{"id":31897,"date":"2021-02-10T19:12:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T18:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofmconv.net\/la-missione-di-san-francesco-dassisi-e-dei-primi-frati-2\/"},"modified":"2021-02-10T19:53:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T18:53:56","slug":"la-missione-di-san-francesco-dassisi-e-dei-primi-frati-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/la-missione-di-san-francesco-dassisi-e-dei-primi-frati-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mission of St. Francis of Assisi and the First Friars"},"content":{"rendered":"

2. Invitation to Preaching<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the story from Thomas of Celano (cf. 2 Cel<\/em> 10 – FF<\/em> 593) St. Francis heard the voice of Christ in San Damiano calling for the restoration of the Church. The voice concerned the mission that our Saint was to undertake in the universal Church. In fact, history has shown that Jesus wanted more than the reconstruction of a few nearby churches, because when the first friars arrived, Francis understood that they had a common task to accomplish, a task that concerned salvation\u2014not only for themselves\u2014but for others, too.
\nNo spiritual director helped him discover this task; God himself taught him how he should live. The Gospel became Francis\u2019 benchmark. He said so himself in his Testament: \u201c\u2026I should live according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel.\u201d (Test<\/em> 14-FF<\/em> 116). In 1208, during Mass, he heard the passage about Jesus sending forth his disciples. The text may have come from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus sends forth the twelve (cf. Mt 10:5-15), or from the Gospel of Luke, which describes the sending of the seventy-two (cf. Lk 10:1-16).
\nSt. Bonaventure attributed the passage to Matthew and described the event as follows: \u201cOne day while he [St. Francis] was devoutly hearing a Mass of the Apostles, the Gospel was read in which Christ sends out his disciples to preach and gives them the Gospel form of life, that they may not keep gold or silver or money in their belts, nor have a wallet for their journey, nor may they have two tunics, nor shoes, nor staff. Hearing, understanding, and committing this to memory, this friend of apostolic poverty was then overwhelmed with an indescribable joy. \u2018This is what I want,\u2019 he said, \u2018this is what I desire with all my heart!\u2019 Immediately, he took off the shoes from his feet, put down his staff, denounced his wallet and money, and, satisfied with one tunic, threw away his leather belt and put on a piece of rope for a belt. He directed all his heart\u2019s desire to carry out what he had heard and to conform in every way to the rule of right living given to the apostles\u201d (Leg Mag<\/em> III 1 – FF<\/em> 1051).
\nInspired by these words, St Francis, in his apostolic zeal, was guided by nothing but love, and under its inspiration he wanted to discern how to serve the Lord and, at the same time, respond with his own life to \u201cthe Love that is not loved.\u201d In his heart, he faced a dilemma\u2014whether he should dedicate himself to contemplation or to action. Most importantly, he chose to follow Jesus. Thus, he chose the will of God, desiring at the same time to immerse himself deeply in the mission of Christ. Moreover, God\u2019s will was revealed to him in part by Sylvester and Clare: \u201cThrough a miraculous revelation of the Spirit, the venerable priest and the virgin dedicated to God came to the same conclusion: that it was the divine good will that the herald of Christ should preach\u201d (Leg Mag <\/em>XII 2 – FF<\/em> 1205). We will talk about Francis beginning to preach in the next article.<\/p>\n

Friar Dariusz MAZUREK, General Delegate for Mission Animation<\/p>\n

Based upon:
\nAEBY G., DELESTY H., CHAIGMAT B., En la escuela de san Francisco, Barcelona 1968.
\nIRIARTE DE ASPURZ L., Vocaci\u00f3n franciscana, Valencia 1975.
\nSCHMUCKI O., Descubrimiento gradual de la forma de vida evang\u00e9lica por Francisco de As\u00eds, Selecc. Fr. 46 (1987) 65-128.
\nWczesne \u017ar\u00f3d\u0142a franciszka\u0144skie, vol. I-II, Warszawa 1981.<\/p>\n

For more information on the missions, cf. Facebook at:<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AniminaFrancescana\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. also Instagram of the mission secretariat at:<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/sgam_ofmconv\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2. Invitation to Preaching According to the story from Thomas of Celano (cf. 2 Cel 10 – FF 593) St. Francis heard the voice of Christ in San Damiano calling for the restoration of the Church. The voice concerned the mission that our Saint was to undertake in the universal Church. In fact, history has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,2186,148,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-general-offices","category-vocazione-missionaria-en","category-news","category-sgam-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}