In the early '80s, in the wake of the document Communion and Community marking the ten-year plan of the CEI (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana) , the Parish where I lived decided to begin a journey,  rediscovering the reality of “being community”. The study of the document of CEI, accompanied by the reading of two extraordinary books: The community, a place of forgiveness and celebration by J. Vanier, but especially Common Life by D. Bonhoeffer, was fundamental to understand what it means to be brothers at the school of the Gospel and learning to love each other. We grew together and we practiced to implement very specific attitudes, attention and respect, responsibility and mutual service. But to love is a difficult reality, is not by itself, it requires an education, a "school of charity", where "love is cultivated, taught, transmitted in a daily practice and by constant practice".[i] And at school you learn the grammar, you learn to use verbs and their conjugations.

In these reflections I’m suggesting a kind of fraternity’s grammar, combining four verbs that express as many existential attitudes to be implemented in spiritual life.[ii]

To descend

      First, the verb to descend. It indicates, in its first and most elementary meaning, a movement from top to down. This downward movement, of approaching or nearby, in the Bible is a prerogative of God. He is not indifferent to the providence of his people: he says his miseries, he hears the cry, he bows down to his suffering, takes part to free him. In that regard, it is suffice to recall a text of Exodus: "I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings. I mean to deliver from the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up from this land into a beautiful and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex 3:7-8).

      The biblical God is the God who is near. His proximity is the will of good, is free choice, is concern that captures and records the suffering of the others, is not simple attraction of the ego  towards you (as Greek philosophy dictated). God listens and observes first, then in a downward movement stands beside the people to deliver them from suffering. The reason for this is to walk with the man, a descent that will become complete in Jesus, in whom God becomes the God-with-us. It is the Kenosis, self-emptying, lowering, the total annihilation of God: not only He is content to walk with man, but became man (cf Phil 2.7).
God comes down and comes close to let us go up to "a land flowing with milk and honey”, not marked by geographical boundaries, or by groups of the same linguistic or religious affiliation. Towards a land whose border is the principle of compassion of those who, like God, has at heart the future of humanity. And God does not descend to fill a void, even to make up for the good that we are not able to accomplish, but to awaken our self. His is a love that calls us to forget ourselves to be attentive to the other. "The charity really reaches the heights when he approached with benevolence to the neighbours’ labors and as much descends with love for the humble things, the more forcefully reaches the sublime".[iii] In other words: the ability to bend down to our brother, especially towards the most needy, is inversely proportional to the ability to rise to God.

      I think that here is placed the foundation of a true fraternal life. God frees us from slavery, uproots us from foreign lands, to plant us in the ground of communion and friendship with him, and fraternity ..., if we accept to sink our roots into a new dimension, other than where we were before. Humility can become the authentic way, the true, fundamental news, the dimension that embraces all the others, the specific manner of expression of fraternal love.

To decentralize

      The movement of descent leads into another, the decentralization. To decentralize means to get out the concentration on yourself to find the center in someone else and then recognize the presence of the other one. This is to change your thinking’s manner, to make an exodus from yourself and from your own projects. The Gospel page of the Sermon on the Mount is a mirror to see what it means to overthrow the certainties that we believe to have achieved in our lives. And that is that we realize ourselves do not possessing but giving, not dominating but helping, serving but not prevailing. "To love, voice of the verb to die, means decentralizing - said Tonino Bello -. Out of ourselves. Give without asking. Be discreet on the edge of silence... Desire the happiness of the others. Fulfill his destiny. And we disappear when we realize that are disturbing the other’s mission".[iv] The way of fraternity is always a journey of decentralization, self-detachment, and is still a reliance on faith to Another more out of us.
But detachment presupposes psychological maturity, and then going deep within ourselves, to know what mechanisms, fears, attachments, addictions inhabit us. To make the vacuum must dig, remove, release. Obviously, not for masochistic taste nor for ascetic practices, utterly anachronistic. We need to identify our idols to reach the freedom of having nothing and nothing to defend, and enter into the logic of disappropriation. Who does not belong to himself, knows that he belongs to the others, and he finds not hard to get himself into the dynamic of giving and generosity.

     At this level is bound our relationship, obedient to authority. In fraternal life, the authority more than the catalytic center, is the yeast that ferments inside the fraternity. The center is an Other to whom we owe a free obedience that provides a real service, not subservience; provides an intelligent faith, not a blind trust; promotes the peaceful harmony of each person’s gifts, not a demeaning massification; raises a real concern towards the weaker and fragile brother or sister, in which Jesus is identified.

To breathe

      The third movement of our journey we can express with the verb to breathe. Breath is life, is life itself. The first Christian community, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, "were of one heart and one soul, and no one considered his property that he owned, but they had everything in common" (Acts 4.32). At Pentecost the Spirit outpouring on Jesus’ disciples has produced a radical unifying transformation: the Spirit  has melted the hearts into one, condensed their breath into a single soul and He made common their substances that are shared with all according to the need (see Acts 2.45, 4.35). The last and thin breath that Jesus breathed through his death on the cross (cf Jn 19.30), soon became "a mighty wind that came, and filled the whole house where they were" (Acts 2.2).

      It is the breath of life of the new creation, but also wind that ruffles, gathers and disperses, infuses new energy, causes fear and paralysis, giving missionary vitality. There is a double movement in this breath: you breathe, that you receive, and you breathe out, that you give, you share. But the movement of the breath is intimately connected with the heart’s movements: a centripetal and others centrifugal. It receives and gives. If there is a movement of reception, this can not exist without a movement of donation. Jesus gathered around him, enter into communion with him, but only to send to the mission. Then you can say that there is fraternity if is capable of centripetal activity, which brings together around Our Lord, and centrifugal activity, which pushes and sends to the world.

      This third movement recalls the importance of reflecting on the gift of poverty. The fraternal life lives and breathes thanks to the dynamism that each member feels donated and at the same time and makes of his own subjectivity a means of relationship, communion, offering for others. Who lives in community is living the exercise of going out from himself to make a gift of  his life. The fraternity is united only by the debt of charity and mutual love.

To bend ourselves

       Stooping, bending, pulling down, kneeling ... are all more or less synonymous with the word curve, albeit with different meanings and nuances. Undoubtedly, they say to get out static and some rigidity of attitude, to welcome, assist and serve. The Dutch painter Rembrandt († 1669) in his framework on the return of the prodigal son has well portrayed the stiffness, both physical and moral, of the eldest son. Who is not able to bend over the other, inevitably maintains an attitude of distance, detachment. His standing simply  means he is observing what can happen.

      The father, however, in the same painting by Rembrandt, is all bent and curved in welcoming the returning son, and in this bend embraces him, enveloping, almost subsumes under himself. The father digs inside himself a place in which the child can find shelter and get the new ability to stand up with dignity. Bending over the other is for the common joy. There is passion in fact in the woman bending at the feet of Jesus for perfuming, almost prophetic anticipation of Jesus’ bow with passion washing his disciples’ feet, whose command is to do the same (cf Jn 13:14-15). A fraternity can not exist without an attitude of acceptance in mutual service, done with joy.[v]

       This is the level in which to live, within the fraternity, the size of virginity, which has a communal character. There is a virginity of the community to guard and to live as a commitment of everyone, as everyone's responsibility. And this tells us that virginity  - personal and community -  is essentially love, ability to complete dedication to everything and everyone, is taking care of. It is meant to be consumed, to burn, to kindle, not to preserve it jealously.
       The fraternity has a heart with all the features of affectivity, donation, spousal, relationship, friendship, apostolic tension. No closure or hardening. "Throbbing and expanding your heart" (Isaiah 60.5). Here is the true virginity in a living heart that throbs and swells.
The four movements described, almost as cardinal points, says all the fraternal experience. But the journey, the route remains undefined, or rather, infinite. The fraternity can not be predefined, as indeed are many conjugations of verbs. The brother or sister is a mystery, as God himself is. He is always more than any definitions.

      The charity is fourfold, as St Paul (cf Eph 3:14-19), but also a journey without end (cf 1 Cor 13.8), whose full realization is still far away from where we seek it. Nestled in the heart of God - is God's dream - the fraternity is an adventure that moves the story to show us the project of the heart.

Cesare Zanirato
cesare.zanirato@tiscali.it