Thursday, May 23

This morning’s Mass was presided over by Friar Tadeusz ŚWIĄTKOWSKI, the Assistant General for the African Federation of Conventual Franciscans (AFCOF). During the Mass, he mentioned the 27^th anniversary of priestly ordination of three Capitulars from the Province of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe in Poland (Gdańsk): Friars Adam KALINOWSKI, Eugeniusz WETTA and Kazimierz SZULC, the Provincial Custos of the Provincial Custody of St. Francis of Assisi in Kenya. 

Fri­ar Jude deliv­ered the homi­ly. In it, he men­tioned that as prophets we must not try to guess the future, we must instead lis­ten to the voice of the Holy Spir­it who speaks to us in the present with­in our con­crete situations.
Fri­ar Dami­an-Ghe­o­rghe PĂTRAŞCU, the Pos­tu­la­tor Gen­er­al, start­ed today’s Chap­ter ses­sion by read­ing a sum­ma­rized ver­sion of his report. As we did dur­ing last night’s prayer ser­vice in the Basil­i­ca, we con­tin­ue to thank the Lord for the many broth­ers and sis­ters whom the Church has rec­og­nized as exam­ples of holi­ness. We are invit­ed to increas­ing­ly cul­ti­vate knowl­edge of these exam­ples of virtue and spread the word about these holy ones the Lord has sown among us.
Then, Fri­ar Joseph BLAY, the Gen­er­al Del­e­gate for Jus­tice, Peace and Integri­ty of Cre­ation made his pre­sen­ta­tion. Over the last six years, he was pri­mar­i­ly com­mit­ted to vis­it­ing our for­ma­tion hous­es around the world. Jus­tice, Peace and Integri­ty of Cre­ation is part of our DNA as Fran­cis­cans, so we need to train our youth in these val­ues, ​​too. Like­wise the whole Order must be sen­si­tive to safe­guard­ing cre­ation and to prac­tic­ing the inte­gral ecol­o­gy that Pope Fran­cis has asked for in his encycli­cal Lauda­to Si’.
Next, Fri­ar Sil­vestru BEJAN, the Del­e­gate Gen­er­al for Ecu­menism and Inter­re­li­gious Dia­logue, spoke to the Capit­u­lars. He under­lined how the “Spir­it of Assisi” is cer­tain­ly in vogue, but it must be rein­tro­duced with­in our own Fran­cis­can mis­sion of liv­ing the Gospel. We want to meet and dia­logue with peo­ple, not argue over abstract the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. This year marked the 800^th anniver­sary of the meet­ing of St. Fran­cis of Assisi with the Sul­tan AL-KAMIL. An exhi­bi­tion based on this theme has been cre­at­ed at the Sacred Con­vent. Tomor­row morn­ing, the Capit­u­lars are invit­ed to attend the inau­gu­ra­tion of the exhibition.
Final­ly, Fri­ar Tim­o­thy KULBICKI, the Sec­re­tary of the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for the Revi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tions, took the floor. He thanked all the col­lab­o­ra­tors, in par­tic­u­lar Fri­ar Bernar­do COMMODI who returned to the Father’s house on July 17, 2017. It is good to remem­ber that the work of cre­at­ing the new Con­sti­tu­tions was a com­mit­ment shared by most of the Order. The Holy See approved the text of the Con­sti­tu­tions and gave it a very pos­i­tive evaluation.
The Capit­u­lars then met togeth­er in sev­en “mixed groups” to dia­logue about the reports that had just been giv­en; the mixed groups were com­posed in such a way so that Capit­u­lars from dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal and lin­guis­tic areas could dia­logue together.

The day con­clud­ed with Evening Prayer I of the Solem­ni­ty of the Ded­i­ca­tion of the Basil­i­ca of St. Fran­cis of Assisi.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In our first read­ing this morn­ing, we hear a con­tin­u­a­tion of the sto­ry of the Coun­cil of Jerusalem.  Peter speaks of how the Holy Spir­it has guid­ed him and oth­ers to bap­tize the Gen­tiles.  James speaks about how this was fore­told by Amos the Prophet.  One of the apos­tles speaks about the present and the future.  The oth­er speaks about the past.  This dynam­ic is one that we should remem­ber in these days of chapter.
We need fri­ars who speak about the past.  We need to review this man­date which is now over and eval­u­ate it.  This is the recent past.  We need fri­ars who remem­ber our his­to­ry like Tim Kul­bic­ki and Igor.  We need fri­ars who can speak of our ear­li­est days as an Order like Wayne and Valentin.
But we also need fri­ars who can speak to us of the present and future of our Order.  We need to lis­ten to the voic­es of the fri­ars from young juris­dic­tions which are grow­ing rapid­ly.  We need to lis­ten to our prophets who view things from the view­point of God.  We need to lis­ten to those who are prac­ti­cal, who have com­mon sense.
If we lis­ten, if we share our insights, we too will know where the Lord is call­ing us to go and what he is invit­ing us to do.