Dear Brothers and Sisters,
May the Lord give you His peace!
I would like to offer you my most heartfelt and fraternal wishes in celebrating the annual feast of St Francis, our Brother and Father, paying special attention to “listening”.
In October the Church is gathered in Synod in Rome around the Pope to grow as a community capable of listening to the voice of God in our times. St. Francis asks us to grow as people capable of listening.
What does it really mean to listen? Listening asks us to become ever freer in openness to the other and to reality. For this reason it is important to cultivate mutual trust, because we know that the Spirit of the Lord speaks in everyone, manifesting the good that is present in each one of us. We are also called to look at the world with wisdom in order to seek in it the imprint of God's love and the ability to recognize therein what contrasts with the plan of God the Creator and the value of the human person.
We need to listen carefully to the signs of the times in order to witness to the Gospel today. In this we encounter the themes of peace and the ecological question in the complete sense of its meaning, that is: the economic situation that weighs upon the smallest and poorest. From listening we are able to recognize what pleases the Lord today.
In this spirit, from La Verna, the place of Francis' pain and love, I address to all of you my most fraternal and cordial best wishes.
May the feast of St. Francis be an opportunity to nourish our inspirations and witness to the beauty of the Franciscan life of the Friars Minor, the Poor Clare sisters, the Secular Franciscans, and the Franciscan Sisters of all the various communities.
From the depths of my heart may the greeting of peace and goodness reach you all!
Br Massimo Fusarelli OFM
