Minister: Bill Roché 239-248-7489 (new)
Vice Minister: Carol Bart
Secretary: Jeanne Sachs
Treasurer: Pat Gagnon
Directors of Formation: Janet & Roy Eidem
Spiritual Assistant: Deacon Bob Kronyak
Publishing Editor: Bill Roché (new)
To all my brothers and sisters in the St. Clare Fraternity,
May God fill you with His peace, His love, His joy and His grace!
Very recently, both Ed Duff and Jiga Piasecki asked that transfer forms be sent to the Fraternities closest to where they now live: Ed in Massachusetts and Jiga in Colorado. Both of them had been for years very fruitful members of the St. Clare Fraternity. Jiga was a voice of experience on the Council and for several years she was also our director of formation. Ed was constantly on the Council and served in several positions, including Minister for two terms. He was also very active on the Regional Council. Obviously, we miss both of them and wish them well.
Our commitment as Secular Franciscans is for life, and it is incumbent on all of us, if we relocate, to align ourselves, if at all possible, with a Fraternity closer at hand. If one is a "snowbird", the best situation would be to have a Fraternity in both locations.
It has been said that when one door closes, God opens another. We are happy to report that we have recently been blessed with the addition to our ranks of several professed members: Jan Snyder, Cindy Phillips, Marilyn Franz, and Marge Ryther. Hopefully soon, Marsanne Reid Huffy will be joining our two candidates: Bob Kowalski and Joe Bradshaw.
We celebrated the Transitus on Oct. 3rd at St. William's. The service was beautiful and the social afterwards was most enjoyable. Too bad it was not better attended. Traditionally, we have celebrated the Transitus here in Naples, and there has also been one every year in either Sarasota or Bradenton. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have one Transitus to which all the Fraternities of our Southwest Area might attend - perhaps at a location somewhere at the geographical midpoint of our area? We need to find more opportunities during the year when we can get together with other Fraternities. The St. Clare Fraternity sponsors a Day of Reflection and also our St. Clare Celebration each year, and many come to us from other Fraternities, some even from outside our Southwest area. If other Fraternities sponsored similar events, we would be most glad to join with them.
As we approach the end of October, the month of the Rosary,
let us all redouble our prayers to our Blessed Mother that she will continue to assist Pope Francis, that she will intercede to obtain blessings from her Son upon the work of the Synod and that she will be the advocate for all those being persecuted for their faith.
Your brother and servant in Christ,
Bill Roché, OFS, Minister, St. Clare Fraternity
If you have an announcement, an article, a suggestion, a picture, a poem, etc. that you would like to have included in our Clarion, please send it by email for consideration to the Editor before the 10th of each month.
The Clarion NewsletterofSt. Clare Fraternity, OFS
Meeting every 4th Sunday @ 12:30 PM
St. William’s Ministry Center
Naples, Florida
October 15th Issue #137
Franciscan Saints Feasts
Oct. 15 – Nov.22nd
Upcoming Birthdays
Nov. 1 - Bill Acini
Nov. 10 - Carol Bart
Nov. 15 - Roy Eidem
Nov. 19 - Helen Kronyak
Anniversary of Profession
Oct. 17 - Carol Bart
Oct 28 - Jan Snyder
Oct. 31 - Gisela Schwab
Nov. 11 - Sheila Solomon
Franciscan Saints & Feasts we celebrate during this period-
Oct. 20 - Bl. Contardo Ferrini, 3rd Order
Oct 22nd – St. John Paul II, Pope, 3rd Order
Oct. 23 - St. John of Capistrano, 1st Order
Oct. 30 - Anniversary of Dedication in Consecrated Churches
of the Order
Nov. 1 - All SaintsNov. 2 - All Souls
Nov. 4 - St. Charles Borromeo, priest, 3rd Order
Nov. 17 - St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Patroness of the 3rd Order
Nov. 21 - The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Nov. 22 - Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Reminders
Sun., Oct. 25 - Our monthly Fraternity Meeting
Fri., Nov. 20 - Franciscan Day of Reflection at the Franciscan
Retreat Center in Tampa w/Fr. Anthony Aarons
Sun., Nov. 22 - Our monthly Fraternity Meeting
Sun., Dec. 20 - Our Pre-Christmas Fraternity Meeting
Fri., April 29 - Sun., May 1: Regional Conference at San Pedro
Thurs., June 30 - Mon. July : XIX Quinquennial Conference
Tues., Nov. 1- Sun., Nov. 6: NAFRA Conference at San Pedro
Tues., Oct. 23 - Regionally sponsored 10 day trip to Assisi/Rome
Prayer- St. Ignatius Loyola
Lord, teach me to be generous, to serve you as you deserve;
To give and not count the cost; to fight and not heed the wounds;
To toil and not seek for rest; to labor and not ask for any reward,
but that of knowing that I do your will.
Franciscan Mysticism: A Cosmic Vision - Richard Rohr, OFM
(From the Fall 2015 issue of the Mendicant, Vol. 5, No. 4)
Franciscan mysticism is not primarily about Francis of Assisi; it is about God. In fact, when it fixates on Francis too long it invariably becomes sentimental, cheap, and harmless. Franciscan mysticism (a subject of Franciscan spirituality) is about an intuition of Jesus as the Incarnate and Cosmic Christ. Francis discovered and so powerfully loved this mystery in Jesus that he eventually became a living image of Christ. A "cloud of witnesses" who shared that same brilliant intuition - Clare, Brothers Giles and Juniper, Angela of Foligno, Jocopone da Todi, Anthony, Bonaventure, Catherine of Genoa, John Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Elizabeth of Hungary, Louis IX of France, and others - continued Francis' particular mysticism. Most true Franciscans are unknown to history, but just lived gratefully and fully human lives that were spiritual in a way that did not look very spiritual. That's the secret!
What we see, again and again, is a joyful and unitive consciousness that intuits and experiences what Duns Scotus called "the univocity of being." By this Duns Scotus meant that we can speak with one consistent and true voice about a rock, a tree, an animal, a human, an angel, and God! They all participate in the identical state of Being to varying degrees. Deus est Ens, he said: "God is Being itself." This eliminates any clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, because Christ existed in matter from all eternity (Col 1:15-20, Eph 1:3-11), ever since God decided to materialize and reveal who God is through creation. It is summarized on our Franciscan coat of arms by the Latin phrase Deus Meus et Omnia: "My God and All Things!"
We are the first generation to understand that this Christ was revealed approximately 13.8 billion years ago. The human incarnation of that mystery, probably given when consciousness was capable of widespread presence, encounter, and love happened only 2,000 years ago with the birth of Jesus. As Christians, we believe that the Jesus story is the universe story and the universe story coalesces and manifests in one man who is fully human and fully divine at the same time, and thus fully prepared to tell us to "follow" him! Jesus is the microcosm of the macrocosm for us. He is the holon of the whole. If we get him, we get it all! The medium is indeed the message. The personal Jesus became the doorway to the universal intuition and cosmic love affair.
Francis and Clare fell in love with the unique person of Jesus, precisely in his incarnate and humble state, identifying with the excluded and little ones, "the least of the brothers and sisters." The bias toward the edge and the bottom has always been at the heart of Franciscan mysticism, explaining its perennial identification with poverty and suffering. Big truth is hard to find at the top and secure center of nations, groups, and institutions. The alternate orthodoxy has to choose a kind of voluntary displacement or it gets sucked into conformity, "churchliness," and far-too-easy answers.
The cosmic vision, personalized in Jesus, was an intuition that Francis and many of his followers lived and experienced, but most of them did not formulate it in theological words or clear concepts as much as in their lifestyles. Usually they picked it up by osmosis, through the Gospel and Franciscan lineage, becoming something that they partly knew and partly just believed was good, positive and wonderful! Followers of Francis and Clare bore "fruit that remained" and invariably believed in original blessing much more than original sin.
Betsy Porter created a marvelous icon which depict the Christ Mystery, standing, holding heaven and earth together, uniting human and divine, physical and spiritual, rooted in things and yet connecting to an infinity of stars. The Cosmic Christ makes all things one, just as Jesus promised and for which he prayed (John 17:21-24). Franciscan mysticism is not about Francis at all, but about a universal notion of the Christ and, therefore, of all reality. In the Office for the Feast of St. Francis on October 4th, Francis is referred to as the vir catholicus, the truly catholic man. He pushes all seeing to the absolute edge by always including those whom other systems might too easily exclude" the leper, the non-Christian, the Muslim, the poor, the hated. When a mysticism rooted in Francis loses that edgy position, it might be mini-mysticism, but it is never Franciscan mysticism. Francis knew the only love is big enough to handle and hold truth. Truth which is not loving, joyful, and inclusive is never the Great Truth.
Vatican City - October 2, 2015
Pope Francis has called on the hundreds of prelates gathered for his second worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops on family issues to remain open in their deliberations to the call of the Holy Spirit, repeating his frequent assertion that God is a God of surprises. The Synod of Bishops is a highly anticipated meeting that has brought some 318 people to Rome -- mainly male prelates -- for discussions Oct. 4-25. Francis opened the event Monday at one of the three-week gathering’s only public sessions by calling on the gathered prelates to work in their deliberations with “apostolic courage, evangelical humility, and trust-filled prayer.” The Synod, the pope said, is not a parliament or a senate, but an “ecclesial expression” of a church “that walks together to read reality with eyes of faith and the heart of God.” “It is the Church that questions itself on its fidelity to the deposit of the faith, so that it does not represent a museum to be looked at or only to be safeguarded, but a living spring from which the church drinks to quench thirst and illuminate the deposit of life,” the pontiff said of the Synod. “The Synod is also a protected space where the Church goes through the action of the Holy Spirit,” said Francis. “In the Synod, the Spirit speaks through the language of all people who allow themselves to be guided by God who always surprises, by God who reveals to the little ones that which he has hidden from the wise and intelligent,” he said. “By God who created the law and the Sabbath for people and not vice versa, by God who leaves the 99 sheep to find the one missing sheep, by God who is always greater than our logic and our calculations,” he continued.
Calling on the prelates to exercise evangelical humility and trust-filled prayer, the pope said the first quality means “emptying oneself of one’s own convictions and prejudices in order to listen to our brother bishops and fill ourselves with God.”
Such humility, he said, “leads us not to point a finger in judgment of others, but to extend a hand to help them up again without ever feeling superior to them.” Trust-filled prayer, Francis said, is “the action of the heart when it is open to God, when it keeps quiet our own moods to listen to the soft voice of God who speaks in silence.” “Without listening to God, all of our words will be just words that don’t quench or satisfy,” the pontiff told the assembled gathering. “Without leaving ourselves to be guided by the Spirit all our decisions will be just decorations that instead of exalting the Gospel cover and hide it.”
The Right To Call Another To A Vocation - Ronald Rohlheiser
"Those of us who profess to be committed need to give our lives over to God in a deep enough way so that we have the right and power to call others to give themselves over in the same way. Only someone who has, without bitterness and too much compromise, given over his or her life in self-sacrifice has the power to ask something similar of another. What this means is that we shouldn't expect anyone to follow us in faith, in church, or in vocation if we, in our own lives, are half-hearted, self-pitying, bitter, and forever whining. No strategy can compensate for that."
A Franciscan Blessing May God bless me with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and to the poor.