Our February Gathering
We will hold our monthly gathering on Sunday, February 9th at 12:30 pm in Conway Hall. We will participate in ongoing formation, recite the Franciscan Crown Rosary and, after our regular meeting and prayers, we will proceed to St. Francis Church for Benediction.
If you are unable to fulfill your obligation to attend the monthly meeting, please call Pat Simon at 610-352-5390
Fair Share
There will be an extra small envelope in your January and February newsletter for our Fair Share Contribution to allow you to pay in two installments. The Fair Share will remain the same at $30. The Fair Share is not meant to be a hardship on anyone. If your financial circumstances makes it hard to pay please let a council member know.
St. Francis Inn Needs:
- Winter Coats/Jackets
- Hats and Gloves
- Sweaters
- Sweatshirts
- Shoes/boots
- Socks
- Thermal Underwear
- Powdered Milk
- Sugar
- Pine Sol
- Bleach
- Feminine Products
- Toiletries (travel size: deodorant, toothpaste, soap, shampoo)
Mothers’ Home Mornings Apostolate
Last month, several of our members volunteered at The Mothers’ Home in Darby for the first of what we hope will be many, many Saturday morning visits. Some of us helped get parts of the 3rd floor ready for new flooring and others worked on sorting and organizing donated baby clothes. We’re hoping to make these monthly visits one of our fraternity’s ongoing service apostolates.
Our next visit will be next Saturday the 15th. Please plan on meeting there at 9:00 am sharp. We should be done by Noon. Mothers’ Home is right next to BVM Church in Darby and some of our members found it convenient to attend 8:15 am Mass there before digging into work.
We will have a signup sheet at our February gathering so we can call ahead to let them know how many people to expect. Please let Lee know if you have any questions.
Formation Information
At our February gathering, we will be discussing some broad ideas related to the SFO Rule in order to created a framework for our upcoming discussions of each rule individually on a month-by-month basis. If you didn’t receive the reading assignments at the January gathering, and have not been able to download them from the website, please let Lee know and he’ll try to get them in the mail to you in time for the gathering.
There will be a slight change in the plans mentioned in January. In March, we will again be listening to and discussing a talk from the CD by Br. William Short, OFM that we used a couple months ago. I hope to begin our series of discussions on the SFO Rule in April. Details will follow.
• • •
Forming Secular Franciscans to understand the secular spirituality that was an essential element in the development of the SFO Rule must be where we begin. We need to be converted to the vision of the Church which has been telling us that we will grow in holiness by participating in that discordant, untidy, unpredictable place we call the “world.†That it is a primary school for holiness.
~Edward M. Zablocki OFS, Finding Identity as a Secular Franciscan
• • •
A Franciscan’s life, therefore, is to be marked by continual contemplation, reflection, and emulation of the Gospel. The way of life is not about particular tasks, responsibilities, duties or rules (although they certainly exist and rightly so), but about the style of living in whatever context one finds him or herself.
~Daniel Horan OFM, Francis of Assisi and the Future of Faith
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