Ritual Feast, Spiritual Fast

Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose:

releasing those bound unjustly,

untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed,

breaking off every yoke?

Isaiah 58:6

Today the brothers celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi with joyful heart and as near-perfect good cheer as you could find among fraternities and sororities of Franciscans anywhere.

Our transitus service last evening, planned and led by the postulants, put all the brothers into a place of good feeling that held us warmly all through the brisk and chilly day. You could hear it in the way we recited and chanted the psalms and sang our hymns this morning: there was a little extra emotion, a fuller fervor. We celebrated a high Mass with additional music, sweet smelling incense, and our own freshly baked eucharistic bread. With two friars visiting from East Patchogue, N.Y., we said evening prayer with the same robustness of the morning prayer; and, in a rare indulgence, we enjoyed the fine fare of salmon for dinner. The spirits were high, and our gratitude for each other was freely and often expressed with the Capuchins' signature humor.

Having reclined for a day in rest and thanksgiving for the great gift God gave the world in Francis' life of conversion, the Capuchins will rise tomorrow, once again to hand on what they have received from the humble man from Assisi. Today we feasted to honor the life of one who re-presented the words and works of Jesus Christ as perfectly as any one who has followed in his footsteps. Tomorrow we thankfully resume our spiritual fast to meet the hunger of the world as Francis did eight centuries ago.

As I have written before, the good people of Neighbors Together, my ministry site, do more than operate a soup kitchen. The staff, volunteers, and members themselves participate in community coalitions to end hunger and poverty, and they organize their own campaigns to improve housing conditions. Neighbors Together has written its representatives in Congress, sent its members to Albany to lobby state legislators, and gone to City Hall to address the mayor and City Council to protect funding for its many services. Now Neighbors Together is sending a delegation to march on Wednesday afternoon with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and an allied coalition of labor and community groups.

The postulant directors have given me permission to accompany the staff and members of our community soup kitchen tomorrow. I am very grateful to them both for their understanding and flexibility.

For me, this is a great ministerial opportunity to bring the Capuchin presence into a scene where, in my opinion, the spirit of Francis is alive and well. Like Francis and his followers in his time, there are many, many people today who in their own way are attempting to rebuild a world in ruins. Today's world, like Francis' world, is suffering from a spiritual sickness, caused by the sins of greed. The Church can be a great witness to justice rising, and a source of the healing restoration people need.

What is my role tomorrow? It is not my place to give unsolicited spiritual care to the people who come to Neighbors Together. I am not a chaplain to them. That would be inadmissible, for we are a nonsectarian non-profit organization. But I am happy to talk to our members about our shared values, rooted in faith and in our common humanity. Should they individually wish to have conversations with me about their faith and religious practice, I would oblige happily. Should they wish to inquire about my faith and religious practice, I would oblige with alacrity. (The same principle will guide my interaction with other demonstrators: I am not a "protest chaplain.")

On the other hand, to the people who make it necessary for Neighbors Together to feed the many hungry, I pledge to demonstrate my faith and show my religious conviction in my thoughts, words, and deeds. I promise to raise my voice against the people who build and maintain a way of life that crushes the life of the rest of us. They will hear from us that they must stop doing harm to the poor, repent, and learn to do good. I promise to keep our contingent safe and out of the way of all potential harm. God willing, we will all return to Brooklyn by the early evening.

I am aware that I will be missing evening prayer and dinner with my brothers. This is not a decision to be made lightly. Postulants should never excuse themselves from fraternal commitments unless it is for the sake of fraternity itself and its associated charisms. This is a moment for ministry driving the values of justice, peace, and mercy. Fed for the journey by the living witness of Francis of Assisi, we are called as lesser brothers to be of one mind with the poor who suffer the curses of the comfortable; one heart with all the heavy-hearted; one spirit with all whose spirits are straining but cannot be broken. Otherwise, as the prophet Isaiah and his disciples after the Exile preached, all our religious celebrations, the ritual feasts as well as the ritual fasts, are idle and blasphemous luxuriation.

Please keep all of us at Neighbors Together, and all the great and good souls striving to build a new society out of the shell of the old, in your prayers.