Surrendering to God

Dear Friend,

This week the Mission friars hosted a very distinguished guest - from Rome, no less: Father Massimo Fusarelli, who currently serves as Minister General of the world-wide Franciscan branch of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM). Massimo was here to make a fraternal visit, to share with us his experience of visiting friars around the world and to encourage us in our efforts to establish a new nation-wide Province here in the U.S. This project has been underway for many years and will culminate in October with a four-day gathering of all the OFM friars in the U.S. officially launching the new province under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

Addressing the novices at a special Mass on Tuesday evening, Father Massimo pointed them to the heart of the Franciscan vocation: surrender to God - not in any way a direct, enclosed, or abstract surrender, but one that for a friar is always and every day a surrender that moves through fraternity, that is, through the family of brothers with whom we share our lives. Looking around the chapel, he smiled, paused and said: We are not perfect. 

In this week’s Gospel Jesus calls those he is sending out (apostles) to self-surrender and it’s surely a text that Saint Francis knew very well as he worked through so many challenges with his own (imperfect) brothers 800 years ago. Friars or not, for each of us this Gospel surrender moves through a set of relationships uniquely our own. We “take up our cross” not by clinging to family, but by allowing family - whatever form it takes - to be a place for us to embody God’s love, the love to which we surrender the very center of our lives. 

Gratefully

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor