12161997 JPII Address General Definitory OFM
On December 16, 1997, John Paul II received the General Definitory of the Franciscans in audience and gave the following speech in Italian, taken from L'Osservatore Romano, weekly edition in Spanish, dated December 26, 1997.
Dear Friars Minor:
1. I am happy to welcome you today and I cordially greet each one of you with the words that Saint Francis used to say: "The Lord give you peace" (1 Cel 23; cf. Test 23). I thank you for your visit: you have come to renew the bonds of intimate communion with the Successor of Peter, which the seraphic father, in his Rule, wanted to be the distinctive character of your Order.
I greet in a particular way Father Giacomo Bini, recently elected Minister General, and I offer him my best wishes for the arduous task entrusted to him. I also greet Father Hermann Schalück, who has carried out his mandate at the head of the Order with a spirit of service.
Your presence this morning offers me the pleasant opportunity to convey to your brothers throughout the world my sentiments of gratitude for their generous and profitable commitment to fidelity to Christ and active evangelization. Your much-appreciated apostolic work is oriented in various ways especially to care for the poor and those most in need, following in the footsteps of your holy founder.
2. Last May, you celebrated your General Chapter in the Sanctuary of the Porziuncola, a place so dear to Saint Francis, where he received enlightenment about his vocation and from where he began his fruitful spiritual and missionary work, which generated a great renewal in the Church and in the society of that time. The gesture of meeting there for an act of fundamental importance in the life of a religious institute takes on special significance, as it expresses the desire to return to the roots of your specific charism. The Porziuncula, a sacred place known throughout the world, has returned to the news due to the tragic consequences of the recent earthquake, which has affected the regions of Umbria and the Marches, leaving deep wounds on people and buildings that still remain. they must heal.
Speaking of the Porziuncola, how can we not remember the famous invitation that Francis received there: "Go, and repair my church"! You, attentive to the signs of the times, want to grasp every call to intensify the enthusiasm and generosity of your service to the Church with unchanging fidelity to the spirit of the origins. Accepting the inspirations of the Spirit of the Lord, you want to open yourselves, in a line of dynamic continuity with your authentic tradition, to the expectations and challenges of the present, to help guide men to meet the Lord who is coming.
Certainly, the earthquakes that affect material structures are serious; but we should not forget other phenomena, perhaps even more worrying, that disturb the existence of people and show the absence and emptiness of humanity and the meaning of God. I am referring here to the loss of respect for the dignity of man and the intangibility of his life, to religious indifference and practical atheism, which lead the thought of God to move away from the horizon of life, opening the way to a dangerous vacuum of values and ideals.
If the challenges of our time lead, on the one hand, to look with concern to the future, on the other, they forcefully challenge the community of believers to accept them and face them urgently. Time is short, the Advent liturgy warns us, and it is necessary to prepare the way for the Lord who is coming. This spirit, typical of the liturgical season in which we are living, must animate all the activities of religious institutes.
I ardently hope that this spirit penetrates more and more intensely also in your religious family, called to bring the gospel of joy and love to the people of our time. For this reason, the mission that awaits you, with a view to the third millennium, consists of starting again from your origins to intensify attention to the brothers, promoting updated pastoral action according to your charism. At the center of this arduous apostolic renewal is listening to God in the typical contemplative lifestyle of Saint Francis. He used to repeat that "the preacher must first receive in prayer what he will later communicate in his preaching" (cf. 2 Cel 163). Desiring that you faithfully follow in the footsteps of your seraphic father, I invoke upon you and upon the entire Order the renewed outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that they may sustain and guide you in your service to Christ and to the Church.
I wish you all a Holy Christmas and a New Year filled with peace and joy. With these sentiments, I bless you all.
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