About 800 years ago, St. Francis of Assisi roamed the hills of Italy, living a life of poverty to love and serve others. Today the Rev. Jeremy Harrington, a 78-year-old member of Francis’ order, roams smaller hills within the lush gardens of a century-old monastery, tucked away in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington. Harrington oversees the monastery, its replicas of Holy Land shrines and the 20-or-so brothers and priests who live there. On Oct. 2, the monastery will hold the Blessing of the Animals, a ceremony meant to celebrate the connection St. Francis found between God’s goodness and God’s creatures. Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I’m Catholic, and I appreciate being part of a community of people who believe in God’s presence, the Scriptures, sacraments, the centuries of tradition. It’s a very rich tradition, and I believe it with my whole heart. My whole life I’ve been promoting it and teaching it. Within the Catholic faith there are different spiritualities, and I appreciate the Franciscan view. Francis was very much taken with the goodness of God and the love of God — God was overflowing with goodness — rather than focusing on sin or the problems of evil. Francis had a very positive view that God has given us this beautiful world, and anything beautiful — our gardens here would be one example — reminded him of the goodness of God. It’s a hopeful and joyful approach to life. It wasn’t that he was naive and didn’t know there was evil and sin, but he chose to see the goodness in people.
A monastery seems, to many, to belong to ages past. Are people you meet surprised Franciscan friars still exist? Is the monastic life important to preserve in our modern culture?
People are surprised by the habit. Some find it hard to believe that we aren’t married and we don’t have a family — that we are a brotherhood, a real community where we share everything and get along and have fun together. But I think it gives a different insight into what life is about. It’s important to be able to sacrifice personal wealth and to use things for the common good, not just for yourself. It’s a witness to faith and the transcendent that we do live together in peace. And I think it’s a witness to joy. We enjoy it; life is good.
What is daily life like at the monastery?
We start with prayer in the morning. We have a Mass at 6 and a Mass at 7. We pray the psalms as a community at 6:40 every morning. We have breakfast together. We work. My work is mainly administrative work. Others work in the gift shop or lead tours of the church. Priests are available every day for confession and assist in parishes. Some go to school. We get together for lunch. We work again in the afternoon. We gather at five o’clock for prayer again. We have a social half-hour from 5:30 to 6 and eat together, and the evening is free to study or pray or talk to people. We’re an international community, so we have interesting conversations at meals. It just so happened the other day there were six nationalities at the table together. There was an Egyptian — a Coptic Catholic who’s here perfecting his English — a Mexican, a diocesan priest from Rwanda, Franciscan priests from Poland and Australia, and a U.S. citizen.
The Middle East has been riven by conflict for decades. Have the Franciscans, who are the official custodians of the Holy Land for the Catholic Church, been able to change anything there?
I think the Franciscans help. … One of the things they do is run schools that are open to people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. And the faculty of the school are also both Muslim and Christian. And so the families get to know each other and understand each other, and that’s a very practical way of promoting harmony in the society. There’s one school, the Magnificat School of Music in Jerusalem at our monastery there, where they have Muslims, Christians and Jews all participating in choir and orchestras. Music is the language that brings them together.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
God is good and loving, and people are at their core good and loving. And we need to treat each other as sisters and brothers, with respect as equals, and live at peace with one another and serve and not take advantage of others.
– Liz Essley
