New Web Series: A Friar Life

When I was discerning a life with the Franciscans, one of the friars told me a joke: “Once you’ve met one Jesuit, you’ve met the Jesuits. Once you’ve met one Franciscan, you’ve met one Franciscan.” A quip both sides actually like to tell (James Martin, S.J., the Jesuit writer of for America Magazine mentions it in his book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything), once could say that it’s more than just playful sibling rivalry: there’s actually some truth to it. As this friar (and James Martin) described it, Ignatian Spirituality and its subsequent formation program for new Jesuits is very organized, regimented, and clearly defined, producing men that all seem to have similar ideas about various topics. Even the slightest whiff of a reform is squashed immediately. The Franciscan charism, as many of you will remember from my video Why Are There So Many Different Franciscans? is slightly less defined… and is almost built on constant reform. As a result, I have heard Jesuits and Franciscans tell the same followup joke: “If you ask 100 Jesuits from around the world the same question, you will get the same one answer. If you ask 100 Franciscans around the world the same question, you might get 100—or more—different answers.”

It is within that context that I present the newest web series to Breaking In The Habit,  “A Friar Life.” For years I have gotten requests to share what a normal day is like for a friar, and for years I’ve wanted to show it. But who could capture what it means to be a Franciscan for us all? What one single day could epitomize the rest? Surely, for us friars, one does not exist. Luckily, one doesn’t have to. For the next five (hopefully six… maybe seven) Fridays, I will present a glimpse into the life of a different friar. Sometimes shot in a single day, other times highlighting a variety of tasks over a series of days, no one video is meant to capture every aspect of each friar’s life as if each were complete, stand-alone records of each friar’s life. Rather, just as we come together to build a fraternity that is greater than any one individual, these videos are intended to be taken together, each as a piece of the wider, ongoing, and growing puzzle of what it means to live as a Franciscan.

Email subscribers click here to watch this trailer, and be sure to check back in each Friday. If you have not subscribed to the YouTube channel directly, you can do so by going to the page here.

 

 1 Comment

 Posted on May 12, 2017 by

 Fraternity, Video

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Learning My Lesson… Again

For nearly six years I have lived in a community of religious men seeking to live humbly and serve others. I’ve been to workshops, heard lectures, went on retreats, prayed for countless hours, and really, just lived this life for more than 2000 days. You would think that I’d have learned a few lessons in that time.

Apparently not.

A couple of weeks ago, I came home for lunch to find a mess in the kitchen: there was peanut butter everywhere. If that sounds like a strange statement, it’s because it is. I don’t know who did it or how it happened without them noticing, but there was peanut butter on the faucet of the sink, the counter, the cabinet handle, the refrigerator, and the bag of bread. Presumably, someone used the peanut butter, got some on his hand without realizing it, and spread it to everything he touched.

Ultimately, that’s irrelevant, though. My first reaction was not “how…” it was “ah hell no!” I took one look at the mess and said, as I have been known to do over the past six years, “Not my problem.” I was not going to deal with this mess. I was in a hurry, had my own lunch to make… whoever did this—and all the rest of the friars—could come home and see what a jerk he was and clean it himself. Not doing it.

*Fast forward fifteen seconds.*

There I was, having leaned up against the counter I had just complained about, with peanut butter on my habit. Ugh. This is not going to come out easily. Initially even angrier at whoever had left the mess, I found myself feeling really stupid moments later. Had I simply taken fifteen seconds to get a rag and cleaning spray, the kitchen would have been clean and my habit would not smell like lunch. Was it REALLY that big of a deal to clean up after someone else?

The answer is no. And really, the answer is always no. As much as what the other person did is disrespectful, rude, lazy, and inexcusable, a passive-aggressive response is never the answer. Letting myself get angry and handling the issue indirectly—simply leaving the mess in hopes that it will annoy others or send a message to the person who did it—is not the way to resolve an issue; it’s the way I get peanut on myself.

Hmm. . . How symbolic. . . It’s almost as if when we try to avoid an issue, choosing to “send a message” rather than simply talking with the person with whom we have a problem, we end up carrying the mess ourselves without them even knowing it. . .

Naturally, this is but an insignificant kitchen situation, but really, how different is it from the serious issues of life? So often in my life I find myself frustrated with something someone else has done, how they’ve treated me, or what they stand for. How easy it would be to simply address the issue head on, grab a rag, and get rid of it: “Hey, can we talk about something that’s bothering me?” But no. I prefer to hold onto my resentment, let myself get angry without them knowing anything is wrong, and hope that they get the message from my subtle slights and distancing myself from them. That’ll show them what they did.

Or it won’t.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how “religious” we are or how much we know, the simplest lessons need to be repeated from time to time; sometimes we need to go back to basics. Luckily for us Christians, the liturgical year offers us a built in mechanism for doing just that. As we pass from season to season—and now as we approach Lent—we return to lessons and teachings that we’ve heard again and again, hoping each year that some will stick for the long haul. It’s a chance to look at our lives and reflect, to take a step back, return to what we know and ask ourselves if that’s what we do. As I have found out over the past six years, and as I was reminded in the kitchen just a few weeks ago, our faith is not the exclusive domain of sacred spaces and buildings: it is something that is lived (and learned) in the ordinary, mundane, messes-in-the-kitchen situations of life. One day, if we’re lucky, we’ll all learn our lesson.

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 Posted on February 28, 2017 by

 Fraternity

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The View From the Top

Every year in formation, the Franciscans of my province host an event called “Intersession,” a meeting of all levels of formation between the sessions of school for a workshop and time for fellowship (hence intersession and not intercession). Without school or ministry on our minds and removed from our normal routines and comforts, it’s usually a welcomed time of intentional fraternity, prayer, and good ol’ fashioned doing nothing.

In that respect, this year was no different. From Thursday until Sunday, I spent time with the postulants, novices, and simply professed friars, catching up on how their year was going, playing games, staying up too late, and eating more than I would normally like. Basically, what you do on intersession. And it was great.

And yet in another respect, although I had attended it three times previously, this week seemed completely unrecognizable to me.

For starters, it was the first ever interprovincial intersession (gotta love religious jargon…) Instead of hosting it at a retreat center somewhere in Maryland or Pennsylvania like usual, everyone flew out to the tundra of Chicago’s Mundelein  Seminary, and instead of consisting solely of formation students from Holy Name Province, we invited all formation students from all US provinces to attend. Yeah, this was going to be different. Even though some of the provinces were not able to send all of their guys because of the distance, our group of normally 10-15 swelled to 31, not including formators and directors. That’s a significant group.

And a young one at that. For the first time in my friar life—I repeat, for the first time—I attended a gathering of friars and I was not the youngest person. Eight people were younger than me, making me not only “not the youngest,” but in fact outside the youngest 25%! How did that happen?? I was pleasantly surprised at this enormous breath of fresh air, and felt a clear difference in the dynamic of the group. Instead of simply sitting around and talking or watching a movie each night (like normal, and not bad at all), guys played animated board and card games, made a heck of a lot of noise, and even (and no, this is not a mistake), organized a four-on-four basketball game in the on-campus gym. First time for everything, I suppose!

But beyond all that—and those things were certainly significant—the thing that struck me the hardest was looking around and realizing that I was the most senior class in attendance. Like my words in I’m On Deck last year, I realized that “there is no one in front of me.” As young as I am, as unprepared as may feel at times, in this gathering, there was no one with more experience in formation than me. With a small handful of others, I was an upperclassman, someone now 4-5 years removed from the experiences of the new guys and the one answering all the formation questions rather than asking them. I was attending my last intersession.

Like so many moments throughout this year so far, it was a moment of pause . . . of reflection . . . of anxiety . . . of comfort . . . of joy. While my regular day-to-day life of being a friar is not considerably different now, nor will they be much different after I profess my vows, these moments remind me how far I’ve come so far and how far I plan to go in the future.

The view from the top is always the clearest, and only makes sense after the long journey to get there.

 6 Comments

 Posted on January 10, 2017 by

 Formation, Fraternity, News

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Where’s The Romance?

The other night I was out with a few friends, and in a discussion about movies, one person revealed that she had a large, color-coded DVD collection of her favorite movies, ranked for each category. Naturally, we had to ask: “What are your categories?” and “What are your favorites?” We were not disappointed. Perplexed, but not disappointed.

Among her collection the largest section was the romantic comedy section. Fair enough. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days? When Harry Met Sally? Hitch? The Notebook?

No. The Mummy Returns.

Yeah, that’s right. The Mummy Returns. The 2001 fantasy/action movie starring Brenden Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (so you know it’s good), in which an Egyptian corpse is resurrected (again) in an attempt to raise an ancient army of unspeakable evil, only to be destroyed (again) by our protagonists.

How romantic!

Naturally, we gave her a lot of grief for this. Not only is it a B-rate sequel, it is neither romantic nor comedic, making it a fairly ridiculous choice for someone’s favorite romantic comedy. For her, thought, it didn’t matter that the couple in the movie was already married with a son, had no moment of “falling in love,” or the fact that their relationship was but a minor subplot to the overall direction of the movie (you know, the whole resurrected mummy trying to destroy the world bit). What made it her favorite was the love the two had for one another in the midst of conflict, how having a child made them love each other more, and the sacrifices they were willing to make for one another.

Interesting.

While I stand firmly unconvinced in her assertion that this movie is a romantic comedy—let’s be clear about that… it’s ludicrous—The Mummy Returns offers a rare Hollywood example of the love of married life. When we think about “love stories,” there are a lot of movies about falling in love (e.g. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days), and a lot of movies about old people looking back on a life well-lived in love (e.g. The Notebook, Up), but there are very few movies about growing in the love that people have already found. It’s as if people fall in love and then jump to “happily ever after,” with nothing in between. Where are the struggles? Where are sacrifices made for one another? Where is the satisfaction of raising a child? As strange as it is to admit, there is something admirable about The Mummy Returns showing that love is not something that people simply fall into and then they get old, it is something that has to be worked at, and believe it or not, can even be stronger more than a decade in.

Pope Francis echoes this idea beautifully in his latest apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Quoting the bishops of Chile, he writes, “the perfect families proposed by deceptive consumerist propaganda do not exist. In those families, no one grows old, there is no sickness, sorrow or death… Consumerist propaganda presents a fantasy that has nothing to do with the reality which must daily be faced by the heads of families.” He goes on to say, “Joy also grows through pain and sorrow… After such suffering and struggling together, spouses are able to experience that it was worth it, because they achieved some good, learned something as a couple, or came to appreciate what they have. Few human joys are as deep and thrilling as those experienced by two people who love one another and have achieved something as the result of a great, shared effort” (Amoris Laetitia: 130, 135).

I couldn’t agree more. As much as we popularly hear about the “honeymoon stage,” how dating and the first few years of marriage are the most exciting and so every marriage should try to hang onto it for as long as possible, people who have been happily married for a long time will say the complete opposite: the “excitement” of the first few years might have faded, but their love for one another has grown. While a story about paying bills, raising children, coordinating busy schedules, and living an overall domesticated life is not something that Hollywood producers are rushing to theatres, it can be through those things—the mundane and trivial things that couples have to work hard at to accomplish—that will build stronger bonds of love than a million romantic first dates or an endless supply of butterflies in the stomach.

As someone who is not married and does not plan to get married, I can say that the same is true about religious life as well. When I entered the Order, all of the friars were new to me, every ministry a open book of opportunities, and the very idea of living as St. Francis a romantic notion straight out of a book. It was a romantic step in my life, in a way, leaving the norms of the world to do something radical. Now, I know most of the friars, have seen all of the ministries and know how they work, and have realized that the romance of the life is lived through the mundane routine of prayer, work, and fraternity, all of which I know very well. The life I live now lacks the idealism and excitement that the first few years offered.

And that’s a good thing.

The life I live now as a friar is so much better than all the idealism and excitement of when I entered. With the passing of time, there is depth in my relationships; satisfaction in having overcome challenges; comfort in knowing what’s next; and even, despite the disappointment and frustration, a stronger assurance in my vocation that I’m in the right place. These are not things I would trade for romance I felt in the beginning, nor are they things that can be felt immediately. They take time, and they take effort.

So, just like having a conversation about favorite romantic comedies with a friend of mine, you could very easily ask me about my life as a friar, “Where’s the romance?” To that I would simply say, that in movies, in marriage, and in the life of a friar, there’s more to life than falling in love. Sometimes, we need to talk a little more about growing in the love we’ve already found.

 2 Comments

 Posted on November 17, 2016 by

 Discernment, Fraternity

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Handmade Fraternity

In Franciscan life, there is not one way to live together. When we look at factors like size of the community, ministerial focus, liturgical preference, community engagement, recreation, and even house governance, there is almost nothing that unites the friars universally. In our own province now in the 21st century, we have houses with more than 25 guys in which meals are prepared by a staff and ministerial duties are individual to each friar, while we also have houses of 3 guys in which they share both domestic and ministerial responsibilities.

While both are legitimate expressions of Franciscan life and both provide their own set of benefits and challenges, I have made clear before that I have a strong preference in the matter: small houses are the way to go for me. Even though I’ve had good experiences in houses of 10, 21, 30, 25, and 19, have been able to accomplish great feats, throw great parties, and make great friends, the experiences that inspired me to be a friar in the first place and keep me here after five years have almost always come in the houses of 5, 3, and now 4. With fewer guys, there are fewer opportunities to find community and fewer people to share the load, meaning that there is a greater opportunity for interdependence, active responsibility, and flexibility.

What does all that mean in real life? Among other things, it means that I get to cook again. For four of out my five years as a friar I have lived in houses with cooks. With 25 people in the house, it just makes more sense to have a full-time staff person manage the workings of a kitchen rather than having a host of different people all buying, cooking, cleaning, fixing, breaking, and wasting all at the same time. I get that.

But there’s also something intangible lost in that, something that doesn’t show up on a budget report. At the most base level, there’s just more control: choosing the types of foods and brands, getting to pick what we eat and don’t, being flexible when a craving hits. On another level, there’s something very satisfying about taking responsibility for the domestic duties of the house—buying, organizing, cooking, serving, and cleaning—rather than having someone else do it for you.

But even more important than those, for me at least, is the intentionality that meals can have for a community when done together. Eating together is not simply a practical activity for the sake of nutritional nourishment, it’s a time to bond, to share, to laugh, to plan, and to let loose after (or in the midst of) a long day. Not that there’s anything against guests in the house or meals prepared for us, there’s just something about congregating in the kitchen while someone is cooking, helping to set the table, and working together to clean up, with just us present, that makes the whole experience more meaningful to me. It’s a time to remember, each and every day, that we’re in this life together.

Is it without it’s difficulties? Of course not. Not all meals are winners, having to stop to cook and clean up when there’s a lot of work to do can be a pain, and sometimes it can just be difficult with the same four people gathering together every day. Sometimes you just get bored of each other! For me, though, that’s where the fraternity has meaning and where this life gets its purpose. In fraternal life, as in cooking, the most satisfying experiences are not the one’s given to us through someone else’s labors, they’re the ones that we have to make with our own hands.

 4 Comments

 Posted on September 27, 2016 by

 Fraternity, News

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