Blessed Angela of Foligno

Today is the feast of Blessed Angela of Foligno, Religious, Third Order

Blessed Angela was born in Umbria in the year 1248. Putting aside the allurements of the world which attracted her for a time she joined the Third Order of Penance of St. Francis and drew many women to follow her example. She was conspicuous for her fervent love of Gd and fellowmen, especially the poor, and for her humility, patience and poverty. Blessed by God with heavenly favors she had a special devotion to the mysteries of the life of Christ and left remarkable writings on spiritual topics which gained for her the title "Teacher of Theologians." She died at Foligno in the year 1309. (from the common of holy women, 1462)

The following was taken from the spiritual writings of Blessed Angela:

My God, make me worthy to grasp your ardent and ineffable love overflowing from the Blessed Trinity and effecting the profound mystery of the holy Incarnation, the source of our salvation. The Incarnation does two things for us: it fills us with love, and it renders us certain of our salvation. O Love, exceeding our understanding! There is no greater love than for God to become man to make me God.

O Love that emptied itself! You abased yourself to make me when you took on our human nature. You did not abase yourself to diminish yourself or your divinity. It is the unfathomable mystery of your Incarnation that causes me to use these expressions. You who surpass our understanding have become understandable! You who are uncreated have become a creature! You who surpass our power of thought have become comprehensible! You who cannot be touched can now be felt by physical contact!

Lord, make me worthy to plum the depths of this profound love which you manifested to us in this most Incarnation. Make me worthy, uncreated God, to know the depth of your love and glowing charity. Make me worthy to grasp the unspeakable love that you communicated to us when you showed us your Son, Jesus Christ, in the Incarnation, and the way the Son in turn showed you to us as Father. Make me worthy, Lord to recognize and grasp your love forward us when you created me.

You who surpass man's understanding, make me capable of recognizing and grasping your inestimable burning love by which you emptied yourself. From all eternity you chose to let the human race see you face to face, even as you, Most High, willed to see our face. Supreme Being, make me worthy to understand this the greatest of gifts, that all the angels and saints have no other gift save to behold you, the object of their love, and to love and contemplate you.

O gift surpassing all gifts because you are love. O greatest Good, you condescend to have us recognize you who are love, and to bring us to love such love. All those who come into your presence will be filled according to the love they have. And there is nothing else that could lead the blessed to contemplate you, nothing else but genuine love.

Taken from Proper Office of Franciscan Saints and Blesseds in the Liturgy of the Hours. This book is available in the Good News BookShop at the Franciscan Prayer Center, Independence, MO.

Come Let Us Adore

Come, Let Us Adore,

Come, let us adore….Jesus Christ, the gift of God Our Father, delivered personally by His Servant, Mary, to a world still waiting for a reality that can be trusted, longing for the cloud of depression to evaporate, breathlessly clinging to a conviction that yes, God is still with us, and will stay.

Come, let us adore....a noble, voiceless, Child, born to the humble and unknown, a Child with our human needs and His boundless gifts. When we look out and beyond ourselves, we find we are in the midst of people who still look, who unwaveringly believe, who continue to see the face of God elbow-close in their own private reality. We are surrounded by warm-blooded gifts personally planned and continually sustained by our Heavenly Father so that our family hearth will stay lit, our neighborhood watch will remain secure, and our faith will live.

Come, let us adore….that is, let us put aside the ambition of perfect and important, preferred and proper. Let us pick up the poor and lonely. Let us look beyond ourselves; and let us not be surprised at being surrounded by the caring and thoughtful. Trusting friends lighten our walk and quicken our pace toward that which lasts beyond the ribbon and the light. We remember that the one who came still walks with us.

Come, let us adore....the Incarnate God who came to share our human nature so that we may realize the Divine Plan of being united with Him.. God comes among us as human to show us the way to Godliness. We have seen; we have heard; we believe; and we worship the Gift of God the Father so that we may have Life with Him, now and in eternity.. Awed that we are included and cared for., we daily care and include. In His littleness the Son of God made man assures us of the greatness of His Love.

Come, let us adore....the Gift of God the Father Who keeps in His Heart our weary world. We join St. Francis, on our knees in gratitude for and in fidelity to our call to be Seraphic Servants For the privilege of being called and forgiven, we, humbly forgive in His name. May the Christ of Christmas lift us beyond the temporal and the tempting. May the God, Whose Only Begotten Son is with us, be praised and glorified, now and forever. May our lives be profound witnesses to Peace in His Limitless Love.

Sister Josephine Boyles, OSF, Spiritual Assistant

Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist
Independence, MO, USA

(picture: Giotto's "Instruction at the Crib at Greccio"

We are officially established!

On September 17 Bishop Robert Finn signed the documents that allowed our fraternity to continue to the final step of becoming canonically established.

On October 4. Fr. Felix Petrovsky performed the ceremony.

Fr. Felix Petrovsky, OFM, St. Josephine Boyles, OSF, Spiritual Assistant, and Jeanette Harriman of Our Lady of Sorrows Fraternity sign the documents in the Chapel of our Lady of Angels.

From the Summa off Tommy Augustine-Art.2

Last month I mentioned Lynda and me moving after spending thirty-two years at the same address. The Moving Process still fills our days, taking our time, sapping our strength, and zapping our energy.

However, we can see the end as the first house has sold. Yes, sold. Buyers are a young couple, first house, two kids, moving into OUR place on top of OUR memories! Unless we remove the memories first. That’s what happens when one scrapes them off the walls, sucks them out of the carpets, and stuffs them in those special moving boxes, the ones for moving hearts. There is room, I am told, for moving all the good memories we cherish, all those we‘d like to re-visit on long evenings with special people, to the new house. The Moving Process is also the opportunity to move on without yesterday’s bad memories and bad dreams and all their poison we harvest to use so methodically to infect our present moments. We all do it. Listen in any group as someone (maybe you? maybe me?) rehearses to others the hurts nursed for decades.

We shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to stick such dreams and memories into black plastic sacks, tie the strings extra tight, and then (when they stop struggling) leave them at the curb on trash day. Unfortunately, sometimes old friends are left behind that way. What and who was precious move inadvertently from the core to the periphery of our lives-and everyone moves on, accidentally forgetting those once treasured.

Purgation of habits and attitudes works about the same. This is a lot like facing Purgatory now or Purgatory later. I, unfortunately, am finding there’s going to be plenty left over for the later if I keep at my current rate of spiritual development. I talk holiness. I tell Franciscan tales. I fantasize what knowing Padre Pio would have been like. Then I realize that when I found reason to skip confession this week from my parish priest--again, it makes any thoughts of much holiness on my part look premature. Without Mercy, they are truly stillborn.

After all is said and done, I confess I am really pretty comfortable spending the day sniping at others, foregoing repentance for self-righteousness. Surely somebody reading this understands. You know, it’s like when you awake to find what you held precious as a “gift of discernment” was really a “critical spirit”.

Again and again, I have to move back to Matthew 7:5. That’s the one about the log in my eye and the speck in yours. I can discern your behavior. I just can’t judge your being or personhood. God does that with precision. Colossians 3 fills in a lot here. Read it. Pray it as you move through the words.

It’s a powerful chapter if you’re at all like me, who when I’m climbing the ladder of spiritual progress, suddenly realize, the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. So again I move it and start over--again, postponing spiritual ecstasy at least one more day.