The first theologically relevant relationship presented in the Bible is between man and woman. The revelation of the creation account is that the human being is sexually identified as male or female, and that this the human being (male and female) is created by "the image and likeness of God." When involved in a relationship, the vocation of every human being is to became one flesh with the other one. The same vocation is given to mankind so that, in its relationship with God - the absolute other - it will be called to become one flesh, thus constituting the Church in the Eucharist, which is a family of children. The call to communion in diversity is thus an essential part of the spiritual meaning of the conjugal union.

The relationship between husband and wife reveals a great truth of faith: we are born to the extent that one loves and loses his life for love. Love makes us like Christ, creates in us the truth of the image and likeness of God who is love. To set forth in a life in which they promise to put into practice the salvation, as love and fidelity in love, is to set off towards the event of the new creature, as one freely agrees to follow the path of Easter.
 The Christian life of the spouses predisposes them to holiness, not only for the suffering of the transformation from the old to the new creature, but also for the fruits of innovation that their love brings to the society. "It's a real passion to bring the hard sacrifice of every day," says John Chrysostom. This passion is preparing the kingdom of God, it creates opportunities of acceptance of life, enjoyment of the goods created, it invents health structures (too small or too old) for the weakest people and it ensures dignity for all.

Love creates the family, the society and the Church: "There is nothing greater than love, or that equals love, even martyrdom, which is the culmination of all the goods ... Love, in fact, even without the martyrdom makes disciples of Christ, but you cannot face martyrdom without love" (John Chrysostom). The fate of a person, of a civilization and of humanity depend on the conception of the love between a man and a woman.

The first and fundamental human relationship is when one comes into the world, in a sacramental space, and as an expression and embodiment of love. The existential security that represents the maternal and paternal figure is profoundly theological: it is not possible to be born and live without this sacramental environment that gives life to the hope of a human quality.


Here again Jesus upsets our logic: call nobody neither father nor mother. In the relationship with the father or the mother there is the danger of an identification with the life as it comes from them. Calling nobody neither father nor mother means that the life of the human person cannot be reduced or identified with something that has been already created. Each of us is more than one who has or has not a mother because he or she has the life of the Father in heaven, and everyone is more than one who has or has not had a father and brothers and sisters, because he has received Christ and with him a familiarity with God and a real family which is the whole humankind.
 Father, mother, teacher ... those are relationships that may indicate "places of death", which represent the perception of themselves as an old Adam, and not as a new Adam regenerated from the love of God, (i.e.) by baptism.
Human relationships evoke a concept of life, a lifestyle and a culture. The new life of baptism has led us to the lifestyle and culture of God's own style of life. The children's life style is the Christ's one. The culture of baptism is the culture that the Saints have been able to create. Father and mother are just "dead to bury," if they prevent us from living the divine life.

Jesus' words invite us to go from the conscience of the life that comes from the parents to the consciousness of having already inside us the gift of the Spirit's life to grow.

Fraternity must be taken with caution. History shows us that in the mankind there could be children of the same mother and father who are not always able to be brothers. The Bible seems to speak only of this. God is Father and men are children who do not know how to live as brothers, or brothers who do not want to have a Father. In the Scripture, almost all the examples of brothers are tragic stories: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, the prodigal son and the miser brother. There are a few edifying examples of brothers, apart from the seven brothers who die for their faith, because only facing death the meanness of rivalry scales down. In fact, the universal brotherhood manifests itself more when life is threatened and when solidarity is revealed as the only sheet anchor.

And we know how difficult brotherhood is even in a religious communities. Why? Brothers and sisters receive themselves as they are, do not choose to have them, or to have their own. They suffer, they bear; either they love one another or not, they cannot leave each other. Even if they are killed. Cain is remembered as his brother Abel's murderer, even when Abel disappears from the scene!

True fraternity manifests God's love. Fraternity is not the purpose of life redeemed: the aim is to enter into the joy of the Father who loves all His children! It is to get to the communion of the Trinity through the fraternity, gift revealed by the cross, because the beloved Son has loved the Father and has given his life for the sake of his brother, because our Father is his Father. Christ showed to be the Son and brother as he died for us. He also expressed the true image of the Father, and has reveled the might of being the Son who cannot be killed the fact of being the Son depends only on the Father and on the Son's love, has expressed the truth of the Resurrection.

The reception of a brother or a sister is the acceptance of the Father's love. Therefore, the spiritual category in which the brotherhood introduces us is the acceptance, not the election or tolerance. If you do not choose, you are called to receive a gift and to live a more profound dimension of freedom and confidence. The more mature we are, the more able to accept the other. Who knows how to accept his brother as he is, learns to love the truth, and this love can become a force that transforms and reveals a deeper relationship, one with the Father.

The tragic character of the community is the loss of a sense of love of the Father and manifests itself as jealousy. In religious communities jealousy has generated the ideology of equality: everybody must be equal, all have the same rights, duties, holidays, studies (...) in the human heart - there's always an open wound, that is identifying the being with the having, and in the having, compared to the other not to have less. Parity is hard to find, because it is always sought to levels that are not those of the Father. The fraternity may therefore be a lie if you do not aspire to the manifestation of freedom of the children of God and "consubstantial" in Christ with every man. In Christ the ontological unity of all mankind that makes us brothers is revealed.


This is our vocation and our mission. The most important thing that we have been asked is witness to be children. Ignatius of Antioch in the face of martyrdom does not agree to please his brothers. For him it is clear: first of all he is the son of the Father, who allows him to give his physical life away to manifest the divine life. He lives the foundation of the brotherhood giving evidence of being a child therefore, the word fraternity is not a word that evokes a certain quality of socialization. Charity shows that we are all brothers, and that's good, but it is not the ultimate goal. If the other one, through this witness, does not discovers that God is Father, that he is loved and therefore called to live as a child, then the fraternity or the mission will not bring the fruit of salvation, i. e. they have not revealed the love that heals the fear of death, that cures from the diseases, and save us from sin.


Christian brotherhood is not therefore a complex of mental states that are blown off, but a witness of being linked to the same source of life.

The friendship, the paradigm of Christian life

Contrary to his brother, you choose the friend, and many spiritual authors would agree in saying that more than brotherhood, friendship is the paradigm of Christian life. The Christian tradition is familiar with the theme. The Latin breviary in the office of Readings on January 2, presents a moving a page on the friendship between two saints, Gregory of Nazianzen († 390) and Basil of Caesarea († 380), celebrated on the same day. Gregory, after the death of his friend, feels to be " half dead and divided into two parts". And Florenskij says: "As the mysterious birth of You, (the friendship) is the environment in which begins the revelation of the truth" because a mutual love has a power of revelation, it is the foundation of mission and proclamation.
What can be said in particular about the relationship between consecrated? From the perspective of the spiritual life, does the word of salvation bring the friendship between consecrated? No doubt: the truth about the vocation, fertility in the opening to the universal.

Truth on the vocation

Aelred of Rievaulx writes that the friendship between consecrated persons are called to be beyond the fantasies of sensuality, and the whims of feeling. For him, true friendship is a school of chastity. The friendly relations between consecrated is based on the "initial basic purity of intention, the teaching of reason and moderation of the brake: the sense of intense pleasure that will add to these things, will certainly be experienced as kindness, without ceasing to be an ordered love."
 Friendship teaches consecrated people to be tied together and free, always near and far. The love between a man and a woman tends to the union of bodies, the friendship between consecrated tends to the union of hearts. The vocation to which one is the mediation of the body in the relationship, but also the rise of the feelings that characterize the friendship between consecrated.
 The erotic component, essential to life itself, should be seen as the component of desire and enjoyment of property that provides the presence of someone close in your life, the taste to grow as a person in respect and gratitude to find another one source of inspiration. "The friendship has a nature inspired eros spiritual" because it is constituted by " the overcoming folding on itself 'and is fed to the" particular mutual inspiration' (S. Bulgakov).

Friendship is thus not merely a sentimental issue. Indeed. "To love is supposed to go up on a mountain, the mountain of his own feelings and desires, that is supposed to love you more than what you feel. Often our feelings keep us from love loving, because either we only love in function of what we like, or we do not love because of what we do not like: the mood (i. e. how I am and what I feel) is the barometer of love if we just love according to the feelings we experience ... The feelings change with the change of man, with the comings and goings of the needs and wants ..." . Not the attraction between two bodies in search of union, and even a relationship continuously threatened by the ups and downs of feelings. What then?
Friendship is the relation between "faces", because the face is the person at its deepest unity, truth and beauty. Close as brothers, and separated as brothers. Beings who are spiritually brothers or sisters can be very close, but their fate, their vocation is not to build their lives together. The loss of a sense of their vocation, the truth about himself and the other is a danger for the friendship, but friendship is the grace of the Spirit into the promised land, where there is truth and love, compassion and fear , familiarity and distance.