(This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall issue of the TAU-USA)

by Jane DeRose-Bamman, OFS

How willing am I to do God’s will? If I pray or say God’s will be done – do I mean it? Of course, that is what the Franciscan journey is all about – recognizing God is in control.

In many ways, trusting in God’s will is like stretching. If you’ve ever had a pulled muscle, you know the importance of stretching before exercising. Tight or taut muscles can be loosened up by slow steady stretches or easy repetitive motions to warm-up the muscles. It’s amazing how much additional length you can get by stretching those muscles – back, legs, arms. It’s worth it to take the time to stretch so one can avoid dealing with the pain.

This lesson can be applied to our prayer lives. We need to experience a form of stretching to prepare us for various struggles that may find their way into our lives. This is what I’ve come to think of as spiritual stretching.

You have an encounter that challenges you; for example:

1. Someone cuts you off in traffic or at the grocery store.
2. A fraternity brother or sister takes an opposite political position than you.
3. A family member or coworker disrespects you.
4. You, a family member or friend is very sick.

How do you respond? What does it take to respond gracefully and lovingly if any response is needed? Can we allow ourselves to be stretched a bit with each encounter?

As a recovering perfectionist, although I have been professed for more than 24 years, my spiritual stretching or limberness has varied throughout the years.  Physically, I’ve never been able to bend over and touch my toes without bending my knees. Spiritually, I continue to work on allowing God to lead.

One area where I have experienced spiritual stretching is in response to nominations to serve on OFS fraternity councils. I have been a nominee many times. But I haven’t always had the “God’s will be done” attitude or “a ready and willing spirit[1]”.  In fact, there were times when I said no, or made it known ahead of time, that I didn’t have time to serve. I didn’t even pray about it before I responded. I just knew that if my name were to be placed on the ballot I would be elected. (Some humility, eh?) My time was filled – working fulltime, building a relationship with my husband, who wasn’t a Franciscan, and participating in other interests (e.g., tennis, volunteer activities). So I took matters into my own hands – not accepting the nomination or accepting it while grumbling about all the other things I had to do. Well, God worked on my humility and trust – for in some of those elections I wasn’t elected![2]  Wonderful examples of the reality that God IS in control of the elections too – no matter how good a candidate I thought I was. As I stretched – spiritually – I came to understand that God knew that I was not ready and was perhaps “not qualified” to serve.

Praying, and allowing God to work through prayer time can transform us from a babbling shallow stream to a calm deep body of water. These days, when I get ready to do something – I’m getting better at saying or thinking, “Okay God, it’s your lead.” I’m getting better at stretching to allow time for God to lead my responses instead of allowing my initial reactions to be the first thing out of my mouth.

If God hasn’t given up on me yet, then I certainly want to keep trying and will put the necessary time into the stretching. Maybe someday I’ll be able to touch my toes without bending my knees… spiritually speaking.

[1] OFS Rule Article 21

[2] My name had been on the ballot as a nominee for a National Executive Council position for elections held in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2018. For five of those elections, I wasn’t elected. It began to feel like “Always a nominee and never an executive council member.” Surprisingly, I was elected in October 2018.

https://secularfranciscansusa.org/2019/12/21/stretching/

(This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall issue of the TAU-USA)

By Anne Mulqueen, OFS 

Let me introduce myself. My name is Anne Mulqueen, and I am spiritual assistant to the National Formation Commission. I have been professed for 35 years and have held many positions in the Order. My first elected position 34.5 years ago was as local formation director for Mary Our Queen fraternity in Baltimore, Md. Every position I have held since that election has been enriched by my formation  background. I consider that initial election a graced moment. God led me to serve in ways I never imagined I could.

Our National Formation Chair, Diane Menditto, OFS, asked the members of the Commission to take turns writing formation articles for TAU-USA, so eventually you will hear from all of us. The topics we choose will give you some insight into each writer. Pray that we have something worthwhile to say. And as Pope Francis said, “The Spirit himself is ‘God’s gift’ par excellence …,” so I am trusting the Holy Spirit to inspire me to write something of value.

Christ Incarnate, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is the topic I chose.

The Centrality of Christ in the Life of Secular Franciscans

 I believe most members of the Secular Franciscan Order could recite, at least in part, the first paragraph of Article 4.

The rule and life of the Secular Franciscans is this: to observe the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by following the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, who made Christ the inspiration and the center of his life with God and people.

Clearly stated in Article 4 is the expectation that we consciously intend to make Christ the inspiration and center of our life with God and people. To accomplish this, we must have an intimate relationship with Christ, and we must know what He said and did. Through a careful reading of the gospel, we will be able to go “… from gospel to life and life to the gospel.”

As Scripture tells us, Christ reveals the nature of the Father when he tells his disciples, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also….” (John 14:7). This statement comes immediately after Jesus tells them that He is the way and the truth and the life. These words of Jesus show us the way to the Father and give us a blueprint to follow. These words reveal Jesus’ identity. “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” (Colossians 1:15). In essence, all we know of God, is revealed through Christ.

We know from our formation that after St. Francis’ conversion experiences, he focused his life and actions on the human person of Jesus. But the transformed saint was once, as a young adult, desiring glory through war. Gradually, through a vision on his way to a crusade, his experience with a leper, and a commission from the crucified Christ to rebuild God’s house, St. Francis was transformed into another Christ.

 Primacy of Christ in the Life of a Secular Franciscan

What was the reason for the Incarnation? Let’s listen to the gospel of John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5)

Now we know that the epistle to the Colossians calls Jesus the image of the invisible God. And the gospel of John tells us that without Him nothing was made; therefore, it follows naturally that God, who is absolutely free, wants to be known by his creation—us!

John Duns Scotus’ doctrine of the Primacy of Christ centers on Scotus’ premise that since God possesses divine freedom, God freely expressed divine love for all creation through the Incarnation. The Incarnate Christ reveals God’s divine nature as one of love and goodness.

Many of us are familiar with the Franciscan Question: “Would Christ have come if Adam did not sin?” This question is not meant to deny the nature of sin and the redemptive work of Christ. Instead, it speaks of God’s intention from all eternity to unite all that God created, animate and inanimate, into the life and love of the Trinity. From all eternity the Almighty desires to express God’s divine nature as overflowing love. Quoting Bill Short, OFM, “God doesn’t build a Taj Mahal to cover a pothole.” Our sin is a pothole in comparison to the gift of the Incarnation.

Jesus the Anointed One of God – Humanity’s Blueprint and Model

All of us are created according to the humanity of Christ. And although we are created in His image, we still need to grow into his likeness. This is the work of conversion.

One of my favorite Scriptures is from Colossians 1:27, “…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This Scripture reminds me of the Prologue to our Rule, in which St. Francis promises me that if I make a place for Christ in my heart and persevere in doing the will of the Father, “the spirit of the Lord will rest upon [me]” and I will be a child “… of the heavenly Father…” and a “spouse, brother, and mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.” All this will be mine and it can be yours if Christ lives in us through “…a holy life [that] give light to others by example.”

Using a Franciscan lens, Christ, the center of the Blessed Trinity, is the one who reveals to us a loving and fruitful relationship between all of creation and the Trinity—God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

My prayer for you is that Christ, the hope of glory, will dwell in your heart now and forever more.

Questions for Reflection:

✤ Who is Christ for you personally, and how do you identify with Him?

✤ Do you hear a call to become “Another Christ?” How would that change your life?

https://secularfranciscansusa.org/2019/12/19/christ-incarnate-the-second-person-of-the-blessed-trinity/

(This article originally appeared in TAU-USA Summer/Fall 2019)

By Fr. Jerome Wolbert, OFM

Icon Screen, Chapel at Holy Dormition Byzantine
Franciscan Friary, Sybertsville, PA, where Fr. Jerome
Wolbert, OFM, a Byzantine Franciscan Friar, is Guardian.

One of my favorite St. Francis stories takes place at Rivo Torto. In the middle of the night, one of the brothers cries out, “I’m dying! I’m dying!” He feels like he is dying of hunger, so strict did he keep the fast, seeking only to eat as much (or as little) as St. Francis himself ate. But it was not enough for his body, so he cries out in the night. St. Francis wakes everyone up, and they eat a little snack together (see FA:ED 3, page 278). What a beautiful expression of fraternity!

We Franciscans talk about fraternity, but that word fraternity means different things to different people. One of the friars in my province, when he was young, first thought this would be like a college fraternity. Or maybe “Franciscan Family” gives some of us a better

intuition on what kind of fraternity we are called to live. But not all of us have the same expectations or experiences of our biological brothers and sisters.

Thankfully, we have the Franciscan tradition to give us some good examples of how to live this Gospel sense of fraternity, stories that we share in common that encourage and  challenge us in living fraternity. The Rivo Torto experience teaches us something of the gentleness of our fraternal life, which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (see Galatians 5:19-25). We might remember how St. Francis urges his brothers to make sure that a brother who has sinned always sees mercy rather than shame and scolding.

If any one of the brothers, at the instigation of the enemy, shall have sinned mortally, let him be bound by obedience to have recourse to his guardian. Let all the brothers who know that he has sinned not bring shame upon him or slander him; let them, instead, show great mercy to him and keep the sin of their brother very secret because those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. (Letter to a Minister)

St. Francis took great care to instruct those in leadership to show mercy even as they impose and enforce necessary regulations. When those in charge are unable to restrain the storm of their own emotions, their own feelings of offense, it becomes impossible to be gentle… the storm lashes against the guilty and the innocent. Cultivating humility, for example, helps us to sow other attitudes in our hearts that can help us to bear the fruit of gentleness. I can’t be harsh on someone because I am aware that I, too, am a sinner.

Thus, the tradition lives on today. I write this while visiting a friary where many of the friars are elderly, and praise God, even in their imperfections and foibles, they live a kind of gentle support and mutual encouragement that is a great light. This Christian light shining in the ordinary events of their lives and their welcome of guests must be what Jesus means when he tells us, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).

https://secularfranciscansusa.org/2019/12/17/gentleness-in-fraternity-life/

(This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall 2019 issue of the TAU-USA.)

 By Kelly Moltzen, OFS

After finishing high school, becoming an “alumna” of Capuchin Youth & Family Ministries (CYFM), and going away to college, I gradually began to yearn more and more for the charism of the Franciscan community I had through CYFM but didn’t feel through my college’s Catholic Campus Ministry. I found moreof a sense of this charism through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an ecumenical Christian fellowship organization on campus.

While there were a few Catholics who attended both Catholic Campus Ministry and InterVarsity, there were also many Protestants who helped contribute to the community I felt deeply through InterVarsity. It was an opportunity to meet and fellowship with other Christians who genuinely sought to follow Jesus. We did service projects together, worshipped together, and did Bible study together.

One particularly impactful thing we did was read The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. That book inspired me to want to live in intentional community once I moved to New York City. I settled into the Bronx with several non-Catholics who introduced me to the work of Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker movement, Fr. Richard Rohr, and others who like Shane Claiborne were associated with the Red-Letter Christian movement (people who are working to take the words of Jesus seriously, looking particularly at Jesus’ words, which in many Bibles are written in red letters to distinguish them from the rest of the text).

Members of InterVarsity and the Red-Letter Christians movement launched LoGOFF (Local, Green, Organic, Fair-trade, Slave-Free), created opportunities for faith-rooted organizing in New York City, and initiated efforts to address health disparities through organizing a Food, Faith & Health Disparities conference. For years, this has given me hope that we can better use our Eucharistic meal practices as the food to sustain work to make sure everyone is treated like a human being regardless of race, has access to affordable, nourishing food, and has a consciousness of the value of God-given food over hyper-processed foods with little nutritional value.

It’s been non-Catholic Franciscan-hearted Christians who have most often accompanied my path living in community in the Bronx, including participating in dinners that are more about shared fellowship, hopes, dreams and goals than they are about arguments or differences of opinion over church history and ecclesiastical splits. This all has given me life.

So when I discovered that the Franciscan family is ecumenical, as there are other Christians who value following in the footsteps of St. Francis and who have created orders within their denominations to follow him —and were united in mission for peace, justice and integrity of creation through the Joint Committee on Franciscan Unity and the Franciscan Action Network (FAN) — I was overjoyed. Building the Kingdom of Heaven together with Franciscan Ecumenical Interfaith Committee Joint Committee on Franciscan Unity 11 Christians of different denominations and even working through interfaith collaboration for the common good… imagine that! What could we not accomplish?

Sadly, I have often gotten the impression that many Catholics and OFS members seem to talk about following the path of Jesus and Francis as something exclusive to Catholics, instead of seeking to build the Kingdom of God in partner ship with Christians of other denominations and listening to the experiences that Protestants have to share with us.

Jesus’ words were meant for everybody, and there are many Christians who truly live them out. By acknowledging our shared values of baptism, vocation, charism, Christ-Centered spirituality, and prophetic voice, we can identify other Franciscans and Franciscan-hearted individuals with whom we can work to bring the kingdom of Heaven to Earth. Those who serve the marginalized, those who see others’ destinies tied with their own, those who recognize we are cocreators with God in this ever-expanding universe, who speak truth to power to authorities within hierarchies that are not serving God’s people, who commit their vocations to peace, justice and integrity of creation — these are our kin. They are Franciscan-hearted individuals doing what they can to bring Christ to the world.

Non-Catholics may in fact be models of living out Catholic Social Teaching without calling it that. To see Christ in the other and to listen to the calling from God to protect and restore human dignity beyond birth, across the entire span of life — that is Christian and Franciscan. To live as if we are interconnected with one another and all creation is Franciscan.

Christ, Francis, Clare, and the many other prophetic witnesses in our Church’s history meant us to follow them, not just to revere them or to remember them once a year. Our contemporary Dorothy Day, whose canonization is under consideration, said, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

So we must ask ourselves, what can we do to ensure the lessons these people taught us while on this earth are taken seriously by all followers of Christ?

https://secularfranciscansusa.org/2019/12/15/why-is-it-important-for-catholics-secular-franciscans-ofs-to-collaborate-ecumenically/

(This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall 2019 issue of the TAU-USA.)

CELEBRATE AND RENEW OUR FRANCISCAN CALLING IN THE SPIRIT OF CONVERSION

20th Quinquennial Congress Prayer: Lord God, Heavenly Father, we come before you in awe of your love for us. We acknowledge Your divine seed in everyone. Through your merciful compassion, help us to see our need for conversion. In our service to each other let us experience this time of JUBILEE! We walk the path before us upon foundations laid by our brothers and sisters. We are thankful for our present and excited for our future, always believing that You, O Lord, guide our journey. AMEN

With nearly two years to go to the Quinquennial Congress, where we will celebrate the 800th anniversary of our Secular Order, we are actively seeking dynamic presenters who will not only add to our body of Franciscan knowledge but also speak to our hearts to increase our Franciscan spirituality and call us continuously to conversion.

Our first presenter, Father Couturier, OFM Cap, is the Dean of the School of Franciscan Studies at Saint Bonaventure University. He is a 1975 summa cum laude graduate of St. Anselm College. He earned a Masters in Divinity from Maryknoll School of Theology in 1978, a Licentiate in Psychology from the Gregorian University in 1984, and his PhD in Pastoral Psychology (Organization Studies) from the Graduate Theological Foundation in 2005. His familiarity with and expertise in how we are called to conversion and the stages we experience in conversion will bring deep discussions in our Little Fraternity groups, as well as insights in our personal reflection. At the Q, he will address the topic, The Four Conversions: A Spirituality of Transformation; which is the title of one of his books.

Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv, our second keynote presenter, is from the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. He is the third bishop of that diocese and was consecrated as bishop in 2015. He professed his solemn vows in 1992 after completing his studies in history and philosophy at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He received his degree of Master of Divinity and Licentiate of Sacred Theology with an emphasis on Church history. He was ordained a priest in 1995 and served in El Paso, Texas, parishes. Bishop Stowe joined the Pax Christi USA Board as their Episcopal President in 2018. His keen awareness of and active participation in today’s opportunities to follow the Gospel by living our Franciscan lives of mercy and forgiveness will stir us to consider how we can improve our involvement in our individual communities to hear the marginalized and address their needs and to be their voices when they cannot be heard.

In the next article, we will share information about two Secular Franciscan couples who have lived their married life and raised their children in the Franciscan way of life through all ups and downs of today’s encounters.

If you are interested in helping now with the Q 2021 planning, or during the Q, please contact Susan Simeone, 602-315-1950 or sksimeone@cox.net.

https://secularfranciscansusa.org/2019/12/13/20th-quinquennial-congress-phoenix-arizona-august-18-22-2021/