[0:00]Father Luke, I have a confession to make. Here here publicly? It is a public confession. Kind of like the early Church. That's right, but you don't I don't necessarily need absolution. Okay. I really, really, really struggle with mornings. Mm. Like every morning, I just want to stay in bed. I just want to stay cuddled up in those covers, with the puppies that accompany me. And, um, I've tried. I've looked up all these morning routines, and nothing works. Help me, Father Luke. That's about to change. Thank you.
[0:52]Hi everybody, and welcome back to Franciscan Fridays at the Shrine. I am Brother Pius here with Father Luke, and we're happy to be back with you. Um, just an encouragement to engage with the content here. Uh, we are so grateful for those of you who have stuck with us and are watching these videos. Uh, please be sure to like, subscribe, tell your friends, still waiting for that billboard in Manhattan. Um, and uh, with that, Father Luke, kick us off. Brother Pious, here we are. Here we are. Now, you know there's this thing that you may see on the internet where people are saying, "We've got some kind of secret life hack." Uh, and then there's this video and they they're promising up front some sort of like really important detail. And then you keep watching and like you can tell they're delaying. Yeah. And you're like, "When are you going to actually say it?" Like, you know, 20 minutes in they still didn't quite get to like these four things you should never eat or Yeah. four things you should eat, you know, and and part of that is also like morning routines. There are these like protocols or life hacks where you should try to get X amount of sleep, you should like delay caffeine, you should get access to sunlight, drink a glass of water, you know. And um, so we thought maybe we would do a version of that, like the secret to how to start your day. That sounds wonderful, cuz I've watched so many of those morning hack videos to no avail. Um, actually some of it's helped, you know, and I think that um, certainly as as a therapist, as someone who is uh nerdy and into science, there there are a lot of really cool kind of scientific things that uh, you know, I think one uh YouTuber calls it like optimizing things, you know, and I also think that there's a way in which we place a lot of stock into something that might uh move the needle a little bit. Um, whereas, I think what we're going to talk about today can actually revolutionize a person's life. Big claim. There's a big claim, but I think it's true. We'll back it up. We'll back it up. So brother Pious, the big topic for today, Franciscan Fridays at the Shrine, the prayer known as The Morning Offering. Yes. So there are these devotions and these prayers, and of course, Our Lady's Blue Army, you know, really jumped on this, a a prayer that you say as soon as you can, you know, early on, you know, kind of offering the day to the Lord. And uh, tell us a little bit about that history, and then I've got some actually some really interesting kind of personal stories that connect with that, including a Blue Army pledge, which I signed when I was a teenager all those years ago. And this morning offering that's been part of my morning routine for decades. That's amazing. Father, it's amazing with how old you are, that that thing is still uh the paper still there, you know. True. They they put some preservatives in that paper. Yeah, it was quality. Quality, exactly, exactly. Um, so uh, with a little bit of research, um, I discovered that the morning offering in its current iteration, um, was started in uh 1844 by a French Jesuit, Father Francois Xavier, and his last name begins with a G and I won't attempt to say it, uh, because my French is terrible. But don't you have a French last name with that starts with a G? Okay. I do. Gagne. Um, doesn't mean that I, you know, natively speak French. Um, and it was popularized by another Jesuit a little bit later on. Um, and it's the World Apostle Apostolate of Prayer, um, that kind of uh grabbed that prayer and has popularized it, and you can find you know, I think uh in our Friaries, some Friars have actually like, there's like a sticker you can put on the mirror, and we have them kind of in the bathrooms, you can like pray the prayer while you're rushing your teeth if you, you know, so choose or.
[6:10]Right. So let's get into it. It's it's the morning, maybe some people aren't morning people, maybe some people have the experience of like, you're you're slowly trying to come online, you know, mentally. Um, other people, maybe as soon as they wake up, their mind is racing and whatever. And so, some saints call this the heroic moment, when you first get up your first conscious and away, okay, a new day is before us. And uh, it's beautiful to have a prayer, which is what the morning offering is, to kind of set the tone for the day. Mm. To have this morning offering prayer. And uh, so the the blue army, Our Lady's Blue Army, you know, came together with Sister Lucia of Fatima back in 1946 and John Hafford came up with this Blue Army pledge, which is kind of what people agree to. And part of that is the morning offering and and some very interesting details with that I I discovered later in some of my reading of the letters of Sister Lucia. And when I was a teenager, I out of Soul magazine, I signed the Blue Army pledge. I have it right here for when I was a teenager and um, we have this prayer that I've been saying every morning. And so I just want to like say what this prayer is, which is part of kind of like the spirituality for us. And maybe we'll look at a couple of these details of how praying this way in the morning sets kind of the tone or sets the trajectory for whatever is about to happen later on in the day. So um, and then in the midst of this prayer, we have the devotion of kissing our brown scapular of our Lady of Mount Carmel as a partial indulgence right there. Okay. It's mine too. Which is connected to that devotion. So get ready, get ready. So here's the prayer the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima. This is the morning offering. So as soon as you you wake up, you just kind of begin your day right here. Oh my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer thee the precious blood of Jesus from all the altars throughout the world, joining with it the offering of my every thought, word, and action of this day. Oh, my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can, and I offer them together with myself to Mary Immaculate, that she may best apply them to the interests of thy most sacred heart. Precious blood of Jesus, save us, Immaculate heart of Mary, pray for us. Sacred heart of Jesus, have mercy on us. So there's the morning offering. Mm. And and what's beautiful is that that the idea of offering, so what what can we give to God that he doesn't already have? We offer ourselves, you know, and so we have this idea of our thoughts, our actions, our words, our potential graces and and indulgences and merits and it makes reference to the precious blood of Jesus being offered on all the altars throughout the world. And this was something that developed the idea of connecting your own personal piety to the actual public prayer, the liturgy of the Church, the holy mass. Even if you're not getting to mass every day, you have this intention.
[9:17]Yeah.
[9:27]Which kind of is an echo of what this angel said to the children in 1916. The angel had come to the children. This is a year before Mary came and he says to them, make up everything a sacrifice. And it kind of set the tone for their spirituality. Yeah.
[9:44]Um, so what are your thoughts on that? Well, it reminds me of something I read in the writings of St. Maximilian Kolbe, another Marion Franciscan saint. Um, and he he said that whenever we make an act of the will, that act of the will sort of keeps going until we make a contrary act of the will.
[10:17]And so I've always thought about that. He was referring to our consecration to Mary, when we consecrate our life to her, maybe a topic for another, uh, Franciscan Fridays. Um, but you know, that that intention of belonging to Jesus through Mary of offering our intentions, that we want to kind of step off on step off on that foot and kind of keep that intention going. And I also love, um, as you mentioned, that connection to the sacrifice of the Mass. Um, it sort of anticipates and something that's been in the spirituality, the Church since the beginning, but was really made explicit in the Second Vatican Council that the sacred liturgy is the source and summit of Christian life, and that really all of our acts of prayer really stem from the graces that come from the Mass and culminate there. And it's in that moment of the of the sort of offertory that makes explicit the offerings that we've made throughout our day or throughout our week, depending on when you're getting the mass. All of those offerings that we've made are gathered up and explicitly offered in union with Jesus's sacrifice on the altar, uh and at Calvary in every mass. So it's so beautiful, um, to not just be connected to my personal piety, but to really be connected to, uh, the universal prayer of the Church. It's beautiful. Mm. Thank you. Yeah. Just kind of piggybacking on what you're saying there, some kind of ideas that I discovered in some of the letters of Sister Lucia of Fatima, you know, kind of highlighting some of her spirituality, which is kind of being looked at right now as they're considering her to be canonized. And it had an idea of renewing and deepening our yes. So, you know, we have that morning offering, and then you have other moments of prayer throughout the day, which, uh, it it seems to be an indication of the idea of, let me, you know, I'm renewing once again, even every morning, like, what they say, you can't live on yesterday's yeses. Like every day we've got to re-choose the Lord, re-choose our Lady and and in prayer. And um, you have this kind of setting the foundation with the morning offering, and then, uh, later prayers throughout the day up until your night prayers before you go to bed, which is kind of the other book end of what we're talking about now, you have kind of an idea of renewing and even like, when when, uh, Sister Lucia told John Hafford about the importance of the first Saturday's devotion, and it, you know, you're getting to confession, you're getting to mass, you're praying the rosary, and she kind of explained it in terms of like renewing our intention to kind of respond and live the message and to go deeper. And um, she in some of her letters talks about that moment that they said yes to Mary at that first apparition. So May 13th, 1917, Mary invites them, would you be willing to say yes, if everything that God will send your way, and they said yes. And then key moments throughout her life, she she kind of indicates in her letters that she was like consciously renewing that moment. Like renewing her yes, deepening her yes, her offering of self. And and uh, her kind of inviting God's grace like carry her through each day or through each like significant moment, like milestone markers on her like journey of her vocation. Yeah. Um, so what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's really beautiful. You know, it's it's reminiscent of something that we do as religious. Um, you know, we, um, devotionally renew our vows, um, in our Friaries every every Friday. Um, and, uh, you know, I certainly have cultivated the practice, every time we put our habit on, you kiss the habit, you say a little prayer to remind you of that yes. And I think, um, two thoughts, uh, about our human nature, you know, I think that certainly as I've lived the spiritual life for however long since my conversion, my yes has been deepening to God. Right, that that first yes, which I meant to be a total yes to God, you know, there there are corners of our hearts that we don't even know, uh, aren't fully given yet. And so every day that we're kind of, um, making those offerings, uh as we discover those places of our hearts that need to belong to God, maybe a little bit more, it's an invitation to that deepening, which I think is so beautiful. And I also love, um, with this devotion with lots of other devotions, just sort of cultivating the habit of remembering that I belong to God. Right? You know, like it's really easy and I think the idea with those French Jesuits was especially with people who are really busy, uh in their day-to-day lives, it can be easy to forget, especially in modern culture with all the distractions we have, like it's so easy to forget, um, that our lives are meant to be totally his. And so being very intentional about cultivating the habit to remember, "Oh yeah, you know, I made that offering this morning and I want to renew that. I want to belong to God. My life is meant to be uh sort of on this trajectory of the mission he sent me on. I I love that." Wonderful. You said something there about, you know, sometimes we're not even aware of like, how, you know, do we need to renew the offering or what part of me really is still not given to God. It reminds me of a famous quote. I think it was St. Crispin. It's a Capuchin lay brother, saint, who would teach children in the streets of Rome these little jingles and evidently in Italian it rhymes, but it's something like Jesus take my heart and don't give it back. Yes. Which cracks me up, you know, like because it's so true, like we, you know, have this moment of prayer and offering to the Lord and then throughout other moments, maybe we're kind of secretly taking it back or whatever, you know. Yeah. But um, maybe to conclude, I'd like to also make a suggestion, something that's developed for me that's been really, really helpful. Hopefully it could be helpful for all of you who are listening as well. And that is, attached to my morning offering, I've also devote, um, developed the habit of praying the first decade, the first joyful mystery of the Rosary every morning. So, you know, sometimes you can just pray a decade, if, you know, you don't have to like commit to the full five decades every time. I find myself praying multiple decades throughout the day. But at the very beginning in the morning, part of my morning offering, I always pray the Annunciation. And it's almost like that moment feels to me like a moment that is the beginning of the day. There is Mary, she's praying, she's receptive and she's offering her yes to God and it just kind of feels to me like that, the spirituality of that moment matches the beginning of each day. Like we're here at the beginning of the day, kind of now with Mary, praying that decade of the Rosary and kind of asking like, give me the same kind of sentiments of heart that I'm here, I'm praying, I'm not sure what's about to happen. But I'm just kind of taking my first step into this day with a gesture of docility, openness, inviting like the grace of the Holy Spirit like and like kind of what Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word, feels like a kind of prayer that you should be saying the first thing in the morning. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I I think that's absolutely beautiful. It's one of my favorite, of all the mysteries of the Rosary. I love them all, but it's one of my favorites, you know, because it's so it's so hidden. It's so imperceptible in some ways. Like, obviously there's an angel there and stuff, you know, but like you know, as as we've talked about before, like what was happening the day before the Annunciation, and then what happened for the rest of that day and the day after and the day after and the day after, you know, like, um, there's something really beautiful about those moments of encounter with God that we have. Um, and then we sort of continue to go about our day. But I think that the idea is to carry those graces with us, you know, to, um, as it says so beautifully in the Gospel over and over, to ponder those realities over and over again in our hearts like Mary. And I think that that's such a beautiful practice. Um, it also helps you get on a good foot to pray your Rosary for the day, you know. Um, yeah, it's such a beautiful practice and certainly, I think for all of us, um, bringing these devotions into our life, um, continue to kind of suffuse our day with prayer and bring us more consciously into the presence of God. Amen. So friends, we thank you again for watching or listening and uh, hopefully we'll see you next Friday.
