�Toreador Fresco� (bull-leaping scene), Great Palace at Knossos, Crete, c. 1500 BC   

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

I Am Who I Am

Holy Fools

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

St. Francis illustrates this stage in many memorable ways. When he hears one day that the people of Assisi are calling him a saint, he invites Brother Juniper to join him in a walk through his old home town. Brother Juniper was the first simpleton (that is a compliment!), the holy fool of the original friars. Francis knew he could always trust him to understand what he was saying. Francis once said, “I wish I had a whole forest of such Junipers!”

Francis told Brother Juniper, “Let’s take off these robes, get down to our underwear, and just walk back and forth through Assisi. Then all these people who are thinking we are saints will know who we really are!” Now that’s a saint: someone who doesn’t need to be considered a saint, who can walk foolishly in his underwear the full length of Assisi.  

A few years later, when people were again calling Francis a saint, he said, “Juniper, we’ve got to do it again.” This time they carried a plank into the piazza. They put it over some kind of a stone or maybe the fountain, and there they seesawed all day. They had no need to promote or protect any reputation or pious self-image.

That’s a rather constant spiritual tradition in the Eastern Church and in the Desert Fathers and Mothers, but it pretty much got lost after the 13th century Franciscans. We became more and more serious about this intense salvation thing, or you might say we took ourselves far too seriously. Moralism replaced mysticism. And this only increased after the in-house fighting of the 16th century reformations. We all needed to prove we were right. Have you noticed that people who need to prove they are right cannot laugh or smile?

When you are a “holy fool” you’ve stopped trying to look like something more than you really are. That’s when you know, as you eventually have to know, that we are all naked underneath our clothes, and we don’t need to pretend to be better than we are. I am who I am, who I am, who I am; and that creation, for some unbelievable reason, is who God loves, precisely in its uniqueness. My true identity and my deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for me, not from what people think of me or say about me. Both the people who praise me and those who hate me are usually doing it for the wrong reasons.

Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism (an unpublished talk)

Gateway to Silence:
I am who I am in the eyes of God, nothing more and nothing less.

 
 
 
Immortal Diamond:
A Study in Search of the True Self
 
January 21-April 1, 2015
 
Self-paced, 10-week, in-depth study of
Fr. Richard's book, Immortal Diamond.
 
“CAC’s online courses have shown me for the first time
the reality of my true self.” - Brenda, course participant
 
Register at cac.org.
 

Did you get this message forwarded from someone else? Wish to sign up for CAC's email lists yourself? Subscribe to CAC email lists here.

You are receiving this message because you subscribed to the CAC’s “Daily Meditations and CAC Updates ” email list. You can unsubscribe or change your email preferences at any time. If you would like to change your email address, please visit our Email Subscription FAQ page for more information.

Please do not reply to this email. For more info about:

•  CAC Bookstore, visit store.cac.org.

•  CAC Conferences and Webcasts, visit cac.org/events.

•  Online Courses, visit cac.org/rohr-institute-online-education.

•  Supporting CAC, visit cac.org/support-cac.

•  Living School, visit cac.org/rohr-inst.

•  Help with Daily Meditations, email techassist@cac.org.