(Rivista Internazionale - December 1998: An epochal turning point - 5/5)

I hope that this Jubilee will be both an occasion for the sanctification of the Order’s members and a chance to meet, hoping that the Grand Priories and Associations will not arrive unprepared for these pilgrimages. I would like members to participate in our meetings not as a duty imposed by the rank they hold but instead taking pleasure in visiting another country or being with friends. This is also something positive, but I would like us to come to the Order’s Holy Year with a solid preparation behind us. It would be desirable for each Association to promote a spirituality encounter before our Jubilee, perhaps even with a national domestic pilgrimage to prepare everyone for this great community event. We can create magnificent organisations, finance important works or decide to foster international co-operation in the world with the help of the European Community and international organisations. But if we have no spirituality inside all this we will act in vain.
I therefore invite you to meditate on this, as well as seeing how much the Order is in tune with modern needs inside the individual Associations and Grand Priories. Why do I say this? Because the Order doesn’t have many people and in part it has got old. The average age of the Order is extremely high today. The managers who with great dignity hold governing positions in the Order do not have an intermediate changeover, the class of those aged between 60 and 65 is missing. The changeover will occur between the 45 to 50-year olds and those who are over 70 today. This is not physiological. We have to seek new forces inside the Associations, because one does not become a manager in the Order without training; you have to believe, you have to have spiritual training. The managers of the future have to be trained. I would like the pilgrimage and the Jubilee to be an opportunity for reflection to encourage the admission and indication of men whom the Magistry needs for the future. The Order’s bodies have changed, we also have a Council of Government and we have to find responsible people who can sit on it.
Thank you once again and I look forward to having the chance of meeting you again soon, perhaps in your offices. I hope that some seeds of this meeting will soon take root; but, above all, I hope that a large, luxuriant plant will grow in the Jubilee Year, bearing the fruit which will certainly be needed in the future to appease our hunger. Thank you.

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