The Little Differences

At supper tonight I and one of the younger friars got into a funny conversation about our cultural differences.

It started as he was preparing himself to read the provincial necrology at the end of the meal and he asked if we did the same thing in America. I said that we did, but that it didn't take as long because our province was a few hundred years younger.

From there he asked me about the typical times for common prayer in an American friary. He was surprised to hear that Morning Prayer is typically a little later than it is here, while Evening Prayer is a little earlier. In fact, the liturgical day is just longer here in Italy. (Between the beginning of Morning Prayer and the end of Evening Prayer there are thirteen hours here in the Assisi friary; at a typical friary in my province at home there might be only ten.) Or maybe it's not that the liturgical day is longer here but that the night is shorter, what with some of the night being shifted to the little riposo in the afternoon.

After speaking of prayer, of course we turned to meals. My young Italian confrere was surprised to hear--though strict correlations don't quite obtain--that our idea of breakfast was something like their supper, that our lunch was more like their breakfast, and that our supper was the closest thing we had to their midday meal. He was most shocked to hear that we have our supper as early as six o'clock, and often even earlier, especially in a friary serving a parish. "But then when do you go to bed?" he asked with surprised concern. Clearly he thought that the earlier time for supper would mandate an earlier time for bed, and he seemed relieved to hear that we didn't have to go to bed at eight. Not that I haven't done it myself, both here and at home, but I'm odd in certain respects.

Like Vincent Vega said, it's the little differences. They have the same stuff here that we have at home, but it's just, well, a little different.

Solemnity Scare

I admit it; there have been moments when I have been overly scrupulous about liturgy. I can be "precise," as my mother would say. And I confess that there have even been times when this has gotten in the way of my prayer and God's grace. But God uses everything, and here in Assisi as I try to pick up a new language, my anxiety has done something good for me: it has pushed me to start composing homilies in Italian.

You see, I know that on a feast or a solemnity, the latter including Sundays, those who assist at Mass have a right to a homily. So I'm always looking ahead to make sure I'm ready if it happens that I end up being celebrant at such a moment. Last week I made sure I had something for the nativity of John the Baptist this past Sunday. It was only fifty words, but it was something. As it turned out, I didn't need it because I went with some of the friars to the sanctuary of the stigmata at La Verna and concelebrated at one of the Masses there.

This morning, the feast of Peter and Paul, was a bit of a scare. At Mass yesterday morning I had understood from the conversation in the sacristy that fra Pietro would be presiding at Mass today for his name day. I was looking forward to it, as he seems very learned. So I didn't worry about having a homily ready for the solemnity today. However, in the morning when I took a look at the little book that lists the daily Mass assignments for the various priests, I saw that fra Pietro was assigned to Mass somewhere else. I was thrown into a little homiletic panic as I entered the chapel for Morning Prayer. During the meditation period following, I rushed my Office of Readings a bit and then went to the lectionary, hoping for an inspiration. Fortunately, one arrived. I thought of the connection between the houses built on rock and sand from the end of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel yesterday (a passage I used to use sometimes for weddings when the couple left the choice up to me) and the Church built on the rock of Peter's confession. That's enough for a homily, I thought, a little connection and a sneaky way to make the point that Scriptures are about God first of all. Basta.

However, I guess fra Pietro hadn't looked at Mass assignment calendar, because he appeared in the sacristy two minutes before Mass. When he was informed of his other assignment--which was alleged to have begun fifteen minutes prior, he ran off. Nevertheless, I guess it was too late or someone else had covered for his absence, because he reappeared in the sacristy a couple of minutes later. I happily removed from myself the lovely red chasuble of the principal celebrant and surrendered it to him, relieved that I wouldn't have to preach after all.

So that's two homilies in Italian that I've prepared but which I haven't had to use, although the latter was only in my head and just a couple of sentences.

This afternoon I've tried to compose my third so as to be ready for this coming Sunday. At sixty-two words, it's my most developed yet in Italian. It's up to God whether it gets delivered or not, but in any case it's good practice and I'm grateful to him for making some good use of my desire to be a faithful custodian of the sacred mysteries.

Get Fat And Dye My Hair

This is another ramble, I guess. But I also guess that I won't apologize. I'm reminded of one of my favorite things anybody has ever said to me about preaching: after lamenting to an older priest that I thought I had rambled a little in my Sunday homily, he said, "Sometimes you're the arrow, sometimes the shotgun."

Living in Assisi is a funny business. I think it's doing things to me. Like the light and space of Vietnam did to Mr. Clean, I think it's putting the zap on my head.

Everywhere you go it's St. Francis. Franciscan friars, Franciscan sisters. Pace e bene. The Tau cross. "Welcome to Assisi, City of Peace," you see as you spend your euro to take the bus up to Piazza Matteoti, noticing once again that you could have gotten away with not validating your ticket. I guess it all strikes me because Francis's own relationship to the place was so much more ambivalent. I think of his participation in the civil disturbances to his youth, and especially of his leaving town to show mercy to the lepers, thereby making himself unfit for respectable, public life.

Reflections along these lines arrive in my Franciscan heart especially when I find myself around Santa Maria degli Angeli, where I have often been in my free time, praying, going to confession, or just enjoying a flat place to walk and think. I pray by the Portiuncula and try to think of it as it might have been at the time of Francis and the first companions. Out in the tranquility and danger of the woods, just the homely little chapel and maybe some huts for the brothers. Just a place, as they would have said, not a convento or a friary or a studium, curia, collegio, or anything, really. No big beautiful church, no amazing bookstore where you can buy a tau cross or someone's acts of canonization or latest volume of the critical edition of Scotus, no sellers of religious articles and internet meme t-shirts, no pizza, no nice lady reigning as queen of the habit rosary and breviary cover racket. Just the insecurity and openness of not-city.

I guess Santa Maria degli Angeli is just one of those places for me, a place where the boundaries are thin. Maybe it's also because it's the starting point of my favorite travel story, which I have told many, many times over the years. Praying there these days I also keep thinking, for some reason, of Simone Weil and her experiences there. There was a spell when I was a novice when I became quite enamored of her and her writing, but I haven't thought much about her since. Maybe it means something, maybe not.

Is it gauche or bad form to make a second oblique movie reference to the same movie? I guess I don't care.

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way. Francis got off the boat. He split from the whole program. Francis got out of town because it was there, with the lepers, that he found the sweetness of beginning to do penance. He went to meet Jesus where he was to be found, outside the camp, and bore his reproach.

We all know the irony of the mendicants then becoming the experts in preaching and pastoral care in the new complexity of urban life. And in some ways all the truths and myths of that still obtain. But I think for me it's still Francis's departure, his leaving the city, his getting off the boat, that draws me to him, that draws me to want to follow Christ in his footprint and his poverty, according to the pattern of St. Francis of Assisi.

Daily Life in Assisi

Not much posting lately. To be honest, I've settled into a pretty plain and scheduled existence here in Assisi.

I get up at some point between 4:30 and 5. Morning Prayer is at 6:15, followed by a half-hour meditation period which I have been using to pray the Office of Readings. Then there's Mass at 7:15.

I've often been the principal celebrant, and sometimes the only priest. The local priests in the house go out in the morning to offer Mass at other convents and chapels. I don't know if my being here frees up someone else to do that, or if there wouldn't be a Mass at home if I weren't here. In any case, I'm happy for the opportunity to pray and practice. I haven't had to try to preach yet, but I know the day will come sooner than I would choose. Though the friars open the door to the chapel, I've never seen anyone come in. I guess when you're this close to the basilica of St. Francis, why wouldn't you go there instead? But if you're walking by, it's the second to last door on the south side as you go down the Via San Francesco toward the basilica.

The morning Mass here at the friary is sometimes a very international affair. The other day I looked around at six of us friars and noted that only one was a native speaker of Italian. Apart from him, the other native languages were English (2), Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

After Mass I go to the refectory to get my espresso and my biscuit and then I get ready for school. I walk up to the school with a prayer and rest break at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Then it's four hours of Italian class. The class ends at one o'clock, just as the friars begin the day's main meal back at the friary. So I walk home and into the refectory, deliver my best buon appetito to the friars, endure the bemused quiz about what I learned in school, and eat.

After the meal I take my book bag and go back to my room. I pray None and then think about what I have to do for the rest of the day. There's homework, emails, praying through the readings for the next day's Mass, and usually a few other things and some studying before it's time to go back to chapel at 6:45. After another half-hour of meditation, we have Evening Prayer and then supper. By the time that's done and cleaned up and I get back to my room, it's almost nine and all I want to do is read a little bit, pray Night Prayer and go to sleep.

So that's my life right now. Blessed for sure, but pretty plain.

Franciscan Ramble

I've taken to breaking up my uphill walk to school in the morning. I set out from the friary and walk up as far as the Piazza del Comune and there I sit for a spell in Santa Maria sopra Minerva before heading up the stairs between the bars on the north side of the piazza to get to the Via Tiberio and the Via Santa Maria delle Rose where the school is.

I don't usually go for baroque, but there's something I like about Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Maybe it's just that it tends to be relatively cool in there. The teal and gold novus ordo altar and attendant appointments are a misfortune, but it could be a lot worse.

Anyway, I was sitting there this morning, praying a little bit, reflecting on this and that, and--as I always do--indulging my compulsion to count the number of stars around Our Lady's head to make sure there were twelve. It was then that I recalled the anniversary that is today. I'm pretty sure that today was the day, seventeen years ago, when I first put on the Franciscan habit.

So there I was this morning, seventeen years later, wearing a Franciscan habit. It's a symbol one is acutely aware of here in Assisi, not just because the place is lousy with friars, but because of the overpowering Franciscan-ness of the place. But what does it mean to say such a thing?

And who was this funny little man who grew up here eight hundred years ago? What is this Franciscan thing?

One thing I notice living in here in Assisi is that there a various Francises. And there are various Franciscanisms that flow from each of them. And there are all kinds of senses of the relationship of these Francises and Franciscanisms to Christianity, to religion, and to humanity.

And then there's me, somewhere in the midst of all of it. That's just a fact of history; for better or for worse--or for both--my own adventure of Christianity has been very much bound up and woven together with this Franciscan thing. What was it that convinced me so strongly, on the way to this day seventeen years ago, that I was supposed to be a Franciscan friar? Is it the same sense that keeps me at it today, struggling with and yearning for and resting in this seductive and searing mystery we call God, according to the Franciscan pattern and footprint?

In whatever way it seems better to you to please the Lord God and to follow his footprint and his poverty, do that with the blessing of God and my obedience. (Francis to brother Leo)

My Map of Assisi, Etc.

Put on a Franciscan habit in this town and people will think you know something about the place. I guess that's justified. Every day I have interactions with various sorts of visitors and tourists looking for various sorts of information and advice. From this I've learned a few things:

First, despite having probably spent more time here than most visitors over my various visits up to and including my current sojourn, I am largely ignorant of the things people want to know from me. I can tell you how to get to one of the major churches, but that's about it. I don't know anything about any of the restaurants, having never been to any of them, and nor I do I know which place has the best gelato. I don't know which hotel is which. I don't even know where exactly to find many of the houses of the various religious institutes. Some of my confreres might say that my ignorance is the result of being a boring homebody who has a hard time making friends, but it also might be because I'm at home studying and praying.

Second, some thoughts on language: a good trick I have learned is that if somebody is carrying a guidebook or--if you have a quick eye--even just a map, you can notice from it what their native language is. Also, almost everybody knows a little English, but almost nobody wants to use it. But they will if they think, rightly or wrongly, that it's the best common language they have with someone from whom they want something.

Third, on the subject of maps of Assisi. The maps that tourists tend to have vary greatly in their level of detail. Almost none of them have all the little alleyways and sets of stairs. Therefore, sometimes people get disoriented when they take a first turn according to their map and it doesn't turn out to be what they thought it was, etc. This is all very unnecessary in a place that more or less just has one end and another. Therefore, as a service to the pious pilgrims of this world, I have developed a map of Assisi such that, when someone consults it, he will know right away that is simplified and not worry about all these little turns and steps and be able to follow confidently the classic Italian advice on how to get anywhere: Va’ avanti, sempre diritto.

(click on the map for a larger view)

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.