Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!


Happy Thanksgiving to all from the School Sisters of St. Francis!
The missalette at church said something like this before today's liturgy,
"If we can thank God in all circumstances, that is a kind of conversion."
This is so true. Thank God in good times and in bad. Thank Him because He is doing something in every situation. His Providence is always at work. Jesus, we trust in You!!!
God bless you all! We really do pray for you every day!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Growing in holiness???

Dear Friends,

First up -- here's our latest "paper" newsletter!

Secondly -- the topic of this blog post -- Growing in Holiness???

We usually use this blog to tell everyone what we're doing and to post pictures and things. We hope you enjoy it!

This time we will talk about something that we usually take for granted in our own lives. We have time to pray, we take time for spiritual reading every day, and we get to go to Mass every day (we usually get quality time in front of the Blessed Sacrament too!). We hope that some of these practices can help you grow in holiness as well.

Daily Mass: If you can, go to Daily Mass as often as possible. There's nothing greater than receiving Jesus in His Body and His Word to feed our souls!

Spiritual Reading: Try to take at least 10-15 min. a day to read from the Bible, the lives of the saints, or another religious book to help feed your soul. It's amazing to us how often the spiritual reading that we have is "just what we needed" that day to inspire us or to help us.

Daily Prayer: Take time every day to commune with God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this:

"The grace of the Kingdom is 'the union of the entire holy and royal Trinity . . . with the whole human spirit.' This, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him." CCC #2565

God thirsts for us! We thirst for Him too, we just have to take the blinders off to see it. . . or should we say, we need to open our hearts.

Practice Mortification: In this crazy world where everything is easy to get and we think we're too busy to do the things that are really important, we many times leave mortification in the dust. This is really the key to happiness. Learning to control ourselves is so critical. If we do not control our passions, our passions will control us. So, we can practice mortification in little things -- don't add salt to a meal, for example. Little things like this will help us control ourselves in much bigger temptations. We know, it's an oxymoron. "I'm supposed to give up stuff and be happy?" Yes, it's true -- try it.

The Catechism says, "...they [the virtues] dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love." CCC #1804

Wow -- practicing the virtues DISPOSES us to COMMUNION with DIVINE LOVE! God is so awesome!

Bottom line: Make God #1 in your life. That's it. Make God a priority . . . and watch your life turn around. You give yourself to Him, and He will give you Himself!!!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Texas Tour was Great!








The top picture is with a family in Port Lavaca that we used to teach! The young man in the red shirt was Sr. Mary Michael's 3rd grader (a few years ago)! He's now in college!
The second picture from top is from a gathering at Texas A&M for Discernment of Vocations. It was a great experience. Every place we went was a great experience. For more pictures, check out our website (photo albums are on the bottom right): http://www.panhandlefranciscans.org/

The bottom picture is taken from our "Community Day" a couple weeks ago! We LOVE it when all the Sisters are home and we can be together.
God bless you all! United in Prayer!