One day, this spring, I exchanged e-mails with our National Minister, Patrick Mendes, SFO, and he suggested to me to look into doing reflections on our Rule, he also suggested that this be a slow project, maybe one or two Articles per month. What he had in mind was that Fraternity members could pitch in and help with this effort.

Unfortunately, this did not happen the way it was intended. Few people came forward to help. This is not unexpected. Over the years of this website (begun around 2002, with part of contents earlier) fewer than ten people have come forth with publishable articles (that were original and not other people's work). Had other people volunteered the website probably would be more lively in content. But that's OK - I don't blame anyone, except that as a result, what you see is what you get. The majority of articles are authored by myself, and the rest are taken (with permission, of course) from www.paxetbonum.net (part of the Saints & Blessed material), www.ciofs.org and other sources. I also have an arrangement with the Vatican Information Service (VIS) and now with ZENIT where we can republish up to 3 articles per month by showing their logo-banner. Zenit is an excellent Catholic news source. I also have permission to print occasional material from CatholicCulture (the organization that rates our website for Fidelity, etc. to the teachings of the Catholic Church).

But back to the Rule, initially I could not get anywhere. I did some work but I was grossly unhappy with it, and eventually did away with it. One person asked me which source I was using, and that idea took me into the wrong direction. I intended neither a definitive work not a very lengthy treatise. We have some excellent (!) teaching materials out there, such as for instance, Fr. Benet Fonck's "Fully Mature with the Fullness of Christ", and others. Fr. Benet is an able teacher, and what he prepared is a teaching document rather than a "reflection." Also, living in a smaller city in Florida has one of several drawbacks and that is the lack of a solid Franciscan (or any other religious) research library. When I was in religious life (7 years total), I was spoiled, because I always had access to beautiful books - for two years a library in OFM friaries; and 3 of the other 5 years, the Holy Cross College Dinand Library in Worcester, MA, with more than 600,000 books, and our own order's books were great too (but not Franciscan, except that we had almost all of the St. Bonaventure works that were translated into English. I've read and reread a great deal of that material.)

Then closer to Pentecost, I got the inspiration to restart the "Reflections on the Holy Rule" project again. Most of the so-called Reflections, aren't reflections at all, they are just restating the obvious. A Reflection is a 'meditation' or a 'contemplation' in writing in this case, and most of these "reflections" just don't come close. Why does it sound as if I am downplaying my own work? Well, that's because I am still not satisfied with it. But for the moment, it will suffice until I get some more inspirations.

Your servant in St. Francis,

       Fred

Fred S. Schaeffer, sfo
Regional Webmaster

5-17-2008