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The
religious life is often qualified as gift, grace, charism, state of
life, consecration, but very rarely as a resource. Perhaps this happens
to avoid falling back to the bad habit of measuring its efficacy
starting from the practical service that it can assume or, perhaps
because of a lazy prejudice that places it among things of the past no
longer capable of life and service. The connotation of resource is,
anyhow, coherent with the committed statement of Consecrated Life::
«The Consecrated Life is in the very heart of the Church as a decisive
element for her mission, because it expresses the intimate nature of the
Christian vocation and the tension of the whole Church Bride towards
union with the unique Bridegroom. In the synod, more than once it was
stated, that the consecrated Life has not only carried on in the past a
role of help and support for the Church, but that it is a precious and
necessary gift also today and for the future of God’s people, because it
belongs intimately to her life, holiness and mission” (VC 3).
To
enter the specific theme that has been given to me, I shall try to show
the underground currents, which are not wholly perceived, using an
indirect course. I shall proceed in a circular and ascension form,
starting from some peripherals and far off elements, I shall
progressively enter the direct experience of consecrated life, to catch
from its heart the possibilities and the tasks of its ecclesial
service. For a proper discernment I wish to avoid some dangers: The
danger of getting drowned into our tiny difficulties, of transforming
our contradictions into an epochal and definitive judgement. The danger
of interiorising an inadequate and insufficient scheme: the
identification of a decline with infidelity. A charism can historically
get exhausted (it has happened many times) without being caused by
corruption and fault. There has never been so much Gospel in some
congregations as before the spiritual trial of one’s own death. Finally,
the danger of historical simplification that entrusts the heritage of
the entire consecrated life to the new forms of common life. This is not
an act of honesty, but of laziness. Church history teaches us that the
new forms, to be accepted and valued as fruit of the Spirit, are
composed with the most traditional experiences and with the most tried
charisma.
Solidarity of the Benedictines with the Burmese monks
I
would start from afar, rather from very far: from the extreme East.
Between the months of August and October 2007, the media brought home
the suggestive and grave images of the manifestations that the Buddhist
monks of Myanmar (Burma) accomplished along the city streets and the
streets of the capital, Rangoon. The information and testimonies have
explained to us the immediate reasons of the protest (the sudden rise of
prices for goods of primary necessity), but also the deepest questions
of pacification and respect as content of the well orderly processions ,
which were unluckily overthrown by the police violence of the local
dictatorship. The upside down pots shown by the photos evidently say
that the traditional request of food for the monks was suspended because
of the people’s hunger or, better, because of more radical and deeper
demands (from democracy to the spiritual food) voluntarily ignored by an
exercise of power without quality and consensus.
Out of
all the expressed acts of solidarity in that occasion, an unusual letter
from the Monks of France as support for the Burmese Monks was not paid
the deserved attention. In that letter, the monks and nuns of
Benedictine tradition, from France, expressed their “vivid emotion and
sympathy”. This is what they wrote, “Peace is our uniform, We do not
doubt that peace is shared by many more. We think that the search for
peace nurtures the best part of all peoples and of the entire humanity.
In this sense it is impossible for us not to see in the events, which
sign the life of your Country, the will to advance further along the
journey for peace. Thus we, unanimously deplore the violent repression
at work to eradicate the formidable movement that has developed within
the Burmese people desirous of more dignity and true freedom. To us,
there has been a huge wound to the rights of man that moves in the
opposite sense of every authentic effort for a lasting peace”. Signed by
Don Philippe Piron, abbot of Sainte-Anne de Kergonan, on behalf of the
Monastic Conference in France (CMF), the letter is, as I know, the first
public and formal manifestation of institutional solidarity after
decenniums of personal reports of study and attendance, which the
monastic and religious world cultivates towards the expressions of
monasticism of the Eastern regions. crossing the religions and resounded
in some reports of the international congress for Catholic Religious in
1993, as preparation for the Synod on Consecrated Life, which would be
celebrated the successive year. It was not at all the matter of ignoring
the specific Christological and ecclesiological identity of the Catholic
consecrated life, or the vain search for a minimum common multiple that
would constitute the common datus of the phenomenon, setting faiths
aside. Rather, it was the perception of a possible alliance between men
and women of different traditions concerning the spiritual demands of
the human heart. Cardinal T. Spidlik wrote: the monastic phenomenon is
“a universally human phenomenon. In all societies there are some persons
who consider the life-style of men among whom they live, not entirely
corresponding to the dignity of the human being, seen that their
existence is externally and internally disturbed. Here is the birthplace
of the desire of finding a different harmony with the world, with God,
with others and with oneself” (T. Splidlik-M.
Tenace-R. Cemus,
Il
monachesimo secondo la tradizione dell’Oriente cristiano,
Lipa, Roma 2007,
286).
Along
the Burmese city streets a phenomenon went on that was perceived as
strange in our shores : a religious and spiritual class interpreted the
most radical human questions of the people, as the Burmese monks had
done in 1988 and as it had happened to the Philippine Catholics in
1986, as well as in Timor in 2002 and in Sri Lanka, South Vietnam,
Indonesia and Tibet, in which on the last days there were disorders and
violence around the monastery in coincidence with the 49th
anniversary of the rebellion against the Chinese dominion. It was a
wave-length that the Western consecrated and monastic life perceived as
synchronic and sharable.
A flourishing of communities in the churches of the Reform
A
second passage allows us to enter the Christian tradition, but in the
tradition that is more far away from the practice and evaluation of
consecrated life: the protestant tradition. In April of last year
(2007), a surprising document of evaluation came out, full of
appreciation for the experiences of communitarian life in the protestant
context. The German Evangelical churches (EKD) shared a vote of the
Council on “Community and society of spiritual life in the German
Evangelical Church”. We remember that the reason of the very hard
opposition of the Reform of monasteries and convents was due not to the
fact in itself, but to the correlated behaviours and principles: the
over-dimension of the papal role was seen as an impediment against the
growth of the local churches and the elevation of the state of
perfection of the religious prevented the development of spirituality
linked with the family factor, with work and the civil commitment. In
spite of this, from the very start of the Reform there was a surprising
resistance of some communities against the imperative of dispersion,
and one of the first reformers, Martin Bucero, founded a community of
common life in 1546. The pietistic wave of the ‘600 and ‘700 nurtured a
residual, but resisting question of common life until the explosion of
the deacons’ experience during the great changes of the industrial
revolution of the eight hundred. Parallel to our social doctrine,
numerous forms of common life were born in Germany, at the service of
the needy and the class of workers. After the first and the second world
wars of ‘900 there were more waves of interest for the consecrated
life. It suffices to remember the Bruderhaus of Bonhoeffer and the
community of Taizé.
Today the communities and the societies of active spiritual life in the
Lutheran Churches and German reformed churches are 234:56; they are
communities with the vow of a stable common life, 33 of them are
fraternities of various type with the simultaneous presence of males and
females, 28 are communities of families, 105 are fraternities of the
charitable tradition, 12 are ecumenical. From 1978 a conference of the
evangelical communities is in action and the meetings of the society of
spiritual life are going on since 2003.
These numbers surprise all those who think that religious life does not
exist in those shores; anyhow, they are very much reduced numbers if
compared to our tradition and to the Orthodox tradition. The importance
of this presence is significantly valued in co-relation with an
important critical passage of the German evangelical churches. In
January 2007, the representatives of the regional churches gathered in
Wittenberg with the aim of approving some orientation for the future of
the churches. Missionary activities, identity and institutional renewal
gave origin to the proposal of some important reforms during the
following decenniums, such as the reduction of regional churches from 23
to 12, the contraction of the pastors from 21.000 to 13.000; the
strengthening of the non territorial communities of faithful (the
church of the youths or those of passing citizens) the reduction and
specialisation of the many charitable activities. During this decennium,
the evangelical churches have lost 3,4 million of faithful (measured
with the specific tax for the church in action in Germany) and they
foresee a fall, in the near future, from 25 to 17 million of faithful,
because of the joint action of secularisation, less births and the aging
of the population. All this is translated into a drastic
re-dimensioning of the financial collection: it is foreseen a fall from
4 to 2 million euro per year.
All this has pushed the protestant communities (which are still the
beating heart and theologically the most consistent of the entire
Protestantism, though the neo-protestants of the recent American
tradition are growing strongly). It is just as if the appeal to the
Gospel profile of one’s future crossed unavoidably the dimension of the
testimony of common life. The text we starting from proclaims, “The
communities and societies of the spiritual life of Protestant tradition
are a specific figure of evangelical spirituality …. a treasure of the
evangelical Churches to be nurtured and stabilised”.
Re-launching of the Orthodox monastic life
The
third passage is on the side of the Orthodox monastic life. There is a
singular re-launching, partly due to the fall of the communist regime,
partly due to a growing attention paid to spirituality. The phenomenon
of the sacred mount of Athos, an extra-ordinary concentration of
monastic life by Ortodox tradition, today knows a renewed centrality. At
the beginning of the past century, the population of the Athos amounted
to more than 4.700 monks. After the Russian revolution, that cut off
every alimentation from that country, and after the civil war, which
devastated Greece at the end of the second world war, the number of the
monks fell reaching, in 1971, the minimum number of 1.100 presences. In
that event, some voices set seriously the question of the survival of
the Athos, thinking that monasticism did no longer respond to the
situation of the Church. In the half of ’70, the government of the
colonels thought of a tourist development of the area, but the emergence
of relevant figures, just in those years, such as Father Iosiph the
Hesichast, Father Ephraim of Katounakia and Father Paisios, caused a
slow but constant inversion of tendency. The monk-citizens and learned
people, who were formed in a demanding spiritual school, substituted
the farmers-monks, By the end of ’70 there were 200 new entrances, which
became 700 in half the ’90. Today the monks are more than 1.700 of much
younger average age. In spite of unsolved problems (like the patriarchal
excommunication of the Esphigmenou, the shared anti-ecumenical position,
the corrosive force of tourism), the Athos has come back to be a pole
of reference for the entire Orthodoxy, even for the Russian one that has
decided of favouring the presence of Russian monks, by allowing the “go
ahead” of a specific foundation (in agreement with the political power)
to sustain them economically.
The
expansion of the monastic phenomenon in the territory of the Russian
Patriarchate is more comprehensible and more evident. Speaking to his
priests in December 2007, Patriarch Alexis mentioned 732 monasteries
(four years ago they were 650), equally divided among
males
and females with more than 10.000 presences. In a previous and organic
report of 2004, he rejoiced at the enormous development of the monastic
life, while indicating the most serious challenges: the constructive and
financial emergence on one side and the formation and spiritual
dimension on the other. “In some monasteries there are hermitages (skit),
where the ascetical monks from early in the morning until late at
night are busy with the care of domestic animals, pastures, orchard and
more occupations of domestic kind. It is clear that the initial
destination of the hermitage, as a place of caring for the soul and
attentive efforts of prayer, goes lost in this case.
(See:
Regno-documenti
1/2007, 50).
This
is why the entrance applications are to be supervised and the
accompaniment must be such as to take into consideration the present
challenges. According to the Synodal disposition, the decisive figure
of the starec (spiritual father) is, “The spiritual fathers, who are
entrusted with the task of accompanying the brothers, are monks and nuns
who have progressed in their spiritual life and are familiar with the
Word of God, with the works and rules of the holy fathers and are
capable to guide the spiritual life” (ibidem)
52).
Less than half of today’s monasteries has a figure of this type. A
renewal of internal discipline and the right position before the
hierarchy can be born only from a spiritual deepening and from the
liturgical and sacramental practice. We must keep in mind that the
monastic authority is often more recognised than that of the local
Bishop
Cyril
of Smolensk, metropolitan and responsible person of the department for
the external ecclesiastical relations of the Patriarchate, has
underlined another important tension: the tension that in our languages
can be indicated as monastic life and active life. Having the
contra-position of these two exigencies been considered not valid, he
tends to value the academic, wise and spiritual life, above all for the
monks who are going to be Bishops and responsible of ecclesial
functions. He indicates in the metropolitan Nikodim, who died in 1978,
a reference for this “school of wise monks”.
Religious life in the Catholic milieu
After
this rapid excursion through the territories of non-Catholic and
non-Christian common life, we enter the Catholic milieu. However, before
facing directly the ecclesial services of consecrated life, I shall
mention some experiences that are found towards the future of the
religious experience..
The
first one concerns a theme very much treated in these latest years by
chapters and organisations of the religious: the link with the laity.
Last October 1500 adherents to spiritual families, who nurture
themselves with the charisma of religious orders and congregations, met
in Lourdes. Behind them there are almost 35.000 persons who participate
in different ways in a spiritual journey of the same type. A French
bishop confirmed the amplitude of the phenomenon: while many are looking
at the new communities (of which we shall speak later), few notice the
emergence of this church milieu. “At first I opposed it. It looked like
an escape from the direct lay responsibility. The new communities also
have revealed themselves not to be apt to nurture the elementary and
strong contact of faith which is typical of the parishes. I felt that
also this phenomenon linked to the religious was more dependent on
emotions than on missionary tasks. However, I have been compelled to
change my mind. They are often the most active persons in parishes, more
available for diocesan services, more generous also in the civil ones,
which of course require more formation, but within areas already amply
experienced and verified by tradition.
Thus,
a world that felt to be in strong contraction and scarcely fruitful,
like that of the religious (330 congregations, 40.000 religious, 5000
communities) has seen around itself the flourishing of unexpected
applications requesting a spiritual sharing . Though present in the
traditional common life (third orders and similar ones) beyond 80% of
lay groups were born after the ’70, out of which 50% after 1995. These
groups have gone on growing at first with reference to individual
religious or particular communities, then they have recognised
themselves as “spiritual families”, thanks to the work of discernment
made within the chapter of the religious life. They seek elements
characterising their own ecclesial and spiritual sensitivity, a special
way of praying, inspiring Biblical texts, well rooted in charisma proved
by the history of the church.
The
second one is not an experience, but a research realised in 2006 by the
Georgetown
University of Washington among 259 new emerging communities of
consecrated life and lay movements of communitarian character in the
United States. A more attentive skimming has found that the new
communities are 165, divided into 88 dioceses and into 40 states of the
Union. The great majority of the emerging forms is made up of women
religious communities in conventional sense, namely of groups that
intend to follow the traditional models of religious life, including the
profession of vows and community life. There are also mixed forms (with
or without vows; males and females), diversified belongings, co-presence
of families. It is felt that the search of a definitive statute has not
yet been concluded for a given number of these communities. Most of
them are public or private associations of faithful. There are also: one
sixth of specific religious institutes, 2 secular institutes and 3
societies of apostolic life.
The
most frequently evocated spiritualities as poles of reference are those
of the Franciscans, of the Carmelites and the Benedictines. The
Salesian, Dominican, Jesuit, Augustinian spirituality follow. One third
of the communities does not identify with no one of the traditional
spiritualities, stating that they have a new vision or spiritual centre.
The devout and traditional traits (Marian devotion, reference to the
Pope, direct evangelisation) are combined with new attentions (poverty
as life-style and ministry area). The evangelising and missionary task
is linked to prayer, retreats, people’s mission and catechesis, more
than to theological researches. More than two thirds share the common
life.
About
a previous relevance, almost 60 communities have disappeared, while 68
are developing, and some twenty of them have been added. The situations
are different also from the vocational view-point. Only the monastic
experiences are without problems of new entrances, while the others have
them, though in different number. While the traditional communities fall
in number, the new ones keep on growing, though in a diversified form
and in a way that cannot be compared with the development of the XIX
century Institutes.
The new communities in Europe
I
mention the new communities from our European viewpoint in addition to
the new communities in the USA
The
new communities and the new foundations had their incubation in the 40s
and 50 (See: The essay by Giancarlo Rocca on
Informationes SCRIS,
no. 4, 2004; and no. 12/2007 of “Consacrazione
e Servizio”,
19-26) when the crisis of religious life began to appear in the West.
The expansion of the phenomenon of secularisation, the development of
the lay and conjugal spirituality and the renewed sense of the
evangelical radical reality are some of the starting conditions. We must
add to this Vatican II that reformulated the Ecclesial conscience
approving a legitimately tentative that were previously looked at with
suspicion and the social phenomena that, for instance, at the end of
the 60s, facilitated the rich-recognition of the most different
communitarian experiences. After 40-50 years the religious and
ecclesial continuity of many experiences appears more evident, while the
proximity with phenomena like the ’68, or similar one, was removed. .
The
number of foundations is uncertain; even more uncertain that of the
adherents. In general we can say that the new communities impose
themselves because of their number. In Italy, for instance, the
«Memores Domini» (common life proposed by some persons in the movement
of Communion and liberation ) are almost one thousand. The Focolari
(forming common life) are almost 1.500 (820 female, 650 male), some
French communities like «Chemin Neuf», «Emmanuel», «Beatitudes» and
«Fondation pour un monde nouveau» and the Spanish community “Adsis”.
None of the other communities reach the number of 100 members. However,
all together there are some hundreds of different communities and the
persons with vows or promises are some thousands. Let us think that the
most consistent religious congregations count almost 20.000 and that,
in the course of history the maximum limit was of 40.000 persons.
The
journey of the new foundations (on the side of religious congregations
as well as on that of the lay associations) is not yet without
understandable fatigue and demanding verifications. Knowing the many
complex passages crossed by our religious families, we should not be
surprised before moments of tension and experiential sufferings of the
new communities. I shall mention some cases.
Out of
the religious congregations, during these decenniums, that of the
“Legionaries of Christ” is the most relevant: 700 priests, 2500
seminarians in the pastoral activities of 18 countries, 1000
consecrated lay persons, 85.000 members of the
Regnum
Christi,
22 university centres, 158 school institutes, 340.000 voluntary people,
one pontifical university (Regina Apostolorum), one university (European
University), some colleges and an average consistent presence (the
Zenith, the monthly
Il
Timone
dell’Editrice A.R.T). However, there is also a grave censorship of the
founder (recently disappeared) from the Congregation of the doctrine of
faith. Or the “Congregation of St. John: almost 600 religious, 200 in
formation present in some 20 countries, under severe criticism from the
Bishop of reference (Monsignor S-guy of Autun) and an attentive
supervision from the Congregation for religious. Or the community of the
Beatitudes (1.500 brothers and sisters spread in 35 countries) called to
give its account due to accusations of past formation behaviours, not
sufficiently supervised and attentive. Or the French community of the
“Word of life” (some hundred adherents with 18 communities in France)
that had to leave behind its own five founders to face with clarity the
future challenges.
Which resources do we represent?
Which
resource is represented by the 945.210 religious active in the Church
(136.171 priests, 532 permanent deacons, 55.107 male religious, 753.400
female religious), 370.000 workers in Europe and 130.000 present in
Italia? What is today their possible ecclesial service? I am not
thinking of practical service, which my and your congregations know very
well. I think of the spiritual and pastoral dimensions that shape the
Christian testimony today. I shall identify four major axes of
reflections. The religious can serve in an original way the ecclesial
life in the order of sacraments of communion, of the common vocation to
holiness, in the search for today’s spirituality, in keeping alive in
the Church some decisive words of Vatican II (See:
Vie
religieuse, and vie consacrée aujourd’hui,
Documents episcopat, 5/2007).
The sacramental aspect of communion
Speaking of sacramental aspect of communion means going back to the role
that the term
“Sacrament “ had in Vatican II. In the international Congress of
Consecrated Life, Father. J. B. Libanio had the perspective of
sacramental type for the future of consecrated life.
«The
expression “Sacramental aspect of communion must be explained: At its
back there is the experience of the church in the Council of Vatican II.
The Church found herself before the famous dilemma: on one side the
ecclesiological tradition of the Council of Trent and that of Vatican I,
that strongly underlined the exterior elements of belonging to the
church; on the other side there was the tradition of the Reform that
insisted on the opposite pole…(…) the council found in the “sacramentum”
category a bridge between the two traditions, thus overcoming the
impasse (…). The fundamental problem of this model is that of asking
oneself questions on the sense, the meaning, the interior reality that
the rules, the norms, the signs, the symbols and the practices that the
consecrated life possessed. If they do not favour any personal, interior
and spiritual experience, they have no reason to exist. Equally, if the
interiority does not exteriorise in signs and practices, there is the
fear that religious life may become a mere arbitrary subjectivity. The
sacramental structure is converted into a criterion of discernment.
Consecrated life takes its distance from mere interiority, affirming the
incarnation of grace and avoiding Pharisee behaviours, legalism,
exteriority of religious rites without any interior correspondence” (J.
B. Libanio,
Passione per Cristo passione per l’umanità,
Paoline, Milan 2005, 164-165).
If the
church is a house and school of communion, consecrated life, in the
variety of its charisma, expresses some of her practical declinations, a
kind of sacramental figure of the mystery. In the document Starting
afresh from Christ we read,
«In
this journey of the entire church we expect the decisive contribution of
the consecrated life for her specific vocation to a life of communion
in love. In Vita Consecrata we read, “We ask the consecrated
persons to be experts of communion and to practise its spirituality, as
witnesses and artisans of that project of communion that is at the
summit of man’s history according to God” (no. 46). […]. The perspective
of the spirituality of communion is the spiritual climate of the church
at the beginning of the third millennium, an active and exemplary task
of consecrated life at all levels” (RdC 28 e 29).
This
means concretely a spiritual work on the communitarian life as the
privileged place of communion, and as a capacity of exemplarity and
dialogue with the other states of Christian life.
The
common life constitutes a place particularly susceptible to signify the
communion to which God calls the entire humanity. In fact, our
communities gather up persons who have not chosen one another, persons
that often have no affinity, but that have been convoked by the common
call of the Lord who leads them towards relations of fraternity in view
of the Kingdom. Faithfulness to this journey makes of the religious
speaking signs of the communion to which God calls all men and women. In
the variety of its forms “fraternal life in common” has always appeared
as a radical realisation of the common fraternal spirit that unites all
the Christians. The religious community makes visible the communion that
founds the Church and also a prophecy of the unity to which she tends as
final goal” (Fraternal life in community, 10).
The prophetic service of communion
The
present social and ecclesial context makes the prophetic service of
communion particularly urgent. The growing individualism and the ever
growing exposure of the single believer before the waves of agnosticism
arouse an increasing interest for the communitarian life, as shown by
the ecclesial movements and the foundations of new communities. However,
it is not the matter of external suggestion. A renewed demand of
community is always present in the internal experience of consecrated
life. After the Council, the apostolic communities also, or those
deputed to single activities, have re-discovered the constitutive
element of the community. In other words, the discernment and the
communitarian mandate are decisive to prevent the slipping of one’s own
activity and witness into diffused individualism. All the experience
concerning the “little communities” or the “integrated communities” or
the “mixed communities” (religious and lay persons), or the
inter-congregational communities are the variation of a common
conviction: the priority of a community as such over the many things and
tasks of the individual persons
The
capacity of the religious life to keep open the relation among different
generations is part of the sacramental service of communion (which does
not mean sacrificing the scarce young generations to the nursing service
of the many aged sisters and of reconciling the different nationalities
in the same community. The most famous Italian demographer, Massimo Livi
Bacci, to those who asked him question about the level of intolerance
for the presence of foreigners in society answered: there is no level;
look at the Vatican and see how it is full of foreigners and yet the
Vatican suffers no crisis. He could have said: look at the religious
communities, where there is no insoluble problem.
The
sacramental aspect of communion is valid also for the relations with the
other states of life; for the new communities and ecclesial movements.
The season of the opposition (more from the movements than from the
religious) is truly at our back. The movements and the new communitarian
forms can offer an example of evangelical and charismatic freshness, as
well a generous and creative impulse to evangelisation. It is beautiful
to see a certain clarity of vocation, the fervour in prayer, the time
dedicated to the community, love for the Church and the Virgin Mary.
Naturally movements and communities can learn from the religious life
the serene, faithful and charismatic witness, as well as the custody of
a rich spiritual patrimony and ecclesial experience.
The same prophecy of communion is valid also for the laity, which we
have mentioned speaking of the case in France; it is valid also in the
relations between the consecrated life and the ecclesial hierarchy. We
must recognise that in this area, at least for the Italian context, the
contentious attitude has practically disappeared: During these
decenniums I have counted some 80 decisions of the Italian Bishops on
the theme of the neo-catechumenal celebration, but not even a single
public letter of criticism against religious orders. Most of the many
tensions of the past are at our back. The accusation of a “parallel
magisterium” survives in some area of Latin America (more as slogans
than as reality), but it has never been in our shores. Now it is the
time for a wise intervention and a calibrated face to offer strength
and substance for the pastoral programmes of the local churches.
The common vocation to holiness
The
contribution of the religious is precious for the vocation of the
Christian people to holiness. The evangelical counsels are not the
property of the religious, “Every person re-generated in Christ is
called to live, with the force that flows from the gift of the Spirit,
chastity corresponding to one’s own state of life, obedience to God and
to the Church, a reasonable detachment from material goods, because all
are called to holiness, which consists in the perfection of charity.
Baptism does not imply in itself the call to celibacy or to virginity,
the renunciation to goods, the obedience to a superior, in the specific
form of the evangelical counsels (VC 30). The same apostolic exhortation
develops the quality of judgement that the practice of the vows
engrafts in the life of the world, in a hedonistic, materialistic and
not truthful context, the public pronunciation of the vow introduces a
powerful form of interrogation and of judgement of the culturally
understood and non discussed schemes. However, the theological root of
the vows is anchored with the Trinitarian life: “The reference of the
evangelical counsels to the holy and sanctifying Trinity reveals their
deepest sense. In fact, they are the expression of the love that the Son
nourishes for the Father in the unity with the Holy Spirit. By
practising them the consecrated person lives with particular intensity
the Trinitarian and Christological character that distinguishes the
Christian life” (VC 21).
Living
chastity, therefore, is not primarily a renunciation to matrimony, but
the efforts to love the other for what he is, after the example of the
divine persons. Living poverty is surely the refusal of possessing
goods, but above all it is the acceptance and the gift of self to the
other in the way of the Trinity. The same thing we can say of obedience.
It is not first of all a renunciation to one’s own will, but the
availability of listening to, for a love journey like the Trinitarian
proceeding. The vows are a proclamation of the Kingdom of God that sets
us free.
Research of sense and spirituality
The
sacramental aspect of religious life towards the demand of sense today
is, above all, the recognition of the demand itself. Spirituality is the
frontier of Christian testimony. The dissipation of the forms of life,
the difficult construction of personal identity, the crumbling of the
great narrations and the ideology of progress, of the associative and
cultural forces, suggest to recognise the centre of the believing
conscience and not the place where to start again speaking of the God
of Jesus, of the Gospel Abba. The Christian spirituality is not
the simple recognition of interiority, or emotion safe from the rational
or dogmatic rigour. It is not a specificity that cannot be narrated and
subjected to the ecclesial recognition. It is the experience of men and
women who believe progressively until they become personally believers,
in other words, until the history and image of Christ emerge. in their
lived experience. In other words, when the died and risen Christ leads
his own disciples to a life-style. Therefore, there is a fundamental and
essential common Christian spirituality. which is specifically that of
Baptism. It is only in reference to it that the various charisma of
foundation take sense and beauty.
It is
something deeply different not only from the pursue of the spirituality
of other religions and other contexts (from Buddhism to sciamanism, from
scientology to druidism, etc.), but also with regard to the vague and
never verified existences, which embody the holistic vision ( a complete
and forcefully harmonic reality) up to the ecologic theory: from the
androgenic form (form of indistinct sexuality) up to mysticism as
harmony of the body
It is
good to resist the “resignation side of today’s civil culture, which
withdraws from the responsibility of pointing at or only recognising the
models built up by a good life; and postpones indefinitively the
settling of existence around the stability of choices that must be
simply honoured: instead of continually being put under discussion” »
(P. Sequeri).
If
spirituality is the hinge of a future Christianity and of a liveable
Christian faith, it is clear that we cannot proceed along separated
itineraries: here there is the religious life, there the married people,
here the ordained ministry, there the lived one; here the formed
Christian, there the Dominical Christian. What is actually pursued is
the primacy of the Kingdom and the wisdom of life, the affirmation of
the truth of Jesus and the daily mediations apt to persuade us with his
bounty for everybody, the affirmation of freedom from the bonds of the
flesh and the seriousness with which one forms a family and welcomes the
children that come to life.
The
diversity of charisma is functional for the administration of the common
baptismal spirituality. Faithfulness to one’s own spirituality is the
service to answer the spread question of sense. “It is necessary to
adhere always more to Christ, centre of the consecrated life, and to
start vigorously a journey of conversion and renewal that, like the
first experiences of the apostles before and after the Resurrection, has
been a starting afresh from Christ, (…) To start again from Christ
means to proclaim that the consecrated life is a special following
of Christ, “a living memory of the existing and acting way of Jesus as
the Incarnate Word before the Father and the brothers”. This implies a
particular communion of love with him, who has become the centre of life
and the constant fountain of every initiative” (RdC 21 e 22).
In the
meeting of Benedict XVI with the executive council of superiors general
on 18th February 2008, the Pope called to mind, “Many times,
like my venerated predecessors, I also have wanted to repeat that
today’s men glimpse a strong religious and spiritual reminder, though
they are ready to listen to and to follow only those who witness
coherently their adhesion to Christ” (L’Osservatore
romano,
20th February, 2008).
The disappeared words of Vatican II
I am
going to close these reflections on the fundamental orientations, that
the religious can contribute to strengthen, with a hint on the
“disappeared words”, those points of the Council’s reference that,
after forty years, have seen the fading away of their fascination.
Poverty
Let us
start with the question of “poverty”. In 1962, in the Council, Cardinal
G. Lercaro suggested poverty to be the “unifying and vivifying principle
of the entire work of the Council: “Where shall we seek this vital
impulse, this soul, this fullness of the Spirit? Just in this: in an act
of supernatural docility of each of us and of the entire Council to the
indication that seems to be ever clearer and imperative: this is the
hour of the poor, of millions of poor persons; this is the hour of the
mystery of Christ, above all of the poor”.
In the document Fraternal life in community, after thirty years,
the journey fulfilled by the religious is summed up. The religious life
has asked itself seriously how to be at the disposal of the
evangelisation pauperibus”, but also how to be evangelised by the
poor, how to be able to let oneself be evangelised by the contact with
the world of the poor. In this great mobilisation, the religious have
chosen the programme of being wholly “for the poor”, “many, with the
poor”, “some, like the poor”. Fraternal
life in community, 63). At th end of the progress ideologies and the
political representation of the poor, their question has become
invisible and the Christian communities themselves have come to know the
fatigue of remaining in the altruistic dimension. As religious, we are
helped by our international dimension. From our solidarity with the poor
a new spirituality is born, which “accepts the purifications of faith
and the ascetical exigencies of evangelical abnegation, as consequence
of solidarity with the world of the poor. This new spirituality seems to
be the necessary condition to answer the cry of the poor and a mature
fruit of this answer” (C. Maccise,
Cento
temi di vita consacrata,
Dehoniane, Bologna 2007, 151).
Woman
The
second word is “woman”. Women are the great majority of the consecrated
life, but not always, Father Maccise notices that their identity and
their genius are recognised and appreciated, both in the monastic and
the apostolic life. “We cannot, surely, deny that, starting from Vatican
II, the consecrated women have started uttering their word of feminine
perspective in the field of theology of the consecrated life. (…). The
male theological reflection continues to dominate also in what concerns
the women religious life, especially the contemplative one, thus
depriving theology of rich viewpoints valid not only for the women
religious life, but also for the male one” (Ibidem,
364).
In a
recent interview, Sr. Enrica Rosanna, sub-secretary of the Congregation
for the Institutes of consecrated life, underlines, “I think that a
considerable journey has been made to place at par the male and the
female consecrated life, to free the women religious from the masculine
protection, to allow the feminine genius to express its own richness,
without sterile dangerous vindications. This does not mean that, in
practice, there is no more journey to be made” (L’Osservatore
Romano,
18-19th February, 2008).
I come
to the conclusion with a quotation, which I feel to be interesting and
provoking, a quotation from N. Hausman: «The moment women resemble men
in a better way and men resemble women, we may ask ourselves whether the
narcissistic homo-sexual and childish dynamisms of omnipotence,
necessary to steal from the other (I am speaking as a woman), might not
have invested the consecrated life in many aspects. Now, one of the most
difficult problems for tomorrow’s Church will not be te question of the
woman’s role, but of what has still been left to man to be oneself
according to the mind of God. To the end of being like man, the woman
imposes to man the way of being less man. On the other hand, because of
a certain affection in the contrary, he offers the woman to enter with
him the narcissistic world, where each person makes the other unfruitful
because of wanting to resemble each other. It pertains to the woman to
return man to himself by making of him a spouse and a father, just as it
pertains to the man to return the woman to herself in love and
maternity”.
Word
The
“Word” is the third decisive question. We cannot say that the Word has
disappeared from the ecclesial agenda. The proximity and practice of the
Scriptures connote many aspects of these post-council decenniums and
represent also one of its major characteristics. However, just in the
Lineamenta
of the
next synod, which will be dedicated to the Word of God, a certain
fatigue is denounced to widen the approach to the Word, “Despite many
insistences, we must say that many Christians do not have an effective
and personal contact with the Scriptures, and those who have it live
theological and methodological uncertainties because of communication.
(….) A robust, and credible promotion of the Word is becoming
indispensable”. (Regno-documenti,
9/2007, 271).
The
consecrated life has a relevant task in this matter, not only for the
widening interest of the Scriptures, but also for the trustable approach
that joins competence and devotion, communities and single persons
through the lectio divina. The religious life is a kind of
ecclesial hermeneutic of the acta et passa of Christ,
particularly in relation with the form of life that the religious have
chosen for themselves and that the Virgin Mother embraced. It is not the
fruit of an ecclesial claim, but of the task entrusted to the disciples,
the task of witnessing to the mystery of the Incarnate Christ. For this
reason the consecrated life is a living interpretation and a truly
spiritual reading of the words of the Lord contained in the Gospel.
Therefore, it is close to the origin of Jesus’ mystery, as well as to
the fulfilment of the Kingdom.
«The
consecrated life does not represent only a sort of spiritual reading of
the Scriptures, but also the most authentic interpretation, because it
testifies –as Ignatius of Loyola states at the end of the spiritual
Exercises- how love is to be revealed more with works than
with words. This means that the ecclesial tradition is capable to
inspire not only those who participate in it, but also the other states
of life, which it goes on confirming” (N. Hausman).
Signs of the time
The
fourth word is “signs of the times”. Even in this case it is not the
matter of removal. The peculiar characteristics of our generation and
contemporary time are spoken of in many ways and through different
media. Instead, what it seems to happen, if we compare the use of the
term at the beginning of the Council with that of today, is the singular
overturning of the frontiers. While at that time the expression meant
strongly also positive elements of the civil life and the historical
process, today the Church seems to have gone back (because of a long
trace in the ecclesiastical preaching of the previous centuries) to
denounce pertinently the negative phenomena without any adequate effort
to indicate also the positive ones. It was a worried and negative
approach in accordance with the “sad passions” connoting Zeit Geist, the
spirit of our days.
For
this reason it is useful for the Consecrated Life to shoulder, within
the council hermeneutic indicated by Benedict XVI as “Hermeneutic of the
reformation”, to indicate with the wisdom of the Gospel, today’s
positive signs; in other words, to make the same gesture as that of John
XXIII in the bull
Humanae salutis
with
which he announced the Vatican II on 25th December 1961.
II.
Going back to the last passage of the New Testament, in which the
exhortation appears explicit (Matthew 16, 4), the document proposes once
again the recommendation of knowing how to read one’s time,
individuating, out of the dark elements, the presence of not few
indications, which make us hope about the Church and humanity
In the
successive documents of the Council, we read many more coherent
recognitions with the invitation: the irreversible and growing sense of
solidarity among the people, the progress of the economic-social of the
working-class, the entering of women into the public life, the
independence of peoples, the charter of rights and constitutions, the
recourse to the negotiated to end the contrasts, the presence of
international organisms; some of these titles show straightway their
structure of promises not adequately kept, yet we are left with the task
of nurturing the gift of discernment on today’s history; of repeating
the gesture, in a time of proximity and prophecy, which has consented
the Church to renew “her youth like an eagle” (Psalm: 103,5).
Lorenzo Prezzi
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