“One day a brother asked Francis: why is the whole world coming after you? You're not handsome, you're not particularly capable, why is the whole world coming after you?”
With this question, the Minister General, Br. Massimo Fusarelli, began his homily at the Eucharist celebration for the Solemnity of St. Francis, at Our Lady of the Angels, in the Porziuncola, in Assisi. To answer this question that still resonates so relevant to-day, he reminded us how Christ truly became man according to God's plan, and he spoke of three points of Francis' humanity that respond to this question.
In the first point, he told us that in order to respond to our human vocation we must take care of others and learn to always start anew, like Francis, who at the end of his life said to the friars: "I have done my part, may Christ teach you yours... Let's start again, brothers." He invited us to learn, to start again without tiring, even when it becomes very difficult, and recalling the friars he met on his visits, he said: "In my service to the Order I have the privilege, I can say, of meeting people in all parts of the world; In the last month, between Syria and South America, I have met people tried by the war in Syria, people tried by violence and poverty between Bolivia and Argentina, and yet I always find a “repairer of breaches” who starts again, that bets on life, on reality. Here I see how Francis is truly relevant."
The second point focuses on the humanity of those who follow Jesus Christ, that is, the Cross, pain and suffering: "Francis learned to enter into a mystery not only of pain, because we do not love pain for pain's sake, but for the sake of love and pain. At La Verna this will reach its highest point, as Francis faced his many illnesses, as he always arrived here at the meeting with Sister Death," said the Minister General. At the end, for the third point of his homily, br. Massimo commented on the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus rejoices “because the mysteries of the kingdom of God are open to the simple, to the small, to those who do not claim to understand, to control, to dominate...
And so, in order to become men and women after God's own heart, we must learn to take steps backwards from our natural will to control reality, ourselves, others, the situations around us, as Francis did: "At a certain point the Lord makes Francis understand that that fraternity, those brothers, are not his, he cannot control them, they belong to him, to Jesus Christ.
Francis truly learned to no longer control reality, to return it to the Lord, and so he saw his humanity flourish fully, but also that of his brothers and sisters, also accepting that they began to follow a different path from the one he had opened. The ‘little ones’ of whom Jesus speaks, for whom He thanks the Father, are those who not only renounce control and the desire to dominate, but who are open themselves to the newness that God knows how to create."
