Living By A Rule

 
We know that Francis and his brothers formulated a simple Rule that they followed during the earliest days of the Order, from about 1209 and during the following decade.  Eventually they wanted to get this approved by Rome, so developed it into a more formal document, the final version of which was not approved until 1223.  But, as you know, while they were developing this Rule for themselves, Francis was formulating a simple Rule of life for the many secular persons who wanted some kind of guide for their daily Christian life and who were very attracted to the brothers and their new way of life.  Around 1215 Francis composed a letter outlining a simple way of life, a document that was later called the “Letter to All the Faithful.”  This “Letter” outlined a penitential program of life, not especially distinguishable from the penitential order that had been part of Church life for some centuries already and was making a come-back in the 13th century.  The first version of this letter is very simple.  It describes the blessedness of those who do penance and the desolation of those who do not do penance.  It does not so much prescribe what people should do, but rather it describes what happens when people do this or that.  Francis does not assert personal authority, but relies on the authority of the Scriptural sources he uses, for these he claims are “spirit and life.”  (1LtF 2:21)
 
The second version of this letter is much more developed and shows a strong influence of the Fourth Lateran Council which occurred in 1215.  Francis incorporates teachings about the Incarnation and the sacraments, which were being challenged by heretics at the time.  He emphasizes the importance of remaining faithful Catholics.  Essentially, he explains that the penitential life is an ideal way to live an authentic Christian life.  About 1221, Francis and Cardinal Hugolino joined forces to bring together the directives of the Letter to the Faithful and produce a rather dry juridical document, a kind of Rule of life that was approved by Rome.  We know it today as the Memoriale propositi.  The peculiar thing about this document is that it does not mention Francis or the First Order anywhere in it.  It might have applied to any association of God-fearing people who wanted to live simply. [1] Nevertheless, it seems to have been the model from which the Third Order Rule later developed.
 
Toward a Franciscan Third Order
 
Very many of the sisters and brothers who committed themselves to live the penitential life in this way looked to Francis and the friars for their inspiration.  Within a century or so, the Franciscan way of doing this was known throughout the Christian world.  By the end of the 14 ^th century, almost every convent of Friars Minor located in populated areas was relating to a fraternity.” [2]  Shortly before the end of that century, the Franciscan Pope Nicolas IV formally recognized the “Brothers and Sisters of the Order of Penance” whose “founder,” as he called him, was St.  Francis.  The pope thus established a tertiary order called “Franciscan” and gave its members a “Franciscan” Rule.  (1289 in the bull Supra montem)  This way of living the penitential life then became dominant in Europe.
 
Francis’s new way was thus a driving force in a movement that was to have a tremendous impact on the lives of great numbers of people down through the centuries.  The time was ripe for his gifts, for his vision, for his energy.  Francis was a Friar Minor, a Lesser Brother, whose Order of Friars Minor would grow great in the Church and serve its vast universal purposes.  However, Francis was first of all a penitent, whose participation in the ancient penitential order of the Church determined to a great extent his fundamental vision of the Christian life.  Beyond his Order of Friars Minor he extended that vision to the whole people of God, inviting them to the sweetness of the converted life, the life of the “children of the heavenly Father whose works they do” and the life of the “spouses, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1LtF 1:7).
 
Bringing the Rule into Contemporary Times
 
For six hundred years the Secular Franciscans followed Pope Nicholas’s Rule of 1289.  It was not until the late nineteenth century that a new Rule was written for Secular Franciscans.  In 1883, Leo XIII replaced Nicholas’s Rule, greatly reducing its directives and accommodating it to what Pope Leo then considered “modern times.”  He mitigated many of its more stringent aspects and emphasized social responsibility and Catholic orthodoxy.  The late Father Robert Stewart, in his landmark study of the OFS Rule, says that Leo’s Rule “.  .  .  transformed the very nature of the Order.” [3]  He goes on to say:
 
The Gospel life that Francis had rediscovered in all of its radicality has not been translated well in the Rule of 1883.  In attempting to remedy the evils of secular society by calling people to live their Catholic faith, Leo has reduced the radical demands of Gospel metanoia announced in the Later Exhortation to the “practices of piety and good works.” .  .  . 
 
Thus, rather than preserving the way of life preached by Francis “altogether unchanged and intact,” the Rule of 1883 allowed for the evolution from a Franciscan Order of the penitents to a Franciscan sodality, [4] [i.e., a pious society].”
 
Vatican Council II, in the early 1960s, challenged religious to return to their roots and renew the original vision and charism of their founder.  In 1965, the Secular Franciscans began to search for ways to renew their way of life.  In close collaboration with friars of the First Order and Third Order Regular, they collected suggestions and proposals from all over the world.  In 1969, they held an International Inter-obediental Congress of Secular Franciscans in Assisi to move the process forward.  At this Congress, they summarized what they believed were six characteristics that defined the nature of the Order:

 
From these six characters, they drew out seventeen “essential elements” of the spirituality of the Secular Order. [5]  Thus they created the foundation for a new Rule.  Nine years later, in 1978, the International Commission had a new document ready to submit to the four Ministers General (OFM and TOR), who, in turn, introduced a very significant addition.  As a “prologue” to the Rule, they added the entire text of the earlier version of Francis’s Letter to All the Faithful (i.e.  the Earlier Exhortation). [6] In this way, they incorporated the ancient document that gave the way of life its character as a “penitential order” in the classic and traditional sense of that term.  This addition guaranteed that the new Rule would be strongly rooted in its penitential identity. 
 
From our study of the lives and works of Francis and Clare, we understand now that they themselves espoused a life that was identifiable in their own times as a “penitential life.”  The Order they founded bore the character of the Church’s ancient penitential tradition.  Francis and Clare speak of their personal conversion in terms of a profound awakening in their lives, which compelled them to “leave the world.”  This language, of course, was and is symbolic for a turning away from the values of a materialistic, selfish and violent society.  In their lives it meant something very concrete and practical—a complete separation from the dehumanizing values espoused by their society and an intense focus on God and the things of God.  In practice it computed into radical forms of poverty, a life of contemplative prayer, personal asceticism and humble service of others. 
 
The Penitential Life: Conversion
 
We’ve been over this ground many times, but no matter how “good” we get at living this way, we are always “beginners.”  Who among us can say, on any given day, “I have lived the Gospel life so long, I have gotten really good at it!”  No, one starts over every day.  Therefore it pays, once in a while, to re-examine the fundamental charism of our way of life.  In this day and age, the notion of “penance,” we know, does not get a good press.  We must really strive to see the positive side of it.  How might “penance” be understood and practiced meaningfully today in ways that get at the same fundamental experience of conversion of life or metanoia that was originally intended?
 
Interestingly, many people today engage in what we might call “penitential practices” for purely humanistic reasons.  Notice how some contemporary people have become fascinated by Eastern types of spirituality that focus on simple living, meditative prayer and fasting from food.  New awareness about health and environmental issues motivate many to use the things of the earth sparingly and deny themselves many luxuries and conveniences, even though they might be easily available and legitimate.  Because of the terrible violence in our society, many people refuse to have weapons in their homes or on their persons.  These are essentially “penitential” practices because they lead people to deny themselves for the sake of a greater good and cause a significant change of lifestyle; in others words, conversion of life.  When the greater good we are seeking is understood to be living a Gospel life, penitential practices are transformative in the Christian sense.
 
To focus on such external practices, however, may be to miss the point.  Essentially, “penance” understood as Gospel conversion or metanoia aims at that profound “turning around” that changes us in the very core of our being.  It is much more than an experience of a changed attitude toward social values or the practice of personal asceticism.  The Jesuit theologian, Bernard Lonergan, tells us that conversion … is a radical transformation on which follows, on all levels of living, an interlocked series of changes and developments.  What hitherto was unnoticed becomes vivid and present.  What had been of no concern becomes a matter of high import.  So great a change in one’s apprehensions and one’s values accompanies no less a change in oneself in one’s relations to other persons and in one’s relation to God. [7]
 
This description of conversion immediately reminds us of the testimony of Francis in his Testament, written shortly before his death:
 
The Lord granted me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way: While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers.  And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them.  And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body; and afterward I lingered a little and left the world (Test 1-3).
 
Clearly Francis’s “turning” was the beginning of what Lonergan describes as the experience “on which follows, on all levels of living, an interlocked series of changes and developments.”  Such a notion of the life of “penance” points to it as a life-long process rooted in a dynamic relational life.  In this sense one never “arrives” at some kind of finish line.  Rather, one lives daily the life of “turning,” renewing over and over the fundamental choice to be faithful.  This was true for Francis and for the movement that he set in motion.  It is rooted in a life of relationship, a life lived for others.
 
For the Christian person the experience of conversion is ideally celebrated in the sacrament of Baptism.  Experience proves, however, that after we are initiated into Christ’s community, there follow many other “moments” when the choice must be made again from ever-new vantage points.  From time immemorial there have been Christian people in all walks of life who have desired to live this way more intensely and more publicly and to receive the support of a community of like-minded persons.  This is how religious communities are born and develop.  This is how the Franciscan movement was born and developed. 
 
For eight hundred years, innumerable persons have done this after the charismatic example of Francis of Assisi.  Twenty-first-century Christians still feel the attraction of this peculiar charism and continue to “run after” this poor little man of Assisi (Fior 10.)  We who belong to the Third Order search our own lives and experiences for ways to express in our times what Francis and his followers expressed so well in theirs.  The renewed Rule of 1978, together with its prologue that roots it in the primitive penitential Rule, assists us to recognize and to accept our origin in the Church’s ancient order of “penance.”  This “order” is, after all, only a sincere and heartfelt effort to live with others the Gospel life, to surrender ourselves completely to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, to share in his life, passion, death and resurrection in such a way that our very lives announce and celebrate God’s mercy in our own time and place. 

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