In 1259, before the beginning of Advent, St. Bonaventure meditated on the incarnation of Jesus Christ, choosing to reflect on The Five Feasts of the Child Jesus: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Holy Name, the Epiphany, and the Presentation. He wrote that, like Mary, a person can conceive, birth, name, search for Jesus with the Magi, and present the Child Jesus back to God. His reflection dealt with what is called “spiritual motherhood,” whereby every Christian - male and female - would be able to do what Mary herself did as His Mother. St. Bonaventure is teaching us how to deal with grace in our lives.

In the first feast of the Annunciation (March 25), St. Bonaventure wrote that Mary said “yes” to God and became pregnant with the Child. What is this conception? It is what we Franciscans call the Highest Good come from heaven, the grace of God present in Mary’s womb. Mary was “full of grace.” So, each time the Holy Spirit overshadows us, we, like Mary, conceive a grace of God. St. Bonaventure noted that Mary went to the hill country to be with her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. So, too, when one conceives a grace from God, one needs to seek the advice of good people - “spiritual obstetricians” or spiritual directors. St. Bonaventure even cautioned one to avoid those who might kill the new conception - a type of spiritual abortion. When we received a grace, did we feel it stirring within us? As a religious myself, I remember almost precisely to the moment in my life when God called me to consider becoming a Franciscan. I conceived a grace and was pregnant with this call.

In the second feast of the Nativity (December 25), Mary birthed her Child in Bethlehem. St. Bonaventure commented here that, after a person has conceived a grace, also called a gift or a good, one brings this grace to birth by doing that for which the grace was intended. St. Francis wrote that all of us are mothers of Jesus Christ and that we birth Him by doing good. A physical pregnancy is usually brought to birth when the fetus has matured. So, too, a grace is brought to birth when we feel it is ripe/mature. My call to Franciscan life, this grace was birthed in my life when I did what the grace intended, namely, when I entered St. Francis Seraphic Seminary. What graces have you put into practice or birthed in your life?

In the third feast of the Holy Name (January 3), St. Bonaventure noted that His parents gave the Child the name Jesus meaning “one who saves.” So, too, when we conceive and birth a grace, we must also name the grace. My call to Franciscan life was a grace I conceived and birthed that has the name “vocation.” My “child vocation” was an “infant” when I joined the Franciscans. As I met with different challenges, I realized that I conceived and birthed another grace, a “sister” to the grace vocation named “perseverance.”

In the fourth feast of the Epiphany (traditionally January 6), Matthew’s Gospel recounts the story of the Magi/Kings who seek for the Child, adore Him, and bring Him gifts (Mt. 2: 1-12). St. Bonaventure saw the three faculties of the human person - memory, intellect, will - as the three “Magi/Kings” within us who go in search of our graces, our children. Continuing with my example above, whenever I encountered challenges on my Franciscan journey, I needed the grace of perseverance to strengthen me to face the challenges that threatened my child “vocation.” My King (memory) helped me recall that I had a “child” called “perseverance”; my King (intellect) helped me understand why I needed this “child’s” assistance; and my King (will) helped me make the decision to go and search for this child “perseverance.” Once the challenge was met, I was in adoration of these “children/ graces” and offered God gifts of thanks, praise, and glory.

In the fifth feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple (February 2), Jesus was brought to the Temple to offer Him back to God as the highest good of all creation. St. Bonaventure described our Trinitarian God as “overflowing goodness,” a goodness constantly exchanged among the Three Persons as well as with creation, for God pronounced at the end of each of the six days of creation that it is good (Genesis 1:3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), the creation of humanity being very good (1:31). And we know from Matthew 19:17 that “only God is good.” If “only God is good,” then each time we do good - simply, as Matthew 10:42 notes, sharing a cup of cold water, our table, or caring for the sick - we bring forth Christ. Then, in imitation of the Trinity, we must let this goodness overflow to others. To hold on to any good would short-circuit the Trinitarian exchange process. To let goodness flow from us in our daily lives makes God present. Moreover, Matthew 10:23 tells us that if we plant one seed, we’ll receive a hundredfold. And, whenever we let some good overflow from us, goodness gets replenished and stronger in our lives! My “child vocation” is more than fifty years old, a mature adult. At each quarter century mark, a celebration was had with family, friars, and friends. They were moments to enter God’s temple gratefully to present this “child vocation” back to God. And, God has blessed me abundantly with graces - many “children” to continue living my Franciscan life.

St. Bonaventure’s meditation on these five feasts from Mary’s perspective as mother can be the tool that helps us realize how many graces we’ve conceived, birthed, named, sought out, and returned to God. Whenever we are gentle, kind, peaceful, generous, believing, hoping, loving, we are birthing the Child Jesus because we make goodness present, and this goodness is God!

Though there are hundreds of saints in our Catholic calendar, it is rare for any person to be canonized and even rarer for members of the same family to be canonized saints. For us Franciscans, this Sunday, November 19, is the feast of St. Agnes of Assisi, who is the blood sister of St. Clare of Assisi and is somewhat hidden in the shadow of her more well-known sister-saint.

In 1211/12, sixteen days after St. Clare left her ancestral home to join St. Francis and his brothers, much to the disappointment of her family, her younger sister Catherine also ran away to join St. Clare in a refuge for women on the outskirts of Assisi at Sant’Angelo in Panzo. When their family became aware of their whereabouts, several knights were sent to bring Catherine back home. When Catherine refused, these fierce knights began beating her and dragging her away from her sister, “ripping her clothes and strewing the path with the hair they had torn out.” So, St. Clare began to pray when “suddenly Catherine’s body seemed so heavy that the men, many as they were, exerted all their energy and were not able to carry her beyond a certain stream. […] When they failed, they shrugged off the miracle by mocking: ‘She has been eating lead all night, no wonder she’s so heavy.’” Tradition tells us that St. Francis, after becoming aware of Catherine’s struggle with the cruel knights, changed Catherine’s name to Agnes after the martyr, St. Agnes of Rome.

Shortly after, St. Francis brought the sister-saints to live at San Damiano, the little church outside the city of Assisi, which he repaired with his own hands. There, the sisters began their contemplative journey, and many women of Assisi, one by one, joined them in their new life. A 1238 document in the archives of Assisi notes that there were 50 women living at San Damiano.

Agnes thought she would spend her entire life at San Damiano with her older sister. But God and St. Francis had other plans for her. In 1219, St. Francis sent Agnes to be abbess in a monastery of Monticelli, near Florence. Reluctantly, she went and spent almost 34 years there. There exists one letter from Agnes to her sister Clare in which she was “burdened and tormented beyond measure […] because I have been physically separated from you […] with whom I had hoped to live and die in this world […] for I believed that our life and death would be one […] buried in the same grave. But I see that I have been deceived.” I always smile at that last phrase because it demonstrates how close these two sibling-saints were to be able to be completely frank with each other. Nevertheless, I still cannot determine who “deceived” Agnes — St. Francis by sending her to Monticelli, St. Clare, or maybe even God. But I believe it shows the profound humanity of Agnes and the depth of her relationship with her sister-saint.

St. Agnes got her wish to be back at San Damiano in 1253. She arrived just before her sister Clare died on August 11, 1253. That same year, St. Agnes herself died as well. She never got her wish to be “buried in the same grave,” but the sister-saints are interred in the Basilica di Santa Chiara in Assisi, erected after their deaths.

Sister-Saints Clare and Agnes, pray for us!

The months of May and October are often dedicated to our Blessed Mother Mary and celebrated with recitations of the rosary. In fact, October 7 is the official feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. People, not just Catholics, have “prayed their beads” for centuries. The rosary that is usually prayed by Catholics is called the Dominican rosary, popularized by the followers of St. Dominic. And it is a lesser-known fact that we Franciscans pray a form of the rosary called the Franciscan Crown.

One of my Franciscan forebears, Fr. Luke Wadding, an Irish Franciscan historian, has traced the origins of our Franciscan Crown back to 1422 when a young man became a novice in our Order. As a young boy, he had a practice of presenting a crown of flowers to the Blessed Mother. Upon entry into the novitiate, however, he was prevented from continuing this practice. Distressed and contemplating leaving the Order, he experienced an apparition of the Blessed Mother who suggested he offer her a different type of crown — a crown of prayer in the form of a seven-decade rosary that would focus on her seven Joys. This evolved into the rosary we members of the Order of Saints Francis and Clare call the Franciscan Crown or the Seven Joys of Mary.

The Seven Joys experienced during the lifetime of our Blessed Mother were:

• the joy of the Annunciation by Archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would become the Mother of Jesus;

• the joy of the Visitation to her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, and the happy movement of both fetuses - Jesus and John the Baptist - in their mothers’ wombs;

• the joy of the Nativity of Christ, when Mary got to hold her Child in her arms;

• the joy of the Epiphany, when the Magi arrived to both adore and gift her Child;

• the joy of Finding Jesus in the Temple after being lost for nearly a full day;

• the joy of the Resurrection, seeing her Son Jesus alive again after His Death and burial;

• the joy of the Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin in Heaven as Queen of Heaven and Earth.

The way I learned to pray the Franciscan Crown as a young friar was as follows:

1. After making the Sign of the Cross, we prayed: “O God, come to my assistance! O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.”

2. Immediately after that brief prayer, the seven decades of the Seven Joys were prayed in the traditional manner of one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory be, reflecting on one of the Seven Joys.

3. At the end of the seventh Joy, two more Hail Marys were added for a total of 72, honoring the tradition that Mary spent 72 years on earth.

4. Finally, one Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory be would be added for the intention of our Holy Father, the pope.

It is with one of the Seven Joys that I gratefully end each day God gives me.

One summer while conducting a pilgrimage to Assisi, on August 2, I was walking down the Via San Paolo when an Italian friend asked: “Dove vai?” (Where are you going?) I responded: “Per una passeggiata!” (For a walk.) She then asked: “Perchè tu non vai alla festa del Perdono?” (Why are you not going to the feast of the Pardon?) I had never heard the feast of St. Mary of the Angels described as the feast of the Pardon, and a new dimension of this feast unfolded for me. First, let me offer some background to this feast.

One night in July 1216, St. Francis was praying in the little church he repaired called St. Mary of the Angels, also known as the Porziuncola. Jesus and Mary appeared to him with a multitude of radiant angels, urging him to ask for whatever he thought best for the salvation of human souls. Francis replied: “I ask you, O God of Mercy, that all those who, repentant, cross over the threshold of this place, receive from you, O Lord pardon — perdono — for their evil deeds.” He was assured that his prayer would be answered, but he would first need to have the approval of Pope Honorius III.

Up to the time of St. Francis’ request, pardon could only be obtained for making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Rome, or Compostela or for participating in the Crusades. The bishops advising Pope Honorius III opposed this request because they felt that putting this little chapel located in a swampy bog on the same footing as those three sacred shrines would damage enlistment in the Crusades. From Pope Honorius III, St. Francis requested: “I ask that all those, who repentant and absolved, shall visit this church, shall obtain remission of their sins.” The pope responded: “In the name of God, this pardon is accorded you.” And, to mollify the bishops, Pope Honorius III limited it to the anniversary of the church — August 2. So, early morning on this feast of St. Mary of the Angels, St. Francis proclaimed the Porziuncola Pardon to all with the holy desire: “I want to send all of you to Paradise.”

So, every year since 1216, Il Perdono has been available to all who visited the little church of St. Mary of the Angels. Later, Il Perdono was extended to every Franciscan church and chapel throughout the world on August 2.

In 1921, Il Perdono was made exactly what St. Francis wanted: pardon valid every day of the year in the little church in Assisi. However, since 1967, on the feast day itself, this same pardon is obtainable at every church for all who, free from attachment to sin and having recently received the Sacrament of Penance, go to church, receive the Eucharist, and pray especially for the intentions of the Holy Father.

So, in our Parish dedicated to Our Lady, if you can make a visit by “crossing over the threshold” of one of our churches on her feast day, August 2, offer prayers for the Holy Father, and fulfill the other conditions mentioned above, you too can receive Il Perdono — the pardon granted by Jesus and Mary first to St. Francis and, today, to all of us!

One of my favorite memories of my father is of him teaching me how to ride a two-wheel bicycle. When I was about ten years old, he bought me a new “two-wheeler.” I was not sure that I could balance on the bicycle, but he told me that he would hold on to the seat running alongside me as I peddled forward. That gave me great assurance to get up on the bike and start peddling. Little did I know that, after holding on to the seat at the beginning, he would let go, still running beside me all the time. His supportive presence gave me the confidence to ride on my own.

We use different words for our fathers, such as Dad, Pop, Daddy, Poppa. When calling for our father, my two siblings and I would simply use “Da,” (“a” pronounced as in “at”) and when referring to him among ourselves, we’d use “Daddy.” Jesus more than likely would have used the Aramaic word “Abba.”

Abba is used in the New Testament in three different passages:

1. “Abba, Father!” (Jesus) said: “For you everything is possible. Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it” [Mark 14:36].

2. What you received was not the spirit of slavery to bring you back into fear; you received the Spirit of adoption enabling us to cry out: “Abba, Father!” [Romans 8:15].

3. As you are children, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of His Son crying “Abba, Father” [Galatians 4:6].

From the scriptures cited here, Abba in itself can carry a few shades of meaning. The first meaning within these verses seems to convey an element of trust bolstered by the closeness of Jesus’ relationship with His Abba. And from the bicycle memory I have of my own father, the closeness I experienced with and from him gave me the great assurance I needed to overcome my fears of the new challenge of riding a bicycle on my own.

A second meaning in the Abba scriptures is a willingness on Jesus’ part to carry out the will of His Father, to be obedient. In spite of the intense pain that He experienced in Gethsemane to the point of sweating blood, He’s disposed to obediently carry out the will of His Father: Let it be as you, not I, would have it. Jesus indeed had an obedient heart.

Before my dad died in 1990, I had already been conducting pilgrimages to Assisi for about six years. I always went to see him before leaving for Assisi, and, when I was ready to leave his home, he always said to me: “I’ll pray for you!” Again, he gave me great assurance of his support in his simple, but powerfully supportive, words.

As we remember all our fathers, let us be thankful for the unique giftedness we experienced or still experience in our time with them and for the graces God gave each of us to respond to them with an obedient heart.

Before the “Hail Mary” became the most popular prayer offered to our Blessed Mother, St. Francis composed his own Salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Hail, O Lady, holy Queen,
Mary, holy Mother of God
you are the virgin made church and the one
chosen by the most holy Father in heaven
whom He consecrated
with His most holy beloved Son
and with the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete,
in whom there was and is
all the fullness of grace and every good.

Hail, His Palace! Hail, His Tabernacle!
Hail, His Home! Hail, His Robe!
Hail, His Servant! Hail, His Mother!
And, hail all you holy virtues which,
through the grace and light of the Holy Spirit,
are poured into the hearts of the faithful
so that from their faithless state
you may make them faithful to God.

(I. Brady, O.F.M., & R. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., Francis and Clare,
Paulist Press: NY, 1982, pp. 149-50.)

While there are several possibilities for reflection in this prayer, I would like to share some thoughts on the unique statement: “you are the virgin made church.” St. Francis is clearly referring to Mary being at God’s disposal so that the Son of God could take flesh in her womb, an anticipatory image of the Church. Because the Church is called to be what Mary already is, the dwelling place of the Trinity where God’s grace is made present for humanity, we have an implicit challenge to become like her as well: a dwelling place for our Trinitarian God. St. Francis reiterated this to his friars in another writing, encouraging them: “Let us make a home and dwelling place for Him who is the Lord God Almighty, Father and Son and Holy Spirit” (St. Francis’ Earlier Rule, cp. 22: vs. 27).

Then, St. Francis “Hails” Mary as “His Palace, His Tabernacle, His Home, His Robe” — four metaphors that he uses to describe Mary welcoming within her the visible presence of the invisible mystery of God. In a homily, I heard a friar say: “Mary’s “yes” to God freed God of invisibility.” These metaphors are applied to the Church, for the dignity of the Church rests in its being the place where humanity meets the Triune God. The Church is inhabited by the Trinity as its temple, because it is made up of believers in whom the Trinity dwells. When others encounter us — the people of God, the Church — do we manifest the Trinity to them?

One last comment on one of these four metaphors — “His Palace, His Tabernacle, His Home, His Robe.” St. Francis lived in an age when palaces were numerous, tabernacles were becoming more common in churches, and he, himself, was raised in a middle-class home in Assisi. But, the metaphor that touches me most is “Hail, His Robe.” For me, a robe is a garment of intimacy. And, just as Mary became His Robe, we too are called to a similar intimacy with her Son as we enclose Him within the “robe” of our being. For, within such an intimacy, we can share in the powerful love Mary had when she carried within her, her Son, Jesus Christ.

Right before Advent in the year 1259, St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio had just completed an extended period of intense prayer and reflection on Mount La Verna in Tuscany. Soon after this, he realized he had some free time before Advent would begin and wanted to spend it on another meditative pursuit. So, he decided, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to focus on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, choosing a most unique approach by reflecting on the liturgical feasts that highlight Jesus’ infancy —Annunciation, Nativity, Holy Name, Epiphany, and the Presentation. It occurred to him that, like Mary, a human person can also conceive, birth, name, search for Jesus with the Magi and present the Child Jesus back to God.

Eric Doyle, O.F.M., in the introduction to his translation of this little meditative work, noted that the entire reflection deals with what is called “spiritual motherhood,” whereby every Christian —male and female — would be able to do what Mary herself did as His Mother. She conceived this grace of God, and St. Bonaventure is attempting to help us deal with the reality of grace in our lives.

In the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25 — notice, 9 months exactly before Christmas day), St. Bonaventure remarks that Mary said her “yes” to God and became pregnant with the Child. She didn’t know fully what it all would mean but had the strength to give her consent to God. The first time I attended a Eucharist in the Porziuncola chapel in Assisi, Fr. Damien Isabell, O.F.M., observed that “Mary’s ‘yes’ to God freed God of invisibility.”

What is this conception of Mary? It is what we Franciscans call the highest good that comes from heaven, the grace of God present in Mary’s womb. With this conception, Mary was literally “full of grace.” So, each time the Holy Spirit overshadows us, we too conceive a grace of God. And just as conception is precious and unique for any woman, so too is the conception of a grace from God a unique, mystical moment for us.

St. Bonaventure notes that Mary goes up to the hill country to be with her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, perhaps to seek advice and learn from her. So too does a person who conceives a grace from God need to seek the advice of good people — “spiritual obstetricians” — such as spiritual directors. He even cautions one to avoid those who might advise one to kill the new conception — a type of spiritual
abortion.

How many times have we conceived a grace from God? When we received this grace, did we feel it stirring within us? As a religious, I remember almost precisely to the moment in my life when God called me to consider becoming a member of the Franciscan family. In elementary school, I used to hide from my mother after school every Tuesday. That was the day she would go to the Franciscan church for the novena to her favorite saint, Anthony of Padua. Whenever she found me, I had to go with her, sit directly in front of her, and dare I fuss during the service. She always sat beneath the altar on which there was a life-size statue of St. Anthony. I remember, at about age ten, sitting there one time, looking up at him, and thinking: “I’m going to wear that habit some day!” I conceived a grace at that time like Mary at the Annunciation and was pregnant with this call to religious life.

Frequently, when hearing confessions, a penitent will confess to distractions in prayer, such as: “I’m not able to keep focused.” “My mind wanders all over the place.” “I keep thinking of all I have to do today.” The Benedictine monk John Main once likened a person preparing to pray to a tree full of monkeys that are all moving at the same time, each one demanding the person’s attention. As we are fast approaching the liturgical season of Lent, we are encouraged to spend a bit more time in personal prayer. I’d like to share some words of wisdom about prayer from Fr. Eric Doyle, OFM (+1984):

“In our approach to prayer, creatures are not considered as ‘distractions’ in prayer, but pathways to closer union with God. Creation comes from God, it speaks of God and proclaims the glory of God’s goodness. How could it be a distraction when it bears in so many different ways God’s vestige, image and likeness? For this reason, we should strive to correct every doctrine of prayer, be it Christian or other, which teaches its disciples that creation is a distraction from God or that prayer should begin by emptying the mind of all that is not God. The weakness, and to some degree the error, of situating prayer in the mind is that when the mind wanders, prayer is thought to have ceased. Prayer should begin with centering the will on God, loving God for God’s own sake. Then no matter how much the mind wanders or is distracted, unless one withdraws the will from God by an act revoking the desire to pray, prayer does not cease."

[From St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood, by Eric Doyle, OFM.]

Since Eric Doyle was a Franciscan, a friar minor like myself, I’d like to suggest that what he proposes is specifically a Franciscan approach to prayer — “centering the will on God,” that is, centering my prayer in my will rather than my mind, so “then no matter how much the mind wanders or is distracted, unless one withdraws the will from God by an act revoking the desire to pray, prayer does not cease.”

An example: a Franciscan Sister friend of mine rises early in the morning to spend quiet time with God in prayer for about an hour. She wants, desires, wills to do this. After about an hour, she then says: “OK Jesus, time to go to breakfast together.” She does not revoke the will to pray, so her prayer continues throughout the entire day, inviting Jesus to accompany her in her daily activities and events.

Moreover, sometimes a so‐called “distraction” may come in prayer that God wants us to pay attention to and to pray specifically for a person or event. And, if God raises up someone like that to us—even someone we may find very difficult—God may be recruiting us for prayer for someone in need of prayer support. Remember, Jesus told us to love everyone, even our enemies.

So, try praying during Lent by centering your will on God, letting God lead you. Then, notice the surprises God has in store for you.