Friars Challenge, Help Bring Prayer Alive at Chapter – Highlights of National Chapter
(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Spring 2022 Issue #105)
 100vw, 352px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>The Conference of National Spiritual Assistants enlivened the National Chapter by focusing on being part of an order, on prayer and contemplation, and on the Liturgy of the Hours.</p>
<p><strong>As an Order, Respect Different Opinions</strong></p>
<p>“It’s important that we recognize that we are committed to an order, and we should try to be in harmony with the church… and with each other,” <strong>Fr. Jerome Wolbert, OFM</strong>, said. But, sometimes, he said, it’s difficult. Sometimes, even across the church, there may be disagreement.</p>
<p>He suggested that sometimes we take something that is true and blow it out of proportion, out of context and reinterpret it, moving people away from the truth. Sometimes, we may not hear the scholarly reply. It’s “important to be grounded to know where the church is – in scripture and to understand it in the light of Christ, to pay attention to church and its magisterium.” Respect it.</p>
<p>As an order, we should “be respectful of other people with a different point of view.” For him, he said he likes to “keep things open and on the table – It’s a dimension of being part of an order.” He recommended having a “broad collection of people and hear a lot of opinions. It’s helpful to sort things out that way.”</p>
<p>“There are a lot of things that we have to keep in our hearts and we can’t say</p>
<p>anything,” but, “we can take them to our spiritual directors. I hope that anyone who is in a position of authority, has a spiritual director.”</p>
<p>Being a part of an order can be difficult, especially if you are in the role of leadership, he said. We must not abandon but rather be “vigilant and persistent about coming ever closer to being coordinated with the rest of the church and among ourselves as an order.”</p>
<p>He added, “To be willing to be directed and to give up something you love out of the sense of harmony of the church is a dimension of leadership…” It’s challenging to keep some things in our hearts, but “we must face this challenge because we are part of an order.”</p>
<p><strong>Prayer & Contemplation: The Bedrock</strong></p>
<p>“Prayer and contemplation are the bedrock of our engagement with the divine,” began <strong>Fr. Christopher Panagoplos, TOR</strong>. Prayer is about giving thanks, asking for intercessions, making petitions and adoring God. These are the four types of prayer, he said.</p>
<p>“The Liturgy is the summit with all forms of prayer included,” he noted. Quoting Sister Delio, he said “prayer is where we speak what we know and what we don’t know.” He added Bonaventure’s thoughts: “If we want to ascend to God, we must descend into our own humanity… In prayer, God bends down to embrace us.”</p>
<p>“God speaks to us,” he added, and we should be “listening and engaging with him…Where God is, he gives us the strength and speaks to us in the goodness of creation…We’re the ones who put the veil in front of our faces.”</p>
<p>Through prayer and contemplation, we can understand who we are. “It brings all into perspective,” he said, adding that St. Clare’s method of “contemplation begins with the mirror of the Crucified Christ; seeing oneself in daily prayer before the Cross; to accept God in the Crucified is to accept God in our own lives, to accept who we are; the more we contemplate Christ, the more we come to resemble Christ.”</p>
<p>He advised: “Find God in the midst of all that is humanity. Listen to him in creation and in fraternity. Keep your mouths shut and ears open to see how God wants the world to be.”</p>
<p>He closed by saying that Contemplation makes us “aware of God who is always here.”</p>
<p><strong>Liturgy</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Hours:</strong> <strong>Church’s</strong> <strong>Gift</strong></p>
<p>Fr. <strong>Chris</strong> <strong>Shorrock,</strong> <strong>OFM</strong> <strong>Conv.</strong> asked the questions: Can Liturgy of the Hours become a prayer for every person? Can it bring new energy? Can we learn from it?</p>
<p>Using the Timothy M. Gallagher, OMV, book, <em>Praying the Liturgy of the Hours – A Personal </em><em>Journey, </em>as his reference, he said that “spiritual life consists of ordinary experience with its daily joys and struggles, daily efforts to pray, and daily striving to love God and others.”</p>
<p>“When ordinary spiritual experience is expressed in words, new paths open in our lives of faith.”</p>
<p>Liturgy of the Hours, he said, is a “rich source of (that) spiritual growth.” The Psalms in the Hours “cry to God in times of affliction,” and “express hope and a deep longing for God.”</p>
<p>Quoting St. Ambrose, he said:</p>
<p>“A psalm is ‘a cry of happiness.’ A psalm soothes the temper, distracts from care, lightens the burden of sorrow. It is a source of security at night, a lesson of wisdom by day. It is a shield when we are afraid, a celebration of holiness, a vision of serenity, a promise of peace and harmony.”</p>
<p>The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, is, he concluded, “the Church’s greatest gift for all members of the church.”</p>
<p>https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2022/05/30/friars-challenge-help-bring-prayer-alive-at-chapter-highlights-of-national-chapter/</p>
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A Visioning for Formation: As in St. Francis’ Time, Spirit of Age Ultimately Doesn’t Satisfy
(This article originally appeared in the Winter 2018-19 issue of Tau-USA)
By Mary Stronach, OFS
Setting the stage for a weekend of formation visioning, Fr. David Pivonka, TOR, provided a dose of reality.
“The world has profoundly changed in the last 25 years,” said the host of EWTN’s Wild Goose series. “Young people have no safe place. There is a sense of danger infiltrating every part of us.” He said that there are things that want to corrupt, to manipulate the spirit of faith.
He took workshop attendees through an historical view of God.
In the pre-modern world, pre-1600s, God is the starting point. The world is imbued with God. The truth is rooted in God, he explained.
From the 1600s through to the 1960s, the modern world view has man at the center of all things. “God is pushed off to the side. God might exist but there is no intimate contact. Humanity has the ability to make things better… fix the world’s problems. Right and wrong is based on the human vision.”
In the post-modern world – the last 50 years – there is no center. There is chaos. “The truth is whatever an individual believes to be true.” There are no boundaries. God is not a part of the equation. During this era, he said, many people have no identification with religion.
Youth talk about being “spiritual” but not “religious,” he said. They react to culture mainly by feeling. It is an era when you “can’t offend anybody.” He continued, “This is a non-reflective age. We are so busy, so consumed…We don’t reflect on consequences.” In the 24-hour news cycle, we are “bombarded with noise. Our interior life is suffering. We need to invite people to an interior life.”
“Words like ‘should or should not’ are foreign to this culture,” he added. “Truth and preference are largely the same. If I determine what’s true and someone disagrees, then it reflects on me… The world is so divided, so hostile, we can’t dialogue.” He referred to a quote in a school that said, “We will tolerate all things except what we believe to be intolerant.”
He offered three approaches on how to engage this culture. The first is “accommodation,” accepting that every- thing is OK. But, he said, using this approach “ultimately doesn’t respect the individual.”
The second is not to critique the culture. “This is an escape behind walls, and leads to isolation,” he said. “The church is counter-cultural. We must confront it.”
He provided a more hopeful alternative with the third approach – “Infiltration and transformation.” Engage the culture, he said. “Desire to create a fraternal world. When Francis embraced the leper, he recognized Christ…Recognize and see that, and help other people to see it. There are two conversions into Christ. The first is to leave the world and go to Christ. The second is to go back to the world with Christ to bring to the world what we discover… The power of the Gospel is an encounter of the love of God that changes us… Especially now, in the midst of chaos, they see in us something that can satisfy.”
https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2022/05/23/a-visioning-for-formation-as-in-st-francis-time-spirit-of-age-ultimately-doesnt-satisfy/