"New York Franciscan monks battle crime in Irish projects"

From Irish Central

Picture at left: Brother Shawn O'Connor, CFR

Since the beginning of the decade the Moyross estate in Limerick City has been a battle-ground for vicious gangland criminals.

Violent crime stalked the streets, making everyday life a nightmare.

But now, the estate is being turned around by a group of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, from the Bronx, New York.

The Moyross estate was built in the late 1970s and is home to 5,500 residents. The vast majority of householders are local authority tenants.

Back in 2006, crime in Moyross was at its peak. The most famous incident took place when two innocent children who were sitting in their mother’s car were nearly burnt to death when three teenagers petrol bombed the vehicle. Violence was an everyday threat on the estate.

In 2007, the monks opened the friary in the troubled estate and over the past four years they have seen a vast improvement in the standard of living in the people living in the surrounding area.

Brother Shawn O’Connor said the monks' "primary purpose" was to "take care of the spiritual and material needs of the people, to give them a real sense of hope and a sense of knowledge that God cares for them and loves them."

Brother O’Connor is impressed by the changes that he has witnessed.

"We have seen quite a few changes. The biggest we have seen is with the people and the way they live their daily lives," said Brother O'Connor.

"Neighbors told us when we first moved in there, that (their) kids wouldn't play on the street very much or else with great caution. Now they are out there almost every day. I don't think anyone thinks anything of it to let their kids go out and safely play in the streets. That is one change, I don't know if that has anything specifically to do with us.

"It's gotten quieter there certainly, I know that. Obviously there are still things going on that everybody knows aren't so good. But there haven't been big violent events or things of that nature.

“If we can inspire people just to make that difference, no matter how small it might be, then you have made a difference. That is what we are trying to do at a tangible level."

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have now opened a second friary in Derry City.

"We won't go anyplace unless we get invited by a bishop,” said Brother O’Connor. “The two places we got invited to were Limerick and Derry and we accepted both of those. They are good places to be."

"Why This Life?"

"Goodbye beer, hello Brothers"

From the Bolton News
By James Higgins

HE enjoyed a beer in the pub with his pals and loved the occasional biscuit.

But Peter Berry’s life in the fast lane is well and truly behind him — as he has become a monk.

The 46-year-old from Farnworth became the first person in nine years to join the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey at a ceremony in Hereford.

Mr Berry, who is now known as Brother Andrew, said: “I felt the call to Belmont in 1998. For me, it was inevitable. I’m very happy and content. Belmont is where God wants me to be.”

When asked what he would miss most about everyday life, Brother Andrew said: “Being free to go the pub with my mates and being able to eat the biscuits I choose, instead of those I’m given.”

Brother Andrew first arrived at the monastery in 1998 but after a few months he left, feeling unready for a monastic life.

He returned in 2004 and, by monastic tradition, changed his name. Now he has joined the monk’s community following a “solemn profession” ceremony.

His fellow monks have welcomed him to the fold — and not just for his faith. He also has a wealth of experience from the computer industry and most of the 40 monks at Belmont regularly use information technology.

Brother Andrew also has a degree and a master’s degree in theology, and is taking a further theology qualification. He hopes to be ordained to the priesthood and is training at Oscott College, a seminary linked to Birmingham Archdiocese.

More then 30 students and staff from Oscott College attended his ceremony at a packed Belmont Abbey church.

It was witnessed by his grandmother, Marjorie Berry, aged 86, from Farnworth and Brother Andrew made his vows to the Rt Rev Paul Stonham, the Abbot of Belmont.

Brother Andrew sang his commitment in Latin and then carried out symbolic rituals.

It ended with him undergoing three days of silent retreat — which meant he couldn’t enjoy the reception afterwards!

But grandmother Mrs Berry said: “It was a wonderful ceremony. I was so proud of Andrew — but I’ve been proud of him all his life.”

The Abbot said: “We are absolutely delighted. Men with vocations are now often older with a career behind them. They are much more stable.”

"Two men hope to become tools of God as Carmelites"

From The Catholic Sentinel
By Ed Langlois

Photo: Fr. Matthew Williams, Carmelite Provincial Superior, blesses newly professed Br. Mark Kissner, left and Br. Mark Silva. Sentinel photo by Gerry Lewin

MOUNT ANGEL — A former Silicon Valley executive and a former electrical engineer have made lifetime commitments to an ancient way of life that balances prayer, ministry, solitude and community.

Brothers Mark Silva and Mark Kissner professed solemn vows last month in the Discalced Carmelite Friars. St. Mary Church here was full for the rite, during which the men bound themselves to a tradition that reaches into the 13th century.

Brother Silva, 46, was a successful risk management chief for computer and insurance companies in California. But since high school, he had felt a tugging at his heart toward priesthood and religious life.

“I kept putting God on call waiting,” he says.

A native of Glendale, Ariz., he went to a Jesuit high school and then on to Santa Clara University where he studied finance. He landed jobs in Santa Clara and then San Jose and enjoyed the life of beach, mountains and friends.

He was happy, but something seemed inadequate. He felt God calling gently but doggedly. He consulted a vocations book, put the idea on hold for years once again, but then met with a vocations director.

During that session, a spiritual spigot turned on inside him and he articulated his heart’s desires. The priest knew enough to direct him to the Carmelites, whom he joined at age 39.

“I just really felt at home,” he says.

Superiors expected the usual struggles that men with established lives have when making the transition to religious community. But Brother Silva seemed beyond that.

The Carmelites’ primary ministry is prayer, but they serve in parishes, retreat houses, hospitals and prisons. Brother Silva is open to any of those.

“I hope I can be an instrument of God so he can use me to bring souls to him in a loving embrace,” he says. He’ll be known officially as Brother Mark of the Sacred Hearts.

Brother Kissner, to be called Brother Mark of of the Most Precious Blood, was a 30-year-old electrical engineer working in San Diego when he joined his parish’s group for young adults. He learned more about his faith and dated, hoping to be married and raise a family.

“Over time, through prayer and study, I grew more and more in love with Jesus Christ and His Church,” Brother Kissner writes in an e-mail interview. “I had also been influenced by several holy religious priests and nuns over those years. At some point during this period of deepening my faith, the idea of becoming a religious priest entered my mind.”

He struggled with the idea for years, because his vision for himself had always been as a husband and a father. But the more he tried to put the idea of religious life out of his mind, the worse he felt. He describes his decision to truly consider the life as “a surrender” that yielded much peace.

“God made the path to enter the Carmelites fairly easy after that,” writes Brother Kissner, a 42-year-old native of Dayton, Ohio and a graduate of Purdue University.

He read St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, 16th-century Carmelite mystics and leaders. They changed his life. He began attending Mass with some Carmelite nuns in San Diego. At age 35, he entered formation. Those who become Religious give people a witness that the Kingdom of God exists, Brother Kissner says, and show “that there is more to life than what you see, that there is a who God loves them.”

Carmelites look to the gospel story of Martha and Mary to seek a balance between service to the world and simply sitting at the feet of the Lord.

Carmelites have their roots in the 13th century, when a band of European men gathered on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. They wanted to help build up the Church through a simple life of prayer and witness to the Gospel.

It was on Mount Carmel that Elijah the prophet contemplated God in prayer. Carmelites look to him as a source of inspiration.

Among Carmelites, the spiritual writer St. Thérèse of Lisieux stands out for her ardent desire to “be love in the heart of the Church.” The young nun died in 1897 at age 24 and has a massive following.

In 1999, the Western Province of the U.S. Carmelites decided to establish its house of studies near Mount Angel Seminary.

Young Carmelites generally spend six months in provisional membership and then enter a year-long novitiate, a time to learn the ways of prayer and the basics of Carmelite life. Those early periods take place in San Jose, Calif.

Then come temporary vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and about six years of study at Mount Angel. Permanent, or solemn, profession of vows follows. If the brother is to go on to become a priest, which most do, ordination comes after more study.

Interview with Cistercian Brothers from Stift Heiligenkreuz

"Brother finds Christ after years of darkness"

From Catholic Voice of Omaha
By LISA MAXSON

Brother Martin Ervin, a member of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, became a religious brother after years of living away from God. He currently serves at a mission in Ireland. Lisa Maxson/Staff
He went from being a lost teenager who was heavily into partying, drinking and smoking marijuana to a charismatic member of a religious order serving the poor in Ireland.

Brother Martin Ervin's story of conversion is unique, but not uncommon, he said, because God changes lives every day.

The youngest of 10 children to Frank and Loretta Ervin of Omaha, Brother Martin, whose birth name was Stephen, grew up in a Catholic family where Sunday Mass and devotions to Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus were part of life. For a little while, he attended St. Margaret Mary School before graduating from Central High School.

But after struggling for several years with dyslexia, he developed a low self-esteem and a lack of motivation.

"I stopped searching to be popular in the way of being top in the class and the best at sports and I started to look for friends who would accept me in the way of being an odd person because I thought I was odd," he told the Catholic Voice during a visit to Omaha in February.

He made friends with people in the punk rock scene and eventually became the lead singer of a local punk rock band.

When he was young, the l3-year-old Ervin and his sister started lying to their parents about going to Sunday Mass. Instead they went to McDonalds.

"I didn't understand the Mass and I didn't even know what was happening when the priest said the prayers over the bread and wine and that the bread and wine became the Body and Blood of Jesus," Brother Martin said.

"Because I stopped receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus, I stopped receiving that life of God within me," he said. "I stopped going to confession and I didn't have an understanding of what the church teaches about the commandments."

He said he started choosing other things, like drinking and partying, to fill up the emptiness he felt by pushing God out of his life.

Brother Martin spent eight years in this lifestyle during which time he distanced himself from his family.

Family helps him

But he says it was his family that helped him return to Christ.

When he was 18, Brother Martin began working as a janitor in his older brother's photography studio. During the workday, his brother, Bob, who was going through his own conversion at the time, slowly began talking to him about the Scriptures, Eucharist, sacraments and what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

At first he was uncomfortable with the conversations, but Brother Martin said he was grateful for his brother's guidance.

"Every day I went to work I realized it wasn't just going to be mopping floors. I was going to be taught a lesson," he said. "Some were tough lessons, but that was good because he was being honest and willing to really try and pull me out of the darkness I was living in. He was helping me see that there's more than just my own selfish life."

Slowly Brother Martin began to change his ways. He started to pray, visited with a priest, went to confession and attended Sunday Mass. He also started being more vocal about his faith to his friends, and stopped drinking and doing drugs.

Bob Ervin calls his brother's conversion and vocation to the religious life a "miracle."

"I'm really proud of him," he said, adding that he believes the struggles his brother experienced were necessary for him to be the kind of person he is today. "He's very charismatic. It's just an absolute miracle."

One day in the office, Brother Martin overheard his brother talking about vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and he said he felt something stir within him.

"As I was standing there, all of the sudden this little fire kind of burst in my heart and I felt myself say inside my heart, 'You're going to do that someday,'" he said.

Bob Ervin credits the Holy Spirit with inspiring his brother.

"I don't think I was on a mission to change him at all. It was the Holy Spirit. That's the thing about living the Catholic faith - if you actually live it, you can't really predict what's going to happen with it," he said.

"I do remember one talk we had when he told me he was thinking about his vocation. We talked for like four hours about how awesome it is to live with Christ."

Lifestyle changed

Brother Martin started watching the Catholic television station, EWTN, and came across Father Benedict Groeschel, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, with whom he immediately felt a connection.

"All the things he was talking about were confirming all the desires that I had in my soul," he said. "He talked about the community and the work with the poor and living a radical life for Christ and the need to reform our lives. I just thought it was incredible."

Although he explored the diocesan priesthood, Brother Martin felt called to Father Groeschel's order, especially after he visited the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal's headquarters in the Bronx in 1994. He joined the order as a religious brother in 1995.

"I'm a bridge to the priesthood in a way because sometimes people need someone to talk to before they go to confession or before they go back to Mass or they enter marriage," he said. "They're looking for someone to help them see that right path to walk on."

As a Franciscan, Brother Martin prays seven times a day, goes to daily Mass and prays in front of the Eucharist for an hour every day. He also works with the poor, prays peacefully outside abortion clinics, and evangelizes through retreats and street ministry.

Brother Martin spent eight years in the Bronx before moving to a mission house in London. Five months ago he was sent to help start a mission house in Ireland.

"Being in the community has been a blessing. It's not without its challenges. My brother, Bob, helped me realize that life is not just a one moment thing, but it's a daily conversion, it's a daily change and sometimes we fall back and then we have to get back up again. That's why we have the name in our community and I'm realizing that more and more. Every day we have to renew ourselves in Jesus and get back up again, sometimes 100 times a day and start over."

Hope in the Future

The article below, from today's New York Times, is about a beautiful new chapel being built at St. Anthony's High School on Long Island. Br. Gary Cregan, OSF, the principal at St. Anthony's, used to be the Assistant Principal at the High School in Raleigh were I taught. I could write at length about Brother Gary and the influence he has been on thousands of lives (including my own), and their discernment of vocations. While the article isn't directly about vocations, I think you will agree that a chapel like this, and a sense of the transcendent in our faith can only help students to contemplate God's will for their lives. (emphases and comments mine)

A Design to Set Thoughts Aloft

By VALERIE COTSALAS

New York Times
Published: March 9, 2008

BROTHER GARY CREGAN, a Franciscan friar and the principal of St. Anthony’s High School here, speaks plainly when discussing the modernist architecture of many area parochial schools and churches built in the mid-20th century.

“I have a general disgust for Catholic architecture since the 1950s,” he said recently. Dressed in a brown (BLACK) habit belted with rope, he becomes animated — even enthusiastic — as he discusses the high school’s plan to build a new, more traditional chapel.

The $3 million structure, designed by Baldassano Architecture, is inspired by a 12th-century Romanesque apse (the Fuentiduena Chapel) that is part of the Cloisters collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Upper Manhattan, according to Alex Badalamenti, one of the architects who worked on the school’s design.

That ancient apse, from Segovia, Spain, is a semicircular room with a half-dome ceiling and a central fresco.

The new school chapel, with a yellowish limestone veneer that does faintly resemble the coloring and style of the Cloisters apse, also adds a bell tower, and is meant to bring back an older tradition of worship, Brother Cregan said.

Many modernist churches, he added, are laid out horizontally. The school chapel that is being replaced, for example, is integrated into a side wing of the building with a classroom-style entry door, across the hall from a science lab. Its ceilings are eight feet high, and behind the pews there is a small niche with an electronic keyboard.

By contrast, the new building and its tower are rising from behind a glass corridor that connects the two wings of the school — classrooms on one side and the gym and auditorium on the other.

Brother Cregan and other Franciscans who “want to stress verticality,” he said, believe that the new chapel, with its soaring 30-foot ceilings, will teach teenagers that they are “worshiping God, not each other.” (AMEN!)

In church architecture, the return to traditionalism is a trend across the country, according to Duncan Stroik, a specialist in the design of Catholic churches.

Mr. Stroik is also a professor at the University of Notre Dame, in the school’s classical architecture and traditional cities program, one of the few of its kind.

For a high school, he said, the decision to go traditional is unusual. “It’s so interesting that the high school is fairly contemporary, but the chapel is consciously a separate building,” he said. “Even from the outside, you can tell that it’s something different.”

Mr. Stroik explained that many of his clients these days express the desire for a church that lures people, rather than one that simply provides a functional gathering place.

As he put it: “There’s this sense that in walking into a vertical space, whether it’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral or Grand Central station, on the one hand you are in awe of how grand it is, and how small you are. But also there’s a kind of feeling that you are lifted up, you are ennobled.”

In the case of the Huntington school’s new chapel, some ennobling accessories were acquired with the help of modern technology. Stepping gingerly through the chapel construction site, Mr. Cregan pointed out his bargain-price purchases on eBay, the Internet auction Web site. These included the confessionals and pews, a 110-year-old arched stained glass window and a 100-year-old statue of St. Anthony. (There is also a 14th century marble altar front with a traditional pelican design - you can see the altar front and more pictures of the chapel HERE)

He is proudest of the bell suspended from the top of the tower — another eBay find, for $4,000. A new one would have cost $20,000, according to John Petrocelli of the J. Petrocelli Construction Company, which is building the chapel.

The new chapel will seat 300, about twice the number accommodated by the current chapel. But for Brother Cregan and the school administration, bringing the chapel more in line with purist Franciscan traditions is the more pressing goal.

Many details of the design, including the unadorned archways and a wooden trussed ceiling in place of the more grandiose arched ceiling of stone or brick, have a Franciscan air, Mr. Stroik said. “There seems to be a Franciscan simplicity about it,” he added. “Looking at the exterior, there’s a simple stone facade, simple openings. The tower — it’s traditional, but not very ornate.”

There are 11 Catholic high schools on Long Island, according to the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Enrollment has been rising steadily by about 2 percent in the high schools over the last decade, Brother Cregan said, after a period in the late 1980s when several parochial schools in the area closed. St. Anthony’s is coeducational, with 2,400 students in Grades 9 through 12. Some students commute from as far east as Cutchogue and Water Mill, or from Queens to the west.

The school, which moved to its current campus in 1984 from Kings Park in Smithtown, is making other changes too. A field behind the school now holds a steel skeleton that will eventually be a $34 million 140,000-square-foot student activities center. The rendering, on a sign near the site, shows a glassy modern design.

Next fall, when the chapel is complete, students will take up the ancient activity of bell ringing for services, using a simple rope in the bell tower.

There might be some laughing from kids watching through the glass wall in the cafeteria next door. But that’s the idea, Brother Cregan said. “It’s in classic Franciscan fashion,” he explained, for the church to be “in the marketplace, not high on a hill.”

The Church’s Religious Life

From First Things
Posted by Ryan T. Anderson on February 5, 2008
(Emphases mine)

The Drudge Report is highlighting this BBC article on the decline of religious life in the Catholic Church. Here’s the basic gist:

Newly published statistics showed that the number of men and women belonging to religious orders fell by 10% to just under a million between 2005 and 2006.

During the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, the number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by a quarter.

The downward trend accelerated despite a steady increase in the membership of the Catholic Church to more than 1.1bn.

However, correspondents say even this failed to keep pace with the overall increase in world population.

I’ve often wondered what the decline in religious life has meant for the average Catholic. Personally, I can count the number of religious sisters and brothers that I know on one hand–and this includes people I met growing up in Baltimore, attending college and then working in Princeton, and now living and working in Manhattan. If I include diocesan priests (technically “secular”), the number jumps up, but even then it’s fair to say that I don’t really “know” most of the priests who have administered the sacraments to me. If push came to shove, there would probably be a couple priests from college and New York who, in a time of trouble, I’d feel comfortable going to see. My parents experienced something different. They, of course, went to Catholic schools all their life, were taught by religious brothers and sisters, and still have vivid memories of the relationships that were forged–relationships that secured them in the faith. One wonders what the loss of religious witness and a ministry of presence has meant to the Church simply on a person-to-person level.

Of course times change. Renewal movements in the Church have opened new possibilities for Christian vocation and holiness in ordinary life. People who might have joined religious communities in times past now find themselves involved with groups like Communion and Liberation, Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, Focolare, and the Neo-Catechumenal Way–all providing lay people with models, organizational supports, and what certainly seem to some like lay vocations. The members of these groups say that a rising tide lifts all ships and a general increase in holiness in the Church will–and, according to their experience, already has–led to priestly and religious vocations. If they’re right, and they likely are, one shudders to think how much more drastic the decline in religious life would be if the renewal movements didn’t exist.

Some will argue that the Church doesn’t need robust religious communities, especially not the ones in monasteries and convents. It’s no longer the Middle Ages, and the Catholic Church doesn’t need to sustain Western culture behind the walls of the Carmel. So much for contemplative life–and the prayers that sustain the Church. The active religious communities? Well, they’re fine and good, but can’t we leave this social work to professional social workers? And in light of the feminist movement, can’t women aspire to something more than soothing bed sores in Calcutta? Somehow the personal witness of a life radically devoted to Christ in loving service to others seems radically discounted.

Yet the institutional loss has been no less severe. And here my mind immediately jumps to some of the most pressing needs daunting contemporary society: decent education for those who can’t afford it; food, drink, shelter and assistance to independence for the homeless; health care for those whose salaries can just meet their bare necessities like rent, heating and electricity, and groceries. One wonders if the state will ever be able to meet these needs–let alone the need for personal care and human love. Maybe the charitable activities of the Church alone will suffice. What would happen to our inner cities if Catholic schools, hospitals, soup kitchens and shelters shut down? But the sad reality is that many of them depend on governmental moneys. When the Church had a ready supply of celibate religious–without the need to earn a wage to provide for a family, with the freedom to give themselves completely to their ministry, and expecting (even vowing) a life of poverty–staffing Catholic schools and Catholic hospitals was much easier.

The situation isn’t entirely bleak. One is forced to think about communities like the Nashville Dominican sisters, or the Sisters of Life, or the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal–youthful, vibrate, orthodox, flourishing communities. Maybe they’re the future of religious life.

I’m just thinking out loud, and I’m rambling, so I’ll stop here. But maybe this Lent a prayer intention should be for an increase in vocations to religious life.

Five Men Seek a New Life at St. Benedict’s Abbey

Photo by Dan MaddenBrother Gregory Dulmes (left) and Brother Leven Harton have their arms outstretched during the singing of the “Suscipe” (offering of oneself), following their profession of vows.

By Dan Madden
Special to The Leaven

ATCHISON — Two monks made monastic vows and three men entered the novitiate at St. Benedict’s Abbey here on Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Brother Gregory Dulmes professed his solemn vows, a lifetime commitment to the abbey. Brother Leven Harton professed simple vows, beginning a three-year period of formation before he may ask the community to accept him for final vows.

“There is a quiet side to being a Christian,” said Abbot Barnabas Senecal, OSB, in his instruction to the two men. “It is a pattern of life in which we learn acceptance, in which we learn to listen, in which we learn to be open and not closed.”

During the rite of profession, Brother Gregory lay prostrate and was covered by a funeral pall, while fellow monks sang the litany of saints.

“This was symbolic of dying to an old way of life and rising to a new one,” Brother Gregory said. “In a sense I had already been doing this by living as a monk, but this was making it permanent.”

Brother Leven agreed.
“This is three years of giving myself to God in a way I’ve never done before and constantly examining how to do it better,” he said. “But there is also a special grace that comes with it, a special union with God.”

Each professing monk was vested in a new garment. Brother Gregory received the cuculla, or cowl, to symbolize his acceptance as a solemnly professed member. Brother Leven received the traditional hood, to symbolize his new level of commitment.

Abbot Barnabas also received three young men into the abbey’s novitiate. Nicholas Padley, Adam Wilczak and Stephen Watson entered the one-year novitiate, receiving the monastic names Philip Neri, John Paul and Maurus, respectively.

Artists and Religious Brothers

For those who visit this site regularly it is probably no surprise that I am supporter of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. I know many of them personally from retreats, visits to New York, and time spent with them in Comayagua, Honduras. They are some of the most genuinely regular guys I have ever met, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. There aren't that many Friars with the personalities of Fr. Groeschel or Fr. Stan Fortuna in the order, but there are a lot of real men living out humble and holy lives of prayer and hard work, serving the least among us on a daily basis. The week I spent living with the Friars in Honduras was incredible. I think about them and the time I was blessed to spend with them often. And true of all people living out their vocation, they are an inspiration to others in theirs. Life in the friary had a tremendous impact on the way I viewed life in our home. In turn, they have often said the same, that holy families inspire them in their religious life.

Back to the point of my post. My background is in art and design. It is what I have done for most of my life (full time vocations work is a bit of a change of course!). So what could make the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal even better? Many of them are artists in some form or another. In fact the community encourages it. What a life - prayer, service to the poor, and getting to make art all the while. People always talk about the sacrifices required in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, but let me tell you, marriage has them too, and in regards to this post, two of mine would be a contemplative prayer life and time to make art.

The pictures below are from one of the best vocations books out there "The Drama of Reform".

Br. Francis, pictured above, has many of his drawings and paintings on this website - Godsgallery.

The picture above is of Br. Damian, CFR. Every now and then you meet someone that seems to be a kindred soul; Br. Damian is one of them for me. I feel like I learned more in a week about a lived life of faith from this man, than I had from all the previous years of my life combined. I despise the saying that is falsely attributed to St. Francis "preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary" (A few years ago, someone used the Internet to contact some of the most eminent Franciscan scholars in the world, seeking the source of this “Use words if necessary” quote. It is clearly not in any of Francis’ writings. After a couple weeks of searching, no scholar could find this quote in a story written within 200 years of Francis’ death. Source). The saying is frequently used as a relativist copout to escape the call to evangelize WITH words. But I digress. Br. Damian does in fact convincingly live out the Gospel in his life without ever saying a word, but when he does speak, it is with the words that come from a place of deep conversion and deep prayer.

What I don't have a picture of is Br. Damian, CFR and one of the icons he has painted. Br. Damian is one of the Friars in Honduras. On my first trip down there I painted a mural (in four days) on the side of the Missioners of Christ building across the street from the friary. This is the mural...

While painting the mural, Br. Damian came up to talk to me. He asked if I would mind taking a look at an icon he had done. He said he was not an artist. Indeed he was an ER nurse in his life before the Friars. I said I would be happy to take a look at it. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting much, and he didn't make it out to be much. The reality is I have seen far more bad icons than I have good ones. Somehow the style of icons lends itself to mediocre artists trying to pull off what is a truly difficult art form. In the most humble way possible, Br. Damian showed me one of the most beautiful icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary that I have ever seen. Any of my former students will tell you that I am quick to tell them how bad something is, but when I tell them it is good they can take it to the bank. This icon was incredible. He had taught himself the art, and spent 6 painstaking months creating it. Where was this masterpiece destined? He said he would like to give it to one of poor families in the neighborhood! How's that for poverty and abandonment? He is a holy man I tell you. Think of the hours of prayer and contemplation that went into that 8 x 10 icon! It could have easily sold for a large sum of money. How many of us would even think of doing something like that? Well, I guess it's possible when you are an artist living a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.

FOLLOWING CHRIST MEANS COMPLETE COMMITMENT TO HIM

VATICAN CITY, APR 1, 2007 (VIS) - In St. Peter's Square at 9.30 a.m. today, the Holy Father presided at a solemn liturgical celebration for Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord, which marks the beginning of Holy Week. The Holy Father blessed the palms and the olives and, following a procession from the obelisk in the square to the altar, celebrated the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic liturgy was attended by 50,000 pilgrims, the majority of them young people from Rome and other dioceses currently celebrating 22nd World Youth Day, which has as its theme this year: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

In his homily, Benedict XVI affirmed that in the procession of Palm Sunday we, like the disciples who accompanied the Lord, acclaim Him "for all the prodigies we have seen. Yes, we too have seen and still see the prodigies of Christ: how He brings men and women to renounce the comfort of their lives and to put themselves entirely at the service of those who suffer; how He gives men and women the courage to oppose violence and lies, so as to make room in the world for truth; how, in secret, He induces men and women to do good to others, to create reconciliation where there was hatred, to create peace where there was enmity."

The Palm Sunday procession, he continued, "is also a procession of Christ the King. ... To recognize Him as King means to accept Him as the One Who shows us the way, the One we trust and follow. It means accepting His Word day after day as a valid criterion for our lives. It means seeing in Him the authority to which we submit. We submit to Him because His authority is the authority of truth."

The procession "is also an expression of our 'yes' to Jesus and of our readiness to follow Him wherever He may take us," said the Holy Father but, he added, "what does 'following Christ' actually mean? ... It is," he explained, "a fundamental decision to take no account of utility and profit, career and success, as the ultimate aim of our lives, but to recognize truth and love as authentic criteria. It is a choice between living only for ourselves, and giving ourselves for something greater. ... In following Him, we enter the service of truth and love. In losing ourselves we find ourselves again."

The psalm of today's Mass, said the Pope, explains "what it means to ascend with Christ. 'Who shall ascend the Hill of the Lord?' the psalm asks, and indicates two essential conditions. Those who ascend and truly want to reach the heights, the real summit, must be people who ... look around them to seek God, to discover His Face."

Turning to address young people, the Pope highlighted the importance, above all today, of "not letting oneself be buffeted from place to place in life; of not being satisfied with what others think and say and do. Study God and seek God. Do not let the question about God dissolve in our hearts - the desire for that which is greater, the desire to know Him and His Face."

"The other very real condition for the ascent is this: those who have 'clean hearts and pure hands' can stand in the holy place. Pure hands are hands that are not used for acts of violence. They are hands that have not been dirtied with corruption and bribes." As for clean hearts: "A heart is clean that does not pretend and is not stained with lies and hypocrisy, a heart that remains transparent like spring water because it knows no duplicity. A heart is clean that is not led astray with the exhilaration of pleasure, a heart whose love is true and not just the passion of a moment."

Benedict XVI concluded by recalling that "with the cross Jesus opened wide the door to God, the door between God and mankind. Now that door is open. But from the other side the Lord knocks with His cross, he knocks at the doors of the world, at the doors of our hearts, which are so often ... closed to God. And He speaks to us more or less like this: if the proofs that, in His creation, God gives you of His existence do not convince you to open yourself to Him, if the words of Scripture and the message of the Church leave you indifferent, then look at me, your Lord and your God. This is the appeal that, at this moment, we let penetrate our hearts."