CENTRAL DOSSIER
THE CHARISM IN RELIGIOUS LIFE
Maria Grazia Bianco, M.S.S.C.S.
Foreword
I am starting off by looking at myself in religious life today, the awareness of many lives “given,” the persons I know within and outside of religious life, the situations I know. In my reflection I carry with me the documents that have enlightened the route of religious life in these decades, conciliar and post-conciliar, synodal and post-synodal; I carry and have carried in me especially the prayer and liturgy of these Easter weeks. I carry with me a sort of a community involvement in my reflection, with sisters of my community and age and sisters on their initial formation journey.
My reflection also moves in the context of university reform, where I would like to be able to speak about and live solidarity instead of competition and, to make this happen a background is required: being able to accept one’s own role and one’s own place. A dialog that bit by bit, has broadened very much.
I would like, not so much to theorize, as rather to stimulate myself and you to look at the dynamic wealth that religious life contains and offers, in order to discover its aspects and possibilities for life and resources, and to keep for our person and that of our religious Families, the ability to continue to enjoy and be amazed by the “beautiful works that the Lord has done for us,” in order to keep awake the true demanding and concrete meaning of the inventive love that does not go forward by force of inertia in habits, but expresses the thousand aspects of the face of a charism. I would like, therefore, to try to enter deeply with you into the variegated and multiform reality of religious life in itself and for itself, but also in and for each of us, in order to see it again fresh and alive, as though we were receiving it today, in this day which is the today of our call, in the “hic et nunc” (the here and now, to use an expression that began in early Christian centuries), in which, placing myself in the hands and heart of God, I put my personal and family fullness on the line, my service to others, my participation in the building of the Church, my responsibility in the edification of the world.
A life to be reinvented and re-positioned every day, but every day. “Starting from three”.1 Regarding living according to habits, a story: a woman had the habit of cutting off the ends of a roast before putting it into the roasting pan “because,” she said, “that’s how you do it.” She was asked why: she answered her mother always did that. And her mother answered that the grandmother always did that. It turned out that the great-grandmother had always cut off the ends because her roasting-pan was too small!
I would like to call to our attention an extremely simple and small truth, so simple and small that it seems useless to recall: at the time of our birth, at the time of our “yes”, at the time of death, what happens, happens and happened and will happen with only two protagonists (main players), God and me, I myself alone before God, with God. A small thing, but it expresses the dimension and the real weight of everything I would like to share with you.
Everything I will be able to tell you calls upon each of us personally and directly, also when the Congregation is called upon. There is no relationship with God in which I involve my whole life and all its aspects without there being a personalized dimension in which everything is in the hands of God and in mine. I am not talking about individualism; instead, I am talking about an existential and daily reality in which a religious family can exist because there are other persons, who, during centuries and in geographic places, who following the road of founders/dresses have welcomed a call to which their person brings richness and fullness of vitality, nuances that accentuate the common and general beauty. Our RL (religious life) today is situated in a society characterized by efficiency, competition, success, accomplishments, a fraternity that is superficial and for convenience; it is a society of great progress, of very refined and rapid machinery that resolves problems; but if it breaks down it leaves life paralyzed; it is a society in which solidarity has become social awareness, but it is also a society of nationalist self-centeredness, religious or cultural, a withdrawal into itself and of self-interest; it is a society of loneliness/solitude, of quality of life, of ecologism, communication, publicity; it is a society of great praise for cosmopolitanism, plurality of cultures, mixture of voices; it is our society, the one we move in day by day, moment by moment, the one in which we complain of dangers and defects. In protesting them we think we are wise and able to see these things clearly, and so we think we are exempt from them. Is it really that way? What can be said to this society? What can one give? I’ll recall aloud VC n. 20: “The first duty of the consecrated life is to make visible the marvels wrought by God in the frail humanity of those who are called. They bear witness to these marvels not so much in words as by the eloquent language of a transfigured life, capable of amazing the world... The consecrated life thus becomes one of the tangible seals that the Trinity impresses upon history, so that people can sense with longing the attraction of divine beauty.”
I must also say that the fragrance of the “first yes” has always held a very special attraction for me. Therefore I would like to help myself keep the “freshness” and “vitality” of the beginning, to return to it. A few days ago, the questions that emerged in a conversation with a 20-yr-old university student made me reflect a great deal. We spoke of the early experiences of her apprenticeship: where do the ideals of youth end up when the moment of “settling in” arrives in the life of a person?; where did the idealism of ’68 end up? The questions of the student, young and lay person, translated for me into questions closer to the adult world, whether lay or religious is indifferent: where does that bourgeois mentality nest, which one easily has to deal with once they have a job that in some way is stable and definitive? And what breeds that bourgeois mentality and where does it nest which easily has to do with religious after perpetual profession? Is it a similar phenomenon? Does it have the same root? What is it? Is a vocation truly---any vocation--- and the response to it, a reality that is easily subject to deterioration, wears out easily? Why? What awareness do I have of this and how do I treat it?
Therefore, a reflection with you that I do aloud, fanning through the elements that make up our daily life. Perhaps what stimulates me most at this Easter time is seeing once again the early disciples of Jesus as they become aware, on their own in the absence of the Teacher, of the importance and consequences of their “first yes.” I’ll give you already now the Biblical references for this reflection of mine with you:
Jn 10:1-16: “unum”
Mk 14:3-9; (Lk 7:36-50; Mt 26:6-13; Jn 12:1-8) Let this woman do this “useless” anointing; let her do this wasteful thing; it is a wasting of love.
Jn 21:20-22: What about him, Lord? What business is it of yours what I ask of him? You, follow me.
1 Cor 12:4: there are different gifts, but only one is the Spirit.
Through my prayer, through the examination of my conscience, (how much attention and interior ecology are needed to move from what we easily call “right conscience”---and it is subjective---to an objective and true conscience!) from these texts came out, also for the renewal of my commitment, some key words which are also light-words and power-words. They are: Christophany (revelation of Christ) (VC made us familiar with the expression), Christophany as witnessing not only that we belong to Christ, but that “you have become Christ” (VC 109). Cristophany/mirror, gratuity, bonds of love. And along with that the image of the anointing of Bethany.
I would like to bring out from these elements (Christophany and gratuity) the type of response: personal life, life of communion, apostolic characterization. Under the guidance and working of the Holy Spirit in a most diversified and therefore most personalized way that one can imagine. Some expressions of Basil of Cesarea (Bas. De Spir. S. 22-23) on the Holy Spirit offer an important and very useful consideration for us: “inaccessible by nature, one can gain access to the Spirit through goodness: while Spirit fills all with power, Spirit communicates only to those who are worthy, distributing operative power not according to a single measure, but in proportion to faith.” The intervening of the Spirit in human beings is not done in a massive and generalized way: the Spirit acts on the basis of what each person can accept. As happens with the light that we perceive according to our own optical apparatus, each differently; as happens also with taste, and with beauty.
I will look at various topics mentioned explicitly in the topic assigned to me, avoiding taking for granted what we sometimes mistakenly consider as such.
1. Vocation
At the basis of every person’s life, just as at the basis of each person’s expression of vows, there is an intervention of God which precedes any action, word or movement of ours. Our God, is a God who does “first”: creates, loves, calls; he is a God who comes toward, a God with a presence which becomes encounter. Thus, our existing is illumined and is called to become “encounter.” And nothing has such strongly personal and unique connotations as encountering/meeting someone. Try to think of the gestures of meeting someone, the words that are said or not said, the looks, what one thinks, and how one prepares for any encounter, how our encounters are differentiated, what each of them evokes in us, what unexpected meetings bring us, what those desired and those not desired bring, simple ones and difficult ones; think also of the types and methods of meetings; in person, by phone, by letter, by message. The beginning of each of us is marked by a unique and multiple call: called to exist, to believe, to accept Love. About this last, special vocation, I will reason with you, or better, I will try to reason with the Lord of Love, with the Lord who is Love, and with you. A basic consideration: I was chosen and my choice is a response, free and voluntary, to the choice of Someone who preceded me and continues to choose me and ask me to respond to his call. “After having chosen once, it is necessary to choose every moment.” (Leibert, Polish poet)
“The vocation that God gives is connected to his personal love for each and every religious” (JP II letter to USA bishops, 1983, 1) It’s a matter of being aware of being, each one, wanted and loved by God instant by instant. It is the power to arrive at saying: “You were here, and I did not know it.”
Vocation as personal response to the love story that God wishes to have with us: as each person is unique and unrepeatable, so is also our response unique, unrepeatable and personal. To God who loves, the human being responds with re-loving, loving in return (ajntagapa-n is the verb invented by Clemente Alessandrino.)
“Thinking of ‘hearing the call,’ when can the person be sure? It is necessary to try not to understand too much and to have faith, read the heart intelligently and believe firmly in Him. Is it tranquillity? Is it joy? Is it relaxation? Is it not-thinking? I would say: it is beginning to trust without seeing and without understanding, having also sometimes the feeling that religious life today is an absurdity. Has this doubt never come to any religious, and they do not want to admit it? The light that one glimpses once, maybe the only time (?), must be “lamp for my steps,” because that light is He. But how and where? The wealth of charisms, congregations, disorients the person who wishes to go to the bottom in a search of Truth, painful, loved, experienced, embodied. Where? The possibilities are so many, one can also stay “alone”, with one’s own economic dependence and not only that, but what meaning can it have? Can being part of a community, better yet of a family, seem limiting, burdensome? In reality the diversity becomes richness. Being under “observation” of the sisters 24 hours out of 24 pushes one to be real, to share spaces, to become “small” in order to make space for others who carry that little piece of truth, that piece of God, part which is All, who potentially has it in him/herself and we can recognize it and from there manage to read it in ourselves.”
Vocation is a personal call which inserts one into a family; task of the call is to make one’s own the charism and spirituality of the Institute. I give my commitment/effort to my religious family, positive commitment and effort, to make it completely mine.” Belonging, being a living part of a Family which shares what is felt in the heart means to realize a piece of the Kingdom, but it is necessary to watch the signs of the times, not “embalm” the urging of the Spirit, not bring to life the “ghost” of the founder as though in fear... It is a risk that, according to me, “suffocates” the blossoming of new vocations. Life of the individual and life of the “family:” two entities that are to live together and not made to enter into conflict; if these two voices are placed in competition, there is schizophrenia. Their co-existence, on the other hand, becomes the possibility of a new experience, enriching for both; it is fertile soil for new plants. One needs to be aware of one’s role in the building of a family which is not an abstract reality, but this concrete family that is built day by day. One must know the Institute/charism; to do this one must make an effort, work hard, experiment, etc. Those who do not love do not make an effort; otherwise who’s going to make me do it? Love whom? God, who called me to this adventure. And the others who share it with me? For the building of the spiritual edifice of the Church...the portion of Church that each institute is...all share with their uniqueness and individuality placed at the service of the common good; in this way, individual and community are enriched and do not enter into conflict. The individuality and diversity of each person, when accepted well, become a treasure for the family and help all members of the family to grow. However, a strong and courageous commitment is required from each member.2
“Responding to a vocation is not an easy thing, because it is making of oneself a holocaust of love to give to God all the glory that our being can give Him.” (L. Tincani)
Jn 10:1-16: Jesus gathers his friends, but does not want a flock of “anonymous” or “identical” sheep; each of his sheep recognize his voice, he calls each by name; (recall the Sardinian shepherd who calls each sheep by name and does not confuse them with each other;) the shepherd who Jesus is wants just one flock and one shepherd. The path for valuing diversities: the same charism can be lived in different ways. Courage is needed, but also common sense, prudence, and good taste. It is a matter of choosing with Gospel clarity whom to respond to, whom to give one’s heart to, if to God or to mammon (and mammon has various names and faces).
2. Consecration
The profound nature of consecration regards the person as a whole: it is the full gift of self under every aspect, focusing on God, God’s love and plan for human history. A gift that presupposes and bases its letting oneself be “won over” by God in the steps and example of Jesus Christ; a gift that is born from being disciples and is the foundation for disciples. I want to stop to reflect on being disciples of Jesus; this is in fact to follow his example, it is to belong to Him. The meaning and the why of being disciple: it is a matter of human experience, therefore also pre-Christian, which Christ wanted to make his own, has proposed and continues to propose. We’re dealing with a human experience which moves on at least two fronts: relationship with the teacher of whom one wishes to be disciple and relationship with the “other,” co-disciples and non.
Being disciple begins with personal listening, a listening from which my “yes” proceeds. But being disciple implies consequently, immediately, living in acceptance of the “others,” also, without giving in to attitudes of authoritarian claims/demands. It is an awareness discovered by the fact that, with being born, all enter as students into the common school which is the world, life itself (cf Clem. AL. Quis div. 33.6). And, when one is in the following of Christ, listening is listening to the word of God and the “yes” is a yes to the God of the word. From listening...a listening that is done not with the ear, but with the soul (Clem.Al. Str. VII 60.3), a “living” listening, an assenting -listening, a listening that speaks of familiarity between God and man (man oaristes of God), a yes is born from the whole being (with the totality with which the earth says its yes to the seed, and welcoming it, makes it a source of life, S. Weil, Waiting for God, 99), a yes that one does not regret (cf Policarp), a yes that places one in openness to others, however same or different they may be. The ear/attention/listening to the word of God who calls each one personally.
Only the believer become “disciple” can savor “the good word of God” (Heb 6:5) and respond to the invitation to a life of special gospel following. Disciple of a Savior, of Jesus Christ, only Savior of the world, yesterday, today, and forever: today, does someone need a Savior? For me, concretely, what meaning has the presence of a Savior who is unique and who is savior of the world? Am I really conscious that it is He and not I (not my religious congregation) who saves the world?
Today maybe we know many things, many realities that “replace” salvation and become its surrogates: wellbeing, health, quality of life, living together, success, power, money; there can be some that are more subtle, for example: the awareness of fulfilling duties, liturgical rituals, witness, breathtaking and breathless engagement in work, even apostolic work. Being disciple is a dynamic reality, a continual “going” behind Jesus who calls people to “stay with” Him, a reality in continual process (from the hardening of the heart to tenderness to mercy to compassion; from having eyes closed, unable to see, to eyes that notice the passage of Jesus---the narration of Easter of A. Sniavskij--) It is also, at the same time, a being called to continuously read and interpret, understand and pass on what gets handed on, in the concrete and constant search of “nearness” (to God, to oneself, to other, to life itself.)
Only “work”: the giving over of self, this “giving in”/turning oneself over to God, a giving of self which God gives us as gift and, together, an active self-consignment, open-eyed, total, the contrary of “power”, even in the challenge of not being understood, maybe of being looked at with conceit, as poor disappointed people. A self-consignment, with a frequent remembrance to Peter who walks on water, but at a certain point “sees” the wind and becomes frightened, therefore sinks (cf Mt 14:30), as well as at Peter of the last meeting with Jesus: another will tie your belt around you and will lead you where you would not want.
A following of Jesus because there, in Him, we find responses to questions like: peace, justice, solidarity, respect, recognition, expansion of one’s own person. And his response (“blessed...”) says that this being “blessed” is fruit coming from a shifting of axis, of point of view. This being disciples starts from the today and is unfurled in the concrete folds of daily history prolonging itself through every day into the forever (an organic, dynamic growing and developing reality). “Called personally by the word of God, the person called places herself at His service. Thus a following begins, not without difficulties and trials, which leads to a growing intimacy with God and an ever more ready availability for the demands of His will.” (JP II, Message for World Day of Vocations, 1997). Following enters into a person’s ability to change of a person, a changeableness to be understood not only as movement toward evil, but as movement toward good, without ever reaching the extreme limit of perfection. (cf Greg. Nyss. Perf. Christ. 212 Jaeger)
Disciples-fishermen: I quote Savagnone (Evangelization in post-modernity, 126) the response that an old man had given to the question he himself asked a missionary: why the apostles are fishermen and not farmers. The old man’s response is: “Maybe because farmers plant, cultivate and harvest always in the same place, while a fisherman must always move, in order to follow the fish wherever they go.”
God does not need our consecration. Jesus asks us to follow him not because he needs the service of human beings, but to give men salvation (cf Ireneneus, Adv. Haer. IV 13. 4-14), as in the beginning he formed Adam not because he needed man, but to have someone on whom to pour out his benefits. “Following the Savior is participating in salvation, like following the light means being surrounded with brightness. Those who are in light are surely not the ones who turn on the light and make it shine, but it is the light which lights them up and makes them shine. They give nothing to the light, but receive from it the benefit of splendor and all other advantages. So also is service toward God: it adds nothing to God, and God does not have need of it; but to those who serve him and follow him, he gives life, incorruptibility and eternal glory. He grants his benefits to those who follow him for the fact that they follow him, but he draws no usefulness from it. God seeks the service of people in order to have the possibility, He who is kind and merciful, to pour out his favors on whose who persevere in his service. While God needs nothing, man needs communion with God. The glory of man consists in persevering in God’s service. And for this the Lord said to his disciples: you did not choose me, but I chose you (JN 15:16), thus showing that it was not they who glorified him, following him, but who, for the fact that they followed the Son of God, were glorified by him.” (Ireneus, ibid)
Ecclesial consecration to Jesus Christ through profession of evangelical counsels with public vows: personal commitment to be lived with others and for others.
Is the “proprium” of the a Congregation’s charism visible? With evidence? Does it need to be sand-papered (removal of incrustation)? Shined up? Communicated? What did I understand when I entered my religious family? Why did I enter there? Why did I remain in it? For what do I thank it? What do I like? What do I not like? What do I give to my Institute?
The journey of discovery of an Institute’s charism must be progressive and accompanied by formation to freedom and self-forgetfulness. It is indispensable to insert here the relationship with the Founder/dress: this relationship, too, must be a personalized relationship. Founders belong to the past, the present, the future: we enter into them and interpret them; we make them alive in the today of our lives, without “embalming” them.
3. The Vows
A way of translating into concrete life commitments the thrust of a consecration of belonging to God, the meaning of our/my personal emptying for God (“vacare Deo”): the three vows that we pronounce, do they effectively do this? And I, do I permit them to do this?
To get to the bottom, we need a love which leads one to the point of giving our life, in gratuity and joyousness of loving for the sake of love. Only this can fill life. Chastity: experiencing the love of Christ and loving with the love of Christ: This is the true emptying for God (vacare Deo) with totality and fullness, making oneself empty for God, becoming “capable” of God (to use Thomas Aquinas’s expression): it is God’s presence in the interior sanctuary of each person, a reality celibate persons fulfill in a total way and which is a task for all, also for those called to married life; poverty: it is one of the forms of our “emptying for God” ; it is discovering oneself to be close to the poor, discovering oneself to be really poor, persons who place themselves in and are in the hands of God: obedience: listening “obaudio”; a listening without which our life becomes absurd; obedience is configuration to Christ in the deepest expression of his union with the Father (“I do always the things that please him.” Jn 8:29); obedience as experience of full Christian freedom. Possessing peace in one’s heart and the justice of God from which peace springs, people can become authentic ministers of the peace and justice of Christ for a world which needs it. (JP II to U.S. bishops, 1983, 3)
All of this together makes---can make---each of us a “break-through” person (one who breaks stereotypes) in order to live compassion (solidarity.) “Recovering authentic simplicity and poverty. Along the centuries many religious congregations have become rich, a fact that can always be justified by our “important” projects; but religious life was more vital and attractive when we were genuinely poor. Then we rediscover that freedom...” (Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. interview Feb. 2, 2000)
“Chastity... is a reflection of the infinite love which links the three Divine Persons in the mysterious depths of the life of the Trinity...” (VC 21); purified hearts that “in faith see God.” Chastity finds its roots in the solitude in which we know the concrete love of God for us intimately, and we are freed from earthy constraints.
Community obedience needs the solitude in which one is rooted in our God’s faithfulness: this climate makes it possible to experience the variety of concrete tasks, seen as different manifestations of a common ministry; living in contact with God allows one to react in a creative way to the concrete emergencies of the day, without letting oneself be caught up in panicky reactions.
The vows as way of living a personal and unrepeatable relationship of discipleship of Jesus, a discipleship in which each person is herself and in which this Teacher who calls each one personally makes requests suited to each person. Jn 21:20-22: Lord, and him? What business is it of yours what I ask for him? You, follow me. In summary: at the center is the person (not the roles): for the place and value of the person cf. a page of L. Cerrito.
4. Fraternal Life
“This is my commandment: that you love each other as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to give his life for his friends. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. This I command you: love each other.” (Jn 15:12-17)
“As to fraternal love, there is no need for me to write to you about it, because you yourselves have learned from God how to love each other. But we exhort you, brothers and sister, to do it even more.” (1 Thess 4:9)
Brothers/sisters = being members of one family, the family of God, brothers and sisters in the Lord (Phil 1:14). Brothers/sisters, what does it mean? Why? Based on what? Commitments-- duties---promises? Curiosity and/or affection/love/tolerance/ support/sincerity/ duplicity/ falsity/ sympathy/fighting/domination/ passivity/arrogance etc., etc.? “Some Christians live in this world around the Word of God with other Christians; others are alone, like semi-dispersed. But what is denied them in sensible experience, they grasp in faith. Thus John during his exile on the Island of Patmos celebrates with his communities a heavenly liturgy ‘in spirit, on the Lord’s day’ (Rev 1:10)” and again: “Christian communion is such by means of Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ; be it a matter of one brief encounter or a daily reality, we belong to each other only through and in Jesus Christ.” (D. Bonhoeffer, Common Life)
The person who comes to my help, who sleeps in the room beside me, who eats with me, who prays with me, who asks me to be quiet so she/he can talk is not simply a person who comes to help me in his seriousness, in his commitment, in his needs and concerns; he is someone whom Jesus has redeemed, called, wanted with me in the Family in which we have both been accepted. He/she is, therefore, someone known to Jesus; is a gift of Jesus for me. Moreover, even before we knew each other, came to live together God had already planned for our being together.
Community “is the place where the daily and patient passage from ‘me’ to ‘us’ takes place, ... from seeking my things’ to seeking ‘the things of Christ.’” (Fraternal Life in Community n. 39) We’re dealing with an evangelical movement, sign of the welcoming of Christ and his lifestyle, sign of putting one’s feet where Jesus left his footprints. Solitude for finding our community identity; in solitude, in fact, we can recognize how to put our more personal talents at the service of a common task. Personal talents as a way toward God, but according to God’s way.
Fraternity as a Trinitarian dimension of our life. Some consequences: deep respect of persons and the values of which they are bearers; development of interpersonal relationships of friendship in sincere dialog and in ongoing interchange, but without idealizing fraternity and communion; strong, beautiful, joyful exercise of faith (not banalizing faith and community relationships by assuming worldly criteria): awareness that we do not create unity by our efforts, but Someone who frees us from the constraints of fear and anger; presence of and capacity to accept pain, suffering in whatever form it presents itself: special light, which is found near the poor and infirm and which we do not have. (cf. Piergiorgio Frassati)
In groups, dynamics are created that are not always positive; we bring our baggage there, which too often is rubbish (ballast), useless weight. And still the community is the most human entity that can exist; it is a crumb of the universal Church; still it is belonging to it, believing in it which often makes us look mad in the eyes of another. Henri De Lubac writes: “It is so much madder and even more scandalous, this our believing in a Church in which not only the Divine offers himself to us in an obligatory manner through the too human...” (from interview Cacciari and Silvestrelli, Corriere della Sera, Apr. 26, 2001) Fraternity, fraternal life produces “ad extra” attitudes of solidarity among difference persons and creates premises for a new culture of solidarity; fraternal life becomes counter-cultural in view of globalization; it is a “throwing up bridges between,” it is a faith contribution to be given in communion among various charisms together with laity. I think that the consecrated person learns to discover and live in community and mercy, and must be witness of mercy: the laity believe this.
But how to live? Purifying our senses, controlling “our instincts,” loving. I think that the basic requisites for a fraternal life are: ongoing dialog, human formation, sincerity, “taking off the mask,” a relationship not of subjects and superiors, but of free obedience, mature, aware obedience which sometimes causes suffering, but also the maturation of a relationship is fruit of suffering. Suffering is constructive if it leads to the awareness of the person who is the subject of it, but also to a discovery of a relationship with the other. Discretion is fundamental; not criticizing other’s actions negatively, not sabotaging other’s work. This is lack of maturity, perhaps lack of a true vocation. I think that when we begin a serious journey of “abandonment” into God’s hands, the suffering of detachment from ourselves is so deep, that there no longer remains space to see the “splinter” in others, but we look at the journey of liberation within one’s own person. More, the sisters and brothers become a help to “pull out” what “encumbers.” We are “climbers,” egoists, feisty, false; we recognize these faults in others because, potentially (or maybe actually already) we have them within ourselves, and so we must purge ourselves of that. Those who stubbornly remain with their own convictions do not grow; they remain “sour.” Do I support (put up with) the other person? No, we need to learn to love. Tiredness makes us hot-tempered; we don’t put up with slowness, delayed understanding, while we think we are seeing “beyond.” The beauty of communication also about small things, small misunderstandings, can dissolve the little “knots” that could become much larger difficulties, could expand into attitudes of arrogance that block, frighten the weak, throw up walls that prevent communicability. The religious family becomes “spirit of its own spirit,” integral part of the person, and wherever the consecrated person goes he/she carries the brothers and sisters in his heart, in his actions; his mission is the mission of the Family; he does not work for himself, but accepts the limitations of the results as well as the recognition, so that his/her working becomes realization of the mission. It is necessary to let oneself walk through one’s own weaknesses, call them by name, talk about them to the superiors, because putting into common becomes awareness and reciprocal growth. The foundation of being together is He; we believe it, we say it to Him in community prayer, and in the Eucharist.
It is also necessary to participate in the Family’s activities from the beginning of formation on, not live in protective baby blankets and such wrappings, but be aware and participating, learn to “serve”, not to be served.
5. Prayer
Prayer is not a thing that’s taken for granted: we must learn to pray. A prayerful life is learned in community. Our communities must become schools of prayer. And still, prayer is already within us as gift of God, as presence of the Spirit in us who, within us calls on the Father. Certainly, it’s a question of entering into ourselves, moving from the superficial and external ego to the interior I (cf. Augustine), to the “heart”, that heart which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is the place where the Trinity is found.
Solitude for meeting God: solitude as direction, direction indicted by the prophet Elijah (1Kgs 19) In solitude we discover first of all our restlessness, agitation, anxiety to resolve immediately, our will not to leave anything suspended, to be weighty. We would like to leave solitude, but if we persevere with a little patience and force ourselves to remain in solitude, we arrive at knowing the Lord of our heart, the Lord who lets us know who we really are.
Personal prayer and prayer in/of the community; it is essential to pray together as whole assembly, wherever the place, whenever the time of prayer. What type of prayer? A prayer of one’s whole being and of all time (the prayer of “good” will, we could say with Catherine of Siena). What rhythm (frequency) of prayer? Impossible to find the right rhythm: it is like when we travel a long time; once a good rhythm is found one can go a long way without tiring. We must find a physical, psychic, temporal, interior rhythm, a “breathing” rhythm (every has “her” type of rhythm of physical breathing!) A prayer that recognizes the priority of God: we remain before Him unproductive and useless, with nothing to show, to prove, to declare, and we let Him enter into our emptiness.
Contemplative prayer: contemplators of the face of Christ to make it shine brightly in our face. To discover, to seek the true Absolute, the one Absolute, not one or another surrogate of it. Whom do I make my Absolute? Who/What is the Absolute for me? Living in our thoughts and actions (all) what we say with our voice. Verbal prayer is not enough; it is inadequate for our needs, as it is inadequate for God’s plans (this people says: Lord, Lord, but their heart is far from me.) Not only to ask something of God, but to thank, praise, bless and adore.
Praying and acting go together: only those who act well can pray well. Praying and “suffering with” (com - passioning) Where there is no compassion there is no prayer; prayer is destined to make the heart compassionate, to make its actions good. “We must carry with us the linen cloth of Veronica (= image of Jesus which always remains imprinted in our heart)” (J.H. Newmann), and also: we must carry with us the anointing of Bethany (= icon of Mk 14:3ff)
6. Apostolic Engagement
Personal? Communitarian? Personal interests and community interests? “Jesus could have carried his cross alone, if he had wanted to; but he permits Simon to help him, to remind us that we must take part in his sufferings and collaborate in his work.” (J.H. Newmann).
Only interest, to serve God in our sisters and brothers: in this way my interests and those of the community will coincide. That means that in face of differences of opinion the individual and the community must ask themselves which is the ultimate end and act accordingly. The individual will exercise her/his own mission not as something of her own, and the community ought not make its needs and views prevail over those of the Gospel. Relationship between doing and being: the charism and works.
A religious life which must meet people, weave relationships with people and among people; a religious that can not stand and look from above, distancing itself.
7. Administration of goods
In this general situation of impoverishment (recalling the intervention of C. Maccise on poverty), of poverty, also the return even of consumerism, RL continues to have many holdings. It seems, sometimes, that only religious do not feel...or feel very little... the limitation (lack?) of resources, of money. Sometimes it appears that one can do everything with money: we buy things, even exams; can we also buy vocations?
I have a very limited question: what goods do we administer? For whom do we administer them? To do what with them? Is it possible to be aware and participant in them? How? For what tenor of life? A uniform tenor in each of our communities?
8. Service of Government
Government and obedience to be connected? Why? Dialog and decision: in relationship? Of what kind?
A service of government = an exercise of authority adapted to present time which guarantees the realization of the saving will of God in conditions of freedom and respect. Thus, an authority-service leadership, not a brooding-hen authority-presence, a leadership authority to which a free and willing obedience corresponds.
It will be indispensable, on the part of those who exercise the service of leadership, to pay true attention to the Gospel, to the whole Gospel. This may seem easy because we all have expressions of fidelity to the Gospel on our lips, but in reality this must be sought and pursued with great attention, with eyes wide open, with the light and guidance of the Holy Spirit who lets us know the existential and concrete implications of the Gospel, who makes us understand the language the Gospel speaks today. That the individual religious be asked fidelity to the Gospel is guarantee of seeking the will of God; it is truly to help recognize the will of God on a person and enter into contact with it. RL finds its deepest meaning in its choice to obey God; now, obeying God is explained as obeying the rule, as way of fidelity to the Gospel. This the service of authority must obtain and guarantee. It must be their one pre-occupation, and must not be altered or covered by other more urgent and immediate concerns. (cf. intervention of Fr. J. M. Arnaiz on Authority and Obedience, published in “Testimoni” of Mar. 30, 2001, pp 21-28) I’ll draw on a brief excerpt from an interview of Fr. Radcliffe op (interview of Feb. 2, 2000). To the journalist’s question: “We are coming from a period marked in the West by a general vocational crisis. How do we come out of it, and how do young people approach religious life?”, he answered: “We must give young people the freedom to respond to the new challenges. Young people are never to be used to ‘fill holes’ or maintain the past. No one will enter a congregation only to help it survive; religious orders do not have to do with survival, but with death and resurrection. It is not important if in the future there will be fewer communities or if a congregation sees its present number reduced to half. What counts is that the communities be alive and that they be seeds of the future. I prefer three live communities to ten that are fighting to survive.”
And proceeding to the question “Are there still persons being born in monastery walls like Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi or Catheine of Siena?”, the same priest replies: “God created only one St. Thomas, one St. Francis and one St. Catherine. He does not clone! Rather, he surprises us giving us, for each generation, brothers and sisters who are unique and have their own life of holiness. When the Dominican order was founded, we would never have imagined that one day there would have been a Bartholomew de Las Casas to firght for the rights of the Indios, or a Beato Angelico to pray through painting. The challenge is to be able to welcome the unexpected saints hidden in our communities, and who could surprise us. And the face of holiness in 2000 is that which shows the glory and beauty of God living among us. In this increasingly violent world we must have courage if we want to be a sign of God. In some parts of the world religious face the risk of martyrdom more and more. Sometimes we need courage just to face misunderstanding and criticism, or the humility not to be afraid to try something and fail. We need the holy courage of those who have placed their trust in God.”
A suitable word for one who exercises the service of government. At this time in which the word of order seems to be “discernment,” I would suggest using the more ancient term, taken from the Gospel, the verb “confero.” Its real meaning is well suited to the interior life of a person, to his/her being disciple and apostle, but also well suited to the meaning and style of government service. Confero = place together all the words of God, those written and those pronounced by God through the living of existence and of the persons in existence. Service of authority is rooted on placing together all these words, as did Mary, place them in such a way that light passes from one to the other and allows “grasping” what God wants for each of the persons, as well as for the Institute in its totality; grasp it in order to accomplish it.
9. Openness to laity and to the universal and local Church
The topic in reality is not only a concrete topic of openness to some specific persons or categories of persons (those we can’t do without, so, an openness that we could feel [or be] forced to practice), but rather of an interior attitude that relates to all our living, beginning with our living within our religious families.
Necessity/ constriction / tolerance? / collaborate? What does it imply and what does it mean?
Relationships between cultures, mentalities: I’ll use a philosophical-literary, human concept which I found in some pages of a Bulgarian author transplanted in France (Tzvetan Todorov, man outside his own element) who, reflecting on his interior experience on the occasion of his brief return to Bulgaria, expresses his situation with the concept of transculturation, or the acquisition of a new code with the loss of the previous one (I read a brief paragraph from the book. P. 13 and end of p. 14: transculturation serves expatriation which helps both the native people (aucthothonous) and the foreigners; the various countries can have one thing in common for a person: in each country, he has friends).
Consecrated persons = perfect persons?; those who must only give and not receive anything from others to be human? Communication does not presuppose equality, but the will to be with and for the other, beginning from the initial consonance of two different persons to reach a new form of life in which neither of the two becomes a photocopy of the other, but both acquire a new way of being and living, thanks to the influence of the other on one’s own life. Dialog does not mean that being distinct is eliminated, but it requires patience to understand the difference, listen to it, experience the difference considered as a richness. Consecrated persons, like all other human beings, are persons who are making a journey of perfection, with all the difficulties deriving from a nature wounded by original sin, from life in and for oneself, from a cultural context in which one can peacefully do without God. The work of salvation is not entrusted exclusively to consecrated persons only, in such a way that others are the receivers of their apostolic work. The one who saves is God and those who cooperate with God are each one of us, with diversity of ministries and operations, in an exchange of reciprocity.
Interiority and the circular action of vital relationships of communion among: persons, religious families, religious and laity, religious and local church, etc.
10. A Following of Jesus by one’s own light
Jesus whom we want to follow, whose steps we want to keep, and each of his steps, those which are born of his love, his energies, his weaknesses, his creativity, his imagination, even though each of us carries along with him/her the weight of self. There is a basic question that is more and more fitting for the times: how to move from “knowing” to “living”? In order to lighten up the thing, we are almost tempted to think that we are dealing only with a difficulty of “passage”: from early formation to life as perpetually professed persons... But, is it really so?
Difficulty and awareness of the problem: deep down it is our own personal problem It is the wondering: how is it that I am not that disciple of Jesus who loves Him primarily and totally and always, and with consistency? A basic distinction is necessary:
- there can be elements/situations, even negative ones, but compatible with being Christ’s disciple, compatible with “holiness” (there is something that must be recognized and accepted peacefully so that it doesn’t take anything from God, others and myself, something for which it’s helpful to recall to mind the words that are addressed to Paul: “my grace is sufficient for you.”);
- there can be inconsistencies (failings) that can block the growth of the person and impede the journey.
What does my own following of Jesus signify? On what is it based? What does it offer? What does it ask? What can one not do without?
A couple of thought-provoking hints for a following of Jesus with one’s own light (the “proprium”):
Study: one can’t understand well the sense of “proper light” to give to the following of Jesus without an attentive and continous commitment to study. How easy it is to misunderstand study and use it as evasion, as jewel to be appreciated or placed on display. Like a useless and unknown object, like...
The loyalty of each person who asks something of herself, who does not let herself live in the mediocrity of building a nice, comfortable niche of self-reference, and the marginal position of those who do not align themselves with this form of mediocrity and pursues a different following of Jesus.
Trust for that which someone sees as characteristic and essential in his/her following of Jesus: trust as starting part for avoiding an accommodating type-approval.
“The consecrated person of tomorrow will have to be solidly linked with the cross of Jesus and with ears wide open to tell every culture, by his/her existence, that there is nothing wiser for a person than letting herself be illuminated by the light of Christ.” This is how one person expresses herself at the beginning of her response to Jesus, but the Fathers of the Church spoke in the same way (I’m thinking of Clement of Alexandria who presents Ulysses who wants to escape the danger of the Sirenes, but also wants to hear them sing and has himself tied to the tree of the ship/cross).
The encounter becomes life, a life based on love and gift of self in gratuity is an absolutely necessary and indispensable element: the gratuity in the icon of the anointing in Bethany: Mk 14: 3-9 (Lk 7:36-50; Mt 26:6-13; Jn 12:1-8); let this “useless” anointing be done. A filled life, sustained and nourished by the love of Jesus, in a deep personal daily existential relationship with Him.
What kind of life-style comes out of this:
Conclusions
Jesus calls today: whom does he call? How does he call? To what does he call?
God calls one at a time and puts together persons to form the same reality that he constitutes with the Father, the “unum” (Jn 10:1-16. In that “unum” each human being has his own identity, physiognomy, task : this “unum” has no room for clones. The people of God, Jesus’s flock, the vine whose vine-dresser is the Father, are a gathering-together of distinct beings, for each of whom there is a love story, the Love of God, who fits himself to that determined person (Jn 21:20-23). To God who loves, the human being answers with the love that makes gift.
Wednesday of Holy Week this year, so at the beginning of the Paschal Triduum, at the center of the basilica of S. Maria Novella in Florence, they put back into place, after restoration, the Crucifix of Giotto and the fresco of Masaccio which represents the Trinity. I was able to go to enjoy them and I heard the comment with which the Dominican community, custodians of that basilica, welcomed the two works, reflecting on the fact that “to be able to admire again two works which focus on the Crucified Christ is reason for truly placing at the center of the Christian community’s consideration the presence of Christ and Christ Crucified, source of unity and peace. It is He who reveals the love of God communion, Trinity, like the fresco of Masaccio marvelously represents; and it is He who has gone the route to which every woman and man is called, the opening of life to the gift of self, toward God and others, as the crucifix of Giotto brings out. Being able to admire these two images in the center of the Church, on the vigil of the Paschal Triduum, these two works of art which carry in themselves a deep message of spirituality and theology, raises two motifs of reflection, among many others. A first is the centrality of Christ, his testimony, his life and death in the life of the believing community. Paul introducing himself to the community of Corinth writes: “During my stay with you, the only knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus, and only about him as the crucified Christ. Far from relying on any power of my own, I came among you in great ‘fear and trembling’ and in my speeches and the sermons that I gave, there were none of the arguments that belong to philosophy; only a demonstration of the power of the Spirit. And I did this so that your faith should not depend on human philosophy but on the power of God.” (1 Cor 2:2-5)
And this is, and ought to be, the ideal of every gospel preaching.
A second motif is that of fraternity, message communicated by these works: Christ with arms opened and side pierced, who in his death gives his life; and the Trinity who welcomes and gathers those who stand under the cross is a message of a hospitality that broadens to every human space and time: it is the broadening of a Masaccian perspective not only in a spatial dimension but also a temporal one. There is a universal message that emanates from these works: the proclamation of the gospel which inspired Giotto and Masaccio is a proposal of dialog and way of meeting, of fraternity and communion among persons. Based on this, the wish that these masterpieces, for the future generations to whom they’ll be passed on, may be cause for itineraries of solidarity with all human suffering and for dialog among cultures and peoples.” (Alessandro Cortesi, O.P., prior of the monastery of S. Maria Novella - Apr. 11, 2001)
A prayer of Newman: “O my Lord Jesus, let your cross be efficacious. Make it efficacious for me most of all, in order to avoid my having an abundance of everything without carrying any fruit to perfection.” “Grant, O Jesus, that we entrust ourselves to you, waiting for you to obtain for us a destiny similar to yours.”
And also an invitation to hope: “do not be discouraged. The truth of life consists in the sure hope that the sun will end up dissipating all the clouds.” (Teilhard de Chardin)
Maria, the person who teaches us to be watchful (silence of the heart) to catch the “signs” of God’s passing (God asks to be welcomed with all He does in our life) and to discover that He calls not to ask us “something” but to ask us if we are open to re-offer to him the availability of our person.
SUMMARY
I wanted to talk about persons who live a life that is not at the center of events, nor is it sensational, nor does it leave grandiose traces: the life of clowns, those who appear between shows, move clumsily, fall and make us laugh again, after the tension created by the heroes (trapeze artists, acrobats, lion-tamers). We react to clowns with sympathy not with admiration, with understanding not amazement, with a smile not with tension (cfr. H.J.M. Nouwen, The Clowns of God ).
1 Translator’s note after conference: Sister explained this expression as a line from a comedy routine where, after repeated failures, a character says he’d rather start from three than from zero because a little progress had been made in previous efforts.
2 (N.B. from time to time Sister indicated that she was referring to ideas picked up from the persons she had talked with in preparation for this talk.