Salami & Zeal

After morning Mass at our neighbor, the basilica of St. Teresa of Ávila, I returned to the house and entered the refectory. There I saw everything set up for the brothers' breakfast like any other day, except for one extraordinary thing: there was some salami. On a Friday.

In my seven years here, I have observed that Friday abstinence is one of the most invariable rules of Capuchin Italy. It is more unassailable than the Capuchin beard or the strict following of Franciscan poverty.  It is even more durable than liturgical law that, when disregarded, results in what the Church warns is grave abuse. Capuchin Italy observes Friday abstinence on solemnities that fall on a Friday as well as on Easter Friday, which some might call incorrect or even impious. The only exception I have ever witnessed is when Christmas falls on a Friday, and that, of course, at the expressed wish of the founder.*

All that is to say that I was quite shocked to see the salami. I thought to myself that the Capuchin General Curia could not have descended to such a level of laxity over just one month of my absence for vacation. So I began to wonder: how long will it take, once the friars start to trickle in from their conventual Mass, for some friar, in his loving concern for the souls of the brothers, to remove the salami to a back refrigerator or some other hiding place?

So I timed it: six minutes and twenty-five seconds, which is a longer time than I would have guessed.

*When there was a discussion about not eating meat, because [Christmas] was on Friday, [St. Francis] replied to Brother Morico: "You sin, brother, when you call 'Friday' the day when unto us a child is born. I want even the walls to eat meat on that day, and if they cannot, at least on the outside they be rubbed with grease!" 

He wanted the poor and hungry to be filled by the rich, and oxen and asses to be spoiled with extra feed and hay. "If I ever speak with the Emperor," he would say, "I will beg him to issue a general decree that all who can should throw wheat and grain along the roads, so that on the day of such a great solemnity, the birds may have an abundance, especially our sisters the larks." 

(Thomas of Celano, 2nd Life of St. Francis, Chapter 151, FA:ED II, 374-375)

The Beard From Head To Heart

Recently I was in an email conversation about an occasional topic on this blog, Capuchin beards and Capuchin beard-growing.

One of the participants offered a link to an interesting Jewish take on the spiritual meaning of beard-growing. Rabbi Aron Moss writes:

One of the greatest struggles in life is to live up to our ideals. ... Between theory and practice there is a huge gulf. It is one thing to have good intentions, but that is far from actually doing good. ... This is what the beard represents. The beard is hair that grows down from the head to the rest of the body. It is the bridge between mind and heart, thoughts and actions, theory and practice, good intentions and good deeds.

Read the whole thing here.

When I was a kid the Chabad-Lubavitchers had a van that they would park in town in order to attract unobservant Jews and therein convert them. People called it the 'Mitzvah Tank.'

Lawrence of Brindisi on the Vestments

I suppose my deficiencies as a Capuchin friar are many. For example, I like to say that my physical inability to grow a proper Capuchin beard is my Pauline thorn. Another one is that I have never really known--and nor has any confrere been able to tell me clearly--why the lone doctor of the Church of our Capuchin reform, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, should be especially a doctor of the Church.

So for a long time I have thought that I ought to read what he wrote and find out for myself. Therefore it was my delight to discover one day that the house where I find myself now has a set of St. Lawrence's works in the English translation of Vernon Wagner, OFM Cap. So as I have had time and inspiration, I have started to read some of them.

Here's a fun passage on the meaning of the priestly vestments from the sermon, "The Eucharist as Sacrifice."

But the priestly vestments of the Church are totally representative of the mystery of redemption. Do you not think that a vested priest resembles Christ? Do you not see that the thin amice that covers his head is the most pure flesh of Christ which covered the Word of God? God is the head of Christ. (1 Cor 11:3) And the alb which is totally white, can it represent anything besides the innocence and the immaculate holiness of the entire life of Christ? It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens. (Heb 7:26) Does not the cincture express what was said by Isaiah: Justice shall be a band around his waist. (Is 11:5) And does not the maniple speak to you of the indomitable patience of Christ throughout his entire life and especially in his passion? Does not that stole around his neck appear to you as a symbol of that yoke which Christ spontaneously took upon his shoulders in obedience to his Father in order to suffer and die for our salvation? For us Christ became obedient to death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:8) And does it not seem to you that the chasuble, which is a single piece of cloth but divided into two parts, one in front and the other in back, represents the Church old and new, one in faith, two by reason of various rites and customs, both signed with the cross, because both and the other are redeemed by the power of the cross of Christ and by Christ on the cross? O what great mysteries are contained in the Mass!

(St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Feastday Sermons, trans. Vernon Wagner, OFM Cap. (Delhi: Media House, 2007), 633)

It's interesting how Lawrence identifies the stole with the yoke of Christ, while the vesting prayers locate this association with the chasuble.

Now For The Real Fire

At supper tonight we got to talking about Capuchin beards, their growth, meaning, value, etc. Among items confessed was my abiding shame at being, apparently, incapable of growing a proper, traditional Capuchin beard. It's my Pauline thorn, I suppose.

Liberal Length

The Pope spoke sweetly at his last Wednesday Audience this morning. Of course we all watched and listened attentively. At lunch all the brothers remarked on how beautiful and personal were his words and on the humility he radiated in various ways.

Some Rules of Italian Capuchin Life

If you are young in religion or old in religion, you must wear the traditional Capuchin beard. If you are in the middle, you don't have to.

You may either wear the habit almost all the time or almost never, but not in between.

If you wear the habit, you should also probably carry a rosary on it, though it's not absolutely required. If you do, it must be a five-decade Dominican rosary; the Franciscan Crown pertains to other branches of the Order, thank you very much.

There is no such thing as laundering something without also ironing it. That goes for everything.

When it's not so hot outside, it's important to keep all the windows closed so that the house can stay warm. When it gets really hot out, the windows have to be opened to make sure it can be hot inside as well.

If you don't like what you are given to eat at lunch, you will probably have a chance to repent of your pickiness when you get it again for supper.

The food groups are the following, in descending order of predominance: fruit, wine, pasta, bread, cooked meat, vegetables, crackers and biscuits, Nutella, ice cream, cheese, cured meat, liquors in unmarked bottles with sinister and creepy looking roots in them.

Coffee is mostly an ingredient, but you can have it by itself if you want.

My Despicable Beard: A Capuchin Dubium

In the course of this past winter Ordinary Time, a confluence of factors led me to stop shaving altogether. Since the spring semester of 1993, around the time of my twenty-first birthday, I've been sporting the Grunge-inspired Van Dyke, and I just decided--as I say, for a number of reasons--that such was over for me.

So I started to let a full beard grow. Such is, of course, como Dios manda for a Capuchin.

But here's the problem. It's not going very well. It's patchy, incomplete, and looks pretty bad. At least it looks pretty bad so far. Of course the brothers don't point this out to me. This is because they are gentle souls but also because they know well the anarchistic and contrarian tendencies that will make me want to do something even more once it is criticized. Be strong, be wrong, as Nomeansno famously put it.

So here's my question. In the oft-quoted precept from our Constitutions of 1536, Capuchins grow beards because they are "manly, austere, natural, an imitation of Christ and the saints of our Order, and despised." If my beard is despicable, and thereby all the easier to despise, doesn't that make it more Capuchin?

At the Bottom of the Chalice

After Mass at the Poor Clare nuns this morning, one of the older sisters came into the sacristy and greeted me. "I like the way you think, and I want to give you something." She then produced an old holy card which had been given to her by another Capuchin, Fr. Venantius Buessing, when he was giving the nuns a series of conferences in 1960. You can see a picture of Fr. Venantius on this page. He's the one with the outstanding beard, como Dios manda.

The holy card depicts the elevation of the sacred Host after the consecration, with Christ crucified mystically present and server and people kneeling before the altar. On the back Fr. Venantius wrote a prayer, which I transcribe as best I can, though I can't make out the whole thing. I don't know if this is his composition or if it's from somewhere else. If anyone knows, speak up.

Rabboni! Master!

When at the words of Consecration

My eyes look through my Savior's Blood,

Lo! in the chalice's shimmering gold

Mirrored my image I behold!

My heart is crushed with consternation

And weeps and sigh: My Lord, My God,

Thy Sacred Blood be my salvation!

Oh! grant that this poor heart of mine

Be henceforth modeled after Thine!

Thy...[?]...in me perfect,

Which my whole being must reflect.

So when at Holy Consecration

My eyes look through they Precious Blood,

There on the bottom's shimmering gold

A Christ-like priest I may behold!

What I Learned At Supper Tonight

We had some guests for supper tonight and in the fertile conversation that ensued, I learned many new things:

Beard and union suit is an acceptable fire-fighting outfit.

Your confreres in religion many not find it as funny and lighthearted as you do to jump in a fountain with your habit on.

Electricity may, or may not, have a hard time going up hill.

Italian bats are smarter than you, so don't even think about it.

Magicians who give magic shows in Latin have no need of stage names.

In the olden days when a young and liberated man would grow his hair long, it made the conferral of tonsure very entertaining.

Germans always want to sing.

There are places, houses of Franciscan friars to be more precise, where one is only allowed to smoke inside.

Beards and Perseverance

I have a theory about Capuchin beard-growing that I think all young friars should at least hear. My theory is largely dismissed, but to me the anecdotal evidence is convincing. In short, this is my theory: you can grow the traditional Capuchin beard if you wish, but if you do you can't cut it off. If you do, you will lose your vocation and you will leave the Order.

Allow me to elaborate.

The beard is, of course, traditional to the Capuchins. And not just any beard; by 'beard' in this sense is meant the natural, untrimmed beard that grows unchecked from your face and neck. Our first Constitutions prescribed the wearing of the beard because it was "manly, austere, natural, an imitation of Christ and the saints of our Order, and despised." The "despised" is usually left off in quotations of this precept. It's an odd omission; grow a traditional Capuchin beard and you will find that it is still despised, as the brothers themselves fulfill (somewhat ironically) the words of their fathers.

Nowadays the beard is optional, though many friars sport some form of facial hair as a nod to the tradition. Our current Constitutions say that the wearing of the beard is subject to the "norm of pluriformity." (pluriformitatis norma) When it's morning in Paris you can try to call a semiotician to make sense of that one. Good luck. Nevertheless, the beard still has a lot going for it, not the least because it serves to further distinguish us from the secular clergy of the Latin rite, who, good Romans that they are, tend to go about clean-shaven.

There are various tales about how it was that the traditional beard became optional. Some friars say that it was necessitated by the cultural shifts of the 1960s, when beards came to associated with hippies, homosexuals, and (gasp) social radicals. Another version (my favorite) says that when the brothers first came to New York City they found that when they went out in clerical attire (with Roman collars obscured by their beards) they were promptly mistaken for Rabbis.

In any case, it is now nobody's business but your own whether you have a beard of any sort or for whatever reason, religious or otherwise. Therefore, it sometimes gets into the head of a zealous young Capuchin, a novice or recently professed perhaps, that he would like to grow the big, traditional, Capuchin beard. Congratulations, I say, and good for you, but be warned.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that once you grow this traditional beard, if you then cut it off, you will lose your vocation and leave the Order. I have observed this several times, and have developed a theory to explain it: When a Capuchin, in his fervor for his particular vocation, decides to grow the traditional beard and succeeds, somehow the Capuchin-ness of his soul grows into and lodges in the beard. If the beard is then removed, the connection of the soul to the vocation is severed, the grace of perseverance is lost, and the brother goes back to the world.


UPDATE: For those who are trying to grow a beard, and don't have scruples about assimilating to the new syncretism of our age, I learn from City of God IV:11 that they should pray to the god Fortuna Barbata to bless them with success.

FURTHER UPDATE: As of late summer 2013, we are observing carefully a possible instance of counter-evidence to the theory.

Pilgrimage: Capuchin Friary at Camerino

We arrived here late this afternoon for a one-day, two-night moment of recollection. Sitting here after supper it feels like the first moment of peace and quiet since the beginning of the trip.

Here in the original house of our Capuchin reform, it’s like the religious life of the movies. It’s a stone building with a gravel road, tiny cells, and a little church with a cloistered choir on the side. At supper, jolly, bearded friars—ourselves, the frati Americani, included—sit around the perimeter of the refectory while novices run around frantically in their effort to bring us wine, cheese, salami, fruit, and grappa, all of it homemade.

In my mind I keep comparing this place to the novitiate in Honduras. They are similar in a lot of ways. The horarium is almost exactly the same. The novices are a lot chattier, though. And fatter. They are always blabbing amongst themselves, and occasionally even break into song—all spiritual, though, or at least as far as I heard.

This morning I couldn’t bring myself to shave. Somehow it felt like it would be sacrilegious for a Capuchin to shave in Camerino.