by Br. Arlen Harris
Humor and humility. 
Were a person to ask me, “What are some of the things that have helped you along the way in your Capuchin vocation?” I think that a sense of humor and a genuine sense of humility are two keys. Some years ago, I began to learn that in the grace of a confession at St. Anthony Shrine in Boston. As I had concluded my confession and received the absolution, I noticed that I had not been given a penance.
“Would you like for me to do something for my penance?” I asked Br. Philip O’Shea, the kind Franciscan priest who had heard my confession. He thought for a brief moment and then asked, “Well, you are a Capuchin and you live in community, right?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Well,” said Brother Philip, “Communal life is penance enough. Go in peace. And be patient with yourself. The brothers in your fraternity are.”
We laughed together. That experience from so many years ago with Brother Philip, who died in 2019, has remained with me even to this present day and has helped me to see humor and humility as two feet that help me to walk through Capuchin life. Though he was not a Capuchin himself, in his life as a member of a different Franciscan community, Brother Philip also helped me to appreciate the role that life in community has in fostering our lives as Capuchins.
Community is related to the word communion. The first place that I learned the word communion was as a young person at my family’s parish, St. Francis of Assisi in Brooklyn. Communion was one of the ways that we spoke about the Eucharist, such as my mom and dad reminding me of the importance of going to confession before receiving communion. But it also showed up every Sunday evening when my parents, sister, brother, and I prayed the rosary. It came near the end of the Apostles’ Creed, when we affirmed our belief “in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”
To receive communion is to receive Jesus Christ truly present in the sacrament of the Eucharist. But to live in communion with Jesus requires that I live in communion, not only with Him, but also with His Body, the Church. As I would begin to learn as a young person, the communion of the saints refers not only to those who are formally canonized like St. Francis of Assisi, but also to all those who are in heaven, those who are being purified in purgatory, and those of us here on earth. Together, these form the communion of the saints. And that brings me back to what Br. Philip O’Shea helped me to learn.
This past Aug. 16, I reached 25 years of religious life as a Capuchin Franciscan friar. To reach this point I had the help of my community, including the six friars who entered the Order with me that day in 2001—Brs. Samuel Fuller, Thomas McNamara, Louis Cinq-Mars (of the Sacred Heart Province in Canada), James Peterson, Charles Sammons and Marvin Bearis. Among the things that I have learned, and am still learning, is the importance of humor and humility. How so?
Over time, I came to see humor in fraternal life as medicinal not punitive because it helps me not to take myself too seriously. Br. Niles Kaufman, a Capuchin friar with whom I lived in Milwaukee, used corny jokes to drive that point home. One day he noticed that I was rushing from one task to another without stopping. “Slow down,” he advised. “We are Americans. So don’t be Russian everywhere!”
Related to this, humility is also a key. Making mistakes does not feel good. But learning from them helps to foster growth. So does asking for help when I need it.
Not by accident is the notion of Capuchin fraternity a smaller part of the larger whole of the communion of the saints. No matter where we may be in that communion, heaven, purgatory—or on earth in a Capuchin friary!—we help each other to grow in the grace of our common baptism in Jesus Christ. I am grateful for those who have and are helping me along the way by being patient with me and helping me to be patient with myself.
Rest in peace, Philip O’Shea.