By Benedict Tang
SINGAPORE (SE): As Franciscans around the world marked 800 years since the death of St. Francis of Assisi on the night of 3 October 1226, friars, sisters and lay Franciscans in Singapore gathered for a Transitus that also brought their own four-year Franciscan Centenary to a close.
The Transitus, Latin for “passing,” is the Franciscan family’s annual remembrance of the saint’s death.
This year’s celebration, at the Church of St. Mary of the Angels in Bukit Batok, was themed “From God, through God, to God”. The parish is served by friars of the Custody of St. Anthony, which covers Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, and the evening was shared by the Secular Franciscans, Franciscan sisters, Poor Clares and friars.
A play drawing on the Testament St. Francis wrote near the end of his life was staged beside a replica of the Portiuncula, the small chapel near Assisi where he died. It walked the congregation through his story: his embrace of a leper, the call at San Damiano to rebuild the Church, the arrival of St. Clare and the first brothers, his meeting with the sultan during the Crusades, and his welcome of “Sister Death.”
Between the scenes, members of the Franciscan family spoke about how they live his charism today.
Father John Paul, a friar who said he has lived in fraternity for 43 years, reflected on St. Francis’s story of “perfect joy,” in which a brother rejected at the friary door finds joy in patience. Community life can console, he said, but it can also hurt. “When fraternity wounds us, let us not give up on fraternity.”
A sister of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood, who brings Holy Communion to elderly people at home and in rehabilitation, said she has discovered that the ministry works both ways. “While I may think I’m bringing Jesus to them, they are also bringing me back to Jesus,” she said.
A Franciscan Missionary of Mary spoke of her congregation’s care for people with leprosy and of her own years in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
A postulant, nearly a year into life with the friars, summed up his journey in a line: “The Lord calls, the Lord leads, and the good Lord provides.”
Janet, a Secular Franciscan professed in 2007, explained that lay Franciscans live the Rule in their own homes and workplaces. Joining, she said, “is not joining an organisation, but it is really God calling us to this way of life.”
The evening ended with St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, the Gospel of the washing of the feet, and the blessing from his Testament. For Singapore’s Franciscans, the jubilee continued on Oct. 16 and 17 with “TO GAZE: St Clare of Assisi,” a stage production on the life of Clare, Francis’s companion and the founder of the Poor Clares.
Eight centuries after his death, Francis’s invitation to live simply, serve the poor and praise God in all creation is still being taken up, from Assisi to a housing estate in western Singapore.
Benedict Tang is a Catholic writer in Singapore and a graduate of the Diploma in Theology programme at the Catholic Theological Institute of Singapore.
