Its been a while I know...

So its been a while since my last post.
I've been up to a lot. but mostly just starting to get things in order for July. only about 4 more weeks of work at the epa. then a three week break and vacation with the family before I move in at St. Anthony's.
As far as things with the Franciscans go, I've been pretty busy the last three weekends especially.
I attended the 150th and 800th anniversary of the Province and the Order at St. Peter in Chains

The the following weekend I got a new classmate accepted, Adam Calder. So I got to meet and hangout with him. I think were going to have a lot of fun starting in July.

And then I went over to the Come and See Weekend mass on Sunday but Gabriel, the guy who attended wasn't there. He may be starting with the other three of us in July if all goes as planned. He had an early flight out and I missed him.

But I'm really looking forward to starting in July. That's not to say I'm always 100% even though I wish I were. It certainly takes a leap of faith to quit your job and make a commitment to this journey. There's a lot of questioning yourself that goes along with this. Like am I going to be happy? Is this really what the Lord wants for me? And ultimately you have to trust the Lord and just follow Him and let Him lead you. There are two things I always remember when I'm having trouble. One is the one our late Pope John Paul the Great used and was the theme of his Pontificate. Be Not Afraid! and the other is one that comes from the Divine Mercy Image which Our Lord gave to St. Faustina. Jesus I Trust in You! We just need to trust that as long we are listening to Him He will not lead us astray. Doesn't mean we always are aware of the reasons he leads us to where we are, but if we trust him we will be alright.

During discernment, I think its easy to forget that there is also someone who is totally against us making this decision and he is going to attempt to play on our fears and try to discourage us. Anytime we give ourselves over to God the devil hates this and will do everything in his power to stop us. But if we stay close to Christ, the devil will never overcome God's will for us.

Now I think we also have to be aware of ourselves and how our imperfections and sins get in the way of following God's will. And the only way we can overcome these thing is through the Sacraments and prayer.

I am comforted knowing that no matter where I end up in the end, I will be a better man because I have been willing to give my life to the Lord and to trust in Him. I hope the Lord blesses me with a life with the Franciscans but I'm just going to let Him show me the Way. Like the Lord said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." We can't go wrong when we are following Him.

Busy Febuary!!

I know... its been a while since my last post!

I've quite a busy Febuary...
work is keeping me busy trying to make $$$ to pay off some of my school loans before I start the Franciscans in July...

I'm also the best man in my brother's wedding at the end of March so he's keeping me busy with all his wedding stuff... I have to go get fitted for my tux on saturday too!! and I'm planning his bachelor party!!

Friday I'm going to IHM for stations of the cross and to hear a talk from Dr. Scott Hahn...

Sunday I'll be at St. Anthony's for mass and t to hang with the postulants and meet some of the Come and see attendees...

So my weekend is already full....

Just a quick reflection...
We started Lent this week...
There are so many people in this crazy world who just don't seem to want to believe...
They think the the story of Christ's death and Resurrection is just too good to be true or they don't want to accept it because they are afraid that God might require them to change their lives... Don't get me wrong you will!!! But this is what having true faith is all about!! But if you give your life to Christ, you want to change your life! Because he alone deserves to have you be the way he made you to be... without the many masks and walls we all put up to the outside world so we can appear to have it all together... but Christ knows us as we are and so we don't need to hide from him. Just give him our lives and he will fill us with such joy and love... will it be easy to do this all the time? Heck no. We are all frail human beings. But if we hand over all our sins, sufferings, sorrows, and fears to the Lord what we get back is the strength and the healing to endure the sufferings of this life...
All I think most of us need to do is remember to trust in the Goodness of our Lord!!!
The Mercy and Love he gives us surpasses even our worst sins!
During Lent I think it is something we need to think about...
It was this unfathomable Mercy and Love which brought him to the Passion and Cross and bought for us the rewards of eternal life.
I thought this was an appropriate quote from St. Faustina's diary of what Our Lord revealed to her about Confession...
Today the Lord said to me, Daughter, when you go to confession, to this fountain of My mercy, the Blood and Water which came forth from My Heart always flows down upon your soul and ennobles it. Every time you go to confession, immerse yourself in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul. When you approach the confessional, know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest, but I myself act in your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy. Tell souls that from this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity. The torrents of grace inundate humble souls. The proud remain always in poverty and misery, because My grace turns away from them to humble souls. (1602)
Peace!

Spring is getting closer.... I can hear the birds chirping outside tonight which means they're getting ready to migrate! Thank the Lord for Spring!

accepted into the postulancy!

I was accepted into the postulancy for St. John the Baptist province on January 31st, 2009!
The morning started with mass at St. Anthony Friary. I can't deny it, I was a little nervous about the whole thing... but God is good and I was accepted. I start July 1st. I have one other classmate right now but hoping for more. I can't wait to see where God is leading me...

My story in a nutshell

“I’m ready to go, let’s go, let’s go home.” Those were the words my dying grandfather spoke from his bed the day before he died. They were to be the words that would ultimately bring me back to reality. Even though he may not have realized it, he was showing me that I should be concerned with not just a reality of the here and now, but a supernatural reality, the eternal reality. That was Sunday, he died Tuesday evening. Looking back now, I now know that with those words he wasn’t any longer talking to us, but I truly now believe he was talking to someone else as the curtain of the supernatural was being revealed to him. He was caught between the supernatural and the natural.

With my grandfather’s death, I started down a path that would slowly lead me back to God and to begin taking the faith of my family, Roman Catholicism seriously. To me, it was no longer a superstitious activity that I was involved in once a week on Sunday, but a faith that had its base in reality, and realizing this, I realized I needed to conform my life to living out this faith in a very real way.

I returned to school, Morehead State University, where I had been studying for a Master’s degree in Biology,. f Following grandpa’s funeral., I was totally confused about what I should do. I didn’t feel right staying at school, so I decided to go home and move back in with my parents. So there I was in December of 2007 unsure of where my future was to lead me. I should mention also that following my grandpa’s death my reversion back to God was not immediate and many trials would come my way. Priesthood and the thought of religious life was not an immediate result.

My first thought was to get a job. That did not come along easily and I was left unemployed for three months from December to March with quite a bit of time on my hands. It was during this time that I started asking myself some important and big questions. Like what’s the big picture? What’s the point of it all? Why am I here when I don’t necessarily have to be? Why does anything exist at all? These were just some of the questions that I was grappling with. It was also at this point where I realized I needed to do something with my life that actually mattered, something that made things better for a world that always seemed to suffer and struggle.

It was late one night when I was surfing the internet for things I could do with my life, when all of a sudden I found myself on a vocation site promoting the priesthood. Suddenly I found myself interested and intrigued by the stories I found on that site. It suddenly occurred to me that I had never seriously considered the priesthood or religious life. I decided that if I was going to start taking my faith seriously, I at least needed to give the priesthood a shot and see where it might lead me.

Going forward I realized the biggest things that I would be fighting with would be the natural inclination to be a father and a husband, but I decided that if I didn’t take that leap of faith I’d never really know. I remember coming home one day after struggling many weeks over what I should do and telling my father that I was on the verge of a major decision. “What the priesthood?” I couldn’t believe those words had came out of his mouth! How could he know? I hadn’t yet told anyone. I knew from then on God was probably calling me,; I just had to be courageous enough to accept. I knew the diocesan priesthood was not for me from the beginning, I had had a great uncle, Fr. Frank Fritz, who had been one and had always complained that it could be lonely. So, I was thinking that a religious community was more the way for me to go.

The Jesuits were the first order I looked into. I was attracted by their academic and scholarly attributes. But after meeting with them a few times, I quickly realized they were not for me. One Jesuit’s self-description of “Jesus Eagle Scouts” just didn’t feel like it fit me. My Brother then suggested I look into the Franciscans and I did, I knew it couldn’t hurt. I talked with the vocation director a little bit and told him I would come over sometime for an interview but I never did, at least not yet.

But as life would have it, and by God’s own providence, I guess I wasn’t ready yet as I hadn’t grown close enough to God to be willing to accept such a gift. I got a job in March at the Cincinnati EPA and put my thoughts of priesthood and religious life by the wayside and figured it had all been a phase and I needed to get back on track with my job in the biological sciences.

By the time summer came, I knew something was missing, but I couldn’t seem to figure out what it was. I was still lost. I knew I needed to get back to the faith I had attempted to embrace a few months prior but I was having difficulty in really believing. I decided I would pray for faith by praying two novenas, one to St. Therese of Lisieux and the other to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This was an initially just an experiment to see what would happen.

By the end of the nine days it was almost miraculous what ended up happening. You know what they say, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I asked for a true faith and boy did I get it. I ended up going to confession after completing the novena and the next mass I went to blew me away. I could truly see the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist at the consecration. It was amazing. I don’t think I had experienced such a spiritual high since my grandfather’s death.

Following that, the feelings of the priesthood started rushing back. I knew I had to do something this time because I had decided if I felt the pull to it again, I would investigate the possibility seriously. For some reason and I don’t know why, I felt I needed to give the Franciscan Vocation Director, Fr. Don Miller, a call and pick up where I had left off. I told him the Lord had broken through to me again. I went over to his office the next week and had an interview with him. Things seemed to click from that very first meeting.

I attended the come and see weekend a few weeks after my first initial interview with Fr. Don. I had a great time that weekend. I was able to meet many of the other friars and postulants that weekend as well as four other great guys who were also considering the same things as me! The weekend showed me that these guys were just as normal as me and had already made the commitment I was already considering. I was also able to see many of the ministries they have in Cincinnati and with such joy and love they are all doing it. By the end of the day Saturday, the Franciscans were feeling right and I was feeling at home. My feelings were confirmed with my meeting with Fr. Don that night when he asked “Well?” I told him I was feeling called and that the Franciscans were feeling right. I just loved the thought of living in community. He told me that they felt the same and from that point on we have been discerning our way through the admission process and I am scheduled to go before the board January 31, 2009.

It’s been an amazing journey. I never would have expected to be where I am at today a year ago. The Lord truly is amazing that he put two very important men in my life to lead me to this amazing journey. My great uncle, Fr. Francis Fritz is the one who put first seeds of vocation in me in my childhood, even though it was at a time when I wasn’t ready to listen. His love, generosity, hope, charity and many of his other attributes will be something I will always try to mirror as I take on my vocation of priesthood. But Uncle Frank’s brother, my grandfather, Edmund Fritz, will be the one who I will always think of when I think of the awesome gift of giving my life to God. Through him, God called me back to himself. Through his death, God brought me and called me to the Holy Office of Priesthood of His Son and not only that, but as a Franciscan!