The religious life in the cultural change

 The international congress¹ is almost imminent. It has been promoted by the Union of Major Superiors on the theme: "Passion for Christ, passion for humanity".

L'instrumentum laboris written with the contribution of many institutes, analyses some problematic knots and leaves plenty of room for the research about a crucial interrogative which has already been resounding in the communities for several years: which life-style must be ours, so that we may be a prophetic presence today?

We are aware that the categories with which we have solved the community organisation and the formation have "failed". We are challenged by inedited problems. We need to pass on towards the cultural pluralism, the precariousness, a re-thought evangelisation in a context of indifference.

By reading again the history of the foundation of many Institutes, which came up by the end of the 800, we find that the primitive charismatic intuitions were rigorously set in a "monastic" vision with a marked accent on regular life, made up of  "piety practices".

Formation itself, with the exception of some peculiarities, followed a common scheme. Society was compact, with stable stratification, with a Christian religiosity, with shared popular expressions.

The Church contributed stability and refuge also from the social point of view..

These parameters do no longer exist since many years.

The multicultural and multi-religious society is a datus of fact. They have passed from atheism  or anti-clericalism to indifference  for the sacred; a subjective and individualistic  religiosity advances, with serious ethical consequences. In fact, when a reference to God disappears, every unwanted thing may happen.

Moreover, the State ha organised itself so as to absorb many tasks and functions which in the past were the prerogatives of the religious, thus causing the crisis of many works of mercy (hospitals, schools, orphanages).

Our communities have been compelled to re-think themselves. Rightly today they speak of re-foundation, because our time is called to express with totally new modalities the charism of consecrated life.

Beyond the stereotypes

"I cannot change. This is how I am … my formation is different".

These expressions are heard often. They are the alibi to remain quiet in the daily tran-tran, within  the niche that each one tends to build for oneself.

On the contrary we know that the time of formation at "a unique print" is over since long.

Many things, in reality, have changed from the post Council: there are new theological perspectives: the degree of the woman's literacy has gone up, the inter-cultural exchanges have multiplied themselves.

Today, our communities have a variegated composition: few young sisters, many elderly ones, with  mature persons who influence the choices considerably. Moreover, in many contexts, sisters of different nationalities and cultures are called to express the same charism and the same shared choices, starting from very distant mental schemes.

The difference is in the heart itself of the community: the age, the culture, the nationality, the work, the organisation of the time cause the daily crisis of the consecrated life hinged on time tables, practices and equal rhythms of life, formation courses and exigencies of standard qualifications.

The emerging question is disquieting: what does "the community" do with a group of persons? How to express a sense of belonging?

The research on this theme is very much urgent since the community life affirms itself as one of the  most fascinating indicators which attract today's youths when they find themselves before a vocational choice.

However, often it is an idealised community. It rewards the fear of solitude. It snatches us away from the fatigue of building within us dynamics of faith. It sublimates our sharing or reduces it to an ephemeral sentiment.

From the sheet music to symphony

The renewed Constitutions are our sheet music, written with love and creativity. Every Institute, after the wind gust of the Council, has committed itself to study the charism of foundation, to clean it from the inlays of time and to codify it, taking into account the new dialogue with the contemporary world.

But a very beautiful sheet music does not ensure a beautiful symphony.

The translation of our Rule into daily choices implies equipping ourselves to safeguard the watching of our heart, to nourish a boundless charity and forgiveness ….

"To pass from the  'I' on to the 'we' " - using an already known expression² - it is a never fully accomplished task. "The effort of building less formalistic, less authoritarian, more fraternal and participated communities is one of the most evident fruits of our renewal"³, which by now is already going ahead.

But the moment we linger with our reflection, we notice slowness, limits, obstacles which, at times, apply the brake to enthusiasm.  Let's call to mind some risks⁴ which our communities are exposed to.

-                     "If the consecrated life interprets itself in the perspective of self-realisation, it means that it has lost

the way of the Gospel.  The culture of self-realisation distorts the communitarian discernment: in fact it is taken not so much as a detachment  and purification to be in tune with the will of God, but as a strategy to impose a personal, often already taken, decision".

-    "If the consecrated life denies to be a visible sign of something, what sense does it have?". The invisibility and the will of normality are modifying radically customs, language, structures. How to recuperate the Gospel "visibility", though living "among" our people?

-   "Today the necessary professional preparation is often becoming a pretext against the availability for mission. We are missing the freshness of the Gospel availability to the end of being professionists.

But if the consecrated life can count only on the professionists of health, of education, of marginalisation, we must admit that something is wrong in it".

-  "A high dose of individualism has penetrated everywhere, an individualism which makes obedience almost impossible. The more we are not aware of it and the more it is serious. Before one's own rights, one's own project, before the realisation of one's personal vocation, there is nothing to be done …".

- "The type of community promoted by a liberal model of consecrated life is "a room for  tranquillity,  reciprocal respect, personal well-being, to feel at home without being disturbed. To succeed in this they foresee the value of homogeneous communities, formed by equals; if this is not possible, they resort to pluralism and to tolerance. The most important thing would be the lack of conflicts, of frictions, or a simple diversity of views."

-  "If the consecrated life does not form robust personalities, men and women of communion, who take care of one another (NMI, 43), it has no reason to exist, because the lived and witnessed communion is one of the elements that make them meaningful, luminous and evangelical".

The renewal journey of the consecrated life will have to conjugate in a serious way the personal and communitarian journeys,  the commitment to the Gospel citizenship with the belonging to God, in the awareness of the "evils" which pollute the world and the courageous denunciation on behalf of the Gospel, the care for fraternal relations and the openness to the great themes of humanity.

Identity, pluralism, intercultural reality are new words whose deep meaning is to be assumed, but they are, above all, terms to be conjugated with "old" words: charism, faith, charity, which demand the way of humility, of forgiveness, of prayer, of God's primacy in our life.

Different rhythms for the same melody

We know very well that music is a question of rhythm. And we know equally well that the communitarian symphony must bring to unity the rhythms of many persons. Little St. Placid⁵ knew how to solve with a smile the problem of the closed and opened windows. But today the problem is more complex: the time-tables of the meals do not coincide, the time-table of the work is different;  in the same community there are persons who work within and without the community, who depend on public entities; many groups have their activities after supper; the pastoral councils meet always in the evening. There are sisters who go to sleep when others are ready to get up.

This exemplification could continue.

There is the person who is punctual and the one who is always late. There is one who gets ready systematically the last moment and the other who arrives in anticipation. There is the one who worries and the one who does not mind even if the world collapses.

It's a question of rhythm. It is on this difference, written in the dna of the persons and of the communities, that we are to reflect whenever we are in search of a new life-style.

This is why I try to trace out some deep indispensable hints for future formation modalities. Considering the present time in which we are all in a continual formation; in a culture which requires a concentration on essential things⁶ to manage in the complexity,  the consecrated life also must deal with some attitudes which allow to combine the project of personal life with the testimony of communion.

We cannot hide ourselves behind the "different formations and cultures"; we rather had better to pick out common denominators, deep attitudes, guiding criteria around which to build the way of self-knowledge, self-identity, as persons who make the priority choice of God and mean to assume the "sign" of community life.

With this, we do not mean to have life, exigencies and persons homologated in an absolute manner. We rather wish to indicate some formative nuclei on which to reflect and which are to be declined in the various ages of life.

To learn an "open" identity. -  A "baby-I" perceives itself at the centre of everybody's interest. He can't bear to live at the margin. He always needs the first place. He likes to be the protagonist.

Only as we go on growing we learn that the world is complex, that we can't always be right, that there are different ways of thinking which are not wrong. The man with a sure identity does not fall into crisis if he has to turn around after taking a decision, if he is put with the minority, if he has to change role. He is an adult, one who has learned to reflect on life, who discovers the mystery of the other and the impossibility of making a catalogue of everything: thoughts and choices.

Learning that our judgements are relative is avoiding the danger of being too secure of our own knowledge and perceptions.

It is only by being aware of these dynamics  that the adult sister, living in the community, develops the attitude of working together with the other sisters, without pretending that only the projects which bear its signature are intelligent and creative.

"The adult I", the adult sister accepts the confrontation. She doesn't lose herself, neither is she confused when she has to change role. If she makes mistakes, she is ready to start again.

He knows how to deal with her own intimacy, with her deep choices, even when she doesn't find around herself the consent and the support she would like. she knows how to bear the fatigue and the experience of solitude just as she knows how to enjoy company, friendship, encounters.

He doesn't feel to be a victim, nor expects a pedestal. He knows that in every person there is a zone of shadow which co-exist with an equally certain richness and luminosity.

The security is "in the heart", in the deep reasons, in trust which gives to the eyes a capacity of understanding and reading beyond the invisible.

The journey of the "I" to maturity is long and is nourished not only with a "vigilant" observation on the motions of the heart, not only with human and psychological strategies which help to find a balance in the choices, but also with the spiritual discernment. This leads to verify before God the honesty of our own journey and helps to remove the masks built by our I to defend itself.

But woe to him who, to defend himself from others, lives in barricades the whole life. He would be destined to unhappiness.

We need to educate ourselves to give room unconditionally to the other within ourselves,

Learning the times of dialogue. - Speaking of the dialogue, Paul VI⁷ has mentioned four of its characteristics,  which require a special spiritual care: the clarity, the meekness, the trust and the prudence.

Today all of us expect the dialogue, much listening, but we forget, too often, that dialogue is built with patience, with time, by learning to understand and to recognise the persons. There isn't a unique recipe for all persons: there are people who understand soon, others who have an iron logic, those who forget and those who are disturbed by continuous repetitions …

The dialogue demand an attentive listening, not a procrastinating silence which prepares the successive answer.

Often we wish to accelerate the times and to reach fast the decisions we have in mind, forgetting that the rhythms of persons are different and that the process of reciprocal acceptance and understanding is slow. The frenzy  of community life has too keep into account the spaces and places of confrontation and research  about the themes of the common mission, favouring the knowledge of motivations, deepening the divergence of thought, overcoming the unavoidable conflicts.

Every person in the community is called to predispose itself to dialogue by minding deep attitudes, so that aggressive behaviour,  tiny resentments and  envy may not make their nest in the meanders of our sensitivity opposing obstacles to trust.

The opening of a meeting with an attack or offence makes dialogue difficult and the air impossible to be breathed. A respectful word, a conciliating tone of voice, the availability  to catch the "good", are the pre-suppositions for fruitful meetings in which the research of good and fraternal correction becomes possible

Learning the harmony. - When practised with discernment and constancy, the dialogue leads to find unpublished solutions and to smooth down  also the touchy aspects of our own character. After all, every civil convivial life is the fruit of mediations among different exigencies.

Assuming also faith during our personal maturation, we call "communion" the art of finding harmony beyond the differences.

In the nuovo millennio ineunte, John Paul II⁸ speaks of it in a very concrete way, overcoming the dichotomy between spiritual growth and human growth. To overcome the dissonance of our diversities, it is decisive to keep on training ourselves to reciprocal acceptance. To train ourselves to a positive thinking is an  exigency of our formation. It implies the avoidance of paying a maniac attention to rudeness, to transgressions, to differences. It demands the capacity of welcoming the motivations of the sisters, considering their interior resources and ignoring the rest.

Being aware of the communication dynamics that rule our interpersonal relationships, we know that problems have multiple solutions, that our hearts may be close even when our heads reason in different ways (Pope John).

Learning the diversity. - Our communities are more and more multi-cultural. The distance is bound, yes, to the cultures we come from (in the international communities), but it becomes more and more evident also the distance of mentality among young and less young persons, between those who have a vanguard experience and those who have  accomplished the same service always in the same place.

How to live poverty, how to understand the apostolic presence, how to face the problems of the youths, the dialogue with the world, the burning themes of the human rights, of ecology,  of respect for life; how to live sexuality and affectivity, but also work, sacrifice, prayer … The cultural distance in our communities are measured on these themes.

We do not have a unique answer valid for everything. Neither it is possible to impose a unique solution. It is not the question of having tactics to avoid the conflicts.

The diversity, which renders community life complex,  imposes to seek communion at deeper levels than in the past.

Today, we need to individuate clearly the few things that matter and to concentrate on the essential, which is surely traced by our Rule of life. The external behaviours, the verbal declaration are not the only criterion to evaluate our faithfulness.

The faithfulness is measured with the love in which we witness to the Gospel and we make ourselves "living word" of the Lord Jesus.

Learning the forgiveness. The experience of our personal limitations urges each of us to elaborate a strategy of the forgiveness. By learning to welcome and to forgive the zone of shadow in our being creatures, we must also learn to overcome attitudes of intransigence towards others, whom we would like to be to our own image and similitude. The will of fitting others into our way of thinking and of behaving is an ever present subtle temptation.

The nourishing of hostile feelings leads to unhappiness and to complexes of persecution so very difficult to be healed. Forgiveness is a truly good therapy and not just a gesture of faith. It helps to find serenity once again and to grow in humanity.

We can commit ourselves to heal the wounds of the heart, soothing them with the oil of tenderness and understanding, nourishing thoughts of meekness, uprooting the small rivalries  and revenges which remain always hidden.

There are sisters in anguish who after years still remember the suffered wrongdoings against them. They magnify them by keeping on repeating them, experiencing anger once again. They live a life full of resentments which make them acidic, deprive them of trust and enthusiasm,   make their prayer empty.

Just as there are sisters capable of raising their eyes after receiving an offence, ready to start again a patient and active dialogue. What is their secret? Besides their faithfulness to Mary, the capacity of not paying to much attention to their wounds, of downplaying  the situation, of using the forgiveness therapy which urges also to courageous steps.

He who nourishes violence finds it difficult to forgive. The meek knows how to weave his life afresh.

Learning the essential. - We have sometimes the illusion that by multiplying rules and regulations we facilitate the observance, the dialogue, the community consensus. On the contrary we see that the more rules are multiplied the more cases of exception increase. Especially today when the time-table is made at the rhythm of the elderly sisters and not at the rhythm of the small group that supports the apostolic work.

Learning to converge on the essential is, therefore, the fruit of discernment, called to combine flexibility and plurality with communion. But communion is to be sought around the apostolic mission more than around the time-tables.

The essential is always to be found in the depth, thus in every charism we are supposed to seek it with patience, so that the permanent gift and the prophecy of foundation may not be betrayed.

It is in the depth that we can find the difficult balance between the free personal choice and the community choice, through different ways.

The exigency of concentrating on the essential is dictated by the complexity in which we are immersed. The thousand rivulets of needs make us to run the risk of dispersion and of the run-up.

We know even too well the emergency pastoral and the thousands of fillings in we are exposed to, This urges us to educate ourselves to what is essential, to look at the whole of life.

An initial formation which emphasises the essential lets surely fall down many traditional customs, many precepts, but cannot hep crossing the exigencies of charity, the sobriety and the limitation of needs, the primacy of God acknowledge with the obedience of faith.

A constant formation that points at the essential helps to remove the inlays of the charism; to frees religious life from the "It has always been dome like this".

If the  only t thing hat matters is to affirm with our own life the priority of God, we are aware that within the furrow of a charism each of us is called to put our personal resources of intelligence and love and to seek the most direct path to the goal.

Conclusions

To speak of plurality ways in the unity of the charism and in the concrete experience of the community life is a complex talk. The psychological  and social dynamics  meet with the spiritual ones.

After all every consecrated person that wants to make of the community a place in which to grow, is called to face the risk, allowing the truest reasons of its vocation to surface and committing itself to become every day more mature, more aware, more a believer.

The themes that have been touched are just some hints of a more articulated reflection which may help us in our changes.

In the "dialogue of the Carmelites" there is a sentence which many years ago impressed me and which today I understand at a different depth. Mother says to Bianca della Force, "Remember: it is not the Rule that safeguards you. It is you that must safeguard the Rule".

The new life-style of our communities is within this capacity of "safeguarding" joyfully and lovingly the gift of the charism, making it fruitful and enriching it with the fantasy of charity which has been sown in  our heart.

We need only that grace may open our eyes to see the newness which is already germinating among us.