Another Step Forward

Looking back at something as broad and deep as my FrancisCorps experience from the vantage point of two weeks since returning to my family’s home in Colorado, it is hard to know where to begin trying to summarize the last year. Like many transformative things, it sometimes feels more like a dream rather than one of the most real things I’ve ever done. Before joining FrancisCorps, I knew very little about the Franciscans. I’d heard anecdotes about St. Francis in religion classes before and I had a very loose idea that friars existed based on the animated Robin Hood movie I watched as a kid, but that was about it. Now, having spent a year immersed in the Franciscan charism and surrounded by people living it, I can understand how this spirituality has continued to draw people into its particular way of living the Gospel and helped shape the greater Church in the process. One of the most beautiful lessons I learned over the course of the year was how wonderfully human people in religious vows are, even when that can be hard to see sometimes from an outside perspective. The welcoming, joyful, and especially authentic nature of a heart rooted in Francis’ and Clare’s charism was modeled for me very well by the friars, Poor Clares, and especially by my community and the FrancisCorps staff this year and I expect the impact of that witness on my heart to be long-lasting.

The structure and space that the program gave me as part of a new way of living this year also taught me a lot about myself that I’m unsure I would have learned elsewhere. Perhaps most apparent was the reassurance that continuing to pursue ministry professionally is the right move for me at this stage since I still found that work fulfilling as a full-time job and not just as a side thing outside of my classes. When I first committed to FrancisCorps, I expected the service work to be my main focus with community living as a much appreciated bonus. As the year progressed, I was surprised by how lifegiving I found community living to be, to the point where it very much became the heart of my FrancisCorps experience. Learning how to form and maintain a community with Madeline and Karlie was often the place I found myself learning the most about my relationships with others, with myself, and with God. The act of consistently showing up for daily community prayer, in particular, showed me how normal and how good it is to let my prayer life change in response to the other things going on in my life instead of trying to lock my time with God into a system that doesn’t take into account those other circumstances.

I hope to carry these insights with me back to the University of Notre Dame where I will be starting a Masters of Divinity degree in August, which will form me to serve as a professional lay minister in the Catholic Church. As I consider what parts of the Franciscan charism I especially want to take with me into grad school and beyond, I’m drawn to the sincerity, willingness to embrace God’s plan, and, of course, the Franciscan foolishness I saw modeled so well this year. Most of all, I hope to follow in the proud Franciscan tradition of setting more conventional metrics of success aside in favor of looking at and loving the person in front of me and making sure I’m leading from that as I take another step toward wherever the good Lord is leading me.

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