December 2014
A thrice yearly publication
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled
as to console,
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying
that we are born to eternal life.
-Attributed to St Francis of Assisi
Dates for your Calendar for 2014December / The Celebration of Greccio
21st December at 3.00 pm
St Theresa Church
678 North Beach Road
Gwelup
Hosted by Balcatta Fraternity
Afternoon Tea
EFFECTIVE LOVE IN ACTION
Dear Brothers and Sisters in St Francis and St Clare:
God made us for loving....loving is healing. Simple gestures of kindness to each other can never be under estimated. This freely given human kindness has the power to nurture our sometimes deflated and punctured human spirit. God needs us to share his love all around....we are then instruments of His Peace.
As chapter three of the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians reads; "Didn't you realise that you were God's temple and that the Spirit of God was living among you? If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy him, because the temple of God is sacred; and you are that temple."
I attended the National Non Elective Chapter in Baulkham Hills in Sydney on the 1st to 3rd August. I apologise that I am unable to write a report for you at this time as I do not have my notes with me. I shall circulate a report to you quite soon. Lola Kelly the National Vice Minister wrote a comprehensive report of the Chapter in the September edition of Oceania. Anne-Marie Langdon was the elected delegate to the Chapter from WA and Sandra Maroney who is on the National Promotions Committee also attended. In short it was an excellent, fruitful Chapter...... the main focus was ....re-invigorating and promoting the Order!
The Ceremony of The Transitus of St Clare was held in the Edel Quinn Centre on Sunday 10th August. Fr Maurice Toop and Fr Ken D'Souza very kindly presided at the Ceremony for the group who attended. Thanks to David Ward, Susan Bolton and the Regional Council for organising the evening.
The Regional Fraternity Retreat "The Joy of the Gospel" held in September was a great occasion for friendship and sharing. Fr Norbert has asked me to thank all those who delivered his talks and was very pleased with the feedback I gave him. All those present need to congratulate themselves for your personal thoughts and stories which you contributed. The baa baas and oink oinks were very well done. Harry Argus will report further on the Retreat.
Harry's second group in Kalgoorlie are moving towards requesting Admission to the Order. Please keep Harry and these inquirers in your prayers.....also the seven candidates who are in formation. These brothers and sisters need our prayers and support as they go forth on their journey to follow St Francis. I also ask you to pray for our Friends of St Francis in Kalgoorlie and elsewhere in WA.
It is with much sadness that I announce that the Midland Fraternity has now become de-activated and is in recess. There were insufficient numbers to form a council. Some of the members will become non active and some will transfer to Perth Fraternity. The last meeting of the Fraternity was held in October this year. The first professions of Midland Fraternity took place in 1953. Antoinette Frendo has been very committed in her role as Fraternity Minister for the last nine years. Ruth Gordon, Coeli O'Keefe and Brian Milne have been serving on this recent council for some time. Much gratitude to Antoinette and all the council members and the other Fraternity members Catie Jones, Harry Argus and Wendy Gellard for the friendship, loyalty and service that you have given over many years to Midland Fraternity and for dealing so well with these difficult circumstances of going into recess. Many thanks to Sr Shelley Barlow who was the Spiritual Assistant to Midland Fraternity. It would be most interesting to print a history of Midland Fraternity for the April 2015 issue of the Regional Newsletter. If anyone would like to send me some information that they would like to contribute it can be compiled in an article which I am sure our readers would enjoy.
Congratulations to Teresa Connolly of Pemberton now a non-active member of Perth Fraternity who has just celebrated 60 years of Profession in to the Order. Please see the article that Teresa has written in this edition.
Fr Michael Brown will be visiting Perth again from early December to mid-January. He tells me he will be attending the Celebration of Greccio hosted by the Balcatta Fraternity at St Theresa's Church Gwelup at 3pm on 21st December. Some of our Anglican Franciscan brothers and sisters are intending to be present for this event including Sandie Oates the Regional Minister. Hoping to catch up with you there.
I'd like to thank you one and all for all your friendship and support that you have given to me over this year and another year of being together, laughing, listening, learning and helping each other deepen our lives in Christ through the Spirit of St Francis. Thank you to the Regional Council for their lively team spirit and for their focus on the best possibilities for the people they serve...... you. My thanks to Fr Carl Schafer ofm our Regional Spiritual Assistant by default although living in distant NSW is ever helpful and supportive and always keen to hear about all the happenings in WA. My thanks also to Sandie Tilley the National Minister, Fr John Cooper ofm Cap the National Spiritual Assistant and all the National Council.
All good greetings to all in the groups in Bunbury and Geraldton and all non-active members in Perth and throughout WA.
Christ's Love and Peace to you and your families for Christmas and may the God of surprises bring you everything good in the New Year. May good health and happiness be yours.
Angela McGuire – Regional Minister
St. Francis and the Crib
by Leonard Foley, O.F.M. /
To celebrate the birth of Christ, St. Francis recreated the manger scene in a cave in the hills above Greccio, Italy. The real miracle was not, as some people say, that the figure of the infant came to life—but that there St. Francis first understood the humility of the Incarnation.
Christmas was 15 days away. Francis was staying at a hermitage at Fonte Columbo. He had just come from Rome—the last time, for he would die in three years—where the pope had approved his Rule. The brief future would be filled with pain, even the pain of the wounds of Christ.
How to celebrate Christmas? He remembered his visit to the Holy Land, to Bethlehem.
Why not? A kind of replica of the manger there. There was a cave, in Greccio...
He had a good friend, Giovanni (John) Vellita, whom he had met on one of his preaching tours. John was a military man, lord of Greccio, just two miles away. John had fallen under the spell of Francis, had renounced all worldly honours and was trying to live a life imitating that of Francis as well as he could.
Francis, with the assurance of friendship, sent word: “If you want to celebrate the Feast of the Lord at Greccio, hurry and diligently prepare what I tell you. For I wish to recall to memory the little child who was born in Bethlehem. I want to set before our bodily eyes the hardships of his infant needs, how he lay in the manger, how with an ox and ass standing by he lay upon the hay.”
John began immediately. People prepared torches and candles to light up the night. The manger was prepared in the cave, and the ox and ass brought in. When Francis came to the friars’ hermitage, he was delighted.
The great evening arrived. People began to come in procession, carrying their torches and candles. The woods rang with their song. They were rediscovering the joy of childhood.
Today, in Greccio, one can still see the stone—perhaps three feet high and two feet wide—on which the hay was placed. It has a brownish grey top and bottom, with a band of grey in the centre. The top has a rough, shallow, V-shaped indentation. Here the carved image of the baby was laid. There were no figures of Joseph and Mary, just the two animals.
As the villagers and friars crowded around, a priest began the Mass. Francis gave the sermon. His biographer, Thomas of Celano, Francis’ contemporary, writes: “The saint of God stood before the manger, uttering sighs, overcome with love and filled with a wonderful happiness....He sang the Gospel in a sonorous voice, a clear and sonorous voice, inviting all to the highest rewards. Then he preached to the people standing about and spoke charming words concerning the birth of the poor King, and the little town of Bethlehem....When he spoke the name ‘Child of Bethlehem’ or ‘Jesus,’ his tongue licked his lips, relishing and savouring with pleased palate the sweetness of the words.”
The accounts do not say whether the child was a living baby or a carved figure. It was probably the latter, for it is recorded that at least one of the observers “saw the infant come alive.”
The simple celebration was not the first time the birth of Jesus was celebrated in a dramatic way, as we shall see. But Francis brought to the scene a vision that saw more than the pleasant tableau we now have.
As quoted above, he wanted to show the hardships Jesus suffered already as an infant. In the daring phrase of St. Paul, he saw the emptying of the glory of the Son of God, born of a gentle mother but still thrown upon a stony and resisting world.
Francis wanted to realize and help people realize exactly what God had done for his people, and “how poor he chose to be for our sakes.” Francis himself had chosen the bitter poverty of being on the margin of society, with no resources or security. He saw the Son of God placing himself, as it were, on the margin of divinity.
He saw a truly human Jesus, not a divine being hiding behind a deceptive physical facade. The humility of the Incarnation and of the Cross was his constant preoccupation. He wanted to think of nothing else—Bethlehem and Calvary.
His life cantered, then, around poverty and humility, sister virtues. He told his friars not to be ashamed to beg, “since God himself became poor for our sakes....Poverty is the heritage which our Lord Jesus Christ has acquired for us.”
Thomas of Celano says, “He would often meditate on the desolation of Christ and his holy mother with tears, and he maintained that poverty was ‘the queen’ of the virtues, as she had become so radiantly manifest in the King and his mother.”
Francis’ love and compassion for the suffering and Passion of Christ were so deep that he no longer cared about his own pain. In the year after this celebration, he would be so identified with the suffering Christ that the five wounds appeared in his body.
The W.A. Secular Franciscan Order Retreat for 2014
The Joy of the Gospel
About thirty five people attended the popular Secular Franciscan Retreat held over the weekend of 19th-20th September at the Guest House of the Redemtorist Monastery in Perth. Most of the people who attended were members of the Secular Franciscan Order; but the retreat was also open to any interested person; for which four lay people did take the advantage of attending. Sixteen people were also able to take advantage of living-in at the guest house, which included six who had travelled from Kalgoorlie.
Thanks to Fr. Maurice Toop ofs who attended the retreat and was on hand to celebrate the Masses and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, plus spiritual help when needed.
The theme of the retreat was on Pope Francis’ “The Joy of the Gospel,” (Evangelii Gaudium) that had been prepared by Fr. Norbert Pittorino ofm. However, due to ill health, Fr. Norbert was not able to travel from Sydney to Perth to present his six talks, but instead his retreat talks were presented by some of the local members of the WA OFS.
The retreat began on the Friday with evening prayers, followed by the first talk called “Introduction Session” which on behalf of Fr. Norbert, was presented by John Barich ofs. A period of time was set aside at the end of each talk to discuss and answer questions, which on each of the six occasions was very positive.
The following morning after the completion of Morning Prayers, Fr. Toop ofs presented the second talk of Fr. Norbert, called “Our Post Modern Culture.” Then the Third Session called, “Some Challenges of Today,” was presented before lunch by Sandra Moroney ofs. Both talks were positively received and many questions were asked at the end of each of the talks by those who attended.
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It was after lunch, the annual moving liturgy of the Celebration of the Stigmata of St Francis was celebrated in the chapel. In the late afternoon the fourth session called, “Mission Spirituality,” was presented by Michael McGuire, with many questions asked. In this talk, Pope Francis is asking all the lay members of the Church to go out and evangelise the world by their good deeds and their Christian way of life.
After the Saturday evening meal, and at the completion of the evening prayers and Benediction, a time was then set aside to socialise with a few drinks and supper. The idea came about during an OFS meeting a few months before when some of the members suggested that as many members live kilometres apart, the retreat would be a great opportunity for members to spend some quality time together so as to get to know and to give support to one another.
After Sunday morning prayers, the fifth session was presented by Angela McGuire ofs, with the theme of “Pope Francis’ Image of the Church.” This talk was also well received by everyone present and many questions were asked
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Before lunch, the sixth and final session was presented by Anne-Marie Langdon ofs. The theme to this talk was called, “The Social Dimension of Evangelization,” which everyone was interested, and also many questions were asked.
The retreat closed on Sunday afternoon with the celebration of Mass at 2.00 pm, with Fr. Toop giving a moving homily and a special blessing for a safe return home.
Again, thanks must be extended to those who organised the retreat, including Fr. Norbert who provided the beautiful spiritual talks; also Fr.Toop who was there to provide the Masses, Sacraments and spiritual help. The OFS Committee members, who had also worked so hard to organise the retreat, and the volunteer staff of the guest house who had made our bedrooms and meals available for us with much love and kindness.
Harry Argus ofs
Merry Christmas to everyone from Balcatta Fraternity
Greetings to everyone from the Balcatta Fraternity.
Since our August Newsletter the Fraternity has been busy with the Regional events of the Annual Retreat, and the celebrations of the Transitus of St Clare in August and St Francis in October. These were well attended by our members and wonderful opportunities to meet up with the members of our Franciscan family.
At our October fraternity meeting, we celebrated the Rite of Admission for Fr Maurice Toop and this is a source of great joy for us. Fr Irek assisted us as witness and we appreciate his support. We wish Fr Toop every blessing during his time of formation.
We still have another event to come this year.
The Balcatta Fraternity will host the annual Greccio service to be held on Sunday 21 December at 3pm at St Theresa’s Church in Gwelup. All Secular Franciscans and their family and friends are welcome. We will conclude with fraternity and afternoon tea.