Franciscan Friends

As the weather gets colder and we travel from autumn to winter, my husband and I have been indulging ourselves in the luxury of spending more time reading.  After a busy start to the school year in my new role as a homeschooling coordinator (which has been both a challenge and a great joy), it now seems right and good to spend some quality time hibernating with hot chocolate and good books in the ever-darkening evenings. And since my husband has embarked on a “study year”, as he contemplates permanent profession as a Secular Franciscan, we’ve immersed ourselves in learning more about various Franciscan personalities throughout history. Last year we studied the spirituality and life of St. Francis, in depth.  This fall, it’s been like meeting some terrific new Franciscan friends!

Such as…

St. Clare… who we discovered was not just Francis’ feminine counterpart, but a woman of independence, strength and courage.  In 1212, she and her female followers founded the Order of Poor Ladies, also known as the “Poor Clares”, and together they created a way for the radical life of Francis to be lived with freedom and joy.  Her letters and writings are so hopeful, encouraging, visionary and loving. 

St. Bonaventure… a medieval philosopher and Franciscan Friar who became Minister General of the Franciscan Order in 1265, just one year before the death of St. Francis. Where as much Christianity in this period was filled with fear and guilt, Bonaventure’s frame of reference is big, optimistic and positive. He passionately believed in the universal “belonging” of all creation, and he wrote and preached that fear-based preoccupations are small and unnecessary.  His writings still feel like a breath of fresh air, 750 years after they were written.

John Duns Scotus… who in 1224 joined an early group of Franciscans who lived in Canterbury, England. His brilliant insights were a breakthrough in the Middle Ages. In a time when the concept of the individual apart from the group had not yet been born, Scotus honoured the uniqueness of persons and things within the Wholeness of God.  He understood that God’s love always shows itself in the specific, the concrete, the particular – something he called “this-ness”.  Fascinating stuff!

This fall we’ve also enjoyed reading two books written by modern Franciscans, which have sparked much thought and discussion:

The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality Into Your Daily Life (Penguin Group Publisher; 1997) by John Michael Talbot.  Talbot is a Secular Franciscan, musician and author, who founded and still lives in a Franciscan integrated monastic community at the Little Portion Hermitage in the Ozark Mountains. This beautiful book is filled with wisdom and practical advice about living a more simple and authentic life.

Immortal Diamond: Searching for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass Publishers; 2013) by Richard Rohr.  Rohr is a Franciscan priest and founding director of the Centre for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  His book is a wonderful exploration of identity and truth – of shedding our false self and getting in touch with our true self, which lies like a diamond buried within and is rooted in God’s love and mercy.  

And now we are approaching the third Sunday of Advent.  Our research, reading and discussions this fall have given both my husband and I a better appreciation of our rich Franciscan heritage...and also nourished our faith and increased our Advent longing for more of Christ in our lives!

Permanent Profession

June always seems like the end of the year to me.  I know this is because I’ve been involved in school calendars for most of my life – as a student, a teacher, and a parent of students.  So, according to my brain, the year starts in September and comes to completion in June, with July and August being…bonus months!

This particular June has been a time of completion for something else in my life.  After three years of orientation and formation, I came to the happy conclusion this spring that I was ready for a permanent commitment to live my life as a Secular Franciscan - centered on Christ, guided by simplicity, focused on peace, trusting God’s mercy.  Bill, my husband, came to his own conclusion that he needs to continue his formation for another year, taking time to study, pray and ponder; being sure in his heart that this is the right decision for him. I applaud his choice, because the decision to make your Permanent Profession to the Order of Secular Franciscans is not one to take lightly. But for me, this was the right time. And so, filled with joy and thanksgiving to God, I made my “Permanent Profession” during a special Mass on a beautiful, sunny June afternoon at St. Luke’s Church, in front of my Secular Franciscan Fraternity.

For students, teachers and parents, June is both an ending and a beginning. It is the end of a school year filled with work and play, challenges and victories. But, at the same time, June is the beginning of summer holidays, leading to the beginning of a new school year, a new class, and a new adventure.  Permanent Profession is also both an ending and a beginning. It is the end of a formation period filled with work and play, challenges and victories.  But it is the start of a new phase in the life of a Secular Franciscan – the beginning of a lifelong walk on the path of discovery, trying every day to discern how best to live out the call of the Gospel in a secular world.  With Christ the Good Shepherd guiding the way, and St. Francis as my inspiration, I’m humbled as I take my first wobbly steps on this path. But I’m excited, too!

Sacred Bookends

We are definitely in the home stretch of our formation journey as Secular Franciscans, as we are nearing the end of our first “Candidacy” year. We are approaching a time when we can make a decision to make our “Permanent Profession”, but another option is to wait one or two more years, if we don’t feel we are ready for that commitment. Regardless, now is an excellent opportunity to reflect on all that we’ve learned and gained over these past three years. One very positive plus in my life has been learning about the Liturgy of the Hours.

We heard a little about the Liturgy of the Hours when we first joined the Catholic Church and were going through R.C.I.A., seven years ago. This set of ancient prayers, also called the Divine Office, are daily prayers that have been part of Church tradition since its earliest times. Early Christians continued the Jewish practice of publicly reciting prayers, consisting of psalms and readings from the Old Testament, at certain hours of the day or night. The Christians added readings of the Gospels, Acts and Epistles. Many brothers and sisters in religious communities still pray these prayers aloud together, but they can also be prayed privately.

The monks of St. Anselm Abbey in New Hampshire pray the Liturgy of the Hours together.

There are seven “offices of prayer” in the Liturgy of the Hours – Morning, Mid-morning, Midday, Mid-afternoon, Evening and Night, as well as a daily “Office of Readings”, which includes a reading from the great spiritual storehouse of the Church, such as wisdom from the early Church Father or inspirational stories from the lives of the saints. Priests are obligated to pray the entire Divine Office daily, and in 2003 Pope John Paul II published an apostolic letter encouraging all of us laity to also take advantage of this rich and beautiful resource, as “a source of nourishment for personal prayer”.

Secular Franciscans are encouraged to pray Morning and Evening prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours, which, along with the Office of Readings, are called the “major hours”. 

As an evangelical Protestant for most of my life, I don’t have much experience with set, written prayer. My prayer times with God have always been quite unstructured and almost conversational in nature. But I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t have to be “either/or” but “both/and”!  The stirring, ancient words of the Morning and Evening Prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours have become sacred bookends to my day, and they often are a gateway to spontaneous, very personal praise and thanksgiving.

Scripture exhorts us to “pray always”, which seems impossible, but the Liturgy of the Hours helps us to get into the habit of interweaving time with God into our day. It has become a very fruitful addition to my spiritual life, and I encourage those who haven’t encountered it to check it out. The Liturgy of the Hours is a great resource for everyone. I think many of my Protestant friends would appreciate that the prayers are so scriptural.

You might ask, “There should be an app for that!” and I’m happy to report that there is – called Divine Office, available from the App Store. With this app, you can either read or listen to the daily “offices of prayer”.  Sometimes I sit and read them prayerfully, but it’s great to have the option of listening to them while I walk the dogs, or do some knitting, or wash the dishes. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I stop and take a few minutes to listen to one of the “minor hours” (Mid-morning, Midday or Mid-afternoon prayer) which are shorter in length…and the lovely and very short night prayer is great to read in bed before drifting off to sleep!

An "Aha" Moment

Bill and I are now halfway through our year of Candidacy, as temporarily professed Secular Franciscans. How time flies! As we journey through this last stage of formation towards Permanent Profession, we are digging deeper into the wisdom of St. Francis. This past fall has been a time of exploring themes such as Community, Conversion, Simple Living, Evangelizing, and Living a Prayerful Life with our little band of fellow travellers. It’s been a rich five months of reading, learning, listening and discussing many ideas. For example, our formation study text reminds us that as believers we are called to “choose the cross”. What does that really mean? One paradoxical facet might be that we have the choice to “put to death” those behaviours and thought patterns that obstruct us from receiving the fullness of life.  

As this New Year of 2014 begins, it’s a great time to think about the obstacles we have a tendency to “choose” (sometimes unconsciously) that impede us from living a life of peace and joy in God’s presence.  As St. Francis said, “No one is to be called an enemy; all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.  You have no enemy except yourselves.” So many of our greatest, deepest, most abiding problems are inside, not outside, of us.  They might spring from our inclination to compare our situation to others with a jealous heart, or to obsess about bad things that might happen in the future, or to dwell with regret on the past, or to shy away from new opportunities because of fear.  These initial days of January are a perfect time, with open hearts, to reflect on some of the patterns behind our choices.  Could this year be a time of striking out on some new, brave, healthy paths?

I recently watched an inspirational “Net for God” video (www.netforgod.tv) about a young Dominican priest named Fr. Jean-Joseph Lataste, who was sent to preach a spiritual retreat in September 1864 at a women’s prison in the southwest of France.  He was totally surprised to see the effects of grace in the lives of these rejected, discarded women, many of whom were prostitutes, and to see their readiness to forgive. When he held a night of adoration, he was profoundly moved when he saw hundreds of women in the prison praying devotedly for hours.  Silence was imposed on them every day in the prison, broken only when he was allowed to hear their confessions.  He was struck by the similarity in situation between the female prisoners and a group of religious sisters living in seclusion in a nearby convent.  The only difference was that one group of women had chosen their situation, and the other hadn’t. 

The women's prison in Cadillac-Sur-Garonne, France

He realized that the female prisoners would experience nothing but contempt after their release from prison. But what if they were given a new chance…a new choice? Fr. Lataste felt called to found a congregation where women, regardless of their past, could enter to live a religious life if they desired to devote themselves to God.  A generous-spirited group of Dominican contemplative nuns were willing to welcome these women coming out of prison into their community. The Dominican Sisters of Bethany was born, which now resides in several European countries. These communities continue to be places where former female convicts live a contemplative life in communion with other women religious.

God gave me an “aha” moment after I watched that video.  What if we “pretended” that the difficult situations that seem to imprison us, for whatever reason, were our own choice? Let me explain. I have always admired the choice that Henri Nouwen, renowned author and speaker, made when he decided to move to L’Arche Daybreak Community in Ontario in 1986, to serve as resident priest and help care for the disabled residents.  He stayed for ten years. One of his “jobs” while there was to be a caregiver to a severely handicapped young man named Adam. Nouwen called Adam “my friend, my teacher and my guide”, and credited Adam with renewing his faith and helping him find joy in the mere gift of human existence.  He wrote a book about the experience, called “Adam, God’s Beloved”. 

Henri Nouwen and Adam

 I must admit that sometimes I feel trapped by my situation caring for the needs of our son Peter, whose neurological disorders are frequently very debilitating and limit the activities we can participate in as a family. But what if caring for Peter was my deliberate choice, like the choice made by Henri Nouwen?  What if I had freely chosen to spend my life ministering to Peter, in a faithful response to a call from God?  When I look at my situation in that light, suddenly it feels more like a privilege, an adventure, a blessed vocation.  

What if we truly believed that God was with us in all the struggles we encounter in life, and that by His love, mercy and power He is able to redeem them for our good? What if we fully trusted Jesus with our whole heart as He invites us to follow Him and "choose the cross" - with a spirit of adventure, courage and even joy? What if it is precisely in the challenging circumstances of our lives that we will find the best opportunities for spiritual growth? It’s a perspective that might not only transform our own lives, but also transform our world. 

To quote another Francis - our Pope: "Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with firm hope in the Lord.  This is the secret of our journey!  He gives us the courage to swim against the tide.  There are no difficulties, trials or misunderstandings to fear, provided we do not lose our friendship with Him, provided we make ever more room for Him in our lives." (from a homily on April 28, 2013)