I am not scared of religious life, it just wasn’t to be. I became a mother. However I’ve had too many interesting experiences not to know I am meant to do something, just so far the Father in Heaven hasn’t given me any instructions on what I am meant to do with myself.
But if it helps I am happy to donate my children. Except my son thinks priests get up too early. And only the Father in Heaven or a man who tames horses for a living could tame my daughters strong will, so no convent is going to be able to do this, understands beyond her age, but so far I haven’t found someone who was born to tame her. I’ve had to pass her into the hands of the Father. If she became a nun she’d have the Mother superior taking valium because she thinks everyone knows what she knows and understands what she understands, so she’d be telling the superior nuns ‘but you know, but you know’. She needs to be around people who will help her with her gifts, not ever stifle them. For those with spiritual gifts, one of the key killers I see is someone who themselves hasn’t got to that level, and will not understand why she is the way she is. She was born a leaf already. But who is there to nuture those already born a healing leaf?
I think it’s beautiful that you would agree to any of your children becoming religious or priests. But unfortunately, we can’t donate them that way. We cannot give what we do not own. Each person owns his own life, his will, mind and body. That is the gift that a priest or a religious gives to the Lord, not the parents. The parents can only fertilize the soil.
I don’t know your situation, but I’ll share mine. I was married for 12 years and we had three children. When my youngest was four and my oldest nine, my wife and middle child (son) were killed in an auto accident along with my father. As I felt the pain that comes from losing three loved ones, I looked around and saw my two surviving children and realized that I knew what I had to do. I had to be a full-time dad.
I said to myself, “I can do this. I know I can. In fact, I’m going to do this and be proud of it.” I’m talking good pride here. To make a very long story short, the following year my little one was diagnosed with autism. Fortunately, he is a very high functioning autistic. His major problem is language. But he understands and has many skills. Today he is a sophomore in college, majoring in art and video game design. His sister is now 25, has a Master of Science in Brain Science and Learning. She is a therapeutic teacher in a school for children with autism.
When they became adults, I looked around again. Again I said to myself, “I can do this. I know I can.” I joined the Secular Franciscan Order. At the time, several Secular Franciscans had founded a cell of brothers consecrated by vows to live the Franciscan life in community in service to the disabled, the elderly and those whose lives are threatened by society, especially the unborn child.
After a great deal of prayer and spiritual direction, I approached the Minister of our fraternity and asked to join the “cell”. That’s what it was called at the time, because it was a community of brothers in vows, but canonically it was still part of the Secular Franciscan Order.
The long and the short of it is that the cell was eventually released from the Secular Franciscan Order and has become a Franciscan Congregation of Diiocesan Right. We are a small community with three houses and 32 brothers known simply as the Franciscan Brothers (OSF).
Every day we go into the secular world, where some of us still hold jobs, that’s how we support our community and our ministries. Some of our brothers do hands-on ministry with the elderly poor, the disabled and women in crisis pregnancies. We follow the rule of St. Francis as he wrote it for the Brothers and Sisters of Penance. Our life and work is a constant offering for our conversion and the conversion of Catholics.
We realize that others need conversion too. But our holy father Francis led a very intense ministry among the Catholics of his Umbrian Province in Italy. The friars who followed him served mostly in Catholic Spain, Italy and France when the order was young. Later it grew to where it is now with over 1.7 million Franciscans between friars, nuns, sisters, brothers, and secular brothers and sisters. The focus still remains primarily on the conversion of Catholics, though we do minister to non Catholics at home and abroad.
My point is that if we look at our lives and look around us, there is something that God is calling us to do. We have to look and trust. We have to say, “I can do this.” As one chapter of our life closes another opens and again we are called to say, “I can do this.”
I have had the unique privilege of being single, married, single dad and now religious. Not many people have a taste of all the above in one life time. But I wonder if I would have had this grace had I never said to myself, “I can do this.”
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
I mean, I was in a cloistered monastery for over two years, and there were some, um, interesting sisters there. But there were also extremely devout and loving sisters there as well. A couple of them did seem to be interested in power as well. But the ones who stayed (about one in three who entered) were the ones who grow with each passing year, in ways those of us who left and got married and had children can never imagine, just as they will never be able to imagine what it is to be a parent.
