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Minute Meditation – Lives Marked by a Spirit of Joy

The Lesser Brothers became a fraternity open to all, living lives of prayer, penance, and penitential admonition. They used songs, hymns, exhortations, and example, making them clearly different from other penitential movements of the period. In choosing to be marginal they embraced humility, accepted hostility, and demonstrated compassion for the destitute in society. Their lives were marked by a spirit of joy, and in the life of Francis and the brothers, many began to recognize a mirror of Christ. Francis and his companions became a new reality in thirteenth-century society, not only through the personal charisma of Francis, but through the inspiring lived example of the fraternity. People noted the correlation between what they said and what they did, their spirit of penance, refusal of money, and inner joy.

Unlike many of the local clergy, Francis and the lesser brothers spoke to the hearts of their listeners in terms that they could understand, inspiring them to embrace a penitential conversion and to follow this authentic example of living a Gospel life.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – A Life of Intimacy with Christ

Clare of Assisi did not follow a traditional path to religious life. She was deeply influenced by the preaching and example of St. Francis and the Lesser Brothers and by the poverty and humility of their lives as they imitated Christ in the Gospels. Clare’s understanding of her vocation was rooted in a life of great intimacy with Christ and a commitment to complete and unmitigated poverty. When she left her home to become a follower of the Gospel life as lived by Francis and his companions, she used his model with the women who joined her after they were settled in the convent at San Damiano.

St. Clare has the distinction of being the first woman in history to write a Rule of Life for religious women at a time when convents for women followed strictly prescribed forms of enclosure and demanded individual dowry provisions for continued sustenance of each monastery. In writing her own Rule, Clare was breaking new ground in the Church by holding to her belief that she was called by God to this very demanding expression of Gospel life. Regis Armstrong writes in Clare of Assisi: Early Documents that she had “a startling sense of individual freedom that was based on [her] experience of the maturity of her sisters.” Clare’s insistence on papal approval to protect her Form of Life—including the “Privilege of Poverty”—not just as a privilege but as a right forged a new understanding of religious vocation in the life of the Church.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//

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Minute Meditation – Living the Gospel in Daily Life

Groups of penitents existed before the Franciscans, and from the beginning, Francis and his brothers identified themselves as penitents from Assisi. Many individuals in these penitent groups desired to be associated with Francis and the brothers, and from this emerged what might be called the Franciscan penitential movement and eventually the Third Order. In a spontaneous response to Francis’ teaching about conversion, members of every social class were moved to a change of heart, to renounce sin and turn away from worldly concerns to serve the Lord in all states of life: cleric, religious, and lay. As Francis and the brothers reached out to them with admonitions and instructions on how to live the Gospel, groups of devout souls began to gravitate to the churches where the friars were located, turning to them for counsel, seeking a deeper understanding of the spiritual life.

The preaching and example of St. Francis exercised such a powerful attraction for people throughout Italy that many of the laity began to desire a deeper experience of God. Because they were bound by family responsibilities, Francis encouraged them to begin leading a Gospel-rooted life in their own homes or places of work, thus inspiring a new “third order” for the universal salvation of all people. Francis admonished them to live simply within the bonds of marriage, or singly, and to love and serve the Lord by serving their neighbor and participating more fully in the life of the Church.

—from the book Franciscan Field Guide: People, Places, Practices, and Prayers
by Sister Rosemary Stets, OSF

//Franciscan Media//