As I traveled to Chicago today for a conference, I thought about St. Peter of Alcantara, whose feast day we celebrate on that day. Peter was very much a product of his world. He tried to respond as a Church leader to the reality and needs of his world. He was a Franciscan priest who was born in 1499, at the dawning of the 16th century, an era that would bring us the Protestant reformation and a lot of changes in the Church and in the world. He served as the confessor and spiritual advisor of the great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila. Since he felt called by God to live very simple life, Peter praised God in his poverty. He became the provincial of his Franciscan order, while still performing menial chores with his friars, such as chopping wood and washing dishes. He realized true role of his poverty in his life of faith, as he remarked in a letter to Teresa: “I do not praise poverty for poverty's sake; I praise only that poverty which we patiently endure for the love of our crucified Redeemer… I consider this far more desirable than the poverty we undertake for the sake of poverty itself.” During Peter’s lifetime, many believers left the faith and there was a rigid backlash within Church in response to the Reformation. He realized that Church needed to reform, so both he and Teresa of Avila were at the forefront of the reform movement in Spain, trying to return to foundations of early Church and the beginnings of their religious communities - the Franciscans and Carmelites. He reimagined the world in which he lived. He was creative in the way he approached his faith. He is a great example as I start this workshop in Chicago on restorative justice and prison ministry.
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