Daily Reflection – The Nature of Fatherhood
Minute Meditation – Living a Story
We are not just our minds. We live and move and have our being in and with the world around us. We experience our lives through all of our senses, and all of that experience is conveyed in story, which is more than ideas and beliefs. Story has movement and sound, and portrays how we interact with our environment, with humans and all living things, from plants to animals to the landscape of our lives in time.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – May 11 – Saint Francis of Girolamo
St. Francis de Girolamo (1642-1716) was the eldest of eleven children born to honorable and virtuous parents in Naples, Italy. As a child he was drawn to God and a life of prayer. Realizing his vocation to Holy Orders, he was ordained a Jesuit priest at the age of 28. He became a renowned public preacher due to his distinguished and eloquent voice. He was described as “a lamb when he talks, and a lion when he preaches.”
Francis had a heart for the missions after his patron St. Francis Xavier, but instead of traveling to distant lands he accepted his hometown of Naples as his India. He went as a missionary priest into country towns and villages for open-air preaching in the streets. He sought to convert sinners wherever they were—in brothels, prisons, galleys, hospitals, and asylums—as well as instructing the pious in their religious houses. He converted Muslim prisoners of war to the Christian faith, rescued children from dangerous and degrading situations, and opened a pawn shop for charity.
The fruit of his labor was abundant. He converted many souls, even hardened sinners, and made them virtuous. Everyone knew Francis for his holiness and zeal. He also had a reputation for being a miracle worker during his lifetime and after his death. After spending 40 years in apostolic labor in Naples, he died of an illness from which he suffered greatly without complaint. His feast day is May 11th.
//The Catholic Company//
Meditation of the Day – Remove the Obstacles to His Mercy
“Tell souls not to place within their own hearts obstacles to My mercy, which so greatly wants to act within them. My mercy works in all those hearts which open their doors to it. Both the sinner and the righteous person have need of My mercy. Conversion, as well as perseverance, is a grace of My mercy. Let souls who are striving for perfection particularly adore My mercy, because the abundance of graces which I grant them flows from My mercy. I desire that these souls distinguish themselves by boundless trust in My mercy. I myself will attend to the sanctification of such souls. I will provide them with everything they will need to attain sanctity. The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is-trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them. I rejoice that they ask for much, because it is My desire to give much, very much. On the other hand, I am sad when souls ask for little, when they narrow their hearts.” —Jesus to St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul p. 560
//The Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – The Gift He Loves Most
“Put your heart at His feet. It is the gift He loves most.”
— St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
//The Catholic Company//
Take and Eat: The Bible and the Mass
God, as a great novelist, has written into creation His plan from all eternity: communion with humanity. It is through the Eucharist—in His Parousia, His presence—that He remains with His people. When we “take and eat” of the Lamb of God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we partake of the worship of Heaven and Earth.
//Saint Paul Center//
Daily Reflection – Our Souls Need Nourishment
Daily Reflection – Do Small Things in a Great Way
Minute Meditation – In the Waiting
And now in this new rebirth of Jesus, Mary could still see her own love in the eyes that looked back at her as he walked upon the earthen floor, much as he had walked the first time he waddled and stumbled into her arms, a little baby boy becoming. She had held Jesus in her arms once he’d walked so determined but hesitantly toward her open arms; she had held him lifeless in her lap when he was taken down from the cross; she would now wait for him to embrace her with the love with which she had embraced him all the days of his life. Even when he left home to embrace the Father’s will that he preach and teach, suffer and die for the people of Israel, she embraced him lovingly in her heart every day as she waited for the next mystery to be revealed. When God works upon us, she thought, then the real working of our lives is in the waiting, waiting to receive what is given us when we wait upon the Lord in all we are and all we have.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Saint of the Day – May 10 – Saint Damien de Veuster of Moloka’i
Saint Damien de Veuster of Moloka’i’s Story
When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy, Hansen’s disease. By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease.
Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary six years later, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii.
In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government’s leper colony on the island of Moloka’i, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people’s physical, medical, and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support.
Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later, he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Cope, to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa.
Damien contracted Hansen’s disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien’s body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995.
When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the US Capitol. Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.
Reflection
Some people thought Damien was a hero for going to Moloka’i and others thought he was crazy. When a Protestant clergyman wrote that Damien was guilty of immoral behavior, Robert Louis Stevenson vigorously defended him in an “Open Letter to Dr. Hyde.”
//Franciscan Media//