Books by Patricia Jordan

Pope Francis, writing a Letter to all Consecrated People, 'as a brother who, like yourselves, is consecrated to God', proclaimed the Year of Consecrated Life and outlined three main aims and five expectations for this special year. In this book, these aims and expectations have been reflected upon and woven into the text with their graces, invitations and challenges. Firstly, in looking to the past with gratitude, Sr Patricia draws our attention to the last fifty years in particular. With her emphasis on Jubilee, she emphasises gratitude and joy for the journey that has taken us to where we are now. In so doing, remembering and recounting our history 'preserves our identity, for strengthening our unity as a family and our common sense of belonging'. The call 'to live the present with passion' is presented by the author as the greatest challenge because it is the perennial challenge of the Gospel. As Pope Francis says: 'The Gospel is demanding: it demands to be lived radically and sincerely'. This is a twofold challenge to a personal and passionate love for Jesus and a reaching out to others with the love of his heart. Therefore the call to mysticism and prophecy is emphasised. Finally, to embrace the future with hope, invites us to allow the Holy Spirit to 'spur us on so that he can do great things with us'. This book will ask questions, pose challenges and invite us to 'constantly set out anew, with trust in the Lord' so that 'we may wake up the world' and be witnesses to the joy of the Gospel.Patricia Jordan is a Franciscan Sister Minoress. Graduating from Liverpool University with a B.Ed. (Hons.), she has taught Religious Education and English at secondary school level, and has both an MA (from the Franciscan Institute, St Bonaventure University) and a Ph.D in Franciscan Studies. She has been involved in the ministry of Religious Formation for over thirty years and writes here from her personal experience of Consecrated Life. She is currently Novice Director and is a member of the Leadership Team for her Congregation. She is also Director of The Portiuncula, House of Franciscan Prayer and Solitude, in Derbyshire. Her three other books, An Affair of the Heart: A Biblical and Franciscan Journey, Come Apart and Rest a While and Francis and Thérèse: Great Little Saints are also published by Gracewing.

When asked to comment on this, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) remarked: '...it is a fact that the choice of "little things" and "little people" is characteristic of God's dealings with humanity. We see this characteristic first of all in the fact that God chooses the earth as his theatre of action, this grain of dust in the universe; and in the fact that there Israel, a virtually powerless people, becomes the vehicle for his own action; and again in the fact that a completely unknown village, Nazareth, becomes his home; finally, in the fact that the Son of God is born at Bethlehem, outside the village in a stable. All of this is consistent' (God and the World, p. 213).Francis and Thérèse Great 'Little' Saints expresses how this 'characteristic of God's dealings' with men and women is at the heart of the spiritual life of Francis of Assisi and Thérèse of Lisieux. If Baptism plunges us into the Paschal Mystery of Christ, this man of the thirteenth century and this woman of the nineteenth expressed its energy of dying to self and rising to life in Christ through a path of littleness. The Poverello, 'Little Poor One', wanted his brothers and sisters to live among their peers by a comparative adjective minor (lesser) that would challenge them always to be the least. Centuries later Thérèse recognized herself as a 'little flower' and described her journey of the spiritual life as the petite voie (little way). Both chose that same characteristic of God's dealing with our humanity to deal with his divinity. This book pursues growth in an awareness of being little, of focusing on the little people, the little things, and the little actions of daily life! This is the challenge of being lesser before others as we are before God! Such is the energy of Francis and Thérèse that needs to be revitalized so that the hands of those of us in the twenty-first century may join theirs in making the world a new Bethlehem.