“Go and rebuild my church” this is the permanent task the Franciscan family has to fulfil in the footsteps of St. Francis. In his First Life of St. Francis Thomas of Celano develops in those paragraphs that record the story of Francis’ calling a whole “theology of building the church” (cf. 1C 18). In like manner, Clare of Assisi situated her community within the same Church structure (cf. graph in Lesson 19:2.4).
Today, the churches are becoming empty in many countries in the northern hemisphere and the religious Orders have only few vocations. The Church has remarkably lost its relevance in the life of individuals as well as in the shaping of social life. The countries that used to be the human and material sources of Christian mission have become mission lands themselves (cf. Lesson 14).
The situation is quite different in the southern countries of the world. There the Church has rather gained more influence. Nobel Peace prize awardees and human rights advocates like Bishop Tutu of
The Franciscan family which is spread throughout the Northern and the Southern parts of the world, must continue to reflect on the mission it received from the Cross in San Damiano. It has to fulfil its task of rebuilding the house of Christ. That is: It must build on the foundation that Christ himself has laid. In doing so, the Franciscan family itself must be the kind of Church that Jesus envisioned, not with an attitude of self-sufficiency, but helping
· to assist the Church in becoming more Church, the Franciscan family must continuously be a reform movement within the Church;
· to help people find protection and a home under the roof of the Church.
The Church is born of the evangelizing activity of Jesus and the Twelve. She is the normal, desired, most immediate and most visible fruit of this activity... Having been born of such a mission the Church in her turn is sent by Jesus. The Church remains in the world .... as a sign - simultaneously obscure and luminous - of a new presence of Jesus, of his departure and of his permanent presence. She is the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of “the mighty works of God” which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by Him and reunited. In brief, this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigour and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel. The second Vatican Council recalled and the 1974 Synod vigorously took up again this theme of the Church which is evangelised by constant conversion and renewal, in order to evangelize the world with credibility (EN 15).
CCFMC, Lesson Unit 25, A
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