It is hard to believe that the first missionaries of the Gospel, untutored except in the Torah, following rudimentary instructions could possibly have been the beginning of what we call the Church. Today, the Church is a complex institution, hierachical in structure and governance. We begin to wonder where the Gospel is present, in its pristine simplicity as Francis of Assisi accepted it, as Jesus instructed his disciples, the first missionaries. As priests and religious we need to re-discover our essential charism of proclaiming the Good News; of being sent, of being an apostle!.

The image Jesus gives is one of total freedom of lifestyle...no attachments of any kind to anything/place / possessions. Rather we are called to total dependency and even to the point of being needy, i.e. go as receivers and not as confident men and women having all the answers to all the problems of humanity. We are called to be totally vulnerable to circumstances, ready to be rejected. We are called to be mobile, to be free to go to the people, without creating structures that prevent people from approaching us freely.

A great simplicity of lifestyle and our Holy Father, Pope Francis, seems to capture the transparency of the Gospel message, in all his moves.