MINISTER’S CORNER
A little over a year has passed since our elections and it’s time for a review.
We’ve all worked diligently on our needs and wants this past year with some progress and some still to go. Living so far apart is still our biggest challenge. I find that I myself don’t reach out as much as I could between our gatherings and connect. As we are mostly Council these days, it feels as if we are business and hardly get to the wonderful and thought provoking challenges that our Order is known for. I’m so blessed myself to be involved in the formation with our two Candidates and the growth possibilities inherent with these gatherings.
I’m wanting other ideas and ways we can stay connected and feel as if we’re growing in our faith while apart. On that note I want to put forth the idea of meeting more often in the future.
We will have the opportunity with the upcoming new Formation Center at Sacred Heart for getting together more often and I feel we could really grow from this. Meeting once a month for council and twice a month for Gathering might (might I say) afford us the opportunity to see some of us whom can’t meet on only the third Sunday of each month. This is of course in the not so far away future; however, it’s something I’d like for you all to consider and get back with me about.
We could have two completely different formats for each gathering and only have a Council meeting before one of them. This gives us more of an opportunity to just “BE” with and share our lives and concerns with each other and in prayer. This could give us another chance to take turns with the Catholic art and song or different books we are interested in as individuals in sharing with each other.
Please prayerfully consider and maybe give me some of YOUR ideas as options for our own growth possibilities
Pax et Bonum,
Debbie Wasche OFS
UP AND COMING
We gather every third Sunday of the month at the Sacred Heart Parish Conference Room in Medford, OR, from 1:30-4:00. The third Sunday in July at our regular gathering there will be a special ushering of Acsa (Ace) Gregory into Candidacy as called by the Holy Spirit. Congratulatons and many blessings on her!
Our Agenda each month until further notice, without participants named, is as follows:
Opening from Ritual Book
Councilor and SA Reports
Morning Prayer from Franciscan Morning and Evening Praise
Hymn
Invocation
Antiphons
Prayers
1st Reading
2nd Reading
Response
Intercessions
Reading From Rule
Region Vocation Prayer
Ongoing Formation Continuing JPIC in FUN Manual – All
Of Course! Food! – Bring something to share
Final Prayer
Blessing
As reminded by Patricia SA, Rule 25 states that “all the brothers and sisters should offer a contribution according to their means.” PLEASE remember to make it a priority to give something at each gathering or mail to our Treasurer Hank.
We are also looking forward with wonderful happiness, preparing for Lois McWhorter’s profession in October. We thank you in advance for your generosity should Debbie and the Council ask you to be a part of a profession committee.
Sadly our Regional Visitation has been temporarily postponed, but we will be informed when it is to take place.
The National OFS has set out a mission call to all Secular Franciscans to help the Diocese of Las Cruces provide hospitality to refugees as they are released from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement into Southern New Mexico. You can help with cash or other personal goods. (For some reason after many attempts, I have not found out how to import a PDF file into this program! so please see below).
National Councilor, Donna Hollis OFS, lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico and helps to lead Project Oak Tree. Donna invites us to come and see, come and volunteer or simply send some items that are much needed. Please click Project Oak Tree Flyer for details.
We received a special note of thanks from Fr. Tom Smith, OFM Conv for initial checks sent as part of Project Oak Tree. He also added a personal note: “I hope your fraternity can flourish and continue to show compassion.” Let’s talk more about this!
“Before – You, Today – Us”
Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame quote from the Gypsies who were being barred from entering Paris.
“The invitation to accompaniment is a fragile invitation into the heart of our Christian faith – an invitation to witness the spirit present in the suffering and fidelity of the poor today.
We are invited to move step by step from our positions of privilege into greater solidarity with the poor and with Christ who is incarnate on the margins of society. But our lifetime journey as non-poor must move beyond solidarity with the struggles of the marginalized, for the non-poor, too, are children of God, called to be subjects of our own stories.
Their suffering and their efforts to claim a more human existence are one with the suffering of Jesus and with His announcement of the inbreaking, Reign of God. The lives of these marginal ones continue the crucifixion and promise of Resurrection. As a redemptive presence in our broken world, the poor accompany us.
As we are accompanied, everything changes. Common struggle begins to replace
destructive individualism; generosity and concern for the other overcome individual and collective greed. Prayer, sacrament, community, and images of God are all transformed. Prayer becomes prophetic and, as Walter Bruggermann says, “Impolite”. Eucharist is nourishment for the long haul, a deep source of consolation and joy, and a profound challenge always to share the bread of hunger.
Francis’ moment with the leper, then, has become a paradigm for understanding Francis. It was a grace-filled moment for him, a time of crisis, a kairos. We reflect on it because it explains so much about him. Francis always pointed to lepers and to the “dwelling places of lepers” as places where Franciscans should be.”
St. Francis and the Foolishness of God, 1993. Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, OFM, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Stuart Taylor. Orbis Books
Ongoing Formation
We continue discussing JPIC from the FUN Manual. We discover that even though we are brothers and sisters in Francis, our visions are not homogenous and we are learning generosity of heart along with the material.
In neccessariis unita, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas – Unity in necessary things, liberty in doubtful things, love in all things.
Patricia Mihalic Doyle, OFS SA
Sister Death
Our region’s 2019 Annual Ministers’ Meeting “AMM” was in early June. I offered information about the weekend at our June fraternity gathering.
I took a few pictures at the “AMM.” You know the saying about a picture being worth 1,000 words. I am including one picture from our Troubadours of Peace 2019 Memorial Service.
This writing, then, only needs a few words.
Seven OFS from our region were honored at our memorial service, five women and two men. Our fraternity did not have anyone being honored this year.
During the service someone from the fraternity offers memories and information about their deceased member. Each member, of course, had unique qualities and giftedness they offered in fraternity life. A picture of each was shown to us, and a candle lit. The pictures are always placed together.
This year the service was extra special to me. Deacon Juan led the service. He told us later it was his first time. He was nervous. He said it was spontaneous that after reading the name of the deceased he called out, “PRESENTE.” Wow! He also allowed us to name our own loved ones in the service.
I had a part in prayer — the Intercessions. Isn’t that the usual for me?!
I write this for those who have not experienced this memorial service.
Later, in a group I said how touching it is to know that each of us will be remembered when Sister Death comes, by our brothers and sisters in our Franciscan Order. Her eyes lit up, another OFS offered being very grateful for this.
You have been called. You do what is yours to do. You will be remembered.
(First Day in Heaven)
“The great women always recall us to the deeper needs and the greater destinies; and so they try to save the world from the shallow, the slick, the facile and the cruel and to show us that the world of men is not meant to be either a battlefield or a laboratory, but a family.” Heart of Compassion, The Vocation of Women Today, Gerald Mann, Sophia Institute Press
Happy Feast of St. Clare August 11!
“For Clare, Christ became the ‘tu’, the ‘thou’, of her life, and in the exchanges of prayer she and Christ revealed their essential mystery to each other. When we also commit ourselves to Christ, we will also discover that he is, as he said, the doorway of God, who is the true life, and only human lunacy would dream of living without life.
On the community level this spirituality of exchange was lived out exteriorly as material poverty and almsgiving. The sisters lived entirely on what was given them but they also worked hard, spinning, weaving, making things with the cloth, the proceeds of which were for others, for giving away. So even materially their way of life expressed this spirituality of exchange and was quite different from the monastic ethos of self-sufficiency. Clare was not acting out of idealism but logically developing her insights into the meaning of following Christ. She was not seeking simplicity of life-style for its own sake, nor to avoid being a burden to anyone, but only to do what she had seen Christ do, to live by sharing and generosity. It was risky, but that is part of the reality of being poor. It depended on others who were under no obligations or contract, but it was not a wild act of irresponsibility. It was a free choice of vulnerabilty over agression, of littleness over power, of physical hardship over luxury. It was an option for those at the bottom of the pile, a decision to be among the exploited rather than to exploit. She learnt it from Christ, who was laid in an animal’s crib, nailed on the cross as an example, a speculum for us….
‘Therefore, contemplate the unimaginal love through which Christ was willing to suffer on the Tree of the cross and, on that same Tree, to die the most disgraceful kind of death. Then may you always catch fire more and more strongly from this burning love!'”
This Living Mirror, Reflections on Clare of Assisi, Sister Frances Teresa OSC, Orbis Books
Lois McWhorter, Candidate
DEAR ST ANTHONY
Thank you for finding my glasses
To tell the truth, I didn’t think
you could do it, but my friend said I should try
and sure enough there they were!
Now I am thinking……
If you really can find things, well
this is what I really need.
Dear St Anthony,
I seem to have lost my patience.
I am having a hard day
people are driving me crazy
and I’m about to blow.
Could you help me find my patience.
it was here a minute ago,
but now I look for it and it is gone.
St Anthony could you help me find my patience
so I can get through the day without exploding.
Dear St Anthony, I seem to have lost my imagination.
when I was a child the world seemed full of possibility.
Now all I see are barriers.
Could you help me find my imagination
so I can break those barriers down?
Dear St Anthony, I seem to have lost my courage.
there is so much pain and need in the world
yet I do so little because I am afraid.
afraid of being hurt,
afraid of being wrong
afraid of change.
St Anthony could you help me find my courage
to do what I need to do.
Dear St Anthony I seem to have lost my humility.
Sometimes I think I’m so smart
I forget to listen to others.
Sometimes I think I’m so dumb
I’m ashamed to open my mouth.
St Anthony could you help me find humility,
that attribute between pride and shame,
that allows me to be only God’s child,
no more, no less.
St Anthony I seem to have lost my compassion.
I am required to love my enemy
but they have hurt me so.
St Anthony help me find my compassion
So I may love deeply
the many faces of God.
SFRV Fraternity Members Birthdays
June
4 Gloria Ray OFS
7 Joanne Kraan OFS
July
none
August
27 Lois McWhorter, Candidate
SFRV Fraternity Members Profession Date
June
none
July
Patricia Mihalic Doyle OFS (1984)
August
Cecelia Rayburn OFS (1968)
Catherine Paradis OFS (1968)
Franciscan Calendar, USA
June
12 Bl Jolenta, religious of II Order
13 St Anthony of Padua, priest and doctor of I Order
22 St Thomas More, martyr of the III Order
30 Bl Raymond Lull, martyr of III Order
July
8 Bl Gregory Grassi, bishop, and companions, martyrs of I and III Order
9 St Nicholas Pick, priest, and companions, martyrs of I Order
10 St Veronica Giuliani, vigin of II Order
12 Sts John Jones and John Wall, priests and martyrs of I Order
13 Bl Angeline of Marsciano, religious of III Order
14 St Francis Solano, priest of I Order
15 St Bonaventure, bishop and doctor of I Order
21 St Lawrence of Brindisi, priest and doctor of I Order
23 Bl Cunegunda, religious of II Order
23 St Bridget, widow of III Order
24 Bl Louise of Savoy, religious of II Order
27 Bl Mary Magdalene of Martinegro, virgin of II Order
August
2 Our Lady of the Angels of Portiuncula
4 St John Baptist Mary Vianney, priest of III Order
7 Bls Agathangelus and Cassian, priests and martyrs of I Order
8 Holy Father Dominic, priest, founder of the Order of Preachers
11 St Clare of Assisi, virgin of II Order
14 St Maximilian Kolbe, priest of I Order
17 St Roch, member of III Order
19 St Louis, bishop of I Order
21 St Pius X, pope, member of III Order
25 St Louis IX, king, member and patron of III Order
