There is a Pauline text often quoted without considering its immediate context, with the dangerous result of a proclamation of faith in Christ without the praxis as a school of reconciliation, thanks to faith in the humiliated and exalted Christ. It is about the famous Christ-logical hymn inserted by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2,6-11.

All of us know it.  In the so far existing translation it starts like this, “Christ, who being in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are and being in every way like human being….” In the new translation, which we listen to this year on XXVI Sunday (28^th September), it does not rhythmically sound well, though it surely is more faithful to the original.

Anyhow this jewel is in the midst of an insisting exhortation for reciprocal welcoming, union of spirits, reciprocal service, starting from verse 2,1.

This is the beginning, “If in Christ there is anything that will move you, any incentive in love, any fellowship in the spirit, any warmth of sympathy…make my joy complete by being of a single mind, one in love….”. The icon of the humiliated and glorified servant is put in this perspective: to say that there is an ascending relation, in which the human effort towards the fullness of fraternity and of koinonia, that finds in Christ full realisation and transfiguration. At the same time there is a descending relation: from adhesion to Christ, humiliated and exalted servant, derives the paradigm that renews and transfigures all the human values, fermenting dynamically every implication, sowing impulses of generosity, service and disarming of the heart.

They cannot be like two sectors running parallel: the space of the ascetic effort, almost self-certified, within which we twist ourselves to bend will and affections in a charitable sense and reciprocal welcoming, and the space of faith, in which the icon of Chris emptied of all dignity and clothed with glory anew, shines up high for himself and related to our manner of living and communion only as graze. External iter and mystery entwine, condition and nourish  themselves  reciprocally, to transform the whole life, also in its concreteness, in a liturgy and confessio laudis of the primacy of Christ as paradigm and generating cause, but also as goal and as journey towards the goal.

The theological thickness of the reconciled community

The reconciled community is not the one that tries its best to live in harmony. This can be an aspect, but it is not the first aspect. The community is located in the grace of reconciliation, of reciprocal charity and acceptance just as a gift, because of ontological constitution and a free initiative of God, through His Son. It is constitutively moulded by the charity of Christ diffused in the hearts through the Spirit, re-created by the sacrifice that broke the walls of division and incommunicability, in order to form a new and united body; it is a “consecrated body” pervaded by reconciled diversities and tending towards the transformation of the entire cosmos  into love and service. This is what the affirmation of consecrated life means when it says that “fraternal communion is a theological space in which we can experience the mystical presence of the Risen Lord, before being instrument for a given mission” (VC 42). How can this happen? Many of us think that these expressions are nothing but generic  and romantic indications. It is not so: it is rather the logical consequence of the mysteries of salvation lived in the community, if they are truly lived in faith without simulations. In fact, the post-synod exhortation adds in the same paragraph, “This happens thanks to the reciprocal love of those who make up the community, a love nurtured by by the Word and the Eucharist, purified by the Sacrament of reconciliation, sustained by the imploration of unity, a special gift of the Spirit for those who put themselves at the obedient listening to the Gospel” (VC 42). The role of the Spirit is that of making the Word and the Eucharistic Banquet fruitful, as well as prayer and conversion, conviviality and charity, not in an individualistic and consolation manner, but in a transforming, freeing and healing way.   

The community life is not immune of frailty and human tensions, but if it is an aggregation generated by faith and theological charity (See PC 15), not by mean cunning ways of him who imposes to himself a forced conviviality without serene reciprocity, sooner or later “the power of reconciling grace” will appear, which knocks down desegregating dynamisms present in the heart of man and in the social relations” (VC 41).

Even the recent document of the Congregation for the Consecrated Life, The service of authority and obedience (= SAO), pronounces a similar language when it speaks of synergy between he who commands and he who accepts to be guided, because it is the matter of “two dimensions of the same evangelical reality, of the same Christian mystery; two ways of participating in the same oblation of Christ. Authority and obedience are personified in Jesus: this is why they must be understood in relation with Him and in real configuration with Him” (SAO 12).  

The problem is not in the conflicts, but in the way of managing them

Notwithstanding the efforts to mask tensions and conflicts, many communities show them all the same, perhaps in the illusion that they are not visible from outside. They are not aware of the fact that true testimony is not in denying the existence of diversities and tensions, but in the way of managing them, the way of going on recomposing unity in charity and loyalty, without forgetting justice and equity. This is because communion is not realised by us, but  is donated to us by the mercy of the Lord, by his grace diffused in our heart through the Spirit (Romans 5, 5): to deny this efficacy, which is there before any effort of ours, means to put ourselves in the place of grace that saves and heals. We are unable to save ourselves.

It we call to mind for an instant the “dissatisfaction” that was being diffused in the primitive Christian community, because of an apparent marginalisation of Hellenist widows (Acts 6, 1-6) and of the way that latent conflict was brought to light and solved with geniality, we understand how true it is that the focal point is the way of managing the conflicts. 1 Before this uneasiness, murmuring, nervousness, perhaps also anger and aggressiveness, the “twelve” do not seek a solution behind the side-wings, consulting just a few intimate and trustful collaborators, but convoke “the group of disciples”, that is, they expose the problem with loyalty and honesty: first of all starting by acknowledging their own errors, the incapacity of doing everything and perhaps also the manias of controlling everything.

They openly assume a collective fault (“it is not right”), before the people and the hierarchy  of the primary values. They ask the collaboration to share their multiple tasks with others: they ask names, according to some objective criteria valid for the community, rather than according to their own interests and tastes. The community, seriously involved, answers in a creative manner: it chooses seven persons with Greek names (thus Hellenist by origin), to assume the new “ministry” in full authority. What these “deacons” do with their personal initiative show that they act wit co-responsibility, not as subjects without autonomy: Stephen is a courageous witness and the first martyr (Acts 6, 8-7, 54), Philip is an itinerant preacher in Samaria on his way to Gaza (Acts 8, 5-40).

It could have become a deadly conflict that would have broken everything: it was, instead, a source of clarification of identity, of roles, but also the occasion for a more evident participation of other ethnic and cultural groups in the ecclesial responsibility. The conflict was managed in an intelligent manner, without fear of being ashamed and with a clear criterion of itinerary towards the solution, in full co-responsibility and trust. The “Twelve” could have felt threatened in their leadership, or think that the usual envious persons disturbed the peace of the community; things that often we observe today in many conflicts within our communities.  

The superiors who know how to overcome this instinctive defensive reaction are rare indeed: this is because they fear to lose power, to leave too much space for alternative proposals, to re-dimension themselves. Then, they hurry up to say that they have done everything with a right conscience, that there is always someone  who thinks only of oneself and thus that it is difficult to please everybody. It is rare the case in which we find the loyalty and freedom of the “Twelve” before the dissatisfaction: namely an honest, objective auto-critic. Many problems and serious sufferings are born from here.

The whole document “The service of authority and obedience” wants to lead us towards the instauration, in the religious community, of a service of authority that may promote the growth of fraternity in a climate favourable to listening and dialogue, the creation of opportune conditions for the sharing and co-responsibility, the participation of all the members in the things of all, a balanced service to the individual and to the community, the discernment, the promotion of fraternal obedience (SAO 20). With a decided language, the text concludes stating that true fraternity is founded on interior freedom, and the following persons can never be free: “He who is convinced that his ideas and solutions are always the best ones is surely not free; he who believes that he can decide all alone, without any mediation to know the will of God; he who thinks to be always right and never doubts that the others are supposed to change; he who thinks only of his own things, without paying any attention to the needs of others; he who thinks that to obey is an act of other times, impossible to be proposed in a more evolved world” (SAO 20g).

The fraternity in a divided and unjust world

This is the title of paragraph 51 on Vita Consecrata, and perhaps never, as in this case, the title is more valuable than its explanation, being it more incisive and original. It is not the matter of an originality thought of by chance, because the perspective of a cultural and paradigmatic proposal is expressed also in other paragraphs as a proposal which ferments and contests diffused mentalities and convictions, in which hatred and refusal, prejudices, and logics of overwhelming the other,  look quite natural. It does it in view of a healing from the very root: because there are always many hidden branches of hatred or refusal, of prejudice and closeness.

The paragraph explains that the communities of consecrated life have the task and the chance of promoting, first of all within themselves, a spirituality of communion, as well as to be a “sign of possible dialogue and communion capable of harmonising the diversities”, according to a logic of life and always renewed trust. Then, in another original context, namely in a section dedicated to “a prophetic testimony before the new challenges” (VC 84-95), there is the theme of authority and obedience as well as the constructive and non lacerating experience, like a cultural contra-proposal to the “abnormal consequences of injustice and even of violence caused by a distorted use of freedom in the life of the individual and the peoples” (VC 91). “Against the spirit of discord and division” derived from exasperating the “diversity of race and origin, of language and culture” (VC 92), of sex and social class, the fraternal community testifies a reciprocal acceptance, in wonder and mutual support, against all the known or hidden discriminations.

I think that this aspect –which has effectively a noteworthy historical truth, also in not less noteworthy contradictions- should lead us to reflect more on this “standing before and alternatively” the domineering culture, we should also address the re-thinking in order to solve the crisis of communities’ models today. Effectively, the mania of a regular community shut up in itself, with pious practices and the neurotic sublimation of fractures and hostilities, could be substituted with better evangelical resources and with more original charismatic inspirations than the dialogical posing/opposing” before the society and its neurosis necrotic and necrotising means”.

Freeing the potentialities

Our stay in the Church as praying and apostolic fraternity would draw energy and sense by following this “exposition” towards outside, it would enrich us with a better and more urgent rate of prophecy and cultural proposal. 2  We are too late, building our life under vacuum, and forgetting that grace saves and heals the community; it is also a debt we owe to everything and to all.  

We are called to let it turn into eloquent and efficacious ferment, fascination and appeal, in this society so very much needful of union and hope, and yet often precipitating into the abyss of violence and suicide fear. To free this potentiality is not a fantasy, but an urgency to be faced, if we want to have a chance in this historical moment.

1 In this perspective see B. SECONDIN, The Word of God is not chained. Lectio divina on the Acts of the Apostles and Letters of Paul, Messaggero, Padova 2004, 25-36.

2 See my contribution:  “Vivere di utopia nei tempi dell’incertezza. Come reinventare il fermento profetico nella Chiesa”, in J. M. ALDAY (ed.), I religiosi sono ancora profeti?, Àncora, Milano 2008, 191-210.

Bruno Secondin
Lecturer in the Pontifical Gregorian University
Borgo S. Angelo, 15 – 00193 Roma