In many of our historic Provinces we find the museums of our past, which present a way of life as Friars that no longer exists, fixed in environments and objects that reproduce it, often in an idealised way.
We do not usually have museums ... of the future, places where we can imagine and experience who and how we will be in the near future.
The General Chapter of 2021 has asked us to review the main structures of governance and animation of the Order, and we have begun this process.
We cannot stop at the top structures. We urgently need to look with faith at our future in a world that is changing and challenging us. What will we Friars Minor be like in 20 or 30 years? We need to live and act today with an eye to the future.
How can we work to accompany and prevent change, not just to live through it?
How can we be concerned about future generations of Friars to whom we will be handing over not only houses and works that are very difficult to manage, but a life that must be expressed in a way that is understandable today?
The Order is changing rapidly, in numbers, in the distribution of the Friars in the different geographical areas, in the structures that it manages to maintain, such as the structures of governance and animation that it has given itself over time. Therefore, we cannot continue to maintain all the structures that history has given us. It is not just a question of reducing, but of asking ourselves once again who we want to be today in order to proclaim the hope of the Gospel.
From here we are called to seek, to discern and to begin to live something new, so that the future will not surprise us. I am well aware that it is difficult and painful to say goodbye to a past that we often idealise and wish to preserve, or that we resign ourselves to seeing die.
I also know that it seems easier to give immediate answers, to sew up the wound of a world that has disappeared and of a newness that we still do not see.
The way is to grow as believers on a journey, knowing that we do not know everything and accepting to learn together to listen to the Lord and to the signs of the times.
This is true, though in different ways, in every area of the Order, even in the youngest.
It is in this context that we can rethink the structures of the Order, the first of which remains the person of each Friar Minor, without whose transformation nothing changes.
It would be useful to have places where we can observe reality, study it and try to anticipate the future in the light of the Gospel and our charism.
Museums... of the future! They are beginning to be built!
