FRATRUM MINORUM - OFM

E SECRETARIATU PRO FORMATIONE ET STUDIIS
We have gone deeply into dialogue as a
primary point for this time. The General
Chapter of Assisi 2003 told us that dialogue
is the path to peace. As such it asks us for
constant openness to the other, for discipline
in listening and reception, mutual obedience
and service (cf. May the Lord give
you peace! nn. 28-32). Dialogue does not
happen on its own. It goes together with
“absolute availability to go out to announce
the Kingdom to the poor and to allow ourselves
to be evangelised by them” (cf. Ibidem,
33).
Dialogue seems to be the way of the
poor, which they themselves can point out
to us. Prophecy, which is born of recognising
the Paschal Mystery in the life, pain and
joy of man, bears the features of the poor in
a special way. In their bodies and lives a
new and provocative announcement is
made. If it is true that the Lord Jesus identified
with them in a very particular way, they
are, for us, a living Gospel and therefore a
memorial of that “perfection”, in the sense
of consummated love, to which we are
called. The prophecy of the poor leads to
that of peace. The poor, in fact, cry out the
desire for peace through their very lives,
which bear the consequences of war, of violence,
of the violation of the fundamental
rights of the person. We cannot but be impassioned
with the poor and with peace together.
It is a question of the only “sacrament”
of Him who is our peace.
Our GGCC say in many articles, followed
by the RFF and other documents of
the Order, that closeness to and sharing with
the poor are the ordinary “places” for our
formation, together with the commitment to
reconciliation, justice and peace. Do we
still feel ill at ease before such solemn affirmations?
In many realities of our international
fraternity the Friars share the fate of
the poor, in both ongoing and initial formation.
In many others they make gestures of
solidarity, but without changing style of
mentality or style of life, without conversion.
We are required to have new eyes to
look at the reality which surrounds us and
thereby to change our mental and material
structures. The encounter with the poor can
renew the formative itineraries because it
reaches the heart and mind and leads the
person to a radical transformation. This is
also the process of that renewal of our life
and of our Fraternity which our Minister
General calls “re-foundation”.
In this meeting of the ICFS I think we
are called on to offer a spark of prophecy to
our Friars spread throughout the world, in
order not to sit down and stop, or to go back
over our tiredness and disillusionment, but
to rise up and go towards the novelty which
the Kingdom opens in front of us through
the life and face of the poor.
3. Formation for the future, for a situation
in ongoing change
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Our proposal and formative activity cannot
continue to offer a “product” already
confectioned and, apparently, ready for all
seasons. “To form” has meaning if it consents
to the rhythm of life, which asks for
unceasing and – let us recognise it – uncomfortable
steps forwards. Forming is an
act of a person, whether of the formator or
of the person in formation, a pact that both
are in a process. Forming, in this sense,
does not only prepare the future, but it anticipates
it, it permits seeing it draw near,
from the beginning. If our work of formation
is limited to repeating models and formulas,
the life and “perfection” – consummated
love – of the holy Gospel is, perhaps,
a faded memory for us.
Today we are living in a time of extraordinary
changes. Our very religious life
bears the signs, some are painful, others are
open to hope. In the diversity of our countries,
cultures and continents, the situation
of the religious life is very different. But
nowhere are they lacking signs of hope and
of worry, even though different. This time,
which we can only love as the space which
Providence opens up to us to live fully, provokes
us not to stop, not to be satisfied with
what tradition has consecrated and assigned
to us. We are responsible for the charism,
which somebody else gave witness to and
transmitted to us, exactly in the measure in
which we, in turn, pass it on. But we are in