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Finding Peace in Poverty, Chastity, & Obedience
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The following is an excerpt from an October 2020 letter sent from Fra. John of Our Lady of Sorrows to friends and family:
I would like to invite you to celebrate and rejoice in spirit with me, because I have just taken my first vows, and am officially a Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate. So, if you would be pleased to do so, I ask that you say a little prayer for me and the other 10 friars that have made their profession with me.
If you are wondering, “What does that mean?” I can tell you that it means I have made, before God and the Church, vows of poverty (giving up external goods), chastity (in my case giving up family life, spousal marriage), and obedience (giving up my will so that I may do God’s will). This, with the added fourth vow, made to God, of unlimited consecration of self to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, with the obligation of total availability to go to the missions, ad gentes. It’s analogical to getting married to God.
I can testify that this year for me has been a year of major personal growth, and as Fr. Maximilian put it in his lectures to us novices, in aspects spiritual, physical, human, and psychological. I am very happy in my vocation as a friar, and I also with to testify that on the night of my profession (after the party, after everything was over) I felt a profound peace in my soul with regards to my vocation.
Please keep me in your continued prayers and be assured of mine. We all have, what seems for us to be, such a long way to go on this earth, but eternity will be much longer than this! Let’s try to give as much of ourselves as we can to God through Our Lady, and save as many souls as possible, as well!
We want to be instruments, things, nothing in the hands of the Immaculate, the most beautiful, most pleasing, and safest way to identify ourselves with Jesus. -St. Maximilian Kolbe
God bless you and let’s stay united in prayer!
In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Fra. John of Our Lady of Sorrows (Civil name: Alec Clark)
Learn more about the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.
