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(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Summer 2025  Issue #116)

By Joseph Makley, OFS

Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission Chair

The first time I heard about Father Louis Vitale, OFM, was when he joined the protests at Fort Benning’s infamous School of the Americas. As a fairly new Secular Franciscan, I was studying the Rule: “Let them individually and collectively be in the forefront in promoting justice by the testimony of their human lives and their courageous initiatives…” Father Louie spent six months in jail on two occasions for stepping past those gates at Fort Benning. A year in jail is something to be endured in peace.

Fort Benning did not have the School of the Americas when I first visited there in December 1969. It was a major training area for Vietnam-bound soldiers. I was in the car when my mother drove through those gates to take my older brother, Philip, back to the base after Christmas leave. I saw troops marching along the roads and heard their songs of bravado. I was a senior in high school with my own choices to make soon, and my mother, Elroyce, had to find a way to endure her son’s deployment in peace.

Father Louie had been busy long before the protests at SOA. He had led an impactful movement to stop nuclear testing for years and had co-founded Pace e Bene, an organization that provides training in nonviolence. As an air force veteran, he felt a special responsibility to bring his  love in action to military installations. In 2006, he was at Fort Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, protesting the torture training manuals being produced there after 9/11. He was arrested, along with two others.

At the same time, down the road in Tombstone, my brother Philip, who had survived the war, was playing Doc Holiday in the gunfight recreations at the OK Corral. He was never the same after the war, but he had supported himself by driving deliveries for the Jacksonville school system. This was his retirement dream: to be a cowboy. He had serious health issues, but he always endured what came in peace. In August 2008, I travelled back to Tombstone to be with Philip, who was finally succumbing to the effects of his exposure to Agent Orange on the docks at Long Binh port. We celebrated his 60th Birthday and he died that fall.

It’s like Faulkner said, “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.” We all bear the wounds of every war that was ever fought. And Pope Francis never let us forget, “No more war. Never again war!” Father Louie worked for justice and human dignity, both of which are necessary for peace. He emptied himself for peace and for the movement of active non-violence. He endured long periods of incarceration in deep love and peace. Reading something he wrote gave me a clearer picture of how he experienced jail time:

“These days [in jail]

are a journey into a new freedom and a slow

transformation of being and identity: an invitation to

enter one’s truest self, and to follow the road of

prayer and nonviolent witness wherever it will

lead.” 1

So, enduring in peace doesn’t mean just to wait out periods of tribulation. It means to grow through them, to love through them, to continue to reach out toward all people of goodwill for the chance to establish a just peace in this temporal world.

1 Ken Butigan (2023, Sept. 6) Nonviolence in Action:

Remembering Louie Vitale. Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service.

Paceebene.org

(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Summer 2025  Issue #116)

Canticle of the Creatures Reflections – Part 2

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon

for Your love, and bear infirmity and tribulation

Finding Meaning in Suffering

by Sharon Winzeler, OFS

Communications Committee Chair

What do St. Francis of Assisi and Viktor Frankl, famous psychologist and survivor of four World War II concentration camps, have in common? They both realized that suffering could provide purpose and meaning in our lives.

As Francis said in the Canticle and Frankl said in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, when we approach suffering with a meaningful response, we affirm our humanity and our capacity for spiritual growth.

Both men knew that avoidance of suffering was futile. Francis shows us that it brings us closer to Jesus. Frankl reveals that suffering brings us closer to what matters in life. Both men testify that suffering brings growth in our spirituality. Jesus acknowledges that given the choice, we would avoid suffering, as recorded in Matthew 26:39. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.”

St. Francis reveals that those who forgive and suffer with love and patience are followers of Jesus and witnesses of God’s grace. Their actions – especially in painful or unjust situations – are powerful forms of worship and testimony to divine love. Jesus shows us the path to forgiveness in Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Our Franciscan values of humility, compassion, and joyful acceptance of suffering as a path to union with God help us understand difficult times in life.

Frankl said that when faced with adversity, we have two choices. We can despair or we can create. When we create love, endurance, and forgiveness, we create meaning on a spiritual level, which is how Frankl identifies man’s search for meaning in life. It reflects Francis’s quest for closeness to God.

In his studies, Frankl found the most profound reaction to adversity is doing the next best thing – forgiving or bearing trials and tribulations with acceptance and joy.

We don’t get to skip the hard parts of life, but we do have a choice on how we react to them. When we hurt, we can open ourselves to people and beauty. In other words, according to Frankl, we choose our attitude.

This choice is an extension of Francis’s definition of perfect joy. As Francis and Brother Leo were once walking in the cold, Francis said, “If we arrive at our friary and the porter refuses to let us in—calls us thieves, beats us, and leaves us out in the freezing night—and we bear this injustice patiently and with love, that is perfect joy.” Francis chose the attitude of perfect joy.

Frankl endured three years of unimaginable suffering and the loss of his family in the concentration camps and emerged with a profound sense of empathy and a mission to help others find meaning in their lives. He chose an attitude of compassion and purpose.

In his canticle, Francis shows us that pain and suffering present us with the ability to create a beauty that touches others and brings us closer to God and find purpose and meaning in our lives that Frankl’s studies say we need.