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domestic tasks of keeping a home in order. The Franciscans heat their ritiro, their house of prayerful retreat, with wood. Trees must be cut, kindling split, logs carried and stacked. They keep up the acres and acres of rolling pasture and and forest and don aprons over their black robes to take their turns in the kitchen.
“There’s not much privacy in the house for spiritual direction and retreat,” Father Ronald acknowledged. For those seeking solitude, the friars renovated a small guest cottage behind the main house and built a tiny, one room hermitage back in the woods on a ledge overlooking • winding creek. Both are primitive. The emphasis at Portiuncula ritiro is not comfort but a continuation of Vatican II's spiritual renewal, according to Father Augustine.
Although the Franciscans number 15,000 to 30,000 in the U. S. alone, the Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Penance is small. "There are only 1,000 in our community in the whole world,” Father Ronald said. Franciscan friars are not monks. As he explained it, monks take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability. "They’re anchored to a place and take their vows to a community. It ordinarily means their whole life is spent there, in one place. ...Friars were meant to be wanderers, to go where they’re needed.”
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