Welcome to the Off the Page Podcast from Franciscan Media, a podcast featuring Franciscan conversations
with authors, artists, and educators.
I'm thrilled to share with you this special episode in celebration of the feast day of
St. Francis of Assisi on October 4th.
Today's guest is the president of the Franciscan School of Theology, Father Garrett Galvin.
Father Garrett Galvin, OFM, graduated from the University of California Irvine and joined
the Franciscan Friars in 1992.
He began teaching full-time at the Franciscan School of Theology in 2009.
He published his first book, Egypt as a Place of Refuge, in 2011, and David's successor,
Kingship in the Old Testament, was published in 2016.
Father Garrett has several wonderful lectures available for free on the Franciscan School
of Theology's YouTube channel.
I highly recommend checking out the channel if you're interested in theology or pursuing
a degree in Franciscan studies.
I also encourage you to visit our online store if you're interested in learning more about
St. Francis or Franciscan spirituality.
Visit shop.franciscanmedia.org and click on St. Francis in the top banner to explore our
St. Francis collection.
There you'll find several wonderful Franciscan classics by authors like Elia Delio, Murray
Bodo, and Richard Rohr, and a number of other resources exploring the Pavarello's life,
legacy, and spirituality.
One thing I really enjoyed about today's conversation is the concrete way that Father Garrett talks
about his faith and spirituality.
He's a seasoned professor.
He's an academic.
He specializes in Old Testament studies.
He's an Old Testament scholar.
But like a lot of Franciscans, he has the unique ability in this conversation to not
get too stuck in the head as I sometimes can and consistently reconnects to the heart.
In this conversation, we talked about what Franciscan renewal might look like today on
an individual and communal level, as well as how St. Francis lived out the gospel as
he followed in the footsteps of Jesus.
I really hope you enjoy this episode.
So here is Father Garrett Galvin.
Well, Father Garrett, thank you so much for joining the Off the Page podcast.
I really appreciate you being here.
Wonderful to be here.
So this episode, it will air on or around October 4th, the feast day of St. Francis.
So to start off, I was just curious, can you discuss the significance of this day and what
it means to you on a personal level?
Sure.
You know, we all kind of come to the Franciscans in different ways.
And and I just kind of got interested in St. Francis, you know, when I was in my early
20s and I read a fair bit about him and tried to learn about him and things like that.
So so I actually wrote to the Franciscan School of Theology and said, you know, that I want
to be a Franciscan.
And they kind of moved that to the appropriate people in our vocations department.
And I kind of heard back from them.
And they said, well, why don't you come up for a visit?
And so I was living in Southern California at the time and I went up to Berkeley and
Oakland and and then they asked me, have you ever met a Franciscan?
And I said, no, I've never met a Franciscan.
You know, I just know about St. Francis.
So, well, you need to meet some Franciscans.
And so so I got to meet the friars in in lots of different ways.
I saw some of our kind of urban parishes that we were working at.
I was able to visit a soup kitchen, really a very big social service agency.
I saw us working in a suburban parish and then got to learn about the friars in lots
of different ways.
Ultimately, I went to Wymus in Sonora, Mexico, before I joined the friars and worked down
there in all types of capacities.
So it was just great to kind of meet the friars and see that we were aligned and kind of what
we were interested in doing.
Yeah.
What was it when you made that call to FST and said, you know, I'm really interested
in taking the next step.
What was it exactly about the Franciscan message that led to you making that call?
It was really about Francis's commitment to peace and reconciliation.
I just wanted to kind of really throw my hat in with that.
You know, there's all different types of things going on.
And this was back in 92 in our world.
And I just wanted to be about peace.
And I was just trying to think, what's the most constructive way to do that?
And it just seemed to me the Franciscans are also about peace and wanting to recognize
the goodness in everyone and make a kind of constructive steps towards goodness rather
than towards violence or towards alienation.
Yeah.
Can you take us back to that time?
Were you beginning to sense some certain things in our culture that were kind of pivoting
away from peace?
Or what was it that kind of led to this inner stirring on your end?
Yeah.
I mean, it was really the first Persian Gulf War.
So that kind of started in 91.
And that was really just kind of what made me think about what I want to do and who I
want to be.
And, you know, and I had thought about being a lawyer.
I actually gone to law school for a little bit and just realized, you know, that I would
probably be an ambulance chaser rather than a good lawyer.
I love the book To Kill a Mockingbird.
And I said, well, that's the type of lawyer I want to be.
And in law school, I saw that wasn't going to be the type of lawyer that I would be.
And so I just could see the ideals that the Franciscans embraced.
And I really wanted to be challenged to grow in those ideals.
What was it like for you to meet your first Franciscan?
Yeah.
So it was a good experience, but it was a learning experience because you're meeting
them on your vocational journey a lot of times and they have questions for you and they're
trying to help you discern.
And to tell you the truth, like I didn't like a lot of the things I was told to discern
about.
You know, I had a very idealistic vision.
And so I needed to kind of just hear about some of their concerns and what it meant to
actually become a Franciscan.
And as friars, I think we're very good with family, but you do have to leave your family.
And this is different than other vocations where you can kind of keep closer ties.
And so for me, that was a challenge and led to, you know, some sleepless nights and things
like that.
But ultimately I needed to kind of understand the gravity of the decision and what it means
to kind of join the Franciscan movement.
And so those guys gave me some good questions and some tough things to think about and that
really helped me.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people listening, Father Garrett also sense that same kind of craving
for peace and maybe a frustration in our own culture or where we're at as a society and
being able to find that peace.
So this theme in particular, how did it speak to you the deeper you went into religious
life and the more you learned about Franciscan spirituality and Franciscan theology?
What I really enjoyed at the beginning of my vocation, even before I put on a habit,
was that I got to spend a lot of time with people that were committed to the better parts
of our world.
You know, so like I couldn't have articulated at the time, but you know, ultimately I was
working with nonprofits and I was working in the nonprofit sector.
And so I just would come across lots of volunteers who were giving up their time for something
that they were not going to get a financial reward.
And so just kind of growing up normally in college and in working, financial rewards
are important and we need those.
But to see people that are decentered a little bit from that made a great impact on me.
And so my big impression when I first came to the Franciscans was I got to spend a lot
of time now with people who were really focused on the good and it just gave me a much better
impression of the world.
I think I was a little bit cynical before I came to the friars and I got to see people
that were really willing to give as much as they could without demanding rewards in return.
Yeah.
Was it jarring at all for you to kind of be on this legal path, you know, and then all
of a sudden you're entering religious life?
Only a little bit because I think as I said, it was like the kill a mockingbird was my
legal dream.
And so at the time there was LA law going on and those types of sitcoms if people remember
them.
But I was very much focused on to kill a mockingbird.
So there was great ideals in that novel, which I think and I found those a lot of my classmates
too in law school.
So I saw a lot of people that were really trying to pursue the ideals of a more just
society and trying to help people maybe who've been left out of civil rights or left out
of other rights that we all deserve.
So I wouldn't say it was jarring.
I just realized my path was better with the friars than it would have been in a law firm
or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so then going back to the feast day, you've given us a beautiful kind of encapsulation
of your journey and you've been a Franciscan friar for over three decades now, correct?
Yeah.
So what does the, what rises up in your heart or in your mind when this feast day comes
around each year?
You know, I always just think a little bit about my journey.
I think a little bit about how we try as Franciscans and I try personally to make the marginalized
a greater part of my journey.
And I think about failures that I've had and how I've learned from those.
And probably the biggest failure I can think of was when I was first joining the friars,
I was visiting my younger brother who was a student at UC Berkeley.
And this was close to where the friars were at the time.
And we were walking up a street, I think it was Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley.
And I remember I was with a group of friends and there was kind of a young man who was
getting ready to kind of bed down for the evening, you know, in just next to a store.
And I caught his eye and he caught my eye.
And then he kind of jumped up and he was like, you can't judge me.
You can't judge me.
This was not a good Franciscan look.
I was trying to really be a friar.
And so I just started moving quick and kind of trying to brush it off.
I didn't say anything to him or something like that, but he read my heart because I
did judge him in my heart.
And so then I just tried to pursue kind of working with that population a bit more.
So a few years later I was back in Berkeley doing a master's and I had a chance to start
to work in homeless shelters.
So I worked for one year with men.
I worked another year with women and children.
And that really gave me a lot more insight.
And I think that's our Franciscan call to, you know, to a certain extent, St. Francis
before his conversion rode around on a horse.
He was a generous guy, fun loving, tossed money to the lepers.
But after his conversion, he got off that horse and he met people eye to eye and he
saw that, you know, all of these people are made in the image and likeness of God.
And that's really been a big part of my journey when I think about the feast day is just really
learning about how all these people are in the image and likeness of God and making that
real in my life.
Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, there's it's such a relatable story.
And at least for me, one of the things that keeps me coming back to the wisdom and the
Franciscan tradition again and again is just how challenging it is.
I read about Francis's response and in the way his conversion deepened in relationship
with the other where, you know, at first it's being generous, like you said, but it's from
atop his horse, you know, and then he's called to go more and more and more into authentic
relationship with this person who's very different from him.
Yeah, it's what about you?
What keeps you coming back after three decades of religious life?
What keeps you coming back to the wisdom of this tradition?
You know, there's just so many hidden gems within the Franciscan tradition and our tradition
just keeps on kind of revealing different things to me.
And so to just think about something like the incarnation, you know, and I always tell
people out here in California, do people like carne asada?
And you know, that doesn't always work in the East Coast, but everyone here knows carne
asada, you know, it's kind of a Mexican dish kind of, but that means roasted flesh, you
know, and that's C-A-R-N.
And that's the key to the incarnation, the word made flesh.
And to just keep on thinking about God's gift to us in the word made flesh and how God always
intended this gift for us.
A lot of times, and a lot of other, you know, Christian and even Catholic traditions, we'll
get that focused on sin and that the incarnation is a response to sin.
But as Franciscans, you know, we'll say, no, the incarnation is God's plan for us always.
And you know, that we're saved, you know, and we see this all the time, people walking
around in shirts, I'm saved by the blood of the cross.
And that's a true statement, but we're also saved by the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus.
And that life is so important that Jesus did not come here to be slaughtered on a cross.
Jesus came here to form communities.
And so for me to keep on kind of going back to that, to be inspired to form community,
to know how hard it is to do that, to look in the mirror and see my failures in doing
that, but to always try to kind of meet that challenge that everyone's made in the image
and likeness of God.
And we have this inherent desire to be part of community, but we have struggles with that.
And so as friars, you know, we really celebrate fraternity or community as, you know, we're
brothers to each other.
We have brothers and sisters.
And so just keep on leaning into that to me is the great challenge.
And that's what kind of keeps me coming back that I know I'm going to fail.
But each day you get up and you start again.
Yeah, I know.
Theologically, that's a huge aspect that really gripped my heart was their positive, hopeful
approach to not only in their cosmology, but the theology behind the incarnation itself.
Whereas I kind of came from conservative evangelical world, for lack of a better term, and everything
was very sin centric.
Everything was very, you know, formulaic.
This is what you have to do so that God isn't mad at you.
And in fact, God was so mad that God sent Jesus to die on a cross to fulfill his wrath.
And then to read the Franciscan approach to the incarnation.
In your words, what is the Franciscan approach to the incarnation?
Yeah, I think the Franciscan approach is going to be very much kind of grounded both in the
gospel of Luke and in the gospel of John.
I think one really important thing is to see how Jesus begins his ministry in Luke's gospel,
which is radically different than in Matthew and Mark's gospel, where Jesus begins basically
parroting John the Baptist conversion.
And there's always a place for conversion.
But our approach, I think, starts with, you know, recognizing that everyone's made in
the image and likeness of God.
So this is what Jesus does at the beginning of Luke's gospel.
He announces a year of favor of the Lord.
He announces that captives will be set free and the disabled will become fully abled and
the blind will see, the deaf will hear.
And so Jesus takes all these groups that, you know, unfortunately, even today oftentimes
get pushed to the sides that get marginalized.
And he says, you know, these are God's blessings.
And so I think we see that in Luke's gospel very clearly.
Luke's parables articulate that.
You know, in John's gospel, we just keep on hearing about how everything started with
goodness.
And so in many ways, John's gospel is a reflection of the first chapter of Genesis, where we
hear the word good seven times.
And so in Genesis, we just see this kind of combination of goodness, blessedness, and
order.
And we can see Jesus is coming to restore all those things, not that they were completely
absent, but to, you know, I've got glasses on and when I don't have my glasses on, I
can't see very clearly.
But when I put my glasses on, I like to think of that as the Franciscan lens, then I can
see, you know, the need for a focus on goodness, blessedness, and orderliness.
It's there.
But we need to be reminded of it, and Jesus came to restore that for us.
Yeah, I know you specialize in the Old Testament.
You brought up Genesis one.
Can you go deeper into that passage?
Because I know that that gets interpreted many, many different ways.
And I'd be curious what your approaches or perhaps what the Franciscan approaches to a
very fundamental passage like that.
Sure.
You know, I would say like the at the most basic, the Franciscan approach is going to
focus on Genesis one 26 through 28.
And so we'll hear Francis refer to that.
I think it's admonition and five.
And so a lot of times the technical theological jargon will be mago dei, which means the image
of God.
And so what we hear in Genesis one 26 through 120 is that we are made in the image and likeness
of God.
We are human beings, male and female are made in God's image.
And so Francis recognizes this.
And I think this gives him and this is another little bit of jargon here, but put up with
this.
I am a professor after all.
There's a positive anthropology.
So anthropology in the theological world isn't the social sciences.
It means what does it mean to be a human being?
And we can think of that in a negative way and that that we're just focused completely
on sin, that we're fallen and things like that.
And we never deny sin as friars, but we say God began, you know, with goodness, blessedness
and orderliness.
And so we're made in that image.
So that I think is a fundamental Franciscan focus.
And then I would just take that kind of maybe one step further.
And through modern biblical scholarship, we'll recognize that the first chapter of Genesis
was probably one of the last parts of Genesis to be written.
And I think that offers us an interpretive key or hermeneutical lens to read the rest
of Genesis and really the rest of the Bible, that at times we will be confronted by different
images of humanity in the Bible.
And I think we have to keep on coming back to that goodness, blessedness and orderliness,
which is such an important part of Genesis one.
Yeah.
Are there any other themes, books, passages in the Old Testament that are particularly
important to you and your own spiritual journey and your own Franciscan spirituality?
Yeah.
I mean, the Psalms are very significant for me.
So I'll often think of Psalm eight and I think that's written almost in tandem with Genesis
one.
Here we hear about humanity and it says that we're made little less than the gods.
And so again, we've got this kind of positive anthropology present.
I like to kind of think about the Psalms of flourishing.
And I think flourishing for me is a very important biblical theme that is Franciscan.
So we see this in Psalm 18.
Sorry, excuse me, Psalm eight, Psalm 19.
I like to think a lot about Psalms 51 and 104 because we have the presence of the spirit
in there and the idea of renewal.
And I think renewal is a very important Franciscan theme.
We kind of do this every day.
We have to be committed to ongoing conversion to kind of learning from our mistakes.
And these Psalms, especially Psalm 51 and 104, invite us to renewal and tell us that
the Holy Spirit is an important part of that.
So the Psalms work out very well.
I mean, I could kind of go through almost every book of the Bible and point out different
things.
We would also kind of look very carefully at the book of Micah.
I think it's Micah chapter six, verse eight that kind of invites us to walk humbly with
God.
The book of the prophet Isaiah was a great inspiration for St. Francis because we see
the suffering servant in that.
And so we know that, you know, and I think it continues today and we just heard, you
know, in church, if we were in church last couple of Sundays, this focus on what does
it mean to be great?
And oftentimes the disciples picking very conventional models of greatness.
But we see Christ picking a model of the suffering servant, of being someone who is committed
to the least in society and will oftentimes look the least.
And I think Francis was very inspired by that.
So those would be a few other touch points in the Old Testament.
Yeah, you can just go through the whole book if you want.
I'm tempted.
We have time.
You have three hours.
So I was wondering, you mentioned the positive anthropology in Franciscan spirituality.
What about some of the verses and passages that seem to indicate or that some people
use to justify more of a negative anthropology?
What would be your response?
Yeah, I, we always have to make choices when we read the Bible and there's lots of, you
know, the Bible literally means kind of a collection of books.
So we've got 39 books in the Old Testament.
We've got 20 something in the New Testament.
And so if you kind of try to kind of pick out some negative verses, you will be able
to find them.
And so this is where I always feel like we have to kind of make a decision.
What's going to be, you know, in Latin we say the abscissima verba, the most important
word for us.
And then we kind of trace that.
That doesn't mean that we don't listen to all the other words.
And we all know, certainly I know in my life, there's times when I have to hear about sin.
There's times when I have to confront the difficulties in this world.
And those are, you know, as a human being, you don't get out of that.
And it's very hard to ignore it.
I certainly can't.
But if I'm going to, at the end of the day, you know, go to verses for inspiration, I
know I want to go to Psalm 8, you know, I know I want to go to kind of Psalm 104 to
Genesis 1.
And so at Mass, in the Liturgy of the Hours, we're confronted by almost all of the Bible.
And we should be confronted by that.
And we should never try to kind of soft pedal that.
But at the same time, if we want to be inspired, I think we know, for example, I'll go to Psalm
139, where we have this kind of vision of God that knows me better than I know myself.
And that for me is very comforting and inspiring.
And that helps me to get up and kind of keep on trying to do the right thing.
Now, other people, you know, are inspired in other ways.
And there's no wrong way to be inspired when it comes to the Bible.
Just as Franciscans, I think, though, we keep on seeing where Francis is pointing us towards
human beings made in the image and likeness of God, to being able to work hands on in
very difficult situations, be that with lepers, be that with the sultan in Egypt.
What allowed him to do that?
How was he heard?
And so I think that's why it's important to recognize that there is a very good case for
a negative anthropology.
I just don't think it's a Franciscan case.
Yeah.
And I wanted to go back to one other thing you mentioned, the concept of renewal concept
feels too dry.
I mean, it's a movement.
And what does what does that look like, both on a personal and a communal level?
I mean, I know the famous story of Francis about, you know, Francis rebuild my house
for it has fallen into ruin.
I mean, this is something that is a participatory act in renewal in the rebuilding of the church.
Where does your mind go when it comes to the Franciscan approach to something as expansive
as renewal?
Yeah.
I think you kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of there's a personal dimension
to it and there's a communal dimension to it.
And so personally, you know, there's there's some days, weeks, months where you're feeling
on top of things and you just kind of have to kind of keep things going the right direction.
But then I think I certainly know personally, I'll hit a roadblock, I'll have a difficulty.
And so I know that I need to have a yearly retreat.
I need to have time to kind of pray, time to hike, time to do things that are going
to kind of help me.
And then I need to reflect, you know, every day on kind of what's right with the world
and where God's blessings are.
So I think that's where the spirit is.
And so so personally, those are all, I think, parts of renewal to, you know, like the word
in Hebrew is Hodesh, and that is related to the cycle of the moon.
So we get a new moon every kind of 28 days.
And, and that's that sense of renewal that we find in nature.
And of course, as Franciscans, creation is very important to us.
We think of the Book of Scripture, St. Father's Church will talk about the Book of Scripture
and the Book of Nature.
So personally, we have those challenges.
And then societally, we have challenges for renewal.
I think it was very clear to us a couple years ago, you know, after COVID that we needed
kind of renewal in our society.
I mean, you would listen to podcasts or others just talk about, oh, I need to practice just
being around people again, because during lockdown, we lost some of our social skills.
And we can see this very clearly in our children and the struggles that they're having in school.
You know, I have a number of friends who are teachers, and they tell me some of the grades
are a year or two behind in their social skills, because these children weren't able to relate
as groups.
We can also see that, I think, in society at large, and we can see, you know, just the
lack of trust that is in our society.
And poll after poll kind of shows us that over the last 40 years, we've moved from about
50% of people really trusting their neighbor, feeling good about others to now it's I think
it's around 32%.
And that has to be renewed.
And how do we do that?
Those are bigger questions than I can probably answer.
But we can certainly see the need for that.
And the Franciscans, I think, do have an answer to that in terms of really kind of working
with each other and kind of meeting each other eye to eye and trying to have a space for
dialogue that, you know, we're called very clearly in the Bible to love our enemy, you
know, if those that calls us to conversation to recognizing that they're made in the image
and likeness of God, and the importance of all that we're all in this together.
Yeah, there's something about at least for me, whenever you're able like Merton has the
great quote from, you know, his mystical experience at the corner of fourth and walnut that, I
mean, it's quite provocative, but he says that like, if we could just see each other
as we are, you know, the real problem would be is that we would fall down and worship
each other.
And the point is that such a positive anthropology, at least in my mind, it almost makes the space
for a dialogical dance for disagreement, for debate, for not defining someone by their
ideas and being able to say, Hey, you're, you're a child of God, and I'm a child of
God.
Am I on the right track there?
Absolutely.
You know, as Franciscans, a lot of times we'll just say a person is never a problem.
And so we have to just kind of recognize that we might not get along with people, or we
might see people at their worst.
But that is not a problem.
That is a child of God.
And we have to try to kind of come to a better understanding of people that, you know, people
might have behaviors that we don't care for.
And usually there's a pretty good reason, you know, to for that.
And so, so we try to kind of come to an understanding.
I forget who said it, but you know, to understand all is to forgive all.
And so to just keep on kind of pushing that direction of empathy, to try to understand
people better, I think is something that we desperately need now.
Yeah.
In sticking with the theme of renewal, I was curious to get your perspective on this.
I mean, we kind of talked about it on a personal level and a societal level.
I'm curious on a church level, you know, we're navigating this age in which people are generally
turning their backs on religion and the churches of their youth.
So what would you say makes Franciscan theology unique and perhaps relatable to a culture
of people who seem to be spiritually searching a culture of people that it really does seem
that on some level they're craving renewal.
Yeah.
I think what's so important for us as Franciscans is being very concrete.
You know, we see St. Francis, you know, connected with lepers, connected with the Sultan in
Egypt.
And so I think we can often have kind of abstract ideas about others and abstract teachings.
And Franciscan, I think spirituality is going to try to break through that with love.
And so I've often heard, you know, for every Franciscan question, the only Franciscan
answer is love.
So I think trying to kind of really think about what that means, trying to see how we
can kind of lead with love and, you know, trying to see people I think as God sees them.
I think that can hopefully kind of help us.
I mean, we've all had experiences, I think, in our childhood or in our young adult years
or maybe even yesterday, negative experiences of religion.
And I think that's kind of part of our journey.
But that can also spur us on to think about what does a good experience look like.
And so I think when we kind of think about the Franciscan charism, there's a wonderful
expression I've heard oftentimes about the Black church, they'll describe someone, you
know, he or she is so heavenly bound that they're no earthly good.
We want, as Franciscans, to really kind of focus on the concrete.
As I said again, you know, we are saved by the life, death, and resurrection.
And so what does that life mean?
That we're called to community, that every community is imperfect, and that if we're
in search of the perfect, we're going to be very frustrated.
But if we can kind of find a community that works well, I think that's what we're called
to.
And as Franciscans, I think we try to just kind of work with the people that come to
us to make sure that there's always a message that includes the marginalized and pushes
us, you know, a little bit maybe away from the gospel of prosperity that we can see in
our society, that you just turn on the TV and oftentimes you hear preached.
And more towards this kind of wisdom tradition that is, you know, at the heart of Franciscan
theology, where we're very much focused on living in the world, really not expecting
God to perform a lot of miracles in the here and now.
We don't see that in wisdom literature.
But knowing that God gave us a good head, that God gave us good people to work with,
and trying to kind of keep that from getting too idealistic.
Because whenever you work in community, there's going to be issues and problems.
And we just have to make sure that it's not abusive, it's not dysfunctional, and that
it's the normal range of problems.
Yeah, maybe this goes, maybe this can be connected in some way to the wisdom tradition.
But the Hebrew word you mentioned for renewal, is it Hodesh?
Yeah.
Can you go deeper into that?
It's not very often I get to interview an Old Testament scholar.
So I would love for you to break that open for us if you don't mind.
Well, I mean, the place that I would think about that the most is in Psalms 51 and 104.
And so what's so important for me there is that Psalm 51, you know, this is a very famous
Psalm that's often attributed to King David and basically David's conversion experience
after he kills Bathsheba's husband.
And he's kind of confronted by that.
Now in Scripture, we see him confronted by that, you know, by one of the prophets.
But in Psalm 51, that's all just kind of the background.
And in Psalm 51, we see the presence of the Spirit.
So in Hebrew, we have got that word Ruah, which means it can mean spirit, it can mean
wind, it can mean breath.
But we generally, we like to see Holy Spirit as part of that.
So the Holy Spirit kind of comes at the personal level and is part of this kind of realization
that I did something wrong in the past and I need to I need renewal to be the person
that God created me to be.
So we see that sense of it there in 51.
I think when we go to 104, we get a sense more of the societal dimensions and we see
a world in which creation is very good and creation can inspire us to have more trust
in God.
And I think renewal a lot of times is kind of leaving some of that cynicism behind us,
leaving some of that sin centeredness where maybe we're just focused on the sins of other
people and just kind of see, well, God made all these things good.
And Psalm 104 will kind of list things.
A lot of times it's especially focused on the Son.
And of course, in the Franciscan tradition, we'll talk about brother Son and this is created
by God.
So I think Psalm 104 just gets us focused on all the things that God created and what
they can do for us.
And when we start kind of thinking about that, I think that can lead to renewal, it can lead
to more trust because certainly in my life, I can get so focused on the difficulties and
the problems and the short followings and budgets and all those kinds of things that
what renewal I think is ultimately one of the areas that's pointing us in is abundance.
And we'll see an abundance of goodness in this world.
If we jump to the first sign in John's gospel, we see at the lowest point, this couple is
going to be embarrassed at the wedding feast of Cana because they're not able to provide
hospitality and Mary kind of nudges Jesus and says, do something here.
Jesus says, it's not my time.
Mary keeps on pushing him.
And then we have this wonderful sign.
Of course, sign is John's language for miracle in which there's an abundance of very good
wine.
And so renewal just keeps on kind of reminding us of the abundance of God's goodness in the
world that we see in nature, that we see in each other.
And we just need to kind of be reminded of that.
I think that's what renewal is all about, being reminded of the good things and being
know knowing that we can put the bad things behind us and start again.
Yeah, yeah.
Another Hebrew word there, ruach, right?
You know, wind spirit.
I got me thinking of Francis as well in his own daily kind of discipline of renewal and
how he experienced God in creation.
Like you said, I mean, he, it seems to me that he saw the spirit permeating everything,
even places that he least expected.
Can you go deeper into that?
Because I think there are some really personal kind of ramifications for giving renewal a
chance each day on an individual level by finding or maybe daring to see God's spirit
in our everyday life, in creation, in people we least expect, et cetera.
Yeah, I had a great, the great fortune last year of visiting Rome and Assisi for the first
time.
So I was summoned to Rome for meetings with the order.
And so I was like, well, I'm going to get to Assisi.
And I decided I'd take my retreat there.
And this was, you know, a really great experience and an eye opening experience because I, you
know, I'd never been there before.
And I had this kind of image of Assisi in my head and I'd seen lots of pictures of it.
But what I kind of realized was, you know, even though we call Francis, Francis of Assisi,
he was always leaving Assisi to do the things that he was best known for.
And so, you know, I was staying with a group of sisters in Assisi.
But I wanted to go down and visit, you know, Rivo Torto, which is where Francis kind of
had his primitive community.
I wanted to go down and see the sites of the leper colonies.
I wanted to go to the Port Sioncula where Francis kind of received his initial vocation.
And I had to leave Assisi and go down there to have those experiences.
Then, of course, I wanted to visit, I wanted to visit the Hermitage, we call it the carcery.
And I had to walk, you know, an hour kind of up the hill, a little bit of Mount Sibasio
for that.
And these places that I think are most acquainted with Francis were kind of outside the city.
And we can see going down to the leper colony, going down to form a community.
You know, probably this was, it would probably be too expensive to do it in the city.
This is where, you know, we get this very kind of tactile concrete sense of where Francis
found God.
Francis also spent an awful lot of time in prayer and, you know, we would say maybe on
retreat, but he would take, you know, a month or six weeks to really, you know, live the
contemplative life.
And I wasn't able to go to La Verna or some of the other places associated with Francis,
but just going up to the carcery, going up to the Hermitage, you saw this connection
with nature, this sense, you know, that you can just see God's goodness kind of very easily
in these places.
And you can get away from some of the distractions that were called to embrace.
But if we're always, you know, amidst those distractions, it can be hard.
And I think this is where the renewal is.
You go up to the carcery, you go up to the Hermitage, and then you can come back to where
all those distractions are with a renewed mind.
And you can go and spend time with the lepers or form communities.
And this is where I kind of saw Francis, you know, being centered in Assisi, but seemingly
always leaving Assisi to do the things that he's most remembered for.
Yeah, that's so true.
I never thought about that, but he really should be called like instead of Francis of
Assisi, like Francis of every other place around Assisi.
Right, right, absolutely.
And not just in the immediate kind of proximity, but I mean, La Verna is a hike.
Rome is a hike.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's very interesting.
One more kind of societal, you know, church question about renewal.
You're the president of the Franciscan School of Theology.
How do you see the world of academia and Franciscan theology?
How do you see that having an impact on renewal on a societal level and a church level?
Well, as Franciscans, you know, we're fortunate that we've spoken a lot about St. Francis,
but of course we've got St. Claire, and she gives us a spiritual tradition that kind of
builds on Francis, I think helping us think more about wisdom literature than St. Francis.
helping us think more about divinization, about, you know, how God is present within
our lives in a very profound way.
And then we can kind of turn to the doctors of the church in the Franciscan tradition,
St. Anthony of Padua, but I would think particularly of St. Bonaventure.
And then some of our other great thinkers like Alexander of Hills or Duns Scotus or
Peter John of Levy.
All of these people are going to be very much focused, and this is an academic word, but
I'll say it praxis, P-R-A-X-I-S.
And this is kind of the opposite of theory.
And this is, you know, my experience of academia is that there's a lot of very practical people.
All these institutions have to be run and we have to run them well.
And so everyone involved in academia knows the importance of practicality.
I think the Franciscan tradition, you know, in some ways kind of canonizes that and says
that whatever solutions we're coming up with, we have to remember that those are solutions
for human fulfillment.
Those are solutions for transformation.
Those are solutions for ongoing conversion.
Those are solutions that help us love God and love our neighbor.
And so we need to be kind of dealing with those kind of very practical things.
And you know, the Franciscan School of Theology is ultimately a school of ministry where we're
training people for ministry.
And you know, we live in a world right now where there's all these different kinds of
ideas about, you know, how we're going to have renewal or how we're going to be Catholics.
And you kind of see lots of different models and you'll see lots of kind of solutions,
maybe wholesale solutions that involve radical change.
But I would say, you know, as a school of theology, a school of ministry, we're into
kind of retail solutions.
And retail solutions means patience, charity, and humility, that we have to always be teaching
people how to work with those things, that we can have this kind of vision, this theory
for how we're going to be a better Catholic church.
But we need to have the skills to work with other people.
And if we're not training people to be more patient, to be more humble, to be more charitable,
and we're going to kind of really struggle with that.
So the Franciscan School of Theology, like many other schools of theology across the
country are kind of very focused on that vision.
Yeah, I love how you brought it back to the practical there because even when I was working
on my capstone thesis, I was spiraling into Bonaventure's Trinitarian Metaphysics.
And then as I was just dizzy and disoriented, I was thinking about Francis like prohibiting
his brothers from owning books in this seeming allergy that he had to knowledge and learning.
And not learning in a lived sense, but learning in a knowledge book sense.
And what would your response be to someone who pushes back and says, Francis would be,
he would not want a Franciscan School of Theology today?
Yeah, I think Francis was certainly trying to kind of make a point.
And what he really wanted was poverty with joy.
That's voluntary poverty.
We always have to recognize that poverty in and of itself is an evil.
But when someone chooses voluntary poverty, then he wants that to be found with joy.
I think Francis would be concerned, and I think we should all be concerned if we're
simply using academics or academia to kind of build up our status.
And so I'm sure he saw some of that, and that's certainly, I see some of that.
I see some of that in myself.
And so Francis was speaking with St. Anthony of Padua, a doctor of the church, and he said,
I don't have a problem with education.
It just has to be on the knees.
Meaning that we need to have piety, and by piety I mean devotion, that we're kind of
committed to love, to charity, and to humility.
And so those are the ways that I think Francis wanted people to go about.
And it's very clear when you read Francis' writings that Francis read a lot, that Francis
prayed a lot.
You know, one of the beautiful things about the Franciscan tradition is just how grounded
it is in sacred scripture.
And you aren't able to ground it in something that you don't know and something that you
haven't studied.
So it's clear to me Francis did that work, and he just wants to make sure that we're
not trying to kind of build ourselves up, but we're trying as best we can to kind of
build up a community.
So there's always going to be a struggle and a challenge with that.
But I really do believe that renewal is rooted in study, and Francis took that time away
to study scripture.
All of us are called to take time away from what we're doing in order to do it better.
And if we understand our Franciscan tradition, if we study our Franciscan tradition, we'll
see kind of 800 years of trying to kind of contextualize what we're doing.
So there's abuses.
Francis saw those abuses.
At the end of the day, he just said we need more devotion.
So I think as long as we're trying to kind of lead with love, we'll hopefully get closer
to that reality.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
I think that's a great way to kind of situate it.
And it's curious what you think about this.
But Francis's approach to ideas, I think it's very relevant today because it seems like
culturally, societally, gosh, we are addicted to our ideas, and we are addicted to certainty.
And we're addicted to feeling like we're the ones who are right in pointing the finger
at those who are wrong.
And humility got lost in there somewhere in our approach to ideas.
Any thoughts on that as it comes to renewal in our own culture and our society?
Yeah.
I think a little bit of the danger is that an idea, I think, is an abstraction.
And this is where our emphasis on praxis, our emphasis on kind of the lived reality
and becomes very important.
And so I think Francis had an idea of what it was to be a leper from the top of that
horse.
And he had a much different idea once he actually started talking to them.
And we see that Francis had an idea of, I think, what it meant to be a Muslim before
he went to Egypt and met Muslims.
And then he seems to have had a much different idea.
And he seems to have been able to recognize important parts of their culture when he went
there.
So I think ideas become concrete when they're in a person, when they're in an experience.
And so we have that kind of push to, rather than to kind of condemn abstractions, to really
think about people.
And even though there's people that I would disagree with terribly, I still have to say
that person is made in the image and likeness of God.
And there's a reason why they're saying these things.
There's been some type of hurt.
There's been some type of disregard of them.
And so I have to be able to try to hear them and then try to dialogue with them using the
gospel.
And so we see Francis doing this.
I think we see Jesus doing this beautifully with a Samaritan woman, with a Syrophoenician
woman.
And there's conflict there.
But then there's two people.
And ultimately, at the end of those stories, there's two people who see the blessing, the
goodness, and the call to orderliness in their relationship, rather than a call to chaos
and just kind of participating in these things that cause our society to be more chaotic.
And we can see that.
And for all the good, we're using technology, hopefully for good here.
But we also see that technology can be used for chaos.
And we have to, I think, fight against that.
Yeah, you mentioned patience, charity, and humility, correct?
Yeah, I mean, gosh, those are three things that we need more than ever today, it seems
like in our relationships with each other and then our own personal, but then communal
renewal.
Absolutely.
I know we're winding down here.
Anything I left out or anything else you'd like to say?
You know, I think maybe to just kind of maybe think about three things that are important
in terms of gospel living.
When one reads Francis's biographies, we start oftentimes with first, Celano.
But we also look at Francis's writings, which I think are a lot more extensive than people
realize.
We have to kind of think about, like, where do we, how does that, what does that look
like?
So, so, so Francis clearly heard the missionary discourse of Matthew, which is around Matthew
chapter 10, verses, let's say, seven through nine.
And this is, you know, a very clear call to, you know, without cost you have received,
without cost you are to give.
Do not take, you know, gold or silver or copper for you.
So we see this very concrete sense, you know, that Francis hears, don't take, you know,
gold, copper, silver.
You've received so much that you do not merit.
So without cost you've received, and then we're supposed to kind of give that back.
So there's a certain simplicity to that.
When we think about Francis, I mean, there's two verses that come to mind when we think
about simplicity.
You know, we're called in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 21 to walk in the footsteps of Christ.
So we can see a certain literalness to that that Francis tries to follow.
And that is always, I think, going to lead to community when we're walking in the footsteps
of Christ.
And then we'll hear from St. Paul into Corinthians, chapter eight, verse nine, and God chose to
become poor so that we could become rich.
So this is that kind of voluntary poverty.
And then when we think about rich, what are we thinking about in terms of richness?
You know, I think it's, you know, becoming rich in mercy, becoming rich in empathy, you
know, becoming rich in humility.
There's these calls that are important.
So we have that call for simplicity.
And Francis kind of really accentuates that.
You know, I think there's also a call to rediscover God in creation.
And so Francis will kind of refer to that call.
And the last thing that Francis seems to have written is the testament, you know, and he'll
tell us kind of very clearly, you know, for when I was in sin, it was too bitter for me
to see lepers.
And I think that means it's too bitter to be part of creation, you know, that we want
to somehow maybe have some kind of abstractions that we're part of, that we see, like Francis
saw himself as perhaps a knight and all that that role entailed, rather than to see himself
in something that God kind of clearly created.
And so there's a great focus then, you know, on ultimately, you know, seeing God in the
sacraments that are part of our life as Catholics, you know, all Christians, I think, can agree
on the sacrament of baptism and then Christians kind of expand as we go there.
But we have that kind of sacramental life.
And ultimately, the sacraments continue the divine incarnational presence in our lives.
As Franciscans, we focus very much on, let's say, how the Eucharist is in a very simple
piece of bread, and that becomes transformed.
But that's always before us.
And we can think about how Christ hid himself in the presence of an ordinary baby.
And there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, that would indicate that that baby was anything
other than ordinary.
And yet God had the humility to become that baby.
And then finally, you know, gospel living, I think, is part of, you know, the call to
radical trust and dependence on God.
And as friars, we focus on the paths to that in holiness and joyful living.
And so we have, you know, that sense of trust.
Another word for trust is faith, and we're kind of constantly called to develop that.
We see that, you know, at the heart of the gospel, and how we can trust God, how we can
be more dependent on God.
And that allows us to kind of give up and live, you know, and everyone does this in
different ways, but to live this kind of sense of voluntary poverty.
And we know that without joy, that poverty can just seem negative, that poverty can seem
kind of very forced.
And so we see Francis, you know, drawn to the gospel, I think, first and foremost.
You know, scholars will argue whether he intended on kind of founding a community that ultimately,
I think, comes out of trying to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who formed a community.
But he first heard that gospel to kind of get on the journey, to let go of those things
that were holding him back, and to have more faith, more trust in God, like Jesus had.
Now, I appreciate you bringing those three themes on gospel living kind of here to the
end of our conversation, because I think that we talked about a lot, but I think everything
we talked about goes back to those three themes in some way.
So yeah, thank you so much for your time, Father Garrett.
No, wonderful being here with you.
Keep up the good work with Franciscan communications.
I mean, it's just wonderful to hear all the different people that you're interviewing
and kind of receiving that push to lean into our Franciscan lives, our Franciscan spirituality.
Again, that was Father Garrett Galvin, the president of the Franciscan School of Theology.
If you like this conversation, I recommend checking out the Franciscan School of Theology's
YouTube channel to explore lectures from Father Garrett and many other professors there.
Or you can visit www.fst.edu to learn more about their different programs and degrees.
I recently completed the online master's degree in Franciscan theology through FST, and I
cannot recommend it enough.
My education there had a huge impact on my life and my own spiritual journey.
So thank you for tuning in.
And if you like this conversation, again, I recommend exploring our St. Francis collection
and our store at shop.franciscanmedia.org.
Thanks again to Father Garrett and FST, and thanks as well to Father Cyprian Concilio
for providing the music for this episode.
This is Stephen Copeland signing off.
Peace and all good.
I will lead you into the desert with me and tenderly speak to your heart.