APOSTOLIC MINISTRY

The type of religious life that was begun by Francis was somewhat new in the sense it included preaching as an exigency of the commitment for the faithful reproduction of the life Christ and his disciples. Francis was however convinced that all preaching worth its name could only\y be the result of an intensely lived gospel from of life. Still history is the witness that he was not totally averse to a certain academic preparation. Accordingly the capuchins, while seeing it as an indispensable necessity, if not the only reason, did make room for the introduction of studies, after a certain initial hesitation. But they never failed to alternate preaching and study together with times of intense work, especially manual and deep quiet and peaceful retreat, just as Francis had strongly enjoined. For all that, the capuchin were wholly as unusual band of preachers, as we already made mention of. It was their contemplative experience, evangelical earnestness, visible austerity, fraternal concern, ready pastoral service, absence of oratorical ornamentation, untied to the ‘biblical formation’ that rendered them uniquely acceptable and convincingly effective preachers for the learned as well as the unlearned. 

All kinds of ministry and preaching were cultivated by the capuchins, in particular, the so called ‘popular mission’, preached always by a group of brothers while living and witnessing to the evangelical ideals of brotherhood. Still that which gave real power to their words, was at all times, as we said, their lived witness to the gospel way of life and the service that flowed there from. They preached more by their deeds than words, as demanded by Francis. To the early initiatives of fraternal assistance to victims of hungry and plague- stricken were gradually added many others, such as aid to sick in the hospitals and to the prisoners in jails, installations of store houses and other institutions destined to project the poor and the abandoned, service to the labor class against the usurence, etc. even today a capuchin is not to be different; he maintains a balance between contemplative life and apostolic ministry, as already directed by the capuchin constitutions of 1536; he is one who preached more by his deeds than his words. But there is one thing that a capuchin Franciscan cannot afford to forget; all Franciscan capuchin ministries are nothing other than an overflowing of the Christ-like love others. “It is the witness of an evangelical life that wins acceptance for his words”.