Journeying

The Provincial Chapter has been completed and the letter of obedience has been officially published. The Triune God, through the Provincial and his council, assigned me the mission of forming part of the Holy Trinity Fraternity at Marsa. This means leaving Saint Anthony Friary at Għajn Dwieli in Paola.

Such a move was a surprise to me. I was not expecting it. But consecrated life is fascinating precisely because it is filled with these kinds of surprises. In other words it is itself shrouded in mystery. In these challenging moments it came vivid into my mind the text from the Prophet Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:8-9).

Obedience called me to be an itinerant, a pilgrim on a journey. This understanding is already found in the New Testament. In the eighth chapter of Matthew’s gospel we encounter the type of itinerancy that was practised by Jesus himself. “A scribe came up and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head’” (Matt. 8:19-20). Jesus, the Son of God, had nowhere to lay his head! He had no possessions of his own. Otherwise he would not be free to move around preaching God’s Kingdom and performing God’s signs and wonders.

The same Matthean text unravels for us Jesus’ view of itinerancy. For Jesus to be an itinerant means putting God and his work first in one’s life priorities. Jesus even goes as far as to demand his followers put their families behind him. To one of his disciples who told him: “Lord, let me first go and bury my father” (Matt 8:21) Jesus replied: “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt 8:22).

In the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus makes it crystal clear that the disciple has to love him more than his own parents and children. “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). Being a disciple of Jesus entails carrying one’s cross. “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:38). Finally, the disciple is the one who gives up everything for the Master he is following. And it is exactly thanks to that giving that the disciple will receive everything back and much, much more! “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10:39).

As I started packing my belongings to go to Holy Trinity Friary another text came to my mind. This time from the sixth chapter of the Rule where Saint Francis exhorts us, his brothers, not to appropriate anything for ourselves, to beg alms and to care for our sick brothers. Here our Seraphic Father highly encourages us:

“Let the Friars appropriate nothing for themselves, neither house nor place, nor any thing. And as pilgrims and exiles (1 Peter 2:11) in this age let them go about for alms confidently, as ones serving the Lord in poverty and humility, nor is it proper that they be ashamed [to do so], since the Lord made Himself poor in this world (2 Corinthians 8:9) for us. This is that loftiness of most high poverty, which has established you, my most dear Friars, as heirs and kings of the Kingdom of Heaven, making you poor in things, it has raised you high in virtues (James 2:5). Let this be your ‘portion’, which leads you ‘into the land of the living’ (Psalm 141:6). Cleaving totally to this, most beloved Friars, may you want to have nothing other under heaven in perpetuity, for the [sake of] the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Lord, unite me to yourself and send me where you deem best to serve you and your Kingdom. Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap