“Join the friars and see the world!” That slogan, usually associated with the Royal Navy, was often said when I first joined the Franciscans, and not without reason. In my first year as a Franciscan postulant, I lived in Dublin. In my second year, as a novice, I lived in the Friary of Chilworth, near Surrey, in England.
In my third year as a Franciscan, I was living and studying in Rome! I couldn’t fail to notice that we are an international brotherhood because friars from across the globe visited our houses and stayed with us. Irish friars were working in Belgium, Zimbabwe, Central America among a host of other countries. If you had an adventurous spirit and liked the idea of travel, you might think of life as a friar.
When I lived in Italy, for example, I had the opportunity to visit Umbria, Assisi, and the Rieti valley; all places synonymous with St. Francis. After ordination I returned to these places when I participated in the annual Marcia Francescana, or “Franciscan march”. Often we travelled along backroads and dirt tracks, making our way through small villages that seemed to belong to another time. Sometimes we would turn a corner and a vast landscape would appear before us.
It was easy to picture St. Francis and the brothers making these same journeys eight centuries ago. The legends tell us that St. Francis would appear in small towns like Poggio Bustone and greet the bemused townsfolk with the words: “buon giorno, buona gente!” “Good morning, good people!” For Francis and the early brothers, the world was their cloister.
I have been reflecting on journeys and the wide-open spaces recently, in light of a book I came across by Fr. Jacques Philippe. In the book he recalls visiting the Carmelite convent in Lisieux. He had long admired the “Little Flower” and it was a special privilege for him to actually visit and see the convent; its cloister, its laundry, its infirmary, its garden and its chestnut tree-lined avenue. All of these places he knew well from the writings of St. Thérèse. Fr. Philippe had read St. Thérèse’s account of the sisters making hay and he had pictured in his imagination a great hay field. To his surprise it was like a ‘pocket handkerchief’! In fact, he noticed that everything about the Carmel was small and unremarkable.
This caused him to reflect because St. Thérèse, in her writings, speaks of an expansive world. Her life seems set against a wide horizon and, Fr. Philippe notes, she never gives you the impression of someone living in a confined, restricted world; quiet the opposite! ‘Her way of expressing herself, and her spiritual sensitivity convey an impression of breadth, of marvelous expansion’.
Reflecting on this, I recalled that St. Francis – the wandering troubadour of the Lord – is believed to have spent about half the year in hermitages and quiet retreats. He lived in tiny spaces and away from the hustle and bustle of town life. His expansive spirituality came not from ceaseless travelling, adventure, and constant communication with others. He was, like Thérèse, content with the same places and he had certainly come to know and inhabit the wide spaces within himself, where God dwells. The appeal of travel, of living in new places, learning new languages, tasting new food, and so on, has certainly been part of Franciscan life down the centuries. Franciscans, I have discovered, can show up anywhere!
This year we are marking the eighth centenary of the arrival of the first small group of Franciscans to England, led by Blessed Agnellus of Pisa. Missions and ‘going out’ is in the DNA of Franciscans. However, St. Francis (and St. Thérèse) remind us that the widest, most expansive landscapes are the less-visited spaces within ourselves. Travelling, we know, can become an endless round of ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ places. For St. Francis, life wasn’t just the adventure of travel. Being a Franciscan must also mean learning to love the small, ordinary spaces of my life. It means discovering the interior world; always going inward, before we go out.
“Join the friars and find yourself?”
