From the first week of the General Chapter of the Order of Friars Minor, held here in Assisi, brother Massimo Tedoldi, General Secretary for Missions and Evangelization, presented at the meeting a brief summary of the state of missionary evangelization in our community. He first announced three items of good news. The first is that the joy of the gospel, perfect joy, is alive and well in our Order: many brothers live in the world closer to people and their concerns and are happy to share their love of God with those who want to hear the Good News. The second good news: the awareness increasingly thorough the Order that evangelization is the rationale of our brotherhood. And finally, the last good news is the development of a renewed evangelization in new forms of life and mission, in which the brothers try to find the "original spirit" of St. Francis the first Brothers.

Three items of good news, but three challenges presented to us by the brother Massimo. We know that the crucified Christ of San Damiano addressed St. Francis, saying, "Go, Francis, and repair my house..." This is linked indissolubly to the personal vocational call made by Christ to Francis (he call him by his name) and the mission entrusted to him at the same time (Go ...). 

Vocation and mission are inseparable, and that is the challenge for our Order to form us from the beginning of our journey to this understanding of our Franciscan life. The second challenge is the need for us to open ourselves to the world today, to live in the margins so often described by Pope Francis. We withdraw into ourselves, we find a comfortable life too often, we close ourselves to the world's cries that betray our charism, and the vocation and the mission that God has entrusted to us. The final challenge, according to brother Massimo, would be to renew our missionary policy in trying to reconcile the internal needs of our communities and sending brothers in mission ad gentes(in other countries), to harmonize the missionary initiatives of Provinces with international projects of the Order, and finally to dare to offer new answers to the world's calls while taking care of our traditional missionary presence.

At each of the identified challenges, brother Massimo added a few proposals along the lines of deepening what is already undertaken, that we really let the Friars Minor's contemplative mission, taught from our entry into the Order be the movement that leads us to meet the world. He also proposed that we move to an evangelical conversion of our structures for the renewed missionary spirit that germinates in us. It requires that we work to develop a dialogue and a greater communion between us both in terms of our missionary presence in the formation of brothers and in our economic realities. The table was set for a good reflection!