Looking from what is, to where it came from, we should discover where to! We are not in the business of reinventing St. Francis and St. Clare. They have lived and died and risen their time. They both believed in something beautiful for the future, but did not expect to be dragged into it! We must let them die! That is who they are, dead and risen to a new way of living. Their lives remain incomplete without allowing the embrace of sister death. As Jesus reminded us - It is good for you that I go... The Franciscan spirit lives today because of others: I have done what the Lord showed me was mine to do, may you do what the Lord shows you is yours to do. We live with friar Christ to discover Abba.

We ask questions of yesterday because we are concerned about tomorrow. Institutional religion appears to be on the decline, not so interest in religious issues! There is the rediscovery of body spirituality, the whole ecological issue, the place of women, search for community values...

Our Franciscan Tradition can serve all this. But it has to happen in the real world. The world as God gave it, in no way unworthy or inferior. Jesus had dirty feet! Francis noticed this and took heart from it. Jesus belongs in the midst of the grit and grime where the few are affluent and the many are poor. What relevance does Poverty for the Kingdom have today? First, Poverty as a bad material state is the lot of the majority. Such poverty can never be a value. St. Francis discovered that he could be active in coming to the help of the poor by setting himself free to do so, without being impeded by anything else. What is infectious about this is that there is an appeal about refusing to keep for oneself what is clearly gift for everyone to enjoy. To own degrades the idea of gift, and nowhere more so than me owning me and mine. I only make sense in terms of another as gift! There is no property in the place where peace and harmony belong - only gifts.

We are abusing creation and the victim signs are already showing. St. Francis’ spirit would give earth, air, fire back to themselves to be the gifts for everyone to enjoy; a world in which humankind, gifted to know these things and accept responsibility for what is known, could take its right and proper place as servant, there to enable creation to be itself by the way we choose to live within it.

Many invoke the spirit of Assisi - Francis spoke with the Sultan [Islam] when everybody else was for war - and he did so from within genuine respect - my brother, son of Ishmael... War, fighting, violence, intimidation, fear... all contradict the Franciscan way: Most High and glorious good, all good, totally good... Always put into context - my brothers, my sisters, may the Lord give you peace!

Brother Austin ofm