O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love…

Come to teach us the path of knowledge!
Enable us, in turn, to teach our sisters and brothers Your path of knowledge.

Come to rescue us with Your mighty power!
May we use wisely the power of Your gift of freedom.

Come to save us without delay!
May we love without forgetting anyone.

Come and free the prisoners of darkness!
Who may search for substitutes to Your light.

Come to save us, Lord our God!
From pride deluding ourselves that we save ourselves.

Come and save man whom You formed from the dust!
As we as a Church evacuate doctrines and practices and drift towards the secular.

Come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death!
Awaken the necessary retrieval today with the wisdom of our God Most High, wisdom containing jubilation and lamentation. Grace us with the wisdom of God to carry the work of the Word Made Flesh, ever forward, never backward!

In this photo, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Dennis Grumsey, OFM Conv. – Pastor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore Pastorate which includes St. Casimir and St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Churches, holds “Baby Jesus” during the December 5, 2021 Greccio Service at St. Casimir Church.

Scores of people gathered on Sunday afternoon, the 12^th of December, outside the Dom Polski Narodowy (“Polish National Home”) in Chicopee, Massachusetts, for the dedication of a mural commissioned to honor the heroic exploits of the late +Fr. Łucjan Królikowski, OFM Conv.  Measuring 60 feet by 30 feet, it is the largest mural ever created by the artist Rafał Pisarczyk.  The artist was quoted as saying: “Dajcie mi ścianę a oddam wam serce.” (Give me a wall, and I will give you my heart.)

The mural depicts the saga of the late +Fr. Łucjan Królikowski, OFM Conv., who shepherded hundreds of Polish orphans during World War II and its aftermath – from their exile in Siberia, to refugee camps in East Africa, and eventually to a new life in Canada.  While a vigilant Angel of Poland stands sentry (left) over the group clustered around Fr. Łucjan (above), with their ship on the sea behind them (below), the radiant faces of the children show no signs of fear or pain – only hope and calm.  The artist used original photographs to depict the faces, as well as the ship.

A caption from one of Fr. Łucjan’s books – Miłość mi wszystko wyjaśniła (“Love Explained Everything to Me”) offers to passersby an inspirational message: Lekarstwem n  wszystkie wspolczesne choroby i bolaczki jest ludzka milosc, ale nie okaleczona, zubozala, czy samolubna, tylko autentyczna I czysta.  (“The cure for all today’s modern diseases and pains is human love, but not crippled, diluted or egocentric, only authentic and pure.”)

Dedication by the artist – Rafał Pisarczyk

Among those in attendance at the ceremony were the Most Rev. William Byrne, Bishop of Springfield, who blessed the mural; the Mayor of Chicopee John Vieau; the Minister Provincial of the Franciscan Friars Conventual – the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. (pictured below with Rafał Pisarczyk); the Vicar General of the Springfield Diocese Rev. Piotr Calik; the Rector/Pastor of St. Stanislaus Basilica – Fr. Brad Milunski, OFM Conv.; Mr. Tomasz Moczerniuk, who conceived and coordinated the mural project; Mrs. Ewa Konarzewska, principal patroness of Fr. Łucjan’s legacy; various civic and Polish officials; and the artist Rafał Pisarczyk.
See a news story from during the process of completion.

Throughout our province, many of our ministries held special celebrations in honor of the December 12th Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some were held on Gaudete Sunday in addition to the regular 3rd Week of Advent Liturgies, and some were held on the days surrounding this important Feast Day for North America. Learn more about the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

On December 11, 2021, our Siler City, NC pastoral ministry – St. Julia Catholic Community – celebrated with a Guadalupe Procession. All of the dances (see photo below), including the dancing horses, were performed before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (photo above). The parish honors this Feast Day with a week-long celebration.

Be sure to virtually enjoy the celebrations, liturgies and services of this vibrant parish, under the pastor ship of Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Julio Martinez, OFM Conv., via their YouTube Channel, their Facebook Page, and their Website (available in English and in Español de México). If you are ever in the Siler City area, Friar Julio, the parish staff & volunteers, and all of the parishioners, would love for you to join them.

The Most Reverend Carlos Trovarelli, OFM Conv., 120^th Minister General of the Franciscan Order, visited the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, on the morning of the 7^th of December 2021.  He was escorted into the “Manuscripts and Rare Books” curatorial department for a private viewing of one of the most important artifacts in Franciscan history: the “Assisi Missal,” a 12^th century illuminated manuscript, also known as the “St. Francis Missal.”  This is the “Gospel Book” consulted by St. Francis in 1208 at the Chapel of San Nicolò, near the main square of Assisi, as recorded in the earliest Franciscan sources, including Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure.
The Very Rev. James McCurry, OFM Conv., Minister Provincial of Our Lady of the Angels Province, arranged the privileged showing through the museum’s Administrator to the Executive Office – Diane White and its Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts & Curatorial Chair – Dr. Lynley Anne Herbert, and the Conservator of Manuscripts (Head of Book and Paper Conservation) – Abigail Quandt.  The museum was genuinely enthusiastic to host the successor of St. Francis and his entourage, which also included the Minister Provincial of the Province of St. Anthony and Bl. James of Strepar in Kraków, Poland -the Very Reverend Fr. Marian Gołąb, OFM Conv., with Fr. Jakub Czajka, OFM Conv. and Fr. Piotr Sarnicki, OFM Conv..
Indeed, Friar Carlos was the third Minister General whom Friar James has escorted to the Walters to see the Missal, preceded by Friar Joachim Giermek, OFM Conv. in 2004, and Friar Marco Tasca, OFM Conv. in 2018.
The museum’s founder, Mr. Henry Walters, purchased the Assisi Missal in the 1920s from an antiquarian book dealer in Frankfurt, Germany.  The book had found its way to Germany from the Venetian-controlled Croatia, in the wake of the dissolution of religious libraries after the 19^th century unification of the Italian states.  Between 2017 and 2020, the Assisi Missal underwent a thorough conservation and restoration of its beechwood cover and goatskin pages.
It should be noted that a 12^th century inscription in the Missal specifically identifies the manuscript as a gift from a local nobleman to the San Nicolò chapel in Assisi.  Moreover, infrared tests of the liturgical calendar at the back of the Missal indicate that another scribe subsequently added the Feast of St. Francis to the calendar on the 4^th of October, at a later time in the Missal’s history.
Following the example of St. Francis, who was accompanied in 1208 by his first two followers Friars Bernard of Quintavalle and Peter of Catania, the current Minister General and his friar-companions examined the three Latin passages which Divine Providence had inspired St. Francis to read, as he practiced a sortes scriptorum opening the Missal three times in honor of the Most Holy Trinity:  Mark 10:21 (“Vade…vende..da pauperibus… – Go, sell what you have and give to the poor…”); Luke 9:3 (“Nihil tuleritis in via… – Take nothing on your journey…”); Matthew 16:24 (“Si quis vult post me venire… tollat crucem suam… – If anyone wants to follow me… let him take up his cross…”).
Carefully and prayerfully, Frs. Carlos and James and the friars from Poland read aloud these Latin passages and translated them into English.  They were keenly mindful that, more than 800 years earlier, these were the actual three passages on the very same goatskin pages, which inspired St. Francis to compose the Franciscan Rule of Life.  The three texts would form the essential core of the oral Rule which the Poverello and his followers presented to Pope Innocent III for papal approval in 1209, a few months after their inspired experience in the Assisi Chapel of San Nicolò.
At the end of the friars’ hour-long visit to the Walters Museum, they sang the Latin anthem “O Patriarcha Pauperum,” invoking St. Francis of Assisi.  Standing in front of the Assisi Missal, opened to its illuminated “Te Igitur” folio, the Seraphic Patriarch’s 120^th successor, Fr. Carlos, then imparted upon all present – the four friars and the two curators – the  ancient “Blessing of St. Francis.”  A sacred silence pervaded.

Learn more about the two year conservation effort: Saving the Sacred: Conserving the St. Francis Missal | The Walters Art Museum

Read The Walters Ex Libris: digitized version

More photos are available on our Province Facebook Page.

Allegory of the Immaculate Conception as Defender of the Faith (1760 Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz)

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Patronal Feast Day of the United States of America,
8 December 2021
Gen 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38.
Theme: Mother of God, teach us to believe,
to hope and to love with you.
Guide us on our way to the Kingdom of God.

Mother of the Church[1] in a Post Christian Culture[2]
The Patronal Feast Day of the United States of America awakens the sense of the faithful and the sense of the Church universal to the doctrine that Mary was conceived, as all of us, by the beautiful love of our parents with the singular privilege of being preserved from original sin. The baptized are liberated from original sin. Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) argued to be preserved is a superior grace to being liberated from original sin. His thought builds upon the fact to which every other consideration must be related as to its motive and end. That is the absolute predestination of Christ and Mary Immaculate.[3] The predestination of all else is in view of this. The development is Newmanian.
Duns Scotus identified and explained the key to a genuine Christo-centrism: the absolute primacy, firstness, or predestination of the Word Incarnate to be Savior of the World. The subtle and Marian Franciscan argued in favor of the Immaculate Virgin to be the Savior’s Mother and set the stage to be Mother of the Church as the plan from eternity to take place jointly with the Savior.
The great merit of Duns Scotus is to have identified and explained why the Word Incarnate was predestined to be the Savior of the World, not because of the sin of Adam but because of the love of God from eternity. That simple truth is to be shouted from the rooftops. Mary Immaculate is predestined jointly with Him to be His Mother and the Mother of the Church.[4]
Recognition of Mary as Mother of the Church is fitting during a perceived freefall of truth accompanying the post-Christian culture. Christian faithful recognize the doubleness of modernity with its gifts and crises. Some cheer, others weep, and still others mix reactions. Love and devotion to the Mother of the Church brings comfort and reassures the unfailing presence of infinite Love. The development of the term post-Christian culture is along three lines: external factors; the length of time of response of Church leaders; and truth about complicity, intended or not.
Post-Christian culture identifies external factors bearing on truth, certainty, certitude, and the direction of contemporary culture. Second, the secular invasion and temporization of Church authorities in dealing with the secular invasion intensifies the ambiguity of external factors. The faithful are not deaf to the reproaches directed at authorities in the Church nor fail to see the justice in some reproaches. Third, by inviting in the secular, ideologies and ideas in openness and cultural encounter, if lacking competence to regulate Christianly, amounts to complicity in creating a post-Christian culture.[5]
The feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God defines concretely Woman who is such because she is Immaculate Conception, so holy as to be able to be Virginal-Mother of God (WK 1318).[6] St. Maximilian Kolbe’s Scotistic perspective treats feminine in metaphysical terms before empirical terms. Duns Scotus is defining woman concretely by the Woman who is the Immaculate Conception. Male and female are used empirically as subordinate to the terms metaphysically. He differentiates and identifies that for which and to which all the rest of creation is related.
The relation is a mystery (not a problem, nor myth, certainly not a fable) that enables the faithful to come to understand person in the Trinity and person in the economy of salvation (Mary and all of us). Irenaeus calls Mary the “new Eve.”[7] Medieval Christian writers call Mary “new Woman.” Contrast with the old Eve and blame for the fall. Eve was deceived. Adam knew better, was weak, used to comforts, failed to take a stand, was complicit and is more responsible in this original sin.[8]
Even if it appears generous, the dignity of persons, the dignity of women, and acting justly seems to be growing worldwide. Upright human conduct is hope in action. Suffering, shocks, cries for vengeance, remind that the power of sin against the dignity of persons continues. Contemporary secularism, which is sturdily empirical, operates within the dual gift of modernity. A Franciscan emphasis and interpretation employ a Scotistic metaphysical approach first as well as empirical approach.
The headline making term “gender” often confuses. A Scotistic perspective on gender employs the metaphysical approach, without denying inclusion of empirical psychological reasons. E.G., a Scotistic perspective builds with metaphysical principles to resolve questions that accompany gender as: 1.) creation, Creator and gender; 2.) Mary, Trinity and gender; and 3.) Divine Maternity, Trinity and gender. Many layers require critical engagement. Amplification of the Scotistic perspective is my goal.
Kolbe, a Scotist, is a theologian and philosopher who considers the personality of the Church as bride of Christ to be the extension of the Virgin Mary. Think of the maximum glory of Christ or the salvation of the Church as realized in the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, the Mother of the Church. Ponder how this paraphrases the Scotistic thesis with which I began. The primacy of Christ shows the divine plan to make possible the final glory of Christ which is the love of Mary Immaculate and the motive of our salvation. Kolbe notes that this truth (WK 1305) points in the direction that everything in the Church, including the priesthood and hierarchy, is nuanced in a feminine way.
Kolbe’s pneumatology rests on the mode of the Incarnation and the mode of salvation as primarily Marian, without ever making them effeminate! For many different reasons, critics on the right and left claim Kolbe gives radical support to the feminine personality of the Holy Spirit and for the Immaculate Conception as a kind of second hypostatic union. If critics read the texts of Kolbe (now available in English as WK), they would be hard pressed to validate such claims.
Kolbe summarizes: “In the union of the Holy Spirit with Her, not only does love conjoin two beings but the first of these is all the Love of the Most Holy Trinity while the second is all the love of creation, and so in that union…is conjoined…all of Uncreated Love with all of created love: the vertex of love”. “The Immaculate…, the apex of perfection in creation, the Mother of God, the sublimest of creatures” (WK 1318; 1325) who is Mother of the Church.

In Celebration of My Golden Jubilee Year of Priesthood, Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, O.F.M.Conv.
eondrako@alumni.nd.edu

____________________________________________

[1]Mother of the Church is the title Pope St. Paul VI gave to Mary in 1964. Pope Francis approved the feast be celebrated by the Universal Church on the day after Pentecost. Paul VI longed for all Christians to turn to Mary as Mother of the Church. Recall St. John Henry Newman’s seven notes of true development of doctrine (1845).
[2] Using the diagnostic, post-Christian culture, might upset the faithful who love Mary with their innermost heart. Doubt not! Mary remains in our midst as our Mother, the Mother of Hope. See Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 50.
[3] Duns Scotus does not treat the predestination of Mary in his published works, but his approach to predestination to glory before any consideration of sin and redemption was taken up mainly by his disciples. Developments follow in logical order so that his theory of the joint predestination of Christ and Mary is now part of the ordinary Magisterium. See Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, ch. 8, n. 61. Peter D. Fehlner attests to this true development.
[4] The lynchpin of joint predestination in LG 61 is uno eodemque decreto, by one and the same decree.
[5] Post-Christian culture is a term I align with “hope” in Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007).
[6] See St. Maximilian M. Kolbe, Writings of Kolbe (Lugano: Nerbini, 2016), Eng trans. is WK 1318; Ital. is SK.
[7] Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, (c. 180), 3:21 and 22. 4. The Second Eve undoes the “knot that Eve tied.”
[8] J. C. Cavadini, Visioning Augustine (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 211-238. Adam should have sacrificed!

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
November 8, 2021

From December 4 -7, 2021, our Minister General, the Most Reverend Fr. Carlos Trovarelli, OFM Conv. visited with our province friars, while staying in our Portiuncula Friary, in Ellicott City, MD. After a few days of meeting and visits with a few of our local friaries, on December 6th, Father General celebrated a private Mass for all of our friars who were able to join him, in our Chapel at The Shrine of St. Anthony, followed by a fraternal meal. Also visiting with him was our Order’s Assistant General of the CFF and a friar of our province, Fr. Jude Winkler, OFM Conv., who concelebrated at the Mass and proclaimed the Gospel. Since Father General is Argentinian, he preached the Homily in Spanish, so Fr. Chris Dudek, OFM Conv. translated the Homily in English for our friars present. Student friar Edgar Varela, OFM Conv. read the 1st Reading and Psalm. Solemnly Professed Friar Richard Rome, OFM Conv. read the Universal Prayer. Around 40 friars were in attendance, including three friars from the Kraków Prowincja św. Antoniego i bł. Jakuba Strzemię w Polsce [Province of St. Anthony and Bl. James of Strepar in Poland]. The Very Reverend Fr. Marian Gołąb, OFM Conv. (Kraków Minister Provincial), Friar Jakub Czajka, OFM Conv. (Kraków Province Treasurer), and Friar Piotr Sarnicki, OFM Conv. (Kraków Delegate to the United States) who are visiting our province in regards to the many Polish friars of their province who live and serve with our friars.

More photos can be found on our Province Facebook Page.

December 2, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar and Syracuse University Catholic Campus Minister – Fr. Gerry Waterman, OFM Conv., after being granted permission by Bishop Douglas J. Lucia of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse on his last visit to the University, was privileged to celebrate the Confirmation and 1st Eucharist of Jediel Henrik Ponnudurai, a 3rd year architectural student at Syracuse University and native of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Jediel’s sponsor was his younger brother Josiah, who was fully initiated into the Catholic Faith three years ago, while studying at Notre Dame University in South Bend, IN. Josiah was present as sponsor at the 7:00 p.m. Community Mass in the St. Thomas More Chapel virtually, via Zoom from Malaysia, where it was 8:00 a.m. in the morning. Taking the Confirmation name “Barbara,” Jediel received these sacraments during the Advent season, rather than with his fifteen Syracuse University RCIA peers at the Easter Vigil, because he is bound for Florence, Italy for the next 2 semesters as part of his curriculum of studies.

Br. Manny Wenke, OFM Conv., Fr. Dominic Lim, OFM Conv., Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv., Fr. Ed Debono, OFM Conv. (who celebrated his 89th birthday on the Feast of All Saints of the Seraphic Order), Fr. Jobe Abbass, OFM Conv., Br. Tom Purcell, OFM Conv., Fr. Jim Fukes, OFM Conv. and Fr. David Collins, OFM Conv.

The famous statue of St. Joseph that sits in the crypt chapel of the Saint Joseph’s Oratory

November 28-29, 2021: Our Vicar Provincial, Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv. joined most of the friars of our Canadian Delegation of St. Francis, on a pilgrimage to the St. Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal (The Shrine of St. André Bessette, in Montréal, Quebec) to mark the Year of St. Joseph. St. Joseph is Canada’s patron saint and one of our three friaries of our Province Delegation is named for St. André Bessette. While there, they took the opportunity to renew their vows on the November 29th Feast of All Saints of the Seraphic Order. The Mass, presided by Friar Michael, was celebrated in the shrine chapel located just over the tomb of Brother André. Following the Mass and renewal of vows, a festive meal was served and the friars were offered a guided tour of the shrine complex.