The Franciscan Journey Assignments

The following are the order of assignments in The Franciscan Journey from Hazel Martin, OFS, Queen of Peace Regional Formation Director

1. Chapter 9 plus Chapter 7, pages 73, 74, 76-79, 81: Vatican II + SFO Rule and Constitutions

2. Chapter 11: The SFO Rule

3. Chapter 12: A Focus on Christ

4. Chapter 13: Encounters with Jesus plus the rule: article 6

5. Chapter 15: Gospel, Conversion and Reconciliation

6. Chapter 16: When you Pray plus the rule: articles 9 and 10

7. Chapter 19: A Simple Way to Live

8. Chapter 20: Freedom to Love plus the rule: article 13

9. Chapter 22: Foundations to the Kingdom, Chapter 23: Justice and the Franciscan Life plus the rule: articles 16, 17, 18, 19

10. Chapter 29: Servant Leadership plus the rule: articles 20 and 22

11. Chapter 31: Membership in the SFO plus the rule: articles 24 and 26

12. Pre-profession retreat

Updated September Events

Date	Time	Event	Location
Sep 6	7:00 PM	Play: Therese, The Story of a Soul	Aquinas High School
Sep 9	9:00 AM	Tau Shalom Gathering and Business Meeting	Viterbo Meeting Room
Sep 26	6:00 PM	Tau Shalom Formation Meeting Chapters 7 and 9 new formation book	Viterbo Meeting Room
Sep 21	6:00 PM	Saint Louis Fraternity Gathering and Business Meeting	Saint John the Evangelist (Rochester)

Contemplative Practice by James FInley

Practice: Surrender to the Present Moment

A contemplative practice is any act, habitually entered into with your whole heart, as a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment. Your practice might be some form of meditation, such as sitting motionless in silence, attentive and awake to the abyss-like nature of each breath. Your practice might be simple, heartfelt prayer, slowly reading the scriptures, gardening, baking bread, writing or reading poetry, drawing or painting, or perhaps running or taking long, slow walks to no place in particular. Your practice may be to be alone, really alone, without any addictive props and diversions. Or your practice may be that of being with that person in whose presence you are called to a deeper place. The critical factor is not so much what the practice is in its externals as the extent to which the practice incarnates an utterly sincere stance of awakening and surrendering to the Godly nature of the present moment.

The following exercise is intended to demonstrate how meditation and the performance of daily tasks might gradually flow together in a habitual state of present moment attentiveness. The exercise consists of first choosing some household chore that needs to be done. I will use, as an example, washing a sink full of dirty dishes.

Begin by first sitting in meditation for about twenty to thirty minutes. Then slowly stand, and walk in a slow mindful manner to the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Stand at the sink, mindfully gazing for a moment at the dishes. Slowly and mindfully put soap in the sink. Fill the sink with hot water, attentive to the simple givenness of the sound of running water. Wash, rinse, and place each item in the drainer with mindfulness.

When the dishes are finished, pull the plug, listen to and watch the water going down the drain. Rinse out the sink with mindfulness. Dry each item and put it in its proper place with natural and deliberate mindfulness. Wipe off the counter tops with mindfulness. Then slowly walk back to your place of sitting meditation and sit for another twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Then open a journal and begin writing spontaneously and sincerely about what it would be like to live in this way. What would it be like to open and close doors, take some boxes out of the garage, file papers, answer the phone, not as rude interruptions into a carefully sequestered-off contemplative life, but, to the contrary, as living embodiments of the hands-on divinity of daily living?

 

Gateway to Silence:
The way down is the way up.

How to Meditate from James Finley

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness that form the infrastructure of each specific way to meditate. Here are some suggested guidelines.

With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower them toward the ground. Breathe slowly and naturally. With respect to your mind, be present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. And with respect to attitude, maintain nonjudgmental compassion toward yourself—as you discover yourself clinging to and rejecting everything—and nonjudgmental compassion toward others in their powerlessness that is one with yours.

Compassion is the love that recognizes and goes forth to identify with the preciousness of all that is lost and broken within ourselves and others. At first it seems as if compassionate love originates with our free decision to be as compassionate as we can be toward ourselves as we sit in meditation. As our practice deepens, we come to realize that in choosing to be compassionate, we are yielding to the compassionate nature of God flowing through us, in and as our compassion toward our self as precious in our frailty.

When we practice meditation, we are like the repentant prodigal son returning to his father’s house (see Luke 15: 11-32). By the time we begin to meditate, we have probably come to realize how foolish we have been in the past. We are sorry about the suffering our foolish ways have caused ourselves and others. We are sincerely intent on not being so foolish in the future. But like the repentant son heading home to beg for his father’s forgiveness, we are still laboring under the illusion that our wayward ways make us unworthy in the eyes of God.

The idea that our weaknesses are obstacles to God’s love is bound up with our egocentric perception of ourselves as outside God’s sustaining love. Entrenched in the ignorance of our imagined otherness from God, we set out to meditate as a way of overcoming one obstacle after another so that we might succeed in reaching God.

The ego self struggles in its efforts to sit present and awake as a way of being open to God’s presence until the ego exhausts all its own means of overcoming its inability to realize oneness with God. Then, just as all seems lost, we look up to see God running toward us with open arms. Suddenly we realize there is no place within us that is not encountered, embraced, and made whole in a love that does not even care to hear our litany of shortcomings and regrets. We are profoundly loved by God without any foundations for being loved, except divine love itself.

Gateway to Silence:Rest in God resting in me.

Reference:Adapted from James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God (HarperSanFrancisco: 2004), 203, 279-282.

TAU SHALOM!

August Events

Date	Time	Event	Location
Aug 4-6	See below	Francis and Clare, A World Premiere Musical*	St Mary’s, Winona, MN
Aug 5	10:00AM	Saint Louis Fraternity Formation Meeting	Saint John the Evangelist (Rochester)
16 Aug	6:30 PM	Tau Shalom Gathering and Business Meeting	TBD
Aug 17	6:00PM	Saint Louis Fraternity Gathering and Business Meeting	Saint John the Evangelist (Rochester)
Aug 19	9:00AM (breakfast) Formation following.	Tau Shalom Formation Meeting (F.U.N Manual Chapter: St Francis and his Approach to Divinity)	Viterbo Meeting Room

* The link below is to the Page Theater in Winona, MN.  They are putting on a play about Francis and Clare on Friday and Saturday, August 4-5 at 7:00 and on Sunday, August 6, at 2:00PM.  Tickets are $18 for adults and $10 for kids. 

http://pagetheatre.smumn.edu/project/francis-and-clare-a-world-premiere-musical/

From the preface to the Cangelosi paper...

"There is a widespread opinion among many Franciscan seculars and religious that the Profession of Secular Franciscans is a 'second class' commitment, some kind of a 'light' Profession.

"Indeed, most people have foggy ideas on the value of Profession in the Secular Franciscan Order and  because of this many  Secular Franciscans do not live the “grace” of Profession for what it really is. A true nuptial alliance with Jesus Christ aimed at a further consecration to God and at accomplishing a closer bond to the Church to reach the perfection of love and the realization of Saint Francis mission.

"The true and authentic answer is, instead, to be searched in history and in the very nature of our Order as the Sovereign Pontiffs have constantly affirmed:

'…, (Francis) founded a true Order, that of the Tertiaries, not restricted by religious vows, as the two preceding (Orders), but similarly conformed to simplicity of customs and to a spirit of penitence. So, he was the first to conceive and happily carry out, with the help of God, what no founder of regulars (religious Orders) had previously contrived, to have the religious life practiced by all.' (Benedict XV, Encyclical “Sacra Propediem” January 6, 1921)

'…you are also an ‘Order,’ as the Pope said (Pius XII): A Lay Order, but a Real Order;” and after all, Benedict XV had already spoken of “Ordo veri nominis”. This ancient term – we can say medieval – “Order” means nothing more than your intimate belonging to the large Franciscan family. The word “Order” means the participation in the discipline and actual austerity of that spirituality, while remaining in the autonomy typical of your lay and secular condition, which, moreover, often entails sacrifices which are not lesser than those experienced in the religious and priestly life.' (John Paul II, June 14, 1988, General Chapter, SFO)

"This lesson on Profession will open the eyes to many candidates in formation as well as to many formators and professed members of the SFO in general and will undoubtedly give a new outlook to many Secular Franciscans on what they are, or ought to be, as Professed members of the SFO and on how to live their Franciscan vocation and mission."