FRATRUM MINORUM - OFM

EX ACTIS MINISTRI GENERALIS
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form others to find words capable of
creating communion with persons
who are different. It is indispensable
to form ourselves and to form others
in respect for those who are “different”,
in the capacity to listen and to
take into account the points of view of
those who are different. It is a priority
to form ourselves and to form others
to “embrace”, and not only to “bear or
put up”, with ethnic, cultural and
theological differences in our fraternities
also43.
– In the time of the “virtual relationship”,
it is fundamental to form others
and to form ourselves to live in a relationship
which is at the same time,
profound, free and liberating. It is
only in this type of relationship that
one can be able to listen to the other
in his “alterity”, without falling into
the temptation of reducing him to our
own schema, up to the point even of
eliminating him. It is then a question
of a journey of growth in freedom,
understood as control of one self and
which leads to the donation of self.
• Forming ourselves and forming others
in an incarnated and practical spirituality44.
The post modern culture favors the
loss of the social dimension. In this context
I see that it is necessary to form
others and to form ourselves in a spirituality
rooted in life, with all its density
of injustice and conflict, of hope and
project. This implies:
– Developing a contemplative attitude
capable of listening to God in concrete
life, an contemplative attitude capable
of discovering God in the world
and particularly in the poor. It is necessary
to be very attentive so as not
to fall nor allow others to fall into an
intimist, timid or fleeing, quietist and
interiorist spirituality. It is necessary
to join firmly spirituality and vital
and historical practice, not to empty
spirituality in its action, but rather to
make it a path and a germ of transformation
of reality, first of our own reality
and then of the reality of others.
– Having concrete experiences of life
close to the poorest and with the
smallest, in a condition of minors -
well programmed, adequately accompanied
and periodically evaluated
- which will lead to finding the
path of the poor and to assume a personal
and communitarian style of solidarity
with them. In this sense,
among the criteria of vocational discernment,
should be inserted the
sense of justice, of peace and respect
for creation45. Consecrated life, and
therefore, formation to that life, are
authentic when they are lived, not as a
flight from the world and from history,
but as leaven and impulse
within that history. Formation must
make consecrated persons of today
and of tomorrow, capable of looking
at history with an open mind and
heart, ready to propose to our contemporaries
paths of hope. From that
point of view we want to form ourselves
and form others so as to be able to
establish profound, intimate and significant
relationships in this society
of the “broken ethos”. Humanity, particularly,
the crucified humanity,
needs men and women who move
with passion along life, who are in
contact with the flow of the common
existence of all and that their word
may be a resonance of their life in
God. The world needs men and women
permeated by the sentiments of
Christ (cf. Phil 2, 5), who will be witnesses
through justice, peace, pardon
mercy, tenderness, solidarity, meekness
and love (cf. VC 27).
– Becoming familiar with the diverse
faces of the Crucified. For this it is necessary
to go from a “bourgeois” formation
to an “inculturated” formation;
to go from a “permissive” formation,
where what is important is
that the person being formed may feel
well, at ease, to an “exigent” formation
in which the following of Jesus
Christ is presented in its evangelical
radicalness, exactly the contrary to