A three-legged stool. As CFR sisters we use this image when we describe our life, to help explain its three central components: prayer, community life and apostolate. If you are missing one of the “legs” the stool topples over. Yet, while each is necessary, prayer is primary. From my relationship with Jesus, I receive the love I need to live community life well. This love then flows from our community life to those that we serve outside the convent walls in our apostolate.
In a particular way as Franciscans – following Jesus in the footsteps of St. Francis of
Assisi – communal life takes on a heightened emphasis. Previously, religious orders of monks lived in a monastery under an abbot, but St. Francis envisioned the friars as a band of brothers. The superior was not to have a special status but rather act as the servant to the
others (that is why we call our superiors the local or general “servant”). When St. Francis describes the beginning of the order he says simply in his Testament, “the Lord gave me brothers.” He saw each brother as a gift from the Lord to him. We try to do the same. In our constitutions, the chapter on fraternal life has this beautiful opening paragraph (with italics added here or emphasis):
"The Sisters live together as one family, united in their love of Christ. Each Sister is a gift from God to the Institute. The different talents and personalities of the Sisters enhance their fraternal life in Christ and are not to be causes for division. The Sisters hold one another in esteem, careful to preserve the character and reputation of one another. In imitation of Christ Who emptied Himself and became a servant for our sake, and St. Francis, who embraced the way of humility, the Sisters are always to seek the least place, serving one another, anticipating one another’s needs, sharing goods in common, and supporting one another through prayer, mutual encouragement, honest communication, and sacrificial service, especially when their assistance is needed."
To accept each sister as a gift is not always easy to do, but I need to see with the supernatural eyes of faith that God has given her to me. She and I have been brought together now, at this moment, in this convent as part of His perfect plan for our good and salvation. I sometimes have to ask myself, do I really accept this sister as she is, right now, or am I trying/wanting to fix or change her? Does she know and sense that I accept her and receive her as a gift?
Striving to receive my sister as a gift brings me two blessings. First, it usually requires some dying to myself, to my preferences, my ideas. And in these little deaths, I make a gift of myself to the other. As we hear so often quoted, it is “only in the sincere gift of self that man truly finds himself,” and for many people this sincere gift of oneself happens most radically in the relationships of marriage and family. For us sisters it happens within the community of the convent. Making the time and effort to talk, to share, to work out misunderstandings, to forgive, to encourage, to support are all ways that I daily make a gift of myself to the sisters around me and show them that I reverence them as gifts to me.
The second great blessing in striving to see and accept my sister as a gift is that I’m led to a deeper acceptance of myself, of what is good and beautiful in me and of what is still on the way of being redeemed. It is through living with each other that we become more aware of our shortcomings and failures, our wounds and brokenness. Although this awareness can be painful at times, it is a gift. Furthermore, that another sister loves and accepts me as I am, is tremendously healing. As I am accepted by the sisters, and as I stive to love and accept the sisters around me, the Lord shows me that I’m loved and accepted by Him. All of this allows me to accept myself, broken but loved as I am. Deeper self-acceptance brings such freedom and peace, and my life is increasingly marked by both, through the love and healing I find in community.
-Sr. Ann Kateri, CFR