Visual Tour -- Franciscan Prayer Fraternity

 

Our Lady of the Angels Friary --  WELCOME to our home

 

(Because of a mix-up, you will probably see this section twice - double your pleasure)

　

As you arrive here at Our Lady of the Angels Friary, the home of the Franciscan Prayer Fraternity, you are greeted by a lovely statue of our Blessed Mother, surrounded much of the year by roses.   Behind her, the first building you see is the residence where the friars live, which also contains the chapel, the commons room, the library, the dining room and kitchen, the bedrooms, etc. Attached to the main building on the backside by a covered walk-way and deck are our 3 guest rooms. Another small building nearby has become the hermitage, and the old family guest house has become the place where our Franciscan soap is made.

 

Almost all of the buildings on the property today had been built by a family named 'Volchok' to provide a residence for themselves as well as give them space for offices and warehouses to handle the needs of 'Blessed Herbs, their herb business. In the 60^th anniversary booklet from Assumption Abbey, THE EIGHTH DAY, we read a short paragraph about the family who had lived here before the Franciscans:

 

"The Volchok family (Michael, Martha, and four youngsters) had Fr. Robert (one of the Trappists) as Spiritual Director. They built their house and workshop on a level section of our land about two miles from the Abbey. They felt called to raise their family apart from the world's turmoil. Michael developed a thriving herb business and kept extending their building."

 

The Volchok family left the area in the 90's and for a good 10 years the buildings were largely empty, used occasionally as overflow when the guest quarters at the Abbey were filled. The buildings were also used for high school retreat groups. For a time, Fr. Robert, one of the Trappist hermits, used the Guest House on the property as his hermitage.

 

The Franciscan friars settled here in the summer of 2005 to begin the Prayer Fraternity. In the final chapter of THE EIGHTH DAY, we read about the coming of the Franciscans:

 

"As part of their renewal, the Franciscans in the USA wanted to make available for their friars a prayer fraternity. Francis of Assisi would periodically leave his ministry among people to retire to a place of solitude and prayer. At Abbot Mark's invitation, they decided to remodel and move into the Volchok's buildings. A small community of friars now lives at Our Lady of the Angels Friary, and receives others for a longer or short time of spiritual renewal."

 

The Franciscans have about 70 acres of land leased from the Trappists of Assumption Abbey. In the center of the land are about 4 acres of tillable land and these buildings that you see in these pictures. Today they comprise the Franciscan Prayer Fraternity that we now wish to visit.

 

Before we go on to look at the buildings that make up the Prayer Fraternity here at Our Lady of the Angels, we can say that several members of the original core community visited 28 different potential sites all throughout the Midwest. It became a general consensus that this site was the first that met all the requirements they had looked for. Its beauty and solitude and its rustic, yet comfortable, accommodations all lend to the prayerful environment that they had hoped to have for our new Franciscan Prayer Fraternity.