Last August 1st in Denver, these novices began to make history. With hundreds of friars looking on in one room at the Chapter of Mats. Six Ministers Provincial received them into the novitiate. Then they took off for Old Mission Santa Barbara. They are not the first interprovincial novitiate class there. But they are the first who will all make their simple profession of first vows into the hands of a single friar. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about many, many changes in our world, and this particular profession of vows is one of them. They have in some ways run on ahead of the rest of us to a new place that we thought might still be a few years away.

In August of 2018, I had the privilege of presiding at the Mass to welcome these same men into the postulancy in Silver Spring, Maryland. In the homily then, which followed the Gospel passage from Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples, “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” I told
the postulants, “Every day of our lives, the Lord comes to us, sometimes as we expect, but more often, in ways that we would never have imagined and so often fail to recognize. But every day the Lord comes. You will face challenges, and you will receive affirmations of your faith, yesterday, today and tomorrow,
individual challenges, individual affirmations, meant for you and for you alone.” I went on to say that we have collective challenges, “(I)n your local community - how will you learn and sacrifice and help one another grow, so that you
may become brothers to each other? For if we do not become brothers to one another inside our house, how can we ever be brothers to the rest of the world?” If COVID-19 has done anything for our fraternal life, it has taught us
the importance of being brothers “in the house!” Then I went on to say to these men who will make their first profession of vows on Thursday, July 2nd, “We face a challenge in our six current Provinces. You will, God grant, make solemn profession of vows, five, six or more years from now, into a Province not yet born.
But our challenge and the hard work that we must do together before your day of solemn profession is to bring that new Province into being, by offering our best selves - the best Franciscans each of us can be individually; offering the best of our inheritance from our six Mothers – now there is a thought – six Mothers! and offering the best of our dreams, which is where you are so very important, to make that Province – Resurrection Province (if I got to name it), truly a new sign of the power of God at work to change our world.”

Fr. David Gaa, the Minister Provincial of Saint Barbara Province will travel by car from his Provincial headquarters in Oakland to Santa Barbara in time to self-isolate for a number of days before the profession. Then with delegation from his five brother Ministers Provincial, David will receive all of the vows of the novices in a single ceremony. In a very special way, it is my hope that these novices will have anticipated in their first vows something that they will experience in depth at
their solemn profession of vows, profession as friars into a coast-to-coast province of friars who are ready to face the challenges of COVID- 19, of racial and LGBTQ+ prejudice, of sexual inequality and of all of those others things, which will call for us to proclaim the Gospel in ways that we cannot even foresee. For we know
not how the Lord will come, but we know that the Lord is with us every day, through every unexpected moment of our lives. 
 

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