August 2nd is the Day of the "Portiuncula Indulgence"

August 2nd will be a day of great grace. 

THE PORTIUNCOLA INDULGENCE - The Portiuncola (PORZIONCULA, PORTIUNCULA, or PORZIUNCOLA)

(from The Confraternity of Penitents)
According to a legend, the existence of which can be traced back with certainty only to 1645, the little chapel of the Portiuncola was erected under Pope Liberius (352-66) by hermits from the Valley of Josaphat, who had brought thither relics from the grave of the Blessed Virgin. The same legend relates that the chapel passed into the possession of St. Benedict in 516. It was known as Our Lady of the Valley of Josaphat or of the Angels -- the latter title referring, according to some, to Our Lady's ascent into heaven accompanied by angels on the Solemnity of the Assumption. However, a better founded opinion attributes the name to the singing of angels which had been frequently heard there.


The Portiuncola today is a town and parish situated about three-quarters of a mile from Assisi. The town, numbering about 2000 inhabitants and officially known as Santa Maria degli Angeli, has grown up around the basilica of Our Lady of the Angels and the adjoining Franciscan monastery.

In the early 1200's, when St. Francis was repairing the small Portiuncola chapel, the basilica which now encloses the chapel was non-existent. The humble Portiuncola was surrounded by the dense woods which covered the plain of Assisi.

FRANCIS'S CONNECTION WITH THE CHAPEL

Francis, who had previously repaired the chapels of San Damiano and San Pietro della Spina, was enraptured by the Portiuncola, a nick name which means "the little portion." He loved its formal name--Santa Maria degli Angeli (Our Lady of the Angels), its poverty reflective in its nick name, its isolation and silence, and its proximity to the leper hospitals where he tended the pitiable residents.

n February 24, 1208, the Feast of St. Matthias, while hearing Mass at the Portiuncola, St. Francis of Assisi recognized his vocation in the day's Gospel. Preach the Gospel. Take nothing for the journey. Stay with those who are worthy in the towns you visit.

Francis made the Portiuncola the headquarters of his Order while refusing to accept ownership of it from the Benedictines. Francis settled on presenting the Benedictines a yearly rent of a basket of fish, thereby feeling comfortable about using the chapel and the huts the friars built around it.

On October 3, 1226, after blessing his friars and asking to be laid naked on the ground so as to come to the Father in utter destitution, Francis died at the Portiuncola after recommending the chapel to the faithful protection and care of his brethren.

THE PORTIUNCOLA INDULGENCE

The Portiuncola Indulgence is a special favor granted by the Pope to St. Francis at his request.

One night in 1216, Francis awoke and felt a strong impulse to enter the chapel of the Portiuncola and pray. While at prayer, Our Lord and Our Lady appeared to Francis and asked him what he desired. Thinking of others and recognizing his own sinfulness, Francis spoke. "0 God, although I m a great sinner, I beseech You to grant a full pardon of all sins to all who, having repented and confessed their sins, shall visit this church."

Our Lord answered, "Francis, you ask much, but you are worthy of greater things, and greater things you shall have."

The Lord granted the Indulgence and Pope Honorius III ratified it. Originally the Indulgence was attached only to the Porticuncola. However, subsequent Popes expanded the churches in which the Indulgence can be gained.

THE PORTIUNCOLA INDULGENCE TODAY

The Indulgence, if the person gaining it is free from every sin including venial sin, remits all the temporal punishment due to sin and may be applied to the person himself or herself or to a soul in Purgatory. If there is any adherence to sin in the person gaining the Indulgence, the Indulgence becomes partial.

The Indulgence may now be gained in any public or semi-public oratory in the world beginning from noon August 1 until midnight ending on August 2 (that is, any church or chapel open to the public). It cannot be gained in a private chapel. The person wishing to gain the Indulgence must fulfill the following requirements:

a. Intend to gain the Indulgence
b. Be detached from all sin
c. While in the church pray one Our Father, one Apostle's Creed, and one other prayer of the individual's choice
d. Pray for the intentions of the Pope (prayerfully saying an Our Father and a Hail Mary will suffice although other prayers may be said)
e. Receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist within one week either before or after August 2.

May we all take advantage of the graces afforded by this Indulgence.

Difference between joy and suffering becomes tenuous

From “The Grain of Wheat” by Hans Urs von Balthasar

The more we come to know God, the more the difference between joy and suffering becomes tenuous; not only do both things become engulfed in the One Will of the Father, but love itself becomes painful, and this pain becomes an irreplaceable bliss.

Purgatory: perhaps the deepest but also the most blissful kind of suffering. The terrible torture of having to settle now all the things we have dreaded a whole life long. The doors we have frantically held shut are now torn open. But all the while this knowledge: now for the first time I will be able to do it - that ultimate thing in me, that total thing. Now I can feel my wings growing; now I am fully becoming myself...

In some way this reminds me of St Francis and his teaching of perfect joy.

Cantalamessa - St Francis

ASSISI, Italy, APRIL 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address that Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, gave Wednesday to participants in the Chapter of the Mats in Assisi, on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the approval of the Rule of St. Francis.

* * *

... There are flowers that cannot be reproduced by planting their seeds or a twig of the plant but only by burying the bulb, which mysteriously reawakens and bursts into bloom at springtime. The tulip and the lily would be two such flowers that I know. I believe that the Franciscan Order, too, needs to go back to the bulb. And the bulb is the primitive insight, or rather inspiration, ("The Lord revealed to me..."), which Francis of Assisi had and placed before Innocent III in 1209.

Read all here.

PRAY AND SING THE WORDS of St. Francis and St. Clare

Passing this on from a friend.

Dear Friends,

Over the past two years, we have worked with a team of Franciscans from across the world [see below] to produce what we call Franciscan Mantras drawn from the writings of St. Francis and St. Clare in a double CD and Songbook for singers and one for musicians.

The CDs are being distributed by Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs and proceeds for FPP will go to support our scholarship program for Franciscans from developing countries to be able to participate in our Assisi Pilgrimages. The Songbooks are being distributed by Tau Publishing from Arizona. The two attachments pretty much give a better synopsis of the works and how to obtain them, and you can visit our website Assisi Journey to hear some of the songs themselves.

We hope these works adds a new dimension to the prayer, worship and life of our Franciscan Family.

If you are able to forward this email to people on your address list, it would help immensely!

Wishing you peace and every good!

André Cirino OFM
Josef Raischl, SFO

Twenty-six mantras taken directly from the writings of Saints Francis and Clare on two CDs, background information on Francis and Clare and a 16 page booklet explaining each chant.
Link HERE for more info on the disks and how to order.

Franciscans Celebrate 800 Years of Their Founding

Some time in the year 1209, Francis of Assisi and his eleven companions walked into the august Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome for an audience with Pope Innocent III. A papal residence since 324, the basilica gave up this claim when 16th century popes began living in what is today known as Vatican City. In 1209, however, St. John Lateran was the earthly center of the Roman Catholic Church. Francis along with his 11 companions traveled the 186 kilometers from Assisi to Rome along ancient roads to ask Innocent for oral approval of their Franciscan way of life. Innocent - having dreamt of Francis holding up a disintegrating Basilica of St. John Lateran - heartily granted the approval, thus helping to solidify the Franciscan Order.

Read more about the celebration in Assisi and also read about the effect Francis had on G. K. Chesterton HERE.

And Friar Jack has some words on this event as well HERE.

And HERE is a link of related articles:
In 2009, the Franciscan family celebrates the 800th anniversary of its origins, when St. Francis and his companions received from Pope Innocent III in 1209 formal approval of a new brotherhood. The central event of the Eighth Centenary year for the Franciscans of the First Order and the Third Order of St. Francis is to be held April 15-18, 2009 in Assisi and Rome.

Click HERE for Friar Pat's blog commemorating the 800th anniversary of the formal founding of the Franciscan order.

Franciscan Saint John Joseph - March 5

St. John Joseph of the Cross
Self-denial is never an end in itself but is only a help toward greater charity—as the life of Saint John Joseph shows.

When his term as provincial expired, John Joseph dedicated himself to hearing confessions and practicing mortification, two concerns contrary to the spirit of the dawning Age of Enlightenment.

Comment:
John Joseph’s mortification allowed him to be the kind of forgiving superior intended by St. Francis. Self-denial should lead us to charity—not to bitterness; it should help us clarify our priorities and make us more loving. John Joseph is living proof of Chesterton’s observation: "It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own" (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, page 101).

St Francis and Chivalry

Here is an offering from Liturgy Training Publications that may interest a good many folk with a hankering for the renewal of Catholic culture: Gospel Chivalry: Franciscan Romanticism, by Mark of Whitstable (pen name of Father Mark Elvins, a Capuchin friar).
[ht: Mary Victrix]

Synopsis: How St. Francis of Assisi transformed the medieval code of chivalry into the religious Rule for his new order.

At the time of St Francis, Europe was riven with almost constant feuding between local war lords, and the knight, with his horse and armour, played an important role in society both on and off the battlefield. In an attempt to control the behaviour of these knights and to limit the scandal of Christian people fighting one another, the Church encouraged and elaborated the code of chivalry. The ceremony of appointing a new knight to armed service was solemnised by a prayer vigil and vows that enjoined the new knight to live by the ideals of honour and defence of the weak. This tied in well with the romantic ideal of the knight as portrayed by the troubadours. Similarly, the temptations to adultery inevitable in a household where the lord was often away on campaigns were at least partially mitigated by the notion of ‘courtly love’, in which the lady was seen as an idealised, but unobtainable object of desire.

Sadly the attempt to Christianise the warrior class was only partly successful. In many cases the vows were ignored, or interpreted in the light of social status at court. Indeed, the emergence of the military Orders can be seen as an acknowledgement that the code of chivalry alone was insufficient.

As the son of a wealthy merchant, the young Francis was rich enough to aspire to join the knightly class. Whilst his family hoped for upward social mobility, Francis was attracted by the romantic ideal of the ballads. However. the stark reality of warfare and its effect on those who took part quickly disillusioned him. Francis set about reinventing the code of chivalry, taking its high ideals of largesse, joyfulness, courtesy and courage, and showing how they could be lived out as a religious way of life.

Each chapter of the fascinating study shows how St. Francis adapted a different element of the knightly life to the life of his Friars. It shows how his teachings and words are infused with the romance of the troubadours, but how in his hands the worldly ambitions of the age are replaced with the eternal values of the Gospels.

This is the perfect book for all devotees of St. Francis of Assisi. And all those who hanker after a lost ‘Arthurian’ age of courtesy and honour will be inspired to bring true romance back into the world by living according to the code of Gospel chivalry.

Here is how LTP summarizes the book:

Born in 1181, into the medieval world where the knightly code of chivalry held sway, St. Francis of Assisi at first harbored ambitions to become a knight. Experience, however, appears to have left him disillusioned with the military aspects of the code, but the ideals of chivalry remained as a formative influence on his life.

The code of chivalry was born out of the Church’s desire to mitigate the growing evil of endless blood-letting between rival feudal lords which had become a scandal to Christendom in the early Middle Ages. From the tenth century various Councils of the Church, and particularly that of Elne in 1027, had developed the elements that were to find formal expression in military custom, while the proclamation of the Crusades by Pope Urban II in 1095 had given the opportunity for a new kind of warfare with an ostensibly holy purpose—the protection of poor pilgrims and the recovery of the Holy Places of Jerusalem. While this noble project was to fail in many instances, one glorious exception is seen in the Order of Knight Hospitallers of St. John, whose care of the sick and the poor was to ensure in some measure the redemption of chivalry.

At its zenith, in the high Middle Ages, chivalry embodied the concept of the ideal life of a knight. However, this was an ideal rarely met, and the chivalric code promoting valor, courtesy, generosity and defense of the weak, was often sadly neglected. St. Francis consciously set out to redeem chivalry, or, at least, to transform its significance, using its language in a new and revolutionary way for the Gospel life he had chosen.

Published by Gracewing, UK. European customers wishing to purchase this title should contact Gracewing directly at www.gracewing.co.uk.