My topic tonight is "living the faith," and I want to focus first on what that means for our life as the Church, because this is a Catholic campus, and I'm a Catholic bishop, and we're talking about issues that affect Catholics in living their Catholic convictions. I'm sure we have non-Catholics in the audience, and I'm very grateful and happy that you're here. But my remarks tonight are meant especially for those of us who are Catholic.

I write a lot of letters every day because a lot of people write to me, and my parents always taught me that ignoring anyone is bad manners. So I always write back. That means I have a lot of interesting pen pals. Some are happy, some are angry, and a few are a little strange. One of the angry ones emailed me some time ago to complain that the Archdiocese of Denver was becoming a magnet for every flaky, right wing new group in the Church. And I immediately thought: Thank you, God, for a great way to sneak St. Francis into my talk.

It’s true that God has raised up many new communities in the Church over the last 60 years, especially since Vatican II. It’s true that all of them have weaknesses along with their strengths. And it’s also true that the Archdiocese of Denver has welcomed them with an openness they don't always find elsewhere. I think that’s partly because of the vision of my predecessor, Cardinal Francis Stafford, and partly because of the conversion our own local Church underwent with World Youth Day 1993.

But in each of the new groups that has taken root in Colorado – groups like the Community of the Beatitudes, the Neocatechumenal Way, the Christian Life Movement, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, the charismatic renewal, Opus Dei, Cursillo, the Marian Community of Reconciliation, Families of Nazareth, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae – in all of these cases, their spirit is very familiar to anyone who knows St. Francis of Assisi.

Francis once said that, “the saints lived lives of heroic virtue, [but] we are satisfied to talk about them.” Francis was never satisfied with pious words. He wanted to act on the things he believed. He saw that the Gospel wasn’t complicated, but it was demanding and uncomfortable. And that didn't fill him with fear. It energized him.

Francis lived in a time just as difficult as our own.  It was an age of Christians killing Christians, Muslims and Christians killing each other, wars between cities and states, and corruption both within and outside the Church. Society and the Church were changing. The feudal system was falling apart.  For much of his life, Francis was lost in that confusion. But in his faith and prayer, he came to some basic insights that gave him a powerful inner freedom.

What Francis discovered was simple.  He experienced God as a loving Father -- and knowing that a father doesn't give his son a scorpion when he asks for bread, Francis decided to live in the world as God’s child.  He began to graft his own life onto the way of Jesus Christ.

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