The Stained Glass Buffalo: A Fourth Order?

17 November 2013

A Fourth Order?

by: Ernest Raymond

And as I stood there thinking this, the fancy came to me there there cleaves always to Francis, whether he approves or not, a Fourth Order. It is the Order of those who do not abjure their fighting and their oaths, who cannot abandon their comfort or their fame, who still like the top table at the feasts and are not in the least eager to return their excess profits, but who, in spite of all this weakness, love Francis of Assisi and wish they were more like him. Perhaps, in a small way, limp after him, loose fellows though they are. They look wistfully after his disappearing figure, and wish they were not so like Brother Fly, in that they do not pray too much nor work too hard, but do eat bravely. The Limping Quaternaries, shall we call them? I have been a member of the Order for a long time, limping on as well as I may; and I suspect that most of my readers are too, or I should have lost them long before this. God bless them all, and lead them on to better things.

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.