PRAYER AND CONTEMPLATION

             The foremost concern of the capuchin reformers in their sincere effort to return to st. Francis’ gospel way of life involved an urgent and irresistible re-evaluation of the contemplative element of Francis’ life. It was prayer that gave Francis the powerful experience of god, providing him the needed consistency to realize the integral gospel vision of life. In Francis’ personality prayer was at the very centre of his being so much so he did not only pray but become a ‘pray-er’ himself. It is out of his own practical experience of prayer, for example, he wrote the ‘rule for hermitage’ which combined both life of prayer and life in brotherhood. His brotherhood was a praying brotherhood. Being well aware of the importance as well as the vital necessity of prayer, the capuchin of the first generation had, as all the earlier Franciscan reformers, a singular attraction to prayer occupied central place. The first capuchin statutes were therefore found to prescribe two hours of mental prayer every day, while affirming that ‘a true friar minor prays always’.

          The prayer life understandable required an appropriate atmosphere, especially a situation of deep solitude and quite retreat. The houses of the early capuchin were accordingly never situation too near the cities, so as to be assured of peace and quiet necessary for prayer. They were however not too far from the cities either, so as not to feel themselves left our or un-integrated and or uncommitted to humans and their situation through ministerial service. Capuchin fraternity, on the one hand, is basically a prayer fraternity and no fraternity can be called Franciscan if prayer is not a regular occurrence in them. Their life gives primacy to the spirit of holy prayer and devotion…to which all other temporal things ought to be subservient. On the other hand, however, they were not monastic communities but ‘evangelical fraternities’, purporting to maintain a delicate balance between the solitary contemplative concern and the vital apostolic disposition or ‘disponibility’. Capuchins therefore always maintain a certain dynamic tension in the search for harmony between action and contemplation.