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The Holy Family and Contemplative Prayer

The Holy Family is the first school of contemplative prayer.  One way to know the truth of this is to visit the Holy Family in prayer. St. Francis brought the manger scene into the churches that he rebuilt precisely to build up such prayer. St. Ignatius also invites us to use our imagination to ponder this same mystery. Christmas carols also take us to this same contemplation if we let them.

This spiritual exercise best begins by visiting a manger scene, making the sign of the Cross and calling to mind the presence of God. Sometimes we can be too mechanical about this, taking too much for granted, and this is a mistake. His presence is remarkable. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves, holding us in existence, and at the same time, waiting for us to hold Him. Calling to mind His presence then is always in the form of a person encounter, a heart to heart, a mystery that deserves the complete attention of all the powers of our being. The Lord who relied on Joseph and Mary in His infancy also relies on us, entrusts Himself to us.

As we allow this truth to sanctify our minds, if we prayerfully turn to the Gospels, our imagination can begin to probe the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. The power of our imagination can search for Mary and Joseph on their flight to Egypt. Or else, we can imagine them on their frantic search for Jesus in Jerusalem. The revealed drama that they endured puts Jesus at the center – everything is always in relation to Him, bringing them into a deeper relation to one another. We might take in the surroundings, sounds and smells that live in the silences of the Gospels; and then the search the faces of Mary and Joseph to discern the paradoxes of tension and peace, prayer and practicality, anxious concern and mutual confidence. When we carefully search the devotion of their hearts revealed in the Scriptures, without realizing how, our own heart can suddenly be revealed.

In the Biblical images, each verse invites us more deeply into the vast horizons of empathy born in contemplative prayer. Here, with the Holy Family, we discover and can even feel that this empathy has a poignantly familial tenderness to it and a fierce dedication driving it. Yet the Bible allows us to share this tenderness with them – their own fierce solicitude for Jesus and familial devotion is passed on to us through the Church.

Ripples on the surface of a deep mystery follow from this. If the concern that Joseph and Mary shared for the Christ-child can rouse our hearts to deeper devotion, then the drama of other hearts in relation to Jesus also belong to us in prayer in some way. And, the anxious concerns and peace that we ourselves know in prayer are also not meant to be carried by ourselves alone, but through the ministry of the Church, by the whole Family of God together in communion. This mystery of communion is why we must never forget the heart of the Church – that place were tenderness and dedication spring just as it sprung in the heart of Mary and Joseph as they drew ever closer to Emmanuel. The familial empathy that impacts contemplation of the Holy Family is ultimately ecclesial. What we behold in the Holy Family is what should live in our own domestic churches, our families, our parishes.

Beautiful silences in mental prayer and the mystery of communion in the Church coincide in the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph shared a devotion that was not individualistic but always in relation and bringing all things into relation in them and between them. The silences they knew were filled with this very fullness of encounter and recognition. If we consider their shared devotion to the Christ-child, they teach us how to protect the gentle awareness of God’s presence that has begun in each other too. The concern-in-common that we ponder in the stillness of their hearts is meant to become the concern that lives in our hearts as we strive for a deeper communion in the Church. Such love implicates us in each other’s life of faith with all the tension and concern that flows from this — a mystery that defined the very life of the Holy Family.

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Interviewing Father Conrad

I had the honor of hosting Father Conrad Osterhout at my house on occasion. He has had quite a life as a religious. He has helped form men for the priesthood and religious life. He has been arrested and imprisoned for praying in front of an abortion clinic. He also recieved a special call to live out his Franciscan vocation in an even more radical manner than he had done before – so he joined the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Now he lives with his community in New Mexico and comes to Colorado to give parish missions on occasion. It was during one of these visits that he first spoke to me about what the Friars call, “radical fraternity.”

To support one another in becaming saints, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have sought to recover a brotherhood more deeply rooted in Christ. This kind of communion demands humility and patience with one another. It also requires a lot of prayer. But this discipline is also the fertile soil for becoming more authentically human and, thus, a more authentic witness to the power of the Gospel.

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Elements of Radical Fraternity– an interview with Fr. Conrad Osterhout, C.F.R.

I asked Father Conrad what the essential elements of radical fraternity were and what they might mean not only for priests or religious, but also the lay faithful like me.

Christ is the foundation. He changes everything. People today speak of their rights, the ability to follow their own way, but in the Gospel and in Christ we find a way of life revealed to transform us. We are called to a humble life, to hold God above all things and follow where He leads. The gift of faith and a life in Christ is to say that my will, my body and my plans are not mine. I use what I have been given, but I surrender it all to Christ, to the Holy Spirit and to God. His truth in my mind allows me to make decisions on those truths. The Holy Spirit guiding me, I can change my plans, my way of thinking, to conform to God. We have to hope for humility if we live in accord with this.

Prayer. We search for, and find, Him in prayer. I fulfill my obligations as the ritual; the practice is something alive and connecting to the mystical union. Christ is present in the power of prayer. To quote St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” Each vocation has its demands, but they are all filtered through Christ. I am not enlivened by my will, or my cultural surroundings, but through the true voice of God, the Church, the Holy Spirit. Think on the church. Quo vadis? Remember the church where Peter, as he fled from Roman persecution, stopped? The name of the Church means “where are you going?” If the Lord asks you where you are going, then you are going the wrong way.

The sacramental and mystical union we have—‘do this in remembrance of me’. We are told how to love Christ through the covenant. His love is manifest through the covenant and Eucharist. He is offering the tangible reality of his presence in the Eucharist, which is both his humanity and his divinity. If we come to the Eucharist prepared for it, ready to receive the Lord giving himself to us in all our smallness and completing us through Him, we are giving ourselves as he did, prepared to be in service to others.

Confession. This, despite the fear we have of it, should be approached with humility as it offers us mercy and renewal. We are able to move forward, to put things in the past and let them stay there and we are totally loved by a merciful Father. He takes us for our weakness and loves us anyway.

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Radical Fratenity: Making the Sacrifice

Over on http://www.Fire.blogtownhall.com I posted a reflection on St. Paul’s call to spiritual worship. It involves our bodies into sacrificial offerings to God. The nature of this sacrifice is love. Today, in another interview with Fr. Conrad, he gave me some insight into how this kind of spiritual worship is key to radical fraternity.
In our conversation, he relayed to me a comment made by Fr. Groeschel to the Friars. He explained that as he has come into his 70’s, he suddenly realized how little he has done for the Lord. He exhorted the Friars to make heroic sacrifices while they are still young. He asserted, “It doesn’t get any easier.”
My mind goes to something that Mother Theresa explained. Namely, one cannot love except at one’s own expense. When our love does not really cost us anything, it is not really love. Real love pours out until it hurts. This is what Jesus did for us on the Cross — it is what St. Paul says we need to do with our lives in return.
How is this related to radical fraternal? Radical means to go into the “roots.” Radical fraternity goes into the roots of fraternity itself — and all Christian fellowship is to be rooted in Christ – or its not. When we root our fellowship with one another in Christ, his sacrificial love for us becomes the standard and the source for the way we love one another – a love without measure. Most of us shy away from this kind of life. It demands too much at least for now. We imagine taking it up, later in life, when we are ready. But this is the putting off game. Fr. Groschel’s words to the Friars are words we all need to hear — it doesn’t get any easier the longer we wait. We need to make our great sacrifices for God now – while we have the energy and the time to make them.

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Radical Fraternity

On Saturday, I interviewed Fr. Conrad Osterhout of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who is giving a retreat in Boulder, Colorado this week. He and Brother Simon stayed with us after completing another mission in Craig, Colorado. Father Conrad has had decades of experience as a Franciscan, first with the Third Order Regular and later as a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal. I first met Father Conrad at Steubenville. He oversaw the pre-theology program household of which I was a founding member. He later was involved in the pro-life movement and imprisoned in solitary confinement for protesting and counseling at abortion clinics. His stories about those experences are quite profound, and I hope someday to write about those. What I asked him about this time, however, was his spirituality. His answers, a small part are presented here, will be part of a book on prayer that I am preparing.

I have always been impressed with the joy, the prayerfulness, the discipline and the poverty of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. I once asked Father whether the reason community looked so attractive and was so effective in the ministry was its rediscovery of a more austere form of poverty. Simplicity of life is something they work on together as a community, and they do this in the spirit of Francis of Assisi who himself had a love affair with Lady Poverty. According to Francis’ ideal, whatever is not necessary for a friar’s apostolic work is renounced for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Following this, the Friars of the Renewal do not own much by way of personal property – basically, the clothes on their back (which mainly includes a very simple habit) and what can be held in a small hand bag, and a toothbrush, if necessary. I suspected that Franciscan joy was the freedom from the anxiety that owning a lot of material things can bring.

Father Conrad thought I only had a part of the picture. He explained that he was also first impressed with this freedom from things. He said there was a lot more fluidity and hospitality that living simply made possible. He gave as an example on of his first experiences as a Friar of the Renewal. In his previous religious experience, travel between houses had to be planned, and they were not really set up for taking guests on the spot. This was probably because each house felt responsible to provide proper hospitality to visiting Friars, and spontaneous visits did not help in preparing for this. But as a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, while he was visiting one of the houses, his brothers asked him to stay the night. He complained that he had not prepared for an overnight stay and thought he should get back to the convent he had come from. His brother asked him simply, “God has provided everything. What else do you need, a toothbrush?”

Father Conrad was impressed by this experience. Because of the greater simplicity the Franciscan Friars lived out, he really did not need very much at all. He had all he needed, and he could trust God and his brothers to provide the rest. He discovered an aspect of Lady Poverty’s beauty which Francis himself must have also appreciated. Freedom from things allows for a greater freedom to be with one’s brothers.

This is where Father Conrad shared an important insight about his way of life. The recovery of the Francican Tradition, which the Friars of the Renewal have devoted themselves to, is really a rediscovery of genuine fellowship in the Lord. By placing their fraternity above material comforts, they are rediscovering how to live with one another as brothers in Christ. Father Conrad explaiend that it was not their radical poverty but their radical fraternity which was the true witness of their way of life. The real question their community was committed to answering together was not so much how they could live more simply but how could the simply build one another up in the Lord. By eliminating material distractions, they could begin to work on being more patient with each other. Father Conrad, reflecting on the richness of this experience, quote psalm 133: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.”

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