"More and Greater Things": Notes for Interpreting the Vows from the Perspective of the Evangelical Life

507 Franciscan Studies 64 (2006) “MORE AND GREATER THINGS”: Notes for Interpreting the Vows from the Perspective of the Evangelical Life Setting the Question It is fitting, convenientia in the Bonaventurian sense of the term, to begin this short reflection on an evangelical interpretation of the vows by referring to the Earlier and Later Exhortations of Francis of Assisi. The Earlier Exhortation in particular has been a companion of Sister Margaret Carney, OSF, ever since she began her collaborative work in preparation for the rewriting of The Rule and Life of the Brothers and Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis.1 The prologue to that Rule is a lengthy excerpt from what was known at the time as Epistola ad fideles: Recensio Prior, a text which would become more and more central to Carney’s exposition of the “evangelical life” in her teaching, lectures, travels, and personal conversation. She has summarized her growing awareness of the foundations of the evangelical form of religious life in an experiential encounter with the living Word of God in her most recent article, “The ‘Letter’ of Fourteen Names”: The penitents of the first Franciscan generations ponder a text, but it is not a letter from Francis: it is the letter of the gospel, the scripture, with Francis as guide or recorder. They speak of the questions that life thrusts upon them: How shall I gain eternal life? How can I see/experience God? What is my destiny? Am I damned by reason of my secular calling and marginal social and ecclesial standing? The texts that respond to their questions emerge and find a place in their communal 1 See The Rule and Life of the Brothers and Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis and Commentary (Washington, DC: Franciscan Federation, 1982), with commentary written by Margaret Carney, OSF, and Thaddeus Horgan, SA, Members of the International Commission. 508 JOSEPH P. CHINNICI meditation. The texts are recorded and the words that recall their happy discoveries or their sobering conscientization are recorded as well. The result is this record of a community of penitents working out the Christian solution for existential problems. (For any person with experience of a Latin American communiades de base the analogy is clear and inviting.)2 Throughout the course of her journey, Carney has combined both the most recent scholarship on the evangelical awakening of the thirteenth century, her personal ecclesial commitments, and the whole Franciscan family’s effort to further the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. More and more she has seen the “textual community” which gave birth to the Earlier and Later Exhortations as foundational for understanding the contemporary inclusiveness and specific contours of the Evangelical Form of Religious Life.3 In a significant way she has used her considerable personal God-given virtues and intelligence to develop two key axes of this form of life: Its emphasis on both the universal call to holiness (Lumen Gentium V) and the specific call of publicly vowed Franciscans (Lumen Gentium VI) to lead a human and penitential life by following “the teaching and footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (ER 1.1, with reference to 1 Pt 2:21). What began as a focus on metanoia and a search for Third Order Regular distinctiveness has taken a deeper turn towards assimilating the anthropological, sociological , and ecclesiological implications of Francis’s encounter with the suffering human condition. What has happened is the opening up of a 2 Margaret Carney, “The ‘Letter’ of Fourteen Names, Reading ‘The Exhortation,’” in Jay M. Hammond, ed., Francis of Assisi, History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents (New York: New City Press, 2004), 90-104, with quotation from 99-100. 3 The “Evangelical Form of Religious Life” as a descriptive term referring to the distinctive elements of Franciscan identity was first formulated in 1983 in response to the classification of the religious life in the Codex Juris Canonici and the almost simultaneous document issued for vowed religious in the United States, Essential Elements of the Church’s Teaching on Religious Life as Applied to Institutes Dedicated to Works of the Apostolate. While not contradicting the formulations offered, the term “evangelical...