San Antonio

Not so fast, pilgrim. Not so easy a day today. Sputtering with words and wishing that classes had ended two hours early. It is a mystery to me, why some days go easily and other days go hard. I cannot fall back anymore on the excuse that I did not sleep and have less than the minimum of energy necessary to work. It is not true. Pondering my ineptitude only makes me irritable, so it is better just to declare that my Spanish was not functional today, chalk up the loss, and forget about it. 

I returned to the convent and to a banquet lunch in celebration of Saint Anthony of Padua. This feast is a big deal for the Franciscan friars. You see, Saint Anthony lived in the first generation of the Franciscan movement. As the branch in the Franciscan family tree of consecrated men with the most ancient roots (there also being the Capuchins and Conventuals), the Franciscan friars claim Saint Anthony as their own. Moreover, the Bolivian province of Franciscan friars is named for Saint Anthony of Padua, making this also the patronal feast of the national fraternity. So all the tables and chairs were brought out into the cloister passage, the fine cloth and chinaware were brought out, and they served good wine and beer and sparkling juice to go with the sumptuous meal. This helped a little to bring me out of my language malfunction funk. 

But the luxuriousness of it made me just a bit uneasy. It always creates a dissonance within me when friars put on lavish meals for the feast days and solemnities. It is not the celebration I oppose, but the richness of it, and also the time and energy sunk into the preparations. Of course, you might have a look at it and say I am being too scrupulous about poverty. Perhaps so, perhaps so. But this is how I feel about the privileges that have accrued to us over the centuries. It has long since gotten to the point (and beyond) where it is often impossible for the most established members of the Franciscan family to live anything near the life of minority that the early Franciscans practiced collectively as well as personally. Our benefactors and partners in ministry simply will not allow us to experience precariousness. Not only do we live above the poverty line, but generally we live far from those who live without the minimum necessary to survive. Thus brotherhood and sisterhood is something practiced among ourselves but not with the outcasts and the disinherited. Prayer and contemplation do not effectively bring the empty and yearning heart outward to other empty and yearning hearts. This calls for continual conversion. This calls for a return to minority, to a closeness to the poor and humble Christ in today’s outcasts. This I say first of all to me, who fears the encounter and the consequences of surrender. 

Okay, enough exhortation. Let me turn to prayer, so I can consider anew what the poor and humble Christ bids me to do, and respond as Saint Francis and Saint Anthony did, with complete and unconditional affirmation. And let me congratulate Brother Leo ahead of time on the occasion of his ordination to the diaconate this evening en route to his consecration as a priest in the year to come.