December 2007          

When the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal began in the south Bronx in 1987, we placed ourselves under the protection and guidance of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our objective in renewal has been to live a more literal of observance of the rule of St. Francis of Assisi according to the Capuchin tradition. We gratefully ask the Lord's blessings on all who help us to God's work and we place our trust in the prayers of Our Lady of Guadalupe who is the Patroness of Americas, Queen of the Unborn and Empress of Mexico and we say "Totus Tuus - It is all Yours..., O Mary!"

Saint Francis was very devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the only human person who offered a %100 yes to God. If we give our vocation and struggle to say yes to God, to her, she will help us to be more like her. This can be done by daily praying the Rosary, wearing the Brown Scapular and/or Miraculous Medal and by consecrating oneself to her. Following is the consecration that we do as a community...

CFR Marian Consecration (renewed every December 12, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe):

O Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of the Angels and Mother of the Church, at the foot of your Divine Son’s Cross, we were entrusted to your maternal care. By your presence, you aided the nascent Church as it prayed and waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit. With that same devotion, we consecrate ourselves to your Immaculate Heart this day and place ourselves beneath the mantle of your Holy Protection.

We consecrate to you our life of prayer, so that you may direct it to the Heart of God, that it may keep us in a disposition of profound trust and recollection and interior silence.

We consecrate to you the living out of our vows: illuminated by your perpetual virginity of heart and mind, in accord with your unconditional yes to God’s annunciation. May we truly be poor in fact and in spirit, as our holy father Saint Francis and our holy mother Saint Clare wish of us.

We consecrate to you our life in community: may it resonate with your humility, with fraternal service, with unconditional love, as your family did at Nazareth.

We consecrate to you our work and our apostolate: especially our work with the poor and homeless. May it be a whole-hearted and fruitful cooperation with the reign of your Son Jesus on this earth.

We dedicate our preaching and our work of healing divisions and disunity to you, the Mother of all Christians.

We consecrate to you the totality of your little reform which, like Saint Francis at the Portziuncula, we place at your feet, indeed in your Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart.

O Mary, we see how imperfect and weak we are, but at the same time we are very secure placing ourselves without reservation in your hands, as belonging totally to you. You will help us to grow as individuals and as a community. In this act of consecration (which we are renewing) we are intending to open wide the doors of our hearts and of our fraternity and say to you - it is all yours, O Mary.

Make of our spiritual family a brand new expression of the original and fresh charism of your early Capuchin reform. Sanctify us and fill us with a radiating love; grant us ardent, pure, and generous hearts. Send us new brothers and sisters so we may continue to glorify God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and increase the vitality of the Church.

Oh Mary, you are our hope, our strength, the surest and quickest way to grow in sanctity. Our Mother, we are yours and you are ours now and forever. Amen.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of Our Community, pray for us!

We are praying for you and your discernment everyday, especially on Wednesdays. Let us set our hands to the plow in the Lord's vineyard and not look back! "The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor"
(1 Cor 3:8).