The Washington Post recently reported on six Franciscan friars who decided to take a 300-mile walk:

The pilgrimage was the idea of four young friars just finishing their training in Chicago and working toward taking lifelong vows. Seeking to emulate the wanderings of their founder, Saint Francis of Assisi, they wanted to journey together as a fraternity, ministering to one another and to strangers, while depending on God for every meal and place to sleep. […]

They tried to live by the ascetic rules Jesus laid out for his 12 disciples: “Take nothing for the journey — no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic.” The less they brought, they reasoned, the more room they could leave for God. […]

Some rules, however, had to be made on the fly. They had agreed not to carry any money, but just minutes into their first day, strangers were pressing dollar bills into their hands. So they made a pact to spend what they received each day on food, often high-protein Clif bars, and to give the rest to the needy.

The WaPo has a slideshow of pictures of the friars’ journey. You can also track the frairs’ trip through the Friarwalk blog. And there’s more commentary on the story at GetReligion.

According to these reports, the friars were often stopped by people who wanted to share problems and concerns. Simply by being visible and open to these conversations, the friars became a kind of walking confessional. Food, money and shelter were given freely to them; despite their meager supplies, none of them went hungry or was hurt in the course of the journey.

Any kind of spiritual discipline is like that: it’s usually something incredibly simple, like not eating for a time, or praying for an hour, or walking from point A to point B… but while they’re simple acts in themselves, God can build them into something extraordinary. Fasting brings us to question our relationship to food and to God. Time spent in prayer brings us to radically reassess our life priorities. Not every skipped meal or hour of silence will pulsate with spiritual insight, but it’s these simple acts of devotion from which God produces fruit in our lives.

Would you ever take a trip like the friars’ journey? Have you seen God do something extraordinary that began as a simple act of spiritual discipline?

By: Chris. This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.