My dear Brothers
The proclamation of Jesus “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mt. 3:2) is brought to our focus once again as we begin the season of Lent. The ‘Kingdom of God is at hand’ is the reason provided by Jesus for repentance. Lent is the time to experience the reality of the Kingdom of God and for this we need to repent. What the Gospels mean by repentance is a total turning away from sin and a wholehearted turning towards God. It means that we open out our hearts to the unconditional love of God and respond to it through our dedicated and selfless commitment to the realities of the Kingdom.
St. Francis in the first chapter of the Rule affirms that whenever a candidate desires to join the Order, the Minister has to address to him the words of Jesus : “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you possess … then come back and follow me” (Mat 19: 21). This is an important condition put by the Lord to those who wish to be perfect. The same is appropriated by Francis as a pre-condition for admission into his Order. This does not mean that once you are admitted into the Order, you can desire to possess whatever you like. The pre-condition remains as a condition for the very realization of the vocation for every brother in the Order throughout his life. In other words, renunciation should be the basic attitude of every friar and in reality renunciation is the result of ‘repentance’, a wholehearted turning away from sin and the causes of sin which is also simultaneously a whole hearted turning towards God. The word ‘renunciation’ is hardly found in our present vocabulary, as we stress more and more on ‘personality development’ of the candidates to the Order. We would rather seem to give an impression many a times that we can have whatever we can in order to ‘fulfill’ ourselves and we seem to believe that ‘fulfillment’ leads to true happiness. There could be different interpretations for our attitudes towards renunciation which can always be discussed and disputed. But the Rule of St. Francis is very emphatic on dispossession and renunciation of all possessions.
If we see the life of St. Francis, the dispossession is the consequence of the possession of the Kingdom. It is not the case that he first became poor and then experienced Christ, but the other way about. He first experienced Christ crucified, especially during the period of his conversion as he spent long hours in meditation in the Chapel of San Damiano, and as a consequence of that he could renounce publicly his earthly father and all the temporal possessions. This dynamic of ‘renunciation’ can be observed throughout his life. The more he possessed the ‘crucified Lord’, the more he dispossessed himself and renounced all temporal realities. All of us can learn much from this experience of St. Francis, namely, that we need to possess the kingdom first and only then can we truly renounce everything. Why we find difficult to speak of renunciation and much more to practice it, is that we do not have the experience of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus and why we have not experienced the Kingdom of God is that we are not sincere about our repentance. We are not yet turned wholeheartedly to God and still inclined to sinful habits. Certainly, a sincere attempt to deeply meditate on the proclamation of Jesus and the Rule of St. Francis can really influence us during this Lent to realize our vocation as friar minors.
Fraternally Yours
Vincent G. Furtado OFM Cap
Minister Provincial
