Hitting The Ground Running

It's when the world is moving the fastest that I need to spend time in prayer to guide me.

It’s when the world is moving the fastest that I need to spend time in prayer to guide me.

One would be hard pressed to find a more difficult transition than the one Dennis, Ramon and I have made over the past few weeks: Having spent an entire year in a highly structured, isolated year focused on contemplation (and surviving cold, grey winter days!), we now find ourselves in one of the busiest cities in the country, responsible for almost every aspect of our lives, thrust into a highly demanding environment focused primarily on action.

The most obvious and so far overwhelming change from last year is my studies at The Catholic University of America. I have no doubt learned a lot of things in the last few years through in-house classes and workshops, but there is a big difference between a steady dose of workshops and a full load of college courses, especially when those courses consist of Ancient Philosophy, Metaphysics, Reasoning and Argumentation, Human Nature, and Latin. Talk about a brain cramp! I’m not particularly worried about the workload, per se, as each of the courses except Latin are at the undergraduate level, it’s more so the fact that I’m being asked to use my brain and time in a way that I have not had to for more than two years.

What makes the day really long, though, is the fact that there are gaps ranging from one hour to almost four hours between every class, and so I find myself on campus from 9-5 most days of the week. The added time isn’t all that bad, however, as it gives me time to get a lot of work done before heading home and the opportunity to take advantage of CUA’s athletic facilities.

The other perk to getting so much done during the day is that it frees me up to get involved with a few of the many opportunities being a simply-professed friar in Washington, D.C. has to offer. For starters, it looks like I’ll be teaching an 8th grade religious education class on Sundays and Tuesdays, which would consist of faith formation, Bible study, and justice and peace issues. I’ve also been appointed as the chair for JPIC (Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation) issues in our house, a position that has very few set responsibilities but a lot of opportunities. At the moment, I’m working with the friars at St. Camillus Church and the young adult group to organize an event aimed at presenting a Franciscan perspective of creation, scientific conclusions about the state of the earth, and both practical and theoretical applications of integrating the two. If that’s not enough, I’ve been trying to get out of the house and have some fun on at least a weekly basis so as to stay healthy and well-rounded. So far that has consisted of playing a round of golf, something that satisfies my needs to be active, competitive, and contemplative in nature.

But despite all of the responsibilities that I’m adding to my once care-free novitiate schedule, the most difficult transition so far has not been what I have been doing, but rather what I haven’t been doing: praying. With so much action in our lives, it’s all to easy to completely forget about the contemplation that fuels it and gives it meaning. I don’t mean to say that I haven’t prayed or been to Mass in the past two weeks, as I have been very faithful to praying Morning and Evening prayer each day, and have attended Mass every chance I was able. The problem has simply been accepting that there is no way to pray as often and thoroughly as I did when that was my only concern, but that with a little effort and time management, I can find a way to devote myself to scripture, Franciscan sources, silent prayer and meditation with the same spirit as I did in my novitiate. It’s absolutely too important to let that spirit drift away. As Francis wrote to St. Anthony of Padua in regards to Anthony’s request to study books, 

I am pleased that you teach sacred theology to the brothers provided that, as is contained in the Rule, you “do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion” during study of this kind.

I don’t know if I could be any happier about all that I get to do this year. The things that I will learn will stimulate and test my mind in new ways, my experience teaching will be an opportunity to share all that I’ve learned and realize all that I can still be taught, and the justice and peace initiatives will make me feel like I’m actually making a difference in the world. Talk about hitting the ground running when you consider what I was doing only one month ago. But with all that, I have to ask myself, “Why am I running, and where am I going?” Without a spirit of prayer and devotion, without an understanding that I am in relationship with God and all that I do is for the sake of fostering that relationship, I may be, as Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI writes in Caritas in Veritate, without Truth to guide me:

Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love.

 3 Comments

 Posted on September 2, 2013 by

 Post-Novitiate

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Finish The Whole Bible In One Year

If your bible looks like this, it might be time to open it up and give it a try!

If your Bible looks like this, it might be time to open it up and give it a try!

Like many Catholics, I have always owned a Bible and believed it to be a very important book, but rarely found myself sitting down to actually read it. That’s not to say that I didn’t know much about the Bible, because I did. By virtue of simply attending mass for 24 years, I was presented with two readings, a psalm, and a Gospel passage every week as a part of the three-year Lectionary cycle.

There is a difference, however, between being familiar with a story and knowing it in its context of the other stories. So much of the historical significance and theological purpose of a passage is lost if it is read within a historical vacuum because the reader has no idea what has led to these events. When reading a text, as with a movie, television show, or the life of another, how can one begin to understand the emotion, the atmosphere, the drama, the relationships, the implications, or the subtleties without first knowing the back-story? In the case of sacred scripture, how can one truly claim to understand the teachings of Jesus without first understanding the Levitical laws that dictated the religious context, the history of the people of Israel that shaped their social constructs, or most of all, what they believed about God?

This is what I set out to learn during my novitiate year. Knowing that I had a lot of time for private prayer and meditation, I committed myself to completing the entire canon of scripture before I was professed. I picked a Bible, (I strongly suggest this one) went to the last page, and divided the number of pages by the number of days I wanted it to take. Five pages a day. That’s it. All it would take for me to read the entire Bible was to read five pages a day. When you consider how many of those pages are maps, charts, and title pages, that didn’t seem like it would be that difficult.

It wasn’t. The more difficult task, actually, was deciding the order in which I would read it. Rather than simply reading each book in the order in which it’s listed, (the historical books, then the wisdom books, then the prophetic books, and so on,) I decided that I was going to do a little research and instead read them based on the best scholarly guess as to when each was written. The reason I say when the text was written as opposed to when the events took place is significant. For instance, 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles are written about the same events, the pre-exilic history of Israel. The difference between the two is that the authors of these books are writing in completely different historical contexts and thus, have completely different purposes for writing. To read them back-to-back might be helpful given the similar content (although the discrepancies in details might be a bit confusing), but I found that reading them separately, among books with a similar context, helped to bring out the particular theology and historical backdrop of the author. The same can be said about all of the prophetic books: it’s much easier to understand the message of a prophet when one understands the historical events that provoked their preaching.

Using biblical commentaries, clues within the texts, and pre-made bible guides, I came up with a Bible Reading Guide of my own  Each book is marked based on the significance I felt that it had for the overall understanding of salvation history, denoted by bolded texts to represent the most important books, underlined texts to represent books necessary for a scope of salvation history, italicized to represent books than can be skimmed rather than read in full, and (in parentheses) to suggest that these books be skipped completely, or read after a complete understanding of biblical texts, as they can be the most misunderstood.

I can’t say that I’m any closer to being a biblical scholar at this point, nor can I say that I have retained everything that I read (it’s a big book!), but what I will say is that the process of reading the whole bible was one of the most fruitful aspects of my year in novitiate. Being more familiar with scripture has helped me my prayer, my understanding of God, my attention at Mass, and my overall confidence speaking about my faith to others. I cannot stress enough the importance of reading scripture on a regular basis.

Which brings me to my last point: try it yourself! It can seem like an overwhelming task at first, but trust me when I say that it’s manageable. I think the first step for anyone who wants to know more about the bible is to simply open it up and familiarize yourself with it: flip through the table of contents, get a feel for which books are in which Testament, see which books are longer than others, and read little snippets of books to get a flavor for different genres. Before you begin any sort of reading plan, however, I strongly suggest reading the general introductions found in the Catholic Study Bible, or another introduction to the Historical-Critical Method, as they are excellent resources to reading the texts properly. I cannot stress enough the importance of proper reading techniques. From there, read as you feel comfortable. Read the texts, the notes, and the commentaries. Read with others and read alone. And most of all, read prayerfully!

 Posted on August 28, 2013 by

 Novitiate, Scripture

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My Advice For Those Discerning

With the transfer of the Postulancy program from Wilmington, DE to Silver Spring, MD, the postulants and simply professed will be under the same roof once again. Holy Name Province is blessed to have eight incoming postulants this year. Their arrival sparked this reflection.

Two years ago I started my journey as a Franciscan. Tomorrow, eight more men will do the same.

Two years ago I started my journey as a Franciscan. Tomorrow, eight more men will do the same.

Having now completed two years of the six-year formation process to become a Franciscan friar, I feel that I have learned a thing or two worth sharing with those discerning religious life. Obviously, my experience is quite particular to my Order, province, gender, and age, but I think that there’s something universal that can be shared with all who are discerning religious life: Give it two years.

What I mean by that is be patient. The entire formation process to become a Franciscan Friar is long (one year of postulancy, one year of novitiate, and four years of temporary profession.) It doesn’t happen overnight, and for good reason. Discernment takes time. Spiritual growth takes time. Building relationships in fraternity takes time. It takes so much time, in fact, that there is a two-year period between entering postulancy and making one’s first official commitment, simple profession. Be patient.

Being patient means giving yourself completely to the program. The first two years are not like the rest of friar life, nor does it claim to be. It is a period of deep spiritual discernment, exposure to a new way of life to try new things, the transformation of self, and the laying of a foundation that will last the rest of your life. These are all critically important. These are all critically tedious and frustrating at times as well. There will be workshops, sharing sessions, confrontations, suggestions and critiques, activities, and people in general that will seem so useless and trivial at the time that you’re going to ask yourself, “What the heck am I doing here?” Sometimes, it’s simply humility and patience that will get you through it. And you will. But I cannot stress it enough: stay open, especially in these times! There have been countless grace-filled moments over the past few years that I didn’t recognize at the time, and had I not been open to try new things, even in the frustrating times, I would have never seen them. Give yourself to the program.

Lastly, most important of all, giving yourself completely to the program means giving up thinking about “all the things I could be doing.” I could be getting a degree; I could be helping the poor; I could be dating; I could be making money; I could be furthering my career; I could be out with friends doing the things we used to do. You’re right: you could be. But you’re not. You’re a part of a once in a lifetime opportunity in which people will take care of everything for you so that you can better know God, yourself, and how that relationship fits with others. Trust me when I say that this is an invaluable opportunity for anyone, even for those who discern away from the friars.

And so I say again, give it two years. What’s two years of your life in the grand scheme of things? Sure, you could discern out, and you would “lose” two years, but think about how much more of an attentive husband, faithful and knowledgeable layperson, effective boss, and empathetic neighbor two years of such an in-depth spiritual program could make you. And if the worst-case scenario were only that, you discern out of religious life after two years a better person, it would seem that you’re risking almost nothing in order to gain everything. What if, on the other hand, that tiny spark of a calling you feel now becomes so enflamed after two years that you can’t think of anything else to do but devote your entire life to God and neighbor? What a wonderful two years that would be.

I now leave you with a prayer that has been very helpful over the past two years in my own discernment, a prayer that has kept me patient in my vocation in good times and bad. May it give you the same peace that it gave me to know that God is working in my life, even if it’s not always obvious.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

 5 Comments

 Posted on August 25, 2013 by

 Discernment, Formation

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Yet Another Transition

Unlike the last two years, the room I'm moving into will be mine for long enough to settle in.

Unlike the last two years, the room I’m moving into will be mine for long enough to settle in.

After two great weeks of vacation, it’s on to the next step of initial formation: post-novitiate studies. (For those keeping score at home, you’ll remember that this is the third stage of initial formation as I discussed it back in 2011. If not, check it out here!) And so for the third time in three years, I packed up all of my belongings and moved into a new house with new people and new responsibilities.

Of these new responsibilities, the most time-consuming, if not most important, will be attending school at The Catholic University of America. In order to be ordained a priest in the Catholic Church, something that I have discerned to be a call of mine, candidates are required to complete 30 credits of undergraduate philosophy and obtain a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree, among other things. Let’s just say that I’ve got a long way to go… The good thing is that I like school, and that I’m actually excited to get back in the classroom.

As friars, there is much more to post-novitiate formation than academics, however. Along with our regular 12-15 credit course loads each term, we will be expected to work in a ministerial setting for roughly eight hours per week, including a bi-monthly supervision meeting and reflections. Supervised ministry such as this allows us an opportunity to apply the theology we learn in the classroom to real-life situations, as well as to gain crucial pastoral experience that simply cannot be learned in a classroom. As of yet we do not know where we will be assigned, but typical ministries include teaching religious education, youth ministry, or Catholic high school ministry; visiting hospitals, nursing homes, or prisons; direct assistance to the poor; and parish work. I will be sure to share extensively about my experience in this area throughout the years.

Beyond these two responsibilities, there is always the responsibility to be “A Brother, Even When Busy,” as I’ve mentioned before. Simply put, we’re a fraternity, not a dormitory. There is a responsibility among each member to add to the life the community by attending prayer and meals, taking on house chores, and simply being present to one’s brothers in a fraternal way in whatever way that may express itself. Certainly is will be the busiest year (so far) when it comes to external responsibilities, and I hope not to place too lofty of expectations on myself and others, but it’s a value that must always be kept in mind.

For now, I’m focusing on getting to know a new community, becoming acquainted with a new (and busy) city, and trying to get my year in order before it starts. I will most definitely continue blogging along the way, continuing to share some experiences from my novitiate year along with new experiences as they happen, but their frequency may not be as regular as they were during the postulant year. I thank you for all of your continue support in prayers and affirmations, and ask that you continue to pray for me as this year gets underway.

 1 Comment

 Posted on August 20, 2013 by

 Post-Novitiate

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This Is Not What I Signed Up For!

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Realizing that we bring our own baggage to community life can help prevent resentful comments such as these.

There came a moment during this past year when the luster of novitiate began to fade, and community life became more of a burden than it did a joy. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I looked around at the inane and constantly occurring conflicts in the friary, the unbearable idiosyncrasies of some of the strangest people you will ever meet, and the dysfunction of leadership that still struggles to understand and live the charism of our founder after 800 years of fighting, and just screamed, “This is not what I signed up for!” I signed up to be a part of a group of men that live, work, and pray together to bring about the kingdom of God; a group of men that are identified with and work for the poor and marginalized of society; a group of men that recognize the wonder of creation, the power of the incarnation, and the joy of experiencing it all. That’s what I signed up for.

That same week, I found a letter written by Fr. Jose Carballo, the former minister general of the Order of Friars Minor and the current secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, to the Poor Clares on their 800th year anniversary. Fr. Carballo writes,

If there is anything that destroys our fraternities it is the pretension of being above others, becoming judges of our brothers and sisters. This is due to our projecting onto them our dreams, and we demand of God and others that they fulfill them. Loving our dream of fraternity more than real fraternity, we turn into destroyers of fraternity. We begin to be accusers of our brothers, and then we accuse God, and finally we become desperate accusers of ourselves. We must remembers that there will never exist the ideal fraternity that can accept our dreams of pretentious pride, and that the fraternity is built on the basis of pardon and reconciliation, since it has so much to do with our own limitations and those of others.

Obviously I knew that there would always be conflicts when it came to differing levels of cleanliness and work distribution, as I’ve written about before, but when I searched further, I found that many of the things that frustrated me the most were not other people; they were the result of things that I brought to community life. Of the most notable was that I brought with me unfair expectations of others, exactly has Br. Carballo writes. Both consciously and subconsciously, I had determined how they should act, what they should believe in, what they should and shouldn’t need. Because I was unable to be flexible with my expectations, they quickly turned into judgments, which turned into condemnations, eventually ending in resentment, something that did not leave me open to new experiences of love.

It was then that I found a book by Jean Vanier that described every feeling, thought, doubt, hope, and situation that I had experienced so far in novitiate. Entitled Community and Growth: Our Pilgrimage, Vanier offers insights and wisdom from his many years of founding communities that are both practical and spiritual. Here’s how he opens the book:

Community is a terrible place. [Good start, right?] It is the place where our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us. When we begin to live full-time with others, we discover our poverty and out weaknesses, our inability to get on with people, our mental and emotional blocks, our affective and sexual disturbances, our seemingly insatiable desires, our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy. While we were alone, we could believe we loved everyone. Now that we are with others, we realize how incapable we are of loving, how much we deny life to others. And if we become incapable of loving, what is left? There is nothing but blackness, despair and anguish. Love seems an illusion. We seem to be condemned to solitude and death.

So community brings a painful revelation of our limitations, weaknesses and darkness; the unexpected discovery of the monsters within us is hard to accept. The immediate reaction is to try to destroy the monsters or to hide them away again, pretending they don’t exist, or to flee from community life and relationship with others, or to find that the monsters are theirs, not ours. But if we accept that monsters are there, we can let them out and learn to tame them. This is growth towards liberation.

If that’s not powerfully wise first page, I don’t know what is. The best part? It only gets better. Throughout the entirety of the text, he simply has an eloquent way of weaving together his own experiences of success and failure, insights he’s learned along the way, prophetic condemnations of unhealthy communities, spiritual nourishment, and his own hopes for the future, while maintaining a humble tone throughout.

These two texts were tremendously helpful in my formation this year, and I strongly recommend them to anyone entering community life. For me, they made me realize that what I was getting out of community life was in fact exactly what I signed up for. I signed up to be a penitent with men who recognize their limitations and sinfulness; men who bring with them brokenness and imperfection; men who realize that love is messy; men who know that it’s worth getting on each others’ nerves and letting each other down every once in a way if it means going through life together. I did not sign up to be in a group of perfect men without any need for God, nor did I sign up to be in a group of men exactly like me! Sure, there is a burden to community life some days, but in the end, even those burdens can be entirely grace-filled if you let them. Community life can definitely be a struggle, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 2 Comments

 Posted on August 17, 2013 by

 Fraternity, Novitiate

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Breaking In The Habit

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