Saturday, June 1

Friar Ángel Mariano GUZMÁN LUDEÑA, the Minister Provincial of the Province of Our Lady of Monserrat in Spain, presided over today’s Mass commemorating St. Justin Martyr. 

Fri­ar Jude WINKLER gave the homi­ly, recall­ing that in Bap­tism we are all part of the Trini­tar­i­an life. As Fran­cis­cans we must ask our­selves: how can we live this with­in our fra­ter­ni­ties? Cer­tain­ly we are called to per­son­al holi­ness, but as a com­mu­ni­ty we must also show that we are one, as Christ is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Today we con­grat­u­lat­ed Fri­ar Dar­iusz HARASIMOWICZ, the Cus­tos of the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Cus­tody of St. Fran­cis of Assisi, on the 23^rd anniver­sary of his priesthood.
In the Chap­ter audi­to­ri­um, Fri­ar Gio­van­ni VOLTAN pre­sent­ed the “Car­i­tas Sant’Antonio ONLUS” [St. Antony’s Char­i­ties— Non-Prof­it Orga­ni­za­tion for Social Use]. It is an orga­ni­za­tion which con­tin­ues the tes­ti­mo­ny of sol­i­dar­i­ty of St. Antho­ny of Pad­ua around the world. Fri­ar Gio­van­ni invit­ed the fri­ars to col­lab­o­rate with this orga­ni­za­tion and help pro­mote it. 
Next, Fri­ar Ryszard WRÓBEL, the Gen­er­al Del­e­gate for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, addressed the Capit­u­lars. Fri­ar Ryszard talked about the sta­tis­tics of the Order. After view­ing a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion on the num­ber of our fra­ter­ni­ties in the world, the Capit­u­lars paused to ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. One impor­tant sta­tis­tic should cause us to reflect and spur us to pray. It shows that our num­bers have decreased in coun­tries con­tain­ing our more ancient, tra­di­tion­al Fran­cis­can pres­ences, while our num­bers have increased in the places where we have more recent­ly arrived.
A vote was tak­en on an alter­na­tive text for an arti­cle in the Gen­er­al Statutes. It con­cerned safe­guard­ing the assets of enti­ties of the Order that are closed. Anoth­er vote was tak­en on a iux­ta mod­um which required new­ly estab­lished Provinces to guar­an­tee a min­i­mum degree of eco­nom­ic self-sufficiency.
The work of the Chap­ter con­tin­ued with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the first motion, by Fri­ar Vin­cen­zo MARCOLI of the Ital­ian Province of St. Antho­ny of Pad­ua (North­ern Italy). His pro­pos­al asked the Order to encour­age twin­ning between Juris­dic­tions in order to pro­mote the con­sol­i­da­tion of exist­ing mis­sions, the study of Fran­cis­can mod­els of mis­sion ad gentes, and the strength­en­ing of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at for Mis­sion Ani­ma­tion (SGAM).

After a dis­cus­sion on top­ics con­cern­ing the mis­sion, the day con­clud­ed in the after­noon, with the first meet­ing of the new Gen­er­al Defin­i­to­ry. For the record, the new Gen­er­al Defin­i­to­ry is com­prised of
Fri­ar Car­los TROVARELLI, Min­is­ter General;
Fri­ar Jan MACIEJOWSKI, Vic­ar General;
Fri­ar Tomasz SZYMCZAK, Sec­re­tary General;
Fri­ar Antho­ny Bezo KUTIERO, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the AFCOF Federation;
Fri­ar Bene­dict BAEK, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the FAMC Federation;
Fri­ar Dominique Joseph MATHIEU, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the CEF Federation;
Fri­ar Gio­van­ni VOLTAN, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the FIMP Federation;
Fri­ar Jude WINKLER, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the CFF Federation;
Fri­ar Rogério PEREIRA XAVIER, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the FALC Fed­er­a­tion; and
Fri­ar Tomáš LESŇÁK, Assis­tant Gen­er­al for the FEMO Federation.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In today’s First Read­ing, we hear about Apol­los who did not know about the bap­tism of Christ.  He knew about the bap­tism of John which brought for­give­ness of sins.  But Chris­t­ian bap­tism brings much more.  In that bap­tism, we enter into the life of God, of the Trin­i­ty.  That is why when Jesus is bap­tized, we hear the voice of the Father and see the Spir­it appear­ing in the form of a dove.  The whole Trin­i­ty is present.
In the Gospel we hear Jesus say that what­ev­er we ask the Father in his name will be grant­ed.  A cou­ple of years ago I did a study on prayer in the Gospel of John.  In that gospel, prayer is not a ques­tion of ask­ing for things.  It is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of a rap­port of love.  If, in bap­tism, we have entered into the life of the Trin­i­ty, then of course God will give us that which we need to live that life ful­ly.  We ask to express our trust in a God who loves us with­in limit. 
We pray in these days for an out­pour­ing of the Spir­it upon this chap­ter.  We trust that God, who has invit­ed us into the very mys­tery of his glo­ry, will grant us this gift in abundance.