Young 'friars' at work today

National Catholic Reporter, March 2, 2007 by Rosemary Huber

THE NEW FRIARS: THE EMERGING MOVEMENT SERVING THE WORLD'S POOR

By Scott A. Bessenecker

InterVarsity Press 199 pages, $75

This book looks at a significant movement going on throughout the world: young people serving in solidarity with the poorest of the poor. It shares values and goals with the ancient monastic orders and particularly the mission orders whose members are known as friars.

The author, Scott Bessenecker, is director of global projects for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an organization that links idealistic Christian students in the United States with poverty projects both here and around the world.

In his book, he looks at the current crop of idealistic Western youths committed to living holy lives in poor communities around the world, in the worst conditions imaginable. He says the urgency among the young is to "be the Gospel." They have no tolerance for spiritual flabbiness. The organizations catering to their yearnings the author describes in his book are incarnational, communal, devotional, missional and marginal. And young: The membership of one group ranges from 22 to 36.

The author describes his own "conversion" experience. In 1995 he was in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City. He first saw the more beautiful parts of the city, then was confronted with a slum. As with Francis of Assisi whom he greatly admires, this upset his conscience and propelled him outward to concern for the poor.

Many in developing countries are trapped in the cultural, personal and spiritual forces of poverty, Mr. Bessenecker writes, and it is these powers that governments and international bodies like the United Nations have little impact on. His experience in Vietnam impelled him to become more connected to the poor and the more connected he became the more convinced he was that money is really the smaller part of the problem of poverty. The author seems unaware that these are notions that were central to liberation theology.

I found his statement genuine and appealing: "If you want me to call students to lives of sacrifice and catalyzing change in the slums, then you'll have to convince me that it's the right thing to do." God answered him in a dream, like his Old Testament heroes, in which he saw his own children sitting on a dung heap. God said to him, "As their father, are you satisfied? Even if they are satisfied, are you satisfied?" This prompted him to seek out and form ways and means for young Christians to remove themselves from the status quo in order to seek justice and mercy with the poorest of the world's poor.

The author relates one story of a young person wrestling with God--Ash Barker from Australia--who felt called to do something but felt inadequate for the task. Mr. Barker prayed, "I know I am lots of things but I am no Francis of Assisi." In response, Mr. Barker said he heard Jesus whisper to him, "You don't have to be someone else. Just light the candles I give you to light."

And that is what this book is about: To give us each the courage to light those candles Jesus gives us to light.

The author doesn't mention the documents of Medellin (1968) and Puebla (1979), both issued by the Conference of Latin American Bishops and addressing the need for concentrated action to relieve the plight of the poor. It was also in 1968 that we Maryknoll Sisters named a "preferential option for the poor" as the center of our own mission statement.

This book follows the Spirit at work guiding today's young people to meet the needs of the human family just as Christian friars have done for the last 800 years.

[Rosemary Huber is a Maryknoll Sister.]