Author: Franciscan

Good day to you all.

One of the hallmarks of being human, it would seem, is to seek out the DIFFERENCES rather than the LIKENESS we see in each other. I wonder if it could come from some deep down pride that says that there is no one like me.

Well, in God’s eyes that is very true. God made each of us unique in every way. Even twins, I should know being one.

But in stead of being in awe of the differences we have from each other, we must also come to stand in awe of how alike we are. We are all “hard wired “ in the very same way. 

It is like what Shakespeare’s character Shylock in his play “THE MERCHANT OF VENISE” says, “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh, if you poison us do we not die?”

It might do us well to look for the commonality in all of us rather than what is different. It is like a work of art. Though the artist may use different colors or images, it still comes from the hand of the same artist. 

If that be the case, then though God has used different colors, and images, the fact still remains that the end result is by the same artist, by the same God and Father who may you and me.

As Maya Angelou wrote in her pome HUMAN FAMILY  

“I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,than we are unalike
We are more alike, my friendsthen we are unalike.”

Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf

and theBros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.  

Hello.
Well today we remember Christopher Columbus Day. Now as I recall this day, we went to school and learned about this man and how he “Discovered” America. Well, I don’t remember anyone saying that America was lost.
Anyway, Columbus was one of the many explorers during his time that were willing to leave their home and take a chance to go to into the unknown.  Old Chris’s hope was to find a Westward way to Asia and to the wealth the Spice Route held for those in Europe. And as it would happen , he came across a vast land mass that until 1492 was unknown to him and his fellow explorers.
Today, many of us have our own way of looking at this “holiday”. For some it is a day of celebration of some kind or another, maybe with a parade of some other kind of festival. For others we would want this day to be know as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” 
We each have our way of looking at this day we say that Columbus discovered America. But the truth is that for thousands of years, this land was home to untold number of peoples that the European had no idea existed.
So often we find ourselves wresting with what this day should be. But we also must remember that Columbus lived in a very different time and space than we. We cannot judge the people in the 1400’s with the same “yardstick” we use today.
Columbu said, “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” And these words can be applied to ourselves today. We will never be able to grow and move on if we are afraid of losing sight of that shore we call security. Sometimes we just must let go and move into the uncharted waters. 
Yes, there is much we may feel that Columbus could have done to and for the indigenous peoples who were living in this “New World.”  But we cannot judge others of the distant past with the same morals and standards we have today.
Maybe we can use this day to see where I stand in my relations with those who are different than I am, those of a different culture, color, religion.  Many a year has pasted since Columbus set for on this “New Land”. But we must agree that some of those old prejudices still can be seen in our land today. May God give us the grace to truly believe that we are ALL sisters and brothers of the same Father. 
Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf and the Bros and the Srs of theFranciscan House of Prayer. 🙏  

Hello. A blessed Sunday to you all.
Our Gospel for today seems to leave a big question in our minds. At first reading our thoughts go to the man who was asked to attend a wedding banquet and yet way thrown out into the darkness because he did not have on the proper attire.  
We all know that were are “dress codes” which are appropriate in society. When one is invited to a “Black Tie Affair” it does not mean that one wares a “black tie”. The dress code is that of a  tuxedo. 
But as we know, the parabolas of Jesus contain a great deal of truth, which is woven into the story. It is obvious that Jesus is not giving hints to the Temple leaders about proper dress when they are invited to a wedding. There is a deeper meaning of why the man was expelled from the banquet. The Canadian pastor, Chelsey Harmon puts it this way, “God’s calling to a new life in Christ does not end with the invitation to faith. It ruins deep and wide, transforming our living, breathing, everyday walking around existence. Those who accept the invitation will find that along the way to the wedding banquet of heaven, they will put on the ways of our faithful Saviour.”  
Pastor Harmon goes on to tell us “When we accept the invitation from God, heed the message of His servants, we respond with obedience to the will of the  

Father in heaven. To do so is to clothe ourselves with righteousness – the appropriate attire for the things to which we have been called by God.”
Our call to follow Jesus is just not where we go to worship on a Saturday afternoon or on a Sunday morning. It requires us to totally reform ourselves, to as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans “To cloth yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ”
In responding to the call that God gives us, we are called to transform ourselves, to “cloth” ourselves in the “wedding garment” of heaven.
Nowhere in the Gospels did Jesus tell us that following Him would be easy. He told us from the very beginning, “Pick up your cross and follow Me.”
This Gospel story give us much to ponder during the week. Maybe we may begin to “cloth” ourselves with our own new wedding garment. We may not be ready to buy one, but maybe we can check out the various sizes and colors they come in???
Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf and theBros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.

Hi, hope all goes well. And here we are at the end of another week. It is like that old soap opera in TV that opens up, “Like sand through an hour glass, so go the days of our lives.”

It would seem that we are stuck in this thing we call “Ordinary Time.” But the truth is , this time we call ordinary is anything but ordinary. It is during this time between the great celebration of Christmas and Easter that we have the time to reflect and begin to live our what we have celebrated. We need to remember that these great celebration are given us that we may begin to reform our lives and truly begin to live the Christian life every day and not just two days a year.

We can do all the reading we want about Jesus, the babe of Bethlehem angels singing “Glory to God in the highest” and the lowly shepherds coming to the birth place to pay homage to the “New born King of the Jews.” Or we can decide what it is that we are going to give up for Lent, and what we are going to serve at our Easter meal.  But surly, we have to understand that these feasts are more than family gatherings, and presents under a tree.

N. T. Wright, an Anglian Bishop and English New Testament scholar says, “Jesus’s death was seen by Jesus himself . . .as the ultimate means by which God”s kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven.”
Though these happy and blessed days have come down to us from a great long tradition, they are reminders of who and what we are, or should be. 

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Jesus came not to make bad people better, but dead souls alive.” 

As we walk through these ordinary days towards another one of these great feasts, may our souls become more alive to be ready to encounter the Lord, not in the number of Christmas cards or presents we get but rather that we are ready to “put on Christ” and begin to come to a deeper understanding of what it is we are celebrating!!

Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf

and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Payer. 

Greeting, I pray that all goes well.

It seems that we are just flying through this year. Before long, we will see the leaves change color if they have not started already, and then comes the snow. But here is Florida one needs a calendar to remind ourselves the month we are in. Just the other day I asked a friend of mine when she would be coming back down from New York. I said would ”it be after Easter?” No, she said, after Christmas. I did not have my calendar in hand.

The other day I mentioned that God is constantly revealing Himself and will be doing so throughout eternity. If we were to liken it here on earth I would have to say that it is like education, we can never stop learning and growing. 

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, “True education is a kind of never ending story – a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts , of persistent newness.” Fresh starts, new beginnings, persistent newness. These words should make us want to go back to school, read a book, listen to a Pod-cast. Anything that will fill those little voids in our minds and souls Anything that will help us to grow, even if it is for nothing else but for our own enlightenment. 

We are part of an “never ending story” Even when we leave this world behind, our story has just begun. God’s eternal revelation will be our “classroom” He will be our library. 

As a student we had the opportunity to speak with a woman who had a near death experience. She said that there were two things that were eternal. Learning and the other was Love. What a glorious experience we have waiting for us. 

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Greetings. Hope all goes well.
I know we all have favorite sayings that we use in our speech when we are talking with our friends. But have you ever wondered where these sayings come from. 

Many of them come from sayings of famous people which have filtered through time down to today. Some may have changed but many have kept their meaning.

One such saying which some thought came from Mark Twain, but In all reality this saying comes from a former student of Sigmund Freud by the name of Theodor Veik (1965) who was a noted Austrian psychoanalyst who wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
But Mark Twain did pen a very similar saying in his work, “THE GOLDEN AGE: A TALE OF TO-DAY.” (1874) Twain’s saying goes “History does not repeat itself.” 

Have you ever played that party game Telephone? Someone whispers something into the ear of the person sitting next to them. That person then whispered it the to person next to them and so on. When it gets back to the person who first whispered the saying, then speak it out loud, first what they heard, then the original saying. It is very interesting to hear how different what the last person heard and what the first person actually said. 

The history of our Church is very much like this. Down through the ages, we have stories about our “heroes”. And through the ages, much may have been added to the original story to make this person “bigger than life”, as we do with all our heroes. 

In the long run, the actual truth of the story is not the point. The point of these stories is to edify and inspire those who are hearing them. 
The TRUTH comes to us in many variations of the original story. But remember, the story is only the means of transmitting the truth, even though in itself it is not the truth.

 
Let us begin to look for the truth which may be in the story and not the just the box it came in

.
Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf

and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.

Greetings, hope all is well.
If you have grown up Catholic, the rosary surly is not new to you. It has been part of our faith tradition for many a year.

Today we remember Our Lady of the Rosary. It is said that she appeared to St. Dominic in the Thirteenth century holding a rosary in her hand. Dominic took it as a sign and began to spread the devotion to others. As his order grew, the Dominicans were known as the ones who truly founded the prayer of the rosary in the Church.

Bishop Fulton Sheen, who has been raised to Blessed, tells us this about the rosary is based on the 150 psalms. “The Rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the sublime of the next. The power of the Rosary is beyond description.”

As Blessed Fulton tells us, the rosary is a book for the blind. It tells of the mysteries of the story of salvation. Just like stained glass windows have been the bible for those who could not read, there are other practices in our Church that were developed to aid those who were uneducated to be able to come to understand and deepen their faith in the beauty of our Church. 

Let us keep in mind that the Rosary is one PRACTICE of prayer. We know that we have many others that fit our spirituality. The important thing is that we use them to bring us closer to God. We may find that just placing ourselves in the presence of God and speaking freely from our heart is truly prayer. 

Our Father longs to hear from us, His children. And as any father longs to converse with his little ones, so God does the same.

Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf

and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.  

Hello, hope you’ll had a wonderful weekend.

One of the most difficult times as a priest has been dealing with people who believe what that believe and that is the end of the story. 

In some circles, these people would be called FANATICS.  I remember getting a Facebook memo from a former student of mine. He had posted something and someone responded in such a way as if they had all the answers. Unfortunately they did not even know the question!

The philosopher and writer from France, Voltaire (1694-1778), wrote once, “Fanaticism is a monster that pretends to be the child of religion.” When I read this I could not but agree with him more. Those who think they know all there is about something, be that religion, politics, or baking a cake, they know all about it and will not be moved to the possibility that there could be, just could be, another way of looking at the situation. 

No one, no one, has ALL the answers!! The only one I can think of would be God. And, as my mother would say, “and He’s not telling.”

Part of life is constantly learning and growing. Theologians tell us that even God is in a constant flux, He is constantly revealing Himself for all eternity. That is going to be one of the marvelous experiences of heaven, having a God who is constantly revealing Himself so that even after an eternity, we just may begin to get an understanding of who and what God is. JUST THE BEGINNING.

Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf

and the Bros and Srs of theFranciscan House of Prayer.

Hello, I hope you all had a good weekend.
I don’t know why, but I got it into my head to go through some of the many stats of papers that I have in the office. Well today I came across some of the dialogue in the movie called CONCLAVE. This is a movie about the election of a new pope. 
What takes place in these gatherings is bound by secrecy. This has been the hallmark of the Conclave since it began many a year ago.

I did come across a very interesting quote which I would like to share with you all. It is made by one of the chief characters by Cardinal Lawrence one of the leading

 Cardinals. In discussion with a fellow cardinal, Lawerence says, “Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.”

How often have we looked at our faith as a living thing?  We may think of our faith as some age old tradition and we are just going through the motions like decorating our house for Christmas. 
It is only when we make our faith alive, only then will it have an effect upon our world. And we do this by putting into practice this thing we call our FAITH. It is more than the fact we go to a particular church on Sunday. It means taking what we have done at that service we attended and living it out in the world. 

It would have done Jesus no good if he preached in the synagog then when about his life as he father may have taught him in making a cabinet or a chair for someone in town.
Jesus told us to go and do likewise. Maybe this week we may see where we will be able to put this thing faith into practice and see if it does make a difference. It may not happen right away but I am sure that if you and I begin in our little part of the world, well, we just don’t know what God has in store.  

Peace and All Good, Fr. Vinnie, osf

and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Payer.  

HAPPY FEAST DAY!!
Well today we celebrate the feast of our Holy Father St. Francis (1181-1226). I as sure the all of you have heard of him, if not you surly have seen a statue of him in a garden as a bird bath.  
There is much that can be said about this man from the little town of Assisi north of Rome He was the son of a rather wealthy merchant in town. He was known to have been quite the “man about town”. In his early days, he truly live the ‘good life.”
But somewhere along the way, as with most of us, Francis had to”grow-up.” He found that his “foot loose and fancy free life style” would have to come to an end. He thought that he would become a knight and fight for Assisi against the neighboring town of Perugia.  And as we know was captured and spent the next year in a prison until his father was able to pay his ransom. 
The next adventure was that he wanted to go off to the Holy Land and fight the Muslims to “liberate” the holy shrines there. Well, God in his way, had something else in mind and as he was taking care of hie horse, as the story goes, he heard a voice telling him to return to Assisi. This event began his great conversion. The following days, many thought that he had some kind of mental breakdown. But Francis was undergoing a profound remaking of himself into what God was calling him to be. 
I guess we all have had some experience in our lives where we had to “grow up.” It may not have been as dramatic as we see with Francis but it did put up on the road, as Robert Frost would say, the “one less taken”.
Later in life Francis would write, “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Given in what Francis went through in his life, I would dare say he lived out every word of that statement.
Francis’ life would be a good read. God, in His own way, took this “man about town” and made him into a saint that is venerated through out the world. Just keep in mind as a dear friend of mine told me, “God don’t make junk!”
Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.