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«The
Institutes of consecrated life have always had a considerable influence
in formation and transmission of culture. (…). However, besides the
service to others, even within the consecrated life, we need a renewed
love for the cultural commitment to study as a means of integral
formation and ascetical journey, which is extraordinarily actual to face
the diversity of cultures.
A decrease of
commitment to study could cause serious consequences also in the field
of apostolate, by generating a sense of marginalisation and inferiority,
or by favouring superficiality and recklessness in realising
initiatives.
In the diversity of
charisma and real possibilities of the single institutes, we cannot
reduce our commitment to study to initial the formation or to the
achievement of academic degrees and professional competences.
Study is rather an
expression of the never satisfied desire to go deep into the knowledge
of God, abyss of light and source of human truth.
Therefore, this
commitment does not isolate the consecrated persons to an abstract
intellectualism; neither shuts them up within the coils of a suffocating
narcissism. On the contrary, it spurs dialogue and sharing; it is a
formation to the capacity of judging, a stimulus to contemplation and
prayer, in constant search for God and his grace in the complex reality
of our contemporary world.
By allowing the
Spirit to transform her, the consecrated woman becomes capable of
widening the horizons of her narrow desires and, at the same time, of
catching the deep dimensions of every individual as well as of history,
beyond the most showy, but often marginal, aspects.
The fields of
challenges emerging from various cultures are numberless. There are new
or traditionally areas frequented by the consecrated life, with which we
must keep fruitful relations, in the attitude of a vigilant critical
sense, but also of trustful attention towards those who face the typical
difficulties of intellectual work, especially when, because of today’s
inedited problems, we must attempt new analyses and syntheses.
(VITA CONSECRATA 98)
The
acropolis of the soul
Tradition hands over to
us, first with Cicero and then with Thomas Aquinas, the idea of study as
applicatio
mentis vehemens:
in his Convivio, Dante translated this expression into “the application
of a soul who has fallen in love”. In the
Repubblica,
Plato expressed the
necessity of application in keeping the acropolis of the soul committed,
“Other appetites, which come up stealthily, due to the foolishness of
education, become many and hale in the human soul (…). Finally, seeing
it empty of doctrine, of noble studies, and true reasoning- which are
the best sentinels and guardians of man’s soul dear to the gods- they
seize the acropolis of the young soul”1.
Passivity in research
and study of the truth corresponds to the emptiness of the soul. The
truth, defined
aletheia
(something that is not
hidden), requires a vivacious movement of nearing, a journey spurred by
wonder, a nostalgia of revelation.
Aristotle and Theofrasto
have moulded an image of the truth “not hidden, but revealed as light
that constantly swaddles and surrounds us”. Our difficulties to reach it
do not depend on the truth itself, but on us: the eye of our
intelligence is like the eye of the bats, which are unable to see
anything when there is the light.2
The study
of truth, therefore, needs an interior eye, or better, it requires that
we train the interior eye in the research and loving application of the
soul for this “fascinating work”.
In Fedro, Plato
reminds us, “The reason why the souls commit themselves to see the
plain of truth is that the nourishment fit for the best part of the soul
comes from the lawn that is there, and the nature of the wing with which
the soul can fly nurtures itself just with this.”3
In a circle of loving
dedication, therefore, man devotes himself to the research, which, by
becoming revelation, spurs him to search again.
The
challenge of study
In an empty and passive
soul, therefore, there is enough space and abode for all kinds of
“appetites”, in the most visceral meaning of the term. We can translate
and say that for us, today, a time of liquid fluidity, the soul becomes
the abode for forms of images
in continuum,
as fragments of an imaginative, fascinating and hypnotic puzzle.
We live in the
post-modern heritage, in a sub-human time, in a fragmented horizon and
complex civilisation, perfectly adhering and solitarily autistic. In the
planetary time, the illusion of virtual communication strengthens the
solitude, nurtures the dreams of omnipotence, lights up the conviction
of a global vision, solidifying the surface vision.
Everything looks
explainable and explained, readable and read. Any ephemeral event
becomes norm and fashion; it extinguishes in darkness like a meteor
after offering a momentary taste.
We believe to live in
“newness” because uninterrupted images on the mega screen –put on for us
by the world network- make us to dive into a fluidity dream, which
caresses and stimulates us unceasingly. We are those images in
continuum. We are, in surface, little screens on which virtual
possibilities flow. Our generation must live a big challenge. A powerful
challenge to the consecrated life inhabits the millennium of the first
decade. The loss is an unavoidable overdone, which we must pay. It is
the loss of identity and history; loss of unity and route; loss of
meaning and of values.
An irrepressible wish of
anchoring assails us and the act of studium becomes a
necessitating necessity. Study, as application of intelligent passion
dedicated to knowledge, is for the women religious, in the virtual time,
an imperative of intelligence and soul. It is the necessity of learning
and a long, constant, systematic reflection to the end of acquiring
solidity and depth; to acquire a critical instrumentation, as well as
the capacity of decoding the languages of the daily cultural fluidity,
the ultimate sense of going and deep interrogatives of our human
identity. It is the necessity of searching the last image in the
fragment, in the solicitudes, in the glimmering of the occasional truth,
followed by a remittal towards light and truth.
To
sharpen the vision
«Do not laugh, do not
weep, do not detest the actions of men, but try to understand and to
choose (sed intelligere)”: this is what the Latin authors say. To
read going (intelligere) in history, in a civilisation projecting
on screens, we need to create bonds of comprehension with the aim of
choosing. Therefore, we need to live in a study attitude as knowledge
and discernment.
Study sharpens the
vision to recognise the human reality beyond fictions, alienating, in
this process, reason and heart. It is a dynamic of passion for humanity,
which we can learn through a long familiarity with history and the
discipline of humanism. A “very mad and desperate” study –to say it with
Leopardi- that leads us to the knowledge of man and of his mystery: it
reveals his ethical choices, his passions, glories, virtues and vices.
It unveils the titanic clashes, the arts of war and the conviviality of
peace; the cultural and artistic constructions; the capacity of edifying
oneself in the polis and in the right; the making of philosophy
among doubts,
impasse and
launching towards the truth; the desire of infinity, by bending the
reason of reasons to the humility of faith.
Do the passions for
humanity and its history sign the study of the women religious today?
Or, ignoring this knowledge, do the religious acculturate themselves by
sectors in view of an immediate service?
Today we run the risk of
losing the sense of study and of seeing it only in a functional way, for
a ministry. Certainly, study serves man and helps him “to serve”, but we
run the risk to live study in an occasional and functional way, rather
than as a strong and precious experience of life and of Christian
humanism.
To say that the seal of
humanitas has signed the heritage that monasticism has handed
over to us means to narrate a known history. To arouse the
question about the studies that the women religious, even of the new
generation, make and about the time they dedicate to scrutinise the
humanum with its history, may start a stimulating reflection.
Creative solutions
The Church, Spouse of
the incarnated Word, indissolubly conjugated with history, in a constant
process that relates her paradigm of values (axiology) to structures and
cultural forms.
Numerous meanings of the
humanum, which have come to maturation and successive crushing,
touch the Western women religious. Let us mention, above all, the
experience of pluralism, of discontinuity and particularity as a process
of progressive differentiation.
We are in a condition of
radical plurality.4
In this century, pluralism acquires an explosive acceleration due to the
differentiation of life-styles, of thinking ways, of orientation
systems, modalities of acting and mass marginalisation because of
religion.
We often consider the
actual cultural change, according to the indication givn by Benedict
XVI, as a challenge to Christianity itself, rather than as a horizon on
whose background we can and must find creative solutions. “The question
of man, therefore of modernity, challenges the Church to devise
efficacious ways of announcing to the contemporary culture the “realism”
of our faith in the saving work of Christ.
We must not relegate
Christianity to the world of myths and emotion. We must rather respect
it because of its longing to throw light on the truth, on man, to
transform men and women spiritually, thus allowing them to realise their
vocation through the course of History”.5
In the West, we are
living a mutation similar to that at the beginning of XIX century, when,
with the development of the religious Congregations of simple vows,
especially feminine, it touched Europe considerably. The Congregations
found their integration –as spiritual, cultural, fraternal and
historical form- in the social tissue of the old continent.
Due to this change, the
historical-cultural form of the consecrated life entered also the
process of re-elaboration, proper of every reality that, in the ability
of restoring its identity, succeeds in becoming a subject of
transformation. Our communities are moving on this horizon of reference.
They live this crisis with a more or less sense of awareness. The
attitude to study-discernment makes them to grow in the awareness of the
situation.
The flow of cultures;
the anthropological and social evolution are spaces of revelation which
we must enter to discern and start processes of elaboration towards new
syntheses. “How many times the religious life has missed appointments
with history because of an excessive attachment to the existent, usual
ways of acting, a-critical ways of repetitions (….). The cultural
superficiality has been the basis “of some fleeing forward, due to a
reading of the signs of the times too much subordinated to culture and
to domineering fashions”.6
A collective
study-discernment (congregational and inter-congregational) can be a
welcoming space for the Spirit (See Vita consecrata 52-53). The
humility of a choral study, conducted by religious, can spur to
confrontations and new systems, demanded also by ecumenical horizons.
“The knowledge of history, of doctrine, of liturgy, of charity and
apostolic activities of other Christians will benefit an ever more
incisive ecumenical action” (ibidem 101).
The
feminine vision
«It is dutiful to
highlight that the new feminine conscience helps also men to revise
their mental schemes, their way of self-understanding, of entering and
interpreting history, of organising the social, political, economic,
religious life (no. 57), thus the consecrated life has opened the way to
the need of confrontation.
Men and women in the
Church must travel along ways of reciprocity in order to make a history
of communion (58). The feminine vision can nourish a studium as
“other” understanding. We expect from a woman an intellect of love, a
glance that knows how to bring up the new births, how to “guard” the
original beauty, a creative vision that may lead reason to wisdom; a
pedagogical glance that knows how to bend towards daily and known
journeys to light up life.
We expect from her an
intellect of love to scrutinise history and to announce the
resurrection.
In the
Mulieris dignitatem,
John Paul II tells us, “In our epoch, the successes of science and of
technique allow us to reach a material well-being to a degree unknown so
far; a well-being that favours some persons while leading others to
marginalisation”.
In this way, the
unilateral progress may imply also a gradual disappearance of
sensitivity for man, for whatever is essentially human. We need the
manifestation of the feminine “genius”, (no. 30) to the end of ensuring
the sensitivity for man in every circumstance.
Wisdom in the Service of authority
In critical developments
of cultures, which are designing the human again, the tension of the
women religious who serve in authority assumes the valence of studium,
as a
vision tended to the consecrated person,
familiaris et
soror. This
guides her towards a wisdom attitude of life; it trains her to human
culture conducted to Christian fullness. It allows her the exercise of
reflection on values, as well as it helps safeguard the sacred character
of the being, so that she may not spend herself excessively because of
utility. All this avoids the transformation of the “Christian wisdom”
into a constellation of efficacious interventions.
The Studium
acts as encouragement for the consecrated woman, so that she may commit
herself to seek the metaphysical foundations of the human condition,
where the Word lets his light shine. The Church exhorts us, “A solid
intellectual formation according to the finality of vocation and mission
of one’s own institution is also at the basis of a balanced and rich
life of prayer and contemplation (79).
Dossier
«Honour your
intelligence”. Study and aggiornamento are recommended as factors of a
healthy renewal of religious life in the Church and for today’s society.
(PC 2,c-d; ES II, 16): «We must plan our studies not as if they were an
ill-understood realisation of self, or to reach individual finalities,
but so that the sisters may answer the exigencies of apostolic projects
of the same religious Family, in harmony with the needs of the Church
(MP 26).7
Finally, we practise
studium as
care for the
“wisdom” of one’s own person, while spending oneself in the service of
authority: experience offered as counsel, «If you want to be well, care
for the health of your soul and then for that of your body, which will
not cost you much. Follow your wisdom. I entrust healthy counsels to
writings, just as if they were recipes of useful medicines. I have
experienced its efficacy in my on wounds which, though they are not
completely healed, yet they have stopped extending”
8.
In
dialogue with life and cultures
Finally, we must reflect
on the need of a “renewed love for the cultural commitment, for
dedication to study as a means for the integral formation and an
ascetical journey extraordinarily actual before the variety of cultures.
(Vita
consecrata
98). They are means necessary to provoke the renewal of communities and
of the whole religious Family in order to identity, to charismatic
vitality and formation dynamics put into daily to action. The charism,
whatever its spiritual and apostolic nature, needs always a dialogue
between the formation moment and the intellectual moment in order to
express itself in an adequate and living manner, just as it always needs
to keep both of them in dialogue with the life and culture of the time.
The sporadic gesture of
some decision or active choice is not sufficient to solicit and favour
this dynamics. It is the matter of setting up and support a permanent
event with a relation and effect on the entire communitarian and
personal life. For this motive, we need to bring to focus, with patient
attention, a life-style that allows pursuing this intention. We need to
create an environment whose ordinary climate may be that of a wisdom
vision. We need a vision that is attentive and loves life and persons; a
vision on the way to discover and to live the opportunities of human and
spiritual growth. The breath of the intellect, of its loving and humble
investigation needs the support of a wise approach to the Word, to the
sense of listening to and of silence, the sense of limitation and
humility before the vast area of knowledge. It needs a simple sharing
the fruit of one’s work, one’s own interior space; one’s living the
passion for man with his questions of sense and suffering.
Therefore, there is a
set of attitudes, of choices and actions, which can build up a
significant environment, as well as witness the charismatic style of the
Institute.
Conclusion
Study as wisdom of
vision. Simon Weil has an essay of noteworthy thickness, “Reflections on
the utility of formal studies, aiming at the love of God” that, in
truth, we should read in useful cues.
Study, with the end of
illumining the intellect, is lived as propaedeutics to the intellect of
love. This passage may happen for us religious, tasting with humility
the divine mystery written in the human research of the truth. By
honouring the intelligence, we nurture wisdom with study. This is the
wisdom of our vision to grow in the awareness of the human dignity and
of man’s vocation in life. «Yet you have made him little less than a
god, you have crowned him with glory and beauty” (Psalm 8).
We need to live study in
a contemplative attitude, as ability of elaboration.
Dossier
«Honour your
intelligence”, the communitarian and ecclesial intelligence of
historical data. We need to live study as convivial pedagogy, by opening
our communities to the encounter, where men and cultures may recognise
their own identity of searchers of God. We need to live study as a
welcoming the free creativity of the Holy Spirit. Living study with a
feminine eye in the civilisation of fragment and collective solitude may
mean weaving a red thread.
1 PLATONE,
Repubblica,
560b.
2 Cf ARISTOTELE,
Metafisica,
II, 993° 30-b12.
3 PLATONE,
Fedro,
127° 12-c 46.
4 Cf W.
WELSCH, «Hegel und die analytische Philosophie», in
Information Philosophie,
1 (2000).
5 BENEDETTO XVI,
Discorso ai partecipanti
all’incontro dei rettori e docenti delle Università Europee. Un nuovo
umanesimo per l’Europa,
Città del Vaticano 2007, 25 giugno.
6 P. G. CABRA,
«Uomini dello Spirito, generatori di santità e cultura», in CISM (ed.),
Santità, Cultura, Impegno.
I religiosi nel terzo millennio,
Rogate, Roma 1996, 50-51.
7 CIVCSVA,
La dimensione contemplativa della
vita religiosa, Libreria
Editrice Vaticana 2002, 19. Cf
Vita consecrata
71.
8 SENECA,
Lettere a Lucilio,
8, 2.
Nicla Spezzati
The responsible person of the magazine
Sequela Christi
CIVCSVA
Piazza Pio XII, 3 - 00193 Roma
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