Wednesday, June 5

The presider at Mass today was Friar Jorge Arturo DOBLES ULLOA, the Custos of the Provincial Custody of Mary, Mother of Mercy in Central America. The Mass commemorated St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr. Friar Jorge congratulated the Province of St. Elizabeth in Germany and the many confreres living there. 

Fri­ar Jude’s homi­ly was about St. Paul’s greet­ing to the elders of the Church of Eph­esus. We must learn to expe­ri­ence our feel­ings ful­ly. Reli­gious should not be robots; they should allow them­selves to feel, as Jesus Christ did.
Best wish­es went to Fri­ar José Luis AVENDAÑO MONSALVE, the Cus­tos of the Provin­cial Cus­tody of Our Lady of Coro­mo­to in Venezuela, for his 52^nd birth­day, and Fri­ar Józef BŁASZAK Cus­tos of the Provin­cial Cus­tody of St. Max­i­m­il­ian M. Kolbe in Cana­da for his 43^rd anniver­sary of priesthood.
Fri­ar Mil­jenko HONTIĆ of the Province of St. Jerome in Croa­t­ia pre­sent­ed Motion No. 6. The Motion asks that youth and voca­tion min­istry be insert­ed into the Order’s Six-Year Plan. The pur­pose of the Motion is to pro­mote pas­toral work with young peo­ple fol­low­ing the Syn­od of Bish­ops on Young Peo­ple, Faith and Voca­tion­al Dis­cern­ment. It is also hoped that each Juris­dic­tion will iden­ti­fy a Defin­i­tor or a Del­e­gate of the Province or Cus­tody so that activ­i­ties in this field can be more con­crete­ly ani­mat­ed. More­over, one could hypoth­e­size the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at for For­ma­tion hav­ing one of its mem­bers work part time in youth and voca­tion min­istry. After a broad dis­cus­sion, the Capit­u­lars approved the motion.
Next, the Capit­u­lars moved on to Motion No. 7. In it, the Gen­er­al Chap­ter man­dates the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al with his Defin­i­to­ry to pro­ceed with the revi­sion of the Direc­to­ry for the Cel­e­bra­tion of the Gen­er­al Chap­ter and the Direc­to­ry for the Cel­e­bra­tion of the Provin­cial and Cus­to­di­al Chap­ter. A pre­sen­ta­tion was made by Fri­ar James McCUR­RY, the Min­is­ter Provin­cial of the Province of Our Lady of the Angels in the USA. A revi­sion of the Direc­to­ry was request­ed in light of the recent­ly approved Con­sti­tu­tions and the new Gen­er­al Statutes. More­over, it has been prompt­ed by the expe­ri­ence of the Provin­cial Chap­ters in recent years. Par­tic­u­lar­ly for larg­er Juris­dic­tions, hold­ing a fra­ter­nal assem­bly before the start of the Chap­ter has proven to be very use­ful. The Motion was approved by a large majority.
Motion No. 8 was dis­cussed, which con­cerns the revi­sion of the Spe­cial Statute for the Gen­er­al Cus­tody of the Sacred Con­vent of St. Fran­cis in Assisi. The Cus­tos of Assisi, Fri­ar Mau­ro GAMBETTI, pre­sent­ed the Motion. Its main issues con­cern the mis­sio of Assisi’s three com­mu­ni­ties (Sacred Con­vent, Fran­cis­canum and Riv­o­tor­to), the priv­i­lege of its ‘dou­ble belong­ing’ and its Cus­to­di­al Chapter.
Above all, the spe­cial nature of the Sacred Con­vent, which con­tains the relics of St. Fran­cis, was reaf­firmed. The Cus­tody also wants to offer fri­ars an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a charis­mat­ic for­ma­tion course that is in keep­ing with the Cus­tody’s doc­u­ment, “Proposi­tum Vitae”. The course would pro­vide an expe­ri­ence of life in fra­ter­ni­ty, ser­vice and study for a spe­cif­ic period.
The Fri­ary of Riv­o­tor­to, in addi­tion to serv­ing the parish, is a home for Fran­cis­can spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. It is char­ac­ter­ized by a Fran­cis­can style that recap­tures the val­ues of liv­ing in the “Tugu­rio” (hov­el) as St. Fran­cis once did. It offers hos­pi­tal­i­ty for the for­ma­tion of the fri­ars and wel­comes pil­grims, par­tic­u­lar­ly young people.
The com­mu­ni­ty of the Fran­cis­canum is char­ac­ter­ized by hos­pi­tal­i­ty and edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ty aimed at the fri­ars; for host­ing fri­ars engaged in ongo­ing for­ma­tion pro­grams; and for activ­i­ties per­formed as part of the “Spir­it of Assisi”.
The Del­e­gates are elect­ed in pro­por­tion to one of every four fri­ars par­tic­i­pate in the Cus­to­di­al Chap­ter, accord­ing to the sys­tem of del­e­gates of both the fri­ary and the Cus­tody. The Cus­to­di­al Vic­ar and the Vic­ar of the Sacred Con­vent can be two dif­fer­ent fri­ars, accord­ing to what is need­ed and the grav­i­ty of the com­mit­ments involved.
Hav­ing already vot­ed two hun­dred times today, the dis­cus­sion on the Statute of the Sacred Con­vent was sus­pend­ed and the iux­ta mod­um shall be con­tin­ued with the text of the Gen­er­al Statutes.
A change was approved which asked to deter­mine the man­ner for the con­tri­bu­tions of the Provinces and Cus­todies for the fra­ter­nal sol­i­dar­i­ty fund, tak­ing into account the eco­nom­ic com­mit­ment that they already sus­tain to sup­port their mis­sions and formation.
The Gen­er­al Chap­ter then asked for the report of the Gen­er­al Del­e­gate for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, includ­ing the sta­tis­tics of the Order. The Capit­u­lars con­sid­ered this report nec­es­sary in order to make a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of the sexennium.
A text was approved con­cern­ing fil­ial hous­es that may be sup­pressed after a fixed time. In excep­tion­al cas­es, the fil­ial house may remain as it is, beyond these lim­its, by deci­sion of the Min­is­ter Provin­cial with the con­sent of his Definitory.
Each coe­tus, dur­ing its coe­tus ses­sions, may grant fri­ar audi­tors and con­sul­tants at the Gen­er­al Chap­ter, the right to speak and to vote.
Final­ly a change was made to the text of Motion No. 2 ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment of the Order to train and pre­pare new schol­ars, as well as teach­ers and ani­ma­tors, for our for­ma­tion centers.
Today’s work in the Aula was con­clud­ed and will resume on Fri­day. Tomor­row, the Capit­u­lars will ded­i­cate the day to mak­ing a pil­grim­age to Cor­tona, Italy.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In the First Read­ing about how Paul departs from his meet­ing with the elders of Eph­esus at Mile­tus to go to Jerusalem.  They all know that they will nev­er see him again on this earth.  They all cry as they send Paul on his way.
At chap­ters, we make changes of where fri­ars will live and what they will do.  At one lev­el, a bit of change is always good lest we become too sta­ble in our ways.  But depar­tures always car­ry a bit of sor­row.  It is part of our spir­it of detach­ment, our vow of liv­ing sine pro­prio, but it still hurts. 
This chal­lenges us to med­i­tate on the place of emo­tion in our spir­i­tu­al life.  Can we cry in the Lord, even as Jesus did at the death of Lazarus?  Can we rejoice in the Lord, even as Mary and Joseph did at the birth of their Son?  Can we  express our doubts to come to a deep­er faith as Thomas did?
Being a Fran­cis­can doesn’t mean liv­ing with­out emo­tion, with­out vital­i­ty.  An Amer­i­can poet said that we are called to suck the mar­row out of the bone of life.  May our emo­tions become a form of prayer in which we lift all of our­selves up to the Lord.