Brothers and sisters in Christ

‘The Lord gave me brothers’ says St Francis in his Testament, written shortly before his death. Those who followed Francis and Clare were known as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ and their life together witnessed to a new kind of ‘family’. So it continues today; most Franciscan brothers and sisters live together in community, sharing resources, possessions, and a responsibility for each others’ well-being.

Unlike some monastic communities, Franciscan ‘houses’ tend to be quite small, from three to ten brothers and sisters; many of them are situated in towns or cities in places that you wouldn’t necessarily recognise as ‘religious’ establishments, reflecting the Franciscan commitment to live alongside people wherever they are. Most of the communities are either of brothers or of sisters, though there is one joint brothers’/sisters’ house; brothers and sisters often work together and are welcome to stay in each others’ community houses.

Life together is, in many ways, quite ordinary. There are regular tasks which need to be undertaken and shared out such as cooking, cleaning, washing-up and gardening; each brother or sister is expected to take his or her turn.

Not surprisingly, with a group of people of different ages, backgrounds and experiences, not everyone gets on with each other all the time; disagreements can occur and attention has to be given to personal relationships and the development of trust. There are regular meetings to talk about the life of the community, to discuss issues and to address areas of concern. The aim is to live together in close fellowship, supporting each other in good times and in bad.

The community is not a closed group; hospitality to visitors, particularly to those who are strangers is an important expression of God’s welcome to all people and every house makes some provision for this. Some community houses have guest rooms where people – either individuals or groups - can come and stay, usually for periods of up to a week. Some houses run organized retreats or weekends which are advertised on this website, through Franciscan, or in Retreat magazine. There’s normally no fixed charge for staying, rather people are invited to make a donation towards the estimated daily cost to the community. Other houses may not have rooms for overnight guests but visitors are welcome to join the brothers or sisters for a meal or to share their time of prayer together.

As in any family or community, food is important and mealtimes are a focus of the common life at which the events of the day may be recounted, stories told and jokes shared; there’s quite a lot of laughter in a Franciscan house! The heart of the community is always found in the common prayer, in the Daily Office and around the Lord’s Table of the Eucharist; it’s there that brothers and sisters renew their relationship with Jesus Christ who has called them into community and, through Christ, with each other.

‘The Lord revealed a greeting to me’, wrote Francis in his Testament, ‘that we should say: “May the Lord give you peace.”’ This revelation shaped Francis’ whole life and work. He was known as someone who both helped others to make peace and who also lived peaceably himself: with his neighbours, with animals and with every part of God’s creation. Franciscans today are committed to working for peace in a troubled and divided world, particularly in situations of conflict and stress within the Church and within the wider society.

In the Anglican Church, divided over issues of women’s ministry, human sexuality, the authority of scripture and the integrity of the Christian tradition, the brothers and sisters – who among themselves may hold differing views on all these issues – are committed to living together in respect for each other and seeking unity in Christ.

Among the churches the brothers and sisters are keen to work and share with people from different denominations; indeed, several of them have formerly been members of churches outside the Anglican Communion and continue to value their respective traditions.

With people of different faiths, the brothers and sisters, while remaining true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, seek to live respectfully and humbly in the tradition of St Francis, not trying to exercise power or coercion, but finding in them the common humanity which has been shared by the Son of God.

This living humbly and simply among people in the way of St Francis involves the brothers and sisters engaging with those on the margins of society, the homeless, the stranger, the refugee, and leads them to work for change, politically and socially. Franciscan community houses are places where people come to find asylum and a welcome in an often unfriendly, if not hostile world.

The Franciscan tradition speaks to what is probably the most pressing concern of the age, that of the effect of human life and behaviour on the natural environment. Francis’ and Clare’s deep sense of the generosity of God in all things and their awareness that everything in creation points to God’s loving presence is a powerful antidote to a society driven by possession and consumption.

Their awareness that every creature, animate and inanimate, is a brother or sister within God’s family reminds a very fragmented world of the essential interconnectedness of all things and that everything, even the most humble, has a place in the universe. Their desire to join in the song of all creation in praise of God, the creator, redeemer and sustainer, gives the world a true goal and purpose which it seems to have lost.

The brothers and sisters seek to live this spirituality of peace and justice within the world in their day-to-day lives, to practice peace and justice wherever they are.

The Hilfield Peace and Environment Project at Hilfield Friary in Dorset, particularly, is a place where people can come to work at conserving the natural environment and, with others, discuss and reflect on how such peaceful living can be carried on in their own situations.

Francis of Assisi referred to himself as the ‘Herald of the Great King’, someone called to tell others of the love of God in Jesus Christ. He was a gifted preacher who summoned people to repentance, a turning around of their lives; and to live in harmony with God’s abundant generosity and compassion.

Franciscan brothers and sisters today are often involved in sharing the Good News - through preaching in church services, through giving talks, leading workshops and discussions, and through their writing. Parishes sometimes ask for a Franciscan team to visit for between a weekend and a fortnight to share the Christian faith and to help congregations prepare for the work of mission in their local area; such occasions can be a time of renewal for both the Church and for the brothers and sisters involved.

Visits to schools give the opportunity to present the Gospel in a way which challenges young people to see the Christian discipleship differently. Sisters and brothers regularly join pilgrimages, and attend festivals such as Greenbelt, Soul Survivor and New Wine in order to meet the wide variety of people from different backgrounds who take part in such events, and to witness to an alternative pattern of living.

It’s often not so much the words spoken but the shared life of prayer and community, with its struggles and joys, which impresses people, and can lead them towards a living relationship with Jesus Christ.

Sr Chris has now moved from the house in Whitechapel where she was living when she wrote about her day, but continues her work with deafblind people from another house in the east of London.

7am and we file into Chapel for private prayer followed by Morning Prayer and then the Eucharist. At 9am, my work mobile begins to buzz with incoming calls. A Social Worker wants to talk about a client in Richmond-upon-Thames. Another call comes from a young lady needing a tactile alarm clock. At 9.30 I make my way to Whitechapel Station waving to the Bangladeshi man from the corner shop and the homeless people gathered at the Whitechapel Mission.

Two tubes take me to Stratford where I meet Ronnie for a 3 hour shopping trip. Ronnie is totally deafblind; he receives fast communication on his hand, and being a passionate shopper, he demands every detail. Walking slowly along the aisles, we pause frequently as I describe the merchandise and Ronnie feels it before tossing an item into his wire basket.

Having left Ronnie at 1pm, I grab a sandwich en route to an elderly lady in Tower Hamlets. Her front door is warped and battered, the mat curling dangerously, and the stair rail hanging loose. But Social Services are on to it! My job is to fill in a 40 page benefit form, and because of communication problems, I know I’ll be here for at least 4 hours.

6pm approaches and I arrive home just in time for Evening Prayer. Private Prayer follows and then supper. At 8pm, I watch as 26 emails cascade into my computer. Unfortunately, they all need answering! I have to report on today’s work as well. Compline closes the day at 9pm, but my day never quite finishes on time!

In the beginning

The Franciscan story within the Anglican Church is a relatively recent one. All vowed religious orders, including the Franciscans, were dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII and were banned from Britain until the return of Roman Catholic religious orders in the first part of the nineteenth century. The re-discovery of catholic tradition within the Church of England around the same time led to the establishment of Anglican religious orders from the middle of the century, but it was not until just over one hundred years ago, following renewed interest in St Francis of Assisi and his seeking to follow Jesus Christ simply in the way of the Gospel, that Franciscan religious communities began to emerge.

The earliest Anglican Franciscan community which continues to this day is that of the CSF sisters which began in Hull in 1905 with the aim of serving the Church and living and working among the poorest of the poor. After a couple of years the sisters moved to Dalston in London’s East end, and, despite early defections to the Roman Catholic church, the harshness of the life, and the disruption of bomb damage in World War II, they kept alive the witness of Franciscan life until a new flowering in the 1950s and 1960s.

The SSF brothers have a number of separate roots: The Society of Divine Compassion, a community of priests and lay brothers which started in the East End of London in the 1890s, a community known as the Christa Seva Sangha, begun at Poona in India in 1919 with a foundation some years later in England, and the Brotherhood of St Francis of Assisi, founded in 1921 at Flowers Farm, Batcombe in Dorset. This last community, under the leadership of Br Douglas, combined both preaching Christ with evangelical simplicity and also working for the rehabilitation of homeless men; it was joined in 1937 by Fr Algy and others from the English branch of the Christa Seva Sangha, who brought a more catholic and church orientated perspective to what was then for the first time called ‘The Society of St Francis’. The defining document of the First Order today is The Principles, in large measure derived from the documents of the Christa Seva Sangha.

The 1960s saw an expansion of both the brothers’ and sisters’ communities, with a considerable increase of those joining and the foundation of new houses. The brothers had begun a house in Cambridge in 1938 and after the war there were new communities established in Plaistow, Stepney, and in Dorset at St Francis’ School, Hooke; the brothers at all these places were committed to holding together the particular SSF synthesis of catholic devotion, evangelical preaching and a concern to work among and live alongside the marginal and dispossessed.

The monastery of St Mary at the Cross at Glasshampton in Worcestershire, which had been founded earlier by Fr William, a member of the Society of Divine Compassion, became a place of prayer, enclosure and study, particularly for those in their time of novice formation, and in 1961 a northern friary was established at Alnmouth in Northumberland. Around the same time the sisters moved from Dalston to a manor house in the hamlet of Compton Durville in Somerset, bringing with them the East End ladies for whom they had been caring; the move allowed closer co-operation with the brothers and in 1968 a formal link was made under the ‘umbrella’ of the Society of St Francis. Over the years there have been sisters’ houses in London, Birmingham, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Dover and Belfast, among other places.

Over the past forty years there has been expansion, both of numbers of brothers and sisters and of community houses, and also contraction. The Society has moved away from institutional work. such as running a school or a nursing home, which became hard to maintain financially and in terms of staffing, and some of the smaller houses have closed. Vocations have declined from the heady days of the 1960s and 1970’s when there were novices in abundance, but men and women are still joining from all walks of life and different parts of the Christian Church, and new houses continue to be established in response to invitations to witness to the Franciscan life.

Despite the secularism of western society and the diminishment of institutional church life there remains a keen spiritual hunger among many for authentic spirituality which holds together the desire for God and a commitment to God’s world – in the way of Blessed Francis and Clare of Assisi.

Into all the world

The European Province of SSF is not the only Franciscan witness within the Anglican Communion. The Order of St Francis was founded in 1919 at Merrill in Wisconsin, USA moved to Long Island, New York in 1928, and amalgamated with the SSF in 1968 to become the American Province; today there are houses of brothers on both east and west coasts of the continent and a sisters’ house close to the brothers in San Francisco. There are many people seeking to join and new houses in other parts of North America are planned.

In 1959 the brothers in the UK responded to persistent calls from the Church in Papua New Guinea to send brothers to establish the Franciscan life in that country; four brothers, led by Brother Geoffrey, sailed from England to found houses, first in Port Moresby and then in the diocese of Popondetta. Five years later brothers moved to Brisbane, Australia; foundations followed in the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. Today, there are two separate brothers’ provinces of Australia/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands,

and there are moves towards dividing the later into the Province of Papua New Guinea and the Province of the Solomon Islands, both of which are expanding steadily. The story in Africa has been more difficult; a foundation was made at Fiwila in Zambia in the early 1960s followed by another later in the decade at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; neither of these led to the establishment of an indigenous expression of the Franciscan life. At present there is a small indigenous Franciscan order, known as the Community of Divine Compassion at Nyanga in Zimbabwe, which is in a ‘covenant relationship’ with SSF; despite the very difficult conditions in that country at the present time the call to live after the example of St Francis is being heard, as it is also in other parts of the world, where there are new Franciscan communities in South Korea and in Brazil.

Besides the First Order brothers and sisters, there are two other orders within the Society of St Francis which reach back to the inspiration of Francis and Clare.

The Second Order, known as the Order of St Clare, is a community of sisters living an enclosed life in the village of Freeland, outside Oxford; they are committed to a life of regular prayer and manual work within the convent and run a guest house, separate but next door to the community.

The Third Order consists of men and women, married and single, from all walks of life, who live under a Franciscan vow with an individual rule of life according to their particular circumstances; those who become ‘tertiaries’ as they are called, undergo a novitiate formation period under the guidance of a novice counsellor before making a vowed profession which is renewed annually, and meet regularly with other tertiaries for fellowship, prayer and worship, study and service.

Companions are those who wish to associate themselves with SSF, and to support the life of the order with regular prayer and friendship.

Although SSF remains a totally separate organization from the numerically much larger and more widespread Roman Catholic Franciscan orders, there is often close association and friendship between members of the two communions. This is particularly so at Canterbury where SSF brothers and sisters, as well as SSF tertiaries, often attend the Franciscan International Study Centre for courses on Franciscan theology and spirituality, and also in Assisi, where SSF maintains a small presence in the city which is ‘home’ to the whole Franciscan movement. While accepting the constraints of historic division of the Christian Church, Franciscans seek to reach out to each other in love and fellowship and to witness to the fundamental unity which exists in Christ.