3. Life in Minority, Poverty and Solidarity
MP 8.38-40

Truly the Fraternity constitutes an inheritance of enduring value for us and of particular significance for our contemporaries. But the Fraternity in question is one of Minors, according to the will of Saint Francis: "I want this Fraternity to be called the Order of Friars Minor". And so what characterizes the life of the Fraternity and specifies its mission lies in the liberating power of poverty, which causes us to bring back to the Lord all that belongs to him. In this way we become wholly available to the Lord and in solidarity with our brothers, especially with the poorest, and become a "sign" of a choice of life inspired by the words and example of the Lord who was sent to evangelize the poor.

The example of Jesus and the exhortation of Saint Francis to rejoice when we live among people of little account are for us a consistent challenge to re-examine our life of minority and poverty and the options we have chosen both personally and as a Fraternity. Therefore we suggest that in the Personal Project of Life and the Project of Fraternal Life the following goals should be set and pursued:

1) The Provinces should find concrete ways for effecting their expropriation of goods and to live in solidarity with those most in need, so that it may be possible to share with the poor what we are and what we have.

2) Every friar should feel himself an itinerant and ready to abandon ideas, activities, offices and structures which no longer correspond to our vocation and to the urgent needs of the Church and of mankind today.

3) Every Fraternity should evaluate once a year its own faithfulness to the commitments undertaken regarding the life of minority, poverty and solidarity.

4) The Conferences, Provinces and individual friars should earnestly try to affirm ever more powerfully among us the culture of solidarity and of collaboration at the level of persons, structures, formation and mission projects, and of material goods.

5) The friars should share as far as that is possible the life, history and hope of the poor and marginalized, in order to be in their turn evangelized by them.

6) The Provinces and the Conferences should create a network of persons and resources in order to deal with the needs of immigrants, refugees and ethnic and religious minorities.

7) The friars in their lives and in their words should be promoters of justice, and heralds and builders of peace and reconciliation, so as to be prophetic signs which fearlessly denounce all that which destroys the dignity of man and of creation.

8) Conferences and Provinces together with the other members of the Franciscan Family should each set in motion some concrete initiative in favour of justice, peace and the safeguarding of creation, an initiative which is born of our spirituality and will constitute a Franciscan contribution to the celebration of the third millennium.
_________
listening

• Mt 18:1-5, 25:31-46; Mk 9:33-36; Lk 4:16-21, 10:21-23, 12:22-31, 22:24-27; Philip 2:5-11.

• Rnb IX,1-9; XIV; XVII,17-18; Rb III,10-14; VI,1-4; STest 4; Adm XVII; ML 3.

• GGCC 64-82.9698; RFF 22-25; OF 34; OET 12-15; FE 52-55.149-156.157.164; RGC 55.130-132.147- 149.

• VC 82.89-90

1. Re-read article 64 of the General Constitutions and complete your reading with the sources which inspired it: which of these characteristics are being displayed by us? And which could characterize our specific vocation in the Church?

2. What forms of minority could we recover or invent in order that our vocation as Minors become a witness in the "place" in which we live?

3. Read and reflect on the following articles of the General Constitutions: 1 §2; 33 §1; 39; 68-70; 96-98: what are the characteristics which should mark our proclamation and promotion of justice, peace and the safeguarding of creation as Friars Minor?