SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 10 - N. 13 - 2004 - March - IV
From: Koinonia, 2003, N. 4
June 24, 1978 - June 24, 2003
Valentin Redondo, OFMConv
Vatican Council II popularized the “Youth are the hope of the Church”. [1] At the same time, it recognizes the hope placed on youth and strongly recommends to the hierarchy to make every effort to see that young people receive a Christian education and preparation by means of catechesis. [2] The Council also underlines the “role of an extraordinary importance” which young people play in contemporary society, which “demands from them an analogous apostolic activity, to which they are disposed by their very nature”, since they themselves are “the first and immediate apostles of the young, exercising the apostolate among their peers, in accordance with the social milieu in which they live”. [3] In this work, the dialogue of adults with young people is important, as the same Conciliar document points out. [4]
Youth is a stage of transition in life which begins with adolescence and continues until a person attains personal maturity. It is a rich stage, characterized by great vitality and a strong manifestation of individuality. It is a very positive period, with great capacity for action. However, at the same time, because of its vitality, its overflowing energy - and its desire to search for success, for recognition, and for growth -- it is a time life in which one has a foot on the accelerator, so to speak. This makes the time of youth a period of great tension and instability, of temporary and brief commitments charged with altruistic sensibility.]
The general characteristics of youth described above are also those which describe the Franciscan Youth (YouFra). YouFra contains some peculiar aspects which specify and enrich its members. It is a vocational journey which is intended to develop and cultivate the seed of an initial call. It is an experience of fraternity which is lived within an ecclesial community. It is a following of Jesus of Nazareth in the light of the life and message of Francis of Assisi. It also forms part of the Franciscan Family as an integral component of the Secular Franciscan Order with whom it shares an existential relationship permeated with a spirit of reciprocal and vital communion. As such, it considers the Rule of the SFO as its document of inspiration. YouFra “offers to this project of life the enthusiastic contribution of its youth, sustained by the courage of its ideals”. [5]
The drawing up of the Rule of the SFO has led back to the Franciscan sources and to the origins of the Order. This is attested in the Prologue which, even though it does not form part of the Rule, is the text of the first redaction of the letter which Francis writes to all the faithful. In reality, it is as Kajetan Esser calls it, the Exhortation of Saint Francis to the brothers and sisters of Penance. In it he presents two ways of life - something very common in the Church - the path of good and the path of evil; the path of those who do penance and the path of those who do not do penance.
In the first place, the Rule appears to be a vocational proposal in which Christ is the center of the project of life: “The Rule and the life of the Secular Franciscans is this: to observe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by following the example of Saint Francis of Assisi”. [6] The General Constitutions make this more explicit: “The spirituality of the secular Franciscan is a plan of life centered on the person and on the following of Christ”. [7] Vocation is a following, a road to be followed. To the young man who asked Jesus: “Good Master, what do I have to do to attain eternal life?” Jesus answers: “Go, sell what you possess, give it to the poor, and God will be your riches; then come and follow me” (Mk. 10: 17, 21). Saint Clare presents this very well in her testament: “The Son of God has become a road for us, and that road has been shown and taught to us, by word and example, by our Father Saint Francis, a true lover and imitator of Jesus”. [8]
It is this plan of life which the SFO “has to be ready to share... with young people who feel attracted by Francis of Assisi”. [9] John Paul II said to YouFra of Italy that this vocational proposal is “the ascetic and apostolic itinerary which characterizes you as Franciscan Youth; this helps you to become adults in faith, to be apostles in the ecclesial Community and to behave in society as responsible persons, capable of assuming courageously the role to which Providence calls you”. [10]
In this vocational journey, which contains, as St. Paul says when writing to the Church in Ephesus, an election and a blessing of the Father for us in His Son Jesus (cf. Eph 1:3-4). YouFra considers “the Rule of the SFO as a document of inspiration for the growth of its Christian and Franciscan vocation”. And the Young Franciscans confirm this call and blessing “by a personal commitment before God and in the presence of the brothers”. [11] With this option begins a process of formation and of growth for the members of YouFra using “methods of formation and a pedagogy adapted to the needs of the world of youth”. [12]
The Rule does not offer just a simple type of devotion to Francis of Assisi according to the multiple varied forms that exist. It offers a true program of evangelical life which commits one to be a credible Christian witness because it demands a fidelity to the Word which makes one a child of God (cf. Jn 1:12) “going from Gospel to life and from life to the Gospel”. [13] This form of life is a call to holiness, in which the Yufrist (member of YouFra) is profoundly involved. As Francis of Assisi states: “We are mothers when we carry Him (Christ) in our heart and body through divine love and a pure and sincere conscience; and we give birth to Him through a holy life which must give light to others by example”. [14]
YouFra is a form of life which tends towards holiness as members of the SFO since it is not possible to think of YouFra as a separate entity from the SFO. In this sense, Pius XII defined the Secular Franciscan Order as a “school of perfection, of a genuine Franciscan spirit and of decided and generous action”, underlining that the Third Order wants souls who, in their state of life, aspire to perfection”. [15] One must tend towards holiness with joy - for as Vatican II states: “Thus, it is evident to everyone that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity”. [16] John Paul II underlines this conciliar affirmation in Christifideles Laici: “It is urgent today, more than ever, that all Christians may once more understand the path of evangelical renewal, generously accepting the invitation of the Apostle to be ‘holy in all their behavior’... Everyone in the Church, precisely because the person is a member of it, receives and, therefore, shares the common vocation to holiness” [17]
The Rule of the SFO offers YouFra a path of perfection which Saint Catherine of Genova, a lay Franciscan, saw very clearly, when, responding to a religious man who suggested that he was in a better condition to live perfect charity, she stated: “If I believed that your habit would kindle in my heart a spark of greater love I would take it off of you if I could not obtain it in any other way. As far as you having a greater merit than I because of what you have renounced for God..., that is your path; but that I cannot love God as much as you, this you will never make me believe”. [18]
In the audience granted to YouFra of Italy on the occasion of the 50] [th] [ anniversary of its birth in May 1998 the Pope insisted: “The Franciscan Youth is constituted as a vocation to grow in a fraternity”. [19] It is a true form of life offered by the Rule of the SFO as an invitation to live the Gospel as Francis did, that is, in fraternity. Life in a fraternity is a common charism for the whole Franciscan Family. The Fraternity is “the privileged place for developing a sense of Church and the Franciscan vocation and for enlivening the apostolic life of its members”. [20] The General Constitutions defines the vocation of the SFO and of YouFra as a “call to live the Gospel in fraternal communion”. [21] This explains why there are no Secular Franciscans who are voluntarily living in isolation. The members of the SFO and YouFra are called to live in fraternity. The Franciscan charism cannot be lived in isolation. As the Pope clearly points out in his allocution in the above mentioned audience, the Fraternity is a “community of love and a privileged environment in which the ecclesial sense and the Christian and Franciscan vocation is developed”. [22]
The great novelty of Francis is not that of having invented something, but that of having made an attentive reading of the Gospel and of having put it into practice. The fraternity is born from the very depth of the Word who pitches his tent next to ours and makes us brothers of the same Father (cf. Jn 1:14). YouFra in Italy highlights this founding aspect of the Franciscan vocation in its Statutes, “Il Nostro Volto”: “The young Franciscans live in the Fraternity as a visible sign of the Church... and as a place where the apostolic life of its members is naturally animated”. [23]
Madrid - From September 15-17 Valentín Redondo, OFM Conv., met with the Minister General of the SFO, Encarnación del Pozo, and Carlos Moura, a CIOFS Councilor, in order to prepare a draft of the national statutes which would be in accord with the General Statutes and the Statutes for Assistance. The draft will be presented to the CIOFS for approval.
After a long preparatory period, a seminar for Spiritual Assistants was held in Oradea, Romania, from September 29 to October 1. The following took part in the seminar: 8 Friars Minor, 8 Conventuals, and 1 Capuchin. The regional ministers of Moldavia and Transylvania, and a member of Hungary's national council were also invited. The seminar was an important step in developing true collegial assistance to the SFO in Romania and a good preparation for a provisional united national council.
During the seminar Ivan Matic, OFM, presented an introduction to the Statutes for Assistance, the formation of the SFO by the First Order and the Third Order Regular, and the assistance to YouFra and the SFO. Irudaya Samy, OFM Cap., gave presentations on the responsibility of major superiors for the SFO, the role of the Spiritual Assistant, and the formation of Spiritual Assistants. Valentín Redondo, OFM Conv., talked on the responsibility of an Assistant, the collegiality of Assistants, and the role of the Assistant in the formation of the SFO. Wilhelmina Visser, a CIOFS Councilor, facilitated the meeting and presented a talk on SFO spirituality. Margaret Mertens, SFO, from Germany gave a presentation on EUFRA (Franciscan Europe). At the end of the seminar there was a round table discussion which gave an opportunity for various clarifications concerning spiritual assistance to the SFO.
1 Gravissimum Educationis (=GE), 2
2 Cfr. Christus dominus, 14. 30; Presbyterorum Ordinis, 6, GE 2.
3 Apostolicam Actuositatem (=AA), 12.
4 Cfr. AA. 12
5 JOHN PAUL II, Franciscan youth, a luminous ideal of life, in l?Osservatore Romano, May 10 1998, p. 5.
6 SFO Rule, 4
7 General Constitutions (=CCGG), 9
8 Testament of Saint Clare, 5.
9 CC.GG. 96.1
10 JOHN PAUL II, o.c., p. 5.
11 CC.GG. 96.3
12 CC.GG. 96.5
13 SFO Rule, 4
14 ICtaF. 1,8-10.
15 PIUS XII, to the members of the Third Order in Italy meeting in the Vatican Basilica, in L’Osservatore Romano, 2-3 July 1956.
16 Lumen Gentium, 40
17 Christifideles Laici (=CL), 16
18 Life of Saint Catherine of Genova compiled by her confessor, Genova 1887, Tip. Arcivescovile, pp. 60-61.
19 JOHN PAUL II, o.c., p. 5; cf. CC.GG. 96.2.
20 SFO Rule, 22
21 CC.GG. 3.3.
22 JOHN PAUL II, o.c., p. 5
23 Il Nostro volto, 7 a.