COME AND SEE

Initial contact

The journey you are about to begin is very serious. You are not simply being asked to change your address, tastes, or work, but above all to experience a radical interior conversion.

  

1. Do you have a spiritual director?

It is essential to verify the call you believe you may have with a spiritual director. A spiritual director is a man or woman of faith whom you trust and who has the time to speak with and listen to you. This person could be a priest, a religious, or a layperson. Do not be afraid to get to know yourself profoundly and to let your self be known by your spiritual director.

 

2. A Franciscan to accompany you

Let it be well understood that you can always knock on the door of a Franciscan community and make inquiries, even if your future is not yet clear to you.

If there are not Franciscans near you, you can always communicate directly with any Franciscan Vocation Director. He or she is ready to accompany you as you discern.

 

3. I would like to join the Franciscans right away

It's normal to want to begin your vocational journey right away. It's always beneficial, however, to take proper time in preparing yourself for such a step. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?" (Luke 14:28)

Don’t be anxious. Continue to prepare your heart and give yourself entirely to finding Christ and eventually the friars. Examine your self and purify your motives for wanting to enter Franciscan religious life. It is necessary that they become more and more clearly rooted in faith: the total gift of oneself for the love of Christ and of the poor.

Also, you need to manifest your spiritual development in concrete action: especially in daily times of prayer and Scriptural and spiritual reading, in volunteering to assist the needy or in the parish or community.

 

4. Your discernment and vocational journey

"This is how the Lord gave me, Brother Francis, the grace to begin a life of penitence. While I was in sin, the sight of lepers was unbearable to me. But the Lord himself led me among them; I took care of them with all my heart, and in return, what had seemed to me so bitter changed into sweetness of soul and body. Afterwards, I did not wait long before leaving the world." (St. Francis of Assisi, in his Testament, vv. 1-3)

There should be at least several months between the time you first identify a vocational call, until you make a firm and clear decision that will change your life. During this time, your personal vocation meetings (with the Vocation Director) and group meetings (with others interested in religious life) have an important place in determining whether your vocation is authentic and whether you possess the qualities required for Franciscan religious life.

To make clearer your discernment, find out more directly about the Franciscan way of life by meeting friars. Visit a Franciscan friary and participate in fraternal activities (prayer, meals, etc.). Get to know others who are discerning the Franciscan life. When you feel ready for deeper discernment, the Vocation Director will ask you to submit some information. With this he, along with the Formation Committee and the Provincial Minister, will determine your eligibility for admission to the first step of formation with the Franciscans: Postulancy.