Wednesday May 29

Today’s Mass was celebrated at 7:15 a.m. at the Sanctuary of Merciful Love in Collevalenza, Italy. The presider was the new Vicar General, Friar Jan MACIEJOWSKI. 

Dur­ing his homi­ly, Fri­ar Jude asked the Capit­u­lars to make an exam­i­na­tion of con­science. A fri­ar should always eval­u­ate his motives before defend­ing his opin­ions, before plac­ing his own idea in oppo­si­tion to that of his broth­er. Only the Holy Spir­it is the whole truth.
Best wish­es went to Fri­ar Gabriel SINGARIMBUN for hav­ing turned forty today, to Fri­ar Robert LEŻOHUPSKI for his fif­teen years of priest­hood and Fri­ar Jarosław ZACHARIASZ for his twen­ty years of priesthood.
The work of the Chap­ter start­ed with each Coe­tus hav­ing a meet­ing. Then the Capit­u­lars met in the Aula to dis­cuss pro­pos­als for mak­ing changes to the Direc­to­ry for the Cel­e­bra­tion of the Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Chap­ter. These pro­pos­als were pre­sent­ed by the Foed­er­a­tio Europae Medi­ae et Ori­en­tal­is (FEMO) and the Con­ven­tu­al Fran­cis­can Fed­er­a­tion (CFF). On behalf of the Canon­i­cal Com­mis­sion, the Gen­er­al Procu­ra­tor of the Order, Fri­ar Mau­r­izio DI PAOLO, pre­sent­ed the pro­posed changes, grouped accord­ing to the num­bers in the Directory.
In short, the pro­pos­als were sub­stan­tial­ly approved by the Capit­u­lars. The changes that were made ensured that all law­ful­ly-received iux­ta mod­um would always be pre­sent­ed and dis­cussed in the classroom.
In the after­noon, the Capit­u­lars began to dis­cuss and vote on the Gen­er­al Statutes. The first chap­ter of the Gen­er­al Statutes con­cerns the “Name and Struc­ture of the Order”. The dis­cus­sion became par­tic­u­lar­ly live­ly at No. 3 where it was decid­ed that Provinces which have less than forty solemn­ly pro­fessed fri­ars, or less than five fri­aries, over two con­sec­u­tive four-year peri­ods, shall auto­mat­i­cal­ly enter into a tran­si­tion­al phase. More­over, the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al with his Defin­i­to­ry shall pro­ceed to the revi­tal­iza­tion of these Juris­dic­tions or to their legal redefinition. 
Anoth­er vote con­cerned some arti­cles in the sec­ond chap­ter, enti­tled “The Life of Union with God”. Then, the Capit­u­lars moved on to the third chap­ter, “Fra­ter­nal Life in Com­mu­nion”. Atten­tion was focused on the norms con­cern­ing the life of our fri­aries; in par­tic­u­lar, the approved reg­u­la­tions on the fri­ars’ duties con­cern­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of spir­i­tu­al and mate­r­i­al goods.
After resolv­ing some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with the vot­ing appa­ra­tus, the vot­ing pro­ceed­ed eas­i­ly, so much so, that more than fifty instances of vot­ing were accomplished.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

In the Gospel today, anoth­er pas­sage tak­en from the Last Sup­per Dis­course in the Gospel of John, Jesus promis­es his dis­ci­ples that the Spir­it would guide them in all the truth.  How can we know what is true?  How can we know that what we are say­ing is tru­ly in the Spirit?
This requires a purifi­ca­tion of moti­va­tions.  We have to hon­est with our­selves to clar­i­fy why we are hold­ing a cer­tain posi­tion and fight­ing for it.   Is it because it is impor­tant, or is it a man­i­fes­ta­tion of my per­son­al or cul­tur­al back­ground?  Is it some­thing St. Fran­cis would have said and lived?  Am I express­ing it in a way that is respect­ful or am I being aggres­sive?  Am I will­ing to lis­ten to the fri­ar who holds a dif­fer­ent opin­ion on the same mat­ter and learn from him?
These are all ques­tions that we should be ask­ing as we begin to exam­ine the Gen­er­al Statutes.  We have to remem­ber that this work is not a ques­tion of win­ning or los­ing, but of dis­cern­ing what the Spir­it of Truth is try­ing to speak with­in our hearts.