining the moral life through the prism of the Beatitudes takes us from rules to virtues: from a rule-centered idea of morality to a virtue-centered idea of morality. The basic question changes from “How far…
Celerity of the Saints
St Francis Solano, when under the impetus of love, would move like the wind so that no one could keep pace with him. On Christmas, a friar caught sight of him rushing along carrying some…
Today’s One-Liner (#208)
Be gentled with others, but stern towards yourself. –Saint Teresa of Avila, cited in Stephen Clissold, The Wisdom of the Spanish Mystics
Living Examples
The most notable new female community was the Missionaries of Charity, originally founded by an Albanian nun, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta (d. 1997), to work especially with the poorest of the poor in India—the abandoned…
Today’s One-Liner (#204)
I felt charity enter into my soul, and the need to forget myself and to please others; since then I’ve been happy! –Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: Autobiography
So Long Ago and So Modern
St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity…
Today’s One-Liner (#203)
…Chesterton was quite sure that one of the great arguments for being a Christian was that it enabled us to understand the real nature and depths of evil in ourselves and in the world. –James…