Message from Rev. Fr. Ignacio Ceja, OFM

It is with great joy and fraternal affection that I greet each of you as we enter the 8th Centenary Year of the death of our Seraphic Father, St. Francis of Assisi. This is a grace-filled moment for the entire Franciscan movement — a time to pause, to remember, and to renew our commitment to the living Gospel that Francis embraced with such total generosity of heart.

A Return to the Sources

Eight hundred years have passed since Francis breathed his last on the bare ground of the Portiuncula, singing praise to God with his final breath. Yet the fire he kindled has never gone out. It continues to burn in the hearts of millions of Franciscan men and women across every continent — in our friaries and hermitages, in our hospitals and schools, in our parishes and mission outposts, wherever human suffering calls forth the compassion of Christ.The Centenary Year invites us, above all, to a return to the sources: to the words of the Gospel that Francis carried always in his heart, to the Rule and Testament he left as a guide for his brothers, to the deep spirit of prayer and contemplation that animated his entire life. Without this interior foundation, our external works, however admirable, risk becoming mere activism. With it, even the smallest act of service becomes a proclamation of the Kingdom.

Living the Four Pillars

The four themes that guide this Centenary — Faith, Peace, Creation and Service — are not abstract ideals. They are the lived experience of Francis himself, written in flesh and blood across the landscape of central Italy eight centuries ago. Faith: because everything Francis did flowed from his radical trust in the God who speaks through the poor and the marginalised. Peace: because his greeting was always ‘The Lord give you peace,’ offered freely to lepers and sultans alike. Creation: because he beheld in every creature the fingerprint of the Most High. Service: because he did not consider equality with comfort something to be grasped, but emptied himself in love. I invite every member of the Franciscan Family to make these four pillars the compass of your life during this Centenary Year. Let them shape your prayer, your choices, your relationships and your apostolates. Let them challenge and console you, as they challenged and consoled Francis himself.

A Fraternal Invitation

I extend a particular invitation to our lay Franciscan brothers and sisters, to our young people in the Franciscan Youth movement, and to all who in any way feel drawn to the Franciscan charism. This Centenary is not only for friars and sisters enclosed in convents — it belongs to the whole People of God who have found in Francis a mirror of the Gospel and a companion on the way. May this year be one of genuine encounter: with God in the silence of prayer, with the poor in acts of concrete service, with creation in a renewed spirit of reverence and care, and with one another in the bonds of fraternity that Francis prized above all earthly goods. May the joy of the Gospel — that great Franciscan joy, the Laetitia — mark everything we do and say in this holy year.