• "A very meaningful area for evangelization continues to be the Parish.  For this reason, a handbook was published entitled, 'Sent to Evangelize in Fraternity and Minority in Parishes'; it offers essential elements in order to come up with a Parochial Pastoral Plan from a Franciscan perspective."
• "Some examples of renewal of traditional forms of evangelization are the renewal of popular missions with a new style and content, pastoral commitment of shrines with alternative services, parish ministry that is entrusted, not to a brother, but to a fraternity, pastoral health ministry, and prison ministry which focuses on reaching out to people in difficult situations."
• "With regards to new forms of evangelization, what stands out are the means of communications, such as television, radio, the internet, the pastoral care of tourism...being present in marginal and forgotten areas; places where, generally, lepers, drug addicts, displaced, and aids' victims are found."
• "Our evangelization continues to be too clerical, leaving little room for the faithful laity.  It is urgent, therefore, to open ourselves to them, value their presence and participation, and entrust them with ministries and responsibilities in the Church.  This principle is also valid for lay brothers of our Fraternity."
• "We need missionary boldness and creativity, in order to respond to this post-modern and post-Christian era.  Only in this way, will we succeed that the Gospel may permeate our culture as a communicable, transparent, effective, and contagious message."
• "It is not enough to proclaim the Gospel to others; it is necessary to be evangelized as well to the point of being transformed into the Good News."
• "A positive vision of the world is necessary.  Better still, we must love the world and look at it with the heart.  This will enable us to open ourselves and capture its goodness."
• "The opening of new missionary foundations:  Myanmar and Sudan.  Other foundations that depend on the Provinces that have been supported are Burkina Faso and Namibia."
• "What we need is lucidity, boldness, and passion to go beyond the borders to proclaim the Good News.  In this way, our Order will remain forever young."
• "We need a renewal of structures that inspires mysticism and passion, so that while maintaining the actual projects of the Order, we are also opening new ones."

• "It is necessary to have an evaluation of the whole process. How can we understand, for example, why the initial ardour for and generosity towards our form of life begin to wane, especially after solemn profession, and even becomes a spiritual anaemia which leads many to abandon the Order or to remain in it while full of frustration, tiredness and resignation?"
• "The answers are many and varied. Some have to do with the fragility of young people, with their insatiable search for strong sensations, which leads them to jump from one situation to another. Others also have to do with the quality of the formation we give."
• "The formator, first of all, must feel he is a traveller, a searcher, some one who accompanies and supports, and who is aware of his deficiencies."
• "A serious discernment of the first assignment of the Friars is necessary. A fraternity where there is an atmosphere of family and communication must be guaranteed and they should not be overburdened with work."
• "It is important, therefore, to remember that what really makes us religious and consecrated people is not what we do, but for whom and how we do it."
• "The vocational invitation and the process of discernment must be carried out with great honesty. I have the impression that at times we allow ourselves to be guided by a 'numbers complex.'" 
• "We cannot propose one thing with our words and another with our life...No one can propose what he does not know. We cannot propose the beauty of following Jesus if we have not already had an experience of it."
• "A missionary fraternity like ours cannot 'delegate' the vocational invitation to 'somebody' or 'somebodies'...Fraternities themselves must be able to say: come and see, especially when the fraternity is for us an essential element of our charism."
• "A good thermometerof the missionary character of lives and the life of our fraternities...is the answer to this question: 'How many brothers and how many fraternities of my Entity can welcome and accompany possible vocations?'"
• "This is not the most promising time to go fishing, but this is the time of faith: trusting in Your word, I will throw out the nets (cf. Lk. 5.5)."
• "Given, on the one hand, the actuality of our charism and the fascination that young people have for Francis of Assisi, and, on the other hand, the reduction in the numbers of Friars, we have to take the topic of vocations seriously."In more entities than one would hope, there continues a seminary model, alien to the spirit of our RFF, and the consequent objective pedagogy, and the figure of a master of discipline, rather than one who accompanies."
• "In many entities there is a need to grow in the conviction that it is necessary to create truly formative fraternities."
• "The third omission that concerns me is that of sending the young men onto the field of battle immediately after solemn profession, without due preparation and necessary accompaniment."
• "In some entities there is still a lack of team-work among formators in Initial Formation...The formation of lay brothers during temporary profession and afterwards is still an unfinished chapter."
• "It is also necessary to increase the interprovincial dimension and collaboration among various Entities, especially those of the same Conference."
• "Worthy of special note are some Provinces and Custodies that are encouraging the intellectual formation of the brothers and the retrieval of our intellectual patrimony. Since it is an initiative of the entire Conference, I think it important to note the efforts made by the English Speaking Conference for this retrieval."
• "In regard to the critical edition of our Masters, we should note here the work carried out by the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University (New York)...and the work of the Catholic University of Washington." 

The delegates will report on the results of their small group discussions as part of Friday's first session.

The passage from Luke's gospel and St. Francis' 5th Admonition invite us to make our own the attitude of praise and gratitude for all that the Lord has done and does for us and with us. Out of contemplation of what He does, grows a consciousness of our poverty, unworthiness and unfaithfulness.

"I praise you, Father...": praise, adoration, and thanksgiving to the Father, are found in Luke in the context of the mission of the 72; on their return the disciples share the marvels accomplished "in his name" during the mission. They refer everything to Him; they share everything and "restore" everything to Him. We will always find ourselves confronting this decisive and fundamental choice in our life: whether to consider our works in the light of God, and "restore" them to Him, or to consider them as our own, claiming that we are the absolute protagonists of our success. This is a serious sin of appropriation against which Francis puts us on guard. Jesus praises the Father and gives Him glory for the "non-success" of the wise, the intelligent, those who know everything and appropriate everything to themselves; he rejoices instead in success among the little ones, without positions of great religious authority, without great ability in argumentation, those who may not have a facility with words, but are obedient to the Word and do not seek to manipulate it.

Francis reminds us that we cannot glory in anything, because we are only administrators of the goods that God has entrusted to us, not owners: "We can claim only our vices and sins as our own."

Praise and gratitude are closely linked to faith, to a right and just relationship with God, with ourselves and with others. They express an awareness of our "creatureliness", of our real identity, of our poverty which renders us welcoming and available before God. Saying thank you is neither obvious nor taken for granted: only one leper in ten returned to give thanks!

Gratitude opens us to adoration, to contemplation of the presence of God in our action: it leads us naturally to refocus our life and our identity more on being than doing. Serene and conscious gratitude acquires a prophetic dimension above all in our day, characterised by a frenzy to possess, accumulate, and an attitude of being owed everything. Gratitude, on the other hand, expresses itself in the freedom of expropriation in order to become "exclusive property" of the Lord, referring everything to Him and becoming a creative space for God in service of his Kingdom.

Are praise and thanksgiving truly the essential dimension, the fundamental notes of our life?
In his 5th Admonition, Francis connects the joy of our being created in the image of God, as a marvellous work of his love, with the constant temptation of seeking to appropriate for ourselves the gifts that do not belong to us, and to glory in them.

The forgiveness that we invoke this evening, for us and for all our brothers who have preceded us over eight centuries of history, concerns above all the lack of that radical expropriation which we have promised in professing the Rule.

How many marvels and miracles has the Lord accomplished through our brothers in this long time! How many would he still do through us today, if we were really to entrust ourselves to his love, if we were to allow ourselves once more to be led by God without resisting, without making absolute our own plans, whether personal or provincial!

It would be sad if, remembering our centuries-long history, we were to commit the sin of appropriating to ourselves this history, these marvels that our saints have accomplished, glorying in them without merit: "It is a great shame for us, the servants of God, that the saints accomplished great things and we want only to receive glory and honour by recounting them." (Adm VI)

Video of this prayer service can be found on our YouTube page: Penitential Celebration.