Francis with Jon Sweeney

Everything Belongs: Living the Teachings of Richard Rohr Forward

Center for Action and Contemplation

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 723 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do we put the genius of St. Francis to work in our own lives? In this final episode of our Third Season, Richard takes us through Chapter 13 of Eager to Love, "Francis: A Natural Spiritual Genius". Mike, Drew, and Paul then engage in a rich conversation with author Jon Sweeney, who shares his journey of writing about St. Francis and how it has shaped his understanding of compassion and sensitivity in daily life. The discussion emphasizes the importance of navigating the complexities of living out spiritual values in a world filled with challenges. Sweeney highlights the radical love inherent in Franciscan spirituality and the significance of daily practice in living out these principles. The conversation also touches on Francis' critique of social structures and his solidarity with the suffering of the world, culminating in the emotional depth of his teachings that intertwine love and wound. Jon M. Sweeney is an award-winning author and independent scholar. His books on Franciscan spirituality have sold a quarter million copies. He’s also the author of forty books on spirituality, mysticism, biography, and memoir including Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, coauthored with Mark S. Burrows and, Thomas Merton: An Introduction to His Life and Practices. Jon is religion editor at Monkfish Book Publishing, editor of Living City magazine, and the book reviewer at SpiritualityandPractice.com. Hosted by CAC Staff: Paul Swanson, Drew Jackson, and Mike Petrow Resources: Grab a copy of Eager to Love here. The transcript for this episode can be found here. Pick up a copy of Jon's book, The Complete Francis of Assisi: His Life, The Complete Writings, and The Little Flowers, here. Find Jon's book, St. Francis of Assisi: His Life, Teachings, and Practice, here

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit
0:05.4	cac.org.
0:07.6	Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Everything Belongs. Today, we are thrilled to wrap up our season by
0:13.4	talking about Chapter 13, Francis, a natural spiritual genius. I'm joined here by Drew Jackson.
0:20.4	Drew, good to see you. How are you doing
0:22.1	today? Doing well, Paul. Doing really well. It's good to be with you. It is always good to be
0:27.1	together. And here we are wrapping up this season of everything belongs with this final chapter.
0:34.3	And something that I was ruminating on as we were beginning to wrap this season was we
0:39.6	know that our next season is going to be focused on Richard's new book, The Tears of Things,
0:45.0	prophetic wisdom for an age of outrage, which feels like a nice next step coming from Francis.
0:52.0	Because with Eager to Love, we knew we wanted to prioritize this conversation,
0:57.5	the series, because it is the lineage that Richard draws from.
1:02.5	Francis is Richard's spiritual father, and we at the CAC are swimming in those same waters of lineage
1:10.1	and seek to exemplify and live this out and
1:13.9	teach from this lineage in our own particular way. And so we can see ourselves in the work of the
1:20.1	CAC being connected to Richard, being connected to Jesus, being connected to Francis. The radicality
1:26.9	of this work does not begin with Richard, does not
1:29.4	begin with Francis, but we can see it as the core tenet of who Jesus is and how Jesus lived
1:35.4	from this place of unitive connection. And we have these nuggets in the Gospels, these nuggets in
1:41.5	Francis, these nuggets in Richard and others, of course,
1:51.5	about how we might live in this way that is steeped in the love of Christ for the love of neighbor with the love of the world. And Francis is just such a great lightning rod for how we talk about
1:58.6	this. And so as we wrap up this season, I can't help but think of what a
	...

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