SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 4 - N. 6 - 1998 - February - I
From: CIOFS Bulletin, 1997, N. 4
Emerenziana Rossato
Together we have seen:
-- the necessity of the wise use of passing time;
-- the importance of reconciliation with God;
-- how the present year has been dedicated to Jesus Christ;
-- our duty as followers of St. Francis.
These are realities to be lived so that the Lord can use us to carry out the wonders of his love.
A gift that makes us His witnesses:
* in speaking and in doing penance;
* in creating conditions for peace and concord;
* in offering love composed of trust and gratuity;
* in being open to welcome everyone and everything as a gift;
* in enlarging communion, an indispensable sign of
reconciliation;
* in eliminating the superfluous, reducing needs, and holding back
passions and helping the poor;
* in carrying our own and others' sins;
* in accepting the daily cross and the completion of that which is
lacking to the passion of Christ;
They are the fruits of conversion:
-- a prayer said with life
-- an offering lived in faith
-- the principle road to evangelization.
They are the facts that make our words true and credible and make us belong to the Lord. To Him who leads all that is hope and answer to our prayers, meaning and significance of our existence, our life and mission.
The Jubilee is the season of grace, and we need to be like the disciples of Emmaus in the company of the Resurrected One listening to His WORD.
Our path is in the knowledge that even if it is to be walked in fatigue and suffering, it is still always the most precious gift that could have been given to us.
20th Anniversary of the approval
of the Rule
24.VI.1978 - 24.VI.1998
Encarnacion Del Pozo
On June 24, 1998 it shall be 20 years since the approval of the renewed Rule of the SFO by Pope Paul VI.
The Holy Father upon approving the Rule with the Breve "Seraphicus Patriarcha", said: "We are happy that the Franciscan Charism' today is still a force for the good of the Church and the human community..." and, further on, "having faith that the way of life preached by that admirable Man of Assisi shall receive new impulse and shall come forth with new vigour... we approve and confirm... the Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order....."
On their side, the Ministers General of the First Order and the TOR, communicating to us the approval of the Rule (4.X.1978), presented it to us as a "splendid gift" from the Holy Father. They talked of the work writing and creating it as "...most important in the search for the way of the Spirit and most useful in noticing the presence and vitality of the Franciscan charism in God's people today". The Ministers General recommend: "that your attention should first be for the Evangelical content, welcoming the Franciscan message that it brings and the guidance which it offers in living according to the Holy Gospel".
Manuela Mattioli, as President of the CIOFS, sending the Rule to all National Councils (November 1978) said, "It is our desire that the Rule be welcomed as a source of life for the creativity and the renewal of the Fraternities"... "That the Rule really converts into "spirit and life" working for the continual personal and communitarian renewal of the Secular Franciscans".
The CIOFS Presidency now believes it is time to launch a year in memory of that important event for the whole Order and for each brother and sister to promote a new reading, reflection and search into this treasure which the Rule is for our spirituality to evaluate the effect that it has had on the life of every Fraternity and of every member.
Since, as members of the Church, we are fully immersed in the preparation for the Third Millennium, participating actively in the chatechetical proposals of the Holy Father for the Jubilee of the year 2000, and since the 20th anniversary shall start in 1998, the Presidency proposes this theme and slogan to guide and centre the commemoration:
This is the Rule: a gift of the action of the Spirit to the SFO - and also to the Franciscan Family and to the Church itself - which moves us, through a transforming spirit of personal and communitarian conversion to advance toward the Kingdom of God, humanising life and, at the same time, filling it with those divine, Christ-centred values, which the Rule itself proposes for us as an expression of the love of the Father and of our path to Him.The Lord chose Francis so that he would answer the new hopes of his contemporaries, who tried to live the evangelical life in the new situations of a new world. And Francis, illuminated by the light of the Holy Spirit, knows by intuition a form of evangelical life which, assisted by God's Grace, he realises in a special way. Today, the Holy Spirit gives us, like Francis, the grace to offer a vitally new interpretation of the Gospel in the Church and in society: a living interpretation, which means living the Gospel in an exemplary way, personally and in the Fraternity, bringing it to others with our life.
The Lord has chosen and called us to the Franciscan and secular way of life so that we give this answer to the gifts of the Spirit. We today trust ourselves to the example of Francis of Assisi, our charism, which shows us the way; the essence of his spirituality is embodied in the Rule, source and inspiration, gift of the Spirit which leads us through Christ to the love of the Father.
And for this reason we propose with conviction this new reading of the Rule, inviting the National Councils to promote it creatively using the methods they think appropriate (conferences in the local Fraternities, courses, seminars, congresses...) especially during the period beginning on July 24, 1998 and which ends with the celebration of the General Chapter in 1999.
Brothers and sisters, lets prepare ourselves well for this time of meditation and celebration in order to actualise our joy for the gift and for the commitment the Rule has represented for our lives and our vocation.