As I write this I am trying to block out the din of a Christian charismatic rock band playing in the rear cancha where the brothers usually bounce a basketball or kick the football around on Friday nights. Today the friars are holding a come-and-see event, or an expocarisma, to promote vocations to the Franciscan way of life. The brothers have been putting in overtime for this event. There are several tents lining the perimeter of the cancha with exhibits for various Franciscan groups of women and men. There is as well as a booth for the Young Franciscans, or Jufra, which is like an auxiliary for the Secular Franciscans, the international movement of lay women and men who follow the Gospel example of Saint Francis of Assisi without taking the vows of consecrated life. I believe I heard an emcee giving shout-outs to the youth attending this expo from different parishes of the area.
God bless the Franciscans for trying any means they can to make their way of life more visible in a world that may be watching but is also growing indifferent and distracted by other things. Promotion of vocations to religious life is an increasingly challenging endeavor in an age when there are many more lifestyle options, Christian and otherwise, for youths and young adults; an age when there is a reluctance to make life-long commitments of any kind, to employment, to living in one place, or to marriage; and an age in which celibacy is seen as far less attractive or meaningful a way to live one’s sexuality and far more difficult to live with integrity.
We Capuchin friars in the United States have entered into a dry period again when it comes to recruitment of men to our way of life and retention of those persons through initial formation. In our New York-New England province we have gone two years without a postulant class, though we will have two young men join us this year as postulants, thanks be to God. Seven years ago, I entered a novitiate class of 24 men from across North America and the Pacific. This academic year, the number of Capuchin novices across the continent was less than half that, and of that number a few were from outside North America, hailing from Australia. Keeping friars through formation has also been a struggle. In the last decade, the vast majority of our brothers in temporary vows left initial formation before making perpetual vows. It is normal for half or more than half of the men who join a religious community as postulants to leave before making perpetual vows. But it is distressing when a great majority of them depart, even when each of them has made a good discernment and had a good reason to depart.
It does begin to make you wonder what God is saying to that religious community at large, doesn’t it? It has certainly made me wonder. God certainly has no special need for one religious order or another. But I have to ask, does God love our fraternity of Capuchins? What does God really think of us? Is God pleased with us? What is God saying about us, about our way of life, and about the way we live our life? We always have to read the signs of the times and respond to those signs through the framework of the Gospel.
Easier done when the Holy Spirit is with you. It is Ascension today in Bolivia. I continue to struggle with the mysterious dynamic of a God whose love presents and is then withdrawn. Christ leaves his friends with the “promise of the Father,” which is another way of referring to the Holy Spirit. But as those of you who have been reading closely lately know, I am having a hard time keeping the three persons of the Trinity, the one God, together. I remain in love with Jesus Christ the Son; I am always at peace with the Holy Spirit; but toward God the Father, the Other, the transcendent, I am feeling hard feelings. I know this does not make sense, because God is one and is Father and Son and Spirit all at once. Why would I excuse the Son and the Spirit when I accuse the Father of capricious activity? God is one, and the activity of God is the activity of the three persons. I will need the wisdom of someone more theologically and psychologically astute to help me out of my confusion and dissatisfaction.
At any rate, while I have had episodes of unhappiness and sometimes sheer crankiness, I know that the renewal for which I long is not far away. Christ goes before us, to open heaven for us, which is to say, Christ makes our real selves and our true destiny available to us. Christ makes the life of God available to us, even when we do not know or understand what God is doing to us or what God wants to make of us. The Spirit comes to us even when everything else we cherish and love goes away from us. I say “even when,” but in the mystery of faith it may be better to say “precisely because” everything else we cherish and love goes away from us.
So the world may continue to go wrong; the Capuchin family may dwindle and slowly go extinct; and all my personal dreams and hopes may be dashed. But the Spirit is still coming, and the reign of heaven is still on the way. It makes no earthly sense to affirm this, but Jesus did say that his kingdom is not of this world. All I can do, all I have to do, is stick around and have the courage to endure until what God has in mind is revealed.
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