(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).

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?

Why Is It Important for Catholics/Secular Franciscans (OFS) to Collaborate Ecumenically?