This year 10 September marked the eighth centenary of the founding of the former ‘English Province’ of the Franciscans. In that 800 years history, the Province, known formerly, as the Province of the Immaculate Conception in Great Britain’, gave to the Order and the Church friars such as Adam Marsh, Thomas of York, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, William of Ware, Roger Bacon, William of Ockham, and of course, Duns Scotus, all of whom in their own fields made substantial contributions to the body of knowledge, not just of the Church and Order, but to the intellectual and academic pursuit of truth — a pursuit the Order is still very much engaged in today.
In a more turbulent era, it gave to the Order and Church heroic men of unyielding faith and loyalty to the truth of revelation such as the saints and beati: Blessed Thomas Bullaker, Arthur Bell, Henry Heath, John Forest, John Woodcock, and John Wall. They were celebrated (perhaps too generous a description!) in Chaucer’s The Friar’s Tale (though some dispute the friar is a Franciscan), and Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence of Romeo and Juliet, who is most definitely a Franciscan. These perhaps are the more ‘dramatic’ moments in the history of this particular corner of the Order of St Francis.
But while there are ‘eye-catching’, ‘mic drop’ moments, there are also the moments that are made powerful by their very mundanity. Friars and Franciscan religious sisters, contemplative and active, have served the Catholics of Great Britain with profound dedication and commitment (as they do in every country) and have always taken their spiritual and pastoral responsibilities seriously. And long may that continue. Though that province is no more (it was suppressed in 2023), its legacy lives on as an example of what Franciscanism can be when it is lived out in the ordinary circumstances of both its life, and the lives of the people it serves. The province as an entity may be gone but as a still living, breathing expression of the vision of St Francis, whose feast it celebrates today, it continues to radiate that pastoral service to God’s people by living the truth of the Gospel in its very ordinariness.
Today we celebrate the physical ‘death’ of St Francis, but we also celebrate the very much ‘aliveness’ of the Franciscan life he left as a legacy to us. We make a mistake if we reduce what Francis encourages us to live and do (the Gospel) to age and numbers of any group of friars or sisters. Of course, numbers and age are a problem — numbers dwindle, health dwindles — but it dwindles in men and women who have spent their whole life (some even joining the Order at seventeen and who are now in their eighties and nineties) in faithful, dedicated service of the Gospel and the People of God.
So while we may celebrate the death of St Francis today, we also celebrate the life he bequeathed to us. Some of us may not be able to ‘get up’ as quickly as we did in younger, healthier days, ‘to begin again’, but even if we sit, or walk aided with a stick or other forms of mobility aids, we hear that clarion cry, and perhaps with moans, ‘ouches’, and ‘achiness’, we do indeed, ‘get up’ to begin once more ‘to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ’. The glory of the Order in Great Britain is not about how long ago it was founded but about how long it has and will continue to live out the calling that Christ gave to his disciples, ‘Come, follow me’, and we, like Francis, tentatively and shakily perhaps, but with renewed Gospel vigour, continue to ‘follow in the footsteps’ of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Séamus Mulholland OFM