We will spend a week to learn and pray with each of the top 6 saints.
Week of
Oct. 15: Holy Trinity
Oct. 22: St. Francis of Assisi
Oct. 29: St. Gabriel the Archangel
Nov. 5: St. John Paul II
Nov. 12: St. Jude the Apostle
Nov. 19: Christ the King
AKA: The Blessed Trinity, The Most Holy Trinity,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are the Three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Feast Date: The Sunday After the Feast of Pentecost
Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 234 and following) teaches,
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. ... The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.”
The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons...The divine persons are really distinct from one another. “God is one but not solitary.” ”Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another...
Prayers:
The Sign of the Cross
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
The Sign of the Cross is a profession of faith—faith in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, faith in the Incarnation, and in our Redemption on the Cross. When used while blessing oneself with Holy Water, it recalls our baptism into Christ and the Indwelling of the Trinity within us. It is also a powerful sacramental that protects against the Evil One, and evil in general.Glory be to the Father,
The Glory Be
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Received the Stigmata (the wounds of Christ)
Francis trusted in God’s providence and gave away everything he owned to follow Christ.
Francis was given the name Giovanni after John the Baptist by his mother. When his father returned from a trip, he renamed his son Francesco. Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. From the beginning everyone loved Francis. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader.
As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time. Despite his dreaming, Francis was good at business. But Francis wanted more than wealth. But not holiness!
Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight. He got his first chance and was taken prisoner only to be ransomed a year later. After joining the Fourth Crusade, Francis had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. After returning and facing ridicule Francis started to spend more time in prayer. But there was a business to run.
One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.
His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano. While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.
The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide. That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again. From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.
Francis rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. He preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church.
Francis, now with companions, created a rule based on three Gospel passages. Jesus’ command to the rich young man to sell all his good and give to the poor, the order to the apostles to take nothing on their journey, and the demand to take up the cross daily. He thought of what he was doing as expressing God's brotherhood. His companions came from all walks of life, from fields and towns, nobility and common people, universities, the Church, and the merchant class. Francis practiced true equality by showing honor, respect, and love to every person whether they were beggar or pope.
Francis' brotherhood included all of God's creation. Much has been written about Francis' love of nature but his relationship was deeper than that. We call someone a lover of nature if they spend their free time in the woods or admire its beauty. But Francis really felt that nature, all God's creations, were part of his brotherhood. The sparrow was as much his brother as the pope.
In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care. The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among him, only flying off when he said they could leave.
Another famous story involves a wolf that had been eating human beings. Francis intervened when the town wanted to kill the wolf and talked the wolf into never killing again. The wolf became a pet of the townspeople who made sure that he always had plenty to eat.
Following the Gospel literally, Francis and his companions went out to preach two by two. At first, listeners were understandably hostile to these men in rags trying to talk about God's love. People even ran from them for fear they'd catch this strange madness! And they were right. Because soon these same people noticed that these barefoot beggars wearing sacks seemed filled with constant joy. They celebrated life. And people had to ask themselves: Could one own nothing and be happy? Soon those who had met them with mud and rocks, greeted them with bells and smiles.
Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach.
When Francis returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to 5000 in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others.
Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation. Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.
Francis died on October 4, 1226 at the age of 45. Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants.
Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint.
Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint.
Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint.
We are choosing a name for our pastorate. This will be an opportunity to show our unity as a pastorate under the patronage of a single saint. This will not change any legal status, each parish will retain their own parish names, so all official documents will still be under the parish names.
Creating a pastorate name is not new, some were created very quickly three years ago when pastorates were created, others have come more recently. The thought of creating a name for our pastorate came about as we talked about working on a common website. The question I posed was what should our web address be? After a short discussion, we came to the realization that we needed a pastorate name and that would become our web address.
The purpose, therefore, is one of unity. We are used to identifying ourselves as a member of a particular parish church under the patronage of a saint and we have some pride in our parishes. Creating a pastorate name will allow us to identify ourselves as a member of a particular pastorate as well as a particular parish. This is one more step in uniting together and sharing our parishes’ particular gifts with each other in our pastorate.
The only other guideline is that this should be a new saint for our parishes, in other words it should not be St. Mary, a title of her, or St. Joseph.
The first weekend (Sept. 23/24) everyone (including children) will write down one name of a saint (or blessed) they have a devotion to, maybe it is a favorite saint, maybe it is one that you think would be a good fit for our pastorate. I would encourage you to take some time in prayer this week to consider one name to propose.
In subsequent weeks we will begin to narrow that list down by everyone selecting their top 5 names from a list of all the names that were proposed the week before. This will bring the initial list down to about 20, then that list will be brought down to a top 5 by a similar process. Once we have the top five saint names we will take a break from that process and spend a week to learn and pray with each of the top 5 saints.
A link to the full list of saints that people wrote down is below.
Holy Family, St. Michael and St. Isidore were removed because there are already Pastorates with those names. St. Joseph and anything refering to the Blessed Virgin Mary were removed because we are looking for a new name for our Pastorate, one not connected with any of our parishes. Also names that were not saints were not included.
On the weekend of Sept. 30/Oct. 1: Everone chose their top 5 picks from the full list of Saints that were proposed. This narrowed the list down to the 21 top Saints.
On the weekend of Oct. 7-8: Everyone choose their top 3 Saints from the top 21 list. This narrowed the list down to the top 6.
Holy Trinity
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Gabriel the Archangel
St. John Paul II
St. Jude the Apostle
Christ the King
There was a 3 way tie for the 5th Saint. Sadly Sacred Heart was not approved by the diocese since there is a single parish pastorate with that name.