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363 Franciscan Studies 64 (2006) A SCOTISTIC FOUNDATION FOR CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Vita evangelica This volume of Franciscan Studies has a central focus: the vita evangelica. Although the phrase, taken by itself and as applied to the Franciscan movement, is more contemporary than ancient, the reality underlying the phrase can certainly be found in the earliest Franciscan writings. To live according to the gospel was and remains a hallmark of Franciscan life and thought.1 Consequently, the more contemporary phrase, vita evangelica, gathers together a past, a present and a future. It involves a past, since in a Franciscan hermeneutic it embraces one of the most powerful spiritual movements of the western Christian church: a movement begun and invigorated by the gospel vision of Francis and Clare. The Franciscan movement of the thirteenth century caught the imagination and heart of thousands of people, and the immediate strong growth of the movement remains, in many ways, an unparalleled phenomenon of Christian life and Christian spirituality. In a very profound way the original Franciscan movement was gospeloriented ; it was a way of life, vita, profoundly evangelical, evangelica. It was a movement that involved one’s life that could not be separated from one’s spirituality. The phrase, vita evangelica, also involves a present, since the Franciscan movement remains one of the stronger contemporary spiritual forces in the western church. After eight hundred years, 1205 to 2005, the Franciscan presence within the church and within the world continues to play a major role both spiritually and theologically. Moreover, the Franciscan gospel life involves a future, 1 Francis in his writings presented the gospel itself as the major focus of spirituality. Cf. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, Regis Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William Short, eds. (New York: New City Press, 1999) [hereafter, FAED 1]: “Later Admonition and Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance,” 46, 18-19; “The Earlier Rule,” 63, 2; 81, 41; “Fragments,” 89, 27; “The Later Rule [1223],” 100, 1. 364 KENAN OSBORNE since at this very moment of time the Franciscan movement has already positioned itself in a singular way for a continuation of its spiritual journey into the third millennium. In current Franciscan writings, the phrase, vita evangelica, has been studied in an in-depth way.2 Michael Blastic, in his essay “‘It Pleases Me That You Should Teach Sacred Theology’: Franciscans Doing Theology,” has enriched its meaning by his insistence that evangelical life, as it developed historically, was also keenly theological . He writes: The evangelical life is an integrated life of contemplative action in the model of Francis and Clare, a life which is theological by definition.3 Blastic makes note of Guigo II, a Carthusian monk who had summarized the dominant medieval view of western spirituality in his text, The Ladder of Monks. Guigo’s text was highly influential in the period immediately preceding Francis and Clare. “Climbing the ladder of Guigo, one must by definition climb up the ladder and be separated from the world – in fact, Guigo considered the world a distraction to Christian monastic process.”4 Guigo’s vita monastica does not correspond to the Franciscan vita evangelica. At the time of Guigo, Blastic notes, there were many innovations in Western Europe which altered the medieval world view in a defining way. After the period of Guigo’s life, the movement inaugurated by Francis and Clare became one of the major innovative and transformative factors for the medieval experience of the Christian message. It accomplished this precisely because the Franciscan movement was a gospel way of living, a vita evangelica. M.-D. Chenu called these various medieval movements an evangelical 2 For the phrase, vita evangelica, cf. Ratio Studiorum (Rome: General Secretariat for Formation and Studies: Order of Friars Minor, 2001), 19, 1; 24, 22. Also, Dominic V. Monti, Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order, Works of Saint Bonaventure V (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1994), particularly his introduction on the rise of the Franciscan movement: 8-21. Cf. Also St. Bonaventure, Quaestiones Disputatae: De Perfectione Evangelica, in Opera Omnia V (Quaracchi: Col. San Bonaventurae, 1891), 11798 . 3 Michael Blastic, “‘It Pleases Me That You Should Teach Sacred Theology’: Franciscans...

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