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The Franciscans

  • Writer: Profiles in Catholicism
    Profiles in Catholicism
  • May 27, 2021
  • 9 min read

Updated: Mar 28

Prayer for vocations to the Franciscan Order

 

“Lady Poverty”

 

Dear Lord, St. Francis suffered the sufferings of Christ and simplified his life to the point of almost perpetual penance.

 

But yet, unlike us, he was happy without a car, the internet,

television, a phone, perhaps because he saw the twin poverty

of low wages to make many more products and the effect of

being distracted by a lot of possessions that possess our time.

 

Nevertheless, Lord, St. Francis inspires us in the garden with

reusing the many plastic boxes, whether for grapes, strawberries,

or slices of chicken, to protect the vegetable seeds growing in

the old ice-cream tubs, yoghurt pots, and even proper plant pots.

 

As a family of ten, Mary, we use and reuse clothes and toys,

play-time in the parks, on walks, in the woods, marvelling, even

now at the many and diverse shapes and sizes of leaves, and dots

of colour even in the familiar candle-blossoms of the conker tree.

 

Growing, as our children do, and outgrowing the garden, the

yard and edge of the grass begin to be places to grow our own

runner beans, lettuce, garlic, tomatoes, and courgettes, in boxes

used for recycling, old bins and buckets, now full of fruit skins.

 

Dear Mary, how you must have mended and darned, sewed and

cut, cloth and old clothes, woven or skin, that made and remade

what your family wore as they grew and worked and toiled in

the heat, drying out what was already dry, oiled and cracking.

 

In your trade, St. Joseph, were you able to keep the scraps of

wood to burn for warmth in the cold nights or for cooking? Or

did you even save the scraps and make a toy, a stool, a table,

for use at home or to earn a little extra at the maker’s market?

 

So now, when I mend a shelf or even the car, though cars were

not of your time, still I ask and even beg for help, to keep it on a

wall a bit longer or on the road another year, although the time

is coming when we will need to pray for more than we can earn.

 

Dear St. Joseph, keep those that abound across the global world, scarcely scrabbling for the minerals needed by the latest smart cars, costing more than a housing estate and earning and selling for

more than a million times more than the scrabblers in the dirt.

 

Oh Holy Family, you know what you needed to live and you lived for busy in others and hunted, like an animal, for all that can be sold more

than shared, robbed more than farmed, is still here to grow and feed.

by Francis Etheredge Profiles Catholicism


Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi


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;

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.

Amen.

by Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration


Franciscan Interviews


Franciscan Articles/Commentaries


Featured Report

Franciscan General Articles and Commentaries


Book Reviews, Commentaries, and Announcements



Film Reviews and Commentaries


  • Wildcat Commentary by Amy Welborn The Catholic World Report

  • La Strada Commentary by Salvatore Cernuzio Vatican News

  • Shane Commentary by Heather King  Desire Lines/Angelus


Theater Reviews and Commentaries


Videos


A day in the life of a Franciscan Friar


Seven Franciscan Saints You Should Know!

Prayer of Saint Francis Song- Capuchin Franciscan Transitus



 
 

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