08151982 Letter from SJPII to the General Ministers VIII centenary birth of Saint Francis

 

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LETTER OF JOHN PAUL II

TO THE MINISTERS GENERAL OF THE FRANCISCAN ORDERS

ON THE EIGHTH CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF SAINT FRANCIS

To my beloved sons Giovanni Vaughn, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor;

Vitale Bommarco, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual;

Flavio Carraro, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin;

Roland Faley, Minister General of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis:

on the eighth centenary of the birth of Saint Francis of Assisi.

To you, beloved children, greetings and the apostolic blessing.

1. "He shone like a bright star in the darkness of the night and like morning light scattered over the darkness": with these words Thomas of Celano presented Saint Francis of Assisi, of whom he was the first biographer (Vita prima sancti Francisci, n. 37 : analecta Franciscana, 10, Ad Claras Aquas, 1926-1941, p. 29).

I like to renew this praise, on the occasion of the celebration of the eighth centenary of the birth of this famous man. In truth, already on October 3, 1981 we spoke to the very numerous Brothers of the four Franciscan Orders, religious and not, who follow the Seraphic Father on the journey of life, gathered to celebrate the vigil of the saint's feast in St. Peter's Basilica, and we spoke also, by radio, to the very numerous faithful gathered in the cathedral of Assisi for the celebration presided over by the Bishop, to begin the year dedicated to the said anniversary.

But now, almost as a continuation of that discourse, we have set out to highlight, with this Letter, some fundamental points of the evangelical magisterium put into practice by him, and communicate to you and through you to as many as possible the announcement that he himself seems to bring to the men of our time. In the "Fioretti di S. Francesco" it is said that Friar Masseo, one of his first followers, asked him one day: "How come then to you that the whole world follows you?". Eight centuries after the birth of the Saint of Assisi, this question still carries weight, indeed it imposes itself with even greater force.

In fact, not only has the number of those who follow in his footsteps more closely grown, adopting the Rule he drafted as the Rule for their lives, but rather than admiration for him and the willingness to follow him have weakened over time, – as instead usually happens in human affairs – they have penetrated more deeply into souls and have spread more widely; their signs are strongly imprinted in Christian spirituality, in art, in poetry, in almost all forms of Western culture. The Italian nation, which has the honor of having given birth to such a great man, has chosen him as its patron together with another great daughter of his, Catherine of Siena.

His fame then crossed the borders of Europe, so much so that the words of the Gospel can rightly refer to him: "In all the world, wherever this Gospel is preached, what he did will also be said" (cf. Mt 26,13). Francis certainly presents himself with such a personality as to find everyone's consent; in fact, all those who have known his way of life unanimously recognize the example of humanity that he offers us. Therefore it does not seem out of place to repeat in this year, sacred to his memory, the question posed by Friar Masseo in the simplicity of his soul: why does the whole world follow St. Francis of Assisi?

This question can be answered at least in part by stating that men admire and love this Celestial man because in him they see realized – and certainly in a wonderful way – those ideals to which they above all tend, but which nevertheless often fail to achieve in their lives. , that is to say joy, freedom, peace, concord and unity between men and with things. Truly all these and other qualities shine with a singular splendor in the life of the poor man of Assisi. Above all, joy shines forth, precisely because Francis is known to all as the man of perfect joy. Throughout his life "he had the greatest and most particular tension that of always being attentive to having spiritual joy within himself and in his relationship with others".

2. Often, as is documented in the memoirs concerning the episodes of his life, he could not hold back the impetus of the joy that urged inside him, so much so that like a wandering singer, accompanying himself with wooden sticks, imitating the players of the so-called " viella” (cf. Tommaso da Celano, Vita prima sancti Francisci, n. 127: analecta Franciscana, p. 205), sang the praises of God in French. The joy that filled the heart of St. Francis was born of amazement with which in the simplicity and innocence of his soul he contemplated all reality and events; but above all it was born of the hope that he nourished in his heart and moved by which he exclaimed: "So much is the good that I expect, that every pain is my delight". Although he hardly ever used the word freedom, nevertheless in fact his whole life was a singular demonstration of evangelical freedom. From each of his gestures, from each of his actions, there transpired the interior freedom and the spontaneous attitude that made charity his supreme law and that totally placed its roots in God.

One of the very numerous examples of this is the freedom he granted to his confreres, in conformity with the Gospel, to eat all the foods that were served to them. Indeed, the freedom that Francis followed and exalted is in no way in contrast with obedience to the Church, and even "to all the authorities in the world", but on the contrary arises precisely from this. Indeed that perfect original form of man, by virtue of which he is free and master of the universe, shines in him with a particular light. This also contains that singular familiarity and docility which all creatures showed towards this Poor Man of Christ. It therefore happened that the birds listened to his holy sermon, the wolf - according to the well-known story - became meek, the same fire, mitigating its ardor, was made "curialis", that is, benevolent.

And so, as his biographer quoted above affirms, "walking the path of obedience and perfectly embracing the yoke of divine submission, in the obedience of creatures he attained great dignity before God". But above all the freedom of St. Francis derives from a voluntary poverty, thanks to which he escaped all earthly desires and worries, so that he became one of those men who, according to the words of the Apostle, "have nothing and possess everything". Francis, in addition to being famous for his perfect joy and freedom, never ceased to be revered as a gentle lover of peace and universal fraternity. Then the peace, which Francis enjoyed and which he spread, is drawn from God as if from a source, to whom he turned praying with these words: "You are meekness, you are security, you are rest"

This peace took human form and strength in Christ Jesus, who is "our peace": in him, as Francis wrote following St. Paul, "all things in heaven and on earth have found peace and have been reconciled with Almighty God." "The Lord give you peace": with these words, according to the teaching of divine revelation, he greeted all men.

He was truly a "peacemaker", or rather an advocate and promoter of peace - a man of this kind is called "blessed" in the Gospel - since "the whole structure of his words flowed to extinguish enmities and to restore peace" . He called to peace and concord the various orders of citizens of his city, who were in a fierce and bloody struggle, putting to flight the demons, proponents of discord, with his prayers. I bring back peace between cities divided by strong contrasts, between the clergy and the people and even, as is handed down, between men and beasts.

However, as Francis believed, peace is built on forgiveness; therefore, to induce peace between the podestà and the Bishop of Assisi, who were in dispute, he had these well-known words added to the 'Canticle of Brother Sun': "Laudato si mi Signore for those who forgive for your love".

Francesco did not consider anyone an enemy, but he saw everyone as a brother. It therefore happened that he overcome all the barriers that divided the men of those times, and proclaimed the love of Christ to the Saracens themselves, sowing the seeds of willingness to dialogue and the establishment of ecumenism between men of different culture, race, religion, conquests that are among the most important of our time. Indeed, he extended this feeling of universal fraternity to all created beings, even to inanimate things: to the sun, the moon, the water, the wind, the fire, the earth, which he called brothers and sisters according to their gender, and treated with a kind of soft reverence.

Concerning this aspect, we find that it was written of him: "He embraces all things with unheard-of devotion and speaks to them of God and exhorts them to praise him." Considering these things and wanting to meet the desire of those who today are rightly concerned with the nature in which men live, we proclaimed St. Francis of Assisi the heavenly patron of all ecologists, with an Apostolic Letter dated November 29, 1979 with the Fisherman's seal. However, the example of Francis in this regard serves as a most certain testimony that creatures and the elements of nature are not immune from an unjust and harmful profanation, unless, in the biblical light of creation and redemption, they are seen as creatures , and man is not tied to them by respect; they cannot be left to his will and must wait with him and desire “to be set free from the bondage of corruption for the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

3. Up to now we have talked about the reasons why the human race rightly takes pride in Francis of Assisi and never ceases to admire him, we mean joy, freedom, peace, universal fraternity. However, if we stopped only at these aspects, it would be a matter of still empty admiration, which would have very little or no strength to teach the men of our time how to reach those ideals we mentioned earlier; it would be the same thing as wanting to pick the fruit without caring about the trunk and roots of the tree. It is therefore necessary, in order for the celebration of the eighth centenary of the birth of St. Francis to act on consciences and leave a sign, that the roots be sought to understand how the life of the Seraphic man could bear such wonderful fruits.

And in fact peace, joy, freedom, love were not given by chance by fortune or nature to Francis, nor by chance adorned his soul, but were the result of a conscious decision and a very austere life , which he himself summarized in the words “doing penance”, as he wrote at the beginning of his Testament: “The Lord has allowed me, brother Francis, to begin doing penance in this way. When I was in sin, the sight of lepers seemed too repulsive to me. But the same Lord led me among them and I was merciful to them. And when I moved away from them, what seemed unbearable to me turned into sweetness for the soul and for the body; shortly afterwards I withdrew from the life of the world.” “To do penance” or “to live in penance”: these expressions recur very often in the writings of St. Francis, since in an essential form they express his whole life and holy preaching very well.

When it was a question of giving a new direction to his life - a moment certainly of great importance - he himself, asking Christ to guide his decision, opened the Gospel and found the answer formulated there, to which he conformed his life from that moment until to death: "If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself". Abnegation (denying oneself) was precisely the path on which Francis rediscovered his soul, "that is, life". He achieved joy in enduring fatigue, freedom in obedience and totally found himself in self-denial, love for all creatures in the fact that he hated himself, that is, as the Gospel teaches, because he defeated self-love. Once walking the road with Friar Leo he explained to him that perfect joy is to bear all torment and tribulation for the love of Christ. "Living in penance" according to St. Francis means recognizing sin in all its gravity; to be before God in a constant attitude of contrition; introduce this feeling of compunction and pain into one's daily life with an austere ascetic commitment. In this he went so far that, before dying, as if asking for forgiveness, he confessed that he "had sinned greatly against his brother body" whom he had tormented with so much serious abuse during his life.

This path that Francis followed, in Christian language with a synthetic word is called cross.

He himself was and still is today the forerunner and bearer of the announcement by which the Church is very firmly recalled to the primary importance of the preaching of the cross, as if God through his poor servant Francis had wanted to plant again "in the middle of the city” that is, in the Church, the tree of life. Therefore, when in this year dedicated to the memory of the Saint, I went on pilgrimage to his tomb, I formulated this prayer: "The hidden reason for your spiritual riches was in the Cross of Christ... Teach us, like the Apostle Paul taught you not to glorify us except in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ". Christ crucified was the guide of the journey for St. Francis from the beginning of his new life until his death; and on the mountain of La Verna he imprinted the sacred stigmata so that even in the eyes of men "he presented himself as crucified". Francis made himself similar and conformed to the example of the Crucifix and the main reason why he chose poverty was to follow the Crucifix.

When he was close to death, he summed up his spiritual experience in these simple but lofty words: "I know Christ poor and crucified". In truth, since he converted, he lived as one who was marked by the stigmata of Christ. Let us now return to the question posed at the beginning: "Whence, then, does it come to you that the whole world follows you?"; by now the answer has become clear, and it is contained in these words of Jesus Christ: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself". All men are certainly attracted to St. Francis, because he, in following his divine master, wanted in a certain sense "to be lifted up from the earth", that is, to be crucified, so that he no longer lived for himself, but Christ in him , if it is permissible to refer the words of the Apostle to him. To the men of our age, who try in every way to avoid pain, but are absolutely unable to do so, indeed the harder they are hit by suffering, the more doggedly they try to remove what they consider to be the main causes of their pains, St. Francis with few words, but made credible by the great authority of his life, indicates the Christian path that leads to that goal: it is precisely a question of eliminating the ultimate cause of pain and injustice, which is sin, especially the sin of disordered self-love .

If he crucifies self-love, man overcomes that weakness at the mercy of which he is concerned only with himself, without caring about society, and refers everything to his own usefulness; and if he crucifies self-respect, he breaks, so to speak, that iron circle of old age and death and enters a new world, in which God is at the center and within whose borders all brothers and sisters find a place; in short, he becomes "a new creature in Christ". After having explained these reasons, it seems to us that the year dedicated to the memory of St. Francis, a year which is drawing to a close, is a providential preparation for the Synod of Bishops, which will be celebrated in 1983, and which will have this theme: "Reconciliation and penance in the mission of the Church”. He himself who experienced the singular fruitfulness of the decision, for his life, to do penance", may we too, Christians of these times, obtain the gift of knowing how to make this truth our own, and that is that we cannot become new men capable of enjoying of joy, of freedom, of peace, if we do not humbly acknowledge the sin that is in us, if we do not purify ourselves with the bath of true repentance and finally "let us bear worthy fruits of penance".

4. We do not want to end this Letter, with which we celebrate the eighth centenary of the birth of St. Francis, without recalling the saint's particular observance towards the Church and the ties of affection and friendship by which he was united like a son to the Roman pontiffs of his time. Being convinced that whoever does not "gather" with the Church, "scatters", the man of God had from the beginning the concern that his work would have the approval and be consolidated and protected by the protection of the "Holy Roman Church"; this purpose he openly declared with these words in the Rule: "always subject and subject to the feet of the same holy Catholic Church, steadfast in the faith (cf. Col 1:23) let us observe poverty, humility and the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ , according to the vow we have firmly made”.

The first biographer says of him: “Among all things and above all things he believed that one should observe, venerate and imitate the faith in the Holy Roman Church, in which alone lies the salvation of those who must be saved. He revered the priests and loved the whole ecclesiastical order with an extraordinary affection". The Church repaid the trust placed in it by the Poor of Christ, not only with the approval of his Rule but also with the attribution of particular honor and benevolence to the Saint. We recalled this love of Francis for the Church, at the beginning of the year dedicated to the memory of the Saint, in the message mentioned above, and among other things we said: "Brother Francis' charism and prophetic gift tended to show concretely that the evangelical message is entrusted to the Church, and which must be lived and incarnated primarily and exemplarily in the Church and with the assent and support of the Church itself”.

The current conditions of the life of the Church seem to call for a more attentive look at how St. Francis, in the reality of his time, played an active part in the life of the Church. The urgency of vigorously promoting a liturgical and moral renewal of the Church itself was a conspicuous and particular fact of those times; this effort of renewal reached its culmination in the Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council, in the year 1215. Although it is not known with certainty whether Francis participated in the sessions of that universal Synod, nevertheless there is no doubt that he had a profound knowledge of the illustrious decrees of that Council and that he himself and the Order he founded contributed to putting into effect the renewal, the form of which the Council had outlined. Certainly the canons of this universal Synod and the Letter of Pope Honorius III openly refer to that pious zeal, with regard to the Eucharist, with which the Saint of Assisi strove to give greater decorum to churches, tabernacles, sacred vessels , but above all so that the love for the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ might once again regain strength. Indeed, Francis embraced the decision to renew penance when Pope Innocent III proposed it in his address to those present at the opening of the Lateran Council.

In that speech the Supreme Pontiff, our very clear predecessor, exhorted all Christians, especially those belonging to the clergy, to spiritual renewal, to conversion to God and to the amendment of morals; and using the word of the prophet Ezekiel, in chapter IX, he affirmed that the letter thau (the last of the Hebrew alphabet, which is made in the shape of a cross) is the sign of those who "crucified the flesh with the vices and lusts” and who grieve and cry because men turn away from God: “He who shows the virtue of the cross in his works bears this sign on his forehead”. From the mouth of the Roman Pontiff, Saint Francis drew and made his own this exhortation to implement the purification and renewal of the Church. And in fact from that day - as it is handed down - the thau sign was held in particular honor; he transcribed it with his own hand in the letters - as in the letter addressed to brother Leo - and engraved it in the cells of the friars, he repeated it in his recommendations "as if - says St. Bonaventure - all his zeal was to mark, according to the words of the prophet, a thau on the foreheads of mourning and mourning men, truly converted to Jesus Christ”.

These and other examples demonstrate that Francis' intention was for his work to be humbly available for the purposes of spiritual renewal that the ecclesiastical hierarchy had conceived. He himself contributed to putting them into action with his holiness, a help which naturally could not be replaced by anything. Having previously disposed to the obedience of the Spirit, insofar as he made himself similar to Christ Crucified, he became almost an instrument which the Spirit himself used for the renewal of the Church, which was to be holy and immaculate". The man of God moved by "divine inspiration", - as he himself liked to say - that is, solicited by the fervor of the Holy Spirit, did all these things; in all he sought "Spirit and life", words of St. John that he gladly made his own. From here certainly emanated a marvelous force operating for renewal, a force that was in his person and in his life.

Thus he was, in the true sense of the word, a promoter of the renewal of the Church, not for blame and censures, but for his holiness. The age that the Church is now going through is in some respects similar to the century in which St. Francis lived. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council issued multiple propositions and decrees on the renewal of the Christian life. However, as we wrote a little while ago in a Letter, 1600 years after the First Council of Constantinople and 1550 after the Council of Ephesus: "the whole work of renewal of the Church, which so providentially promoted and aroused the Second Vatican Council ... can accomplish if not in the Holy Spirit, that is, with the help of his light and his strength”. This action of the Holy Spirit, which is of fundamental importance, does not normally occur except through men, in whose souls the Spirit of Christ has deeply penetrated and who have become his instruments, to the point of being able to communicate and instill the same Spirit in the brothers, albeit in different ways.

Therefore the memory of the birth of St. Francis, which is solemnly celebrated this year, seems to us to be, given the considerations set out above, precisely in relation to these times a singular grace bestowed by God on the Church. From this gift in particular the movements of the faithful and the new forces which today by divine grace have been aroused in the Church are called to remain firmly rooted with all their commitment in the Church, as Francis did, to put aside the pretension to assert each of their own and particular intentions in the renewal, but instead to humbly make available the charism they have received as a gift, for the projects undertaken by the Church in the Second Vatican Council. Even today, as in the times of St. Francis, there is a need for men who have arrived at a newness of life in communion with the sufferings of Christ and whom the Spirit can freely use for the building up of the Kingdom. If this does not happen, there is the danger that the teachings and directives, even the best, of the universal Synod will remain ineffective or at least will not bear those fruits that are ardently hoped for for the good of the Church.

The Church addresses this exhortation to all her children but above all, on this occasion, to those who have wanted to follow more closely in the footsteps of the man of Assisi in the various Orders and Institutes, who have in him the founder or who intend to follow the his illustrious form of life. The Church expects them, inflamed by a renewed spiritual ardor, with their holiness to contribute to its growth, so that in a certain sense that great gift that the world had, in the past age, in the person of St. Francis will be resurrected of Assisi. With this hope to you, beloved children and to the religious families you lead and to the Franciscan monks and sisters and to all the brothers of the Third Order of St. Francis, we impart the apostolic blessing, auspice of heavenly gifts and testimony of our charity.

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, August 15, 1982

JOHN PAUL II