Tag: St. Francis of Assisi

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Regina Fratrum Minorum

Regina Fratrum Minorum is what is written on the lintel above the entry into this small side chapel which is adjacent to the University chapel at St. Bonaventure University. Translated literally I think it means, “Queen of the Friars Minor.” Mary held a very special place in St. Francis of Assisi’s heart and it’s depicted in this mural behind the altar in this small chapel. I used to come here and sit when I first moved to the area in 1979. I loved the quiet and peace and I always felt very secure in this chapel. Today when I was on campus at St. Bonaventure University waiting for the staff of Graduate Admissions to return from lunch I walked into the University Chapel and then here.

Today was a homecoming and an epiphany for me. Yesterday, I formally applied for admission to the University and today I met with the head of the department I will be a student in. I wanted to stop by admissions too and make sure that I was covering all the bases. With some extra time following a great lunch at Cafe La Verna I stopped by this chapel and sat where I sat so many years ago and thought how much my life had changed and how grateful I am for the direction it took and continues to take. I thought too of the Franciscan influence in my life and how these men and women in brown had so deeply influenced my life. I began my formal education at St. Pius X School in Delevan, New York in 1957. Fifty-two years later I’m in the process of application at St. Bonaventure University. How much my life has been formed by Franciscans.

Today, as I walked about the campus I discovered that I knew many people.  I met Dr. Gibbs who will be in charge of my education here. At Graduate Admissions I met Tina Dewe,  a woman whom I still owe an airplane ride. I talked to  Br. Ed Coughlan and Fr. Dan Riley.  In fact Dan Riley has more to do with me being at St. Bonaventure other than my wife and daughter than probably anyone else I know.  It was a homily on Holy Thursday night nearly ten years ago delivered by Dan that brought me home to my roots. Although the experience of a student is new, the surroundings are old and familiar. I did get to sit in St. Joseph’s Oratory for the first time in my life. I’ve passed it many times throughout the years and been intrigued but never had a chance to venture in until today.  St. Bonaventure has always held a special place in my heart. I remember sitting in study hall at Archbishop Walsh high school and looking south at the orange tile rooftops. It was here that I attended basketball camp in the summer of 1970. It was here that my wife and I came on our first date almost twenty-eight years ago. Here it was that our son Devin began to play organized basketball in  Butler Gymnasium.  Here we’ve come hundreds of times to watch the Bonnies basketball teams.  Now,  my daugher and I are students.   I stopped by the bookstore to pick up a t-shirt that says St. Bonaventure University.  I look a bit more official.

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Merton and me

Last night I attended a talk given by Walt Chura, SFO at Mount Irenaeus. Walt’s topic was the “Transformations of Thomas Merton.” Walt talked about the similarities between the transformations of Francis of Assisi and Thomas Merton and helped me to more clearly see each man and their journey to God and my own journey too. Both Merton and Francis were profligate sinners. They knew excess and it is or was their excess that eventually drew them close to God.

I was thinking as I ran this morning and contemplating what it means to me and it occurred to me that it’s possible to know God without theology. In fact theology might actually come between us and God. In the west and particularly in Western Christianity we are totally absorbed in describing God and what God is and isn’t. It’s that obsession with description that actually stands in the way of our knowing God. In twelve step programs, old timers frequently say that if you can describe the higher power, you’ve just lost him or her. If that’s true, and I believe it is, then theology or theologies could actually be standing in the way of knowing God or following God. I think both Merton and Francis knew this. I was thinking too of the popular Christian view of a sin centered universe and how that shapes Western Civilization. The less popular theology is of Duns Scotus and the Theology of the Incarnation that says that Christ came not to save the world from its sins but to show how much God loved the world.

If you tell that to your average American Christian you’ll be in for the fight of your life, but it makes sense to me. I read a book a few years ago by an Irish theologian who said that spirituality had been around for 10,000 years and that religion for only the last four or five thousand of those years. Karl Rahner once said, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.” The Buddhists speak of the various paths of truth as being fingers pointing to the moon. Drawing from all of this and Walt’s talk last night I believe its possible to get so caught up in the fingers as to miss the moon. Its possible that a profligate life is really the path of the true seeker and that it’s not a sin centered universe but a sartori centered universe in which each man and women is moving slowly, very slowly towards enlightenment which Christians in the west would call redemption.