800 Years of St. Francis · Day 29 of 31 · Thursday, October 29, 2026
The Little Flowers tell of a day when Francis preached so movingly in the town of Cannara that the whole village wanted to leave everything and follow him. He stopped them. Don’t be in a hurry to leave, he said. I will give you a way to live this where you are.
From that impulse came what was once called the Third Order, and is today the Order of Franciscan Seculars. It is a way of Franciscan life for people with families, jobs, mortgages, and ordinary days. I have been a Secular Franciscan for many years, and I can tell you it is no consolation prize for people who couldn’t manage the monastery. It is a vocation in its own right.
The lay Franciscan’s calling is to carry Francis’s vision into the places where most human life is actually lived: the boardroom and the kitchen table, the difficult negotiation and the parenting failure, the commute and the diagnosis. The call is not to escape these places to find God elsewhere. It is to find God precisely here, and to leave each place slightly more luminous for having passed through it.
The kingdom isn’t somewhere else. It is here, in the next moment as it actually arrives.
Notice today: Where is your cloister this week: the office, the car, the kitchen, the hospital corridor?
You don’t have to leave your life to follow Francis. He will meet you in it.
At San Damiano: All are welcome at the Monthly Mass for Staff and Friends of San Damiano, Wednesday, November 4, 9:30 – 10:30 am. Details
Day 29 of 31 · 800 Years of St. Francis: A Daily October Companion · spiritualbreak.com
Reflection © 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS.
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