In the first official biography of St Francis of Assisi, the author Thomas of Celano, one of the Saint’s first companions, wrote:  “Once while he (Francis) was staying near the town of Greccio, a certain brother brought him a live rabbit caught in a trap. Seeing...

The Franciscan Friars have been organising pilgrimages designed specifically for young adults since 2019. In fact, Friar John Paul Tan led a group of young adults, aged 18 to 35 years, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land last December. An objective of these...

An important part of our preparation for Christmas is the use of special antiphons from 17 to 23 December. They are called “O Antiphons” because each Latin text begins with a long beautiful chant expressing the longing of the Church for the coming of the Lord. Many...

It may seem contradictory that receiving the gift of the stigmata would be called love. After all, receiving the stigmata would mean enduring the painful wounds that Christ Himself experienced when He suffered His passion and death. How then can it be called love and...

The word itinerant comes from the Latin word ‘iter’ which means “way” or “journey”. Such is the life of a friar. The ‘iter’ of a friar involves continuous conversion as he experiences daily a personal encounter with the Lord in everyone and in everything,...

Many of us pray to St Anthony when we lose things, and we may even call him “Doctor of the Church” and not know why. Well, Anthony had a licence to teach (licentia docendi in Latin) because Francis realised that his friars needed to study theology in order to be...

"St Anthony, please help me, I cannot find my keys!" How often have we found ourselves reaching out to St Anthony for something like this? You may even have a story about how your misplaced items were miraculously found. Many of us have also entrusted St Anthony with...

Following the example of St Francis, each friar (and indeed everyone) is called to a life of conversion. As such, it is easy to relate Franciscan spirituality with a spirituality of the Cross, of Christ’s passion. But is not Franciscan spirituality fundamentally...

St Francis of Assisi is well known for his love of poverty, but he was not born into poverty. In fact, he was born into wealth and privilege, and dreamt of glory on the battlefield. He thought these would bring him happiness. It was not until he encountered the leper...

The Incarnation The seasons of Advent and Christmas offer us the possibility of doing things in other ways. The Pope speaks of the Church as a “field hospital”. God, he says, is not found in “neat, orderly places and things, distant from reality”. As we set out our...