Pentecost Novena 2010

May 13, 2010 - Ascension Thursday


The First Novena


On Ascension Thursday, we commemorate that day when Jesus, some 40 days after His resurrection, ascended into heaven at the right hand of the Father. In his final instructions to the early Church, he commanded them to stay in Jerusalem and pray, awaiting the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts of the Apostles 1). The early believers, gathered around Mary, prayed for nine days. The ninth day was the Jewish feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon the early Church.


This amazing historical event inspired Christians to pray special prayers for nine days, also known as a novena. Follow this link to find a beautiful novena for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in your life: Novena to the Holy Spirit.

Fr. Luke Mary Fletcher, CFR

St. Joseph Friary, New York, NY

Happy Easter! The Victory of the Resurrection:

Happy Easter! The Victory of the Resurrection:

There is something in the human heart that loves a battle and longs for victory. We all desire to win, be victorious, triumph, succeed, prevail, overcome, conquer and surmount! Every good movie, TV show, novel and story tries to tap into this eminent human quality. Beyond merely being competitive, it is as if this aspiration for victory is in the blue-print of our being.

The deification of sports is an example of this human attraction to the contest, the battle. My memories of growing up in basketball-obsessed-Indiana were rekindled as I watched Butler almost topple Duke in the NCAA Championship basketball game (A.K.A. “March Madness” or “The Big Dance”). I couldn’t fall asleep for hours after the game was over. Our brothers in Ireland were recently embroiled by controversy because they suggested it was wrong for Catholics to replace church with a rugby match on Good Friday (I guess the brothers kicked the sacred cow).

There must be something from God our creator in this human yearning for victory. The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the culmination and fulfillment of our deepest desire for victory …


Fr. Luke Mary Fletcher, C.F.R.
Saint Joseph Friary, Harlem, New York

The Cross by Br. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

The Cross
The paradox of our life is simply this: if you wish to be strong, confident, and live without fear you must accept the cross in your life.  You will probably feel repulsed by this and everything within you will rebel against it.  You will try and think of a million plans to conquer this reality, more prayer, more reading, more exercise, more sleep, more work, etc, all of which may be helpful but none of which alone is the cure.


What is ironic about the cross is that it comes in different disguises and shapes.  To some it might come as an illness, a death of a spouse or friend, loneliness, feeling rejected or misunderstood, bearing with a person whom we find difficult or perhaps even something as simple as the weather or living in a place we do not particularly like.


Yet whatever disguise or shape the cross comes to us in our life, we can be assured that if we decide to carry the cross in union with Jesus it will become for us a bridge eventually leading us into a land of true freedom and peace.  The world is terrified of appearing weak and poor.  However, if you are not willing to be poor and weak then you are not willing to be strong because it is in poverty and weakness that God’s grace overflows in abundance.


It is difficult in the midst of so much suffering to be grateful for the cross.  However, as we look back on our life and review the moments of growth and happiness that we have experienced we will realize it was the cross that has always preceded those moments and has softened the ground we walk on, enabling the seeds of life and holiness God has planted to grow and bear fruit.

Br. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

St. Leopold Friary, Yonkers, NY

Pictures from our newly invested novices

CHAIR OF ST. PETER - FEB. 22

CHAIR OF ST. PETER  -  FEB. 22
During this year of the priest, we have been highlighting one of the Apostles each month at our Associate days in the Bronx.  Our apostolic feast day for February is the Chair of St. Peter. 

Certainly we are honoring something greater than a piece of furniture, and something even greater than St. Peter himself, as great of a personal figure as he was.  We know his weaknesses.  I presume our Lord was so insistent on washing Peter’s feet at the Last Supper because He had seen that he often had his “foot in his mouth.” (!)   Yet Jesus called him blessed because he was given a word of truth, a revelation that came not from man but from God the Father (see Mt. 16:17).

The Chair of Peter reminds us that we don’t belong to a man-made Church.  We are not left on our own to answer the question of who Jesus is.  We are not left to “sola-Scriptura,” the Bible alone, which ends really in “O solo mio….”, to my own interpretation.   Vatican II taught us that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are two branches of the same fountain, the same Divine Word.

Although human nature tends to rebel against religious authority, the fact that Christ gave authority and a guarantee of truth in matters of faith and morals to another human being is a great blessing.  We have someone who can say for certain what it means to be a Catholic, which not every world religion has.  (For example, some Muslims will say the problem with any dialogue with Islam and other religions is that no one can definitively say what it means to be a Muslim.)  A personal authority, a Body with a head, means also that theology can develop with language and understanding.   We are not left to keeping everything exactly as it was, in the liturgy for example, in 35 AD.  We have a continuity of authority which means that theological understanding can “change to remain the same” as language and societies change.

We can think of four facets of papal infallibility like four legs of this Chair.  One is for truth in doctrines of faith, one for truth in doctrines of morals, one for bringing unity, and one for the authority to “bind and loose” in regard to sin and penalties.  How amazing that Christ gave such authority to men, beginning with his fisherman friend.  The perseverance of this chair, this office, over the ages is another way that Christ is with us always, even until the end of world.
- Fr. Richard Roemer, CFR

To Be or ...

To Be or ...


In Matthew 13 we read about the people of Jesus' native place. They were so overly familiar with him that they took offense at his teachings and miracles. "Where did this man get all this?", they stated. "But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.' And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith."


Many people have a "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" attitude towards Christianity. Inspired by this dynamic, Mel Gibson wanted to film The Passion of The Christ in Aramaic. He wanted Christ to strike us afresh, in a new way. When I type "To be or ..." You automatically know the rest, "or not to be. That is the question." Gibson believed that many people do the same thing with Jesus. We are so overly familiar with him that we lack faith.


Pray for the grace to experience the life-giving radicalness of Jesus and his Gospel anew so that he may work many mighty deeds in your life.

God bless,

Fr. Luke Mary Fletcher, CFR

The Words of Jesus

The Words of Jesus


Perhaps one of the greatest struggles in embracing the gospel is the command of Jesus to let go of our entire life.  The control we think we have, the anxiety we often create, our disordered desires that only serve to hurt us, our ideas about ourselves and others and our own will often reveal themselves in the light of the gospel as an illusion, a mask that is surrounded in unreality.


Jesus reminds us that everything that is true and beautiful about life comes from Him.  His words alone remove the veil that we so often remain trapped behind.  "Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock."  Mt 7:24-25


A wise person is one who looks at their life and realizes that by himself they are incomplete and in need of an "other."  Jesus Christ is therefore not a crux for "weak" people but the cure and the remedy for the blindness and sickness we live in without Him.  Those who listen to His words and build their life upon Him will not be moved despite the trends and fashions that blow through society and leave so many people lost and wandering aimlessly for direction in their life.   

Br. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

St. Leopold Friary, Yonkers, NY

A Christmas Prayer

Merry Christmas from the friars. For those of you who read Magnificat, this beautiful prayer will be familiar...

On that holy night,
Somehow
It happened.


Somehow,
God took a handful of humanity:
Proud, petulant, passionate;
And a handful of divinity:
Undivided, inexpressible, incomprehensible:
And enclosed them in one small body.


Somehow, the all too human
Touched the divine.
And was not vaporized.
To be human was never the same,
But forever thereafter,
Carried a hint of its close encounter with the perfect.
and forever thereafter,
God was never the same,
But carried a hint of the passion of the mortal.


If God can lie down in a cattle-trough,
is any object safe from transformation?
If peasant girls can be mothers to God,
Is any life safe from the invasion of the eternal?


If all this could happen, O God, 
What places of darkness on our earth
are pregnant with light waiting to be born this night?


If all this could happen, O God, 
Then you could be, and are, anywhere, everywhere,
Waiting to be born this night in the most
unbelievable places,
Perhaps even in our own hearts. Amen.


- Ian Oliver
We Ask Your Blessing: 100 Prayers For Campus Occasions

SAINT ANDREW - Bringing our Brothers & Sisters to Christ

SAINT ANDREW - Bringing our Brothers & Sisters to Christ


Who was the first of the Apostles? Usually we think of Peter because he is at the top of the list, but the first in historical order was Saint Andrew. Andrew, along with another unnamed disciple of John the Baptist, was the first “vocation visitor” invited by Christ to come and see how He lived. He was a fisherman, like his brother Simon-Peter, who was the first person that he went to in order to get him “hooked” on Jesus as well (See Jn. 1:35-42).


Bringing people to Jesus was evidently Saint Andrew’s forte. At another key moment it was Saint Andrew who brought the young man with the 5 loaves and 2 fish to Jesus so that He could multiply them for the crowd (Jn 6:8-9).


Perhaps what is most notable about his efforts is his lack of notoriety. Saint Andrew seems content to fade into the background after he brings people to Christ. He doesn’t get to go with his brother and fellow fishermen, James and John, when they are with Jesus at the Transfiguration or Gethsemane. Maybe he was the responsible one whom Jesus could leave in charge while He was away.


Saint Andrew teaches us that the work of evangelization, being fishers of men, doesn’t call for a lot of recognition. John Henry Newman said that the true estimate of a person’s influence comes more from looking at their private life than their public life. Is anyone more influential than a mother or father upon the life of their children? Edward Leen, in his book on Progress in Mental Prayer reminds us that: We can never know if God shall realize His purpose in us through keeping us hidden or bringing us to light. The soul that seeks to be perfect must consent to be nothing, that is, to be held as nobody. It is wrong to seek to do remarkable things in God's service for the sake of attracting others to that service, (p. 116) As one member on a team of medical scientists said, “It doesn’t matter who gets the credit, as long as those who need it get the cure.”


Many great saints followed this path of hiddenness. For example, Saint Therese and Saint Benedict were not well known during their lifetimes. Saint Bernadette went into the hidden life of the cloister after the famous events took place at Lourdes, explaining that she was content to be like a broom in the hands of her Master, who could use her when needed and then put her back in the closet. She must have pondered the humble hiddenness of the Mother of God, such a central figure in salvation history about whom we really do not know many details.


It is enough to bring our brothers and sisters to Christ and let Him take over from there. It is encouraging that Saint Andrew’s success in evangelization began with his own family. This is not often the case, but he shows us that it is a worthwhile effort. In this case he won over the first pope. His manner of doing so was simply to share his experience of what he went and saw: “We have found the Messiah!” We might not be able to tell a family member how to live the faith, (that is, there is usually an independent spirit among family members in these matters) but we can at least be true to who we are and what God has done in our lives and share that experience with them. It is good to pray that the Lord would send a “fisherman” friend to them, who they might listen to more readily. If all else fails, I know of a woman who sewed a prayer cloth blessed by a priest into her husband’s clothing (unseen of course). Her husband, who had been away from the Church for 20 years, went back to church that Sunday and became a daily communicant!


Saint Andrew’s example also reminds us to be grateful for all of those people who brought us to Christ at crossroads of our lives and then faded into the background. We ask Saint Andrew to intercede for each of them, for our families, and for every person that Christ wants us to bring to Him.

Fr. Richard Roemer, CFR

St. Crispin Friary

Bronx, NY

Reading Souls

Reading Souls

Throughout history there have been prophets who were given the grace to read souls. The Old Testament is full of examples, one of which is the scene when the prophet Nathan confronted King David for his adultery with Bathsheba and subsequent killing of her husband. This grace to read souls is always ordered to inviting the sinner to repent of sin. David wrote Psalm 51 in repentance for his sin.

Saints John Vianney and Padre Pio are modern day examples of this grace. They could tell you your sins when you knelt in their confessional! The effect was beautiful: people who were hard of heart and unrepentant, ended up converting and repenting. Yet, the absolution which these two saints offered is no different than the absolution one can receive from any Catholic Priest. You had to wait in line for days to make a confession to those two saints. Many priests sit alone for half an hour on Saturdays in the confessional. If we only knew the graces which are available things would be different ... In all of her modern day apparitions, the Blessed Virgin Mary has been encouraging us to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a month.

Pray for the grace of a well formed conscience and true contrition for your sins.

God bless,
Fr. Luke Mary Fletcher, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
New York, NY

It is true; we are never alone, especially in our moments of pain and suffering.

“The sea rose because a strong wind was blowing.  When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat.  They were frightened, but he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.”  John 6:18-20

Perhaps the greatest hardship of pain and suffering occurs when we convince ourselves that we are alone, that everyone, including God, has forgotten about us and we must face this dark period in isolation from the rest of the world.


However, as months pass and we reflect on those moments with fresh eyes we slowly begin to realize that we were not alone.  God was indeed very close to us.  Even the most darkest and violent periods of history reveal this to us.  How could humanity survive any of the countless tragedies she has faced and will continue to face, if there were not a loving God behind it all, holding back the gates of despair and anarchy from erupting upon the earth?

Jesus’ words to his disciples in the midst of their fear, “It is I; do not be afraid.” (Jn 6:20), are much more than an affirmation that everything will be alright.  They are the proclamation that it is Jesus Christ who is the ultimate authority in the universe.  It is He who conquers every tragedy, every disaster and every act of violence.

It is true; we are never alone, especially in our moments of pain and suffering. 

Br. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

St. Leopold Friary

Yonkers, NY