All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [21]
The ordination picture stands in contrast to my “cutest baby” photograph. I feel no shame when I look at this one, only a deep and abiding joy, what I have, over the years, called the “happies.”
When solemn vows are taken in the Franciscans, the rule is that you must change your first name to a saint’s name, an outward symbol of putting on the new man in Christ Jesus. No two men in a community could share the same name; in other words, there couldn’t be two Johns or two Michaels. For those who knew me prior to 1963, my name is Richard or Richie. But from that year on, my name has been Brennan.
Ordination day, May 18, 1963
Notes
1 Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 130.
Part II
BRENNAN
9
There’s got to be more. The phrase kept turning and spinning in my head. Such was the case with the Franciscans. I was initially wooed by their life of complete and utter simplicity. But the pope wanted a more educated face on the order, so an emphasis was placed on higher learning, aka, colleges. Through no fault of their own, this move propelled the order into needing everything from clothes to typewriters; in my opinion it was a slouching toward the middle-class that left a bitter taste in my mouth.
In 1966, I sought permission from the Franciscans to take a leave of absence to join the Little Brothers of Jesus. The fraternity is a place where brothers learn to pray together, and in light of the gospel, each man ruthlessly questions himself to discover the path God intends for his life. It is a life of rhythm: singing of the Liturgy of the Hours; celebrating the Eucharist; holy reading (lectio divina); and periods of silence, work, and pastoral care. To some it might appear as yet another attempt at a utopian society, but to the brothers themselves it is a lived-out statement that in Jesus Christ such a dream is possible.
My provincial (the equivalent of a bishop for parish priests) denied my request; in fact, he was quite angry that I would even consider leaving the Franciscans. But one lesson I learned in the military was that there is always someone with a higher rank you can appeal to, if you have the guts. So I went over my provincial’s head and wrote to the minister general in Rome. His response was, “If this is the call of God on your life, I will honor it. But wait a year.” So I impatiently spent the next twelve months teaching and serving as spiritual director at the Franciscan seminary in Loretto. When my year was up, I stepped out into the next stage of my journey.
I would be remiss to talk of the Little Brothers of Jesus without mentioning Charles de Foucauld, the founder of the order, who lived from 1858 to 1916. Foucauld had an experience at the age of twenty-eight, in some ways much like my own, where God broke through and captured his senses. He said, “As soon as I came to believe there was a God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than live only for him.”1 Foucauld made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and was then ordained as a priest at forty-three.
According to John’s gospel, the public ministry of Jesus lasted only three years. Foucauld wondered, What did He do the other thirty? The answer he found was that Jesus spent that time in manual labor and prayer. Foucauld realized his own calling in the example of Jesus and set himself to live among the Muslim poor of North Africa, preaching the gospel with his life. For Foucauld and the Little Brothers, life in the desert was not a flight from the world but rather a school of love and prayer to learn to enter more deeply into humanity. Their goal was to shout the gospel not so much with their mouths as with their lives.
After twelve months of waiting, I finally received permission to join the Little Brothers. So in 1967, while my family and friends were busy with their lives in the States, I spent six months in the little village of Saint-Rémy, France. In many ways reminiscent of the Marines, I had stepped into a basic training program. The