Parish News – 4/5 October 2025 – Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

🙏 Happy Feast Day

Happy Feast Day to Fr. Dominic, Fr. Kees, and all their fellow Capuchin Brothers.
May St Francis’s example guide you to a life of humility, love, and care.
God bless you all for everything you do and for all that you mean to us.

✝️ The Feast of St Francis of Assisi

We rejoice greatly with the Saints and Angels and Our Lady in heaven on this beautiful feast of St Francis!

St Francis was no doubt one of the greatest saints in the Church. He brought reform and renewal just before the Reformation. The Franciscan Order, with its three families together, is the largest religious order in the Church today.

Francis made a huge impact on Pope Francis, who was a Jesuit but chose the name “Francis” in honour of St Francis of Assisi. Two of his encyclicals—Laudato Si’ (on climate change, care for creation, etc.) and Fratelli Tutti (about the brotherhood of all nations in a society of love)—were inspired by St Francis.

The question is: What did Francis give to the world? How do we remember him?

He was childlike, innocent, and very uncomplicated—qualities that attract so many people today. Francis showed great humility; he was very poor in all things and fasted most of the year. He was full of praise for all of God’s creation—nature and animals—and wrote the famous Canticle of the Creatures, which is worth looking up and praying through.

Francis brought great joy in his experience of the Resurrection. He fought evil spirits, and there are many healings attributed to him even to this day. He was the first person ever to receive the five wounds of Christ in his side, hands, and feet—called the Stigmata.

Yet to hold all these things together, he was above all a man of prayer. He spent most of the year in prayer—on an island, in grottoes, or in hermitages.

The source of Francis’s power and influence came from the experience of the love of Jesus in his life. After returning from imprisonment following the battle of Collestrada, he was so depressed that he spent a long time alone in caves outside Assisi, desperately searching for the love of Jesus. Like Francis, we too must sometimes wait and enter into our own “cave”—a place of silence or even darkness—so that, slowly but surely, we can feel the love of Jesus flowing into our hearts.

Love was Francis’s inspiration, and love lay behind his healing. Love was the source of the Stigmata. Above all, the Stigmata was a wound in his heart—an interior wound—so that the love of Christ pierced him with the same suffering that Christ endured on the Cross. Francis suffered with Christ for the world; he bled for the world.

In the same way, Padre Pio, a Capuchin saint who died in 1968, also received the Stigmata and suffered greatly with Christ, in pain and inner torment, for sinners and for those in need of God’s grace.

The faith that burned like a fire in Francis came from the love of Jesus. There were times when he was so filled with this love that he danced in the forest singing to his Lord. His love of creation came from seeing all things in Christ, through whom all things were made.

Francis was also a man of peace because Jesus, the Prince of Peace, showed him His peace. For this reason Francis went into the desert during the Fifth Crusade to speak with Sultan al-Kamil el Malik, seeking peace between the Crusaders and the Muslims. Together they succeeded in forging a peace treaty, but the Papal Legate Pelagius wanted an all-out victory in the battle against the Muslims. He lost and the heavily defeated Crusader army had to limp back to Europe.

So we have all these expressions of who Francis was, what he did, and how he influenced the world so powerfully. We can pray to him, and through him to Jesus, that he may obtain for us a spirit of prayer and contemplation. It is through our prayer life, dear friends, that our love will grow. Jesus will plant His love in our hearts so that we too may become healers and peacemakers in the world.

🍫 International Food Fair Donation Drive

This week’s request: Chocolates, Sweets and Chips

Please continue to support the weekly IFF Donation Drive.

🗳️ PPC Election Results

The election has been completed and results finalised.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the PPC Elections.
The new Parish Pastoral Council will be announced and introduced once all portfolios have been filled.

🌹 Rosary Week

Venue: Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Matroosfontein
Dates: Monday 6 – Friday 10 October

Please see the posters on the parish notice boards for the full programme for the week.

📢 Parish Notices

Second Collection: This weekend is for Planned Giving.
Catechism Classes: Term 4 will resume as follows:
- Wednesday Group: 15 October at 5:30 pm
- Friday Group: 17 October at 5:00 pm
Next Baptisms: Saturday 25 October
- Interviews: Tuesday 7 October at the Presbytery (5 – 7 pm)
- Instruction Sessions: Thursdays 16 & 23 October
  (Both parents and godparents must attend both sessions.)