Provincial Letter- Fall 2006

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Dear Friars

Peace and Good Things!

After a beautiful early and mid autumn in Minneapolis, the recent drop in temperatures and the bleak, dark mornings are a vivid reminder that we are about to enter what our local weathermen like to call �meteorological winter.�� It�s a clever and sophisticated term to mask the fact that although winter does not officially begin until later in December, we can expect cold and snow any time.� As the ancients used to say, �No matter how you slice it, it�s still baloney!�

Still, the changing of the seasons�especially as we enter into a time of prolonged darkness and hibernation�reminds us of the reality of death and the promise of renewed life.� We hear this reflected in the Scriptures during these waning weeks of Ordinary Time and in the Church�s annual festival celebrating our union with the saints and the souls of all those who have gone before us.� In addition to our own beloved dead�parents, siblings, and members of our extended family�we would do well to remember with gratitude those members of our Province who have entered eternal life.� Each in his own way has helped to form us as a community of Franciscan men and some, in more particular and personal ways, have supported and encouraged our own vocations.� They labored unselfishly to give us a sense of who we are and what we could become, individually and as a Province.

Faithful to their memories and the legacy of selfless service they bequeathed to us, it is incumbent on us to remain active and invested in the Province by participating in its life and working toward a viable future for those who will come after us.� One practical way to do this is by your presence and participation in the regional meetings that will be scheduled in the months ahead and that will strive to give flesh to important proposals and recommendations of the Provincial Chapter.� Each of us is important to these discussions which will help form our collective future. Reaching further back into our past, we encounter our sister and patron, Elizabeth of Hungary.� The celebration of her feast on November 17^th will mark the beginning of a year-long observance of the eighth centenary of her birth.� Our Minister General has seized this occasion to invite us �to know our patron better so that we may know ourselves better.�

We are all familiar with the caricature image of St. Elizabeth�a regally dressed woman dispensing bread and other food staples to the poor and needy.� However, that image is no more complete than Francis in the bird bath.� If her biographers and early chroniclers are to be believed, Elizabeth eschewed the trappings of the royal court and preferred instead to live and dress in simplicity, fostering and giving witness to the spirit of minority so characteristic of the early Franciscan movement.� It was this spirit of simplicity that enabled her to enter into the lives of those she sought to help and, by her compassion, help them to know the nearness of God.� She was possessed by that same passion for the Gospel that seized our Father Francis and allowed him to maintain a spirit of joy and peace even in the face of the disdain and ridicule of others.

The invitation that Elizabeth offers us is to strive to align our lives with the poor in ways that challenge us�individually and as a Province�to surrender whatever we cling to for our security so that we might give ourselves completely to the God who comes to us in the poor and all those who hunger for bread, for acceptance, for love.� Although our Minister General has invited every Province of the Order to establish particular projects to mark this jubilee observance, perhaps our first and best tribute to Elizabeth is to recommit ourselves to the values that governed her life and gave energy to her actions.� We must make a �preferential option for the poor� more than a catch-phrase but the Gospel value that guides and directs our lives convinced, like Elizabeth, �that poverty for the Reign of God is the only true antidote for the violence in the world.�

May God give us vision, courage, and strength and may we know the intercession of our sister and patron, Elizabeth.

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Fraternally in St. Francis,

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������������������������������������� (Very Reverend) Anthony M. Criscitelli, TOR
Minister Provincial

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