Let us pray to the Lord

Dear Reader,

The Lord give you peace.

Please pray for my brothers who were attacked and pray for their attackers. (follow link below)

My prayer is that everyone involved in this tragic incident will be healed in body, mind and spirit.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4620434.ece

Pax et Bonum,
~ Friar Rex

And a child shall lead them.

After mass yesterday I was talking with a new parishioner, a single mom with her young son in tow. She introduced her son to me. "Gabriel will be entering third grade in a few days," she told me. After a few words with young Gabriel his mother and I began chatting about the upcoming election.

"Who will it be? McCain or Obama" I asked.
"Brittney Spears," she replied.
We both laughed.

We said our goodbyes and as I extended my hand to shake Gabriel's hand he quite unexpectedly pushed my hand out of the way and gave me a big hug (as big a hug as a little person whose head comes up to about my belly button can give). His mom and I both smiled. The hug complete, Gab and his mom walked to their car parked not too far away.

That hug----spontaneous on his part, totally unexpected on mine---has stayed with me until this moment, nearly 24 hours later. There was something sacramental about it. The content of yesterday's homily I have forgotten. The songs we sang, the announcements that were made, the faces of the people sitting next to me in the pew: all gone. But that hug....

I wonder if maybe right before Jesus said that famous line about the need for us to become like children if we want to enter the Kingdom he received an unexpected hug from a little person? It would be just like the God Who comes to us in the the seven Sacraments to turn a hug into a sacramental.


In one of her poems Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.

Yesterday I saw heaven crammed into the simple, spontaneous hug of a third grader. Today I'm reminded of another passage from Scripture: "And a child shall lead them."

Lead on, Gabriel. Lead on!

Pax et Bonum!
~Friar Rex

Juggling and Preaching the Gospel

I can't remember where or when I first heard it, but I liked it......It was the idea that preaching the Gospel, the whole Gospel, is a juggling act.

In juggling all the balls must be kept moving -- the red, the blue, the orange balls going up into the air, or coming down into the palm of the hand or being held for a nano-second before being launched over to the other hand and then up into the air again. This is real juggling.

In preaching, if it it to be authentic Christian preaching, all the messages found in the Gospel must be preached -- God's mercy AND His judgment, the necessity for action AND contemplation, both Easter AND Good Friday -- or the preaching is not the whole Gospel.

Telling a baptized man that Christ dwells in him is true, but it not the whole Truth. Telling a mean, arrogant, self-righteous bully of a man that God loves him unconditionally is true, but only partially so; it is true on the level of the soul. It is patently untrue on the level of the man's behaviors and attitude.

For reasons rooted in sin we tend to want the good news of the Good News while ignoring the bad news of the Good News, if that makes any sense. We will all be judged one day. We believe it will be judgment tempered by mercy, but it will be judgment nevertheless. Not to mention this from the pulpit or in conversations with out fellows is diabolic.

So, to those of you who preach the Gospel "in season and out'' [this includes you and me, dear reader], let us preach the whole Gospel, not the watered down warm fuzzy feel good stuff that many pew-sitters want to hear and many preachers are quiet happy to deliver.

Many's the Mass I leave "feeling good about myself" when on second thought what I really ought to be feeling is a sense of compunction and the need for repentance and a desire for transformation, the sort of transformation that can only be brought about by the working of the Holy Spirit Who from east to west has been gathering a people to Himself.

Pax et Bonum,

~Friar Rex

The Sermon of St. Francis

Here's a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The Sermon of St. Francis

Up soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a wingéd prayer,
As if a soul released from pain
Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard: it was to him
An emblem of the Seraphim;
The upward motion of the fire,
The light, the heat, the heart's desire.

Around Assisi's convent gate
The birds, God's poor who cannot wait,
From moor and mere and darksome wood
Come flocking for their dole of food.

"O brother birds," St. Francis said,
"Ye come to me and ask for bread,
But not with bread alone to-day
Shall ye be fed and sent away.

"Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds,
With manna of celestial words;
Not mine, though mine they seem to be,
Not mine, though they be spoken through me.

"Oh, doubly are ye bound to praise
The great Creator in your lays;
He giveth you your plumes of down,
Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

"He giveth you your wings to fly
And breathe a purer air on high,
And careth for you everywhere,
Who for yourselves so little care!"

With flutter of swift wings and songs
Together rose the feathered throngs,
And singing scattered far apart;
Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart.

He knew not if the brotherhood
His homily had understood;
He only knew that to one ear
The meaning of his words was clear.

++++++++++++++

Pax et Bonum!
~Friar Rex

Renewal of Vows

Here is a copy of what was said during Mass yesterday as I re-dedicated my life to Christ as a Solitary of Saint Francis.

I said:

All praise be yours, my Lord, for all creation gives you glory.

All praise be yours, my Lord, for all good things come from you.

All praise be yours, my Lord, for you called me to new life in your risen Son, following the example of Saint Francis of Assisi. Today, I re-dedicate myself to that call.

Before you, Most High and Glorious God, and in the presence of those gathered here, I renew my profession of the Rule of Life of a Solitary of Saint Francis, confirmed by Bishop Richard J. Malone.

I pray for the grace to continue to live my life with obedience to your Spirit and your Church, without property (in imitation of your Son), and with a chastity that frees me to love you and your people with unmeasured love.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, St. Francis, St. Clare, St. Anthony, Sts. David and Cuthbert, St. Theresa and all holy men and women, intercede for me, a sinner, and for the whole Franciscan family. Amen.

Fr. Lupo said:

Most High and Glorious God, you helped St. Francis to reflect the image of Christ, through a life of simplicity and joy.

May our brother, Rex, follow your Son by walking in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi, and imitating his joyful love.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Life Profession

I began my Franciscan journey in 1987 when as a Methodist I became a member of the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans, an ecumenical version of the Anglican Communion's Third Order of St. Francis which is itself modeled on the Roman Catholic Church's Secular Franciscan Order.

A few years later I left the O.E.F. and the Methodist church, joined the Episcopal Church and took vows as a Franciscan Solitary under the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church's bishop of the Diocese of Maine.

In the year 2000 I answered the call of Our Lord --- a call that had been sounding in my heart and mind for nearly a decade -- and made the journey home to the Catholic Church within which the fullness of Christ's revelation subsists.

After seven years of spiritual discernment and simple vows, I made my Life Profession as a Solitary of St. Francis before the 11th Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Bishop Richard J. Malone, Th.D., on the 11th day of August, 2007. Today marks the one year anniversary of my Life Profession.

Please pray for me, a sinner, as I renew the commitment to Franciscan life I began to "flesh out" twenty years ago. I'll be renewing my vows during a Mass celebrated today in the chapel of Little Portion Hermitage.

For all of this I have a full and thankful heart.

~ Friar Rex, ssf

What does it mean to be a Christian?

What does it mean to be a Christian?

It means that Christ is the biggest idea in your mind,
fills your soul like a riot of joy, sits on the edge of your lips
like a shout of praise, motivates you, haunts you,
hounds you day in and day out.

It means there is nothing more real,
more enticing, more fascinating,
more central, more emphatic,
more thrilling than Christ,
and everything else has
meaning, and value
and significance
because of Him.

You make your decisions in terms of Christ;
you make your judgments in terms of Christ;
you make your plans in terms of Christ.

That is what it means to be a Christian.

~ Fr. William MacNamara

Feast Day of St. Dominic

Poor Dominic. Always living in the shadow of his contemporary, St. Francis. Were it not for Thomas Aquinas, I fear good Saint Dominic would be entirely forgotten.

I have a proposal. I propose that each year on this date Dominicans have a Blessing of Those Who Give Homilies just as we Franciscans have a Blessing of the Animals on the Feast of St. Francis.

In any case, to my Dominican brothers and sisters, Blessed Feast Day!

~ Friar Rex

Who would Jesus bomb?

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. It is also the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan indiscriminately slaughtering approximately 140,000 men, women and children, all of whom were made "in the image and likeness of God."

That said, I wonder.....who would Jesus bomb?

~ Friar Rex

A Full & Thankful Heart

In March of 1962 Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, shared the following thoughts in an article published in the AA Grapevine, an official monthly publication of that fellowship:

"One exercise that I practice is to try for a full inventory of my blessings and then for a right acceptance of the many gifts that are mine--both temporal and spiritual. Here I try to achieve a state of joyful gratitude. When such a brand of gratitude is repeatedly affirmed and pondered, it can finally displace the natural tendency to congratulate myself on whatever progress I may have been enabled to make in certain areas of living. I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits.When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know."

Anyone with guts and grace enough to call themselves a Christian should prayerfully ponder Bill Wilson's words. Pouring out one's love and life for God and neighbor---a way of BEing, rooted in "a full and thankful heart"---will do more to attract people to Christ and His Church than anything else I can think of save the gift of prevenient grace.*

I pray you a full and thankful heart this 17th Sunday in [extra]Ordinary time.


Pax et Bonum!


~ Friar Rex


*Prevenient grace is divine grace which precedes human decision. It exists prior to and without reference to anything humans may have done. Prevenient grace allows persons to engage their God-given free will to choose the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ or to reject that salvific offer.

August

When someone asks me about my life as a hermit I'm at a loss for words. The question is asked, I think, in hopes that the answer will be something to the effect that I live in a cave, eat wild locust and honey, wear a hair shirt under my clothes, or some other answer equally as "spiritual" or romantic.

Alas, the vocation of a hermit is to be ordinary. To quote a rather more famous solitary than I, one Thomas Merton, "What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe."

In her poem, August, Mary Oliver captures the idea of how extraordinary and spiritually delicious "ordinary" actually is

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

May God grant you a very ordinary, August-like life.

Pax et Bonum!

~Friar Rex

The Three Amigos

In recent weeks God has blessed me with the opportunity to join the company of three young men, each in their 20's, as they wrestle and fight and pray their way along the spiritual journey.

One of these fellows left the Church for a liberal Protestant denomination and is now having second thoughts about having done so. Another, a member of a Protestant denomination, is considering "coming home" to the Catholic Church. The third young man---tired of the lack-luster faith he finds in the Church today---is considering leaving Catholicism altogether.

I admire each of these men as they struggle to come to terms with their faith: "What does it mean to be a man of faith in the 21st century?" "How do I walk my own journey of faith, not simply follow uncritically the path my parents trod?" "Where and how can I best live out my commitment to Jesus Christ?" "Where have all the Christians gone?" I admire these young men for the depth of their commitment to Christ, their desire for Truth, their courage in asking the hard questions and for listening for God and others to answer them, even when the answers are somewhat difficult to accept.

I do not know what good my walking the journey with them will do. I am not a particularly learned man, much less a theologian or apologist. As I am want to tell them "I'm just another Bozo on the bus." That said, I am a man you has certainly struggled in the past like they are struggling now. I share with them my experience, strength and hope in Christ. Perhaps that is enough. They know they are not alone in their struggle [none of us are], that others struggle or have struggled to integrate into their lives "the faith once delivered the the saints."

What I do know is that these young men have blessed my life in very real ways. Their questions and critiques of the Church have challenged me to grow in my understanding of Christ and His Church. (It is always disconcerting when someone throws political correctness to the wind and points out in no uncertain terms that the Emperor has no clothes.) And make no mistake about it, the Church has it's own form of political correctness. Every bit as silly, dysfunctional and sometimes damaging of the Truth as the political correctness that flows from more "liberal" institutions. They have also blessed me by listening, really listening to me as I have given them the reasons for my love and hope for the Catholic Church.

And so to the three amigos about whom I write [You know who you are]: I thank God and I thank you for the opportunity for spiritual growth our conversations have afforded me.

Pax et Bonum!

~Friar Rex