Canonical Visitation

Above all else, a Chapter is a time to come together as a fraternity.

Above all else, a Chapter is a time to come together as a fraternity.

Every three years, dating back to St. Francis himself, the Franciscans gather together in what is called a Chapter. A combination of business and fraternity, a Chapter is a time for the brothers to take a break from their daily ministerial lives to be with each other, share about their experiences, and to readjust the fraternal mission. This generally includes various speakers, discussions of important topics, votes around important issues, the election of the provincial council (the advisory board to the provincial), and if the provincial has finished his term (six year followed by an option for three year), the election of a new provincial.

In such years, as it is this year, the province goes through a process called a Canonical Visitation. The best way that I can describe this process is that it is the most fraternal and least binding audit one can imagine. Essentially, a friar is chosen from a province outside of our own to give an objective report of the life of the province so that it can best correct itself into the future.

This is no easy task. Besides sitting in on provincial council meetings and thoroughly looking over important documents, the “Provincial Visitator” as he is called meets with every single friar in the province for an hour to discuss three areas of critical importance: Personal Life, Local Fraternal Life, and Provincial Life. For example:

  1. The state of your health: physical, mental, spiritual, vocational.
  2. What gives you life in ministry?
  3. Are you a happy friar?
  4. What do you think of the different dimensions of your local friar life?
  5. Do you have any proposals to better the life of the local fraternity?
  6. Is there a transparency between the Provincial administration and the friars regarding finances?
  7. What are you thoughts around provincial movement and collaboration?
  8. Do you have any suggestions of friars that would be good in leadership positions?

These are among the two pages of questions I have been given to prepare for my meeting tomorrow, a meeting that I am very grateful to have. What a blessing it is to have an outsider visit each of us every election year, to listen to us in confidence, and to collate our responses into a comprehensive report! It is an opportunity to understand who we are at the moment so that we can best determine who we want to be in the future. It is an opportunity to receive affirmation for what we are already doing, and to correct what might have gone astray. It is an opportunity to bring forth new life in the Franciscan Order and in our world.

As it is my first chapter I know little of what to expect. I look forward to seeing everyone in June, to hearing what the visitator has to say, and to see where the Spirit decides to lead us next. Certainly more to come on this topic as plans unfold! Please keep Holy Name Province, as well as all of the other United State provinces, in your prayers as this is an interesting time of collaboration and new endeavors in this country.

 Posted on January 22, 2014 by

 Fraternity

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Franciscan Film Society

Movies have the ability to truly move us. What if we were to be moved while looking through a Franciscan lens?

Movies have the ability to truly move us. What if we were to be moved while looking through a Franciscan lens?

I find much of what is considered popular “Christian” movies to be lacking. Besides the obvious theological problems raised by movies portraying Jesus as some sterilized hippy that simply wants everyone to be happy, God as an impersonal judge that is more like Santa Claus than the creator of the cosmos, or anything involving the rapture, I find many of the story lines to be trite, corny, and distant from the experience of many people dealing with brokenness in their lives. While there are obviously some redeemable characteristics to these movies, and many people do in fact like them, I would like to posit an alternative perspective on the Christian movie-going experience: the best movies portraying the journey of a Christian to the heart of God are often found in the secular world.

The problem I think we as Christians run into when trying to select movies is twofold: 1) we can too narrowly define Christian movies as those films produced by Christian organizations and/or have an explicit message of Jesus or Christianity, and 2) we shy away from anything rated above PG because PG-13 and R rated movies inevitably include images that are contrary to our Christian values, and thus, “could not be Christian.”

I could not disagree more. Take a movie like Gran Torino for instance. The main character (Clint Eastwood) is a vengeful, broken man who uses terrible language and more racial slurs than I knew existed. At multiple points in the movie he resolves conflicts with threats and violence, and if that’s not enough, is disrespectful (to say the least) towards the local priest seeking to help him. This character is far from G-rated and family friendly, and by no means a prototypical Christian hero. And yet, I find him to be a powerful expression of the Christian experience. *Spoiler alert* Touched by the very people he spent his entire life hating, he finds redemption and closure to many broken aspects of his life by refraining from violence in a violent situation, sacrificing his own life for the life of the community. His experience of forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption is powerful to say the least.

How about the movie Crash? This Academy Award winning movie is rated R for “language, sexual content and some violence” and the only explicit reference to any religion is one character’s superstitious devotion to St. Christopher. In no way would I show this movie children, and frankly, most teenagers. And yet, I find it to be a foundational movie in my Christian development. Comprised of a series of vignettes, the movie follows the lives of numerous strangers as they unknowingly interact and shape the lives of the other characters. What I would call the “anti-Disney” movie, it portrays a world that is not-so-easily boxed and categorized into “good” and “bad” people with predictable and happy endings; like us, each character brings a complex set of experiences to each situation, complete with faults and failings, exhibiting a remarkable glimpse of God’s love in one instance and a terrible act inhumanity in another. It is a reminder that no one is outside of the power of redemption, and that it may be people in situations we least expect that we experience God most vividly. It is a reminder that no body should be judged by what they do on their worst day. It is a reminder that we are not the protagonist of ever story, and that our actions can have profound effects on those we meet every day.

In a truly providential way, I was working on this post when a like-minded parishioner invited me to attend the first “Franciscan Film Society (working title)” movie night. Let’s get together for dinner, watch a great movie, and have a discussion among young-adult Catholics, he said. Fantastic. Besides offering me an opportunity to interact with people (roughly) my age outside of the friary in a fun way, the movie and discussion was an extraordinary experience of Christian fellowship and faith building.

As I should have expected, but was completely put on the spot, the organizer asked me, “the Franciscan,” to explain to everyone why I thought what we were doing to be particularly Franciscan. Luckily, the answer seemed obvious to me. Franciscan theology is an incarnational. God is ever immanent, both creator of and partaker in matter. God is not some distant idea on high looking down upon us. God is in our midst, appearing in the broken and mundane, the imperfect and incomplete. Jesus’ taking on flesh rather than speaking in a booming voice from heaven is evident of this. When we watch movies to experience the ever-present God, recognizing God in the mundane and less-than-obvious places, together in community, we are doing so through the lens of a Franciscan.

For some, this whole experience might seem a bit misguided and self-fulfilling: you see what you want to see because you have read into the movie. That’s possible for sure, and I hope that I have not led anyone to believe that simply because something is R rated and doesn’t talk about God that it is in fact Christian. There are of course movies with little moral value and not worth watching (including many G and PG movies!) But it’s worth a question: is what we’re doing “reading into” a movie that was never intended to be Christian in meaning, or is it recognizing the presence of God all around us, using a popular and powerful medium to kickstart a discussion about our own experience of God? For me, just because something is not explicitly Christian or it contains situations that are not in keeping with our Christian values does not mean that it cannot provide a liminal experience for conversion and growth. My hope is that this experience of film, this replacing of rose-colored glasses for Franciscan ones, will in fact help each of us to see God more clearly in the world around us, a world that, frankly, more clearly resembles the brokenness and struggle found in well-made secular movies than it does explicitly “Christian” ones.

 2 Comments

 Posted on January 11, 2014 by

 Theology

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Withholding Judgment

Nobody, even Tina Fey, wears judgment well.

Nobody, even Tina Fey, wears judgment well.

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” (Mt 7:1-2)

“Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?” (Jas 4:11-12)

“Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things.” (Rom 2:1)

Passages such as these are easy to come by in the New Testament and secular culture alike. Find me a person who has never quoted, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” or “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” or “He who has not sinned cast the first stone.” It’s nearly impossible. The admonition against judging others is so pervasive in the New Testament that its practice would seem to be intrinsic to Christianity, and thus, the Western world.

And yet, I find myself judging others on a regular basis. I don’t believe that I am alone in this. As Christians, we are a people with high ideals regarding justice, morality, and faith. We believe that we should act a certain way, and that others should act a certain way toward us.  We believe that we hold the Truth, and that God is on our side. This may in fact be the case. Unfortunately, it does not resolve the issue at hand: what do we do when the world around us, or even the world within us, does not match the world we are hoping for?

I think that we are called to get to know the world.

The problem with judging others isn’t that we are incapable of knowing the Truth. While we may not know everything that is true, God has revealed to us at least some of it, and there are at least basic things that we can assert. The problem with judgment is that it is often done without true discernment, and it unnecessarily creates divisions in the human family. When we are quick to judge, we build resentment and ruin relationships.

The fact of the matter is that each and every one of us brings to every situation a lifetime of unique experiences that has formed our conclusions about the world. Undoubtedly, some of these conclusions will be misguided and distorted. But there is a difference between condemning our neighbor outright for a wrong conclusion and entering into a discussion to understand what may have led them there and in what ways they may actual bear the Truth in a light different from our own. To believe that we or anyone else is ever COMPLETELY right or wrong, that we are without sin or blemish, is preposterous. In this way, there is a true sense that if we are ever going to grasp what is the Truth, it is going to be something we do together, open to understanding even the most condemnable people around us.

Which brings me to a resolution I have for this year.  Recognizing the resentment and condemnation I build up in myself because of failed ideals, my goal for the year is to withhold judgment of my brothers and sisters, to live comfortably in the tension between asserting the Truth I have found and being open to my understanding of that Truth changing. I wish withhold judgment as long as possible, and even when I have come to certain conclusions, I wish to remain open to God’s grace in a new way. The Bible is filled with stories of unexpected people (dumb, lame, dirty, foreign, etc.) bearing the Truth for a whole people to hear, and yet I still find myself judging people prematurely, writing them off before I am able to know them, and ultimately cutting myself off from the grace God has worked through them. I guess in the end, I hope to withhold judgment from my brothers and sisters because I’m ever thankful that God has chosen to do the same for me. If I’m still growing, learning, and failing, it seems only fitting that I be able to recognize that in my neighbor.

 Posted on January 5, 2014 by

 Justice, Ministry

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My Prayer of Fidelity

The commitment to prayer of our Muslim brothers is truly inspirational. Francis himself admired their universal call to prayer.

The commitment to daily prayer of our Muslim brothers and sisters is truly inspirational. Francis himself admired this.

Woody Allen is famously quoted as saying, “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” For many, this is an example one of those cheesy motivational quotes found on posters of soaring eagles or sunsets over mountains, feel-good lines that don’t stand up to actual reason. For many, glorifying the act of showing up is akin to awarding “participation ribbons” to every kid in Little League, downplaying what really matters, skill and hard work, ultimately lowering our expectations and standards so that we’re all winners. Showing up, for many, is worth very little.

It may surprise many of you then to hear that I find this line is a perfect one to describe my experience of prayer life since the beginning of novitiate. Prayer, as I have found it, is an act of fidelity.

Even for someone who has been a Christian all my life, believed in God, and found prayer to be an important practice, I have often struggled to find prayer to be a consistently fulfilling experience. Sometimes, I would finish empowered, overjoyed, and enlightened about God, myself, and the world; other times, I would leave having spent 20 minutes thinking about what I was going to do next, or worse yet, focused entirely on the question, “What the heck am I doing wasting my time with this?” Because of this, prayer time was never among my highest priorities, and my commitment to it was sporadic at best. This was the case even up through my Postulant year into Novitiate. I intellectually knew that prayer was a good thing to do, but for one reason or another (too busy, bored, tired, distracted, etc.) I could still go days without intentional time for prayer.

This all changed during novitiate. While I knew that I could not control how tired, distracted, interested, comfortable, or happy I was going to be during prayer, nor could I affect the outcome of the experience, I knew that I could control my attendance. Within the first couple weeks of novitiate, I made a commitment to quietly sit in the chapel for 30 minutes a day. All I had to do was show up. And let me tell you: a lot of mornings, that’s all I did. There were days that getting out of bed to sit in a cold chapel was the last thing I wanted to do. There were days when I could have spent that time doing “more important” things. There were days when I was angry at God, my brothers, or myself, and didn’t want to deal with them. There were days when showing up, literally, was all I could have done, and yet, in the past I wouldn’t have even done that.

What I came to realize was that showing up, having fidelity to prayer, was in fact a prayer in and of itself. I found that it offered an insight into God’s fidelity to me, that God was always there, showing up for me, not because I deserved it, was particularly enjoyable to be around, or offered a fulfilling experience, but because of his commitment to my life. Showing up, even when I didn’t want to, offered me the opportunity to return that love, to emulate the God who had never failed to love me.

The reason I believe I failed to experience much in my prayer life before this point, and why I continue to struggle at times, is because prayer is something that requires a lot of work, commitment, and practice. For me, eighty percent of that experience is showing up, and so that’s what I do. I prayer Morning and Evening Prayer each and every day, no matter how busy, and find thirty minutes a day for Lectio Divina. Do I always enjoy it? No, but I can tell you one thing: the more I show up the more I enjoy it. In the same way that one does not pick up running and immediately enjoy it or is able to run well, prayer is something that needs to be entered gradually, worked at, and persevered.

In the end, what more is there for us to do but show up? We are always and already in the presence of God so there is nothing more we can do to call his attention; God is constantly offering us more of his grace than we can surely handle so there is no need to earn anything; and we are certainly not in control of what God may or may not be preparing us for, so there is no use in trying to assert our will over his. All we have to do and all we can ever do is show up and take part in the work of our God. Fidelity. That’s my prayer.

 1 Comment

 Posted on December 30, 2013 by

 Prayer

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Breaking In The Habit

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