Trust in God…

I do not understand how it is possible not to trust in God, who can do all things. With God, everything; without God, nothing.

St. Faustina Kowalska, with thanks to Friar Rex

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Absolutely – these last few days with my dear TSSF sisters and brothers at Hilfield has demonstrated this so beautifully. Trust, and the patience and littleness that grow out of trust, are the ingredients of humility, of which the Principles so memorably says, “Humility confesses that we have nothing that we have not received and admits the fact of our insufficiency and our dependence upon God. It is the basis of all Christian virtues. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, `No spiritual house can stand for a moment except on the foundation of humility’. It is the first condition of a joyful life within any community.” (The Principles of the Third Order)

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” (Jesus, in John 14.1 NIV)

Of and with the poor…

We can no longer be satisfied by simply being the Church for the poor from our position of establishment.  We must realize that sometimes that very generosity, that very attempt to be good to other people, has kept us in a position of power and superiority.  Somehow we must be of and with the poor, and then be ready for some mistrust and even criticism.
Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), the holy Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, said it so truthfully, “As long as I fed the poor, they called me a saint.  When I asked, ‘Why are there so many poor people?’ they called me a communist.”

Richard Rohr, April 2010

As Franciscans, I think it is crucial that we face this question. The First and Second Orders, by virtue of their vocation to the Evangelical Counsels, live it out in common with their sisters and brothers in other religious communities—but we as Tertiaries need to examine ourselves rather rigorously on this point, I feel. Though, as our Principles state, “we possess property and earn money to support ourselves and our families,” we must consider how Rohr’s words here question our own vocation.

I don’t have an answer, of course, to these questions. The path God has somehow laid out for me has brought me closer to the way of poverty than some of my sisters and brothers, but this is through what might be called (if you leave God out of it!) force of circumstance: I can claim no holiness, or acuity of discernment, for myself. All that life since the farm accident that stopped me working some years ago has done is to give me a different perspective, a way of seeing that I didn’t have before; a cure, maybe, for a blindness common to so many educated people of my generation, who have not had to live frugally amid abundance. But it has not shown me any specific advice for anyone else… Maybe each of us has to plot our own course through this land of inequalities—it would be so hard to offer advice without appearing to manipulate, or to offer criticism.
One thing I do know. As Franciscans we must look clearly, with wide open eyes, at the poor who live among us, quite as much as at the glamorously poor of what used to be called the Third World. (I am using deliberately provocative language here!) We must set aside the dark glasses of prejudice, the tinted lenses of class, and look, really look, into the eyes of the Big Issue sellers, into the bundles of rags under the city bridges, into the doors of the temporary accommodation dotted even among the prosperous and leafy villages of Dorset, and allow them to ask their own questions of us, of our own vocation to the Third Order of St. Francis…

A Gospel Reflection for 2nd August

More than eight centuries ago, in the dark recesses of a dilapidated and forgotten chapel, St. Francis received the call of our Lord Jesus to his life of service and devotion. From those humble beginnings in the tiny Portiunucula chapel, the work of Christ has reached across the globe to touch the lives of millions. Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiunucula and remember the call of Christ on St. Francis.

Today the Portiunucula is no longer forgotten, but situated and restored within the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli where millions of pilgrims visit every year. Despite the grandiose beauty of the surrounding cathedral, the simple chapel remains as a reminder of the humble beginnings of the Order. In the same way, in today's Gospel reading, Jesus reminds His followers not to follow Him because of extravagant signs and wonders. While He obeyed the will of the Father through miracles of power, Jesus knew that people would be left hungry if they followed Him for these miracles alone.

Jesus said to them: "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world." When they still demand this miraculous bread, He tells them: "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." Not long after He spoke these words, Jesus drank from the cup, giving Himself to all as the Bread of Life, calling His followers to give their lives at the Cross with equal devotion. It is not hard to imagine that many who sought a sign that day, looking for a miracle of power to prove Jesus was on the "winning" side, fled at the price required at the Cross.

John Michael Talbot says of this feast day: "We must live the Gospel radically like they did in that first community... We live this Gospel way of life- radical contemplative prayer, radical charismatic high praise, radical Gospel living." Just as the simple Portiunucula remains amidst the grandeur of the Basilica as a reminder of humility and suffering, so too does the Eucharist stand within the beauty of the liturgy, calling us to embrace the costly sacrifice of the altar in our lives. St. Francis love for Christ out weighed his desire for self-preservation and glory, embodied so beautifully when he kissed the leper. While we give thanks to the Father for the power and beauty of His Church, we never forget the simple, poor Messiah who loved the poor, embraced the leper and went willingly to the suffer and death of the Cross.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci, with thanks to Franciscan Journey

May the Force be with you…

The word healing comes from a word meaning "entire" or "complete," and signifies a restoration to wholeness. For that reason it is a more "holistic" word than therapy. While many people are helped by psychotherapy, I suspect that there are also many like me who have benefited from occasional counselling but have received more help from spiritual practices such as prayer and lectio divina, or holy reading. Perhaps the most radical aspect of the psychology of the desert monastics is the extent to which they believed that Scripture itself had the power to heal. In The Word in the Desert, his study of how thoroughly the early monks integrated Scripture into their lives, Douglas Burton-Christie notes that they regarded these "sacred texts [as] inherently powerful, a source of holiness, with a capacity to transform their lives."

Appreciating this monastic perspective on the Bible means abandoning the modern tendency to regard it as primarily an object of intellectual study, or as a handy adjunct to our ideology, be it conservative or liberal. The desert father who expounds on the inherent value of meditating on Scripture by observing, "Even if we do not understand the meaning of the words we are saying, when the demons hear them, they take fright and go away," insults our intelligence. What is left to us, if we relinquish our intellectual comprehension? Isn't it necessary to retain more control than that? Maybe not, if we want to experience the Word of God as these monks did, as "a living force within them."

From Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead Books, 2008), with thanks to Vicki K Black

I just love this. I love it. I love it. I love it. I have for so long felt that there was a force, which I couldn't exactly name, in Scripture as you read it in the Daily Office, unvarnished, free from commentary or sermon, short of devotional notes. Just the Word of God, standing there before us, rather as Jesus stood before Pilate. We are changed merely by being in its presence. Healed. Made whole. And we do not need to know the mechanism behind our healing. There words of Norris' are such liberation: to read someone else describing just what I've been feeling is - for me at any rate, full of self-doubt as I am - healing in itself!

Roots and things…

The Oxford Movement called on people to look more deeply into the institutional life of the established Church to discover its inner mystery as the Body of Christ. In reading the Tracts one discovers beneath the concern for institutional structures a deep piety and spirituality, and even more a sense that the Tractarians' concern about institutions and their outward forms arose from what they believed about Jesus Christ as Lord of the Church. The immediate situation called for a defence of the Church against those who would, as they thought, destroy it. As the Movement gathered strength they were more and more nourished by a sacramental spirituality and devotion which had much wider implications. . . .

The Church is sacramental not simply because it was founded by Jesus but because it is his graceful presence in the lives of human beings. It was this vision of the Church which became so central to the Oxford Movement, first as it was expressed in the Tracts and later in sermons, manuals of devotion and theological treatises. The Church was seen as the community of grace, the means through which we share in the life of God in Christ, and as the present embodiment of Christ himself by his Spirit in the world. Therefore, it could be nothing less than sacramental: the visible presence of the invisible God; his redeeming act towards his people in their history, working through people, institutional structures, and the things of creation—water and bread and wine.

Nowhere, perhaps, is such a view better expressed than in Dr. Pusey’s Tract on baptism (Tract 67) and in his several writings on the Eucharist (Tract 81 and his sermon ‘The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent’). In those writings Pusey draws upon the scriptures, the writings of the Fathers (especially Cyril of Alexandria) and a host of earlier Anglican divines, to show that in those two sacramental acts of the Church our redemption in Christ is made real and present to us through God’s use of the things of creation, and that through them we are truly incorporated into and participate in the real humanity of Christ himself. In the sacraments a new principle of life is imparted to us as we are united to Christ in the Church.

From Church, Ministry and Unity: A Divine Commission by James E. Griffiss, a volume in the Faith and the Future series, edited by David Nicholls (Basil Blackwell, 1983) with thanks to Vicki K Black

 

[The Franciscan Third Order] was formed in the Anglican Communion around 1936 at a time when Brother Douglas was operating from a farmhouse in Dorset, now called Hilfield Friary, and Father Algy had the vision of establishing three orders, as in the medieval church. The Third Order in Europe celebrated its Diamond Jubilee at Salisbury Cathedral on Saturday, 20th July 1996, led by its Minister Provincial, Very Revd Stephen Platten, Dean of Norwich;   In addition to Europe there are four other provinces in which the Third Order operates: America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, whilst a number of tertiaries work in isolated areas under the care of the Minister General.

from the TSSF UK website

The roots of the Anglican Franciscans run deep into the Oxford Movement, for it was within the movement that the Anglican church began to recover the legacy of monasticism:

Monastic life in England came to an abrupt end with Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of King Henry VIII. The property and lands of the monasteries were confiscated and either retained by the king or given to loyal protestant nobility. Monks and nuns were forced to either flee for the continent or to abandon their vocations. For around 300 years, there were no monastic communities within any of the Anglican churches.

Shortly after the Oxford Movement began to advocate restoring catholic faith and practice to the Church of England (see Anglo-Catholicism), there was felt to be a need for a restoration of the monastic life. Anglican priest John Henry Newman established a community of men at Littlemore near Oxford in the 1840s. From then forward, there have been many communities of monks, friars, sisters, and nuns established within the Anglican Communion. In 1848, Mother Priscilla Lydia Sellon founded the Anglican Sisters of Charity and became the first woman to take religious vows within the Anglican Communion since the Reformation. In October 1850 the first building specifically built for the purpose of housing an Anglican Sisterhood was consecrated at Abbeymere in Plymouth. It housed several schools for the destitute, a laundry, printing press and soup kitchen. From the 1840s and throughout the following one hundred years, religious orders for both men and women proliferated in the UK and the United States, as well as in various countries of Africa, Asia, Canada, India and the Pacific.

Some Anglican religious communities are contemplative, some active, but a distinguishing feature of the monastic life among Anglicans is that most practice the so-called "mixed life", a combination of a life of contemplative prayer with active service. Anglican religious life closely mirrors that of Roman Catholicism. Like Roman Catholic religious, Anglican religious also take the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Religious communities live together under a common rule, reciting the Divine Office and celebrating the Eucharist daily.

In the early 20th century when the Anglo-Catholic Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds of orders and communities, and thousands of religious. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion, most notably in the United Kingdom and the United States. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery comprised of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct. There are however, still thousands of Anglican religious working today in religious communities around the world. While vocations remain few in some areas, Anglican religious communities are experiencing exponential growth in Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

from the Wikipedia article on Christian Monasticism

 

One of the results of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church during the 19th century was the re-establishment of religious orders, including some of Franciscan inspiration. The principal Anglican communities in the Franciscan tradition are the Community of St. Francis (women, founded 1905), the Society of Saint Francis (men, founded 1934), and the Community of St Clare (women, enclosed). There is also a Third Order.

Another officially sanctioned Anglican order with a more contemplative focus is the order of the Little Brothers of Francis in the Anglican Church of Australia. Their webpage is here

There is a young Order of Ecumenical Franciscans that started in the United States. Their webpage is here

There are also some small Franciscan communities within European Protestant and Old Catholic Churches, and The Saint Francis Ecumenical Society - ^[4] Ecumenical Franciscan Society from Eastern Europe (Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and free Protestant members). There are some Franciscan orders in Lutheran Churches.

Two of the more ecumenical Franciscan Orders within the Anglican heritage are the Order of Servant Franciscans (OSF)^[5] and the Conventual Community of Saint Francis (CCSF). The members of the Order of Servant Franciscans (OSF) are committed the process of becoming ministers of Christ's message of reconciliation and love, as demonstrated by the holy lives of Saints Francis and Clare. The Conventual Community of Saint Francis (CCSF) has a special charism to serve the marginalized, including the poor and homeless, racial and sexual minorities, and others who are not welcomed by the institutional church. The OSF and the CCSF are not officially related in any way.

from the Wikipedia article on Franciscans