December, 2024 | St. Joseph Cupertino Fraternity - Theme for 2025

Minister General Tibor Kauser, OFS

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Minister General’s 2024 Christmas Message

Prot. n. 3778 Rome, December 20th 2024

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

may the Lord give you his peace!

We are arriving to the end of this year, and I give thanks to God for the many graces and treasures that we have received during these twelve months, and I invite you all to join me in prayer for those who, looking back to the year, have to remember more suffering and sadness. Both joys and difficulties form part of our life and let us strengthen our international fraternity also by remembering these things together.

The second year of the Franciscan Centenaries was dedicated to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the stigmata of St Francis. Every fraternity, who could celebrate it, knows more about the encounter of St. Francis with Christ and may understand better, how can the wounds be understood as the gifts of God.

I give thanks to every great fraternal experience, national elective chapters, fraternal and pastoral visits. These important moments have renewed the life of the particular fraternities, and I offer my special prayer for those who have ended or have begun their services this year, thus arriving to a turning point in their life.

We have celebrated the General Chapter in November. Living the experience of the great international fraternity has made all of us understand in a deeper way: God is love, and we are being loved every year, every month, every day, every moment. This General Chapter has brought us closer to the love of God, and closer to the love of each other. The follow-up work of the General Chapter is still going on, finalizing the concluding document and starting to set into practice the priorities determined by the Chapter. Attached to this letter you can find the final message of the General Chapter, which is announcing the good news: God is love and we have to forward this love to everyone. I ask you to share this message with every fraternity and with every brother and sister of the OFS.

I want to remember those, too, who have suffered a lot during this year: our brothers and sisters, who had to experience the terror of war, the damages caused by natural disasters, the losses in their personal life, or had to go through serious health problems. Let us ask God to give better times for the future, and strengthen all of us to be more and more able to learn from these hard times, never forgetting that God loves us and is close to us in the hardest moments, too.

May Christmas bring you the joy and the peace of the heart! May God continue blessing all of you during the coming new year! I send you all my most heartfelt greetings, wishing you all

peace and good!

Your brother and your minister

Tibor Kauser
CIOFS General Minister