This year we celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints of the Seraphic Order on the eve of the opening of the last Franciscan Centenary, that of the Easter of the Poverello- Poor Man of Assisi. The final stage of the celebratory journey that the Franciscan Family wanted to experience from 2023 to 2026 actually opens us to the future, to a new chapter in the history of the Order and of salvation, in which all of us Franciscans are invited to leave a mark, to write a page.
St Francis, in his Letter to the whole Order, wrote: "Keep nothing of yourselves for yourselves, so that the One who offers himself totally to you may receive you completely". These words must have guided the hearts, minds and steps of so many confreres who, in the eight centuries of Franciscan history, have truly lived Francis' project to the full, welcoming God unreservedly and loving their neighbour to the end.
A host of people that, in a chronological sense, goes from St. Francis (canonized on July 19, 1228 by Pope Gregory IX) to the Martyrs of Damascus (canonised on the 20th October, 2024 by Pope Francis), and already extends to the French Friars Minor victims of Nazism, who will be beatified next December on the 13th in Paris.
In the conference entitled "Holiness Today", promoted by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in October 2022, Br. Maurizio Faggioni, OFM, taking up the conciliar Constitution Lumen Gentium, recalled how the universal vocation to holiness was a call consequent to baptism, thanks to which Christians "were truly made children of God and sharers in the divine nature, and therefore truly holy." By virtue of baptism, therefore, we are all called to holiness, each one in the context in which he lives, even where hatred, indifference, violence, hunger, war, darkness seems to prevail. Retracing the last years of St Francis' earthly life, the Centenarians taught us to pause before the mystery of the Incarnation to contemplate the greatness of divine love for humanity; to celebrate the Rule in order to be an open and outgoing fraternity, a builder of a new culture of encounter and social friendship; to be silent in order to listen to and follow Christ, conforming ourselves totally to Him; to change our relationship with Creation and its creatures; to welcome sister bodily death with song in order to enter into full communion with God.
On this day of celebration for the whole Franciscan Family, let us make resound within us the witness of Francis, who prayed with these words:
Almighty, eternal, just and merciful God,
give us miserables ones the grace to do for You alone what we know you want us to do
and always to desire what pleases You.
Inwardly cleansed, interiorly enlightened and inflamed by the fire of the Holy Spirit,
may we be able to follow in the footprints of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Chris,
and, by Your grace alone, may we make our way to You, Most high,
who live and rule in perfect Trinity and simple Unity,
are glorified God almighty, forever and ever.