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Sr. Enrica Rosanna, Figlia di Maria Ausiliatrice, is the
Sub-Secretary of the CIVCSVA since 24th April 2004. She has
spent her forty years of Religious life hinged on the religious
community annexed to the University Institution - Auxilium - whose
Principal she has been from 1989 till 1998, though for study and work
reasons, she has been spending several periods of her life in other
communities of the Institute, both inn Italy and abroad. First she
obtained the diploma in Religious Sciences, then the Licentiate in
Social Sciences and finally the Doctorate of research in Social Sciences
from The Pontifical Gregorian University. She has been a lecturer in the
Auxilium and other faculties. She published numerous articles on
magazines, essays on books and dictionaries and some
volumes concerning "formation" in religious life.
Appreciated because of her culture and polyhedral
experience, she gone through an extraordinary participation, along the
years, as member of very many commissions, scientific committees and
synods, besides being a Consultant of the Congregation for the Catholic
Education and of the same CIVCSVA. She has been "Adiutrix Secretarii
Specialis" of the Ninth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops on "Consecrated Life and its mission in the church and in
the world" (1994), of the second Special Assembly for Europe of the
Synod of Bishops on "Jesus Christ living in his Church, source of
hope for Europe" (1999): of the Tenth Ordinary General Assembly of
the Synod of Bishops on "The Bishop, servant of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ for the hope of the world" (2001).
We have, purposely, asked her a few questions about the
"thought" of John Paul II on the consecrated life. She has answered with
the warmth, the conviction, the joy which characterise her. We are
thankful to her.
What is the thought of John Paul II on the relation
between Christ and the consecrated beings?
The Pope asks us to identify ourselves with Christ. He
wants this identification to be more and more concrete and total
up to
the cross. He has given us the example of this identification, till the
end. He has asked us to make Christ visible, "to follow after His
footprints" (to be lamps on the candlestick and not only leaven).
In a meeting with UISG, on 3rd May 2001, John
Paul II marvellously spoke of the Sequela Christi, in particular
of the vows, showing us the way of living them in a creative
faithfulness. He said splendid words about it. "To recognise Christ and
the Church, the world needs also your testimony. Don't get discouraged,
therefore, if you meet with difficulties. (
). Don't be afraid, the
Lord is with you, he precedes and follows you with his faithfulness and
his love. Be witnesses, with your life, to Him in whom you believe!
The world needs the strong and free testimony of your
vow of poverty, lived with love and joy, so that your sisters and
your brothers may understand that God, with His saving love, is the
unique "treasure",. Poverty safeguards chastity, and prevents you from
becoming slaves of the needs artificially created by the civilisation of
the well-being
There is the need of your faithful and limpid
chastity which ", in the silence of its daily gift, announces the
mercy and the love of the Father, and cries to the world that there is
a "greater love" which fills the heart and the life, because it creates
space for the brother
There is the need of your responsible
obedience and full availability to the Father through the persons
whom he will put on your way. You are called to show, with your life,
that the true freedom is to be found in entering, decidedly, the way
marked and blessed by obedience, the way of the death and resurrection,
which Jesus has shown us with his example
Let your obedience be a
boundless abandonment into the designs of the Father, just as it has
been for Jesus.
Starting
from His first homily on the day of his coronation, the Pope has always
revealed a particular passion for man. How are the consecrated persons
expected "to live" the passion for man?
"Passion for Christ and passion for humanity" has been
the theme of the recent Congress on religious life. This theme reveals
the spirit with which we are called to live the passion for humanity:
the passion for Christ. In the unconditional love for Christ, we find
the strength and the joy to live the passion for our brothers and
sisters, indistinctly all of them, starting from the poorest.
I, consecrated woman, happy consecrated woman, am
convinced that a peculiar way to live my passion for humanity is that
of "taking care". It is my taking care to educate the new generations,
in conformity with the gift of my vocation. We must "take care" like
many women in the past and recent history.
Theresa of Calcutta, who takes care of the miserable;
Brigid of Sweden, who takes care of unity and peace; Monica, who takes
care of the great rebel Augustine; Gianna Beretta Molla, who takes care
of life: Theresa of the Child Jesus, who takes care of love; Edith
Stein, who takes care of the truth; Catherine of Siena, who takes care
of the authority; Theresa of Avila who cares for the reformation of the
Carmel. These are the colours in the rainbow of love, colours which we,
consecrated, can increase immeasurably! The testimony of these holy
women confirms the certainty that the spaces of our passion for humanity
are to be cultivated and dilated day after day" (NMI, n. 45).
Today, in our chaotic and complex time, there is plenty of space for the
"fantasy of creativity" (n.50).
How to live and to witness the multicultural and
multi-religious dialogue?
To live with simplicity, wisdom, creativity and peace
the gift of a multicultural reality, in our communities, and to make of
it an intercultural richness, in which the "genius" of different
cultures may be given value, perhaps we must give value to and live the
meaning of a recurring adjective in the prayer Jesus has taught us: the
adjective "our".
- "Our Father" who are in heaven.
To say "Our Father" is to have the courage to state,
first of all, that we are called from every land, people and country to
live in the House of the Father and to build the Kingdom. It is
important that we say this to one another and that we ask the Father to
make us understand its grace. We are called to build a Kingdom of
truth, of love, of peace. This is how God wants us: engineers,
architects, artists of this Kingdom: this is also how the people want
us, those who are entrusted to us through the gift of our charism: the
poor, the sick, the youths, the aged, the immigrated.
- Give us this day "our" daily bread
In our multicultural communities, we must have the
courage of "meeting one another with hands full of different heritages",
though it costs fatigue, mainly for the children of Europe.
The dialogue of daily life must start from clothing
festively the daily things. The dialogue must ban all the revenges of
superiority. Minor or major cultures do not exist; every culture has its
own richness and precious values, and every person is rich of its own
dignity. It is, instead, important to create a climate of Franciscan
minority for which, in due time, each person is ready to become teacher
or pupil, to offer one's own bread and to receive the bread of our
brothers and sisters, to share it in the same banquet. This is
fundamental, because each of us is limited, each culture is relative,
one of the ways of living humanity; it is a viewpoint on the human
person, on the world, on God.
An intelligent interaction with persons of different
cultures, which goes beyond the external courtesy, helps us to discover
what unites us, to see that all of us have the same ideals and believe
in some values which go beyond any culture, that we are in love with the
same Lord. The presence of brothers and sisters of different cultures
helps us to discover the universality of the charism, its capacity of
being fruitful in different cultures, and at the same time the beauty of
living it according to the "genius of different cultures".
In our communities, the daily bread of fraternity, of
acceptance, of silence, of tolerance, of prayer, of modesty, of balance,
of discernment, of reciprocity , of fatigue must be a gift of each one
and of all, and it must be fresh bread every day. God does not
accumulate in granaries, but distributes without measuring. Let us think
of the stars in the sky, of the birds in the air, of the flowers in the
fields.
Forgive us our trespasses
The bread of offered and received forgiveness is of
great importance, rather of an absolute necessity for the peace and the
harmony of a multicultural community: 70 times 7, as Jesus has taught
us. Communion and unity have no other rule. Jesus teaches it to us,
above all with the parable of the prodigal son.
Forgiveness is the way to become men and women without
adjectives, according to the quoted expression of Mons. Tonino Bello, to
fill the recurring fracture in the history of Cain and Abel. Cain has
not wanted to be responsible of his brother after killing him. Abel is
invited by God to make himself responsible of Cain through forgiveness.
John Paul II has nourished a particular interest for the
woman as such. According to you. which key-points are to be meditated,
deepened, lived by the consecrated women?
The attention of the Pope for the woman is inscribed in
the solicitude with which He, from the very beginning of his
pontificate, has turned to man, "way to the Church"; she is present
throughout his Magisterium, whose centre is the human person revealed in
Jesus Christ; it has its foundation in his pastoral concrete reality
which makes him sensitive to the evolving of history, including the
history of women. He openly manifests of knowing and appreciating her
through his numerous interventions and many gestures of solidarity and
friendship.
There is an interesting and inedited aspect of the
dialogue between John Paul II and the women, an aspect which surprises
and amazes us. He tries to communicate with our intelligence and with
our heart and, at the same time, he tries to sensitise the world to our
problems; He listens to women, offering them the possibility of
expressing themselves, of discussing, of learning, of comfort. He offers
a dialogue "to think" and "to love". It is thanks to His writings, in
which poetic and meditative styles, symbols and metaphors interlace each
other, that more women today speak to other women and more women
together speak to men.
John Paul II wants to penetrate the mystery of the woman
and intuits her gift and richness, her "Genius", which simultaneously
veils and unveils the eternal measure of the feminine dignity and leads
him to thanks the Trinity for the wonders of God that, throughout the
history of the human generations, have been worked in her an through
her.
The genius of the woman is, therefore, the focal point
around which -according to John Paul II- all the reflections on the
mission coagulate, the mission which every woman is called to fulfil in
society and in the church at the service of the human person. "Genius",
not identified with the traditional stereotype of femininity, but as a
feminine expression of the triple munus (priestly, prophetic,
regal) and as participation and involvement of women in various areas
(arts, science, economy, health, culture, politics
), through the
specific contribution of their femininity. Genius, therefore, as
inestimable value of femininity, of the woman's way of being and of
relating with the world- Genius of arts: the feminine art of loving,
working, suffering, educating, giving life, favouring the growth.
Genius as "specific" of being woman which, particularly
in the Church, must find "spaces", times and ways of expressing itself,
because the Woman, in her iconicity of virgin-spouse-mother is
paradigmatic in order to the faithfulness-fruitfulness of the whole
Church, as well as because the Woman fulfils -after the example of Mary-
the maternal diakonia towards the new children of God and of the Church,
strongly entrusted to her care". This is why the entrusting, the taking
care becomes the central, bearing idea in the writings of the
Holy Father: "The moral strength of the woman and her spiritual strength
join in the awareness that God entrusts man to her in a special way, the
human being (
) just because of her femininity (
). The woman is
strong because of the awareness of being entrusted with, strong
because God "entrusts man to her", always and anyhow ( --- ). Our days
are waiting for the manifestation of that "genius" of the woman,
to ensure the sensitivity for man in every circumstance: for the fact of
his being man".
We have seen an aged and sick Pontiff. He himself has
admitted the growing old of our institutes. What does his testimony tell
us in our reality?
During his last years of life, I have often looked at
John Paul II with admiration and deep emotion. With His life, the Pope
has taught us how to live every season of life as Christians, even the
season of old age, of sickness, of powerless silence. We must thank God
for his life, for his martyrdom during these months, for the greatness
of his life. A great life is nothing else but a continuity of enthusiasm
and hope from the youth to mature age. In one responsory for the feast
of St. Leo the Great, the liturgy says, " Like an eagle, he caught from
on high the sense of things". We can apply these words to John Paul II.
All of us know that he has been led by God by the hand. The Lord has
asked him a lot, but He ha also given Him a lot. There was a deep
understanding between the two. This could be seen and touched with our
hands. It is due to this understanding -which we, too, experience in his
life- that we can look into the future with hope and we can believe that
hope, the true one, does not die.
I think of his funeral. A jubilee never seen before, in
spite of the heartfelt sorrow. A youthful feast lived by young and old
people alike. It has been a gift for the whole humanity. A wide opened
window on the mystery of life that does not die.
Once again I have asked myself: why does this Pope
magnetise so many people, particularly the youth? Indro Montanelli, in
this regard, on the occasion of the Youths Jubilee, wrote on the
Corriere della sera (17th August 200), "This old grand-father
who can hardly speak even in his own language, has said to the youths
things out of which, the most modern and updated one is two thousand
years old. But it is just this, I believe, that the youths, unaware of
it, seek in the ephemeral world in which we have brought them up;
something that has no time because it is eternal, and that offers some
stable thing on which to stand -and to rest- the feet".
All this is a teaching for us. We must not be afraid of
the future, of growing old, of lack of vocations, of defections, but
rather acquire the "wisdom of the twilight", which makes us trust
Providence that guides history and renews always our faithfulness.
In many occasions John Paul II has insisted on the
faithfulness to one's own charism
In the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, the
Pope invites us courageously not only to remember and to narrate our
glorious history, but also to build up a great story.
"Look into the future -he states- in which the Spirit
projects you to make great things
Be always ready, faithful to Christ,
to the Church, to your Institute and to today's man. You will, thus, be
renewed by Christ day after day, to build up, with his Spirit, fraternal
communities, to wash with him the feet of the poor and to give your
irreplaceable contribution to the transfiguration of the world".
It is the Spirit that leads us to do great things. It is
the Spirit that creates and constantly re-creates. According to Vita
Consecrata, each of us has received from the Father through Christ
and in the Spirit, a "special grace of intimacy" (VC 16, 18; 21c) and,
in an answer of "total love" (VC 21b), that is in an offering of
holocaust (VC 17b) to the Father, through Christ and in the Spirit, has
put "his way of existing and of acting in the hands of the Father" (VC
22b), consecrating everything, present and future, in his hands" (VC
17b).
We have received a grace of intimacy, the gift of a
spousal, unique friendship with Jesus.
The custody of this "grace of intimacy" is called
faithfulness. Our faithfulness -also to the Constitutions- is
faithfulness to the preferential and unique love for Jesus, it is a way
to the interpersonal relation with Him. It is not a cold precept. It is
an itinerary of
" sequela" qualified by our specific charism.
In Vita Consecrata n. 37, we read that the
foundation to live this creative faithfulness is the example of our
founders. We are invited to re-propose today their value, their
inventive, their concrete and creative holiness, as an answer to the
signs of the times, with a dynamic faithfulness to our mission.
We are invited to be, like them, dreamers and prophets.
This is what Fr. David Turoldo writes with this regard, "Send us, Lord,
new prophets, men who are sure of God".
We are called to re-generate constantly, with our own
steps, the way on which our feet stand. This way starts from the rock of
our tradition. The vitality of a tradition is reflected in its capacity
of enriching the old customs with the new meanings; it is manifested in
the capacity of entering a creative relation with the historical
context, producing theoretical models and formulae of life, which answer
the exigencies of the times, or better the exigencies of God in the
time.
Faithfulness to tradition -according to me- is a return
to the first love. A Congregation at the "birth stage" is always a
community of enthusiastic persons. Let us think of the community of the
apostles, of the primitive church, of our origins: Francis and Clare,
John Bosco and Maria Domenica, Francis of Sales and Johana de Chantal,
Vincent and Luisa.
To refuse the past, or to be unfaithful to one's own origin, is
dangerous. We know very well that unfaithfulness is not only oblivion
(we can be unfaithful without forgetting), but betrayal of love. It is,
however, equally dangerous to be photocopies of the past. The today is
different from yesterday, also for each one of us. We have lost dear
persons, woven new friendships, changed house and work. Perhaps we have
known also the bitterness of sin and the greatness of mercy.
One more question. On request of the Supreme Pontiff, you
have partecipated in the synod on Consecrated Life in 1994. Which more
meaningful memories can you share with us?
It was my first synod experience and I carry in my heart
a splendid memory of it, not only for what I learned, but also for what
I lived in the meetings, relations, in the work, which I was asked to
do.. It was a wonderful ecclesial experience, also thanks to the daily
presence of the Holy Father in the hall of the synod.
The synod has left for us a fecund and stupendous
heritage in the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, translated
into concrete life in the renewal and journey of the various religious
institutes. We must be grateful for it and treasure it up. As Goete
said, "Conquer what you have inherited from your father, so that it may
belong to you".
I want here to refer to three aspects, which I find
particularly meaningful.
The synod has invited the consecrated to live the
prophecy of consecrated life, to be "a living memory of the way
Jesus lived and acted" (VC22).
We are prophets when we feel burning in our hearts the
passion for the holiness of God and, after having welcome the Word,
through dialogue and prayer, we proclaim it with our life, with lips,
gestures, carrying the voice of God against evil and sin. We act in full
freedom, without money or provisions, or compromises and fears
Without feeling ashamed. Fr. De Foucauld has written, "We should be
ashamed of one thing only: of not loving Him enough".
People, especially the needy, will ask the religious,
"Sentinels, how far is night?", if they see in us vigilant men and women
who have a word to say on behalf of Go; if they see in us people, who
are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus.
Then it has spurred us to live our mission in the
frontier, that is to continue with enthusiasm and courage, the
mission of Jesus.
In a letter to the Franciscan brothers and sisters, Fr.
Schaluck has written:
"In creating the world
God left a touch of imperfection in all things.
He commanded the earth to produce the wheat, not bread;
man had to learn to make the dough and to cook it.
He did not make bricks, nor houses, but clay;
the bricks and the houses are the work of man.
God calls us to collaborate in the creation of the world.
Men must continue to fulfil the work of God.
These words can be addressed to each one of us. It is up
to us, with the strength, which comes to us through our continual
renewing "the love of the past" (Ap. 2,4), to make the dough, to cook
the bread and to break it for the poor; to build up the house and to
give hospitality to those who are roofless, to safeguard the goods of
the earth, to ask pardon and to denounce the wastage and the wounds
inflicted to nature; the scandal of the trade of women, the abuse of
children, the wild attacks of terrorism and of wars. It is up to us to
give heart, face and hands to our charisms, in the concrete
actualisation, in which we live. But with an attention: we must avoid
to let ourselves be caught by the temptation of the generic and of the
vague: we have our own originality, on which we can rely to translate
the sermon of the mountain into today's reality: Blessed are the poor in
spirit, blessed are the merciful
blessed are you, when they persecute
you for the sake of my name. It is up to us to make
these miracles.
Where they happen, we must believe, the Spirit of God blows and the
future is born. The secret of the fruitfulness of consecrated life is
all here: faithfulness to the Spirit.
The synod has invited us to walk
towards the future with hope, trusting God.
Go, I am with you, the Lord tells us. David Maria Turoldo
writes: "Send us, o Lord, prophets, men secure of God", secure of God.
In his love and with His strength, we walk towards the future with hope,
in spite of the growing age, the lack of vocations, the economic
difficulties, the defections, the hostile context, the precarious
reality. We walk in hope because we believe that we are not alone: the
Trinity inhabits us, and we inhabit the earth, the world of many
brothers and sisters of ours.
Thomas Merton says that our hope is not something that we
hope to be able to do. No, it is God who is arousing something good from
the reality we live in, in ourselves, even if all this is unknown to us.
Hope gives us a glimmer of God's hand, of his outstretched arm, which
guides us. We must believe and experience it in the faithfulness to the
Spirit. Faithfulness to the Spirit to catch the signs of God in the
today of history and to have the courage of overcoming discouragement,
of disconnecting ourselves from the pseudo-needs of our time, of
recuperating obsolete values, like silence, humility, peace, dialogue,
which are the rights of all and not the privilege of a few.
The experiential conviction of the presence and the
action of the Spirit allowed the first Christians to live in an attitude
of discovering him, through faith, in the events and of feeling in them
his demands and provocations. This experience of the first Christians
is not exclusive. The Biblical revelation underlines that the Spirit is
always near us and in the Christian community, to guide us towards the
full truth; that it is He who moves the Church at all times, so that
she may give testimony to Christ and so that the project of God for
humanity may become a reality.
The Spirit is close to each one of us: we must welcome
Him and listen to Him.
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