Every historical event is ambiguous; only the èschaton will replace ambiguity with  fullness. Similarly, even the flourishing of the actual religious experience is full of richness and ambiguities.

The dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church is undeniable, even in the case of the charism evaluation worked out by Vatican II. It is in this direction that the growth of formulas, different from the past ones, founds itself as a punctual leavening of a traditional richness, which we gratefully receive as a gift, but also as a virtuality to be realised , in a possible and necessary way, in an actualisation that in itself is an "outrage": not only an overstepping all bounds, but also a transformation. It is a matter of verification and this can be made always through the veracity of the truth, through the carrying out of differences,  which become necessary differences  (we quote the famous formula of J. Derrida to say that history  - always partial because it works always in its course- implies an unavoidable postponement, a course that never reaches its fulfilment and that, by realising itself, makes the received patrimony different).

These very much contracted words -I apologise for it- contain a synthetic description, which carries in itself the appreciation for the new proposals of spiritual journey to the consecrated life.(this term, however, in spite of the lashes inflicted by the tentative of a simplifying re-centring , clumsy because the existing problems are not to be faced with reductive formulas, is unsafe due to some main points of Vatican II, most of all the universal call to holiness, together with the consecrating form of the sacrament of matrimony and the pertinence of every Christian state to the radical dignity of Baptism. This is the mysterious fulcrum around which all the Christian ways articulate. None of them can presume to be above the others, and this is true, notwithstanding the pathetic repetition of this term during the synod on consecrated life: a sign of the impossible overcoming of a theological uneasiness that no simplifying going back can adequately solve).

But it is just the charismatic liveliness that makes the inter-weaving of the hierarchical values necessary, understood not at authority level, but at architecture level. This corresponds to the organic unity of the mystical body and of the re-capitulation of the universe in Christ. More specifically, it corresponds to the necessary co-ordination  between punctuality and tradition, between subjectivity and objectivity: to speak of tradition and punctuality means to assume the history that has assumed us and, precisely, not the relation with e generic and gaseous numen, but with some well indicative and identifying names like: Jesus Christ, Church, Tradition (understood as a handing over of the spiritual experience: "Christ wanted to be called truth and not custom", a patristic voice warns us)..

History, tradition and identity

            No doubt, the transformation of the spiritual life carries with itself the fulfilment of a not easy but necessary task that concerns just the identity. Today in the weak condition, which could be a form of scepticism, but also a form of  Christian conscience,  no "enunciabile" (we are quoting the Summa Theologiae, by St Thomas, II-II, 1, 3 and 2), namely, no hypothetical though realised formula, is the term for a believing act. This is, instead, always the divine "thing" expressed by those formulae, by figures and postponement, not by definition and conclusion. In fact, they carry with themselves the "abbreviation" of eternity into history, according to the essential canon of Christ for which the epiphany of revelation takes place only through kenosis, namely though the stripping of the infinite in terms of our finitude;  thus the saving love of the absolute and holy God makes itself dissolute through the condescension by which God, wanting to respect man, makes himself an illumination and not a blinding lightning.

This is why the believer feels the exclusion of identification very much self-consonant (what can ever be "defined", that is confined, if not provisionally and instrumentally? What can reach its conclusion?), but does not simplify, as it often happens both in the lay culture-that excludes not only the identification but also the identity- and in the ecclesiastical culture that, instead, superimposes identity and identification. Certainly, in the awareness of faith the identity is never static, but expresses itself in the dynamic course between the alpha, the beginning, and the omega, the end. There is a dynamic identity that is born from an existence having a root and a project (man in his vision of faith lives the gift of a planning -we could say "projection" if the word were not ambiguous- and not the abandonment of a  dejection).

It is in this terms that the process of consecrated life lives. Consecrated life is not definite and concluded. It is a way as epèctasis, extension and in-tension, towards the fulfilment of what has been worked in us through grace, and that is actuated by the liberty that gratefully welcomes the gift of grace, as its fulfilment (Phil 3, 13-14).

 These terms, which make things complex, but also alive, indicate the Christian journey, as well as the journey of the consecrated life, particularly the monastic one.

It is evident, therefore, that the process of the spiritual life and of its experience takes place through the inter-weaving between subjectivity and objectivity, between the desiring human eros and the" gift" of God's grace.

Value and pathologies of the subject

The value of the subject is undeniable, according to the prophetic and evangelical truth of the single. This entity is quite different from that of the individual. The emphasis given to the absolute being of the single (the Christian anthropology cannot conciliate itself with the metempsychosis, even if  the "Purgatory" tells us that the life of faith does not end with death, especially if we consider the great intuition of St. Catherine from Genova),  is the pride and the task of the Christian tradition. We can truly say that God has wanted to take his creatures closer to himself, by putting his own absolute being into the absolute value of the human liberty (understood not as free will - this is the philosophical meaning-  but as the Augustinian dialectics between the "libertas minor", the one that acts in history, and the "libertas maior", the one we shall have in our motherland; or - according to the perspective opened by J. B. Mets - as "power of the totality"): the project of God is that of two absolutes , his own will and the human will that are in love, a thing that the old Church has well understood ("liberum arbitrium gratia liberatum", the 853 Carisiaco says in an Agostinian tonality before the Molinist anthropomorphism - this is how Maritain rightly defines it- opened the aporetic and neurolising process- the right and meaningful opposition of St. Francis of Sales is to be remembered- of the "quaestio de auxiliis!). The Franciscan line has the merit to emphasise the irreversible oneness of the single: Blessed John Duns Scoto had this merit much before the modern evaluation that counts Guglielmo from Ockham among its forefathers, as one who continues the way of Duns Scoto. This is according to the evangelical truth which manifests the worry of the Father that nobody may be lost (Mt 18, 14; Jo 6, 37-40).

But this value implies the possibility of turning into individualism: in fact the subjectivity has gone adrift (within what C. Taylor has called "the uneasiness of modernity") towards subjectivism, a harmful and pathologic form of subjectivity that- just as the value of the subject is accentuated  and the expectations increase- carries with itself a reducing form of globalisation, together with many phenomena of a missed respect for the singularity.

Because of this, the actual sense of subjectivity has pathological components that are to be analysed. They can be seen as two externally diverging lines, but deriving from the same equivocal structure of value and pathology, which we have briefly spoken of.

a)       The first line is given by the accentuation of the subjectivity in subjectivism. This

tendency corresponds to the tentative of realising a  recuperation and a compensation for the fact of not having been  given value to one's own singularity: To this tendency we can associate other concomitant phenomena. Among these the lessening of the relational sense - to be for the other- which carries with itself the transformation of one's relation with the other based on the condition that the other be a source of pleasant experiences ( here comes the lesson of the "Individualised society" by Z. Bauman), and the search of the immediate as the realisation of one's satisfaction; consequent and linked to it, is the attenuation of the future (here, instead, it remains meaningful the bitter lesson of the grammar of creation by G. Steiner, recently commented by E. Scalfari in La Republica).

b) The other line, instead,  brings the request for the authority that, in the complexity of choices, simplifies, reduces, falsifies freedom with the desired and sought imposition of a decisive will that, before the complexity of life (let us not forget the criterion of the act that makes things complex, which rightly Teilhard links to evolution), excludes the embarrassment of the choice and the fatigue of responsibility. This is a way of omologating freedom, transforming the charism into cult of the personality, and the community into an omogenising aggregation. Here an appointment of discernment opens that catches in the structures of modern communities,  (which often look very alive, but which at a closer glance can be seen that they are born on the model of fusion and not on that of relation and communion, which is, instead, the radical Trinitarian model, in which God himself is not the same God),  a formula of unification very much different from unity. It is not the determining empire of an objective course, which does not respect the steps, the possibilities, the poverty and the richness of the singles. Often, rather than bearing the toil of maturation, we resort to imposition (for instance through the retaliation of faults, a pathology induced by the will of power that reasons in terms of efficiency and not of the truth according to the Gospel. The Spirit of God does never sows desperate regrets, but always opens to metanoia and asks to face it with courage).

It is from here that the movements draw their success (how much bearer of spiritual virus?). They, however, have lost their bite because the false phenomena of solutions, based on compensation , soon reveal their limits; in fact in the perspective of form will (I am the subject, the other is the object) and of power will (the power of the aged, of the Catechist, of the community head) they cannot stand before the structural and divine necessities of the "eternal man" (G. K. Chesterton).

            The same instrumental favour given by a hierarchy made because of some efficiencies ((especially because of successes at the level of presbyters vocations, whose enthusiastic forms do not pass under verification, because -there are concrete cases- later on the commitment, taken with the community, forbids  the freedom of going out and, therefore, the freedom of the confirming yes; from here we can see the negative impact of the community which expresses a pathologic form unless it helps freedom). In this regard, the hierarchy manifests its own desperation, because- anchored on the criterion of power- it understands the efficiency, but it is unable to exercise the patience of the Gospel efficacy which walks at long terms, convoking the freedoms and supporting maturation.

In all this we can verify an area of general phenomenon which expresses itself in the search of a liberation from life (here we must mention the lines of miracles and of exorcisms), while Jesus in the Gospel has brought the assumption of life and the freedom of history.

Note: Obviously all this  running shot is too fast and risks to be itself a simplifier: it would need bibliographic references wider than those already indicated, but they should be integrated in such a way as to offer useful data for the odegetics( that part of the pastoral work that enlightens the reality of the one who "leads the way"- "odon-via"+ "ago-conduco"- guide and soul of the community) to be endowed with sufficient lights in order to help those who in the pastoral life play the role of animation, by offering a service, not by dominating ("We have no wish to lord it over your faith, but to work with you for your joy" (2Cor 1,24). But the economy of this writings wants to be just a synthetic sketch that needs to be completed; it is the solicitation to an intus-legente analysis of the situation.

Necessity of an intus-legente analysis

Prudence is not shrewdness, but a basic intus legentia of reality, to perceive its truth.

It is exactly the first cardinal virtue that can keep into account the indicated picture, since it is necessary to discern between charismatic vitality and the festival of the subjectivism which is actually present also in the religious field.

With this thesis-premise we try to read within the actual situation of the consecrated life, which is certainly in a ferment together with the multiplication of monograms and communities within the ecclesiastic journey, which has never been as colourful as today. This phenomenon puts questions about its authenticity, seen that the spiritual life is not uninjured by the time contingencies  in which we live (rather it has to assume them, as a form of incarnation, but also of redemption and transfiguration) , thus the multiplication of so many communities and religious experiences, mainly monastic ones, correspond  to a positive and punctual spiritual flourishing, but it could also inevitably be interpreted as a version of the present subjectivism.

Several other times, I have asked to strengthen the values present in people and friends who belong to groups, movements, communities, but I have asked also to overcome the too visible defects that come from constrictive and regulative formalities ( if we took the ironic and propositive sense  that St. Benedict gave to his Rule?) on which movements and communities are based and which are not essential to their truth.

We should have an approach with the defects, without making them absolute or simply underlining them, but only to note the forms of pathology that impugn positive tracts of spiritual history.

Note: It is necessary to have some irony about the actual insistence on discernment, because sometimes it is born from the impossibility of succeeding in bearing the insecurities of life within the certainty of faith; it can also belong to the devaluation of the future (the way of possibility, of virtuality, of the optative),  in favour of a present that expresses our consolidation on the immediate (which is always a "much" consistent before the "all" that has no easy and immediate consistency), thus it could mean a weakening of hope ("Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection …and then you will not lose heart and come to grief" Hebrews 12,2-3). Yet we need to make an analysis.

Interpretative proposal of some symptoms

In this spirit we can interpret authoritarism as a symptoms of deviation in the compensation of the I.

a) In fact, often authoritarism marks the actual  religious and monastic structures (the latest ones, in Florence, are the Fraternity of Jerusalem and the monastic Family fraternity of Jesus), which, sometimes, are characterised by an intolerable authoritarian regime; let us think that one community has imposed an eight hours process on friars who had presented some disagreement; another was expelled for objecting against the way they were treated with exorcisms, because of the contiguity with an exponent of the "curative line" of a homo-sexual: at first he was sent for a course of spiritual exercises, then he was expelled before his return: neither should go forgotten the horrible injunction of going to the abbot for confession, as it happens in some other communities. 

 b) Another line of compensation could be caught in episodes of exhibition and propaganda (along with the refusal of collaborating with other communities: these are supposed to go to the "elects", while the elects do not need to go closer and confront themselves). This exhibition emerges in the continual wanting to display oneself and in the will of attracting the attention ( perhaps by celebrating a great feast of inauguration, for a presence that is not yet there even after two years, as it happened in Pianosa, where the present Bishops could exempt themselves at least from making the "trenino" on the wharf of the port, while the friars where playing the guitar). By sure, the distinction  between communication and exhibition is difficult, but we truly need to call ourselves back to the  austerity of silence and to the form of the hidden seed, with the Gospel efficacy, surely far from the spot efficiency.

c) Perhaps the research of originality is to be seen under the same light (like a monastic community that keeps vigil the whole night because its charism is the night prayer).

d) To this a delicate question can be added (which needs an attentive exposition), that of an active or pastoral monastic community. It is to be said that the true pastoral essence of the monastic life is the life itself of the monks and of the monasteries. This is supposed to be the directive criterion, even when the monastic fecundity opens itself to hospitality, at the cost of dilapidating the spiritual treasure in showy forms, too far from the monastic charism and pertinent to other ecclesial and Christian charisms ( even this activism signals a compensation line for the difficulty of being marginal and of keeping the silence proper to the monastic position that can never lose its anacoretic dimension).

e) Another pathological element is sometimes present: the worry for money, just as if the Christian efficacy depended on the economic power, just as if the "to do" were obligatory, even when objectively the possibility is missing (in this field, fragrant and  absurd things are reached, like the one of asking the professed religious to donate to the community the part due to him from the family inheritance: Apart from the inconveniences of the damage  (and here we enter a sin of  injustice against brothers and sisters in case the family patrimony be so invested  as any interruption of the investment might produce a loss),  the fact remains that the thing assumes such a form of blackmail as it becomes impossible to go out of it, in case it is seen that the community results invalid: the adept, this is how he is to be called and not brother,  would have to leave without property, after alienating a sometimes consistent richness.

f) Another symptom of subjectivism is the inability to support the hard fatigue of community life, by taking one's own position of becoming contingent with a patience capable of re-conciliating the diversities, to reach a toilsome but possible agreement, with the wisdom of overcoming the difficulties by overlooking the discussions and entering the attitude of adoration before God (here the practice of Arrupe  in the general congregations of the Jesuits is for us a precious reminder) and entrusting oneself to the charity of the Holy Spirit, with the asceticism of utility (1 Cor 14). A community marked by affective immaturity (capacity of opening and welcoming relations) is a soup of culture for the microbes of general immaturity ( here we go back to the second part of  A onore del cielo, come segno per la terra, by A. Gruen and C. Sartorius).

The delicate relation on the innovation before tradition also lies here. In fact, there are communities born by the separation from another community, which in turn was born by the separation from a traditional order. An easy innovation, (save the appropriation of titles, as it happens in the Benedectines annexations of charges),  could be born also from the inability of setting up the growth in the acceptance of tradition. This would cause a loss or an attenuation of the richness that comes from the handing over of the spiritual experience, within a spiritual journey that carries a history of holiness and spiritual data which, in their stability, show the presence of a substantial and not only episodic structure.

g) Moreover, we cannot forget that authoritarism  could be the symptom of another disease, that of the self-centredness that characterises many movements which presently try to offer gifts of spirituality, separated from the objectivity of the Church and from the ethical-spiritual objective (the New Age is typical: and it is interesting to read the best-seller of J.Brady, God on a Harley, and Sonzogno-New: having  repented of his old improvisations and matured in the modern age, the first thing that this God eliminates is the ten commandments). In the religious world, self-reference is fatally inefficient, just because only the reference to God is determining.

            To speak like this  -with the awareness of a severity that needs to be confronted-  does not mean an interdiction to the birth of other different monastic lines, since Bose and Monte Veglio say that, though with defects like all other even old Congregations, they might be  signs of a great and fruitful newness. But the fact remains meaningful that the one who founded them is marked by years of "salting with fire" (Mk 9,49) maturing the call with patience and made fruitful by the cross- like hypompnè and makwothymia.  The analysis of these valid and fruitful experiences brings to evidence the decantation of the charism and of the subjectivity, within the ecclesial and spiritual objectivity.

 Here are some points of general critical analysis

The above-given notes  reveal a symptomatic complex that - though particularly referred to the consecrated life- is concomitant to pathologies of a wider ecclesial picture.

All that we have been exposing so far would lead us to make a perplexed balance on the past 25 years of the Church, owing to the fact that every particular phenomenon is inscribed in general history and is its symptom; in fact every analysis of the above-mentioned   spiritual movement, could be adequately and directly linked to the general situation of the Church today. Not to make this writing too heavy, we are not going to make the exposition of the direct co-relations, but it seems very plausible to say that in the latest season of the Church there has been enough pathology just of subjectivity-subjectivism structure which we have taken as an in-exhaustive but central   symptomatic picture of the present human, spiritual and ecclesial season. We need to catch the deeply lived  situation  to avoid that- besides rendering the symptoms "fatal"- we might try to apply symptomatic cures, instead of trying to make s serious, punctual and genuine diagnosis of the disease.

In particular:

We can say that the past 25 years have brought a situation which we can massively and punctually indicate as a situation of schizophrenia. Yes, in the apparent external omologation (though already in '91 on Regno I indicated the reality as a practical schism in the Church), the fact of having pointed at general lines which articulate as an internal re-centring in order to strengthen the external ecumenism,   is a sign of a non wanted will of scission  (with a subtle aura of duplicity and hypocrisy which consequently turns into a destructive metamessage).

-This set up has deprived the Church of a charismatic and prophetic force because of a conformism  and bureaucratic accentuation , excluding voices different from the centred will, but setting up a line of conformism-conformation which often produces more sycophant than free men, more spiritual amoebas  than responsible Christians. 

-This has particularly led to the formation of an episcopate that looks like a directing agency and a bureaucracy (it is useless for Ratzinger to complain for the scarcity of Bishops), while each bishop is supposed to be a sacrament of the "episkopein",  of  "the visit paid by God to us". (Gospel of Luke). There has, thus, been the frequent reduction of the episcopate to knighthood (an unsuspected but real proof of ecclesial atheism, not only in the macroscopic election of the secretary and of the master of ceremonies  to the episcopate, but also of the frequent Roman practice of expecting the episcopate as a reward for the fulfilment of some service, like the material drafting of a document  in the Church). A mortifying reduction to executions without soul (because in the field it is sensed that things are different: how many of us have  come to know the actual  scission in many bishops who in private express truly prophetic tendencies with ideas that they never express in public?). Persons taken prevalently from among the "yes men" have been co-.opted as Bishops. Well, but what if also men of the "beyond" had been chosen? What has the Italian Church gained by excluding men of God and of doctrine, like Colombo, Sartori, Dianich, Forte, Ruggieri, Ardusso, Colzani, Canobbio, cereti and Manzillo?

-The mainly executive spirit of a "retro (while being also "ante") circumspect Church and the ambiguity of taking conformity for unity, just as if the one piece habit of Jesus were not connected  by the Fathers with the multicoloured one of Joseph.

 - All this has brought the Church to a tonality and a way of proceeding quite different from a push of motivations coherent with the structures of the present human situation. Every age is a space of action and presence, but also an anthropogenetic  moment ( it suffices to remember the absurdity of a correct re-edition of the penitential proposal of the Tridentine decision - which at that time was thought with a punctual pastoral wisdom- just as if four hundred years of continual, diversifying  anthropogenesis had never passed; the examples could be multiplied). If the Christian and ecclesial proposal is not of an  incarnation type, we finish by being either  strangers ( salt that is kept in the freezer and has no taste), or the builders of a church that is like a separated micro-cosmos, while it is supposed to be "Catholic", synchronically and diachronically universal.

- In such a case the word becomes jargon, the community an omologation, the rite an appearance , the structure a sect ("secta- cut from" or  "saepta- separated by a boundary wall"), anything, except a Church. This carries with itself a sterility that de-motivates, even when we live the remuneration of an efficient integrity : it is sad to see a Church, that continues the Trinitarian mission, seeking her  self-identification by refusing the "world".

- A kind of odegetic despair  flows out of all this. For instance, the continual use of testimony (is there any ecclesial meeting that does not include the afternoon "Testimonies"?), which, if well considered is an unhealthy form of forced exhibition,  not aware of turning the terms over, because it happens that the witness (for example Mother Theresa) is valid not because of her faith in God (continuing with Mother Theresa, it is meaningful the fact that the discovery of her "night" time at the end of her life was censored , because it destroyed the instrumental oleography, while it manifests her spiritual authenticity), because it is he who makes faith plausible (another sign is that it is possible to write a text in fundamental theology, tough praise-worthy, giving to it the title of Un Dio affidabile (a trust-worthy God). In this way the testimony confirms both God and faith, while it is God (and the faith that he gives) to confirm our weakness. Let us not forget the metamessage  which, with the angle of communication view, is given by the testimony (the acumen of Mrs. Testa, a refined advertising agent,  gives its credibility): practically, the use of testimonials says that the offered "product" has no value in itself. It is, in fact, recommended by the witness who is strengthened by his own fame, which has actually nothing to do with the concrete product).

It would be important to make an analogous analysis of other behaviours of the Church, like the progressive loss of her biting as an agency of morality, and of her becoming an agency of social services, or a civil religion. Let us think of the position taken before peace, which is right in itself, but that could also be motivated differently; let us think about reducing the religions to bodies as makers of peace, using as symbol a miserable vase of olive. Then we have the courage of opposing H. Kung because he turns faith into a political religion!

            Another point: The impact of the media is not wisely evaluated. They are used only with a miserable immediacy. It was wanted and pursued like this, for instance,  during the 2000 Jubilee, (Sepe, the organising mind of the jubilee, said, "whatever is not television does not exist") which, no doubt, had its presence in the video, but which arises also the final question of how much presence has really been left in the hearts. Is he metamessage (never considered in the Church) that is born with this insipid mediation ( the Austrian Church wisely transmits the holy Mass by radio, but not by TV) not a reduction of faith experience to a spectaculum, to an event to be seen rather than to be shared? Does the irony of God not weigh upon this beautiful acquisition the beautiful sum with which he has been given value? (Zk 11, 12)?

Note: We have never sufficiently caught the mixture of Thomism and phenomenology which structures the doctrinal position of the ordinary of philosophy in Cracovia , Karol Woytila, while the relief (that years ago I proposed to the publisher of Il Regno, with a scarce success, as I believe) would be useful to understand the source where often the inspiration and the configuration of the Pope come from. Here I want to point out only a particular thing:  the phenomenology of the lived experiences (things are caught as the original manifestation of reality in the conscience) with the premise of the eidetic reduction (the common judgement is suspended so that the phenomenon may emerge in its genuine, essential data, but in the reduction of the conscience and of the experience to the pure conscience: the experiences of the individual conscience are reduced to the universal and necessary essence),  carry a mixture that is absolute, deprived of the Thomistic ironies. Do we not find here the functioning of the mind of John Paul II? (I have personally met the Pope only in a seminary, just on phenomenology and Thomism, within the world congress of Thomistic studies in 1974; the thing was for me symptomatic when he was successively elected Pope).

We should analyse also the present conscience when it is repeated that we are a "minority";  We use a word of pure descriptive, quantitative  and sociological carat, while in the Scriptures ( and this is not Biblicism  but wise intelligence and theological dimension) the word used is "diaspora", dissemination. Here, that ecclesial need of the mission is present which is absent in the previous term. It is about the mustard seed that decays to become a nest. It is not the pre-figuration of triumphalism , but only the need of authenticity, of an ecclesial justice, to see a Church according to a project of God. The real credibility is to be found here (we find it interesting the reflection-published in Il Regno,  on this theme in the experience of failure of the Berlin Church).

 What about the substantial validity, rather than the emotional valence,  that we find in the word "experience", if evangelically and anthropologically understood? Even in the Church there is a form of emotional illiteracy  (I take the formula from U. Galimberti), which manifests itself in not lived and enjoyed emotions.

Moreover, the passion for an imminent efficiency leads the Church to elude her eschatological structure of glory and patience, which is not alienating because it links her strictly and peremptorily with history. We do not realise that the insistence on the Last Judgement- besides being a sign of an impoverishing  of faith and theology, can substitute (with a tone of intimidation, of retaliation and of self-insurance) the eschatological dimension of history: this imposes the  anticipation as a poor, but real sign of the fullness that will be given. In fact, the Church often feels a poor apocalyptic panting, in the bad sense of the term, a pre-figuration of history as catastrophe process, rather than a breathing of the eschatological fullness, of the consolation and the hope (this is the secret of the Biblical apocalypse , which is eschatological) and like an attitude of demonising   the different, instead of a compassionate sight and of creativity with which to look at the human journey. This is not the agony of a dying man, but the travail of child delivery, as Jesus and Paul say (Ro 8).

Conclusion

These are a few notes, which point out parts of a picture in which we place the flourishing of consecrated life and monastic experience. In this fruit of God, a pathological veining emerges, corresponding to the general ecclesial situation

On one side there is no wonder: the human finitude is always linked with the project of God, for which nobody can expect a spiritual purism or a form of perfection that will be realised only at the eschatological phase of the kingdom. But we need a critical attention to be paid to the penitential dimension which is part of the essential structure of every Christian journey and for the "epektasis", the "extension-intention " (Phil 3,13-14) that takes the community  and every person in the perspective and in the history of God. We have lingered on the problem of the subjectivity because it is anyhow central; the "I" finds true realisation, if it finds confirmation and truth in the power of grace. This allows him to say the more divine than human formula "I am". Alone we are flesh ( and we understand the sadness of desperation from the quoted book by G. Steiner) and only in communion with the "I am" of God we have the truth (this appears clearly in Jo 6 and Jo 17), and consequently the historical veracity.

As already said, here we have wanted to offer just a few hints of critical reflection, aimed at seeing that the positive fruit of the Spirit of God in the Church and in the world today, may live in as authentic as possible forms,  for the good of the one who reads and of those who feel more and more urged to deepen their faith with science and conscience.

* A monk, lecturer of dogmatic and spiritual theology.