Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.

It is true that in our dealings with the world, we are told to give reasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns. We are told quite clearly: “do so with gentleness and reverence.” We are also told to overcome “evil with good” and to “work for the good of all.” Far from trying to appear better than others, we should “in humility count others better than ourselves.” The Lord’s apostles themselves enjoyed “favor with all the people.”

“Jesus is the model of evangelization… How good it is for us to contemplate the closeness which he shows to everyone! If he speaks to someone, he looks into their eyes with deep love and concern: ‘Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.’

We see how accessible he is as he draws near the blind man and eats and drinks with sinners without worrying about being thought a glutton anda drunkard himself. We see his sensitivity in allowing a sinful woman to anoint his feet and in receiving Nicodemus at night. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. Moved by his example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world. But we do so not from a sense of obligation…but as a result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives.”

Fourteen men were recently received into the Franciscan Interprovincial Novitiate in Santa Barbara, California. Among them is Loren Moreno, a parishioner of St. Francis of Assisi (third from the left in the top row.)

Let us join together in prayer that he and his fellow novices will have a novitiate year filled with God’s love in the spirit of St. Francis.