Fraternity - The Franciscan Vocation

Homily for the Solemnity of St. Francis of Assisi

It is generally accepted that St. Francis of Assisi never intended to form a new religious community within the Catholic Church. He identified himself as a penitent, and the eleven men who joined him at the outset of his penitential journey thought of themselves with a similar perspective. However, because his small band of penitents continued to grow, he set out for Rome to seek the counsel of the Pope. While he gained the approbation of the holy father during his audience, he realized that he needed to set down his Rule of Life for those who would come after him. His first attempt was actually rejected by his brothers who told him that it was simply too difficult. His second attempt, which we now call the Later Rule, was published in 1223. Consequently, we will celebrate the eight hundredth anniversary of the Franciscan Rule of Life. The General Minister of the Friars Minor used today’s feast as an opportunity to reflect on the authentic Franciscan vocation. (I have borrowed heavily from his letter on this occasion for this homily.)

Francis’s vocation and mission led him to make the call to fraternity resonate in the society and Church of his time as the truest fruit of Jesus’s Passover. Everything in him stems from the surprising discovery that no one is forgotten by the merciful love of the Father, who welcomes all of us as beloved children: the healthy and the lepers, thieves and brigands, popes and sultans, knights, and ragamuffins…

The life and words of Jesus showed Francis the goal to strive for, and fraternity was the path that allowed him to follow Jesus. Truly the life and rule of the Friars Minor is to live and faithfully guard “the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity.” For us, too, fraternity is the space where we can experience new life according to the Gospel and experience the harmony that can only arise from different notes and a diversity of musical instruments. In this way, we are a prophecy of humanity faithful to the Creator’s original design.

Today we live in a culture and society which is fundamentally a layered society. While we may hold that all people were born with fundamental rights and are held as equals in the sight of God, the social strata that surround us make it more and more difficult to live fraternally. Without a doubt, St. Francis thought of the Franciscan movement as men and women called to become fulfilled in the same family through a fraternal communion rooted and founded in charity and minority. This ideal meant a permanent challenge to the greatest familiarity between brothers and sisters, to equality, theologically and juridically, in the sign of Christian love, respect, service and mutual obedience.

As we approached the eight hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Later Rule, Franciscans everywhere will be looking at the structures that challenge our life as brothers and sisters. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ forces us to recognize the fact that God sees us and our society differently than we ourselves see it. The Gospel consistently challenges us to become the least, the smallest, so that we can be raised up by God. Every believer, through baptism, is called to participate in the one and only perfect sacrifice of Christ, not only through the sacramental celebration but above all through the gift of one’s own life for the good of one’s brothers and sisters: this is the true worship according to the spirit that every baptized person, clerical or lay, must present to God. Our relationship with God, in this way, does not become one occupation among others that fills our days, but the basic orientation that brings order and unifies the rest of the activities I am called to perform. As we read in the first letter of St. Peter: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms… So that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

As we celebrate today the feast of the founder of the first, second, and third Franciscan orders, the challenge we face is to be able to see that they are not ranked like