SSTT AANNTTHHOONNYY bbrriieeff € IRISH FRANCISCAN MISSION MAGAZINE No .6 OCT/NOV 2008 1.00 FFrraanncciiss aanndd JJiihhaadd MMiissssiioonn iiss aa QQuueessttiioonn ooff LLoovvee FFrriiaarrss iinn MMoorrooccccoo PPrroobblleemmss iinn PPrraayyeerr I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling Spirit to the need to be right. and – Anne Lamott Life 2 St Anthony Brief SSTT ANTHONANTHONYY briefbrief From the Editor. 4 Francis and Jihad . FR PATRICK NOONAN, OFM, a missionary in 5 South Africa, challenges us to look afresh at St Francis as Peacemaker. The Struggle to Survive . FR BRENDAN FORDE, OFM, a missionary who lives with the indigenous peoples in Colombia, writes 8 on a special tribunal of justice. A Place of Peace and Love. BR PAULO CEZAR MAGALHAES, OFM, ministers in the Franciscan hospice in Thailand where the friars 10 journey with those living with Aids. Church Brief. 12 Crossing the Frontiers. FR RONAN BARRY , Director of the Irish Missionary Union, invites us to cross the frontiers of cultures and 13 traditions in the new Ireland. Mission is a Question of Love. In his message for Mission Sunday (19th October), POPE BENEDICT reminds us the 14 missionary mandate is an absolute priority for all the baptised. The Year of St Paul. FR FRANCIS COTTER, OFM, looks at how 16 we can live this Year of St Paul as a time of grace. A Soul Thirsts for God. 19 An Irishman and Scholar. FR PAT CONLAN, OFM, honours 20 Fr John Colgan the Franciscan who died 350 years ago this year. News from Around the Franciscan World. 22 A Different Mission: Friars in Morocco. The friars in Morocco Volume 68 No.6 share what it means to be a humble, loving presence, true Friars Missionary Magazine of the Irish 23 Minor, among a Muslim people. Franciscans. Published bi-monthly by the Franciscan Missionary Union, 8 Merchants Quay, Dublin 8. Problems in Prayer. FR KIERAN CRONIN, OFM, offers some Editor: Fr Ulic Troy, OFM. 24 practical pointers for when we encounter difficulties in prayer. Production: Fr Francis Cotter, OFM. Subscription & Distribution Secretary: What Assisi Meant to Me. FR GEARÓID Ó CONAIRE, O FM, Helen Doran. Tel: (01) 6777651. shares his pages with John Tiernan who reflects on his first visit to Design, Layout & Printing: 27 Corcoran Print & Design. Assisi. Tel: (053) 9234760. Subscription including Postage: € Mission Digest. Ireland – 12.00 per annum Britain – Stg£10.00 per annum € Overseas – 15.00 per annum 30 The Church is Young. Cover: Image of St Francis, Assisi. 31 Oct/Nov 2008 3 From the Editor… “FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY” On 4th October Franciscans, and many more men and women from all over the world, commemo - rate and celebrate the feast of St Francis of Assisi, often called the Poverello , or the little poor man. He was born in the small Umbrian city of Assisi in the year 1181 or 1182 of Pietro di Bernardone, a wealthy textile merchant, and Pica, of a distinguished French family, probably from Picardy. Francis’ wealth and love of life made him the leader of Assisi’s youth, and filled him with dreams of grandeur. In the intercity feuding between Assisi and Perugia he enlisted, entered the battle of Collestrada, and was imprisoned when the soldiers of Assisi lost. After his release he returned to Assisi, and turned his back on a military career, and on a promising profession in the Fr Ulic Troy business world, in order to respond to the impulses of the Lord that moved mysteriously within him. A meeting with a leper and hearing a voice from the Cross of San Damiano resulted in his conversion, the renunciation of possessions, and the building up of the Church of Christ that was falling into ruins. From the day he heard the words spoken from the crucifix in the church of San Damiano, Francis of Assisi walked away from a particular form of slavery – attachment to posses - sions and wealth – he became a free man and a lover of poverty. There are many qualities that can be admired in the life of Francis of Assisi – but his rejection and non-attachment to material things is worth pondering on. We can learn from his example and ask ourselves to what extent are we responsible for the slavery of others, when we ourselves are enslaved to narrow self-interest with little sense of the consequences. This can happen when we fail to embrace spiritual values and settle purely for material things of no lasting value. The words: “You cannot serve two masters,” invites us to consider what really matters in our own value system – both as individuals and as a society. In the current economic downturn we should reflect on the words of Christ: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body what you shall put on. Is life not worth more than food and the body more than clothing?” During the years when the so-called Celtic Tiger was in full cry and there was plenty about, there was the particular temptation abroad to measure everything in life purely in material terms, while overlooking our other needs. Christianity would be the first to acknowledge that everyone has legitimate material needs that should be met. When we look at the word “clothing,” it reminds us and highlights the plight of abused workers in underdeveloped countries, who are exploited to satisfy the demands of the well-off in order to get more for less. In a published report, it was alleged that as many as 27 million men, women, and children endure brutal working conditions for no money, and live under the constant threat of beatings and other forms of torture. Like Francis of Assisi, we can take the first step away from slavery and the misuse of material things, when we rediscover our own worth and the things that really matter in the Good News of the Gospel. We are constantly invited by Jesus to realise that our life “does not consist in the abundance of my possessions,” but in the fact that each one of us is uniquely precious to God and cared for by Him, who seeks freedom from all unnecessary anxiety and worry, and freedom to be the best that we can be. It was Bertrand Russell who said: “It is preoccupation with possession more than anything else that prevents men from living freely and nobly.” – Ulic Troy, OFM ([email protected]) 4 St Anthony Brief Francis and Jsuch ais Behrnadettea, Patrickd and Ma ria FR PATRICK NOONAN, OFM, a missionary Goretti. We understand them. And there were those saints who integrated in South Africa, challenges us to look afresh at politics, faith and spirituality in a unique way such as Simon the Zealot, St Francis as Peacemaker. Thomas More, Charles Lwanga, King n heaven I would want to Christianity, an angle emerging from Louis of France and Francis Taylor the meet St Francis of Assisi” said that particular environment. It could sixteenth century Lord Mayor of Dublin. Nobel prize winner Arch - make you smug about things, about Not surprisingly, Francis of Assisi is “b“ishop I DI esmond Tutu. life, about priorities. hardly remembered by the North for his Who was St Francis? Have his follow - extensive travelling in the cause of ers successfully domesticated him? Eurocentric Story Tellers peacemaking and reconciliation. Have his scholars cleverly diminished Take for example the saints of Chris - Perhaps this characteristic of Francis of this extraordinary 13th century holy tianity. The North has a monopoly on Assisi doesn’t feature too much in the man? Is there a Global South St Francis? the saints. Fair enough. Their hard life experience of his recent biogra - Will the real St Francis please stand up? work, education, ambition, devotion phers. And when his official biographers It’s not a cover-up. Nobody wants to and money help to get their Christian remember the event at Damietta hide anything. It’s just that they don’t heroes immortalised. Unfortunately they’re embarrassed! They’re not sure know anything better. How could they? they seem to sanitise their saints what to say. They spin a yarn! They They live in the North Atlantic region of before hoisting them into their lofty pass on quickly. The following is a the world, don’t they? In Europe and stained-glass windows. They put their reconstruction of an aspect of the life America. That’s very much a world on saints out of reach. In the interests of of the Bernadone son (Francis of Assisi) its own. It tends to revolve around aesthetics they lose contact with them. from a perspective of the Southern itself. It’s a different world. It’s full of A pity. We in the turbulent Southern Hemisphere. It attempts to humanise St great technology and declining faith. Hemisphere look differently at our Francis, to give him back to the people It’s affluent and its affluence pollutes saints. Happily we don’t have too many and indeed to recall him as the univer - the whole world. They have few wars stained-glass windows to banish them sal figure he was intended to be. these days although in the last century to. We like saints who have struggled their tribes fought two world wars and not only with self-perfection (the Euro - Making Peace finished the century with an ethnic peans) but those who lived like us and As he increasingly fell under the spell free-for-all after the break up of were people of the soil.