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| St. Francis of Assisi seeking martyrdom before the Sultan of Egypt |
Litany of St Francis of Assisi
The "Franciscan Spirit" has become an even more paganised misnomer than "The Spirit of Vatican II." Several so called Franciscans in this state invoke St. Francis of Assisi to justify worshiping nature. It's clear that they just don't get the valiant knight of Christ or the Franciscan tradition of the Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure.
“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”
-GK Chesterton