National Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order - USA
Mission Statement - 1990 (revised 1997)
The Ecology Commission of the National Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order in the United States of America has as its mission to witness prophetically that all Creation, animate and inanimate, is of God and redeemed by Christ, and that the earth is sacred because it is the Lord's. This evangelical mission testifies to Christ as "Ruler of everything; the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole Creation" (Eph 1:23) while responding to the Secular Franciscan Rule which urges the sisters and brothers to ...respect all creatures, animate and inanimate, which "bear the imprint of the most High," and they should strive to move from the temptation of exploiting creation to the Franciscan concept of universal kinship. (The Rule of the SFO - Article 18) The duties of the Commission are to call the sisters and brothers to a fuller Gospel life by helping them form in their daily lives an option for God's creation; to exhort them to a more radical interior conversion that places their individual and fraternal relationships to creation in a moral and providential context; and to encourage them to praise God joyfully for the gift of kinship with God's creatures after the example of their Seraphic Father Francis.
Goals
Goal 1: Inspire and challenge the sisters and brothers to educate themselves and others, and also to reflect on their individual impact on the environment and their moral obligations to God's creatures, beginning with their own bodies as physical constituents of the ecology and extending to those social, civic, and political structures of which they are a part.
Goal 2: Create an understanding among the sisters and brothers regarding the full expression of kinship to creation and an alertness to attitudes and practices in the economies of our households, our fraternities and our society which may exploit creation.
Goal 3: Encourage the sisters and brothers to witness by their senses, words, and actions the sanctity of creation and to the need in the spirit of penance, to nurture and develop our relationship with nature, first individually, then family, church, workplace, and ultimately in the marketplace.
Goal 4: In a manner appropriate to the level of fraternity, confront peacefully by action, protest, or witness those who exploit creation. In so doing, join in a spiritual and/or physical presence with the Franciscan family, local Church and people of good will.
Goal 5: Place kinship with creation in the context of the desire of the brothers and sisters to be instruments of the Lord's peace and to obey the admonition of Francis to "pray always." |
