Some Jargony Fun and Encouragement

Yesterday life conspired to give me a little encouragement to maybe feel less bad about myself, which was certainly a welcome thing given the experience from earlier in the week recounted in the previous post, when one of my Franciscan brothers refused me entrance to a party to which I had been invited.

The first thing was that I realized it was already the second anniversary of that crazy day when my Provincial Minister called me in the morning to make a phone appointment for later in the day, saying that we needed to talk about something important. Of course I spent the rest of the morning freaking out; I was a new guardian at the time and, sorry to say, it wasn't going very well. What was up? Was I being removed? Was one of the brothers in the house in trouble? It turned out to be the rather stunning news that the General Minister had asked for me to be summoned into service at our General Curia.

So, two years later, as part of that assignment, one of my little jobs yesterday was to prepare the decree to authorize the Provincial Minister of Great Britain to convoke their next Provincial Chapter. To do this I had to look up the dates of their last one. In so doing I noticed that it was on September 6, 2011 that my predecessor in this assignment had been elected Second Definitor of the Province of Great Britain.

Now, if my Provincial Minister called me more or less first thing in the morning on September 20, 2011 to tell me that the General Minister had asked for me to come to Rome, that means that our General Councilor must have called him the day before at the very latest.

That means that if it was the election of my predecessor to his Provincial Definitory that precipitated the search for a successor, it was only thirteen days, at most, between that precipitation and my being thought of for the job. That's not a lot of time for many friars to have been asked and then to consult with their superiors and spiritual directors, etc., before having to say that they couldn't say yes at that moment, so therefore I conclude that I wasn't that far down the list of preference when candidates for my current assignment were being considered. So in that conjecture I guess I'm invited to a little recovery of self-confidence after recent events.