‘Brother, Where Is Your Coat?’
GUEST COLUMN
When I about five years old in 1930, my Dad’s cousin, Brother Aloysius Gilmartin, would come down on the train to Altoona, Pennsylvania, from St. Francis College in Loretto to visit us. He would get off the train and walk half a block to Westfall’s Men’s Store where Dad worked. Dad would usually bring him home for lunch. He enjoyed our big family so much. And we all loved Br. Aloysius too; he was such a gentle and humble man.
One day it was bitter cold, about zero degrees, when he came to Dad’s store. Dad was shocked to see that he was not wearing an overcoat.
“Brother, where is your coat? It’s freezing out!” my Dad exclaimed.
“Oh, Frank, I don’t have one,” he replied. The monks of the Order of Francis take a vow of poverty and do not personally own anything, even their clothes.
You May Also Enjoy
Method of Inclusivity... Undergraduate Hitman... Rat Town, Down Under... Trash Champs... A Fitting Accommodation?... Wondrous Words... more
Major decisions about the future of society are made by secular elites who speak and act as if God did not exist, but who usurp His divine power and wield it over the rest of us.
Fr. Paul was the fulcrum of many a network of artists, academics, jurists, politicians, and men and women of letters, locally and across the globe.