From Our November 2016 Newsletter

Our November Gathering

We will hold our monthly gathering on Sunday, November 13th at 12:30 pm in Conway Hall. We will have ongoing formation followed by social time. Around 2:15 we will proceed to St. Francis Church for our annual Mass of Remembrance. Fr. Quan Trinh will be our celebrant.

If you are unable to fulfill your obligation to attend the monthly meeting, please call Pat Simon at 610-352-5390
“And we will be involved in the monthly meeting as an act of worship and a building of community.”
~ The Lay Franciscan Monthly Pledge

Prayer Petitions

We need a volunteer who will be willing to collect prayer requests, type them up, and email them to Lee to be included in the newsletter. If you are willing, please let us know at our November gathering.

St. Francis Inn Needs

• Men’s & Women’s Underwear
• Men’s Shoes
• Dinner-size Forks
• Deodorant
• Toothpaste
• Paper Towels
• Prayers

Christmas Gathering

This year’s Christmas gathering will be held on Sunday, December 11th from 1:00 to 4:00 at Anthony’s Restaurant in Drexel Hill. More details to follow in the December newsletter.

Ongoing Formation Information

After a long hiatus, let’s return to our journey through our Rule of Life, picking up up where we left off with Rule 12: Witnessing to the good yet to come and obligated to acquire purity of heart because of the vocation they have embraced, they should set themselves free to love God and their brothers and sisters.

Please consider this passage and meditate on the questopns that follow.

‘Purity of heart’ is the personal choice to develop the attitudes and establish the means to be continually ‘tuned in’ to God in order to have the freedom to seek and share the great treasure of the kingdom: loving God and neighbor. It is preoccupation (a ‘one-tracked heart,’ we might say) with the wealth of God’s kingdom: intimacy with the person of God and the faith, hope and charity that intimacy brings. It is striving for that cleanliness from sinfulness (loss of integrity, breaking of harmony, eroding the union with God) that soils the heart. It is placing limits on our attitudes and actions so that we can work toward true liberty: that moral stance that gives our inner and outer self complete reign to achieve a Christ-centered life and to give witness to the ‘ person and message of Jesus in our everyday dealings. (Called to Follow Christ, Benet A. Fonck, OFM)

Questions:

1 – What are the qualities within me which prevent me from acquiring purity of heart?

2 – What practices can I adopt to increase my purity of heart?

3 – Are there other ways to describe purity of heart? Other metaphors?

Food for Thought

Here are some things to keep in mind as we prepare for our annual Mass of Remembrance.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them.

~ St. Francis, Canticle of the Sun

 -  -  -  –

Even death itself, considered by all to be so terrible and hateful, was exhorted to give praise, while he himself, going joyfully to meet it, invited it to make its abode with him. “Welcome,” he said, “my sister death.”

~ Thomas of Celano, The Second Life of St. Francis of Assisi

– – – –

As he approached his own earthly end, Francis, recalling the love of God made manifest in the gift of creation, looked forward with hope to his share in the resurrection of Christ. There was no longer a need to avoid or exploit death, because death was his sister, closer to him than the fear of the unknown. With arms extended, Francis did not cower from his destiny in fear and anxiety but embraced his sister bodily death with his whole heart and left this world in peace. abode with him. “Welcome,” he said, “my sister death.”

~ Daniel P. Horan, Embracing Sister Death: The Fraternal Worldview of Francis of Assisi as a Source for Christian Eschatological Hope