The Franciscans in Montreal are moving, and when I first heard our new address, rue Lescarbot, I wondered why it sounded familiar. At first, I thought snails, but these are called escargots. Escarbot is a kind of beetle. They are mentioned in a fable recorded by Jean de La Fontaine, which is called L’aigle et l’escarbot. In English, it is called The Eagle and the Beetle. It is about how the lowly beetle gets angry at the eagle for failing to show mercy on his friend, the hare. The beetle gets his revenge, and the eagle must then find a way to get along with the beetle again.
Is this an auspicious beginning for the Franciscans in their new home? I think so. The moral of the story is that smallness is no impediment to standing up for the rights of the weak. Everybody has noticed how the Church has changed over the last 50 years or so now that Sunday Mass and parish activities are no longer at the centre of most people’s lives. We have now been given a much smaller role. The fundamentals of faith—love of God and love of neighbor—remain broadly popular, but organized religion is certainly in a state of great change. Once again, we need to adapt to changing circumstances, as the Christian message always needs to be told anew to make sense of all this change.
For Franciscains, this should not be a reason to be afraid. As important as our ministry in parishes was in the past and continues to be today, it has never been the most important ministry that we do. Our main ministry is to form small communities of Catholic Christian faith that can speak of the hope that this faith gives them in the ordinary activities of life.
If I try to adapt the fable of the beetle and the eagle to our situation, then we can think of ourselves as the beetle. It is close to the ground, mostly hidden out of sight of the powerful, but attentive to what happens on the ground. When we ground Christian life in the ordinariness of community life in the midst of the people, then we are where we are supposed to be. The eagle represents the powerful who may have yet to learn the need for mercy and attentiveness to those who need protection.
So, I thought, here’s our new name: Les escarbots franciscains. We move to a new home, but we have the chance to reconnect with the lives of the people in whose midst we will continue to live. We remain in the midst of the Christian faithful who seek nourishment for their faith by our service and our preaching.
