Tuesday, June 11

Today’s Mass commemorated St. Barnabas, the Apostle. Friar Igor SALMIČ, the Minister of the Province of St. Joseph in Slovenia, presided. 

Fri­ar Jude gave a homi­ly on the man­date of the Apos­tles. Jesus asked the Apos­tles  to car­ry forth his word with­out pos­sess­ing human means. Our Chap­ter must wise­ly plan our jour­ney for the com­ing years, yet take into account that God can do every­thing, that he can work beyond our weak­ness­es. We must there­fore trust in Divine Prov­i­dence, believ­ing that the will of God can be real­ized in the inten­tions of all our broth­ers, beyond dis­cor­dant viewpoints.
The Capit­u­lars con­grat­u­lat­ed the Gen­er­al Del­e­gate for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Fri­ar Ryszard WRÓBEL, for his thir­ty-six years of priesthood.
Fri­ar Louis PANTHIRUVELIL and Fri­ar Franklin Anto­nio DURÁN ZAMBRANO, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and Vice-Sec­re­tary for For­ma­tion, sum­ma­rized the con­tents of Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship. Its pref­ace and the four parts in which the doc­u­ment is divid­ed were reviewed. In Part I, for­ma­tion is seen as one being con­formed to Christ. Part II deals with the stages of for­ma­tion. Part III part is about ongo­ing for­ma­tion as a con­tin­u­ous for­ma­tive jour­ney of the fri­ar; and Part IV deals with the com­pe­tences of the Supe­ri­ors in the for­ma­tion field and in the for­ma­tion of formators.
This was fol­lowed by the eval­u­a­tion of Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship, which was done by com­plet­ing a sur­vey on its pos­i­tive aspects, its crit­i­cal ele­ments, and offer­ing sug­ges­tions and ways to improve the text. To work on this eval­u­a­tion, the Capit­u­lars were grouped accord­ing to Coetus.
In the after­noon, the iux­ta modi on some already-approved Motions were vot­ed upon. Motion No. 1, deal­ing with mis­sion, was giv­en addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al on New Evan­ge­liza­tion. The Capit­u­lars intend­ed to move the Order towards Mis­sio ad Gentes as well as the re-evan­ge­liza­tion of the de-Chris­tian­ized West.
Motion No. 11 is about uni­fy­ing some south­ern Ital­ian Provinces. The Gov­ern­ment of the Order was advised to take into account the expe­ri­ence of uni­fi­ca­tion of some oth­er Juris­dic­tions in recent years.
Final­ly, Motion No. 14 was giv­en addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al on the ways to car­ry out the restruc­tur­ing of the Federations.
The Sec­re­taries of each Coe­tus gave a report in the Aula on the reflec­tions that were made about Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship. Those sug­ges­tions shall now pass on to the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, which will prob­a­bly pro­pose a Motion to assign the text to the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al and his Defin­i­to­ry for fur­ther review.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In the Gospel today, we hear how the apos­tles are sent out to preach the Good News, but they are not to car­ry pro­vi­sions with them­selves.  They are to trust in the prov­i­dence of God.
Through­out this chap­ter, we have been plan­ning our future through statutes and doc­u­ments and motions.  We write six year plans and four year plans.  We speak of finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty.  When we open a new mis­sion, we study the sit­u­a­tion care­ful­ly and try to pre­pare the fri­ars for what they will encounter.  We try to be prudent.
But there is also a time to take a risk.  At times, the only wrong deci­sion is to do noth­ing.  We have to move for­ward into the future, no mat­ter what it holds.  If we become too care­ful and try to pre­serve what we have today, we will pass into insignif­i­cance.  The wind of the Spir­it blows where it will.  We can hun­ker down to hold on to today or yes­ter­day, or we can allow it to car­ry us into the future.