stfranman Living Life

Meet the House Chaplain

Margaret Kibben is the Chaplain of our House of Representatives. She had only been in that post for a week or so when House Members found themselves in the cross hairs of a violent mob on January 6th.

Chaplain Kibben did what she was put in that job to do — she led our Representatives in prayer. As the gas masks were being put on, she led her charges in prayer.

To be in danger was nothing new for her. She served a tour in Afghanistan as a Navy Chaplain. Admiral Kibben was in that role for 36 years so serving under hazardous and difficult conditions was not a new experience.

If you’d like to learn more about one of the few folks who’ve held both the titles of “Pastor” and “Admiral”, just follow this link. It’s quite a story, one well-worth reading.

Ben Basile

© 2021 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Holy Days and Holidays, Spirituality/Religion

Our Blessed Hope

I most certainly do want to wish all of you a most happy and blessed Easter today.

I don’t have to tell you that our joyous celebration is the second consecutive Easter taking place while COVID-19 is drastically effecting how we gather together.

And even though much progress is being made on returning our lives and our spiritual practices back to some semblance of normal, it’s true that for most Christians, the virus is still blunting the Joy of Eastertime and the ways we have always come together to celebrate it.

But even in these troubling times, this we know: the hope and transcendent glory of Christ’s resurrection was a stunning, singular event on that first Easter morning and we can feel and appropriate that glory, that blessed hope today just as surely as Jesus’s followers and grief-wracked mother did nearly two millennia ago.

May that blessed hope be yours today.

Ben Basile

© 2021 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.