October 4, 2005
Feast of Saint Francis
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Although today’s Tuesday, it feels like Sunday. Our two communities of friars and sisters gathered together in the South Bronx to celebrate the Feast of Saint Francis. The liturgy was celebrated most reverently with great billows of incense and wonderful harmonious chant. How I wish you, our friends of the friars, could be there! Yet, in some way you were since I prayed for you, our friends and benefactors.
At the conclusion of the liturgy, before the recessional hymn, we prayed the “Prayer of the Companions of Saint Francis”, as we do at the end of every Mass. Today, to honor our holy father Saint Francis, we thought it would be good to share this prayer with you. So, if you’re a faithful “friend of the friars” (I believe there are approximately eight hundred who visit us every day) you can pray this prayer also! In this way we can be united in prayer, in spirit – the Holy Spirit – and you don’t need a computer to be on this “line”!
A special word of thanks to Rosann who celebrates her birthday on this special day; without her, there would be no “From the Friars” e-letter!
Fr. Glenn Sudano, CFR
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Prayer of the Companions of St. Francis
Draw us to yourself, most worthy Father, Francis, that we may run after your fragrance of holiness. As you know, we are lukewarm because of our sloth, languid because of our idleness, half-alive because of our negligence. This little flock is following you with hesitant steps. Our weak eyes cannot bear the dazzling rays of your perfection. Renew our days as from the beginning, O mirror and model of perfection, and do not allow us, who are like you in our profession, to be unlike you in our lives.
Holy Father, remember all your sons and daughters, who surrounded by inextricable dangers, follow your footsteps though from so great a distance. Give us strength that we may resist; purify us that we may gleam forth; fill us with joy that we may be happy. Pray that the spirit of grace and of prayer be poured upon us; that we may have the true humility you had; that we may observe the poverty you observed; that we may be filled with the charity with which you always loved Christ Crucified, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns world without end. Amen.
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