The universality of the figure of St Francis makes him familiar in every church in the Holy Land. His own Francis, a man in love with Christ, centred his spiritual experience in the contemplation of the Crib and Calvary. In his body he received the signs of the Passion. In him, as in the greatest mystics of the Church, the harmony with the cosmos, expressed in the Canticle of the Creatures, is recalled. On 4 October in all the Franciscan fraternities, their Founder is honoured with the celebration of the Transitus at the end of Solemn Vespers on the eve of the feast, and in the Holy Masses of the feast day, which are always well attended by the faithful. In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Most Holy Saviour, Brother Francis Patton, Custos of the Holy Land, presided over the solemn celebration of the Transitus. In his homily, Brother Patton emphasised the person of Jesus, who lived as a pilgrim and stranger in this land, so that Francis and the first friars followed his example. Br FRANCESCO PATTON, ofm Custos of the Holy Land St Francis lived his whole life as a transit, that is, as a passage. I would say even more, he lived his whole life as a pilgrimage. So much so that one of the definitions he likes to give of our life is that we must be ‘like pilgrims and strangers in this world’. This means that our life must be one in which we trust the Father above all. We live in an absolutely essential way. We go out to meet others in a trusting and begging way and in the end, when it is also time to close our eyes, we know how to place our life entirely in the hands of the Father like Christ on the cross. During the liturgy, the temporarily professed renew their promises. Young people came from many parts of the world, attracted by the life of St Francis, both for his way of giving himself to God in a spirit of gratitude and for his ability to leave everything and strip himself, having only God as his Father. Br HASSLER OSMIN PINEDA,ofm Theology student – Nicaragua Since I was a child, I have received Christian values from my family, my parents, my grandparents. I always had the desire to be an acolyte. Then I thought how I could serve God more deeply. And so when I grew up, I went on a mission together with a Franciscan priest I met in my homeland. And so I liked to follow this way of life. Br SYLVESTER NDUBUEZE CHUKWUMA,ofm Theology student - Nigeria Reading a few pages of St Francis I stopped where he stripped himself before his father and then the bishop to give up everything he had and that the only father he has now is God. There it threw me because if a young man like St Francis, who had a rich father, did this for the Lord, to follow Jesus! So who am I? And from there I had this feeling of asking to also be like the Franciscans, to follow Jesus through St Francis. Br FRANCESCO PATTON, ofm Custos of the Holy Land The wish I make is precisely to take on this way of life of St Francis. I think also in a context like the one in which we find ourselves strongly marked by conflict, by war. It is easy for one to get caught up in fear, discouragement, negative feelings. But if one lives with the pilgrim's spirit even in a situation like the one we experience, one is at peace, one is serene. I know that my life is in God's hands! A very touching moment is the reading of the transit of St Francis, with the words and gestures made on that evening at the Convent of the Portiuncula in Assisi. On four October, the day of the Feast, once again gathered in the church, as is tradition, one Dominican priest presides at the Eucharist - Prior Father Martin Staszak - and another gives the homily - Father Olivier Poquillon. A reminder of the relationship between St Dominic and St Francis, both founders of the mendicant orders and also dedicated to preaching, proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel. Br FRANCESCO PATTON, ofm Custos of the Holy Land The fact that they have told you in some of the biographies of an initial idea almost to merge the two orders. Which in fact Francis does not want because he knows that the charisms are different. But this has led to this tradition of exchanging the presidency and preaching on the day of our respective patron saints. Then at the end of the meal we sing a refrain recalling what one and the other taught us in terms of apostolic commitment and also seraphic zeal. In this time and context in which we find ourselves, let us ask St Francis for the grace to live the spirituality of trust and fraternity to the full, following in the footsteps of Christ and his Gospel. Aware of being a small flock, daring to live as pilgrims and strangers, in the possibility of glimpsing God's dream of fraternity and peace. Read More