Friday, June 7

Today at Mass, we commemorated Friars Michał TOMASZEK and Zbigniew STRZAŁKOWSKI the Blessed Martyrs of Pariacoto, Peru. Friar Dariusz MAZUREK, the Delegate for the Provincial Delegation in Peru was the presider. 

In his homi­ly, Fri­ar Jude men­tioned that Jesus healed St. Peter’s three denials by ask­ing three ques­tions about how much Peter loved him. The Good Shep­herd entrust­ed his flock to Peter, who would have to over­come all his fears through the pow­er of the Holy Spir­it. In this Chap­ter, the fri­ars who are called to play a role of author­i­ty must always ask them­selves whether they fol­low the log­ic of love or power.
In the Chap­ter audi­to­ri­um, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al con­grat­u­lat­ed Fri­ar Jarosław WYSOCZAŃSKI on his 33^rd anniver­sary of priesthood.
Dis­cus­sion in the Aula began with a new Motion pre­sent­ed by Fri­ar Wayne HELLMANN, the Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of Our Lady of Con­so­la­tion in the USA, on behalf of the Con­ven­tu­al Fran­cis­can Fed­er­a­tion (CFF). The Gov­ern­ment of the Order is asked to make a study on a pos­si­ble restruc­tur­ing of the Fed­er­a­tions of the Order. Accord­ing to the authors of the Motion, the com­po­si­tion of the cur­rent Fed­er­a­tions does not take into account the cur­rent numer­i­cal, cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic and geo­graph­i­cal real­i­ty of the fri­ars. After some dis­cus­sion, the Motion was approved.
Then, an alter­na­tive text to Motion No. 1, con­cern­ing mis­sion, was pre­sent­ed by Fri­ar Dar­iusz MAZUREK. It pro­posed that con­tracts should be made to ensure greater sta­bil­i­ty in col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Provinces. In the study of the Fran­cis­can mod­els of mis­sion, the fri­ars should choose to live by ade­quate means, bear­ing in mind the virtue of pover­ty in the charism of the Order, and when pos­si­ble, pro­mot­ing the direct involve­ment of the laity in mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty. Final­ly, the restruc­tur­ing of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at for Mis­sion Ani­ma­tion (SGAM) was request­ed, to facil­i­tate it in col­lect­ing and ana­lyz­ing infor­ma­tion on the state of our mis­sions; propos­ing devel­op­ment pro­grams for exist­ing mis­sions of the Order and draw­ing up plans for new pres­ences; and coor­di­nat­ing mis­sion­ary ini­tia­tives for the New Evan­ge­liza­tion. Also, a qual­i­fied work­ing group was asked to be set up in the Sec­re­tari­at to achieve these objec­tives. After some dis­cus­sion, Motion No. 1 was approved with sev­er­al iux­ta modi.
Fri­ar Gas­pare LA BARBERA, the Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of St. Agatha and St. Lucy in Italy (Sici­ly) pre­sent­ed an alter­na­tive text to Motion No. 11 which con­cerns the redesign of the Juris­dic­tions of south­ern Italy. It involves the Province of St. Bernar­dine and St. Ange­lo in Italy (Abruz­zo), the Province of the Seraph­ic Father St. Fran­cis in Italy (Naples), the Province of St. Nicholas and St. Ange­lo in Italy (Puglia), The Province of St. Agatha and St. Lucy in Italy (Sici­ly) and the Provin­cial Cus­tody of St. Daniel and Com­pan­ion Mar­tyrs in Italy (Cal­abria). The orig­i­nal text of the Motion had not been dis­cussed in the Aula, so the Capit­u­lars debat­ed the already amend­ed ver­sion. The new pro­pos­al called for even­tu­al­ly merg­ing all five Juris­dic­tions into one Province. How­ev­er, that would be the final step. The first step would be to unite Abruz­zo and Puglia into one Province. Sici­ly and Cal­abria would be unit­ed into anoth­er Province. Final­ly Naples was asked to redesign its pres­ences before it joined with oth­er Juris­dic­tions. The whole process must be con­clud­ed by East­er of 2024. It will be guid­ed by the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al with his Defin­i­to­ry. After a long and com­plex debate, the text was approved.
The Capit­u­lars returned to work on the Gen­er­al Statutes. After hav­ing approved all the arti­cles, iux­ta modi and vari­a­tions, the Capit­u­lars vot­ed chap­ter by chap­ter. Final­ly, the over­all text of the Gen­er­al Statutes was unan­i­mous­ly approved.
The fri­ars went on to dis­cuss a text mod­i­fy­ing the Spe­cial Statute for the Cus­tody of the Sacred Con­vent of Assisi. The Capit­u­lars approved that all solemn­ly pro­fessed fri­ars who are affil­i­at­ed to the Cus­tody, whether in per­pe­tu­ity or for a fixed time, and those resid­ing there by let­ter of obe­di­ence, enjoy active and pas­sive voice in the Cus­to­di­al Chap­ter. With this vote the approval of the arti­cles of the Spe­cial Statute was con­clud­ed. When the Capit­u­lars vote chap­ter by chap­ter, the entire text will be approved.
The work con­tin­ued with the dis­cus­sion and approval of some iux­ta modi on Motion No. 3 con­cern­ing the laity. In par­tic­u­lar, the Motion asks the Juris­dic­tions to pre­pare a report on their col­lab­o­ra­tion with the laity, in order to share their expe­ri­ence, give every­one an idea of their cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, dis­sem­i­nate good prac­tices and iden­ti­fy Fran­cis­can mod­els for the future. It then asked the Juris­dic­tions to hold a Provincial/Custodial assem­bly of fri­ars and laity to lis­ten to each oth­er and reflect togeth­er upon some joint ini­tia­tives of evan­ge­liza­tion and on voca­tion ani­ma­tion and the pro­mo­tion of con­se­crat­ed life.
Final­ly, there was a vote on a iux­ta mod­um on Motion No. 5 con­cern­ing the use of new media. In par­tic­u­lar, the Motion asks the Gov­ern­ment of the Order to estab­lish guide­lines for the use of this media by 2021, which must then be applied at the Juris­dic­tion lev­el by 2022.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In the Gospel this morn­ing, we hear Jesus ask Peter three times, “Do you love me?”  Obvi­ous­ly, three times to heal the triple denial.  Fur­ther­more, three times is the Hebrew way of say­ing the superla­tive.  If Peter before was the denial­ist, now he is , the lovingest.
Jesus also gives Peter the man­date to be the shep­herd.  In John, Jesus is the good shep­herd.  Now he is giv­ing that respon­si­bil­i­ty to Peter.  We have to remem­ber that this pas­sage was writ­ten down long after Peter was dead, so it stands for Peter’s author­i­ty and also that of his successors.
Peter’s author­i­ty, like our author­i­ty in our com­mu­ni­ty, is based upon love.  Author­i­ty in the Church is not a ques­tion of pow­er, but of ser­vice.  Remem­ber St. Fran­cis’ atti­tude toward author­i­ty.  While each reli­gious should be obe­di­ent, each min­is­ter should aspire not to acquire and main­tain posi­tions of authority. 

Do I tru­ly love the fri­ars whom I serve?  Do I view my ser­vice of them as a priv­i­lege, for God has giv­en me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to die to myself in my service?