Continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality today by beginning to look at what we call the soul of Franciscanism. The heart and soul of our spirituality, in a word, is charity or love. And since St. Francis is called the Seraphic Father, since St. Bonaventure is known as the Seraphic Doctor, since the Franciscan order itself is called the Seraphic Order, we're called with Franciscan spirituality to a Seraphic love, the love of the highest creatures, the Seraphim angels, whose love, this whole being actually burns with love for God. It's actually how we're called to live as well, too. Franciscans really do see love as the synthesis of everything, all the realities of natural and supernatural life, so the whole drama of the universe finds its raison d'etre, its justification in love. The first thing that Franciscan theologians see in God is that essential characteristic of charity.
In this, they're really just following the footsteps of St. Francis. Every divine manifestation every divine action has love as its source and its goal. So love is the alpha and the omega to borrow from the book of Revelation. And every creature has the imprint of the love of our Creator in them. And our return to God and the return to God of all His creatures endowed with reason, so both angels and human beings that return, is accomplished to borrow from the mass through love, with love, and in love. Of course, we always have to be clear about what love is, right? We tend to think of love as a sentiment, as sentiment-based and feeling-based. Our emotions and affections can express love, but true love is in the soul. More specifically, we say it's in the will. We know that God is love, the angels love as well, but neither God nor the angels have bodies, right? 
But they have a will like we do. And that's where charity resides. Part of love is the powerful attraction that draws us or pulls us like a magnet towards the good, towards some created good or towards the uncreated good who is God. Or it pulls us away towards something which appears to be good but in reality isn't good for us. Or it's not good for us right now or in the way that we want it. That's when disordered love comes into play. So I might be drawn to marriage, for example. Marriage is a good thing, right? But since I'm a priest with a vow of chastity, not a good thing for me. Plus anything that's sinful is a clear example of disordered love too. To love is to will the good. So love is active, it's not passive, not just a feeling.
There's the attraction, but then there's also the choice to embrace what is good. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian William of St. Thierry in their own writings, a little bit before St. Francis, see love first of all as egocentric, meaning that it's first of all turned inwards towards the I or the ego. Then they say that the natural love we have towards ourselves is the point of departure by which we arrive at the love of God. So I start with me and I arrive at you. I arrive at God, essentially. So God's grace supernaturalizes and gradually transforms my me-centered love, helping me to love God first for the good things that he gives me and will give me as well. Then I learn to love him for his goodness. Finally God gives me the grace to love him simply for who he is too. When you think about it, don't we all want to be loved that way, simply for who we are, right? God's no different in that respect. He wants to be loved that way too, for who he is, not for what he does or what he gives. According to St. Bernard and William of St. Thierry, in order to arrive at the love of God, renunciation is key and the spiritual life begins with humility they say. So their spirituality highlights the different levels of renunciation to help us arrive at the goal of love. 
A medieval Cistercian monk of the time wrote this, which is actually quite beautiful when you meditate on it. He said this, he said, the road to God is easy because as one advances little by little the weight you're carrying decreases.It would be hard if while you were walking the spiritual walk the load would get heavier.You can lighten the load by, he says, abandoning everything and in the end renouncing yourself as well. It's actually beautiful to meditate on that. 
As beautiful as that is, St. Francis in his spiritual journey followed a bit of a different path. He didn't really know anything about the philosopher Plato or St. Augustine, who both gave preeminence to the good with the capital G in their thinking. In the simplicity of his approach, St. Francis followed the paths of St. John the Apostle and St. Paul, who both know that love comes from God. They both know that it's a gift from him. St. John says that the God who is love first loved us, 1 John 4 verses 8 and 19. St. Francis prayed, in his praises to God he prayed, you Lord our love, you are good, all good, the highest good. So that's kind of when you look at it that St. John and also Plato rolled into one in the prayer of St. Francis. When we love something or someone, we're really reaching out, we're reaching out of ourselves to embrace that good. We know that in us there's something of God the creator, so the love that's inside of us is actually an impulse towards the infinite. It's that fingerprint of God in us that's reaching back to its creator, reaches out to embrace the infinite good that is God. 
We say that some of us, we say that we're, or other people, or maybe us at times, we're looking for love in all the wrong places. What does it mean? It means that we're not looking to the God of love to meet the needs of our life, which is what we should be doing, right? That's the right place to look, that's where we find true love when we look to God. 
To get back to a little bit of St. Bernard and St. William of St. Terry, renunciation, yes, we say that it is necessary in the spiritual life of course, but it's only for love of God, love of the highest good, that we can say no to something which presents itself to us as a limited good. Again, why do priests and religious renounce marriage? It's not because marriage is bad, they renounce it for a greater good, which is the kingdom of God. They say no to something good in order to say yes to something better. 
And humility? Well, humility can certainly be considered the starting point, foundation of the spiritual life, but if there's no love with that, if love doesn't place in our hearts a serene trust in God's goodness and his providence and his love, then even the virtue of humility can break down and turn into discouragement and despair too. Without love, humility essentially shrivels up, it withers away, and it's only the impulse or the energy which comes from love that can help us to escape from being egocentric and self-focused. 
So God is the final and efficient cause of love, meaning that love draws us to our Creator as our goal, and love works inside of us to get to that goal at the same time. And even the natural affection that we have towards what's good, it's really basically an attraction towards God. So the source of all love is God, even when we're deceived as to the object of that love or we're not quite sure about it. If you're able to follow all of this a bit, you can see that there is a circularity to love. It comes from God, it's given to us through grace, it's meant to bring us back to God, to God who is love. 
So God loves you, and in love He redeems you through His crucified Son, and your response should be a filial love which brings you back to the Father through the blood of His Son. St. Francis said, we must love very much the love of the one who has loved, who has very much loved us. We must love very much the love of the one who has very much loved us, says St. Francis.
And as Franciscans, all of our actions should be informed and guided by the love of God which is revealed to us in Christ. We'll close with St. Francis saying in his first rule, chapter 23, this is what he says, and we'll close with this, "We should wish for nothing else and have no other desire. We should find no pleasure or delight in anything except in our Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. He alone is true God, who is perfect good, all good, every good, the true and supreme good. And He alone is good, loving and gentle, kind and understanding. He alone is holy, just, true, and right. He alone is kind, innocent, pure, and from Him, through Him, and in Him is all pardon, all grace, and all glory. Everything is in God who is love." 
So let's ask our Lady for the grace to understand love more from God's point of view as we continue with our series. 
Praise be Jesus and Mary now and forever.