Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we're continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality, talking about the importance of the Church and specifically St. Francis's reverence towards the clergy and the hierarchy in God's Church, the Living Magisterium. Francis's profound devotion for the priesthood grew in his life as he began to contemplate Christ operating in the various levels of the hierarchy. This type of reflection and contemplation gave St. Francis the impression of coming even closer to Christ Himself, to Christ essentially living in His Church.
When we talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the gifts that He gives to the Church, for the most part we can categorize them as three different types of gifts. There are sanctifying gifts, there are charismatic gifts, and hierarchical gifts. The sanctifying gifts are the ones that make you holy, so they are geared towards personal holiness. That includes sanctifying Grace, the sacraments, theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit which are wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, piety, fortitude, fear of the Lord. Every one of us to some degree or another has the three theological virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. We receive them when we were baptized and we all have access to the sacraments. We can all pray, we can do good works, all these help us to grow in personal holiness and happiness and joy and love and all the other fruits of the Holy Spirit.
The charismatic gifts are gifts given for the common good, as Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, meaning that they are given for serving others and for building up the Church. St. Paul clearly speaks of the charismatic gifts in his New Testament writings. More recently, the Vatican II document "Lumen Gentium," paragraph 12, speaks of them as well. Priests, religious, and lay people can all have different charismatic gifts, and they aren't just natural gifts that people have or natural talents. These are gifts that are given by the Holy Spirit.
The hierarchical gifts are the gifts which come from the sacrament of Holy Orders. It includes the clergy's God-given, Christ-given, Spirit-given power to govern the Church, sanctify her, and teach. So it includes the power to forgive sins, the power to transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and the ability to evangelize and exercise spiritual authority. So the sanctifying gifts are the ones that make you holy, charismatic gifts are more for serving the Church, the hierarchical gifts are what make us the Church, the Body of Christ. Without the hierarchy, there would be no Church, so we should be very careful about how much we criticize the hierarchy. They are our spiritual parents essentially.
And believe it or not, Saint Francis was not one to attack or undermine or be at odds with the hierarchy. In the bishops and in the Holy Father, Francis first considered their sublime dignity. He wanted to love and venerate them, he said, one because of their consecration to God and two, mostly because of the great dignity with which they were invested. To a messenger who ordered him to present himself to the ecclesiastical tribunal, Francis responded saying, "I will appear before the Lord Bishop because he is the father and Lord of souls." Saint Francis wanted his Friars to have recourse to the local Bishop always and in everything, the Bishop whom Saint Francis said is the father and Lord of Souls. He also said that his brothers must love the Holy Father and observe, venerate, and follow the faith of the Holy Roman Church in which alone is found Salvation, as Francis would say.
Saint Francis's was a filial veneration that was full of simplicity and love more so than fear. One time finding himself in Rome, Cardinal Ugolino obtained for him permission to preach to the Holy Father who was at that time Pope Honorius III, and Francis preached to him and to the cardinals as well. Thomas of Celano, his biographer, relates the episode saying that Francis began to speak without fear and not being able to contain his joy to find himself in their presence. When he spoke, says Celano, he moved his feet almost jumping up and down, not as a joke but as one who burns with the fire of Divine love, and not exciting laughter but rather exciting tears of compunction from his hearers, so tears of remorse and sorrow for their sins.
Saint Francis opens his rule with a solemn promise to fidelity to the Church and to the Pope, and he closes the same rule with the exhortation to his brothers to "always be subject and submissive at the feet of the same Holy Church." He's actually the first in the history of religious founders to ask the Pope for a Cardinal Protector as a link between the Holy See and his order, Cardinal Protector who would be the governor, protector, and corrector of the order, as he writes, so the Friars, poor and humble men as they are, would not directly address themselves to the Holy Father, such a high Majesty as he is, as Saint Francis would say.
So again in this spirit of Franciscan tradition, we need to be humble and respectful and obedient to the Living Magisterium, and we need to be working in union and communion with them, not in opposition to them. On certain issues, with some pastors and even bishops, we can have different theological opinions and different prudential judgments as well too, but as far as our opinions go, but that doesn't mean that we undermine or attack or detach ourselves from the Church's Authority because not only are we no longer Franciscan when we do that, but we're no longer Catholic either. 
And it's not enough to say "I'm faithful to the perennial magisterium." That's a wonderful thing. You also have to be faithful to the Living Magisterium. Sometimes that phrase "perennial magisterium" is used like a code word for rejecting Vatican II or rejecting the Magisterium of Pope Francis, two things that faithful Catholics can't do and still call themselves faithful.
So let's ask Our Lady then for the Grace to stay grafted into the vine which is Christ, which is the Body of Christ, which is His Church, and let's ask her for the grace to have a supernatural vision of the Church and to give respect and deference to those who exercise authority in her.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.