Greetings from Fr. Francis A. Sariego, OFM Cap.

November, 2009

All-powerful God,

everlasting, just and good,

of ourselves we are nothing but poverty;

but grant, for your own sake,

that we may do what we know is your will,

and always desire what is pleasing to you...

Amen.

(Conclusion of the Letter to the Entire Order)

During the Year of the Priest

Pray for Priestly Holiness and Vocations

Following are daily excerpts taken from various Franciscan writings

referring to the importance St. Francis gave to Fraternal Life.

The first characteristic of the Franciscan life, even from a mere superficial view, is Fraternal Life.

In fact, Francis is the founder not of an Order but of a Fraternity...

The Rule refers to ‘brothers’ and ‘fraternity’ This month expressed in: the HABIT and CHAPTERS.

Daily meditative phrases continue from the Encyclical Spe Salvi (In Hope We Were Saved)

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - If anyone, desiring by divine inspiration to accept this life, should come to our brothers, let him be received by them with kindness...let them present him to their minister as quickly as possible. (Earlier Rule, chpt.2) - Judges 1- For prayer to develop ... it must on the one hand be something very personal, an encounter between my intimate self and God, the living God.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - And no one should be called Prior - ‘first’ -, but all generally should be called Friars Minor - ‘lesser brothers’. (Earlier Rule, chpt.6) - Judges 2 - For prayer to develop...on the other hand it must be constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - After a few days had elapsed, however, three other men from Assisi, Sabbatino, Morico, and John de Capella, came to them, begging blessed Francis to receive them as brothers. (Three Companions, chpt.9) - Judges 3 - Praying must always involve this intermingling of public and personal prayer. This is how we can speak to God and how God speaks to us...we become open to God and are prepared for the service of our fellow human beings.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Let those who wish to stay in hermitages in a religious way be three brothers or, at the most, four...each one may have his cell in which he may pray and sleep. (Rule for Hermitages) - Judges 4 - Hope in a Christian sense is always hope for others as well. It is an active hope...in the sense that we keep the world open to God...in this way it continues to be a truly human hope.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Your brothers in our country (Spain) stay in a poor hermitage. They have set up the following way of life for themselves: half of them take care of the household chores and half remain free for contemplation. In this manner each week the active half moves to the contemplative, and the repose of those conte plating returns to the toils of labor. (2 Celano, chpt.135) - Judges 5 - All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action ... enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Francis burned with great zeal for the common profession (fraternal life) and Rule, and endowed those who were zealots about it with a special blessing. (2 Celano, chpt.158) - Judges 6 - If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - When blessed Francis saw that the Lord God was daily increasing their numbers, he wrote for himself and his brothers present and future, simply and in few words, a form of life and a rule...he inserted a few other necessary things for the practice of a holy way of life in common. (1 Celano, chpt.13) - Judges 7 - Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - For whoever chooses to suffer persecution rather than wish to be separated from his brothers truly remains in perfect obedience because he lays down his life for his brothers. (Admonitions, 3) - Judges 8 - Certainly we cannot ‘build’ the Kingdom of God by our own efforts...The Kingdom of God is a gift, and precisely because of this, it is great and beautiful, and constitutes the response to our hope.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - There was another brother esteemed by the people...the father of all envy...snatched the crown from his hands...Separating himself from the religion of the brothers, he went about the world...he wandered the countryside...Soon he was awash in the waves of temptation...He went (back) to the brothers’ place in Siena...(Francis said to him) Never again separate yourself from religion and your brothers. (2 Celano,chpt.6) - Judges 9 - We can open ourselves and the world to allow God to enter: we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to what is good. This is what the saints did ....

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - They dwelt in cities and towns in groups of ten or seven. (Roger of Wendover) - Judges 10 & 11 - It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Bernard put on the habit and shared the same life with Saint Francis. (1Celano) - Judges 12 & 13 - A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Peter put on the habit that Francis had taken upon himself after he relinquished that clothes of a hermit. (Three Companions) - Judges 14 & 15 - Truth and justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my life itself becomes a lie.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Those who were received into the Order, were led to Francis that they might receive from his hands the religious habit with humility and devotion. (Three Companions) - Judges 16 - To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves - these are fundamental elements of humanity.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - They were content with one habit, often mended inside and out, so poor that they seemed in that attire to truly be crucified to the world, with a cord around their waist, and wearing rough britches. (1 Celano) - Judges 17 & 18 - God cannot suffer, be he can ‘suffer with’. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to ‘suffer with man’ in an utterly real way - in flesh and blood - as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’ Passion.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - Those who saw them were strongly amazed at their manner of attire. (Anonymous of Perugia) - Judges 19 - In all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering ‘with’ us; hence ‘con-solatio’ is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love - and so the star of hope rises.

(Acceptance and the Habit-signs of fraternal life) - All the brothers who have already promised obedience may have one tunic with a hood and, it is necessary, another without a hood and a cord and trousers. Let all the brothers wear poor clothes...they can patch them. (Earlier Rule, chpt.2) - Judges 20 - Faith in Christ has never looked merely backwards or merely upwards, but always also forwards to the hour of justice that the Lord repeatedly proclaimed.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - When we were only seven brothers and no more, one day blessed Francis gathered us together at Our Lady of the Portiuncula in the woods that extended then around the friary that we might celebrate the first chapter of the Order. (Brother John) - Judges 21 - A world without God is a world without hope.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - Having received the place of Santa Maria (Portiuncula) from the abbot, Francis established that a chapter be celebrated twice a year: at Pentecost and for the Feast of Saint Michael. (Three Companions) - Ruth 1&2 - God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - In the year of our Lord 1221, May 23^rd... on the holy day of Pentecost, blessed Francis celebrated the General Chapter at Santa Maria della Portiuncula. According to custom at that time, both professed and novices came to the Chapter, and the number was estimated at three thousand. (Leggenda Perugina) - Ruth 3&4 - This we know turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these things - justice and grace - must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - All the ministers are to attend the General Chapter at the feast of Pentecost; those who live in the regions beyond the sea or the Alps come once every three years, and the others once a year, unless the minister and servant of the entire brotherhood has not ordered otherwise. (Jordan of Giano) - Ecclesiastes 1&2 - In the end souls will stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what they once were in history, but only what they are in truth.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - Lord Pope Innocent III had approved the Order and the Rule...In this rule, the time between the chapters was prolonged to avoid hardship for the brothers living in remote places. (Three Companions, chpt.16) - Ecclesiastes 3&4 - With death, our life-choice becomes definitive - our life stands before the judge.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - Once a year on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, each minister can come together with his brothers wherever they wish to treat of those things that pertain to God. (Earlier Rule, chpt.18) - Ecclesiastes 5&6 - There can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and this fully open to their neighbors - people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfillment what they already are.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - Saint Francis used to engage carefully in a dail, or rather, constant examination of himself and his followers, Allowing nothing dangerous to remain in them...the others avidly followed his example of mortifying the flesh. (1 Celano, chpt.16) - Ecclesiastes 7&8 - For the great majority of people - we may suppose - there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil....

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - (Francis) Moreover, the piuos Father used to reprove his brothers who to him were too austere, exerting too much effort in those vigils, fasts, and corporal punishments...the man of God admonished them with kindness, reprimanding them with reason, and binding up their wounds with the bandages of wholesome precepts. (Three Companions, chpt.14) - Ecclesiastes 9&10 - Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life on it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - If some of the brothers who came to the chapter experienced any temptation or tribulation, upon hearing Francis speaking...and on seeing his penance, they were freed from their temptations...but as a merciful father to his children, or a good doctor to the sick, knowing how t be sick with the sick and afflicted with the afflicted...when the chapter ended he would bless all, the brothers. (Three Companions, chpt.14) - Ecclesiastes 11&12 - The encounter with (Christ) is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melt away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - At the close of chapters, it was always customary for our father to bless and absolve all the brothers present and the others who were to come to this religion. (Mirror of Perfection, #87) - 1 Timothy 1,2,3 - (Christ’s) gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation...but it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - How ardent was the love of the first disciples of Christ! How strong was their love for their religious family! Every time they encountered one another there was a true explosion of spiritual affection, the only love that is above all other love and is the source of true fraternal charity...They sought to offer themselves for whatever need they might notice in their brothers...They were happy to get together...and were saddened when it was time to depart. (Jacques de Vitry, Letter 1216) - 1 Timothy 4,5,6 - No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - In the year of Our Lord 1219, ten years from his conversion, brother Francis, at the chapter held at Our Lady of the Portiuncula, sent some brothers to France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and in those provinces of Italy where the brothers had not as yet gone. (Jordan of Giano) - 2 Timothy 1&2 - Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for u? With her ‘yes’ she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us.

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - (At Chapter, Francis made it known that) There is a land, Germany, where good and devout Christians live... Since brothers once sent among them returned after being mistreated. The brother forced no one to go again but asked that those who felt inspired to do so out of zeal for God and souls, he would give them obedience to do so...Anyone desiring to go was to stand up and apart from the rest. Ninety friars offered themselves to die, if that were the case. Jordan of Giano - 2 Timothy 3&4 - From the Cross you became a mother in a new way: the mother of all those who believe in your Son Jesus and wish to follow him. The sword of sorrow pierced your heart. Did hope die? Did the world remain definitively without light, and life without purpose? At that moment...you probably listened again to the word spoken by the angel...at the Annunciation: ‘Do not be afraid, Mary!’

(The Chapter is a sign of brotherhood) - Chapters are important times in the life of the brothers for here they treat of those things that pertain to God; and wherever the brothers gather they pray or say the office. (Fioretti) - Titus 1,2,3 - (Mary) You remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way!