I read this acute remark by Peter Berger in his book Questions of faith. "The sleepy business man exists within what today we call the "reality of reference", namely the world of common daily life, whose parameters are well known and shared by the majority, if not by all contemporary men, in a way that it contains a few surprises" 1

Yes, really, few surprises exist within a society dominated by a rationalism, which, gradually has become a rusted container of the practical relativism. In a world based on calculation, the only winning card is that of the competitive market from West to East. The only yearned surprise is that of "sleep".

Isn't it the sleep of indifference to values crossed by dreams?  We dream economic security, success and careers, things, love consumable with hurried, immediate pleasure.

We sleep and dream.

However, questions arise when we suddenly wake up because of some trouble. Why has this failure happened to me? Why has this decease befallen on me, on my dear ones? Why do this delusion and this death of a dear person happen to me?

This is the appointment in which depression, desperation and a times even suicide take place.

It is true that in this drunkard condition of sleeping people, "camp-fires" of well awake and new people burn with love: lay communities very alive in faith. They kindle small fires of hope and active charity in answer to today's demands. Anyhow, the constant picture of socio-cultural panorama largely diffused today is a spiritual impoverishment revealing an ever more marked degradation.

New opportunities

With the courage that comes from the theological hope as a breath of our identity of women open to the world, yet in deep contact with the Mystery, we must say: this is our time.

Yes, it is time to live the femininity invaded and transfigured by God-Spouse as people deeply awake in the Spirit.

Within a big noise of a materialistic and consumerist type of culture, which is smashing to smithereens, it is He, yes it is the Spirit of the Lord that arouses in today's man the hunger and thirst of God, above all in a good number of youths. It arouses a great desire of renewing the family, politics, economy, the technological world and communications.

We are growing in the awareness that the evil of evils, today, is the egocentric living, which spurs to all kinds of selfish avidity, of possession-attachment, which soon become violence of every type within the single persons, the couple, the family and society.

However, what is the "ego" if not the superficial, inauthentic part of each of us? Is this not the external reality, which the ephemeral and inconsistency nourish?

See, here is the point. The big bet, which Jesus calls us to, is this:  to become what we are already because of Baptism and Religious Profession: light, salt, leaven.

For us personally, being well awake means, allowing the Spirit of the Lord to attract us from outward appearance into interiority. , from the "ego" to the "self" inhabited by God.

Too often, we, too, are pushed by the "spiral" of doing too much, an activism anxiously marked by a drafting of programmes, of projects (communitarian or else), of calculations and indications.  We do all this to enter the ways of efficiency, which soon slip into today's typical law of efficiency. On the contrary, the urgency of the pastoral activity is enlightened today by the

urgency of "an active faith”, otherwise it is nothing but fuss and chaff of wind.

Your Word is a light for my steps, Lord"

Therefore, it is a matter of coming out of the adrift of hurry, of doing too much and gaspingly or too little and in a narcissistic manner.

To have light and become ourselves light wherever we do our pastoral work, we need time for a deep, quiet and contemplative listening.

Faithfulness to communitarian prayer moments is not enough! Precise, personal choices are urgently needed, so that our interior life, nourished by the Word of God, may be light on the teachings of Jesus and become in us an evangelical way of thinking and acting.

It is no longer the time to arrange museums and to erect monuments in honour of our saints, but rather to fetch from the genuine spirit of their total self-giving to God and to brethren, in answer to their times.

Not even "to fetch" is enough, because we need "to translate that spirit" into today’s understandable languages, in answer to the exigencies crying everywhere.

In a world of "sleepy people", because saturated with material goods or desperate because of misery, the consecrated woman cannot remain in her little hole of quiet religious "perbenismo", in a niche targeted with devotional and cultural practices, or only repeatedly of assistance character.  If there is light within us, it radiates through smiles, words and gestures, because it is the light of God towards whom we turn our heart.

If it is not insipid, the salt burns also, but then it gives taste; it is the very first thing required to season our food. The salt is that wisdom of living, which moulds us in the light of the listened Word, of the Word prayed with living faith, hope and charity.

Isn't the leaven, the good leaven fermenting the mass, a femininity immersing its gifts of intuition, of tenderness, tolerance and opening to service in the heart of the Easter mystery?

I would like simply to remind you and me, sisters, of how to live concretely "awake" the strong metaphors of light, salt and leaven. I want to say something about the way of living so that, spiritually awake, we can awake many sleepy people around us; confused and sadly raving people in a sleep of death. Let us see how we could arouse a diffusive joy in us and in others.

First, we want to be light

I seek a space of time, of quiet of silence in my room, in the church or in the garden. However, I am convinced that this space-time is indispensable for me, just as indispensable for the sun is a sky free from dense clouds.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world", and I place myself within the space of His light, the light of His Word. His own sipped and absorbed Word slowly changes into prayer. I breathe and absorb His Word in the silence. A famous existentialist philosopher wrote, "In the present state of the world, the entire life is sick. If I were a physician and somebody asked me a medicine, I would answer to seek it in the silence, leading man to silence". 2

Silence is, therefore, a container of God's light (light of the Word, light of inspirations, light of discernment).

In the past, perhaps, they presented silence more as an ascetic practice, a discipline of the spirit, and it is this. However, it is much more than this: it is an initiation to the Mystery, a quiet furthering to the vision of light, of Jesus. It is to be persuaded that he and His teachings are the centre, the sense, the solid rock supporting my existence, a support of all my physic-psychic spiritual reality, my being regenerated and vivified.

To be salt

In his talk delivered at Subiaco on 1^st April 2005, shortly before his election as Pope, Benedict XVI said, "God can come back to stay among men only through men touched by Him".

After all, in an unforeseen way we find ourselves to live the situation of the first Christians. During the great Roman Empire, in an epoch of decadence, the first Christians could be Christian only through a mature faith, in which the "salt" of the evangelical concept of life could impose itself over the domineering sense of many divinities competing among them.

Even today it is a matter of promoting the credibility of the God of Jesus Christ with a tried mentality of faith. Salted with the salt of the "beatitudes" in a world in which nihilism is pervading and domineering, I, as consecrated to defend life and hope to prepare the way of love. In a homologated, conformist and materialistic world, as a consecrated person I live the salt of wisdom, which is, first, a true, invigorating and joyful humility.

This is why I do not assume the air of wanting to sit on a teaching chair or to impose judgements, counsels or moralising prescriptions. I want rather to sow something in tune with peace and to promote the growth of heart serenity, the desire of living in tune with what God wills, only because He loves us.

How important it is, therefore, to have the face of a saved person, a benevolent and easy smile, a word like those that St. Francis de Sales suggested to his first spiritual daughter, St. Francesca de Chantal, "Let your words be sober, suave, holy, discreet and pronounced in due time. 3.

To defend life, to arouse hope and to kindle a big fire of charity among the domineering egoism, we do not need a resounding "saying" or "doing". We need the simple presence of one who in first person believes, hopes and loves, because his own wisdom of life is a constant research of union with Jesus and His Gospel. The remaining things -even the new activities- follow in consequence.

To be leaven 

Just a pinch of leaven suffices to ferment the whole mass. A pinch of true femininity, imbued with the tenderness of God, (first of all his mercy), is enough to awaken an to favour the growth of life, peace and joy.

An aware femininity dripping with the living water of the Spirit rejects every attitude of power, to give space to the authoritativeness of the authentic woman who offers herself totally to her brothers, in order to belong to God.  Thus, her feminine optic of looking at today's problematic realities, at the discernment we must make, at the decisions we must take, completes and lovingly corrects the masculine optic and discernment.

The leaven of a femininity imbued with the Gospel that ferments the mass becomes flexibility against every form of rigidity, narrow-mindedness, sterile attachment to the past, fear of the newness and competitive tendency of conflicts.

Truly, the leaven of a feminine presence in love with Christ, the leaven of a person who lives the Gospel in the daily life, ferments the mass of a new humanity. Its specific aim is, indeed, that of "taking care", of understanding, of generating love with mercy and tenderness.

Conclusion

Joy is born in us constantly when we live more and more as awake persons towards the simple awareness of the Beloved who lives in us and with us, spurring us along today's paths. This joy grows when we believe that life around us awakens at the blow of the Spirit.

With our life, we contribute to the spreading of the Kingdom of God, of its great Love, through the men, women, aged and youths, whom we meet and contact in our daily life, lived outside stagnation and ill feelings.

If we seek only the Kingdom of God (and his justice), we not only experience joy, peace and love, but we shall see them awakening also people around us.

To be light, salt and light substantially in today's of our consecration is a "to be" more than a "to do". It is a living and communicating to people around us the conviction that "the more RL is demanding and the more beautiful it is; that though it is the most difficult thing, love seems a light and suave joke. Yes, love is something that, after all, despite the many resistances, we accomplish more willingly than any other thing" (Von Balthasar).