Our Community'sSeraphic Spirit
The Franciscan Order is also known as the Seraphic Order. Seraphs are called the “fiery ones”, those angels closest to God, burning with love as they bow before the Most High God.
"The Seraphic Spirit consists in ardent holy love, in a heart which seeks and sees God in all things and is bent on spending itself for His honor and using all things to glorify Him."
~The Poverello's Round Table
FranciscanSpirituality
“O admirable heights and sublime lowliness!"
Two years before the death of St. Francis, our Lord appeared to him in the form of a seraph and bestowed on him the wounds of His suffering, marking him with the stigmata. Known for his ardent love of God, we address him as our Seraphic Father Francis. Seraph wings and seraphs are symbolic of the Franciscan Order.
Franciscan "Seraphic" Spirituality
Franciscan spirituality, as contained in the Franciscan tradition, is in essence Christocentric -- a practical imitation of Christ and conformity with Christ prompted by love. Emphasis is placed on the will, and hence on love and action above speculation. Distinguishing aspects of Franciscan piety are childlike love of God our Father, devotion to the Humanity of Christ, His Sacred Heart, the Holy Eucharist, the mysteries of the Nativity and the Passion, His Virgin Mother Mary, and reverence for the priesthood.
Francis had been marked with the love of Christ on Mount Alverna, where he saw a seraph from heaven imprint the stigmata on his body. He died two years later, leaving the world the Franciscan Order, which became synonymous with the Seraphic Order. To this day, seraph wings and seraphs are symbolic of the Franciscan Order.
Symbolism: The order's coat of arms is a cross with two arms, one of which is Francis' and the other Christ's. Seraph wings and seraphs are also symbolic of the order.
"O admirable heights and sublime lowliness!
O sublime humility!
O humble sublimity!
That the Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under the little form of bread!"
~Our Seraphic Father Francis
The great Franciscan, St. Bonaventure, was said to have done his theology on his knees. He put into systematic words the sublime and radical wisdom of the ‘poverello’, St. Francis, the ‘seraph’ wounded with the fire of the stigmata on Mount Alverno.
His writings emphasize love for God, intimacy with God, and the clarity of thought resulting from it. The Seraphic Doctor taught that it is not primarily the intellect that seeks God, but the will. He had a ardent love for Jesus and the Church.
Like his model, Saint Francis, Jesus was the center of everything—his teaching, his administration, his writing, and his life and he was given the title the “Seraphic Doctor.”
“If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love.
The fire is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem (Isa 31:9), fired by Christ in the ardor of his loving passion.”
~St. Bonaventure
FranciscanTheology On Our Knees
“If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine.” ~St. Bonaventure
St. Francis'Stigmata
"The fire is God..." ~ St. Bonaventure
"He, who appeared outwardly to Francis, taught him inwardly that, although weakness and suffering are incompatible with the immortal life of a seraph, yet this vision had been shown him to the end end that he, Christ's lover, might learn how his whole being was to be transformed into a living image of Christ crucified, not by martyrdom of the flesh, but by the burning ardor of his soul."
~St. Bonaventure, also known as the Seraphic Doctor
