C I O F S LIST

The Beginning of a New Millennium

Participation In The Life And Mission Of The Church

It doesn’t happen often that one sends a letter from one millennium to another. However, it also contains "fresh" words of encouragement and hope for the beginning of a new year in a new millennium.

Looking back a little, it must be said that the Jubilee Year of 2000, recently celebrated in faith, has been truly a year of many graces. God our Father has shown us in a very profound way his immense mercy. "It is he who has rescued us from the ruling force of the darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him we enjoy our freedom, the forgiveness of sin" (Col 1,13-14).

We wish to thank God our Father for every gift received, especially for the greatest gift, his only Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord. "Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ...Such was his purpose and good pleasure, to the praise of the glory of his grace, his free gift to us in the Beloved, in whom, through his blood, we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins. Such is the richness of the grace which he has showered on us" (Cf. Ef 11-14).

With new vision and heart we wish to go forward, following the footprints of Jesus our Master. The example of our Seraphic Father St. Francis always helps us along this path. He invites us to love and praise our God, saying: "Let us love God, therefore, and adore Him with a pure heart and a pure mind, because He who seeks this above all things has said: True adorers adore the Father in Spirit and Truth" (2LtF 19).

There are many things that we have lived in unity of spirit with the whole Franciscan family during the past year. The Secular Franciscan Order, in particular, has a special reason to thank God on the threshold of the third millennium because the Church of God approved the Constitutions of the SFO on 8th December 2000, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a great gift to the SFO for the new millennium. Let us thank God.

On the 8th of December 2000 the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life approved the emended text of the General Constitutions of the Secular Franciscan Order. In the letter of the Secretary of the Congregation the only wish is that the new text of the Constitutions be an efficient means for the members of the Secular Franciscan Order always to be able to understand better their particular vocation in the Church and continue, in that way, to re-invigorate their own Christian life according to the Gospel after the manner of St. Francis of Assisi (italics ours).

The Secular Franciscans begin the third millennium with revised Constitutions in hand; these are the result of the experience of life according to the revised Rule of Paul VI (1978) and the text of the Constitutions approved in 1990. The unity of the Church, writes John Paul II in the Apostolic letter Novo Millenio Ineunte (46), is not uniformity but organic integration of a legitimate diversity or the reality of many members joined in one body, the only Body of Christ (cf. I Cor 12,12). Of great importance for communion, continues the Pope, 'is to take on the duty of promoting the various gregarious realities that continue to give to the Church a vivacity that is a gift from God and constitutes an authentic 'springtime of the Spirit’.

The Constitutions approved in the Jubilee Year of 2000 is not only the point of arrival of the consolidation of the identity of the SFO but is also the staring point for a more vigorous realisation of the identity in concrete life. The Constitutions approved in such a short time (four months after the delivery of the texts to the Congregation) are a new invitation to fidelity and creativity in "making the charism of St. Francis present in the life and mission of the Church" (cf. Rule SFO, 1). The desire and the disposability to respond to such an invitation could be noted with clarity in the hearts of secular Franciscans participating in the General Chapter in Madrid in which the revision of the Constitutions was finished.

It seems important to us, in the context of the Church and of the world today, to draw the attention of secular Franciscans and of the assistants to the sense of being Church, one of the basic characteristics of St. Francis and the Franciscan family. And to invite brothers and sisters of the SFO to an 'identification’ with the views coming from the universal Church and to 'sensitivity’ to the life of the local Church.

The SFO is in fact 'a public association within the Church’ (cf. Const. 1,5). "The local fraternity is... a visible sign of the Church, the community of love" (Rule 22). Today, the post-council renewal having being deepened, we will need the fraternity to be a sign of the 'Church – communion and mission’. It is significant in this regard that in the last interrogation before profession in the SFO the ecclesiastical dimension of belonging to the SFO is insisted upon "... do you wish to bind yourself more closely to the Church and to collaborate in its perennial renovation and to its mission among men?" (Rit. of SFO, 29). All the associations of lay faithful converge in ecclesiastical communion. In this they find their origins, the principal reasons for their existence and their most authentic end.

The 'charism’ remains the concrete key for understanding the life of the Franciscan family and of the Franciscan Secular Order in the Church. Extraordinary or simple and humble, the charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit that, directly or indirectly, have an ecclesiastical usefulness, oriented as they are to the edification of the Church, to the good of men and to the needs of the world (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 799).