Fr. Michael Cusato graciously led our Regional SFO Retreat at Priestfield last fall.
Thank you Fr. Cusato!
The Priority of Prayer
January 28, 2013 By
In a letter to Saint Anthony, Francis wrote:
Brother Francis sends greetings to Brother Anthony, my Bishop. I am pleased that you teach sacred theology to the brothers providing that, as is contained in the Rule, you “do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion” during study of this kind.
“There is a great lesson for us today in the wisdom of a brief eight-hundred-year-old letter from one of the world’s most famous Christians to another of the world’s most famous Christians: whatever we do should take second place to how we live. If we find that our work is interfering with the priority of prayer and the spirit of devotion, perhaps we need to reevaluate what it is we are doing, or at least how we are going about doing it.
An interesting thing about the mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans, is that their way of life is modeled in such a way as to foster life with and among ordinary people. Perhaps this is why the Franciscans have remained so popular, even to this day. The wisdom of not letting one’s work or one’s ambition or one’s personal desires or even one’s will to do good for others get in the way of recalling that all things come from and should return to God is a message not only for women and men in professed religious life, but for all Christians and all people of good will.
What if we lived in such a way that our prayer was our priority, that we allowed our whole lives to reflect a spirit of prayer and devotion?”
(the above excerpt is from Daniel Horan, OFM’s book “Dating God”. See the full article.)
Preparing for Christmas
December 4, 2012 By
The following letter, between two saints , illuminates the importance of preparing well for Christmas. Let us prepare with prayer, charity, awareness of our brothers and sisters, and thankfulness of God’s creation.
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Winter, 1224
My Dear Sister Clare,
How kind of you to ask how you can help the brothers in Assisi prepare for Christmas while I am away preaching in the country.
I know there is much to be done. Food must be prepared for the many brothers and sisters who will return from their work to celebrate the feast with us. And food must be prepared to share with the poor. The townspeople will expect us to arrange another manger scene and midnight mass. We must locate animals and torches, even a baby! We must find a priest for the mass and deacons to assist.
You know that in my heart Christmas, the feast of love, is my favorite feast – the one I wish would never end. It is the time when the poor should be treated royally, and the animals are not only welcome but necessary to our worship.
But, dear Sister Clare, do not let yourself or any one of us get caught up in the busy-ness. That is false preparation for the great Christmas feast. God would have us prepare quietly, in our hearts and in our living. We must pray and wait for the Incarnation but be prepared for it at every moment. Look at the faces of the lonely and befriend them. See Jesus in the hungry and feed them. Put seeds on the road for the birds. And stop to thank God for the beauty of the moon on a cold dark night.
This is how to prepare for Christmas,
Pax et Bonum
Your little Brother,
Francis
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(**this letter was found online and was reported to be quoted in from Jeff Smith’s “The Frugal Gormet Celebrates Christmas,” William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991. ***When we find the authentic source text, we will post a link here.)
Happy Feast of St. Francis
October 3, 2012 By
On October 4th, the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Francis!
Francis of Assisi was a poor little man who astounded and inspired the Church by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit and without a sense of self-importance.
Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his frolicking life as leader of Assisi’s youth. Prayer—lengthy and difficult—led him to a self-emptying like that of Christ, climaxed by embracing a leper he met on the road. It symbolized his complete obedience to what he had heard in prayer: “Francis! Everything you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know my will. And when you have begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely to you will become intolerable and bitter, but all that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy.” (excerpt from AmericanCatholic.org)