One of the foundational charisms of St. Francis of Assisi was the way he integrated contemplation and action. Early on, he is attracted to contemplation and to living in silence out in nature. But he’s not sure if this is what God wants him to do. So Francis sends two brothers to Sister Clare and Brother Sylvester to ask each one to pray for an answer: should he live in prayerful seclusion, or should he travel through Italy and minister to people as a preacher?

When the brothers return, Francis is ready to do whatever they say. Both give the same reply: Clare and Sylvester each said that it was God’s will “that the herald of Christ should preach.” Francis gets up, and quickly takes to the roads in obedience to God. [1]

Francis’s eagerness to serve God by preaching did not limit his deep love for meeting God in prayer. When he needed rest from the crowds who gathered to hear him, it was customary for Francis “to divide the time given him . . . to spend some of it to benefit his neighbors and use the rest in the blessed solitude of contemplation.” [2]   

Father Richard describes how Francis desired the same combination of contemplative and active ministry for his friars:

The Franciscan worldview is that the Christ is everywhere. In fact, this was my Bachelor of Arts thesis in college. I wrote it on the quote from Francis where he says, “Don’t speak to me of Benedict; don’t speak to me of Augustine! The Lord called me to a different way.” [3]

Francis didn’t need to create a monastery, as the Benedictines and Augustinians had done. He didn’t want us to be enclosed monks. He wanted us to be friars, living in the middle of the people. To this day, Franciscan friaries are in the heart of most major European cities.

Over thirty-five years ago, when we named our organization the Center for Action and Contemplation, I was just being a good Franciscan. It was St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) at the University of Paris who had to debate the secular (diocesan) priests who said that the Franciscan way of putting action and contemplation together would not work. They wanted Franciscans to choose one or the other. The secular priests worked with the people in the parishes, while the “true” religious people went off to monasteries. Francis and his followers thought there had to be a way to do both.

That was unique. It’s almost like human consciousness just couldn’t imagine that anyone could find God except by going into the desert, into the monastery, away from troubles, away from marriage, away from people.

And eight hundred years later, we’re still trying to learn how to balance contemplation and action. -—Fr Richard Rohr