Hi everyone . . . I have not fallen off the ends of the earth, assuming it’s still flat.
I’m not feeling too well these days and have been doing a great deal of sleeping and other stuff to get spiritually, psychologically and physically ready to celebrate the Incarnation and birth of Our Lord. I believe that the first two preparations are really much more important, the spiritual and psychological preps. The physical health . . . well, we accept to be where God wishes us to be, whether it’s out and about or resting in bed.
Sometimes, being sick is depressing. I’m a hyper person by nature. I’ve always been very active and have lived a very full life, done many things, been many places and loved many wonderful people. These past two years, life has been very sedentary and slowly becomes even more so. Pray for me that I do not succumb to the temptation of depression.
The brothers are very kind to me. They take time for me. They get me out to eat a bite, spend time just talking to me daily and pray with me, since I can’t always make it to common prayer. When I do, it’s a great day for me and them.
That’s part of the Franciscan charism. It’s something that whether you’re regular or secular, you have to master. Never let a day go by when you don’t make contact with at least one of your Franciscan brothers or sisters, even if it’s a telephone call to ask how they’re doing.
I have the luxury of being in community, but most of you are Secular Franciscans. Your communities are not physically in the same house. Nonetheless, let me remind you that that these brothers and sisters are family. Our Holy Father Francis founded a family, not orders. The structure was imposed by the Church to make government and canonical distinctions easier. It has its strengths and weaknesses, like all things in life.
But the highest good is Francis’ vision. That is that you belong to a great family where Christ is the first-born among many brothers who take up their cross, daily give up what stands in the way of their journey, in order to follow him. It is the common bond that we share through the Incarnation and the Cross that must be preserved at all costs. Our Holy Father Francis lived and died with two words in his heart, mind and mouth: Lord and brothers. His love for them was inseparable.
He the Lord called him to serve him alone; but like Adam, the Lord did not leave him alone, “and the Lord gave me brothers,” (Testament). He dearly loved his brothers and sisters, because they were God’s great gift to him. They were a sign of God’s preferential option for the poor. Francis was the poor orphan who had no family and no place in the world, but the Lord did not leave him alone, just as he did not leave Adam, Abraham or Jesus alone. He gave them a family.
Try not to forget this family. It is just as much a part of your soul as your biological family. In fact, Francis said, “if you love your brothers and sisters according to the flesh, how much more should you not love the brothers and sisters according to the Spirit.”
There are many Franciscans, both regular and secular, who are old, sick and often forgotten, because they can’t actively engage in fraternity life. Here is a chance to be a true disciple of Jesus as was our Holy Father Francis. Call them, especially this week. One call a day will remind a brother or a sister that he or she is loved and still belongs to our great Franciscan family.
Those of us who are consecrated by vows are painfully finding out that our numbers are dwindling in some areas and exploding in others, because of one single aspect . . . and it’s not poverty, though that’s important. The numbers of dwindling in those communities where fidelity to brotherhood or sisterhood is weak, where brotherhood and sisterhood has morphed into some kind of social bond or corporate bond that makes everyone members of the organization.
No Franciscan community, friars, nuns, sisters or seculars should ever be an organization or a corporation. Francis avoided monasticism for this very reason. Monasticism in his day had become corporate. Monasteries were so huge, some had as many as a thousand monks, that it was impossible to live a simple life of brotherhood. The more men or women you had, the more structure and less spontaneity you could allow, or you would have chaos.
Francis, on the other hand, embraced the idea of smaller fraternities, so that the spirit of family as it exists within the Trinity, can be a daily occurrence. The Father loves the Son and showers him with the most precious gift, the gift of humanity, which is the Father’s crowning masterpiece. To prepare the way for his Son’s incarnation, he prepares the soil by bringing into the world the sinless mother for his Son. It is out of love that that Father vests his Son in human nature, but he prepares the ground so that his Son is vested in sinless human nature, by giving him the gift of a sinless mother, who was redeemed through the cross of her son, before she was conceived.
From this love between the Father and Son flows the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who has always been present, since the love between the Father and Son is eternal, so is the Holy Spirit through whom the Incarnation is made possible as we heard in Sunday’s Gospel.
Francis, being the perfect disciple learns to live fraternity as it is lived within the Trinity. Therefore, his brothers and sisters hold a place in his heart that is inseparable from his love for God. They are most important to him than any ministry, any ritual, or any form of religious life. Ministries, rituals and the different expressions of the consecrated life in the Franciscan family exist to support and sustain the love of the Trinity among the brethren and out of that love among the brethren flows their embrace of all other men and women as brothers and sisters, without distinctions.
