Emerging from Francis’ call to live the Gospel, Franciscan Voice is a virtual platform for the Conventual Franciscan Federation. Incorporating a wide range of content informed by the Franciscan spiritual and intellectual tradition, it speaks to issues, events, and cultural reference points in the 21st century. From the serious, to the topical, to the light-hearted, there is an underlying tone of the Joy of the Gospel!
Words teach and actions speak. In this episode, Friar Tim Kulbicki talks about the call for the friars to travel the world proclaiming the Good News. How can we reinvigorate Christian life? How can we share the joy of the Gospel?
Ministry is our response to Jesus' commands. St. Francis said: "The Lord God gave me the grace to work." Friar Tim Kulbicki discusses how the Friars respond to the needs of the times in deciding the tasks to be accomplished, then work on their assigned duties (while remembering their spiritual and fraternal lives), humbly doing the things the Church and the community need them to do.
If they take a vow of poverty, how come they have to worry about finances like everybody else? Friar Tim Kulbicki focuses on how the friars care for goods and finances in terms of poverty and as an expression of fraternity.
In a world where individualism reigns, how do the friars live in fraternity, open and sharing with each other, creating a Franciscan family despite differences of opinion and personality? In this episode, we begin Chapter 3: the Fraternal Life of the Friars.
Continuing the discussion of Chapter Two, Friar Tim Kulbicki talks about the penitential life. Penance helps exercise the spiritual 'muscle' that allows us to say no to self in order to say yes more deeply to God and others.
Prayer is time spent with God, whether we pray in community or by ourselves. In this episode, Friar Tim focuses on the life of union with God: laying out the primacy of the spiritual life.
Part two of this series on the Constitutions focuses on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
In this 12 part series, Friar Tim Kulbicki delves into the Constitutions for the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. This is a document that seeks to put on paper the original charism of the Order, given to us from our founder St. Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, and then describe how that charism translates into modern terms. How do we take that charism and set policies and rules to live it in all the friaries across the world? The Constitutions must respond to the needs of an increasingly global, diverse, and pluralistic fraternity.
