Fuel for The Journey
What energizes your life?
Quotes:
1-St. Francis’ of Assisi’s religion was “…not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.”
-G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
2- “‘He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord.”
-Jeremiah Ben Hilkiah (650-570 BC)
3- “I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself.”
-Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)
Which quote(s) stood out to you on first reading? What caught your attention? See below for more information about each.
Detail:
1-St. Francis’ of Assisi’s religion was “…not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.”
Some modern critics have painted religion as nothing more than forced submission to a moral code. Many in our secular age are fueled by a similar submission; not a submission of faith, but submission to an ideological point of view. The life of St. Francis, properly understood, challenges us to live by a very different and more effective motivation.
Francis of Assisi (1181 – 3 October 1226) lived at the peak of the Middle Ages, long before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He preached the gospel, performed miracles, and experienced stigmata. He also embraced poverty, cared for lepers, and worked to negotiate peace between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades. His religious life transcended the religious expectations of his day. It transcends the ideological commitments of our own day as well. And that makes his life, in its entirety, difficult for us to understand.
G.K. Chesterton begins his biography of St. Francis with this concern. In 1923 he wrote, “…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 danger of prosperity or even property.” Different aspects of his life overlap with the concerns of religious conservatives. Both sides focus on the parts of his life that fit with their agenda and see him as their hero. But this approach blinds us to the ways he can challenge and sharpen our ability to make good happen in our lives.
To correct this, Chesterton continues, we must begin with St. Francis's motivation. “The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well be to him a very wild one until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.” The fuel for Francis's larger-than-life journey wasn’t a moral or ideological code. It was a deeply personal relationship with God. “We must love God,” Frances said, “and adore him with a pure heart and mind, because this is what he seeks above all else.”
G.K. Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) wrote four thousand essays, two hundred short stories, and eighty books in his lifetime. One of these was his short biography of St. Francis of Assisi. Not unlike Francis’ life, Chesterton’s writing regularly turns things inside out to reveal wisdom hidden by the popular point of view. His biography, available for free through Project Gutenberg, is well worth reading so that he and Francis can deepen our ability to makegoodhappen.
2-“‘He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord.”
The Prophet Jeremiah (650 – 570 BC) lived in a time of dramatic change. The seismic shifts seemed purely political on the surface. The rulers and their people had to choose sides between the Babylonians and the Egyptians. But Jeremiah looked under the political intrigue for another source of the “overthrowing and uprooting” of his fellow Israelites. He found a deeper cause and a simpler solution.
In Jeremiah’s day, the Kingdom of Judah (which many call the West Bank today) was surrounded. Egypt and Assyria were plotting together against the Babylonian Empire. Right in the middle of it all was Israel. King Josiah lost his life trying to stop Egypt from aiding the Assyrians against the Babylonians. Three months later his son, Jehoahaz, was removed from the throne by the Egyptian Pharoah Neco II who put another son of Josiah, Jehoiakim, in his place.
But Jehoiakim was not like his father. When he became King he threw his support to Egypt instead of Babylon. Then he turned his attention toward enhancing his royal grandeur. While Israel’s king pursued wealth and status, the prophet Jeremiah argued that the kingdom’s security had more to do with faith than luxury or politics. Here is the full poem:
‘Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,
his upper rooms by injustice,
making his own people work for nothing,
not paying them for their labor.
He says, “I will build myself a great palace
with spacious upper rooms.”
So he makes large windows in it,
panels it with cedar
and decorates it in red.
‘Does it make you a king
to have more and more cedar?
Did not your father have food and drink?
He did what was right and just,
so all went well with him.
He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?’
declares the Lord.
‘But your eyes and your heart
are set only on dishonest gain,
on shedding innocent blood
and on oppression and extortion.’
Against Jeremiah’s advice, Jehoiakim rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar II, leader of the Babylonian Empire. Though the king died before his people had to suffer retribution, the Kingdom of Judah was defeated and the Israelites, including the prophet Jeremiah, were sent into exile. The Biblical book of Lamentations consists of five poems written during that catastrophe including the following passage:
My eyes fail from weeping,
I am in torment within;
my heart is poured out on the ground
because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint
in the streets of the city.
They say to their mothers,
‘Where is bread and wine?’
as they faint like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
as their lives ebb away
in their mothers’ arms.1
Things could have been different if Jehoiakim had sought the good of his people above all else. It seems such a simple idea in our complex world.
3-“I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself.”
How do we break the cycle of injustice? This age-old question is the subject of the 17th-century British play entitled, “The Revengers.”
The script, first performed in 1606, begins with the most common human response to the age-old question: How should we respond to injustice? Vindice, the main character, enters from stage right with the skull of his fiancee in his hands. Ten years previous, he tells us, she had refused the advances of a powerful man. She paid for it with her life. How will he respond to this injustice? Given the meaning of the Latin word “vindice,” which in English is “avenger,” and the fact that he is still carrying the skull of his beloved a decade after her death, it is clear that vengeance is his response. Vindice the Avenger is going to kill the man who killed his love.
The rest of the play follows his tragic journey of revenge. Through many comedic twists and turns, it becomes clear that this path is distorting any personal virtue and personal relationships he might have had. The plan needlessly endangers his sister. He and his brother threaten to kill their mother for a moral lapse. Vindice does get his revenge. But he and his brother are sentenced to death for murdering the now elderly Duke by the man who replaces him in power. The playwright, Thomas Middleton, leaves us wondering how the cycle of injustice will ever be broken when the most common human strategy of revenge does nothing more than fuel another cycle of death and injustice in the world.
But he does leave us a clue in our quote. Amazingly, it emerges from the mouth of Vindice when he and his brother are preparing to kill his mother. To the audience Vindice’s phrase, “I think man’s happiest when he forgets himself,” points to a different answer to that age-old question. If we can lay aside our urge for revenge and live our lives for the sake of others, a new world becomes a possibility; a world that could actually break the cycle of injustice. We see just such a move in the life of Jesus:
who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.2
This strategy can make all the difference in the world.
In the comments below, tell us which quote you found the most intriguing. Also, share why it caught your attention.