SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 3 - N. 27 - 1997 - July - I
From: Koinonia, 1997, N. 3
Felice Cangelosi OFMCap
(Part - I)
The Gospel fraternity finds its basis in Christ, firstborn of many brothers, who makes of all men one true fraternity. Fraternal life is built in welcoming the option of thekénosis of the Incarnation and of Easter, and in following in the footprints of Christ the Servant. In fact, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20,28).
Ever since Christ gave his life for others, service implies the aspects of renunciation, humiliation and suffering. Service finds its natural context in the expectation of solidarity in sorrow, and not in that of reward and recognition. The commitment to fraternal life and the cult (doulía ) of the same pass of necessity through the gift of a service (doulía) rendered as a sacrifice and gratuitously.
Gift, because we are talking about serving our brothers, and not of being served by them.
Sacrificial service, because it is service wherein there is sacrifice; only service costs something.
Gratuitous service, because it does not demand recompense (do ut des ), because it does not find its own motivation in the constraints of slavery, but in the freedom of love, in the need of a caring charity for others and for the fraternity.
What service?
1. The service of "carrying one another's burdens"
It is the first and fundamental form of fraternaldiakonìa, because the brother is not an object to be dominated, but a "burden" to be borne: and he is brother precisely because he weighs heavily on the shoulders of others.
Fraternal communion is realised in "support", just as the communion between God and men is realised in support. In fact, God supported men in the Body of Christ, because "He was burdened with our sufferings, he has taken on himself our sorrows...; he was pierced for our sins, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment which gives us salvation fell on him..." (Is. 53, 4-5).
Fraternal communion is the communion of the Cross; it is present whenever one feels the weight of the other. On the other hand, there would not be Christian communion and the law of Christ would be disowned if one did not feel the burden of the brother.
2. The service of good example
Good example finds its place always in connection with and in dependence on metanoia which enjoins self-transformation, by doing violence to one's own passions and evil desires. Fraternal life is not built with discussions, it is not the outcome of a defence of the fraternity; it is founded instead on the example of the one who is ready for sacrifice, the one who overcomes the reluctance of his own nature to carry out tasks which imply renunciation, weariness and distress; the one who does not allow himself to become disheartened by the opposition of a mediocrity for which "good example" is a reproach.
Fraternal life is the result of a humble and simple witness: it depends on personal readiness to die like the grain of wheat; it is the winning-post, never definitively reached, of constant daily heroism.
(To be continued)
Conference of General Assistants
7 March 1997: Emanuela De Nunzio met with the four Assistants to discuss the conferences to be presented at the seminars in Lebanon and Tanzania this year and in the Ukraine in 1998. The Assistants are also planning seminars for the Provincial Assistants of their respective Orders, possibly in 1998. They prepared answers to correspondence from Thailand, Honduras and the United States. Fr Zvonimir reported on his participation in the meeting of the Union of Conferences of Italian Franciscan Ministers Provincial, held in Palermo in February.
9 April 1997: The four Assistants met at the General Curia TOR, to review various projects (Eastern Europe, Africa, Lebanon) and to plan seminars in 1998 for the Provincial Assistants of the separate Orders. They were informed about the arrangements for Franciscan Youth in the Paris Meeting of Youth in August. They finalized the Statutes of the Conference of General Assistants.
13 May 1997: The four Assistants met at the General Curia of the Capuchins. In the morning, they decided on the themes of the ten conferences of the Seminar for Provincial Assistants that each one will conduct for his Order late in 1998 or later. They allocated the conferences to themselves and to the SFO Minister General, and determined the elements of the seminar's time-table. In the afternoon, they held the normal meeting of the Conference. They allocated the liturgies for the meeting of the Presidency, discussed a question about Animators voting in the SFO elections at all levels, and presented reports on the presence at elective Chapters of Fr Carl in Malta and Fr Zvonimir in Spain.
1-5 April 1997: Seventeen representatives of six European national Fraternities met at Hotel Park, Nasice, in Croatia. They discussed the theme, "St Francis and Jesus Christ", in accordance with the Church's programme leading up to the year 2000. Tibor Kauser (Hungary) gave two conferences and guided the discussion. Juray Gasparovic (Croatia) attended to the practical arrangements. Two General Assistants (Zvonimir Brusac TOR and Carl Schafer OFM) attended. Next year's EUFRA-Meeting will be held from 15 to 19 April, possibly in the Netherlands.