Between Carmel and Alverno

"SAINT FRANCIS IN THE MIDST OF HIS WORK",
SAINT TERESA AND "THE WORK OF PRAYER"

Two mountains, Alverno and Carmel, mark the geography of Mother Frances Streitel's soul and shape the spirituality of the new Congregation dedicated to the Sorrowful Mother.
At Alverno, Mother Frances looks with admiring wonder at "the humble father Saint Francis", faithful custodian of holy poverty and love for God, "with the sublime signs of victory" - hands and feet pierced by nails, and his chest wounded as if by a lance - that make him a faithful imitator of "our God who bears the stigmata".

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At Alverno, she captures her industriousness.
But what is this hard work?
It is the work of the evangelical person attracted by the cross and sensitive to all pain. An industriousness that draws strength from being crucified with Christ and, like him, moved to compassion for every creature. Deligient work that becomes 'active charity for one's neighbor'. This is, as she reiterates, 'St. Francis in the midst of his work'. And with him, "the mother St. Clare".

At Carmel, Mother Frances drew from the sublimity of the contemplative life which was wisely interwoven with work and the apostolate. She looked with filial devotion to Saint Teresa of Avila, the great reformer of the descendants of the prophet Elijah, and to Saint John of the Cross, "a man of courage and prayer.” She grasps in them the new beauty of the ancient renewed ideal and understands that prayer and work, contemplation and action must be the two pulsating lungs of the new Foundation. Never one without the other. And the one always dependent on the other.

The stigmata of Saint Francis (Giotto)

MOTHER FRANCES WOULD TELL YOU...

“If you were to meet St. Francis, may he immediately recognize you as 'son', [as his daughter], and may he then give you his holy fatherly blessing for your open profession of holy poverty.

I find all my joy in my holy Father in religion. If in heaven, he finds such joy in me, then nothing is wanting to me in time and eternity.”

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For the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, she does not want a “formation of daughters of Carmel”, that is, as she points out in a letter to Fr. Jordan, she does not want them immersed “only in a purely contemplative life”, but demands that their active charity for their neighbor should spring, grow and mature continually from prayer, and that it always returns to prayer becoming intercession.

REJUVENATE IDEALS AND COMPOSE THEM INTO A SINGLE FORM

La Verna and Carmel: two spiritual places, therefore, brought together in a single form, in a single ideal, contemplative and apostolic together. "The values of Carmel and Alverno," wrote Mother Frances, "should come together in a single form"; they must be "reunited closely". And she reiterated several time that it is necessary to "unify and rejuvenate the ideas and principles of St. Francis and St. Teresa".

Indeed, it is to a "renewed Alverno" that she aspired, feeling "called to rejuvenate the ideas of St Francis", while she asked herself, with good-natured irony, "Who will put the hood back on the Order of Franciscans, that is, who will give them back their original form?”

St. Teresa of Avila

And she concludes: “My understanding in regard to the new foundation is that the holy Rule given by St. Francis to St. Clare be practiced again in its original form with the addition of the norms of St. Teresa … is what my mind, in the hours of deepest intuition, was able to understand as the will of God”. Certainly, this "understanding" was "a new beauty" for the Church!

AGGREGATION TO
THE THIRD ORDER REGULAR OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Historically, a seal was placed on Mother Frances' understanding. On February 9, 1904,

the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother received the Document

of Aggregation to

the Order of Holy Father St. Francis. As she was experiencing what has been called "the time of trial” in Castel Sant’Elias, Mother Frances must certainly have felt great consolation.