Christianity, religious life in particular, has always been solicited, rather challenged, by contemporary history, by culture, by the thought which has crossed it along the centuries. This happens today also to us, religious, who have been called to witness to the Gospel in the present time. But, do we know the present enough as to give a credible and dialoguing witness to the issues it bears? We cannot help learning how to read the changes of the surrounding world, being aware of them, having an interpretation key  to confront them, to catch their challenge and to launch it back in our turn.

Perhaps we already have some awareness of today's changes: we are journeying and every vital situation we go through is for us a reaching and departing point. This can, somehow, help us to be open and hospitable towards the present, which visits, marks and transforms us. In fact, religious life is not a going out of the world and its history, rather it is a more intense and mature immersion into them; an immersion capable of welcoming all that is in the world and in history, including the inhospitable resistances which cross them. Religious life challenges this lack of hospitality by welcoming  them, because Christ is the God who embraces both the world and its history by entering them, by inhabiting  the seismic and lacerated zones of the world, of relations and human hearts.

The present reminds us that history is still and will always be furrowed by enmity and inhospitable attitudes,  but we, as religious, dare also believe that the Spirit, agitating breath of unforeseeable forms, knows how to overturn the tombstone side of events, to initiate us to journeys of a new feeling towards discovering, in the face of the other, a reflex of the divine Diversity, the burning bush of His unfathomable mystery. The God of history, of Jesus Christ crucified, is also the creative Energy of new inedited possibilities which rise up from the graves of our self-saving logic. This makes the surplus of his creative imagination and mercy to shine in the humble mundane condition.

Starting from these considerations, we can venture to confront the religious life with today's culture, society and history. However, in order to understand such a relation better and to draw valid indications from it, in view of a fruitful dialogue with the contemporary world, it is necessary to have a global sight, which extends through various epochs, and plucks meaningful elements, useful to face this challenging dialogue.

To start, we could say that the double side of the question conjugates with the two dimensions, which are as old as Christianity: the vigilance, which required an attention to the signs of time in which we live, and the testimony,  which always pushes us to witness to our faith and, somehow, to our own vocation within the unique faith.

Vigilance: the welcome challenge

To challenge someone we need to welcome the challenge represented by its presence, namely by his occupying a time and a space which are also ours. The religious are called, first of all, to be aware of this presence and to "watch" on that present which is inhabited by many existences, sensitivities and cultures. However, here we soon find a problem concerning Christianity, particularly Religious life. In fact, this comes from an old tradition marked by various changes, which must take into account epochal deviations, some of which are not yet metabolised.

Religious life, born in he patristic epoch, contributor of the development of the Medieval History, has had recently  to confront itself with the modern world, and has not yet reached a balanced situation. However, what is more disquieting is the fact that, while seeking a balance with modernity, there is the perspective of a new phase of history, rather a new epoch defined post-modern by many.  The watchful religious, thus, find themselves before the double challenge of modernity and post-modernity.

a)       The modern challenge: the newness without tradition. Before the Middle Age, understood as a

particularly successful epoch in the integration between faith and culture, many Christians and religious have perceived modernity as a particular fracture of such integration. Once overcome the times of contrapostition,  a more or less consistent part of the Church has attempted to face the challenge of modernity in a constructive way. A challenge  which the Church cannot avoid, if we think that the adjective modernus was used by the V century just to define the newness of Christianity, when compared to the Greek-Roman old world.

The Greek-Roman (pagan) culture was defined by the term antiquus because of its being pre- Christian with respect to that culture; the Christian faith represented, instead, modernity in the sense of being recent, of being actual: modernus, hodiernus. Christianity is marked by the "post" (post-antique, post-pagan) and by "today" (recent, actual, present). With the passing of centuries, however,  it finds itself in the need of not losing the bond with its own gospel and apostolic origins. The ever more marked tie with tradition leads Christianity to connote differently the terms "antique" and "modern", to the extent of inverting their evaluation: the Christian tradition becomes antique, old, and has a positive sense, while the modern is every newness which attacks the authority of the tradition.    In the medieval epoch any modern thing was seen with suspicion.

Christianity, born as modernity, ends to be re-qualified as antiquity, above all  when there is the insurgence of the more recent epoch (starting from XVII century) which we use to call "modern".  Thus, it happens that Christianity, which was born as the post-antique,  when the antique was pre-Christian, becomes the pre-modern, when the modern is qualified as post-Christian. We can say that there is a formal reason, according to which every cultural phenomenon, including Christianity, defends itself (or attacks) binding itself to the past or the present (old or modern), in which it acknowledges its own identity. However there is also a reason richer in containts. In Christianity, but not only in it, most attempts of renewals are, more or less, qualified as a return to the origins. In other terms, if the Church feels itself as a radical newness with respect to the Greek-Latin culture, the newness, which she lives within herself, is felt, more or less, as a return to the authentic "origins" of faith. This is what appears emblematically in the monastic history, where the repeated reminders of renewal coincide with that of the old law or of the primitive tradition: the change is valued as a "reform", namely as a newness in the tradition.

Just on this, the epoch which we define as modern has produced a different concept, which leads from the reform to the "revolution". The idea of newness, starting from the French revolution, is not qualified as a going back to the previous phases of history, but as a quitting of such past even in what was called tradition because of its normative value. In fact modernity brings newness without tradition. This is the challenge, which the modern poses to the consecrated people. There are obviously, many more aspects of the modern culture: for instance, let us think of how relevant the individual sphere and the subjective freedom are, as well as the objective rationality and the authority of science before any other authority. The consecrated life seems to have been making an account with some of these modern expressions, while we could already decree the others to be aged if not dead.

To me, the central question is given by the above-mentioned concept of renewal as a revolution, where the newness is not legitimated by going back to the sources, to the origin and the tradition. Though it is unthinkable for religious life, as well as for many more cultural phenomena, to exhibit  an identity which does not change at least some of its past characteristics, the exigency (the challenge)  remains of knowing how to integrate into it something which has never existed in the past.

b)      The post-modern challenge: the difference without foundation. - The foolish virgins run for

oil when it is already too late. The past time marks the coming of a new epoch in which the inexorable word of the God of history resounds: "I don't know you". Something similar may happen also to the religious, who, being sleeping in the night of tradition, have not been found ready at the coming of modernity, or who worry in pursuing the modern, without being aware of the new dawn, in which other colours shine, or emerge from dark zones.

Advancing amidst lights and shadows, the post-modern discusses some myths of modernity such as: the non discussed trust in reason, in the technical- scientific progress, in the enlightened dominion of man over nature. This critical attitude must not make us to forget that the post-modern is in line with the modern at least on one point: exactly on the critical attitude, understood as an overcoming the past, in the name of a newness which cannot be legitimated only in virtue of the past. We know that the entire humanity can be read according to this dynamics: a present which partly depends on the past,  and which partly gets emancipated from it. Modernity and post-modernity, however, seem to be aware of such a dynamics, including in its optic not only the reforms but also the revolutions.

Now, if we consider the characteristics of the post-modern, we can state that, beyond its complex dynamics, knotty points can be summed up in the insistence on the ecological problem, in the tolerant attitude and in the value attributed to the difference. Notwithstanding the many exceptions, a new sensitivity towards the natural area as well as towards social groups seems to be undeniable; a sensitivity decidedly contrary to the attitude which postulates the subordination of the area to the technical rationality  and the absorbing  of different societies into the unique Western model. In both cases the principle of "diversity" emerges: nature , as well as the different cultures, must be respected in their own alterity before the technical rationality and the western civilisation-

As it has already been observed, the difference is a word of order in the post-modern culture. Even old Christianity and the contemporary world have in themselves the sense of difference. In the area of experienced ecclesial life, in fact, several theoretical and practical expressions are admitted, even if within a unitary global vision and, above all, within the inalienable foundation of faith. Modernity seems equally sensitive to differences,  fostering also those excluded by the Christian culture, but it presupposes something universal, necessary and non-negotiable: the demonstrating rationality. Anyhow, the difference starts from the foundation.

The post-modernity takes a decisive step towards the abandonment of every universal and necessary reference. For instance, let us think of its relation with tradition.  With its scepticism, the post-modernism accepts the  tradition, at least the traditions, rather than refusing them boldly like modernism, yet by doing so, it makes all of them relative, thus promoting a radical newness in place of the concept according to which every tradition makes itself absolute. In this case, it is the very criterion of identity that changes: the post-modern self is thought of rather as a discontinuous entity, as an identity (or a series of identities) constantly moulded in a neutral time.

In so doing, truth itself is no longer formulated as unique, but understood as a single interpretation, a single formulation, possible with infinite other ones. The contemporary world is more and more marked by this pluralism, which often changes into an ideological void, into the absence of sense and orientation. There being no formulation capable of exhausting the truth, no great account to orient the existence in a foundation way, the thought results inevitably weak, namely, an infinite interpretative game never reaching a strong referent.

To a certain extent, the post-modern could be defined as the graveyard of great illusions. It decrees the death of God, of man, of community of subject and reason. In all this deaths we can record the disappearance of strong and founding identities: the identities which in the past were characterised by necessity and universality. Today, the interest turns towards the contingent, which appears in fluorescence of mass-media images.

Reality, in itself, is whatever is imaginable and, therefore, whatever is unreal. This becomes evident, above all, if we consider the slow, but relentless quitting of whatever is universal, of what characterises, through with very different models, both the antiquity (pagan and Christian) and the modernity. It is the value of the particular, of the singular that emerges today, the singular that cannot be subordinated to any absolute viewpoint, just because of its being universal. The difference among the parts (among individuals, societies and cultures) is so radical as never to admit a universal superior foundation: everything is difference without foundation.

The religious life, challenged by modernity with the newness without tradition, receives now from modernity the challenge of difference without foundation.

The testimony: the launched challenge

The received challenge is already, partly, a way of "challenging", since the confrontation is accepted by proposing one's own presence. The religious presence, taken globally, could be understood as a new configuration of the newness and of the difference: a new configuration which, to me, should assume the face of the exodus and surplus..

a)      The exodus as a religious cipher of newness. - Everything seems to derive from tradition in

Religious Life. The static sight of the monks in the stalls looks as the most radical negation of every change, of every newness, of every proposal which would transgress the fixed customs of the past. Everything is so heavy as to appear immovable. However, if we reflect a moment, this can be interpreted in a very different, almost opposite way. On one side, we can observe that the extreme static position of the monastic life constitutes a formidable challenge, rather, a real "newness", if compared with the high speed of fashion  and the frenetic commitments which characterise the modern society.

The newness of religious life would consist just in not running breathlessly after the newness! It would mean not to run at all or "to stay". But where does the religious stay? Where is the place of its staying?  It is undoubtedly correct to seek some differences in the things it does, or in the way it does it, but it could also create illusion and confusion.

The central question is in the way of living our time. Even here, however, illusions could be generated. We could feel a certain uneasiness both in a frenetic life and in a slowing one. In both cases, time is lived as an inexorable process which places us between the past and the future, the old and the new, the antique and the modern. Modernity has attempted to cut off the inexorable continuity of time and history by finding the newness without tradition  in work, commitment and transformation of the world. Yet, though very good, all this has not been enough. It has not succeeded and does not succeed to stop the inexorable flowing of time. We need something able to stop the logic of work itself. What is it? Prayer.

Prayer is the interruption of work, of office time. It is not another work, another "office", but the interruption of the logic of work and office. If we work during prayer, it means that we do not pray. Work can be interrupted in order to rest and to recreate oneself, but this extra-work interval has nothing to do with the sense of existence.

For the consecrated person, instead, the extra-work prayer is the sense of the existence, just because it is an extra-work interval, that is, because it perceives a centre which is different from te "I", from its capacity, realisation and time … from its tradition. Thus the consecrated person lives the newness without tradition, not because it quits its own tradition to assume the modern one, but because it suspends the logic of every tradition, namely, the primacy of man who weaves history. We could object that religious life has a tradition, but in the act of  extra-work prayer, he who prays abandons every root and every tradition. The primacy given by the consecrated person to prayer is the primacy of "an extra-work newness", which is truly a "newness without tradition". No doubt, prayer is a characteristic of the whole believing community. The consecrated limits itself to underline the importance for faith of what, in itself, belongs to every believer: prayer in its extra-work form. The exodus of the consecrated finds its place just in this underlining: the exit from the working logic of the "I" that weaves history and tradition towards the gratuitous logic of the decentred "I".  Evidently, prayer also is part of tradition, but the point is that, the moment in which prayer is made, it is "not" lived as tradition: one truly prays when he is not aware of being praying! Time is suspended. This is how the exodus is fulfilled, namely the passage from a time measured on the "I", to the immeasurable time of grace.

b)      The surplus as a religious cipher of the difference. - The most committing challenge comes,

perhaps, from the post-modern, since we do not find in it any more exceptions either towards the old or towards the new. Everything seems to get lost in the countless proposals, perspectives, traditions, cultures, without any stable reference. The differences tend to be respected in a judgement, which makes them equivalent: but it is just this equivalence which ends by losing every possibility of orientation, weakening the sense of things and making everything indifferent. Difference without foundation may lead to the denial of the difference, to indifference. The Christian who wants to be as open as possible to the world and to the various cultures of humanity, sometimes seems to be losing the indefeasible specificity of his faith. On the other side, he who insists on it, not seldom shows the face of an aggressor or a coloniser, unable to catch the reasons of different viewpoints.

In both cases, to me, there is an excessive concentration or attention to know and to explain the world, starting from the world itself (mundane introversion). As Christians, we are in the world, but not of the world. The incarnation of God leads us inevitably to pay attention to the world and to history. The risk is to understand this world in its ideological explanation, even of a Christian matrix.  Both pluralism and integralism can move along this ideological side, where the foundation is either too far and almost lost, or too close and almost possessed.

The consecrated life is not so much an alternative to the world, as an appeal to what I would call "mundane extraversion", where the entire world is assumed to tend towards what is beyond the world and, above all, beyond the ideologies which explain the world. Many times we have heard that the Christian looks at the world with the eyes of God. The religious, who is interested in the world, must empty himself of every will to dominate the world itself.  Religious life is not against the world, but suspends every interest of dominion on it. Just because he turns all his interest to God, the religious man accepts his human condition more deeply. Religious life is the world which, in its humble and weak condition, turns its eyes to God.

The "mundane extraversion", as we have called it, does not pass through an ideological system  made up of universal concepts, but through a concrete experience made up of individual encounters.  The religious encounters God in his "difference", turns to him in his singularity. The singular always exposes to the difference of the other, be it God or the human being. When the other is God, however, the difference is boundless, it goes beyond every boundary, it is an surplus.  It is this exceeding difference of God that founds the consecrated life,  gives sense to it and urges it to witness to the Gospel, which enables it to meet and to welcome every difference, just as Jesus did, he who in the surplus and in the difference of the Father acknowledged his own foundation.

The sense of the existence of the world does not consist in having understood. The sense of the world and of existence is the sense of belonging to somebody, even if we do not know anything about him. The foundation is not what is understood, but the incomprehensible mystery of God. The consecrated is one, who opens to the desire of this mystery and wants to witness to it. To desire somebody truly means asking to be given hospitality in his mystery. To be guests of this mystery in its utmost difference (totally the other) enables us, as consecrated, to host any difference. This is what we are called to be prepared for, today, if we want to witness to the Gospel.

Hospitality, between watchfulness and testimony

The value of testimony is proportioned to the capacity of watchfulness. As religious, we cannot help proposing our "challenge" without allowing ourselves to be challenged: we cannot propose a conversion, without converting ourselves. Only a spirit of faith, shared in dialogue, can help the disciples to discern what is to be abandoned and what is to be accepted. For the consecrated, everything is born from the sympathy for Christ, that is, from the involving pathos, which is realised in the listening. We speak of a listening within or without the walls of the convent or of the community. A listening which abolishes every dominion and consists in a life felt with others: it is the sympathy of listening.

This attitude of testimony is very close to another dimension of the consecrated life: the communion. Today, this calls us to be neighbours to the periphery, to discover the city of others, to enter the dialogue and relation with others, to exchange hospitality honouring each other. There are many diversities which daily knock at the door of our convents asking for an answer and a testimony. The first very actual evangelical hospitality is, to me, that of welcoming the diverse, the stranger, those whose thinking is different from ours.

To offer hospitality is among the useless things, just what we have to do as useless servants of the Gospel, concerning the contemporary world and the challenges it poses, so as to honour just whatever is useless, namely whatever is of use in itself.  It is up to us to catch today's value with all its complexity, but also with its beauty, just as Jesus did. In fact, hospitality is a Christological  attitude, a basic attitude manifested by Christ with regard to every diversity, an attitude which we, too,  can realise if we see Christ in the guest, even when he does not belong to our community, to our human and spiritual securities. In fact, the guest is a guest just because he is close to the house in which we live, just because he is hosted by us. Hospitality is an open house, not so much a building as an open "I". The openness is the cipher of hospitality, it is precisely the opposite of exclusion, refusal, discrimination. A discriminating openness would be a masquerade: the bad masque of being shut up. No doubt, physical limits are required for a hospitality understood as reception into an edifice; but there are no limits to a hospitality understood as capacity of encounter, even outside the edifice. Here we find a fundamental point: hospitality is like the door of a house: it is used both to enter and to go out. If the door is used only to enter the house becomes a prison. The religious is hospitable not only because he meet people who enter, but also because he meets them when he goes out. The two functions of the door, entry and exit, are decisive. In fact the exclusion of one of them, sooner or later, leads to the exclusion, at least psychological, of the other. A cloistered hospitality facilitates the enclosure more than the openness, that is, it promotes an inhospitable attitude, made up of discriminations and exclusions. The religious is hospitable if within or without the convent he meets any type of persons, catching the way of encountering the great divine Diversity in the differences of origin, sex, profession, vocation and religion. Any type of enclosure opposing this logic of diversity is specifically in-difference: a more or less explicit indifference towards men and, finally, towards God.

Hospitality puts religious life in a confrontation with itself and, first of all, with its own faith. Christ is the God who enters the world: he who goes out of it is not from God. Consecrated life is not an escape from the world, but rather a more intense and mature immersion into it: an immersion capable of hosting all that is in the world. The problem is that the world refuses itself, because there are divisions, prejudices, fights and discriminations. in it. There is always somebody who refuses the somebody else in the world. There is want of hospitality in today's world.

Religious life is called to give an evangelical witness and the reasons of its hope by challenging this want of hospitality, by challenging the world just in the act of welcoming it. The world does not welcome itself: this is the spirit that the religious life refuses. But the refusal of the inhospitable spirit of the world consists precisely in the hospitable welcoming of the world.  God created the world, but the enemy pushed the first human beings to refuse their state of human creatures in order to "become like God". We are made, instead, "to the image and similitude with God" just when we accept to be the human creatures made by the hands of God. God has made himself man, flesh, human creature to be accepted lovingly, so that there might be no deceit on this point.

We are made to the "image and similitude of God" not because we are "like" God, but because we are world: created beings. Thus, we are called to welcome as such ourselves and all others into the world which we share with them. This is both the divine and human mystery to be witnessed in our consecrated life. Just as for the Holy Trinity, so also for us the utmost communion with the world reveals te utmost difference. We are called to witness, today, this divine and human hospitality to the challenges of our time.