Every Secular Franciscan is a living book of Gospel Fraternity and Friendship
Monthly Spiritual Message, April 2026
PP Capuchin SPiritual Assistant
Our Lord Jesus Christ is called the Icon of the living God.[1] In teaching us to understand icons, the Eastern Churches tell us that you do not simply look at an Icon, you read it! You understand it. In English, we have a statement, “I can read you like a book!”
We cannot help ourselves; when we meet and spend time with others, we read them. Often, it is easy to understand someone’s true thoughts and feelings just by looking at their appearance and behaviour.
The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus, is not chiefly something to be written on paper, but in our hearts and in our minds and on our faces and in our actions. This happens if we cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit, which should infuse and change our whole person. St Angela of Foligno, OFS, teaches us that the process of conversion[2] can be long and difficult. It requires a harsh honesty about the way we live our lives.
In a very real sense, God promises us a deep relationship with himself, a covenant: “I will make my covenant with you, a covenant unlike that which I made with your fathers.” Then he adds, “I will put my love in your heart.” [3]
The Capuchin friar, Saint Joseph of Leonessa, said:
“In this way, every Christian should be a living book in which the teaching of the Gospel can be read. St Paul taught this to the Corinthians: “You yourselves are our letter (of recommendation) written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of human hearts”. The parchment is our heart; the writer is the Holy Spirit. Transformed by the Spirit, we become the Icon of Gospel friendship and fraternity.
But how can one script be imposed upon another? Unless the former is erased, the new cannot be written. Avarice, pride, lust and other vices are written on your hearts. How shall we write humility, honesty, compassion and the other virtues on them, unless the previous vices are wiped out? If men had such writing in their hearts, each of them would be a book, as we said above; he would instruct others by his mode of life. For this reason, St Paul adds: “You yourselves are our letter… to be known and read by all.”[4]
p.p. Capuchin Spiritual Assistant.
(Latin: pro procurationem, meaning “on behalf of”)
Questions:
Why did you become a Franciscan? Why are you staying in the Order?
[1] Jesus Christ is described in Colossians 1:15 as “the image of the invisible God,” with “image” translating the Greek word eikon (icon), signifying an exact representation, manifestation, and revelation of God’s nature in human form. As the incarnate Son, Jesus makes the invisible God visible through his life, character, and actions, acting as the definitive, living human revelation of the Father.
[2] This process of infusion of grace is the first step and is called “Purgation.” For Angela of Foligno this process was brutal and long, but it leads to “illumination” and on to “Union.”
[3] The Prophet Jeremiah 31: 33. “Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.”
[4] A sermon of Saint Joseph of Leonessa: (Analecta OFM Cap. 1897 pp. 281-283)
