This is a confusing and intriguing title. It calls our
attention to something greater which we need to achieve. How can we be
crucified and resurrected in Capuchin Franciscan vocation. Let us turn to our
Father and founder St. Francis. We all know a story is told about St.
Francis that one day a Friar Masseo came to him and
asked, "Why after you? Why is the whole world coming after you, wanting to
see you, to hear you, to follow you?" Francis' own response to
Masseo's question indicates that he is chosen by God because of his smallness
and insufficiency, so that the Creator and not the creature will receive the
credit. Francis is an ordinary person who takes the gospel and the Life of
Jesus seriously. His identification with Jesus attracts men and women of all
times and ages to his Order to be his followers. The following of Jesus and
conformation to Jesus leads him to reveal that the question "Why after
you?" is transformed into "Why after Him?"
Francis never wrote a
meditation on the passion of Jesus but what he did was to identify with Christ
thus bringing the whole message of Jesus to his life and made it look real in
his dealing with all creatures. The desire to conform totally to Christ was put
directly into deeds, into action, by Francis. Rather than explain what it meant
to become one with God through conformation to Christ, he demonstrated it, with
an intensity and simplicity. The Cross was seen in every fiber of his being and
Resurrection was demonstrated in his relationships, words and deeds. For
Francis, the way of Jesus was above all the way of the cross. His life was
ruled by "compassion for the passion of Christ" (2C 127). The
whole course of his life from the very beginning was marked with the glorious
mysteries of Christ's cross (Minor Life 6:9; pp. 825-26). From the early
days of his conversion, when he heard Christ speaking to him from the crucifix
in the ruined church
of San Damiano , it was
above all conformity to the Passion of Christ. The motivation for all this is
nothing but fervent love and he longed to be totally transformed into him by
the fire of ecstatic love" (LM 9:2; p. 263). This conformity to
Christ in his Passion culminates, of course, in the events of September, 1224,
on Mt. Alverna , when the body of Francis is
marked with the wounds of Christ: Thus it is the love of Francis for Christ
which draws him into a participation in the Paschal mystery.
For Francis, the cross
was never a sign merely of suffering but of redemption, and his vision of a
redeemed world complements his devotion to the cross and accounts for his
emphasis on joy as a sign of genuine discipleship. From his experience of the
risen Lord he composed the beautiful canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon is
in some sense a resurrection hymn, a hymn of the new creation. Francis was
constantly conscious of the resurrection of Jesus and he witnessed to it
through his life in the Order. With St.
Paul he could say, "All I want is to know Christ
and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing
the pattern of his death. That is the way I can hope to take my place in the
resurrection of the dead" (Phil. 3:10 -11).
this
Easter we are all invited by Father and founder St. Francis to devote to the
Life and passion of Christ. Let us cultivate a profound conviction that the
life of Christ is the only road by which we can reach to the Father. Our Father
Francis proposes to us that we only need to follow Jesus in all things and
spread and deepen this devotion in our personal lives. Let the spirituality of
conformation to the way of the cross be our daily
bread so that we experience the
Resurrection in our daily lives. St. Francis’s
intimately identified with ordinary humanity and with Christ and wants us to continue to serve in our own time, as he did in his, as a sign of God's gracious presence among His people.
Let us unite ourselves completely with our poor,
broken, sinful humanity in order experience the resurrected Christ. Let us bring the Resurrected Christ to
others by being the
resurrected Christ for others. This Easter challenges all friars to see and experience the resurrected Lord in the poor, the alienated,
the "lepers" who continue to live in our midst.
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