Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel, which is a feast for April 26th on the old calendar,
but which is particularly dear to us and which we celebrate also in the Novus Ordo in our Institute,
because our mother house, the place where our founders, Father Gabriel, Father Stephan,
Father Stefano Minelli, and Father Gabriel Pilateri, began their experiment in religious life
that led ultimately to the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.
The two founders were both conventional Franciscans, and Father Stephano had and was a spiritual child of Padre Pio.
And after the Council, when...
Many religious, with the mandate of the Church, were experimenting and attempting to update their religious life to the times,
again, according to the mandate of the Council, that wanted religious orders to restore their charism and bring it into a fuller light.
During that period of time, a lot of unfortunate things happened,
and many religious communities...
Abandoned community life, abandoned the life of obedience,
and experimented in new forms of religious life that led to a lot of defections.
A lot of religious, especially sisters, went home,
but the Franciscan Order also had its problems during that time,
and therefore, having been a spiritual child of Padre Pio,
and having been very familiar with the spirituality of St. Matthew,
and Maximilian Kolbe,
Father Stephano requested of his provincial that he might also be permitted to try and experiment.
So, he wrote a little statute, which we call the Traccia,
the Marian Plan of Franciscan Life.
And it was really based on the tradition.
It was based on a very traditional interpretation of the Rule of St. Francis,
in the light of the great saints.
But Father Stephano pointed out,
that we really didn't need to go very far back
in order to find examples by which we could live
the Franciscan rule in some rigor
and also in a way that was modern.
And the example that he wished to use primarily
was St. Maximilian Kolbe and also Padre Pio.
And that is how our religious institute got started.
He was given permission by his provincial
to try this experiment with one other friar
who happened to be Father Gabriel.
And they went up on this lonely little mountain
in southern Italy in the province of Avellino
in a town called Frigento
where there was this little shrine
that had been run by the Carmelites.
The Carmelites had this little church
and a little tiny convent attached to it.
The church had been built there
because about 100 years earlier
a man had been directed by an angel
to dig into a field and find this little icon
of the Blessed Mother,
which it took him...
years actually to do.
He looked all over
and trying to follow the angel's direction.
And finally he found the icon
which was this just little tiny icon
of Our Lady of Good Counsel
made out of ceramic
and fired and painted
and not anything particularly extraordinary.
But he cracked it in the process of finding it.
And eventually a church was built there
and miracles were associated.
With this little icon.
So Father Stefano and Father Gabriel
went to this little shrine,
a very quiet place,
and began to live religious life
according to the standard
of St. Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio.
And little by little,
to make a long story short,
many friars, young men,
entered the conventional branch of the order
there in Frigento
and began to live there.
And from there it spread to the Philippines.
And then in 1990,
John Paul II decided to make us
a separate institute within the
conventional branch of the order,
independent institute from the
conventional branch of the order.
So now we are the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.
But in reference to this particular feast,
we celebrate really the wisdom
and the counsel,
of the Blessed Virgin whose councils are always better than anything the world
has to offer in the face of the modern world the church has tried to adapt to
the needs of modern times but the the trick is is to do it in the councils of
God and of the Blessed Mother and not to listen to the world unfortunately it
seems that that's just the exact just exactly the opposite is what has
happened so often in our efforts to accommodate or to evangelize perhaps
would be a better word to evangelize the modern word world instead of bringing a
modern world our way we've very much accommodated ourselves to it and many
people have lost their faith in the process and we've we've lost our
traditions and our moral compass and that is why
you
perhaps God inspired father Stefano to follow the spirituality of st. Maximilian
Kolbe which is a spirituality in which we entrust ourselves entirely to the
Blessed Mother and and give ourselves over into her hands and beg her to
change our way of thinking and acting to cultivate within us a humility by which
we recognize that we don't have the answers that only God has the answers
and he mediates his
grace and his truth and His wisdom through our Blessed Lady and so what we
need to do more than anything else is to kneel at her feet and
to venerate her to honor her and to love her as a mother which is exactly what
father stefan on father Gabriel did up on that lonely mountain they had no
intention really of starting a new branch of the order they had no really
even intention of having a lot of Friars there with them their intention was to
love the Blessed Mother and through her testimony to
her to love our Lord and to be faithful to their vocation and to hang on to the grace that God had
given them. If we do that in our daily life through our consecration to the Blessed Mother,
then God will give us the wisdom and counsel to know how to change the world in which we live,
to know how to deal with those who are around us. Ultimately, Our Lady is, as we read in the
Book of Wisdom today, she is the mother of fair love, of fear, of knowledge, and of holy hope.
And her is the way of grace and of truth, and in her is all hope of life and virtue.
She exhorts us to come over to her that we receive all that we desire. We desire the truth,
we desire wisdom, we desire blessedness, and that is ours.
If we remain.
If we remain at the feet of Our Lady of Good Counsel.