Prayer Life

Our life of prayer is at the heart of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ, and it is essential for us as Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago. Prayer fosters our life of ongoing conversion to Jesus Christ, following the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi.

Key Elements of Our Daily Communal Prayer Life:

Mass
Communal Holy Hour
Liturgy of the Hours: Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer
Devotion to Mary and the Saints: Angelus, Annual St. Francis Novena

Key Elements of Our Daily Individual Prayer Life:

Private Holy Hour
Prayer with Scripture
Liturgy of the Hours: Office of Reading and Daytime Prayer
The Sacrament of Reconciliation
Rosary
Devotional Prayer
Spiritual Reading
Annual week long retreat

Central to our life of prayer and our service to the Church is the Eucharist. We want to encourage a proper understanding of the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist, first by our witness and then by our words.

We strive to live this witness by participating in daily Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. As our community develops, we will continue to build up to perpetual Eucharistic Adoration at our centers. In order to see Jesus in the poor, we must first be able to see Him in the Eucharist. It is from our relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist that we draw strength to do the Lord’s will each day.

Daily Mass, Liturgy of the Hours in common, and Eucharistic Adoration are at the heart of our life of prayer, and nourish the life of our community and our own personal relationships with the Lord. These liturgical (Mass, Liturgy of the Hours) and devotional (Adoration) forms of prayer are encouraged by the Church for every Catholic. These forms of prayer are ways we acknowledge our total dependance on the Lord.

Private prayer is essential to our consecrated life. We grow in relationship with the Lord through meditation and spiritual reading, especially reading the Sacred Scriptures. It is in the word of God that we, like St. Francis of Assisi and all the saints of the Church, are daily inspired to continue this pilgrimage of faith, with the goal of Eternal Life in the Kingdom of God as our final destination.

Our own personal commitment to a life of prayer and virtue is the best way we can preach. We owe it to our own brothers and sisters in community to strive for a life of ongoing conversion and renewal as St. Francis taught us so well by the witness of his life. We look to the intercession and witness of all the saints, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Franciscan saints, as a source of constant encouragement.

The Father willed that his blessed and glorious Son, whom He gave to us and who was born for us, should through His own blood offer Himself as a sacrificial victim on the altar of the cross. This was to be done not for Himself through whom all things were made, but for our sins. It was intended to leave us an example of how to follow in His footsteps. And He desires all of us to be saved through Him, and to receive Him with pure heart and chaste body. Let us also love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility. Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin. Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world, but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. For these they will receive from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve.
St. Francis of Assisi