Monday, May 20

The day began with Mass at 7:30 a.m. in the Friar Elias Chapel. The presider was Friar Carlos Alberto TROVARELLI, the Assistant General for the Federación América Latina Conventuales (FALC) Friar Jude Martin WINKLER, the Assistant General for the Conventual Franciscan Federation (CFF) delivered the homily, as usual.

Fri­ar Jude spoke about Jesus’ promise to remain with us for­ev­er through the Holy Spir­it. The Gospel of John refers to the Holy Spir­it as the Paraclete—the con­sol­er, the one who assists. These days, the Capit­u­lars need to lis­ten clear­ly to the Holy Spir­it, who dwells in our hearts, in order to make deci­sions from the heart and to look past unavoid­able difficulties.
Today is the feast of St. Bernar­dine of Siena. The Capit­u­lars began work at 9:30 a.m., with some fes­tiv­i­ty aimed at the Province of St. Bernar­dine and St. Ange­lo in Italy (Abruz­zo) and Fri­ar Bern­hardin M. SEITHER, the Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of Saint Eliz­a­beth in Germany.
The timetable and cal­en­dar of the Chap­ter were then vot­ed on and approved. Next, the Capit­u­lars dis­cussed the Direc­to­ry for the Cel­e­bra­tion of the Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Chap­ter and some changes pro­posed for it by the FEMO and CFF Fed­er­a­tions. In short, they decid­ed to pay greater atten­tion to the iux­ta mod­um, so that they can be more wide­ly dis­cussed in the Chap­ter audi­to­ri­um. Since this issue also con­cerned vot­ing to be done on the Gen­er­al Statutes, Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship and Ratio Stu­dio­rum, the Capit­u­lars decid­ed to vote on these par­tic­u­lar changes once the Jurists’ Com­mit­tee clar­i­fied their pre­cise ter­mi­nol­o­gy. The Capit­u­lars approved the Direc­to­ry, but left the request­ed changes to be made at a lat­er date.
Fri­ar Tomasz SZYMCZAK was elect­ed Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Chap­ter and Fri­ars Jan MACIEJOWSKI, Col­in Charles SAMMUT and Fri­ar Mau­r­izio BRIDIO were elect­ed Mod­er­a­tors. After­wards, mem­bers of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion, the Finance Com­mit­tee and the Griev­ance Com­mit­tee were elected.
Before mov­ing on to the read­ing of the reports, the Capit­u­lars heard some mes­sages express­ing best wish­es for the Chap­ter. These came from the Most Rev­erend José Rodríguez CARBALLO, OFM, Sec­re­tary of the Con­gre­ga­tion for Insti­tutes of Con­se­crat­ed Life and Soci­eties of Apos­tolic Life; the Most Rev­erend Giuseppe PIEMONTESE, Bish­op of Terni; the Most Rev­erend Rober­to CARBONI, OFM Conv., Arch­bish­op of Oris­tano; the Most Rev­erend Gian­fran­co Agosti­no GARDIN, Arch­bish­op of Tre­vi­so; and the Father Kolbe Mis­sion­ar­ies of the Immaculate.
After pray­ing Mid After­noon Prayer, the Capit­u­lars began the day’s sec­ond ses­sion.  At that time, the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al, Fri­ar Mar­co Tas­ca, read his report. After thank­ing God and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, the out­go­ing Min­is­ter Gen­er­al cen­tered his reflec­tion on the Gospel of the “rich young man” (Mk 10: 17–27). The pas­sage teach­es us that our good inten­tions to fol­low the Lord Jesus are not enough; we need to aban­don our­selves to his will and admit that we can­not save our­selves by our own strength alone. The rich young man is unable to accept Jesus’ advice and becomes dis­ap­point­ed and embit­tered. To avoid this fate, we must die to our­selves and allow our­selves to be deeply loved by Jesus.
Next, the Capit­u­lars were told about some of the more sig­nif­i­cant sit­u­a­tions in the Order. Many neg­a­tive aspects were cov­ered, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the unde­ni­able aging of the fri­ars in some of our more ancient Juris­dic­tions. How­ev­er, the Lord had some pos­i­tive aspects to show us as well, in par­tic­u­lar the vital­i­ty of our fri­ars in the south­ern hemi­sphere, who play an enthu­si­as­tic part in an ever-young Church.
Fri­ar Mar­co notably con­clud­ed his report with a prophet­ic out­look on the prospects for our Order. He con­sid­ered the unique­ness of each of our pres­ences around the world and saw that in these the Lord still offers us many oppor­tu­ni­ties for evan­ge­liza­tion, so long as we keep bear­ing wit­ness to our charism and do not aban­don the works that have always dis­tin­guished us.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

As we begin our first day of work at our Gen­er­al Chap­ter, we hear the promise that Jesus makes in today’s Gospel that he will send the Holy Spir­it, the Par­a­clete, who will teach us and remind us of what he said.
The word used for the Spir­it is Par­a­cle­tos. That word has a num­ber of dif­fer­ent mean­ings. It could mean an advo­cate or inter­me­di­ary, a con­sol­er, a helper, a counselor.
We need the Spir­it to medi­ate between us and God so that dur­ing this chap­ter we walk in God’s ways. We need the Spir­it to medi­ate between us and each oth­er so that we treat each oth­er with God­ly charity.
We need the Spir­it to be a con­sol­er as we mourn our fail­ures in liv­ing the life to which we are called as well as the depar­ture of fri­ars with whom we lived.
We need the Spir­it to be a helper to eval­u­ate this past man­date and guide us into the future.
We need the coun­sel of the Spir­it in the deep­est parts of our hearts, for that is where the Spir­it dwells. All through­out this chap­ter we have to lis­ten to the voice of the Spir­it in our hearts. Too often at chap­ters we lis­ten to our gut feel­ings, think­ing of what we want indi­vid­u­al­ly or for our juris­dic­tion. The Spir­it in our hearts, that dove which teach­es us how to love God and each oth­er, wants to teach us and remind us of what is most impor­tant. Come, Holy Spirit!