05041991SJPII General Chapter OFM
Dear children of Saint Francis,
1. In accordance with the tradition of your Order and according to your Constitutions, Fr. John Vaughn, your Minister General, has asked me to designate my delegate, in charge of presiding, in the name and representation of the Holy See, the next election of the General Minister, which is one of the main tasks of this Chapter of the Friars Minor.
Far from being something purely formal, this request constitutes for you an act of fidelity towards your brother Francis, who promised "obedience and reverence to the Lord Pope Honorius and to his canonically elected successors and to the Roman Church" (2 R 1,2). For the entire Order, this procedure manifests, more than respect for a prescription of the Constitutions, your current will to keep alive your ties of close and filial communion with the successor of Peter, whose mission is "to procure the common good of the Church universal and of each Church».
2. I found it useful to accompany the appointment of my delegate with a message for you, dear children of Saint Francis. This is the third time, since the beginning of my pontificate, that I have had the opportunity to address you in this way. This gives me, at the same time, the joy of strengthening my personal ties with the Franciscan family, evoking my pilgrimages to the places sanctified by the presence of Brother Francis, among which I do not want to fail to mention, in thanksgiving, the one that On October 27, 1986, he gathered in Assisi, in fasting and prayer for peace, the representatives of all religions.
3. In my previous messages I have tried to highlight some of the aspects of the rich spiritual heritage that your founder left you. I am pleased to underline again some essential features of your Franciscan tradition: passionate love for the poor Christ, which is expressed in the most perfect participation possible in the condition of the humble; the radical detachment from the goods of this world, which marvelously unites with a family love for creation, in which brother Francisco lived as if he were at home; the attachment to fraternal life with the sharing of the gifts of each one, in a total and joyful obedience; a persevering action, in the diversity of the ministries and functions exercised by the brothers, with a view to the growth of the Body of Christ; the worship of the Eucharist, inseparable from the proclamation of the Gospel; in short, tenderness towards the holy humanity of Christ and faith without a dent in his divinity and in his eternal Lordship.
By developing these charisms of your Order, which are always up-to-date, you offer the generosity of the messengers of the Good News safe paths to serve the people of today, thanks to your theological, spiritual and pastoral balance.
4. You have chosen San Diego to celebrate your Chapter, and thus you participate in the celebration of the V Centennial of the Evangelization of America, in which your brothers took part widely. In that city, the oldest of those founded by Europeans in California, Blessed Junípero Serra (1713-1784) established the first of the twenty-one missions that were to extend along the west coast of the United States (1769). .
5. Your General Chapter intends to study the theme: "The Order of Friars Minor and evangelization today." It is not a question of a re-evangelization, as if the first proclamation of the Gospel had failed, but, as I told the CELAM general assembly held in Haiti in 1983, of a "new evangelization in its ardor, in its methods and in its expression”.
Pope Innocent III sent your first brothers to announce the joyful news of salvation offered to all men and to launch an urgent call to conversion to Jesus Christ: "Go with the Lord, brothers, and, as He deigns to inspire you, preach penance to all" (1 Cel 33). Today I make this sending on mission my own and I repeat it to you again. And just as the existence of your Order was due to that first mission, so also today the mission that it receives from the Church in the person of the successor of Peter, gives it its raison d'être. Therefore, no brother is sent individually. The Order itself has no other mission than that received from the Church, according to its own charism. Dependence on the One who sends is essential in the conception of the ecclesial mission, because it is not only unfolded in the image of that of Christ, but is situated within the mission of the One whose word is that of the Father who he sent him (cf. Jn 14,24).
Franciscan Drawing: Desk6. Allow me today to call your attention, in fidelity to the tradition of your Order, especially on the intellectual formation that must be considered as a fundamental requirement of evangelization. This, far from being done by dint of slogans or through ephemeral ideologies or debatable opinions that could mislead the poor, requires a prolonged and deep intellectual investment, austere no doubt, but effective in the long term; investment sustained and animated by faith, and which leads to progress in faith: "from faith to faith" (Rom 1,17). An authentic faith, in fact, seeks the intelligence of the mysteries, and a healthy exercise of the intelligence takes full advantage of the lights of faith.
7. The mandate "de poenitentia praedicanda", to preach penance, requires a serious intellectual preparation from the point of view of the human and sacred sciences. The new evangelization, too. Is this not what the saints and doctors of your Institute taught, for whom "the building of the Order must be built on two walls, that of sanctity of life and that of science"? I hope that, Following in his footsteps and according to the Rule, the preaching of the Friars Minor may today be "examinata et casta" (cf. 2 R 9,3), that is, refined in study, straight and without confusion!
8. Dear brothers and sisters, I strongly urge you to enter into the dynamics of a regenerated evangelization, thanks to the promotion of the study of theology, an ecclesial science par excellence "because it grows in the Church and acts on the Church... She is a service of the Church and must, therefore, feel dynamically inserted in the mission of the Church, especially in its prophetic mission". To achieve this objective, certain specific provisions must be promoted, which I think it is useful to cite to you.
The norms of the universal Church that are valid for the formation of all religious, and especially for the formation of all future priests, must be rigorously observed. Equal attention must be paid to the prescriptions of your Order (Constitutions, General Statutes, Ratio institutionis et studiorum), intended to guarantee full fidelity to your Franciscan charism. The provinces best supplied with young religious should not be afraid to send them in large numbers to pursue higher studies in the humanities and sacred sciences, so that the Order of Friars Minor "can and knows how to expand, in today's society, the spaces to the values contained in the Gospel”. It is also appropriate that each province adopt its own measures to have a sufficient number of qualified formators. Furthermore, it is important that the magazines and newspapers under the responsibility of the Order encourage serious reflection on the problems of our time, in the light of faith and in communion with the Pastors of the Church, because "the office of authentically interpreting the Word of God, oral or written, has been entrusted solely to the living Magisterium of the Church, which exercises it in the name of Jesus Christ”. Finally, to be able to "integrate creativity with fidelity", the brothers will strive to maintain ongoing formation.
9. In delivering this message to Cardinal Jean Jérôme Hamer, who will preside over the election of your Minister General, I also entrust to him the task of expressing my affectionate encouragement to you, which I will gladly summarize using the words of the Seventh Admonition of Saint Francis: "They are enlivened by the spirit of the divine letter those who do not attribute to the body all the letter that they know and want to know, but by word and example restore it to the most high Lord God, of whom everything is good».
Dear children of Saint Francis, dear brothers in Jesus Christ, I entrust your work to Mary, whom you venerate as Mother and Queen of the Order, and I wholeheartedly impart my Apostolic Blessing to you all.
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