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LET US SET OUT
Br. José R. Carballo, ofm
Minister General
Dear Brothers:
At the end of this "Pentecost Chapter", which gathered together 147 participating Friars from the five continents here in the shadow of St. Mary of the Angels, I wish, first of all, to thank the Lord for the gift of this Chapter, which, like every Chapter, has been a time of grace; an opportunity to meet and celebrate together the gift of our vocation as Friars Minor; the grace of reflecting together and sharing, in a family manner, our joys and preoccupations. To Him, who is the "good, all good, supreme good" (ExhP 3), we raise with thankful heart our "Magnificat" of thanksgiving.
My thanks also goes to all that have collaborated actively so that the Chapter would respond to the projected objectives and be carried out in a climate of serenity and great brotherhood. Thanks to the Secretary of the Chapter, Br. Francesco Patton, to the Vice-Secretaries; to the Recording Secretaries, the interpreters and translators; to the Moderators and Tellers; to the Brothers responsible for communications; to the juridical experts and the redactors of the Final Document; to the Liturgical Commission; to the Seraphic, Roman and Tuscany Provinces, as well as to the Fraternities of the General Curia, of St. Anthony’s in Rome and of the Porziuncola, for their truly fraternal welcome; to the members of the previous General Definitory, who prepared the celebration of the Chapter with the greatest care and, particularly, to Br. Giacomo Bini for his "complete and evocative" Report to the Chapter, which helped us to enter into a climate of reflection in which we could face up to the topic, always arduous and difficult, of the revision of our structures. Thanks to all of you, dear Brother participants in the Chapter, for your presence and for your work. Thanks, equally, to the Brothers of Domus Pacis and the Stuoie, as well as to all the personnel, for their friendship and Franciscan courtesy.
A Chapter is always a time of grace, which allows us to turn our gaze on the past with gratitude to the Lord and to the Brothers and which invites us to prepare the future with our trust placed in the Lord and the Brothers. This future, as I see it, passes through re-foundation, re-dimensioning and discernment.
Re-founding. It certainly is not a question of inventing Franciscanism "ex nihilo". When I speak of re-founding I simply wish to say that we must continue to delve deeply into our identity, into the essential values of our "forma vitae", just the Chapter has asked us repeatedly —particularly during the first week-, so that, placing our life on the firm rock of the authentic values of Franciscanism, we may respond to what the Church and present-day man expect of us. If the crisis of the religious life in general and of the Franciscan life in particular is not simply skin deep, but really profound, the solution cannot lie in superficial innovation, but in an authentic re-foundation. The challenges that are presented to us are such, and of such magnitude, that it no longer suffices to reform, retouch, repair... "For new wine, new wine-skins" (Mk 2, 22). To new questions and new circumstances, new responses. If it is certain that the future germinates in the present, it is certainly true that "we do not only have a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history still to be accomplished" (VC 110a), we cannot be content with putting on patches, with filling holes or, as the Gospel says, with sewing new pieces onto old clothes (cf. Jn 3, 3); it is a matter of verifying our style of life, our concrete options, the coherence of the testimony and service that we wish to offer to men, our brothers. It is necessary, as Francis and Clare did, to keep ourselves in an attitude of docility to the Spirit (cf. VC 37), which blows here it wills (cf. Jn 3, 8), and "to reproduce the audacity and sanctity" of Francis in our ‘here and now’ (cf. VC 37). It is not a question of simply thinking about survival, of struggling on. It is a matter of being "zealous heralds of Jesus Christ, ready to respond with the wisdom of the Gospel to the questions posed today by the anxieties and the urgent needs of the human heart" (VC 81c). As Br. Giacomo Bini has said so many times, we need to dare.
Re-dimensioning. Re-foundation entails profound changes on the personal, community and institutional levels. This is what I wish to indicate with the term re-dimension. As Br. Giacomo Bini indicated in his letter, The Order today, during recent years a great effort was made to identify precisely the "orthodoxy" of our charism. The hour has now struck for us to concentrate more on the "ortho-praxis". The problem we have is no longer of a theoretical character, but of commitment and action. We have passed from what is said to what is done. Or better still, we must continue to speak, but, at the same time, we have to act. The present moment and the situation in which many of our entities find themselves demand this re-dimensioning of us. If we do not do so, time will do it. This situation, though perhaps, many would not wish it, can however produce an awakening effect: it can take us out of the night and call on us to begin a new day, it can be a goad and a caress at the same time, putting us into movement, questioning us, unloosing a process of reflection, of decisions and of action, with an objective and clear stages for the entire journey.
This re-dimensioning will appear then as a call to a dynamic fidelity to our charism (cf. VC 37), to the "constant and passionate search for God’s will, ... to the practice of spiritual discernment and love of the truth" (VC 84b). So, it will not simply be an option for overcoming the shortage of manpower with which the Order in many Provinces finds itself, but it will be at the service of life, of a greater significance in the living out of our vocational option, of greater fidelity to Christ, to the Church, to Francis and to present-day man; and in this way we will be able to build more fraternal communities capable of washing the feet of the poor and of giving an irreplaceable contribution to the transformation of the world (cf. VC 110b).
This re-dimensioning passes first of all, in my way of seeing things, through the recovery of the capacity to enter into relationships with the world or, which is the same thing, through the recovery of communication with those that surround us, particularly with those that suffer, with the world of the "broken" or "fractured", to those to whom we are called to announce the peace that comes from the Lord, by working for justice and peace (cf. "May the Lord give you peace", II, 2). We cannot continue to be locked into our big or small castles. It is necessary to go out, to go "to those who are close by and to those that are far away" in order to sow the germ of life, the seeds of the Kingdom, in the hearts of all.
Re-dimensioning also passes through the revision of our presences. In the same way that the fruit manifests the vitality of the tree (cf. Mt 7, 10. 20), so also our presences manifest, in one way or another, the life we carry within us or the lack of it. Re-dimensioning our presences means, first of all, making ourselves more significant, more alive, in such a way as to "face up to the challenges of the world" and to read in them the presence and goodness of God, especially in a time like ours, of great socio-cultural changes, of great lights and not a few shadows (cf. MP 6). Re-dimensioning our presences will also mean, in many cases, revising what we do (our apostolic activities) in such a way that life and mission are facilitated. I think it is urgent, most of all, to re-dimension the works that submit the brothers to excessive activity and work. We cannot sacrifice life to work —no matter how important this may be-, to efficacy and to social utilitarianism. Structures must be at the service of life and not life at the service of structures. Re-dimensioning our presences will demand, finally, the review of the location of some of them so that we may be close to the people by opening our life to the people and entering into solidarity with the poor. In this way we will recover the gospel poverty that we promised.
Discernment. All this requires us to enter into an attitude of constant discernment or, if it is preferred, of mental and structural itinerancy. The range of possible options has probably never been so great as it is today. And, faced with such a variety of offers, many ask themselves: What am I to do? What path should I take? How can we be oriented?
The response to such questions is not easy. What we are sure of is that, in order to attempt an adequate response, the only possible way is that of discernment. Faced with the difficulty of achieving agreement between the "semper" and the "novum", Parmenides y Heraclitus, fidelity and creativity, discernment is imposed.
As Dickens writes in his Tale of two Cities, ours is the best of times, ours is the worst of times. It is the hour of wisdom and that of madness, the era of great believers and of great incredulous, the season of light and that of darkness, the spring of hope and that of despair. The same double perspective appears clearly in the Final Document of our Chapter: May the Lord give you peace". In the analysis of the present situation, which the Chapter Document makes in the first chapter (Greeting together with new signs of heaven and earth), we are invited to examine the signs of the times and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel (cf. GS 4; VC 81). It invites us "to undertake, as in every time and place, the path of gospel discernment in a double perspective: ‘test everything and hold on to what is good’ (1 Ts 5, 21)" and to "become aware of personal and social schemes that oppose life, in order to denounce them and contribute to their overthrow and, equally to open the eyes of faith and hope in order to detect, in the midst of the crises, the emerging dreams of humanity, in order to open up channels for them in our own life" ("May the Lord give you peace", I).
AS Friars Minor, we need "to bear in our hearts and in our prayer the entire world’s needs, while at the same time we work with zeal in the fields determined by the founding charism" (VC 73c). The mind and the heart should be open to all, but the hands should be occupied and the feet walking along paths suitable to our form of life. It has been said that in the West the problem is not of spiritual malnutrition, but that of inadequate feeding. It is not a matter of simply choosing the good and rejecting the bad. It is a matter of choosing, from among the good, what does us good and responds most adequately to our condition of Friars Minor. But discernment is needed for this: "Prophetic witness requires… the practice of spiritual discernment" (VC 84b). It is necessary to train ourselves, personally and in community, " to discover the signs of God in earthly realities" (VC 68), it is necessary to learn the art of discernment.
Dear Brothers: On returning to your provinces and Entities, transmit to the Brothers the joy of having lived together during these four weeks. Communicate to them the joy of forming a part of a worldwide Fraternity, of a Fraternity in mission. And salute them in my name and in that of the Definitory, assuring them that our greatest commitment consists of being close to them always in order to share their struggles, their fears; in order to share, above all, the joy of being Friars Minor.
"May the Lord give you peace" Brothers.
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