Monday, June 10

Today’s  7:15 a.m. Mass was presided over by Friar Teofil PETRISOR, the  Minister Provincial of the Province of St. Joseph, Spouse of the B.V.M. in Romania. Today we celebrated the commemoration of Mary, Mother of the Church; may we entrust the path of the friars of our Order to our mother Mary. 

Fri­ar Jude cen­tered his homi­ly on the Gospel of the Beat­i­tudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Mt 5:8). With regard to our con­fr­eres, we are not asked to be per­fect func­tionar­ies of sacred litur­gy, but to be able to meet the Lord together.
Con­grat­u­la­tions to Fri­ar Michael ZIELKE, the  Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of St. Bonaven­ture in the USA for his thir­ty years of priest­hood, and to Fri­ar Stanisław STÓJ of the Province of St. Antho­ny and Blessed James of Strepar in Poland (Cra­cow) for his  forty-one years of priesthood.
Work began in the Aula with the pre­sen­ta­tion of a new Motion by Fri­ar Mar­i­an GOŁĄB, the Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of St. Antho­ny and Blessed James of Strepar in Poland (Cra­cow). The Motion was not part of the Instru­men­tum Laboris and there­fore the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee titled it Motion No. 15. This Motion called for pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives for a life more faith­ful to our charism. The Gen­er­al Chap­ter looks to the future of our Order with hope. At the same time, it encour­ages Provin­cial and Cus­to­di­al Chap­ters and Min­is­ters Provin­cial and Cus­todes, togeth­er with their Defin­i­tors, to seri­ous­ly dis­cern and sup­port the heart­felt inspi­ra­tions of the fri­ars in under­tak­ing new ini­tia­tives of life and mis­sion, moti­vat­ed by the desire to live the Gospel in the coura­geous prac­tice of the Rule and the Constitutions.
The Gen­er­al Exac­tor, Fri­ar Woj­ciech KULIG, and for­mer Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Fri­ar Vin­cen­zo MARCOLI, spoke next. They pre­sent­ed Motion No. 12, which deals with Juris­dic­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions for eco­nom­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty in the Order. Point 1 of the Motion, the Tax for the Gen­er­al Curia, will be vot­ed on lat­er; there are alter­na­tive texts for it giv­en to the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee which have yet to be dis­cussed. Point 2 was vot­ed on and approved: the insti­tu­tion of the annu­al con­tri­bu­tion to the new and unique “Fra­ter­nal Sol­i­dar­i­ty Fund”. This fund should cov­er aid for for­ma­tion expens­es, schol­ar­ships, and make up for aid usu­al­ly giv­en through Mass inten­tions, which are now in steep decline.
Next, the Gen­er­al Econom, Fri­ar Nico­la ROSA, pre­sent­ed Motion No. 13, which con­cerned set­ting lim­its on expens­es for the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al alone and col­lec­tive­ly with his Defin­i­to­ry.  After a brief dis­cus­sion, the text was approved.
The Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al for For­ma­tion, Fri­ar Louis PANTHIRUVELIL (India) opened the dis­cus­sion on Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship. First, there was a pre­sen­ta­tion by the oth­er mem­bers of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at for For­ma­tion: Vices­ec­re­tary Fri­ar Franklin Anto­nio DURÁN ZAMBRANO (Venezuela), Fri­ar Zbig­niew WÓJCIK (Cra­cow) and Fri­ar Emanuele RIMOLI (Cal­abria, Italy).
Fri­ar Louis explained that Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship is not a legal text. Rather, it is a text meant to inspire and instruct the projects of the Order’s for­ma­tion hous­es. He then sum­ma­rized the his­tor­i­cal, thir­ty-five year jour­ney that led to the cur­rent text of Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship. In par­tic­u­lar, over the past six years, our for­ma­tors around the world made sug­ges­tions to help redraft the text into a form that more close­ly met the needs of our fri­ars work­ing in formation.
The floor was then opened up for ques­tions from Capit­u­lars on how the final text was arrived at. Tomor­row the Capit­u­lars will con­tin­ue their dis­cus­sion on Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

The Gospel today presents a series of eight beat­i­tudes which are a type of a new law for the new Israel.  As Moses received the old law on a moun­tain, Jesus pro­claims this new law in the Ser­mon on the Mount.  But these are not rules as much as goals.   This is a very Jew­ish way of speaking.
Sin, for exam­ple, in the Old Tes­ta­ment is seen as shoot­ing an arrow and miss­ing the mark.  Con­ver­sion is not hit­ting the mark.  It is get­ting clos­er to the mark.  Con­ver­sion tends to take place in slow motion.  Very few of us have dra­mat­ic con­ver­sions such as St. Paul on the road to Dam­as­cus.  Most of us con­vert a lit­tle at a time.  What is impor­tant is not nec­es­sar­i­ly to be per­fect, but to be get­ting better.
I would like to accent only one of the beat­i­tudes.  Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.  The heart in the Bible is where one thinks.  If one is pure in one’s thoughts, always think­ing of God, then of course we will see God.  This reminds me of Phil 4,8.  What­ev­er is true, and right and noble and pure and love­ly and admirable, think about those things. 
We are all busy, and the first things that get aban­doned when we are too busy in spir­i­tu­al read­ing and med­i­ta­tion.  We need these.  The fri­ars we serve need us to do these things so that we might see God clear­ly, and help them to see him as well.