Author: Franciscan

God day. Hope you are all well. Yes, I am still having difficulties with this computer. I just hope you all are receiving these meditation.  

Today’s Gospel, if it is the first time you are hearing this passage from Matthew’s Gospel one might get the wrong idea about how Jesus interacted with those who were outside of the Chosen People. Today we read about a Canaanite woman coming to Jesus to request a healing for her daughter who was possessed by an evil spirit.  Even being told by Jesus that it is not right that the children’s food be given to the dogs. Here Jesus uses a term for what we would know as a puppy or a small house dog. Yet this woman comes back at him and says true, but even the puppies eat the scraps that fall from the table.

Only a mother would put herself on the line for her child. Jesus does not get off so easily with mother. She is hell bent on getting help for her child even from this wondering preacher of whom she had heard of who could work miracles. This may be her last hope to help her daughter.

St. Augustine once wrote, “Hope has two daughters’ their names are Anger and Courage. Anger a the way things are and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”. 

“Great is your faith”, Jesus tells this woman. Only a mother would have such a faith. Because of her belief that Jesus was able to help, no put down, no insult was going to put her off her mission. And as we are told, the daemon left her daughter and health was restored.

Sometimes, Faith is like what St. Augustine tells us that Faith has her two daughters who are always ready to come to our aid and give us a clear path to be strong as this Canaanite woman was in the face of the Son of God.  

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Hello.

Today we celebrate of the major feasts in the Church calendar. In some places it is known as the “DORMITION” or the “falling asleep” of Mary. We in the West know it as the Assumption. It is a feast when Mary was taken up into heaven, body and soul.

As you know we do not have a great deal of firsthand information. Most of what we have from the early Church come down to us by stories told word of mouth. It is much earlier to remember stories than facts and figures.

St Bernard of Clairvaux gives us such a story about the falling asleep of the Blessed Mother. He tells us, “When finally the Blessed Virgin had fulfilled the course of this life, and was not to be called out of this world, all the apostles were gathered together form each region to her house and behold the Lord Jesus came with his angels, and received her soul . . . at the  break of day the apostles lifted her body with the couch and laid it in the sepulcher, and they guarded it awaiting the coming of the Lord. And behold the Lord stood by them and commanded that the holy body be taken up and born on a cloud into paradise, where now, reunited with her soul . . .  “

Much truth is relayed to us in story form. True, word for word, maybe not. But true non the less. Or Blessed Mother ascended to her rightful place with the One she bore in her womb, nursed and cared for and kept vigil at the foot of the Cross.   

Queen of heaven and earth, she is that. But let us not forget, she is still our Mother who loves each one of us with a love only a mother has.

Peace and All Good

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and srs of the

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Hello, peace to you all. Today we remember Maximilian Kolbe, priest and martyr.

St. Maximilian born in 1894 and died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1941. He was a Conventual Franciscan friar and had a deep devotion to Our Blessed Mother who he referred to as the “Immaculata.” 

After his first arrest he said to his community, “Courage, my sons. Don’t you see that we are leaving on a mission? They pay our fare in the bargain. What a piece of good luck! The thing to do now is to pray well in order to win as many souls as possible. Let us then, tell the Blessed Virgin that we are content, and that she can do with us anything she wishes.” 

Maximillian offered to offer himself for a fellow prisoner who was one of ten to die because of the escape of another prisoner, who was a husband and a father. This man was present at the beatification of Maximilian in 1971.  

Maximillian was “one of kind”. So were all the saints. They stood out from the crowd and were not ashamed of who they were. 

I remember one spiritual writing saying that God was like a great fire. Most of us stand close enough to be warm, but far enough away not to get burnt. A saint is one who runs head long into the flames, and comes out terribly disfigured but magnificent transformed. Maximillian and all the others we remember and those who we will never know until we meet them in heaven, are those who plunged into the midst of God’s blazing  love and emerged magnificently transformed by God’s love.

Today as we remember St. Maximillian who was willing to give up his life, not only for his faith in God but also for his fellow man, let us try, just try to take a step closer to that great fire which is just a symbol of the love God has for each one of us.   

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Greetings, hope all goes well with you. 

Both my brothers have children and grandchildren. I know that they delight in the sight that their family grows into the future.

Having worked in hospitals and the health care system, I cannot imagine what parents go through when they lose a child. I have seen the effect it takes upon them and I cannot imagine how their heart must be torn apart. 

When my thought go to this I cannot imagine what it must have been for Mary as she stood at the foot of the cross. The pain has got to be unspeakable.

Not to make this meditation so dark, I write this after reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he asks the question, “What kind of world do we want to leave our children? What is the legacy going to be? What do they have to look forward to?

Dietrich tells us, “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”  Is our society a moral society that cares for the other as if they were family? Or is it one that we take what we need and good luck to the rest. 

I know we all have our ideas and concepts of what a moral society may look like. We all have our political standings and points of view. That is OK. But the question is always before us, what do I want to leave to my children and their children, and theirs . . .!!

“God, give us the wisdom to know what we must do for those who come after us.”

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, ofs and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Greetings.

I am sure there are days when, for whatever reason, you feel alone. Not just being with others, but a feeling in your being that you are alone. No matter how busy we are, we are always ready to welcome the phone call, the knock on the door. It has a very sinking feeling. 

We know that we always have someone we can call, someone who we know will fill that empty void. But just right now, there is something missing in the center of our being. Why? We do not know. Is there any reason? We don’t know.

Dear Pope Francis left us these words for thought, “Every step, every effort, every test, every fall and every recovery have a sense within God’s design for salvation as He wants life – not death – and joy – not pain – for His people.”

No, we are never alone. The Father is always there. As Jesus reminded His disciples, “I will always be with you, even to the ends of the earth.”

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the

Franciscan House of Prayer. 

Hello!

Not too long ago I spoke about time. It is how we keep order of our lives, our days, weeks, months, years. It is how we calculate moment of our day. It is something we believe we have so much of until we don’t.

The American author and businessman, Hervey McKay. once wrote, “Time is for free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you cannot get it back.”

Time is something like so many other things we have, we take for granted. As they say in Italian, “Domani, domani, ma domani non arriva mai.” (“Tomorrow, tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes”) Tomorrow is promised to no one.

We all have to learn to not put off until tomorrow what we can today.

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.

Greetings, hope all is well

As I thought about what I would write to you today, I realized that on a Sunday, I usually center the theme on the Gospel. Well, as I read through the readings for this Sunday, I could not be drawn to the first reading from 1Kings:19:9a – 11-13a.

Elijah is on a high mountain and is told by God that He would reveal His face to him. Now, in the Jewish tradition, to see the face of God would mean the death of that person.

Elijah hides in a cave. A strong wind is blowing but God is not in the windstorm. Then there was an earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake. At long last there is a “tiny whispering sound” At this sound Elijah hid his face less he see the face of God, he uncovered his face to only see the back of God. 

Have we ever thought where we would see God? Would it be in a mighty wind, or a destructive earthquake?  Well, Elijah found out that God was in neither,  but rather in the soft whispering sound any loving parent  makes when they would approach their child. Maybe we need to look to see if we can see God in that gentle breeze, that faint whisper. It just might be that it is there we will see our loving Father. as he reaches down to touch our cheek with the tips of His fingers.

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the

Franciscan House of Prayer.  

Hello, and a Happy Feast to all our Dominican Brothers and Sisters. We are told that Francis and Dominic met a few times during their lives.

One of the hallmarks of the saints is that they say this earthly life as a testing ground of their faith and a preparation for the life to come.

Each saw that heaven was the place where we really belong. It was this that Dominic had in mind when he uttered his final words to his brothers. Dominic said upon his death, “Do not weep for I shall be more useful to you after my death, and I shall help you then more effectively than during my life.”

This is what faith is all about. Knowing that this life is but a foreshadowing of the life we were created for when God, after He completed the creation of the heavens and the earth, after he took the clay of the earth and breathed into it His own breath and created mankind, His own Spirit that does not have an ending, only eternal beginning.

God, look upon his creation, and if I may take a little literary license, with a smile on His face, and said, “It is good, it is Very Good.”   

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the 

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayerl.

Greeting and a happy Friday. I guess this only make sense if your workweek is Monday through Friday. For homemakers, one day is very much the same as any other. Well anyway, A Blessed Day to you All.

It’s nice to be served. You go to a fancy restaurant, and someone is there to answer any questions, pure your water, wine, bring the food and so on.

Yet in the scriptures Jesus, the Son of God, tells us, “”Even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve. . . ” (Matthew 20:28) We also read the same in the Gospel of Mark 10:45.

Albert Schweitzer picks up this theme when he said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only one among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

As much as we like being served, we will receive much more joy in serving the other, for the other in all reality is Christ whom we serve when we minister to the needs of our sister and brother.

May your weekend be blessed and safe.

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the

Franciscan House of Prayer. 

The Basilica of St. Mary Major is one of the oldest churches in Rome. It is the place that Pope Francis wished to be buried.

Religious buildings have always had a special spot in the human heart. If we took a tour of Europe, we would see a number of temples and other religious spots where people for thousands of years came to worship their gods. 

For us Christians, the word “CHURCH’ is derived from the Greek which is translated into the English word “gathering”. But for us it is more than a building which we “gather” in. WE are the CHURCH. We are the gathering. A gathering place can be in a gothic cathedral, or in someone’s living room. 

We need to remember that we, not a building is CHURCH. We are the Body of Christ here on this earth until He come once again in all of His Father’s glory.

Yes, we need a “place” to call home. We need a place where we can gather as God’s people. But let us not forget that WE are CHURCH!!

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, osf and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.