Novitiate is a response to God's call. It indicates that you have reached the human and spiritual maturity that allows you to respond to this call with sufficient and proper responsibility and freedom. Novitiate begins when you have completed your postulancy and are invested in the religious habit. It lasts at least one year and may be extended depending upon your readiness for profession of temporary vows.
The novitiate year is devoted to the foundations of the spiritual life. It combines intensive prayer with instruction on spiritual direction, Franciscan history and spirituality, prayer, religious vows, and the Rule and Constitutions of the Third Order.
At the end of the novitiate, you will make temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience for two years. Thereafter, you will renew your temporary vows until you are eligible to profess solemn vows, which are perpetually binding. A friar is ordinarily in temporary vows for four to five years.
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Brother Sean McConnell, TOR
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Brother Vincent Yeager, TOR
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Brother Samuel Devine, TOR
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