As always, we begin the issue by presenting a very brief but important text by our venerable Fr. Founder. He writes of the love and profound devotion he had for the Holy Trinity. He reached the point that he was able to live his love and devotion with fidelity and joy; not through abstract reflections, but through a dialogue with the individual Persons: "God, the Father, my Father and my creator; to Him I owe everything. The Word, Son of God, my elder brother; I want to listen to Him, to follow Him, to imitate Him. The Holy Spirit, my director and my guide; He is the soul of my soul; He is like a mother to me".
The central dossier is entirely dedicated to this theme: "The Face of God" which, through the face and the person of the Son, makes Himself known as "Father": God, Father of Jesus Christ and the Father of us all. This is the theme that John Paul II proposed for the entire Church during this third and last year in preparation for the celebration of the jubilee of 2000.
The entire dossier is composed of 3 articles. The first is entitled: "The Quest for the Face of God". It is a quest born witness to by all religions and is particularly evident in certain Psalms of the Old Testament: "My being thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go and see the face of God?" (Ps 42:3). This emphasizes the importance of the idea that we have of God, not only regarding our personal lives but also regarding the relationships that exist between individuals and between peoples. A person who thinks that God is "a severe and demanding judge" will be, in his turn, demanding and intolerant with everyone; whereas the evangelical face of God, "merciful Father", cannot fail to inspire trust in a life of prayer and fraternal solidarity with others: all children of the same "Father who art in heaven".
This is followed by an article by Diego Carminati, president of the "Dehonian Laity" association of Albino (Bergamo). This article, entitled "In the Name of the Father...", is a reflection on faith and on the most typical religious attitudes we Dehonians feel when we are meditating on the Person of God the Father, of God the Son and of God the Spirit... They are reflections which can also nourish our prayer; but above all they are "words" which are waiting just to become a part of our "action, work, family".
The dossier concludes with a third article, one which is more explicitly "Dehonian" since it describes the divine Triad (Father and Son and Spirit) as God/Love, going back first to the Holy Scriptures, then to Fr. Dehon's experience of faith and, lastly, to the experience of faith of both religious and lay Dehonians.
The first two articles of the "Pastoral Theology" section, return once again to the theme of "Economy and the Kingdom of God". Compared to the previous articles on this subject, which were at times somewhat generalized or "utopian", these last ones in the series have the virtue of being more concrete. They do not, in fact, present general or merely abstract principles, but offer very precise operative indications, letting us know what can or cannot be done when we find that we are working in a specific sector or that we have particular responsibilities. From Bazoli's article we learn that the generic calls for solidarity are many and easy to make, but the indications showing the practical ways of being able to live solidarity are very few and often too general, even on the part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
We ourselves have the opportunity to discover the elements needed, in order to respond to such a need for "concreteness", when we read the subsequent articles on the hospital ministry in Cracow, on the 75 years of S.C.J. presence in South Dakota or on "the Bethany Community": they are all very different examples, all animated and made possible by the evangelical spirit, and all devoted to responding to precise situations of need in the appropriate way .
Andrea Tessarolo