Yes, Pope Francis is scheduled to canonize the founder of the Marians on June 5 in St. Peter’s Square.
Yes, the Marians can finally say we have a saint–the founder of the congregation!
I hope to be there, although I’m going to have to travel all the way from California.
For further information about our founder, he has his own website: Blessed Stanislaus Papczynski
The Marians are associated with a number of apostolates associated with Divine Mercy. Among them are Eucharistic Apostles of The Divine Mercy and the Mother of Mercy Messengers.
A list of the apostolates is here.
There is definitely a renewal of vocations in the Marians. When I entered as a postulant back in the 1990’s, there were 4 men in temporary vows, 3 postulants, and 4 novices.
Today there are 2 students in perpetual vows, 17 men in temporary vows, 4 novices, and 2 postulants.
Here’s a picture of this year’s renewal of temporary vows:
The Marians do not advertise for vocations in outside publications. I believe that the combination of individual apostolates (i.e. Fr. Seraphim, Fr. Calloway, Fr. Gaitley, and others) and other apostolates relating to the Divine Mercy message have helped bring in vocations.
A portion of the Diary of Bl. George is available as free MP3 file downloads. You can hear some of his inspiring thoughts at this page. The journal entries were read by Stanley Saplis, M.I.C., for a cassette tape series.
June 28, 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of this first Lithuanian to be beatified and renovator of the Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. In Lithuania and for the Marians, this is the “Year of Blessed George.”
Year of Bl. George
The large phrase above is Bl. George’s motto: Conquer Evil with Good.
The Marians in the US have produced a new website about him: Blessed George Matulaitis-Matulewicz.
The Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception has a new transitional deacon today: Deacon Ronald McBride, MIC. Congratulations Deacon Ron!
There is a definite upswing in vocations, and our congregation is part of the upswing. We now have 8 novices!
Here’s an article about the recent vocation developments of the Marians.
I must admit that I haven’t been updating the blog much. I should note that I am now teaching a night class at Franciscan University of Steubenville – Christian Moral Principles. It involves trying to give a broad survey of material that I had over the course of at least 4 semester classes, but by no means are we going into the detail that I had at Dominican House of Studies.
I noticed that one of our seminarians, Br. Angelo Casimiro, has written up his vocation story. It’s always inspiring to read one of these:
Br. Angelo’s Story
We are having quite a year vocation-wise. There are now four men who just entered a shortened postulancy which will end on August 14, when they (God willing) become novices. We also have four men who are scheduled to enter a year-long postulancy on August 15. There are also four men who are scheduled to profess their first year of temporary vows on August 15, and there are two men scheduled to profess perpetual vows soon after that. We also had an ordination to the priesthood in May.
I’m currently in Washington, DC, with the four men in the shortened postulancy.