I divided the report into two parts: in this first meeting I will try to find pastoral ways of communion within the reality that happens around us and within the Church and society; in the latter we shall reflect on the paths of trust aimed primarily at service government.

Thinking inside the Church

The Consecrated life is the Christian life! The baptismal consecration constitutes and defines the identity of every Christian, which is nothing but holiness. The same evangelical counsels, of their religious life, can not be considered exclusive elements of it: they are a fundamental duty of every believer, in a process of identification with Jesus Christ. To be religious (we are all consecrated under the baptismal vocation) is a specific way of being Christian. The historical pattern of this existence as Christ is the special relationship that Jesus in his earthly existence had with some of his disciples. "Consecrated life truly constitutes a living memory of how to exist and act of Jesus" (VC 22).

In my opinion it is important to think us inside the Church and in communion with her. We are not a story "apart", while having her own characteristics and specificity. We can not think so self: do not make sense or perspective. It seems a truism to say, but in practice it is not so, because in view of communion in the Church and  with the Church and the problems are seen in different ways, the solutions to them take their own direction.

It is urgent to reflect on the communion, which worries more than the mission. We need people with the charisma of the communion. And we are called to be, in every way, those people. Here the communion’s  structures are required. And we are called to foster them. Communion is a gift, a mission, a spirituality for the consecrated life. "Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice its spirituality" (VC 46). The fellowship is a vital force in our day, which is expressed by the new demands: here you play life and death. The communion is all. It is important to see the community: individuals or groups who can not see the signs of Communion must be to sterility and death, they  have no future.

 Therefore it is necessary to place the eye, hearing and speech where communion buds. "In the depths of the human condition lies the hope of a presence, the deep desire of communion" (Brother Roger). Communion in the Church must be understood as a dynamic and inclusive thing: it embraces all people, especially the poor and oppressed, and even the creation.

Consecrated before the world

The consecrated life is made up of permanent and total consecration to God, expressed through religious profession lived in community and mission and is inherently shaped by historical context. This results in continuity and discontinuity in its different forms, different also in substance.

The category that regulates the relationship between them is the world. In the history of the Church the relationship between consecrated life and the world was, at times, antagonistic and hostile. The consecrated life at the beginning was the repudiation of the world (going into the desert, in the convent ...). With the Vatican Council II has a new relationship with the world: Gaudium et Spes was the dawn of a new era. Right in the new relationship with the world raises the theological and pastoral challenge for the consecrated life: how to redefine own vocation without losing their identity? And then we must have a worldview based on a theologically positive conception of creation as a gift of God’s love; in human history as a context in which the Incarnation of the Word humanity is called to the deification;  of humanity as the object of Trinity Mission of God that creates a new spirituality.

Consequently, our commitment to God who loves the world can no longer express in relation to the world and its people through the strategies of isolation, social distance, elitism, but through the fellowship, compassion, sharing.

The challenges of postmodernity

In responding to the divine call to the consecrated person no longer belongs to herself. God grasps the totality of her being in an irreversible way. In this regard, there are three lines of formative  process to trace in the context of postmodernity. Relationship between the self and the apostolic task. The consecrated person agrees to have a mandate, to be sent; he doesn’t decide by himself his mission;  he can only recognize it and respond. Only when your task is discovered as a personal mission, then you can embrace with all freedom and desire. For Jesus to be conscious of being sent meant to be conscious of the will of the Father. The awareness of the Father also founds the apostle's life. To avoid the risk of reducing the apostolic vocation in voluntary care, the consecrated person is called to live deeply anthropology of son or daughter. Units of life. The discovery of life as an apostolic mission enables a deep spiritual balance, greater harmony and unity of life, both in contemplation and action. The idea that the mission "unloads”  or uses the person calls a lack of understanding between the person and mission. In fact, the conduct of its activities is the place where, day after day, has brought a deeper relationship with the mystery of Christ in filial relationship with the Father. The concept of mission can unite inwardly  the consecrated’s life.

Life Apostolic between individuality and belonging. For the apostle, the character of its action is both individual and community. If it is true that every mission is unique, how unique is each one's life, it is equally true that it can only be placed within the Church, the Body of Christ. Each is an "apostle" or "sent" only in communion with the community that sends it.

In a globalized world

Two challenges emerge from the world and the Church today: a globalized world, a world’s Church. The globalization of the world is expressed in a new perception of time and space and creates a new interdependence between peoples. Thus the crisis of consecrated life tends to spread rapidly throughout the world (lower numerical, perception of its irrelevance). The emergence of a world’s Church has disintegrated his identification with the West; today the membership is multicultural and multinational mission. This has led some disorder in the consecrated life: the search for a different understanding of its essential elements; awareness that Europe is no longer the only source of missionaries to the world; the expansion of the movements. This situation offers many opportunities, however, to the consecrated life.

First, the value of internationalism as the possibility of communion among several persons. The journey, however, must go to the "multiculturalism", which effectively means allow all cultures to be visible in the community; and avoid any attempt of cultural leveling, which absorbs the minority in the dominant culture; creating a climate in which each culture let transform and enrich the other. Moreover, the inter-congregational cooperation. It is not only a strategy for the mission, but to say that our mission is not an issue, is the missio Dei, larger than that every individual and every congregation can do.

Immersed in history

The consecrated life needs to confront with the world, as Christ did. "In the world but not of the world": in the world, that is, with its struggles and its labors, listen with attention and participate in its voice. Jesus loved the world and every person, and has taken the pain and suffering, even before denouncing and condemning sin. We always called this benevolent glance, a look of genuine "passion for humanity."

The consecrated life is a call to be with Christ, who lives with and among the people, and who gives himself for others. In a word, it is living in union with him, who "went about doing good and healing all." The elements that give the basis for a relationship "blessing" with the history and the world are those connected with the Incarnation: God is in Christ, and the incarnation involves God in history. As the church even religious people are steeped in history. God has come to us so mysteriously that we can give him all our life.

Beyond all fear

Today we discover and experience in practice, even in our institutions, the challenge of diversity. There is difficulty in expressing the different experiences and so they can be heard and understood: there is a need for a new language. In this effort two images are with us and design attitudes as paths of communion: the path and harmony. The first step is to refer to Jesus, who alone can fill our life with meaning. This reference should not be taken for granted, even among us: it asks to be highlighted, recognized, celebrated, sang.

In Christ Jesus we are and we can be unity and communion. He is the Risen and Alive Lord that gives us the certainty that you can grow in this journey of communion. He is who opens our doors to meet other brothers and sisters with whom we can share the road. He is who is present and active even where our community contexts and relationships  remain closed. He is he who makes us able to hope for a new life and a new world where the small and the poor have dignity as brothers and children of one Father. Without him, without his explosive power, too many doors, heaters, barriers, self remain painfully closed, too many walls, built by our frail humanity  divide us in ourselves and others, preventing us to open ourselves to the grace which the Spirit has prepared for today.

The power of the Risen Christ frees us from fear. Fear is the strongest obstacle to love and gift. It is said that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Fear of ourselves: I can not, I can not ... Fear of our past: I've tried so many times, I know I'm wrong, I do not trust ... Fear of others: what they will say, judging what I say, what I do ... Fear of the future:  shall I resist,  shall I be faithful, shall I measure up?

"Essential" walks

Our main paths of communion we can express them with the attention to the poor, the dialogue, a new quality of relations and training.

We are called to put in the perspective of the weak and vulnerable. This, however, is the perspective of God, as Scripture tells us. The consecrated life has always been at the forefront of proximity to those in pain and in trouble. The poor continue to be our way to the future: a closed community to the poor can not spiritually grow. The challenge today is to recognize and approach the new poverty, opening our eyes on its causes and asking to ourselves if our witness should not be more of denunciation of social injustices and of denial of human rights.

It also appears the instance of an universal ethic, a really human ethic. This may be an area of ​​dialogue and concrete paths between different religious experiences. It is not a matter of helping what is common, downplaying the differences, but of thinking the differences standing up to the need for truth and communion inherent in the human heart. In this sense, it also hired a confrontation with secularism, which is not intended as a closure to transcendence.

Witnessing to the faith in God and be faithful to the charism urges us to go out and not to stay inside. God is encountered outside the camp. The exodus is necessary. The God that we already know and comes to us, is yet to come for us. This involves recognizing, knowing and abandoning our habits and our tendency to control or possession.

All this gives new light to the relationship between identity and otherness. The sense of identity (personal, Christian, religious) allows to know the identities of others and doesn’t leave us as a prey to relativism. At the same time we can not be themselves without the others, you may not know ourselves if not for others.