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Geste of the Great King

"Geste of the Great King" is a reference to a prayer book that St. Francis of Assisi composed. In this prayer book, Francis contemplated the journey of Christ's paschal mystery. Christ is the hero, and St. Francis is the geste who through these prayers becomes a witness and closely connected to Christ mysterious death on the cross. Inspired by Christ and St. Francis, this blog is affectionately named after St. Francis' prayer book.

Br. Billy's Two Cents Worth: Learning to slow down during times of crisis

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March 27, 2020

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A Short Sermon for the Feast of St. Francis

October 06, 2017

My sisters and brothers in Christ, these pass few days we have heard about many tragedies that have occurred in the world and w ith in our own city: acts that are so senseless that our communities are often left in suspicion of each other. It is during these times, we need to look at the heroes of our faith in order to learn how to handle such devastation. And today we commemorate and learn from such a hero in St Francis of Assisi. A man whose remarkable life is celebrated by how he embraced poverty to become closer with God in Jesus; he was renowned for his preaching and knowledge of holy scriptures; and, of course, his love for creation and animals—we are reminded of the latter as our furry friends are blessed today. But, dare I say, S. Francis’s greatest gift is often overlooked, his ability to broker God’s peace during an extraordinary war. St. Francis’ world was filled with uncertainty and violence. He was a former war veteran in his youth and he was a...

Sermon Feb. 18/18: A new Conscience in Christ

February 18, 2018

In Genesis, we hear about Noah’s Ark. One of the most popular biblical stories filled with the images of the great flood, the building of ark, animals and a rainbow. Overcome with the more Hollywood image of this tale, we often forget that this is a story about God making a change in His own behavior. God promises to never use divine anger as a means of punishing his divine art piece, creation, and his reflected divine image, humanity. The God of Israel, is moved with remorseful compassion. In other words, the very thing God set out to do was to create life, not destroy it. How do we know that God was moved by this event? God created the rainbow to be a reminder to God’s self to not give into anger and destroy his creation again—the rainbow is not for us to remember, but for God to remember his side of the contract. The first temptation we need to resist, then, is believing that God is involved in any horrific acts of violence, and terror within the world in order t...

Ash Wednesday: Treasures, Fasting, and Increasing God

February 15, 2018

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our Lenten journey of fasting, praying, and almsgiving. These acts of penance, are ways in which we can open our hearts to receive God in a more abundant way. In these acts, we experience what God gave up so that we could gain a fulfilling life both in the present day and in eternal life. In today’s gospel, however, we are sternly reminded to practice these acts of penance with humility. Jesus warns his disciples not to by like the hypocrites. These pretenders of the faith preformed acts of fasting, prayer and alms giving as a way to gain or to exploit something. Their repayment was getting praise and glorification from others in the community—in essence, they were about using their faith to gain great publicity. The God in Jesus is quite the opposite. Jesus does not charge us a price for our redemption. He becomes impoverished for our sake taking on the form of a human. He knows our sufferings, pain, illnesses, and he ...