This month, our faith is going through a similar transition. As we continue to walk through the season of Lent and then the darkness of Holy Week, we find hope in the fact that we are headed toward the rebirth and rejuvenation that comes with Easter. 

As author Mark Etling writes in his article in this month’s issue, “The Work of Justice”: “Christians believe that Jesus’ passion and death are the supreme expression of God’s love, the ultimate sign of God’s unfailing care for humanity.” We hope you have a prayerful season of Lent and a joyous Easter! 

Sin begins in the heart but often finds expression in what we do, permeating society, government, and even the Church. The social teachings of the Church show us how to push back against systemic sin. 

Catholic Social Teaching pops up everywhere, but often we don’t realize it because we think we are just reading about things like student loan debt, police brutality, Jim Crow laws, or even abuse within the Church itself. Nonetheless, these issues and many others have one thing in common: They are all related to and expressions of “structures of sin.” 

These “structures” are built on personal sin that, in turn, can permeate human institutions, making them hard to recognize—much less root out. As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (119) states: “These are rooted in personal sin and, therefore, are always connected to concrete acts of the individuals who commit them, consolidate them, and make it difficult to remove them. It is thus that they grow stronger, spread, and become sources of other sins, conditioning human conduct.” 

In short, sin begins in the heart, but it does not stay there. It gets expressed in what we do. So the things we create end up reflecting, among other things, the sins that live in our hearts. This isn’t true merely of people who make pornography or manufacturers who produce shoddy products. It suffuses everything we make, especially the globe-spanning political, social, and economic systems we create to dominate the world. 

Examples of Structures of Sin

Structures of sin are nothing new, as we see in the account of Paul’s visit to Ephesus in the earliest days of the Church (Acts 19:23–41). When Paul went to Ephesus to preach the Gospel, he did not simply threaten a religious system that worshipped Diana, the moon goddess. He threatened an entire socioeconomic and political system organized around her temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Consequently, it was not just a gaggle of random members of the cult of Diana that attacked him. It was a mob organized and spurred on by the silversmiths of Ephesus, who made their living selling Diana trinkets to pilgrims. The Gospel threatened (and in good time would eventually dismantle) a religious-economic-sociopolitical structure of sin in Ephesus that stood opposed to the kingdom of God. 

Now we—to the degree we all sin—are all idolaters just like the Ephesians because sin is the disordered attempt to get our deepest happiness from something other than God. Our Big Four in the pantheon of idols are (and always have been) money, pleasure, power, and honor. Just as the Ephesian silversmiths did, we, too, create political and economic systems to support our idols. These idolatrous systems fight against those trapped within them, including those genuinely trying to do the right thing. 

We see just such a conflict in the early United States. The Founding Fathers, who fought for the proposition “all men are created equal,” nonetheless were trapped in the structure of sin known as a “slave economy” and could not find a way to get rid of it. Result: Thomas Jefferson, the man who cowrote the Declaration of Independence and said of slavery, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever,” never freed his own slaves. 

The system of slavery helped enslave Jefferson to what his own conscience told him was the grave sin of owning slaves. This does not absolve Jefferson of his sin. After all, others of his time did free their slaves. But it remains the case that structures of sin can both blind and bind us from seeing and acting on evil that later generations (and sometimes even we ourselves) rightly regard with repugnance. They exert enormous pressure on people to acquiesce to sin while providing them with countless excuses, often against the cries of their own conscience, to do so. 

Similar situations apply today concerning a host of human institutions. A person who works, for example, for a corporation where an increase in profits is the only measure of success will be pressured and even compelled by fear of job loss to act in ways that may not be in accord with the Gospel. Institutions provide structures that guide decision-making and set up systems of rewards and sanctions. The question is whether these systems reward the good or do the opposite. 

That is why Catholic tradition insists that, in addition to confronting our personal sins, structures of sin must be battled as well, since they exert pressure on us to not repent our personal sins—and they often blind us from even seeing that these structures exist. This is a dynamic that applies in all institutions and must be confronted in all institutions—even the Church, as the clerical sexual abuse scandal abundantly illustrates. 

A Gospel Challenge

The teachings of the Gospel have challenged structures of sin many times in history, from ending murderous games in the Roman Colosseum, to the abolition of slavery, to reforming unjust labor laws, to enacting the Civil Rights Act. Such a process nearly always occurs with agonizing slowness, since it takes human beings centuries to grope toward pulling down such structures, especially given that huge amounts of money, power, and the sheer dead weight of human habit resist such change. Still, dismantling structures of sin can be done, and the leaven of the Gospel repeatedly has been kneaded into societies in order to do it. 

These changes to structures of sin usually have involved a combination of moral persuasion and the help of the state. For instance, the barbaric games in Rome ended when Christian monks confronted the cheering mobs with their own consciences by entering the arena—where for centuries people had been forced to kill each other or be mauled by wild beasts—shouting, “For God’s sake, forebear!” The brutality was outlawed by the increasingly Christianized state because citizens’ consciences could no longer endure it. For the same reason, crucifixion was banned by that same state because it could no longer bear to inflict on other human beings what it had once inflicted on the Son of God. 

In the 19th century, the great English Evangelical Anglican William Wilberforce likewise made the slave trade morally unbearable to the English conscience and, with the help of the state, abolished it. In the United States, Christian abolitionists made slavery intolerable to the consciences of many Americans before the state abolished it by force of law. A century later, the civil rights movement continued the unfinished work of the Civil War abolitionists through the moral appeal of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who helped unravel the structure of sin called the Jim Crow laws via citizen protests and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Again, this does not mean the state itself cannot be a structure of sin. It obviously can. But the state also can be an instrument for healing structures of sin. On many occasions, such healing would have been impossible without the help of the state, since it alone has sufficient power to back reform with the force of law. 

The point is this: Structures of sin make it hard to be good and often punish us for trying while blinding us from even being able to see the good. Healthy institutions, in contrast, make it much easier to do the right thing and even reward us for trying. Structures of sin are usually reformed—or, where necessary, dismantled—through good actions by each person, together with good statecraft and just laws. 

From Sin to Solidarity

The Compendium (193), a landmark 2004 document summarizing the Church’s body of social teaching, is clear about what is required to change structures of sin:  

They must be purified and transformed into structures of solidarity through the creation or appropriate modification of laws, market regulations, and juridical systems [emphasis added]. 

In short, nonstate efforts to effect change (e.g., boycotts of corporations that support abortion or use child slaves, or mass marches against police brutality) are wonderful, but very often it is necessary to change legal, political, social, and economic structures by the force of law as well. Here, not just the citizen but the state bears a responsibility. 

This does not relieve individuals of responsibility for solidarity or the common good. Indeed, attempts to effect change merely by force of law without winning the consciences of most of the citizenry can often be doomed, as Prohibition demonstrated. Therefore, since the state neither can nor should do a great deal of moral formation, the responsibility falls squarely on our shoulders as good citizens, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, workers, and employers to make it our personal and hands-on business to love our neighbors by teaching them. This is particularly true under a system of government where citizens elect representatives who create the laws. After rendering his taxes unto Caesar, Jesus (who was so poor he had nowhere to lay his head) still found plenty of opportunities to go about doing good. We should do the same. 

The Church’s insistence on solidarity is often deeply threatening to much of Western—especially American—culture, but it is key to destroying and transforming structures of sin. 

Take, as one example, the vast structure of sin called student loan debt, which impedes people from starting families and eats up the prosperity of Americans. Many complain about forgiving it, asking why we should bear the burden of debt for others. Yet this is to forget that we live in a permanent relationship of debt to God, to all who come before us, and to all who come after us. We also owe a debt to all who came before us and to the vast interconnecting web of relationships that sustains us at this very hour. 

We owe this debt because Jesus has commanded us to love one another as he has loved us. That is how our debt is repaid: By paying it forward to our neighbor, we love the God who needs nothing from us and to whom we can give nothing that is not already his. 

The Compendium (195) calls us to “the willingness to give oneself for the good of one’s neighbor, beyond any individual or particular interest . . . so that humanity’s journey will not be interrupted but remain open to present and future generations, all of them called together to share the same gift in solidarity.” 

Through this gift of solidarity, we can dismantle the structures of sin so that, by the grace of God, his kingdom can come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  

His is a Franciscan legacy—one marked by love, laughter, peace, justice, and inclusivity. Three authors reflect on Father Richard Rohr’s impact on them and spiritual seekers everywhere. 

With Love and Gratitude

By Pauline J. Albert, PhD 

I am frequently asked how I can remain Catholic given the many missteps of the Church’s leaders. My answer has evolved, largely because of all that I have learned from the mystics and a few modern-day prophets. The most important of my prophets is Father Richard Rohr. From an early age, around 8 or 9, I had a major problem with the story of a wrathful God and the teaching that Jesus died to atone for our sins. It just didn’t make sense to me. From Father Richard I learned there was an alternative story promulgated by Franciscan theologians—that Jesus did not come to atone for the sin of Adam and Eve and the rest of humankind, but rather he came due to God’s immense love. Jesus came to show us how to love. Now, that I can get behind. 

I am a social scientist, and my focus is human and spiritual development. Social scientists do their research based on empirical evidence. We are careful about examining theories and assumptions, and developing hypotheses based on observation and measurement of directly experienced phenomena. It has been a long journey to grow in my faith, not rely on what I was told to believe, and search for deeper meanings. 

After many years of reading and prayerful reflection about these two different stories about why Jesus came, I realized that all of theology is theory—a sense-making device—developed by humans to “make sense” of Jesus’ life on earth. Is this not what Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi did? They prayed and contemplated the Gospel and lived out of this sense that imitating Jesus and loving all of God’s creation was “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). 

Thus, with good conscience, I have come to live out of the Catholic love story rather than the sin story—or theory. I have Father Richard to thank for breaking open this story, for breaking me open to embrace the incarnation—that is, Jesus’ incarnation as well as my own and that of my fellow human beings. Father Richard’s magnum opus, The Universal Christ, teaches that with love, people heal from pain, injustice, and life’s many twists and turns. People do not heal from being shamed over their missteps. I know that from both experience and extensive empirical research. 

We live in a time where there is a desperate need for love, compassion, and healing. Jesus, as well as Francis and Clare of Assisi, are exemplars of these virtues. I’d like to close with a story that exemplifies the importance of shifting our perspective and living out of love. 

Bullying is a terrible problem in our schools. In a recent podcast, I learned about Aaron Stark. His TED Talk describes how he was so bullied in school that he had begun to plan a school shooting. He was ready to go, when his best friend invited him to his home for a snack. The podcast gave more detail about his best friend, whom Aaron thanks in the TED presentation. The best friend’s mother invited Aaron over to eat pie that she had baked especially for him. That experience of validation and love from Aaron’s friend and his mother convinced him to change his mind and not shoot his fellow students. Aaron’s central message in his TED Talk is, “We have to give love to the people we think deserve it the least.” 

Because of Father Richard I think about how my actions each day can support the healing of people’s woundedness. 

Pauline J. Albert, PhD, is a writer, teacher, and research practitioner who contributes widely to St. Anthony Messenger and to Franciscan Media. 

My Three-Step Waltz with Brother Richard

By Anne Lamott 

I converted to Christianity in 1985 at a tiny progressive sanctuary church in Marin City, California, despite having been raised by highly intellectual atheists. I got clean and sober in 1986. So there was a gap year, where I came to church sick and probably smelly, longing for knowledge of this higher power my pastor preached about, some sort of loving energy that animated all of life, surrounding, co-creating, indwelling, the Love who had worn sandals. 

My pastor frequently quoted Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, the radical treatise on how to develop and nurture a deeply contemplative and mystical way of life. For that last year of active alcoholism, I had Thomas as my companion. Thomas helped bring me to Jesus, to the risen Christ, and, by some mysterious spiritual Rube Goldberg machination, this led me to Richard Rohr. 

The first book I read of Richard’s was Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go, which I knew by then was the third step in my 12-step recovery program. Letting go! Ugh. Not my strong suit. I’ve heard 12-steppers say that everything we let go of has claw marks on it, and yet practicing letting go really does make doing so somewhat more possible. Let go, or get dragged, right? So Rohr’s beautiful meditation and exhortation was my Bible, his voice always so wise and genial, never dogmatic or preachy—and so real. 

And ever since, so many of his books and writings have hit the spot in my deepest inside places, at my hungriest for spiritual truth and the kindness that is Richard Rohr’s stock-in-trade. I have read Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent every Easter, every year since 2010. Listen to this: 

“There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless and empty. You need both of them to keep you going in the right direction. Lent is about both. The first such moment gives you energy and joy by connecting you with your ultimate Source and Ground. The second gives you limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, so you keep seeking the Source and Ground and not just your small self.” 

That is all I ever need to remember on any given day, the ultimate condensation of the first three steps, or the Three-Step Waltz, as we call it: I can’t; God can; I think I’ll let God. I am powerless over people, places, and things, unable to save or fix or rescue anyone, including myself. But God can, through the movement of grace in our lives, grace as beloved community, grace as spiritual WD-40. So maybe, because of the Gift of Desperation, I’ll let God. It was God as the Gift of Desperation that ultimately got me sober. Later, Good Orderly Direction helped guide me, and just yesterday, Grace over Drama helped me once again release my grown, clean, and sober son to his own hero’s journey (Thank you, Jesus.). 

I could have just kept reading Wondrous Encounters over and over for all my needs and questions to be met. And yet, the following year, Breathing Under Water was published. This masterpiece was a merge, a marriage of the 12 Steps and the Gospel message to all who are broken, addicted, and scared. He writes, “Stinking thinking is the universal addiction.” This is one of the most stunning, succinct, and profound sentences I’ve ever heard. And this is indeed a book for anyone and ev-eryone who cannot stop creating trances and numbness via alcohol, drugs, sex, workaholism, or toxic obsessive thinking. (I once took the Alcoholic’s 20 Questions on Drinking, only I substituted the word Thinking for Drinking: “Has thinking ever damaged your primary relationships? Has thinking ever interfered with your work life? Do you ever think alone?” I got all 20 right. I was clearly a “thinkaholic”.)

“We are all spiritually powerless, however,” Rohr writes in Breathing, “and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book [Breathing Under Water] to everyone. Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking.” 

Over the years, I’ve read many of Richard’s articles and papers on peace and justice, evolutionary love, radical self-love, suffering and new life, eco-spirituality, and absolute inclusivity, all bathed in our union with the Cosmic Christ, God’s astonishing maternal love for the world. But I always return to Breathing Under Water, where the Gospel meets the 12 Steps, through the heart and words of this incredibly sweet Franciscan. Richard shows the reader that the 12-step program “parallels, mirrors, and makes practical the same messages that Jesus gave us.”

_{^{“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living.
We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
―Richard Rohr}}

Here is the union of the two: 
We suffer to get well. 
We surrender to win. 
We die to live. 
We give it away to keep it. 

The title Breathing Under Water comes from a poem about overwhelm and surrender by Carol Bieleck, RSCJ, the last lines of which read: 
“And I knew then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning. 
That when the sea comes calling you stop being neighbors 
Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance, neighbors 
And you give your house for a coral castle, 
And you learn to breathe underwater.” 

As a 12-stepper who has known degradation, hopelessness, self-loathing, and resurrection, who has given her house for a coral castle most days and who has learned to breathe underwater, one day at a time, occasionally gulping, gasping, and spluttering, I’ve learned that the secret to life and serenity begins with the third step, where we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we each understand God. The care of God! The care of God, rather than the voice of addiction, the superego, the Enemy? How? 

I recommend you read the book with a highlighter beside you. You will highlight something in every chapter—about powerlessness, the raging ego, hope, surrender, salvation, setbacks, grace, making amends, and opening our hearts to bright, cooling ribbons of cosmic and earthly love, the very reason we are here. 

If you or a loved one has suffered or are suffering the slavery and humiliation of addiction, this book is a blueprint for freedom, new life, a path with a little light to see by, the coral castle. As we read in Alcoholics Anonymous’ The Big Book (words that Richard Rohr might easily have written): 

“Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny. May God bless you and keep you—until then.” 

As we often tell newcomers at our meetings, “Give it a try, and if, after a month or so, you are not feeling happier and more peaceful, we will gladly refund your misery.” 

And if you do give the path described in Breathing Under Water a try, buckle up, because Brother Rohr may just take you to places you’ve both avoided and longed for, to truth, union, joy, laughter, and, greatest of all, to your own precious self, here on earth with us, child of God. 

Anne Lamott is a New York Times best-selling author of novels and nonfiction and an inductee into the California Hall of Fame. She lives in northern California. 

The Genius of the And

By Brian D. McLaren 

A few months ago, Richard and I were having dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in Albuquerque. 

“A lot of people think of you as ‘the contemplation guy,’” I said, “and little more.” 

“Yes, I think you’re right,” he replied. 

“I think you’re so much more,” I said, which gave me a chance to share with him how I have come to understand him and his work. 

Getting a chance to share with him like this was especially poignant. 

Over recent decades, Richard has survived multiple bouts with cancer. Last year, yet another form of cancer was spreading through his body. Over the summer, he was so frail that many of us suspected he was near the end. Fortunately, after the new cancer was discovered, the treatment had given him a burst of energy, which made it possible for us to have a meal and evening of conversation. 

I told Richard that I felt he is a lot like Thomas Merton. What Sue Monk Kidd said of Merton (in her 2007 foreword to New Seeds of Contemplation) applies equally to Richard: He is “multifaceted, complex, even self-contradictory, meaning he [is] able to hold within his extravagant personality a wide range of ambiguities, paradoxes, and selves.” 

Richard often says that the most important word in the name of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) is the and. In other words, what Richard has been about has been to hold multiple realities in creative tension. Where people normally insert a versus, Richard inserts an and. 

Five examples come immediately to mind, beginning with action and contemplation. 

Contemplation, the art of “seeing things whole” and “meeting all the reality we can bear” (as Richard often describes it), is beautiful, groundbreaking, and absolutely necessary in our fractious world today. But without action, contemplation can become yet another pastime of the privileged, adding the prize of personal peace and inner happiness to all their other luxuries. Like Sts. Francis and Clare, Richard instinctively links the inner journey with the outer, the pursuit of inner peace with peace in the world at large, and quiet serenity with the often noisy struggle for justice. 

Richard has consistently integrated spirituality and psychology. Years ago, as he worked with men in prison, he realized that nearly all of them had deep inner wounds that needed to be understood. In the years since, by incorporating the insight of Carl Jung, the Enneagram, and many other psychological resources, Richard has been eager to integrate psychological health with spiritual growth, and vice versa. 

More broadly, Richard has been committed to integrating faith and science, and especially ecology. It’s no wonder that he, like fellow Franciscan Ilia Delio, OSF, takes physical creation so seriously, calling it the original Bible, God’s first self-revelation. 

From exploring new understandings of quantum entanglement to taking delight in a majestic cottonwood tree to pondering the vast wonder of an expanding universe, Richard sees the glory in every this, every that, echoing the “Canticle of the Sun.” 

More broadly still, Richard has integrated simplicity and learning. He has embodied a creative tension that runs deep in the Franciscan movement, holding together both the moral simplicity of Francis and Clare and the intellectual brilliance of Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. To be simple, you don’t have to be stupid, Richard knows. In fact, intellectual curiosity and humble simplicity go perfectly together. 

Finally, also echoing Francis and Clare, Richard has devoted himself to both institutions and movements. He is leaving a legacy—a center, which is a young institution. But if you spend much time around the CAC, you’ll hear folks talking about the larger movement the institution exists to serve—a movement that lives out Franciscan values, Jesus values, Gospel values. 

On a recent Zoom call, someone asked Richard what his “love language” was. Words, touch, quality time, gifts, and acts of service all had their place, he said. But what matters most to him is when people care about the things he cares about and join in that good work. For me and so many of us, that means being about the and. 

Brian D. McLaren is the dean of faculty for the Center for Action and Contemplation. He and his wife, Grace, have four adult children and five grandchildren. 

That is when the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Francis, released the declaration Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust). In the document, the dicastery and Pope Francis addressed the blessing of same-sex couples, a question they said has been posed by cardinals a number of times. The words same-sex couples and blessing together in any context are trigger words for some. People hear them together and minds shut and defenses go up, even before reading the document. We live in a world where we read headlines and think we have the whole story. We don’t. We need to go beyond the headline. 

In the introduction, Cardinal Víctor Fernández, prefect of the dicastery, notes that the document “implies a real development from what has been said about blessings up until now, reaching an understanding of the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” 

Pope Francis and the dicastery made it very clear—time and time again—throughout the document that a blessing is not the same as legitimizing a same-sex marriage. In fact, I’m not exactly sure how they could have made it any clearer. 

An Immediate Response

Yet, despite that, almost immediately there was pushback. The bishops’ conference in Malawi said that “blessings of any kind for same-sex unions are not permitted in Malawi.” Various bishops in the United States issued statements regarding the document. And though most welcomed the document, some also restated Church teaching as if to head off any backlash. 

A few weeks after the release of the document, the dicastery doubled down on the statement’s message, saying that “prudence and attention to the ecclesial context and to the local culture could allow for different methods of application, but not a total or definitive denial of this path that is proposed to priests.” Whether that directive is followed, however, remains to be seen. 

More Blessings, Not Fewer

The reality is, though, no matter how many statements are issued or what the dicastery or Pope Francis says, there are still going to be clergy and laity who will equate a blessing for a same-sex couple with somehow affirming same-sex marriage. It does not. Yet, trying to make people understand that seems to be a Herculean task. The British province of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy issued a statement saying, “We see no situation in which such a blessing of a couple could be properly and adequately distinguished from some level of approval.” 

So it doesn’t appear as if anyone—not even Pope Francis—is going to change people’s minds, no matter how many times it’s stated that blessings are for all and don’t change Church teaching. I will challenge you: Read the document. And read it with an open mind and heart. 

Perhaps Cardinal Fernández said it best when he wrote: “This world needs blessings, and we can give blessings and receive blessings. The Father loves us, and the only thing that remains for us is the joy of blessing him, and the joy of thanking him, and of learning from him . . . to bless. In this way, every brother and every sister will be able to feel that, in the Church, they are always pilgrims, always beggars, always loved, and, despite everything, always blessed.” 

Certainly, that’s something we can all get behind.

There is a beautiful depth to the word panting. After a strenuous run or hike, I might find myself panting heavily, but my body continues breathing nonetheless, almost reaching into the deepest parts of myself (and the world around me) for air. In prayer, we let ourselves come to God imperfectly, pantingly, yet in this honesty about our condition, we are becoming even more dependent upon our source—the very spirit that dwells within each of us. In this sense, we can think of prayer as the human heart gasping for the inner life-source of spirit, a rich inner movement into vulnerability. 

One of the many things I love about the Franciscan tradition is its unashamed acknowledgment of anxiety and lack as fundamental realities of the human condition. Shallow religion often fails to guide us inward and instead offers false promises of wholeness and completeness that mask our inner division and conflict. Our post-religious age is full of secular religions that often make similar promises, whether it be a political ideology, exercise program, or meditation regimen. The early Franciscans, like the Gospel writers, felt no need to hide the frailty and messiness of the human condition. 

Theology of a Poet 

Bonaventure and Francis each came to La Verna with aching hearts and heavy minds. Anxious over the future of the Franciscan Order as its rapid growth continued to create organizational headaches, Bonaventure carried the weight and fear of institutional collapse when he made a retreat to La Verna and commented that he was “panting after peace.” Francis, in his final visit to La Verna, arrived in a similar inner state. As the order organically grew beyond Francis’ control, he became anxious over its future as he neared the end of his life. It was during this time at La Verna that Francis is said to have received the stigmata, which he hid from his brothers until he died. Bonaventure, too, emerged from La Verna with a “thorn in his flesh,” accepting the future of the order as his own responsibility. 

Franciscan spirituality has a visceral and experiential dimension that the study of theology sometimes lacks. For Francis and Bonaventure, theology was not meant to remain in the head as ideas, where I often like to keep them. For them, the heart and senses became conduits for experiencing the divine beyond the mind. 

My dear friend and mentor, Father Dan Riley, OFM, recently shared with me a story about Francis I had never heard. Francis, perhaps feeling lonely or questioning his decision to remain celibate, slipped into doubting the lifestyle and path he had chosen. So, Francis decided to go outside into the wintry cold and carve into the snow sculptures of a spouse and two children. While doing this, he realized his life had unfolded as it was supposed to. He then apologized to the snow people for being unable to take care of them. 

On the surface, this story may sound absurd. But Francis was all heart. Often that meant basking in the beautiful, but in being so in touch with his heart, he found anxiety and lack sometimes swirling around there as well. Francis leaned into these complexities. He brought them to God in prayer. He made snowmen. 

So often in my panting I can slip into self-condemnation. How are you not past this already? I might ask myself. Why are you like this? Why can’t you let this go? Francis does not beat himself up in this story. He does not tell himself he should be past these thoughts of wanting a family or shame himself for this very human moment of wanting something different with his life. He engages the vulnerability of the moment and gets his hands dirty, or, in this case, snowy. In panting there is a prayerful movement through the complicated contours of the heart. 

I did not have a mystical experience as Francis and Bonaventure did when I visited La Verna, but it was fitting that when we reached the top of the mountain, almost 5,000 feet above sea level, we could not even see the splendor of the sight below. We had risen above the thick blanket of fog. All we could do was watch the fog slowly move beneath us. 

The Breath of God

God, I am fearful of the tensions within myself. 
I prefer to distract and escape rather than bring my anxiety and lack to the surface. 
I want my heart to be fully alive in you but am afraid to let go of control. 
I suppose I am afraid to move. 
Will you enter the emptiness as I pant for air? 
Will you fill me with your breath? 

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Many cinephiles cite Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s performance in the titular role as the greatest ever rendered to film. Perhaps a more realistic statement would be to call it the first truly great performance in film history. Without the benefit of sound, Falconetti conveys Joan’s anguish, fear, pain, and passion almost entirely through her careworn eyes. The result is a performance that is both of its time and years ahead of it. Defiant while always affixed on God, the actor showcases a world of hurt without an audible word. 

The Women (1939)

It’s chatty, catty, and endless fun. The Women—about a group of upper-crust New York socialites who gossip, console, and cajole each other through life’s messes—is in its way revolutionary because the title doesn’t lie: Not a single male actor is seen in the film. The result is a madcap celebration of womanhood and how friendship can mend a broken heart. The cast of Hollywood legends chew the scenery with relish. Just enjoy. 

All About Eve (1950) 

Perhaps no film of its time has better portrayed the painful journey of aging in the public eye quite like this 1950 classic. Bette Davis, in her greatest screen performance, plays a Broadway legend who wages a winless war against time (as well as a scheming assistant bent on replacing her). Thanks to its Oscar-winning script, the film is really a study of how ego and ambition will inevitably interfere with happiness. 

The Color Purple (1985)

Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel—and its slew of adaptations—tackles poverty, agency, and domestic violence, and it still packs a punch 40 years on. Featuring a cast of luminaries, this timeless tale looks at a group of southern women of color in the first half of the 20th century who band together for emotional support. Whoopi Goldberg is career-defining as Celie, a woman who overcomes abuse, illiteracy, and neglect to reclaim her self-worth. A Tony-winning Broadway musical, and last year’s well-received remake, prove the story’s relevance. But the original is still the gold standard. 

Aliens (1986)

Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) cemented Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as an action film superstar. But it was James Cameron’s sequel seven years later that made her an icon. In this go-around, she begrudgingly leads a ragtag group of Marines—accompanied by a young girl who rouses Ripley’s maternal instincts—in exterminating an infestation of extraterrestrials. Not for the squeamish, Aliens is a cinematic roller coaster, but at its heart is Ellen Ripley: flawed, fiery, and tenacious in her ability to protect and serve. 

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Author Thomas Harris’ greatest creation was not, in fact, the doctor with a craving for fava beans and census takers. For my money, it was Clarice Starling, the brilliant but untested FBI trainee who matches wits with one killer to catch another. Brought to life by Jodie Foster, Clarice was ’90s cinema’s most impactful feminist crusader. Though crudely sexualized by males throughout the film, Clarice rises above the limitations put in front of her for the sake of justice—and the actor won an Oscar for her efforts. 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Can a feminist anthem live in concert with a martial arts odyssey? In the hands of director Ang Lee, it’s a resounding yes. More than two decades before Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, she was paired with the equally mesmeric Chow Yun-fat as two warriors on a quest to retrieve a legendary sword. The balletic action sequences aside, the film is a Western-inspired tale of personal freedom and societal expectations. Supported by the dazzling Zhang Ziyi as a governor’s daughter on her own quest for independence, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an exquisite plunge into the power of womanhood. 

Whale Rider (2002)

If you haven’t seen this sleeper from New Zealand, you’re missing a modern-day fable about a Māori girl who bucks convention and expectation to fight for her rightful place among her people. Set in the present day but so infused with mystery and whimsy that it could qualify as a fairy tale, Whale Rider doesn’t pander to its audience. Director Niki Caro is far more interested in a three-dimensional portrait of a latter-day Joan of Arc Jr., who defies an oppressive patriarchy to be the leader she is destined to become. 

Wild (2014) 

On the surface, this Reese Witherspoon vehicle is about a woman’s journey of grief and healing. But a closer look yields another layer. Witherspoon, also the film’s executive producer, gives the performance of her career as a woman who hikes the Pacific Crest Trail (2,650 miles) to find herself after the death of her mother and descent into destructive behavior. It’s heavy-going, though at its center, it is a simple story about damaged souls and the women who love them through it.