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My name is Colin King. I am 33 years old
and I am a Franciscan friar.
After graduation I was a high school special ed teacher
in the Greater Cincinnati area. I kept feeling a call to
something more, something else, which eventually led me to joining the
Franciscans of Saint John the Baptist province.
The very basic thing as a franciscan would be:
we are to live the gospel.
And that can be somewhat nebulous. What does that mean...
feeding the poor, clothing the naked, housing
the homeless. In the 1980's when the ***-aids epidemic
broke out we went down and opened centers for people with
***-aids as a place where they can come in and be safe and be spiritually fed
and be taken care of.
Right now there's a number of men who are working on immigration.
And trying to be with the alien in our land and making sure that they are not
abused which is
a great commandment from the Bible. We're not just social workers.
We're not just an NGO. We stand as Catholics
for something. When I wear my habit and I go out
then typically I'll be stopped on the street and just somebody will come up and
just say,
"I'm struggling with this or this just happened."
And they invite me, a complete stranger,
into a very sacred and often times a wounded place in their life not because
of who I am,
but because of what the habit represents. When you make a public
witness of anything it makes people stop,
pause, and reflect on where are they
in this, where are they in their life at this time.
We're at a shift in, I think, in many places
in the world and so now it's time
for some of us much younger guys whether Gen X-ers are Millennials to
to kinda decide what that future will be.