Newsletters July 2009 Living the Gospel
Living the Gospel PDF Print E-mail
Written by Brother Desmond Alban SSF   
When Francis of Assisi gave up all his possessions and began to wander around Italy serving the needs of marginalized people and preaching the Gospel by word and action, he was doing something both old and radically new. It was new, because nobody had lived a form of vowed ‘Religious Life’ quite like that before – many thought him mad – but it was old too because all he was really seeking to do was to follow the teaching and example of Jesus;

‘The Rule and life of the Lesser Brothers is to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Just as the first monks and nuns challenged the Church and the world of the past, so the Anglican founders of Religious Communities were moved by a Spirit-breathed vision, at once both new and old. Today, new and previously unimagined forms of Gospel life are springing up in unexpected places both within and beyond the historic Churches.

Yet older forms of monastic life continued in the changing 13th Century world in to which the life of the friars first erupted, and so too we find today that God is still sending novices to our Franciscan community, a steady trickle here in the UK and elsewhere in ‘the West’ but in abundance in our two new provinces of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Like the Anglican Communion and Christianity in general, we are growing used to the idea that our centre of gravity these days is now south of the Equator. Like the Church of England though, we are still called to witness here in England, but to what?

When people think of religious life they probably picture a life centred on the daily round of prayer in some beautiful rural setting. That description certainly fits my current home – temporary, as an itinerant friar’s home always will be – but it’s not, perhaps, the absolute heart of the Franciscan vision. Our witness to the priority of prayer is certainly a given, and the opportunity to share that with many guests and visitors is a God-given one. But our basic call, our gospel motivation, is to find a way to share our lives with the people who are disadvantaged and marginalized in the world of today, and that is why many of our sisters and brothers live in somewhat forgotten urban areas, of economic deprivation yet often rich in ethnic, cultural and religious diversity – seeking to live as those finding paths of reconciliation and peace, proclaiming the Kingdom of God in action and word as what Francis called ‘Heralds of the Great King’ and living in simplicity as brothers and sisters to all whose lives touch ours.

Brother Desmond Alban SSF
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