Friars, Secular Franciscans, provincial staff, and many friends of the Province gathered on the Feast of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin for an appreciation celebration and meal. Through prayer and reflection, an important theme became prominent- God is always already at work with ordinary people, extraordinary circumstances, and powerful images. Fr. Jack Clark shared the below reflection at the gathering.

      I first heard this Franciscan story of Creation from Bill Short, one of our most renowned Franciscan scholars. The story goes like this...

     It seems that one day the Blessed Trinity was sitting around the breakfast table in Heaven, before time or the universe began, some would say even before the Big Bang, and as they sat there, basking in the wonder of what it was to love and to be loved, someone among them said, “You know, it is wonderful for us to know love, to be love, to love one another, but we should share this love with others.”   

     Well, a coffee cup and a teacup both hit saucers with a resounding rattle, and simultaneously two voices asked, “Others? What others?" This was, after all, before the beginning of time or the creation of the universe. So sheepishly that first voice said, “I guess that we will have to create them. And we will have to create a place for them to be, to sit and to stand, to walk, and to swim.”

The questions began, "What’s walking?”

"Well, it’s like standing, only you are going someplace.”

“And swimming?”

“Well, it’s like walking only you do it lying down in water.”

“What’s water?”

You get the idea, the questions went on and on, but the answers came just as fast, until the last question came...

"But how will these creatures know how to love?

    The Second Person of the Trinity jumped to respond, “I’ll go show them!” So the universe and everything and everyone in it was created, in this Franciscan version of the story, not to show the power of God or the majesty of God,but so that God could share what it is to be loved and to love. That is the Gospel.           

      Over the years, Franciscans have struggled to learn and share that lesson. Sometimes we have done well. Sometimes we have failed. But we keep trying, and one of the most important lessons that we have learned ourselves, is that God is always ahead of us in sharing the lesson and the love with others.When Franciscan missionaries arrived, such as those in Mexico in the 16th century, or those who came to New Mexico in the 19th and 20th and now 21st centuries, they have found over and over again, that God and the Gospel actually got there and here before we did.

    God uses ordinary people to tell the story and paint the picture. Juan Diego was all about the ordinary business of helping care for his uncle Bernardo, so he took a shortcut over Tepeyac Hill, when God intervened to help him see that he was loved, and not Juan Diego or Bernardo alone, but all of those who looked like him, his people were loved.

    They were loved by God, and as God’s very own.Our Lady of Guadalupe revealed the Mexica face of God’s love and as we look around us tonight, we see many, many different faces of the love of God.

    How do we come to know God’s love for us – by seeing it in the good that others around us do, and the love that they share. I have the privilege of seeing that in my brothers, but also so often in so many others, like those of you who are here tonight. Where will we go and what will each of us do to share the love of God -that is a mystery, but I will share with you something else that I have learned in forty years with the Franciscans. God’s favorite thing to do is to love us, but God’s second favorite thing to do is surprise us! God is at work in things that we might call ordinary, but let me share another insight. There is nothing ordinary about ordinary. 

    In the Church, the Ordinary time that we just left is only called “ordinary,” because the Church used ordinal numbers: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on, to number the Sundays and weeks between Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. One day, any day, on God’s threshold is better than a thousand years elsewhere. Coming together with you tonight, we are on God’s threshold.

                You are all a gift to us, and we thank you,
             and pray that we may continue to be a gift to you.