The Secular Franciscan Order
is an order in the Church, but is not, properly speaking, a
religious order because it does not have the public profession of
the vows to live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and
obedience nor a requirement to live in community. The Secular
Franciscan Order is a public association of the faithful. (See
Canon 298 - Canon 320, click
here.).
At profession, a Secular
Franciscan makes promises to live "the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ in the Secular Franciscan Order by observing its rule of
life." A Secular Franciscan makes promises, not vows
as do religious at their profession; therefore, a Secular Franciscan
is not bound to the Evangelical Counsels the same way as religious.
(Of interest, "A Vow and an Oath," Canon 1191 - 1204, click
here.)
The Evangelical Counsels are
essential to a Gospel-centered life, lived according to one's state
of life, and for all in the Church responding to the universal call
to holiness. They are present in spirit in the The Rule of the
Secular Franciscan Order and the General Constitutions.
A deeper understanding of the
universal call to holiness, the Evangelical Counsels, the laity and
the religious may be obtained through a reading of Lumen Gentium.
See our page,
Lumen Gentium.
Saint Francis Renounces His Father
The following writing, "The
Evangelical Counsels and the Secular Franciscan Order," was written
by Fr. Michael J. Higgins, TOR. On May 27, 2007, the feast of
Pentecost, Fr. Michael Higgins was elected General Minister of the
Third Order Regular (TOR). Fr. Michael had previously completed a
six-year term as General Assistant to the Secular Franciscan Order
(SFO), during which time he had served as a member of the
International Presidency and ministered to Secular Franciscans
throughout the world.
The
Evangelical Counsels
and the Secular Franciscan Order
Fr. Michael J. Higgins, TOR
(Part I)
Introduction
The Gospels stories point out
that Jesus touched people in ways that made them question the
direction of their lives. Some refused to listen or turned away
because his challenged seemed to be too hard. Many others were so
moved by his mission and ministry that they were impelled to search
for a more perfect way of living and being. This is exemplified in
many Gospel passages like the one regarding the rich young man: “As
he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before
him, and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal
life?’” (Mk. 10:17) It is also manifested in the Beatitudes in which
Jesus teaches that the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of
heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for righteousness will
inherit the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt. 5:3-10).
The longing for eternal life
or the “kingdom of heaven” has often been described as a desire for
perfection. This is one of the motivating factors for the so-called
flight to the desert and the birth of religious life in the early
Church. The early ascetics found models for how to live their lives
in the examples of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist, and
in the temptations that Jesus faced before and during his public
ministry. The message that is conveyed by these Scriptural stories
implies that any serious quest for God involves a separation from
the world, the taming of one’s passions and human ambitions, and a
constant struggle with the forces of evil. In their desire for
spiritual perfection, the ascetics believed that the only sure
avenue was an intensely close following of the evangelical counsels
of poverty, chastity, and obedience and a strict following of the
example of Christ himself. They accepted the challenge of total
surrender to the Master through the abandonment of all worldly
goods, family relations and future plans.
From the first centuries of
the development of religious life the evangelical counsels became
one of its defining elements. The Rule of 1223, which stills
serves as the foundational document for all the branches of the
First Order, states that, “The Rule and Life of the Lesser Brothers
is this: to observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ by
living in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity”
(LR I:1). Similar statements can be found in the opening chapters of
the Form of Life written by St. Clare as the rule for the
Second Order, and the Rule and Life of the Brothers and Sisters
of the Third Order Regular. The Secular Franciscan Order, as a
public association of the faithful in the Church,
[1] is not
bound to the evangelical counsels in the same way that their
religious brothers and sisters in the Franciscan family are.
However, the rules and teachings that have guided the lives of
secular Franciscans throughout its long history are replete with
passages urging them to embrace a life that is poor, chaste, and
obedient - lived, that is, according to the lay or secular state.
This is particularly true in the Rule of the Secular Franciscan
Order, approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978, and in the General
Constitutions approved in 2000.
It is with this in mind that I
would like to briefly explore how the evangelical counsels can be
understood and lived within the Secular Franciscan Order.
Poverty
St. Francis’ embrace of
poverty grew out of an all consuming love for Jesus and an ardent
desire to live in conformity to the Gospel. It was not just an
external imitation of Christ, or merely a renunciation of material
possessions, or even an attempt for social action and witness. St.
Francis embraced poverty because Christ embraced it as a driving
force behind his ministry and mission.
Poverty, lived as St. Francis
lived it, recognizes that one is not self-sufficient and that
everything ultimately comes from God, even life itself. As Thaddeus
Horgan, SA, points out in his reflections on the TOR Rule,
Francis stripped himself not
so much to set aside the things of this earth, but to free himself
of all that is not God. Like Christ, Francis perceived the world
as God’s gift to help us on the way to life's fullness... As an
interiorized value then, gospel poverty is an attitude of heart
that proclaims hopefully and joyfully all people's need for God
and that the Lord alone is God.
[2]
Poverty allows all of creation
to stand on its own merit. Instead of being seen with functional or
avaricious intent people and things are seen and respected as
sacraments of an encounter with God.
The ideal of Franciscan
poverty is best expressed as simplicity. Guided by this virtue one
becomes attuned to the presence of the Divine in all things. It in
turn encourages a life lived in loving abandonment to the all good
God. Every event, every person can then be seen as an epiphany of
the Divine. This can be seen in a dramatic way in the life of St.
Francis when he embraced the leper and was able to see him as a
child of God and not simply a diseased and frightful creature.
The key element behind this
kind of understanding of poverty is the challenge to see all things
and all people as they truly are - as God sees them - and then
relating to them accordingly. When one lets go of the self as the
measure against which everything must find its worth the world is
set free to be itself. Wise and respectful use of the things of this
life is an inevitable result.
In a wonderful way, article 11
of the SFO Rule captures the heart of the Franciscan understanding
of poverty:
Trusting in the Father,
Christ chose for himself and his mother a poor and humble life,
even though he valued created things attentively and lovingly. Let
the Secular Franciscans seek a proper spirit of detachment from
temporal goods by simplifying their own material needs. Let them
be mindful that according to the gospel they are stewards of the
goods received for the benefit of God’s children. Thus, in the
spirit of “the Beatitudes,” and as pilgrims and strangers on their
way to the home of the Father, they should strive to purify their
hearts from every tendency and yearning for possession and power.
Article 15 of the General
Constitutions presents some of the practical implications of the
“proper spirit of detachment” that the Rule requires. It
starts by stating that,
Secular Franciscans should
pledge them-selves to live the spirit of the Beatitudes and, in a
special way, the spirit of poverty. Evangelical poverty
demonstrates confidence in the Father, creates interior freedom,
and disposes them to promote a more just distribution of wealth.
[3]
The following paragraphs of
article 15 are extremely challenging. They call secular Franciscans
to “provide for their own families and serve society by means of
their work and material goods, have a particular manner of living
evangelical poverty.”
[4] To do
this they are to “reduce their own personal needs so as to be better
able to share spiritual and material goods with their brothers and
sisters, especially those most in need.”
[5]
Further, “they should take a firm position against consumerism and
against ideologies and practices which prefer riches over human and
religious values and which permit the exploitation of the human
person.”
[6] In a word, secular Franciscans are challenged to “see” the
world through the filter of the Gospel and to act accordingly.
2
Horgan, Thaddeus, Turned to the Lord, Pittsburgh:
Franciscan Federation, 1987: pp. 52-53.
6
CC.GG. 15: 3.
Source:
http://www.ciofs.org/per/2005/lca5en20.htm
The
Evangelical Counsels
and the Secular Franciscan Order
Fr. Michael J. Higgins, TOR
(Part II)
Chastity
Apart from the mention of
the vow in the first chapter of the Rule for the First
Order, St. Francis does not mention chastity in his other
writings. Rather, he focuses on the need for the brothers to seek
for the kingdom of God and to have a pure mind and spirit.
In several of his
exhortations he stresses that God seeks, or desires, people who,
with pure heart and mind, are willing to serve, love, honor, and
adore him. In the Rule of 1221 he writes:
I beg all my brothers,
both the ministers and the others, after overcoming every
impediment and putting aside every care and anxiety, to serve,
love, honor and adore the Lord God with a pure heart and a pure
mind in whatever they are best able to do, for that is what He
wants above all things… And let us adore Him with a pure heart.
(ER XXII: 26, 29)
St. Francis repeats this
challenge in the Second Letter to
the Faithful,
a document addressed to the tertiaries and most likely written
during the time that the Saint was writing the Early Rule
for the friars. He states,
Let us love God,
therefore, and adore Him with a pure heart and a pure mind,
because He Who seeks this above all things has said: True
adorers adore the Father in Spirit and Truth. (2LtF: 19)
According to Francis, the
only appropriate response to God is adoration, love, and a
focusing of one’s attention on the Divine will.
In Admonition XVI, after
quoting from Mt 5: 8, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they
shall see God,” he writes:
The truly clean of heart
are those who look down upon earthly things, seek those of
heaven, and, with a clean heart and spirit, never cease adoring
and seeing the Lord God living and true. (Adm XVI: 2)
For St. Francis, every
relationship should be based on a love and adoration of God and
guided by a pure mind and spirit. This is basis for a life of
chastity, a life that should make one more loving.
Following the Saint’s lead,
the Rule of the SFO does not specifically deal with
chastity. It does, however, echo his exhortation to the friars and
to penitents to love and adore God and to allow that love to flow
out to others. Article 12 states,
Witnessing to the good yet
to come and obliged to acquire purity of heart because of the
vocation they have embraced, they should set themselves free to
love God and their brothers and sisters.
As Article 17 points out,
the first place this love should take root is in the family. It
states that,
In their family they
should cultivate the Franciscan spirit of peace, fidelity, and
respect for life, striving to make of it a sign of a world
already renewed in Christ. By living the grace of matrimony,
husbands and wives in particular should bear witness in the
world to the love of Christ for his Church. They should joyfully
accompany their children on their human and spiritual journey by
providing a simple and open Christian education and being
attentive to the vocation of each child.
The General Constitutions
are even more specific - it points out that secular Franciscans
“should love and practice purity of heart, the source of true
fraternity.”
[1] And, in
their families they,
should concern themselves
with respect for all life in every situation from conception
until death. Married couples find in the Rule of the SFO an
effective aid in their own journey of Christian life, aware
that, in the sacrament of matrimony, their love shares in the
love that Christ has for his Church. The way spouses love each
other and affirm the value of fidelity is a profound witness for
their own family, the Church, and the world.
[2]
Both the Rule and the
Constitutions challenge secular Franciscans to love - love
God, love their spouse if they are married, love the brothers and
sisters in their fraternities, love the Church and its ministers,
love all people, and love all creation. This is basically a
challenge to love as God loves, with a pure heart and mind. What a
tremendous challenge!
Of course, for the married
brothers and sisters of the Order, one of the distinguishing
characteristics of the secular embrace of the Franciscan vocation
is more properly called conjugal chastity. The Catechism of the
Catholic Church points that,
Conjugal love involves a
totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal
of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity,
aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply
personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads
to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and
faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to
fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal
characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new
significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but
raises them to the extent of making them the expression of
specifically Christian values.
[3]
The Pontifical Council for
the Family put it this way:
Human sexuality is thus a
good, part of that created gift which God saw as being “very
good,” when he created the human person in his image and
likeness, and “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27).
Insofar as it is a way of relating and being open to others,
sexuality has love as its intrinsic end, more precisely, love as
donation and acceptance, love as giving and receiving. The
relationship between a man and a woman is essentially a
relationship of love: “Sexuality, oriented, elevated and
integrated by love acquires a truly human quality.” When such
love exists in marriage, self-giving expresses, through the
body, the complementarity and totality of the gift. Married love
thus becomes a power which enriches persons and makes them grow
and, at the same time, it contributes to building up the
civilization of love.
[4]
The document goes on to
state that without this love men and women become objects and
children become a hindrance. It is only through respectful love
that human sexuality can find its fulfillment. For this reason, an
active and mutually respectful sex life can be seen and embraced
as an essential element of conjugal chastity.
Obedience
Through an often difficult
and painful conversion experience, St. Francis discovered that
life had meaning only when he listened attentively to the voice of
God and followed his will. This attentive listening desire to
follow the will of God in concrete and practical ways is what
Franciscan obedience is all about.
In his Testament St.
Francis reflected on the effects this kind of obedience had in his
own life. It is clear that the Saint experienced God as an active
presence and guide that led him beyond his own narrow view of the
world to something newer and greater. He writes that, “The Lord
gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance… the Lord
Himself led me among them (the lepers)… the Lord gave me faith in
churches… the Lord gave me, and gives me still, such faith in
priests… the Lord gave me some brothers… the Most High Himself
revealed to me that I should live according to the pattern of the
Holy Gospel… the Lord revealed a greeting to me… the Lord has
given me to speak and write the Rule…” St. Francis reports that it
was always the Lord who showed him what to do in the most
important and decisive moments of life. The Saint responded to
this Divine action with obedient collaboration.
St. Francis found in the
life Jesus the fundamental example of obedience to God. As the
writer of the Letter to the Hebrews points out so well,
when Jesus came into the world he said, “Sacrifice and offering
you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and
sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written
of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God” (Heb.
10: 5-7). Every aspect of the life and ministry of Jesus was
shaped by his intense desire to follow the will of the Father.
Even when he faced a painful and humiliating death his obedience,
his attentive listening, to the Divine will gave him resolve and
courage: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this
cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will” (Mk. 14:
36).
The foundation of Franciscan
obedience goes beyond adherence to our rules of life or to the
constitutions and statutes that guide our Orders. It flows from an
intimate and loving following of Jesus, is empowered by the Holy
Spirit, and leads to an intimate relationship with the Father. It
is only with this in mind that the practical dimensions of
obedience can be understood.
For St. Francis, one of the
primary places where obedience is lived out is in the fraternity.
The Franciscan fraternity is not just a group of people who have
agreed to live together or share life. It is a reality born out of
obedience to divine inspiration and an attentive listening to the
Gospel. It is only then that it can become the “privileged place
for developing a sense of Church and the Franciscan vocation and
for enlivening the apostolic life of its members.”
[5]
It is important to emphasize
the profound evangelical character of Franciscan obedience. Both
for individual Franciscans and for the fraternity as a whole, it
requires a constant search for the will of God and a willingness
to embrace that will and follow it - even when it is difficult and
requires sacrifice. Obedience is nothing more than listening
attentively and devotedly to the will of God as it is mediated to
us through a variety of channels and a willingness to follow it.
Foremost among these are, of course, the Sacred Scriptures, the
tradition and Magisterium of the Church, the rules and
constitutions of our respective Orders, the ministers of our
fraternities, the brothers and sisters in our fraternities, and
the spouses and families for our married brothers and sisters.
Once again, the Rule of
the SFO captures the spirit of St. Francis in its presentation
of obedience.
Uniting themselves to the
redemptive obedience of Jesus, who placed his will into the
Father's hands, let them faithfully fulfill the duties proper to
their various circumstances of life. Let them also follow the
poor and crucified Christ, witness to him even in difficulties
and persecutions.
[6]
This article of the Rule
is expanded in a wonderful way in the General Constitutions:
“Christ, poor and
crucified,” victor over death and risen, the greatest
manifestation of the love of God for humanity, is the “book” in
which the brothers and sisters, in imitation of Francis, learn
the purpose and the way of living, loving, and suffering. They
discover in Him the value of contradictions for the sake of
justice and the meaning of the difficulties and the crosses of
daily life. With Him they can accept the will of the Father even
under the most difficult circumstances and live the Franciscan
spirit of peace, rejecting every doctrine contrary to human
dignity.
[7]
These documents are clear in
stating that Jesus, who was always attentive to the Father’s will,
is the exemplar of Franciscan obedience. He is the “book” that
directs and guides the lives of Franciscans, seculars and
religious alike.
Conclusion
The evangelical counsels
challenge Franciscans to live a life based on the Gospels and the
example of Jesus - who himself lived a poor, chaste, and obedient
life. What better way to go “from gospel to life and life to the
gospel”?
[8]
With this in mind, and
without simplifying this essential foundation too much, we can say
that poverty, chastity, and obedience are constitutive elements of
a Gospel centered life. They help define our relationship to God
and the way we live our lives in the world.
Even though the way that
they are lived out by religious and seculars are different, the
understanding and spirit behind the evangelical counsels are the
same for all Franciscans. Flowing from an intimate relationship
with God they provide wonderful guidance for how to live our
lives.
Poverty encourages us
to value the world - and every one and every thing in it - as God
does. It leads us to recognize the inherent dignity in all people
and to a loving and respectful use of the world’s goods.
Chastity encourages
us to love as God loves, with a purity of heart and mind, and
challenges us to express our sexuality in ways that are consonant
with our vocation and state in life. It leads to right loving.
Obedience encourages
us to listen attentively to the will of God and to have the
courage to allow that will to guide and inform every area of our
lives. It leads to right living.
3
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section II, Chapter 3,
Article 7, Part 5, “The Goods and Requirements of Conjugal
Love.”
4
The Pontifical Council for the Family, “The Truth and Meaning of
Human Sexuality,” December 8, 1995, para. 11.
Source:
http://www.ciofs.org/per/2005/lca5en21.htm
