we believe that consecration (or even married life) once set out must remain unchangeable  and must  last all the days of our life; we believe that it has no more moments of re-thinking or transformation. Nothing is more unfounded than this.

If the state of life does not grow together with the growth of the person, such spiritual phenomena will be generated as they not only disturb one’s identity, but also damage human relations and infect the motivations. All of us more or less experience these phenomena –even several times- throughout our existence; often they are misunderstood and are almost never  appreciated in the light of personal growth; they are not linked among them in the most absolute way in the continuum of personal life.

The communities often “apply the brakes” to the personal growth”

All this becomes more frequently relevant in the world of women consecration than of men’s, due to some reasons: the feminine communities are more shut up from the external world –despite phones and televisions-; the female work is much less varied and the routine of house-work is much more binding; female conviviality is proved to be much more controlled and the acts of obedience (given or received) are much less discussed, less elastic and adhering to the dispositions of the persons concerned, not comprehending at all the creativity possessed by every woman.

 The spiritual structure itself of  women always implies a modality of peculiar objective relations, aiming at creating relations, at being interested in human problems, at nourishing a desire of personal participation, which is very much important for the feminine growth and which should never be stopped to prevent the “uprooting” of the woman from her specific interest in “maternity”. The woman is in the real danger of identifying herself with the obscure side of her being, the one that from Jung onward comes to be called animus; this danger very often includes syndromes of hard, defensive, detaching character with the desire of power, of prevarication over other frailer persons, identification with an attitude which can be said “male” and which causes the woman to suffer just when it detaches her and makes her thorny. ¹

I do not want to state that this is the way which almost all consecrated women walk along (who by profession have neither husband or children), but I want to say that this is a danger for all women, if they do not keep contact with their feminine dimension, which often presents the first issue of the interior needs to be oneself, to keep being oneself and to grow to maturation. In the different phases of life, the modality of feeling and perceiving oneself changes and at time it may become “dramatic”.

He who, like me, has been working for years with the other side of the medal, both in feminine and masculine way (namely with the unconscious part that manages the motivations and defensive behaviours), is strongly convinced of this. Often what appears outwardly does not correspond to all that is stored up within, but it is often a frame of appearance linked to the received formation (“I am as others have wanted me, but I am not the one that you see!...”)

Our perception of life varies with the different phases of life

Too many consecrated persons believe that the reaching post of their spiritual growth is that of having to please the superiors and, consequently, they attempt useless efforts to get rid of personal contents (even less affective, sexual and self-projection…). However, this is not possible and all their efforts are bound to fail. Unluckily the structure in which consecrated persons live and work does not take into consideration the “private” sector, where each person is strongly rooted, and the “personal space” in which one can grow and bring to fulfilment one’s own personality, despite the chronological age.

The famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav (1875-1961), in a too little known essay entitled “The phases of life”² states that each man has an interior programme to bring to fulfilment.  He lays it out in his youth (morning), carries it on to adult age (afternoon) and perfects it in the old age (evening). Without fulfilling his programme man cannot be satisfied. Herewith I want to quote some meaningful passages from this essay: 

«The conflict between the subjective premises and the external conditions is not necessarily always the only cause of problems; equally often these may come from intimate psychic difficulties, which exist also when everything seems to go on well outwardly. Very often the perturbation of the psychic balance is caused by sexuality and, perhaps equally often, by an inferiority complex that provokes an unbearable sensitivity. These interior conflicts may exist even when the external adaptation seems to have been reached without any difficulty…(…).

When we try to extract the common and essential things out of the almost inexhaustible multiple problems of the youth, we find a characteristic that seems to be common in all the problems at this phase (the youth): it is a more or less clear attachment to the degree of conscience proper of infancy; it is a resistance against the powers of destiny in and around us, powers that want to carry us into the world. The youth thinks that something of us should remain infantile, totally unconscious or, at least, we would like to be conscious only of the “I” and would repel, or at least submit to our will, whatever we feel to be stranger to the “I”; we would like to do nothing or to have the ability to realise our own desire or power…Resistance arises against the expansion of life, which is the essential character of this phase…”.³

Usually, the difficulties of life to not disturb the on-going programme in the various chronological moments, because the personal true motivations keep on changing gradually as needs compel us to change.

«The problem is solved by adapting the conditions of the past to the possibilities ad demands of the future. We limit ourselves to whatever can be reached; psychologically it is a renunciation to all other psychic possibilities. There are some who in this way lose a precious part of their past life, and some who, instead, lose a precious part of their future (…). The great problems of life can never be solved definitively; if it seems that they are sometimes solved, this is always to our damage. We would say that their meaning and scope are not in the solution, but in the activity that we indefatigably spend to solve them (…). The more we approach the midday of life, consolidating ourselves in our own personal orientation and social situation, and the more it seems that we discover the normal course of life, the ideals and principles of our conduct. Therefore, we presuppose certain eternal values and consider virtuous to remain always attached to them. However, we forget an essential thing: we can reach the social scope to the detriment of our entire personality. Much, too much of our life that could have been lived, remains perhaps in the store-room of dusty memories; often they are burning coals under grey ashes… The statistics prove that depressions keep on growing in men at forty. In women the psychological disturbances arise earlier….».⁴

According to the formulation of Jung, the big problems of life that cannot be solved once for ever definitively, and challenging all persons, are those of one’s own existence, linked to health, growth, learning (never ending studies), personal participation in a wanted project, self esteem and, above all, relations, which make us grow and feel well. On this line, one may keep on being happy even after the “midday” of life, in the afternoon and late in the evening of old age, provided the person has made the necessary passages.  

«Man would surely not reach his seventy or eighty years, if this duration of life did not correspond to the sense of his species. Thus, the afternoon of life must similarly have its meaning and scope, but can never be a poor appendix of the morning…. The man who thus drags the law of the morning beyond the first half of life, in the afternoon, consequently beyond its natural scope (to settle, to have children and to bring them up…), will suffer psychic damages, exactly like the youth, who wants to keep his infantile egoism in his adulthood, will have to pay his mistake with lack of social success.  […]. This is why all great religions promise a life to come as a goal to be reached, thus allowing mortal beings to tend towards an end in the second half of life, as well as in the first. (…). As doctor, I have observed that a life oriented to a goal is, generally, richer and more serious than an aimless life. I have also observed that it is preferable to go ahead according to the journey of time, than wanting to go back along its course. For the psychiatrist the aged man who does not want to renounce to life is as weak and sick as the youth unable to evolve.».⁵

Jung wrote these reflections on the running life for a public of specialists interested in the mental health of people imbued with anti-religious prejudices and reductive materialism, not for persons who had turned religion into a platform on which one could create solid supernatural motivations.  

The problem was felt a lot in the scientific world because some years later the great Italian-German philosopher-theologian, Romano Guardini (1885-1968), faced the same theme in the Christian optics and published a little known booklet, flown out of a series of conversations transmitted by the radio in Bavaria during those years. ⁶ The intention of the book was undoubtedly pedagogical, addressed to all who reach a certain age and face the problems of life. They are philosophical reflections, which set aside the academic psychology, but reach the same depth as the observations of Jung.

Here are two very beautiful quotations from the mentioned booklet:

«These phases, (the phases of life) are true forms of life which cannot be deduced from each other (…). Each phase has its own character, which can be accentuated so much as to make difficult, for those who live it, the passage to the successive phase. These difficulties can also get crystallised. In this case one remains in a phase when the said difficulties should have been exhausted to give way to a new one; let us think, for instance, of  some infantile man who should be adult because of his age, and yet keeps his affective attitude and childish character (…). Moreover, the forms of life build up valuable figures… (where) given values emerge which, marked by domineering notes, make up characteristic groups. They mark the possibilities and moral tasks of a determined phase of life.

It is always the same man who lives in all these phases. He is not the same biological individual, as the animal is, but does not cease to be the same person who knows himself and becomes responsible of his new phase of life (…). We can see clearly how here the dialectic of phases and the totality of life emerge. Each phase has something peculiar which does not allow itself to be deduced neither by the preceding nor by the successive phase. However, every phase is inserted in the totality and obtains its own sense only if the effects have their repercussions really on the totality of life. ⁷

[…] These phases all together form the totality of life, yet not in the sense that life is given by them; life is always present: at the beginning, at the end, every moment. It is the foundation of each phase and acts in such a way as each of them can be what each is. On the contrary, each phase exists for the totality and each other phase; by damaging a phase, we damage the totality and each single part (…). However, each phase constitutes a definitive form, has its own sense and cannot be substituted by any other.»⁸

The observations of both the Authors are true for all categories of persons, also for the consecrated ones, because the basic scheme is the human becoming, which nobody can set aside (not even the consecrated person).

Man needs to keep the condition of being able “to listen” to life, which belongs to him and resounds within him like an offered gift. Only like his we can feel the goal reached so far (even if only dreamt or visualised in a perspective manner) as a personal conquest. We should never try to go ahead at any cost with a situation which is no longer felt adequate and can no longer be suffered.

Trusting the «call»

Therefore, the starting point is of an extreme importance: in the consecrated life the starting point is given the Biblical name of “call”. In matrimony it is called with the (often abused) human word “falling in love” or “love matrimony”. For the consecrated persons the initial programme should always be linked to a “call” (sometimes also to the dynamic of “conversion”) which excludes other possibilities of entering life with various roles and casts down the basis a project of “personal asceticism”. These initial conditions should never be forgotten or long neglected; rather they must continue to be the platform on which joys, contingent difficulties and relational uneasiness can be confronted.  

Keeping the motivational conditions of the departing line is an ever functioning trick which allows us to fetch from the fundamental motivation on which life has been based, the “true” motivation. Only true motivations lead us to perseverance, as well as active participation, the effort of keeping disordered impulses under control, etc.; in other words, they allow us to spend our life for others, to use our energies for a common project. The motivations for the perseverance of a consecrated woman are analogous to those of a married woman and of a mother who manages work and family.  

The real woman, synthesis of evolving history and relation

The persons who reach the consecration (or matrimony) in their young years are synthesis points of a whole growth that, usually, takes place around two very important figures, that they will remember till the end of their life: the parents. Birth, growth of infant years, first schooling and relations are always to be framed in the picture of this growth, which starts and carries forward the development of the person, the so called personality. ⁹

The persons who knock at the door of a religious institute…arrive with their own history and the moment they ask to enter they carry with them a series of life experiences connected with history. They take with them different experiences, which somehow contributed to structure their person in a given way. These experiences are held together by a bodily scheme (male or female) and by a spiritual scheme, which together define and present the personality (…). Each person has, therefore its own times of growth because the biological rhythms and the expressive functions are linked, from the very beginning of existence, to the modality and satisfaction of the needs, which every person experiences with the motherly and fatherly figures. The gratification that the individual experiences, so to say, rules the rhythm of growth…¹⁰

In other words: persons are not all equal because not all of them have received the same gratifying modalities in the first years of their life. The management of the problems we meet in the course of our own existence are linked with these “archaic” modalities. This is why some react without anxiety to life circumstances, others become upset in the same circumstances and do not succeed in facing them.

The consecrated woman can surely rely always on her own motives of consecration (if there has been a “call” at the beginning), but she must also make an account with her “personal history”, of which, unluckily, the superiors and sisters know almost nothing. In fact, in the religious communities ( especially in communities of women religious) almost always the sisters “presume” that, having emitted the final vows, all the sisters have solved their interior conflicts in a standard manner and are no longer subjected to interior changes. Therefore, they must do whatever is to be done, namely whatever obedience imposes.

The personal history, instead, colours each activity we enterprise with an individual peculiarity: sometimes this colour becomes a true resource, but more often it is a considerable limitation contrasting with the assigned work and role.  Therefore, we should ask ourselves: When can the personal colour become a resource that leads one’s personality to its fullness, by offering clean resources in every circumstance? Again: When could it be a limitation clocking the growth and opposing the flowing of energies?

We cannot determine it a priori, but we need to catch it by reading the personal history of each one. A positive diagnostic criterion is the balance and joy that each reveals. The positive attitudes showing that the person is fine and can face the difficulties linked with the age,  growth and circumstances are: capacity of working, of sleeping, eating, digesting, taking a rest, good relations, interest for others, professional updating, participation in the community…

Vice versa, the frequent interior crisis and sadness are negative diagnostic criteria: their corresponding attitudes are the most varied and each community can see them daily. ¹¹

Building on true motivations

The statement that we need to build on “true” motivations may sound as theoretical to a profane person. The sense of the above statement is that of not being under the illusion that we can be satisfied and continue our spiritual development if the starting point is not truly authentic or if the growth is not oriented in the direction of its fulfilment. What would it be for a man the cost of adapting himself to a series of unhappy relations, which compel him to be what he is not, in search of something that cannot be reconciled with his own life-style? A constant effort (even if it is made with extreme good will) on an insistent and spurious motivation soon wears down the person and introduces dynamics of compensation or psychosomatic diseases.

The examples are numerous and we could choose tens and tens of them from our clinical experience. ¹² One cannot live in the state of consecrated life (which implies the vows of obedience, poverty and chastity) when one desires to live a “normal” life in communion with a man or with the bringing up of children (classical examples are given by the Nun of Monza, mentioned by Manzoni, and Sr. Angelica in the opera of Puccini). To build up on non-existing or spurious motivations means an upsetting of the whole growth, with the consequent living of an unhappy life. The “call” to consecrated life should never by itself lead to unhappiness: it should be felt as a gift from God to persons whom He loves, and on this love –received and returned- the motivations, which I have elsewhere called “supernatural”, are normally grafted. ».¹³

Building on true motivation can also demand sacrifice and renunciation, but if they are willingly faced for the love of God, according to the slogan  of St. Augustine, they, too, become love.

The ideal woman  as suggested by formative models

The formative models, which every Institute proposes to those who enter, are truly “ideal” (or if we so want “virtual”), that is, detached from the concrete person. They were elaborated according to the charism of the Founders, are explained in a radical way and are proposed as goals to be reached with efforts and constancy. Sometimes the charism of the Founder corresponds fully to the ideals and to the evangelical tolerance, but at other times it is “made radical” by the ascetic effort of the Founders themselves, too much bound to the historical situation of the time and not adequate (or no longer adequate) for the actual society.  

The ideal men or women cherished by the Constitutions do not exist: each man of the Institute incarnates somehow, as better as he can, and realises it in the course of his life according to the connotations of his own personality, conformed and measured after his own history, even if often it is very much modified by the generosity of corresponding to the grace of the call.

The translation of the religious models into the present time is intimated by Vatican II (Perfectae charitatis 8, 18, 20…) to all the Institutes, but it is not always realised satisfactorily, being it filtered by the “magisterium”  of every superior legitimately elected, and perhaps also because of the fear that the consecrated person –mainly if woman- may not be adequate to the “ideal” model of the Founders re-proposed by the Constitutions.

These themes touch the chapter on formation and are objects of contrasts and differences on behalf of superiors as well as of aged sisters (brothers) who turn the Rule into a shield or a battle trench.

A complicated journey always between the true and the ideal self

Every person who reaches a given age within a religious Institute has undoubtedly made an effort of perseverance, which the community hardly recognises. Often it does not recognise at all this ascetic effort, because it cannot even imagine it, or probably because it looks down on it, considering it as a normal thing, as something due…Sometimes the attitude of the community offends and saddens the person because in the external circumstances and in the indifference of those who do not know what the Institute did when it was active and young, it sees that its contribution goes on extinguishing. On the other side, the person suffers and gets depressed if it does not feel to be within the life flowing into its adult or sunset phase because of  not having completed its programme as yet”: The person feels that it has not adapted itself to the deep motivations related to the “call”  (as at the time of its youth: see: Hosea 2, 16-19); it feels that there is something more to be done, to be given and understood ; it feels that its present is disconnected from the past… All this belongs to the mystery of perseverance and of the spiritual growth.

I conclude with a beautiful warning from Guardini:

[A complete growth) also according to a sociological and cultural perspective, depends on the understanding of the importance an aging man assumes in the context of his total life; it depends on the overcoming of a dangerous infantilism for which man values only the young life; very much it depends also on the fact that the image he makes of existence contains the phase of old age as an element of value and that consequently the span of life  becomes complete, without limiting ourselves to a fragment, considering the remaining part as wastage. Thus he keeps on living biologically and becomes a burden for himself and for those around him. It follows that the community must give to the sisters or brothers advancing in age the possibility of growing old in the right way, because only this partly depends on them… ¹⁴

Notes

1.       This problematic has been studied enough in the psychotherapy approach of Jung. For your information, see the monograph of Jung’s wife: E. Jung, Animus e anima, Boringhieri, Torino 1992. Cf ancora: M. Valcareggi, L’aggressività femminile, Mondatori, Milano 2003.

2.       C. G. Jung, «Gli stadi della vita» (op. orig. 1930), in Opere complete, Boringhieri, Torino 1976, VIII, 410-432.

3.       Idem, 421-422.

4.       Idem, 423-424.

5.       Idem, 428-430.

6.       R. Guardini, Le età della vita (orig. 1957), Vita e pensiero, Milano 2004.

7.       Idem, 33-34.36.

8.       Idem, 82.

9.       I have recently developed these concepts more exhaustively in a volume that speaks a little of all the problems that a consecrated (and non) person may meet in life. See my: U. Fontana, Senza perdersi, professionalità nelle relazioni pastorali, Messaggero, Padova 2005.

10.   Idem, 1457-158.

11.   Some years ago I developed this theme in a lucky book (now out of print): U. Fontana, «Dinamiche di crisi nella vita consacrata: criteri per impostare una psicoterapia corretta», in Pina Del Core (a cura di), Difficoltà e crisi nella vita consacrata, Elledici, Torino 1996.

12.   This happens when persons join the consecrated life because of enthusiasm, frustration, compulsion, pushed by formators who guarantee their call to please their parents and for petty vengeance, etc. The casuistic that I have observed in the advisory centre of crisis with religious is over abundant. I have mentioned something in the above quoted book: Difficoltà e crisi nella vita consacrata (83-90 e 147-165).

13.   See the monograph that I have written on the centenary of Don Bosco’s death (as well as on my 50^th birthday): U. Fontana, Uomo e consacrato, Elledici, Torino 1988.

14. R. Guardini, Le età della vita (106)

Umberto Fontana
Istituto Salesiano S. Zeno
Via D. Minzoni, 50 – 37138 Verona