Chapter 3 Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas
Brugge
One league up the canal, in a quiet church in the mercantile capital of the Low Countries, Friar Lukas is at prayer.
He’s a small man of great faith. Bring me Martha, he prays.
Bring me Mary. Send me Ruth, or Miriam, or Esther.
A woman of virtue, a woman of learning, who can lead with humility, who seeks material poverty to reap spiritual riches.
Bring me a woman with the faith of a saint.
He has never met a woman like this. Nor a man, he thinks. To be fair.
Friar Lukas, the leader of the Franciscan preachers of Brugge, has sent his band of men into the lanes to fill their begging bowls from the back gates of households.
He’s stayed behind to pray. Help me serve you, Lord.
I’ve spoken to shopkeepers and seamstresses, examined the daughters of merchants, queried midwives and nuns.
I have looked high and low to find a woman able and willing to establish a new order in Flanders.
A woman who can lead the humble life of Saint Clare, in its pure austerity, to inspire the women of Brugge to the utmost edge of devotion.
We need a dedicated, fearless Franciscan woman to lift up this city of greed.
“You want what?” the women say.
Poverty, chastity, obedience. To renounce the material world for a life of prayer. To seek God above all else. To spread his word.
Even the nuns think he’s extreme.
Lukas sits back on his heels and sighs. All he wants is to bring God’s kingdom to this particular corner of earth, the wealthiest city in northern Europe.
It’s been twenty years since he renounced his life as a banker’s son and took vows with the Franciscans.
Twenty years of preaching on street corners, five as the head of the band of brown-robed friars.
He loves his men with their empty bellies and full hearts.
He just needs more of them. It’s his mission to expand the order.
But the people of Brugge are hard with greed like they hunger for hell.
They’ve had no new recruits since Lukas took charge.
People love the brown friars, but they don’t want to join them. At least, not under him.
But then it struck him. There’s another half of the population.
When Saint Francis founded their order in Assisi, not so very far away and not so very long ago, he had only a handful of followers—until the arrival of Saint Clare.
Upon hearing Francis preach, young Clare gave her possessions to the poor and fled her noble family to join him.
Hers was a true faith, and the people responded.
Under Francis’s guidance, Clare established a large order of Franciscan women.
She healed the sick, she fed many from little.
Saint Clare’s prayer was so powerful she saved Assisi from an attack of infidels scaling the city walls.
Dazzled by her, the invaders fell from their ladders and fled.
The pope attended her funeral. That’s the kind of woman Friar Lukas needs.
Saint Francis had Clare. Abraham had Sarah. Adam had Eve. Well, that didn’t work out so well. But that’s the point. He needs a rare woman, a woman of virtue and faith, to bring Brugge to God.