Interviewing Father Conrad

I had the honor of hosting Father Conrad Osterhout at my house on occasion. He has had quite a life as a religious. He has helped form men for the priesthood and religious life. He has been arrested and imprisoned for praying in front of an abortion clinic. He also recieved a special call to live out his Franciscan vocation in an even more radical manner than he had done before - so he joined the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Now he lives with his community in New Mexico and comes to Colorado to give parish missions on occasion. It was during one of these visits that he first spoke to me about what the Friars call, "radical fraternity."

To support one another in becaming saints, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have sought to recover a brotherhood more deeply rooted in Christ. This kind of communion demands humility and patience with one another. It also requires a lot of prayer. But this discipline is also the fertile soil for becoming more authentically human and, thus, a more authentic witness to the power of the Gospel.

Elements of Radical Fraternity– an interview with Fr. Conrad Osterhout, C.F.R.

I asked Father Conrad what the essential elements of radical fraternity were and what they might mean not only for priests or religious, but also the lay faithful like me.

Christ is the foundation. He changes everything. People today speak of their rights, the ability to follow their own way, but in the Gospel and in Christ we find a way of life revealed to transform us. We are called to a humble life, to hold God above all things and follow where He leads. The gift of faith and a life in Christ is to say that my will, my body and my plans are not mine. I use what I have been given, but I surrender it all to Christ, to the Holy Spirit and to God. His truth in my mind allows me to make decisions on those truths. The Holy Spirit guiding me, I can change my plans, my way of thinking, to conform to God. We have to hope for humility if we live in accord with this.

Prayer. We search for, and find, Him in prayer. I fulfill my obligations as the ritual; the practice is something alive and connecting to the mystical union. Christ is present in the power of prayer. To quote St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” Each vocation has its demands, but they are all filtered through Christ. I am not enlivened by my will, or my cultural surroundings, but through the true voice of God, the Church, the Holy Spirit. Think on the church. Quo vadis? Remember the church where Peter, as he fled from Roman persecution, stopped? The name of the Church means “where are you going?” If the Lord asks you where you are going, then you are going the wrong way.

The sacramental and mystical union we have—‘do this in remembrance of me’. We are told how to love Christ through the covenant. His love is manifest through the covenant and Eucharist. He is offering the tangible reality of his presence in the Eucharist, which is both his humanity and his divinity. If we come to the Eucharist prepared for it, ready to receive the Lord giving himself to us in all our smallness and completing us through Him, we are giving ourselves as he did, prepared to be in service to others.

Confession. This, despite the fear we have of it, should be approached with humility as it offers us mercy and renewal. We are able to move forward, to put things in the past and let them stay there and we are totally loved by a merciful Father. He takes us for our weakness and loves us anyway.

Radical Fratenity: Making the Sacrifice

Over on http://www.Fire.blogtownhall.com I posted a reflection on St. Paul's call to spiritual worship. It involves our bodies into sacrificial offerings to God. The nature of this sacrifice is love. Today, in another interview with Fr. Conrad, he gave me some insight into how this kind of spiritual worship is key to radical fraternity.
In our conversation, he relayed to me a comment made by Fr. Groeschel to the Friars. He explained that as he has come into his 70's, he suddenly realized how little he has done for the Lord. He exhorted the Friars to make heroic sacrifices while they are still young. He asserted, "It doesn't get any easier."
My mind goes to something that Mother Theresa explained. Namely, one cannot love except at one's own expense. When our love does not really cost us anything, it is not really love. Real love pours out until it hurts. This is what Jesus did for us on the Cross -- it is what St. Paul says we need to do with our lives in return.
How is this related to radical fraternal? Radical means to go into the "roots." Radical fraternity goes into the roots of fraternity itself -- and all Christian fellowship is to be rooted in Christ - or its not. When we root our fellowship with one another in Christ, his sacrificial love for us becomes the standard and the source for the way we love one another - a love without measure. Most of us shy away from this kind of life. It demands too much at least for now. We imagine taking it up, later in life, when we are ready. But this is the putting off game. Fr. Groschel's words to the Friars are words we all need to hear -- it doesn't get any easier the longer we wait. We need to make our great sacrifices for God now - while we have the energy and the time to make them.

Radical Fraternity

On Saturday, I interviewed Fr. Conrad Osterhout of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who is giving a retreat in Boulder, Colorado this week. He and Brother Simon stayed with us after completing another mission in Craig, Colorado. Father Conrad has had decades of experience as a Franciscan, first with the Third Order Regular and later as a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal. I first met Father Conrad at Steubenville. He oversaw the pre-theology program household of which I was a founding member. He later was involved in the pro-life movement and imprisoned in solitary confinement for protesting and counseling at abortion clinics. His stories about those experences are quite profound, and I hope someday to write about those. What I asked him about this time, however, was his spirituality. His answers, a small part are presented here, will be part of a book on prayer that I am preparing.

I have always been impressed with the joy, the prayerfulness, the discipline and the poverty of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. I once asked Father whether the reason community looked so attractive and was so effective in the ministry was its rediscovery of a more austere form of poverty. Simplicity of life is something they work on together as a community, and they do this in the spirit of Francis of Assisi who himself had a love affair with Lady Poverty. According to Francis' ideal, whatever is not necessary for a friar's apostolic work is renounced for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Following this, the Friars of the Renewal do not own much by way of personal property - basically, the clothes on their back (which mainly includes a very simple habit) and what can be held in a small hand bag, and a toothbrush, if necessary. I suspected that Franciscan joy was the freedom from the anxiety that owning a lot of material things can bring.

Father Conrad thought I only had a part of the picture. He explained that he was also first impressed with this freedom from things. He said there was a lot more fluidity and hospitality that living simply made possible. He gave as an example on of his first experiences as a Friar of the Renewal. In his previous religious experience, travel between houses had to be planned, and they were not really set up for taking guests on the spot. This was probably because each house felt responsible to provide proper hospitality to visiting Friars, and spontaneous visits did not help in preparing for this. But as a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, while he was visiting one of the houses, his brothers asked him to stay the night. He complained that he had not prepared for an overnight stay and thought he should get back to the convent he had come from. His brother asked him simply, "God has provided everything. What else do you need, a toothbrush?"

Father Conrad was impressed by this experience. Because of the greater simplicity the Franciscan Friars lived out, he really did not need very much at all. He had all he needed, and he could trust God and his brothers to provide the rest. He discovered an aspect of Lady Poverty's beauty which Francis himself must have also appreciated. Freedom from things allows for a greater freedom to be with one's brothers.

This is where Father Conrad shared an important insight about his way of life. The recovery of the Francican Tradition, which the Friars of the Renewal have devoted themselves to, is really a rediscovery of genuine fellowship in the Lord. By placing their fraternity above material comforts, they are rediscovering how to live with one another as brothers in Christ. Father Conrad explaiend that it was not their radical poverty but their radical fraternity which was the true witness of their way of life. The real question their community was committed to answering together was not so much how they could live more simply but how could the simply build one another up in the Lord. By eliminating material distractions, they could begin to work on being more patient with each other. Father Conrad, reflecting on the richness of this experience, quote psalm 133: "Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity."

Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila wrote an autobiography (Life or La Vida) which offers powerful descriptions on the life of prayer. I find this work especially suited to those just beginning the spiritual life because it validates so many of those early experiences that one questions at first. The first nine chapters are about her life - up to the time of her conversion. In chapter nine, she speaks about a definitive experience, one that set her in a direction from which there would be no turning back. By this stage of her life, she was a middle aged nun living a mediocre prayer life and motivated a little more by her desire for friendship and to impress others than she was her love of God. On her way to chapel to pray the psalms with her community, she was thinking about this very thing, and felt disturbed by it. That is when "it" happened.

She glanced at a statue and the statue seemed to be staring back at her. She experienced the look of Jesus through the eyes of the statue. The statue itself depicted Jesus as he stood before Pontius Pilate - scourged for our offenses, beaten and mocked in a purple robe and a crown of thorns. She was not looking at her with disappointment or anger - a look she thought she deserved. Instead, he was gazing at her in love. His gaze of love pierced her to the heart and she fell on her knees and began to cry. What she experienced was a gift. The ancients called it "the gift of tears." It is really a gift of prayer. This experience was so strong she will go on to develop a description of growth in prayer in terms of these kind of tears.

She descibes prayer in terms of watering a garden. The garden is that place in our hearts where we encounter Christ and she explains we must cultivater virtues there so that this encounter will be more beautiful. The water she has in mind is the gift of tears. There are four ways she experienced this gift. For her, each of the ways marked another stage in her growth of prayer.

The first way of prayer she describes in terms of drawing water from a well. One draws this water by thinking about one's life and the life of Christ. In thinking about the life of Christ, she refers to a practice the Society of Jesus identifies as composition of place - imagining oneself in various scenes from the Scriptures. Honestly looking at one's life and thinking about Christ for long periods of time (she recommends two hours a day - but thirty minutes is a good start) is hard work, takes determination, perseverance and confidence in the Lord.

The second way of prayer is to use a windlass to pump the water out of the well. This kind of prayer is an awareness of a quieting presence of God in the soul. She calls it Prayer of Quiet. This prayer does not take as much effort. In fact, it cannot be forced because the soul does not do it as much as simply recieve it. Spiritual theologians well say that the difference between the first and the second kinds of prayer is that one is ascetical - a cooperation with God's grace, while the other is mystical - the operation of God's grace which the soul can produce but can only sanction.

The other two kinds of prayer are also mystical- intensifications of this quiet experience. They are called the sleep of the faculties and the prayer of union. The former she describes as a canal or river that flows through the soul. This flow is so great that the soul experiences the urge to break forth in praise and jubilation. The prayer of union she likens to a gentle rain storm and it involves the total surrender of one's will to God.

Seeing prayer in this way is directly related to her experience on the way to chapel. For her there is a primacy of grace. Because the Lord breaks into our lives and pierces our hearts, we find the motivation to be determined in the beginning and to become more and more open as we mature. Her whole teaching on prayer is centered on this encounter, a true encounter with Christ crucified - Risen from the Dead.