RELIGIOUS LIFE
FRANCISCAN FATHER Mike Duffy, O.F.M. visits a guest at the St. Francis Inn soup kitchen in Philadelphia. Hospitality is of great importance to Franciscans.
Meeting God in the city by Father Linh Hoang,
O.F.M.
BROTHER OCTAVIO DURAN, O.F.M.
Father Linh Hoang, O.F.M. is a member of the Franciscan Friars, Holy Name Province. He is an associate professor of religious studies at Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y. where he also lives in student housing as a friar-in-residence.
A young man discovered his vocation by immersing himself in the pillars of Franciscan spirituality—starting with a sense of place in a beloved city.
I
MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY from Topeka, Kansas in 2000 to pursue my doctorate in theology at Fordham University. It was going to be my first time living in New York. Though I had been in Chicago a few years earlier and so big cities did not intimidate me, I would come to learn there is definitely something quite different about NYC. The people, the traffic, the buildings, and the massive public transportation system created a web of human interactions that can be overwhelming to the uninitiated. Constant activity keeps the city beating at all hours of the day and night. There is hardly a place where one will not run into another person. It was a city unlike any other I had visited, where all my senses were stirred. It was also the place where I discerned my religious vocation. That may sound strange to some people that a secular city can have such a spiritual influence, but it was very fitting because a sense of place is an important
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