The missioners have been practicing restorative circles to build stronger community ties. Above are some of the values Casa members thought were important to fostering a healthy community.

Welcome to the FMS e-newsletter! Each week, our newsletter will be highlighting what our missioners are learning through their mission preparation at Casa San Salvador, the FMS missioner house. Enjoy these stories from the missioners' ninth week!

Join us in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land on November 11th at 2:30 PM to celebrate our lay missioners at the Commissioning Mass.

RSVP by November 6th

Patience Robbins presented the strategy of prayerful listening, which does not entail trying to fix, solve, change or understand any present situation. Instead, it means being present, receiving, and giving space for what is most deep to unfold. This strategy allows listening to become more intentional and, in some sense, a practice of faith, as our missioners in formation prepare to listen to the stories of economically poor and marginalized communities. 

The prayerful listener allows oneself to see and manifest God in any conversation or encounter. Emphasizing the constant seeking and giving a place to God in all encounters, prayerful listening enables intimacy, authenticity, relation, and deep love in any moment of our day. The missioners were invited to practice this kind of listening with one another.

"I appreciated Patience discussing presence with us. Since this will be a key part of our ministries overseas, I appreciated having the chance to practice it. I also appreciated being given ideas for how to discern something - this will be helpful when deciding how to split our time once we are in our country assignments."

-Kim Wagner

Myers-Briggs

Last week, the Casa community gathered to discuss the Myers Briggs personality test, and they were joined over Zoom by Franciscan volunteers from Cap Corps. The session was led by Mariam Kaldas, former FMS Associate Director who is a leadership and personal development coach specializing in facilitating the Myers Briggs personality test for groups and individuals. The participants were encouraged to take a free version of the test before the session.

The eight letters included in the test represent different personality traits; specifically: Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I), Intuition (N) vs. Sensing (S), Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F), and Perceiving (P) vs. Judging (J). Depending on what combination of letters the participants received in their test results, they were placed into breakout groups to discuss their personality traits with other participants. Mariam also led the group in several exercises that encouraged dialogue among participants with differing personality traits. These exercises helped the participants to understand the range of dispositions that exist within their community, and the session fostered enthusiastic discussion among the Casa housemates.

Each week the missioners will learn about different styles of prayer as part of their faith formation. We encourage you to enter into this journey; hopefully it can assist in your own spiritual life as well.

This week, the missioners were invited to study the lives and wisdom of various modern Black, Indigenous, and Latinx theologians and spiritual leaders. To start the week, they listened to an address given by Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA, a Catholic sister and candidate for sainthood whose life is outlined in the section below. Then, each missioner took a day to present a prayer meditation centered on a theologian of their choosing, with special focus on Dr. James Cone, Dr. Richard Twiss, and Dr. Howard Thurman.

"Christians speak to their unity in faith in Jesus, but then in practice, there is such disunity in spirit. To walk with one another we must be open to our differences, and have the will to talk and listen to one another. A good starting point is Christian spiritual leaders outside of Catholicism who speak with the voice of the marginalized. May I recommend Dr. Richard Twiss of the Lakota Sioux tribe? Allow him to share his wisdom about belonging to one another."

-Susan Sarkissian

The Franciscan tradition is brimming with Saints, Blesseds, and Venerables included in the Roman Canon. Each week, we will highlight a different Franciscan who lived a notable life of holiness.

Sr. Thea Bowman was born in 1937 in Yazoo City, Mississippi to Methodist parents. At the age of nine, she decided to convert to Catholicism with her parents' permission.

At the age of only fifteen, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and earned her B.A. in English at Viterbo University and her M.A. in English at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Sr. Thea was a gifted singer, writer, spiritual leader, and educator, and she often referenced her upbringing as an only child surrounded by "old folks" in Mississippi. She said that the community that raised her taught her to survive in the face of racism and segregation, and she learned from them to live by these words: “If you get, give—if you learn, teach.” In her ministry during the national fight for civil rights in the 1960's, Sr. Thea gave and taught from her experiences with great enthusiasm.

At the age of 47, Sr. Thea was diagnosed with breast cancer. The disease and treatment made it very difficult to travel, but that did not stop Sr. Thea from continuing her ministry of education and racial reconciliation in the Church. The year before she died, Sr. Thea spoke to the USCCB and, referencing her own spirituality and experience as a Black Catholic woman, she implored the bishops to evangelize more to their African American flock. Despite the pain she was experiencing, she managed to leave a deep impression on the bishops with her joyful presence.

A few weeks before her passing, Sr. Thea wrote the following reflection:

“We unite ourselves with Christ’s redemptive work when we reconcile, when we make peace, when we share the good news that God is in our lives, when we reflect to our brothers and sisters God’s healing, God’s forgiveness, God’s unconditional love.”

Sr. Thea died peacefully in her childhood home on March 30th, 1990. She requested that her gravestone be etched with the words, "She tried."

She was designated a Servant of God in 2018 when the Diocese of Jackson opened her cause for sainthood.

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