Introduction
The Franciscans have a significant presence since Our Seraphic Father Saint Francis of Assisi he listened God´s call. The movement didn't begin as such, but a personal and intimate call, to an extraordinary human being, that woke up before a very alive light in his heart, Saint Francis he was a youth that, as all the youths, he enjoyed the life and that prepared him to have other conceptions inside the context of its time the: The Middle Age. He wanted and dreamed many things, dreams of greatness and glory, that without a doubt reached, for a different road, he never dreamed then that he would travel. He only began, then their nearer friends followed him, after a rich woman of nobless Clara Favarone of Ofreduccio, and later it would be the whole world.
The Revolution
Since San Francis of Assisi changed his form of life, and he exposed it with his own example to the world, a revolution, a radical change, began, until then what is seen in his western world: The task of changing the society of his time, with something that was there without being exposed: To live the Gospel, to go from the Gospel to the Life and of the Life to the Gospel, but in a practical, real way, not only words, but facts. And although he wandered many times the road, he always continued in his evangelising task in a peculiar way and very novel: he was doing everything, repair chapels, meditated by the mountains; he requested charity, he fasted, he took care of lepers and sick, he distributed love. And God gave him Brothers. When his friends arrived and they asked him to share that life of Penance, he begins to arise in his mind the necessity to be organised some ideals that could continue to settle down and assure the Rule, it isn't a regulator statuteto, the same style of the existent religious Orders, but conceived as a form of life, with simple precepts or orientations, but expressed what will be the life of the siblings in community. The great revolution, the change begins, the religious Orders known till then had changed, Saint Francis will inspire other Orders, and he will extend this way for the world sending Gospel'message, not for the weapons of the crusades, but the weapons of the peace and good, for the whole humanity. Already diffused the Order would have diverse approaches of the spiritual thing and the material thing, the rigidity of the Rule, and still in life of Saint Francis, the divisions would arise, new branches of their basic ideals, with new own regulations, and the Branches of the Franciscan Family arise they are very varied as all the Families in their members, but the fundamental thing is same: To live the Gospel.
The Franciscans in the World
What began to be a madness is one of the religious more dear movements, for their simplicity, the Franciscans in their different manifestations, they began with the pursuit of the Gospel, they gave place to an entire series of expressions in all the branches of the knowledge. The religion was view otherwise, as something daily, practical, non only for some few elects but for all, like a personal responsibility in the own spiritual preparation and for the other ones. The mortification and the penance continued, like it was conceived in the Middle Age, but with slips of change that took centuries in being given to know or to understand: The Saint Francis Patron of the Environmentalists or Ecologists, or the one who loves his body, and he asks him for forgiveness for so many sufferings, desirous of assisting his complaints, it is what today knows as integral medicine, self health or others forms of staying healthy and happy, forgetting old blame concepts and sin, for almost everything, when in fact all that the human being needs is love, one to another ones. Saint Francis loved a lot to the other ones, but he forgot himself, although it is in the Gospel: "he loves your neighbour like same you." But it was the Middle Age, and Saint Francis was a man of his time, with visions of centuries toward the future, like Ecology in his Song to Creatures.
The Franciscans travelled the world to Evangelise and they took with them the diffusion of the Orders, and in them, each one with their personal charisma, contributed a Franciscan vision in other manifestations. Saint Francis was a writer, and he wrote with knowledge, about the Bible, but he didn't stay there, it combined and it composed his own sentences, his psalms, blessings and he gave them, another sense that, without changing the Bible, the toward accessible to the daily, coarse chore to see his writings. This way from then on, the Franciscans have created their own literature, their poetry, their songs, and in all the topics the Franciscans have written through the centuries printing in their writings feeling of the Franciscan: Peace, Good and Love.
The architecture was nurtured with the convents, chapels, eremites and hospices. They were built in all place where a Franciscan community settled, and the altars arise, the squares, the sculptures, all the Franciscan saints' images and non Franciscans, relieves, reliquaries, chalices, lamps and more.
Coarse to see the old inventories to show that they brought with them (in particular to America) all the necessary to evangelise, to educate and to assist even medically to the communities. They created this way convents, with the purpose of being, not only rest centres, meditation, sentence and other spiritual exercises, but the heart beating in the community, centre of spirituality, culture, medical attention, and even politics, they took one planned form of life and when arriving they also assumed that of the towns to evangelise, they learned their languages and customs, they corrected what was necessary to their to understand and they still taught to cultivate plants.
Each convent had: their vegetable garden, infirmary, a chapel, library, cooks, cells and generally internal gardens where to meditate. The historians are plentiful among the Franciscans, expert or not, they had to edit the memoirs of what they knew, they had lived or heard, and uniting the work characteristic to of Franciscans which preceded them in this task, wrote the history of the Evangelised towns for them. From the Provincial one until the Brother in charge of the File or the Library, they should take care and to leave written review of all the facts of the Community and of the respective Order, invaluable documents that exist still, although other many got lost and they continue getting lost for the very old or the moth and other many enemies of the paper. Cristopher Colon, first historian from America, the Admiral was of the Third Order. In Venezuela Fray Antonio Medrano, Fray Pedro of Aguado and Fray Pedro Simón among others. Thomas of Celano first biographer of Saint Francis and Saint Buenaventura the second. Franciscan poets like Jacopone of Todi Italian, and Dante Alhigieri whose Divine Comedy is universally known.
Composers and singers like the same Saint Francis of Assisi, minstrels of the Franciscans. The Choristers in the Churches were important part of the organisation of the Franciscan Community. Painters many, well-known as Fra Angelic whose extensive work finds in Italy, and unknown as the author of the Christ of Saint Damián, so important in Saint Francis's life and for the Franciscans all. Each Church or Chapel is full with the Franciscan art of the painting through oils, fresh, altarpieces.. Sculptures and sizes represent the images of the Saints and of the Franciscan but well-known Saints, in marble and wood.
In the medicine we find Franciscan as San Francisco Solano, Fray Bernardino of Sahagún who wrote on these matters. In law we had pled them as the famous Thomas Moore, Theologians like Duns Scotto, Tomás of Aquino , devout persons and Venerable we have thousands of pages full with their exemplary lives, the Franciscan Calendar that presents to the better known ones, among the Tertiaries the Doctor,M.D. José‚ Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, of the Third Order, so dear for the Venezuelans and other countries, founder of the scientific studies on Bacteriology.
The Franciscans Friars were cooks, doctors, male nurses, fishermen, sailors, farmers and priests sometimes everything at the same time, an only Franciscan for hundred of souls in precarious conditions, a lot comes out and few return to the origin point, the Franciscans, lived an entire odyssey in these American lands from the discovery until the Independence, and lastly the suppression of convents, and some even later continued, until the new return, and today all the Franciscan Orders even persist in its task.
The Franciscans are of the world, for the world and in the world we are trying to diffuse the Love, the great message of the Gospel, and we greet ourselves with Peace and Good, to tell to the world that is possible to live without wars, neither hates, respecting feelings, beliefs, ideology and speakings of all, we have to give example and do not convert for the force to who doesn't want or can't be converted, to respect the other ones, to love them, , the salvation is for all, Jesus didn't force anybody to follow Him, He requested them and if they didn't accept He does not reproach them for it. As Francis, pass by and let our Franciscan message.
PEACE AND GOOD!
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Update Revisadas 10-04-2020