Start with an inventory rather than an intention: go through what you own and give away what you do not need, to people who do. Then change the flow — buy less, repair rather than replace, borrow and lend, keep a plain table, and set a ceiling on spending in the categories where you know you overreach. Make gratitude explicit and vocal: St Francis's Canticle of the Creatures is a school of it, and thanking God aloud for bread, water, weather and daylight changes how they are used. Give directly and personally as well as by transfer, so that you meet the poor face to face and learn their names. Work for your bread and refuse anxious accumulation. Keep the seasons of restraint the Church gives — Fridays, Advent, Lent — as a household, not privately. Members of the Secular Franciscan Order live this under an approved Rule and in fraternity; anyone may begin without joining anything, with one concrete renunciation held to for a year.

St Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) founded the Order of Friars Minor on poverty and fraternity; his Canticle of the Creatures gives Laudato Si' its name, and that encyclical develops the same conversion under the headings of sobriety, gratitude and care for the common home.

Other

Franciscan

A continuing way of life; reviewed each Lent

other