The idolatry of doing

            A strange fleshy stalk takes root in the vegetal universe: the rhizome. It is planted a little underground, it branches its roots only horizontally and has a fruitless stem, unable to rise up high. This taking roots only under the ground surface seems to be the metaphor of our globalized society, a society enslaved by false needs, with flat desires, dominated by a greedy and creeping ego which forces the deep self into exile. Isn't it true that we live superficially and move "only" along the horizontal nets of communication, weaving tightly fabrics of self-centred interests, always in search of immediate gratification? And that this proceeding along an exasperated particularism drags us  into a limbo of interior fragmentation, leaving latent in us the divine energies that push us constantly up high?

            Unluckily - as Vladimir Solov'ev (1853.1900) prophetically perceived in his Brief narration of the Anti-Christ-  "not even the church of the living God, pillar and foundation of the truth, escapes from this drowsiness, since she is taken just as a beneficial, aesthetic, socialising organisation."  (1). "This is", the enlightened Russian thinker added, " the fatal pitfall that today keeps on looming up for the family redeemed by the blood of Christ".

            In particular, with reference to consecrated life, we may say that too often "it is reduced to a mere humanitarian action in various fields of assistance, solidarity, philanthropic activities and culture"(2). All these things are good in themselves, but they are also misleading, and,  in our time, nothing short of lethal, if it serves the idolatry of action and if it is cut off from the deep roots of being new creatures in Christ (see 2 Cor 5, 17), inhabited and made fruitful by the Spirit to become a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God  (Rom 12,1).

The deep roots of the being

Since this is the situation, which is, at times, almost affected by a kind of schizophrenia with the tendency of dissociating mind and heart, action and contemplation, the consecrated life needs to contact the Spirit once again, to catch its interior action "both when He prays in us and when He invites us  to fulfil the work of the Father" (3). This happens by re-discovering the evangelical traits of Martha and Mary like the two cheeks of the same face" (Cassiano), avoiding to get lost in the meanders of futile questions about the superiority of contemplation over action or viceversa,  and rather acknowledging that only in their inseparable complementarity we can catch and fully welcome the face of Love.

            Sure, we must be extremely clear about a qualifying presupposition: the apostolic action is fruitful only when it is urged  by an authentic interior disposition which, individually and collectively, grows to maturity in contact with the Word, ruminated and prayed in  the daily faithfulness; never reduced to formal, behavioural codicils, but "breathed" as good news of the Kingdom which, thanks to God, is here …, in my heart indwelled by Him!

            In synthesis, therefore, it is the matter of clearing the ground from the ambiguity of certain catalogued actions of the past, by catching how, in the multiform consecrated life " the external picture, the field of action, the rhythm of life change;  these, however are but signs of an interior experience that develops at baptismal and faith level and is common to all, "active" and "contemplative" alike (4). As already said, we refer to the mysterious experience of spiritual life: the very life of God who dwells in us.

            Consequently, whatever the co-ordinates which specify the identity  of each Institute, we must allow the passion for God's holiness to burn in us, crouching down in the intimacy of His friendship, fixing our eyes on His infinite beauty. Thus, in the rhythm of time which becomes the kairos of salvation, we keep on inhaling the purity of love and, once pacified, we exhale the adulterations of the ego; we remain rooted in the authentic life,  truly free of risking our existence by donating it without reservations, till the end, beyond mere results.

            Once we have caught the essential which identifies us as consecrated beings, it is clear that this deep attitude breaks up "all the superficial evaluations of functionality", (5)  which presume of judging the life of institutes more on efficiency basis than on the "superabundance of gratuity and love" (6) we breathe in them: beyond number and "visibility".

And you, how do you live?

Allow me to recall a personal memory. On welcoming into the Diocese a new religious community,  my Bishop Giancarlo Bregantini (the community in which I live is in the Diocese of Locri-Gerace, in Calabria), there and then did not ask, "What do you do?", but rather, "How do you live?".

            This is the point! The challenge of the third millennium  before the religious life is played on the field of "the way we live", before and even more than on "what we do".

            How we live in the spirit of the beatitudes, from which everything in and around us becomes transparency and a reflex of the Kingdom. You are the salt of the earth (Mt 5, 13), Jesus says in the sermon of the mountain. Pay attention: He doesn't say "give" salt, but "be" the salt! (7)  Even before the tired and hungry crowds He doesn't say to his disciples: give bread, but "give them something to eat yourselves" (Lk 9, 13)! That is, make tasty and feed the world with the savoury offering of your life, so that people may say even of us, "He was in the fire not like burning flesh, but like baked bread" (Martyrdom of Polycarp from Smirne):  in the fire which the Lord has brought to the earth in order to warm the heart of the world.

The way of the "weekday" mystic life

From the wisdom of  chassidim, a spiritual Hebrew movement born in East Europe in '700, we pluck out this pearl, "Rabbi Bunam said, 'The Talmud compares this world to a wedding. It is as if one were getting ready for his marriage, but forgot to buy the nuptial ring; thus the ceremony could not go on. The same thing happens to a man who works throughout his whole life, but forgets to sanctify himself through the Torah and the commandments. When he reaches eternal life, he cannot enter it, and all his toils are of no avail" (8).

            As consecrated people, we are not to forget the nuptial ring! Namely, we must safeguard in us the gift of the Covenant, acknowledging in the depth of our heart the traits "of the Bride standing before the Bridegroom, partaking in his mystery, wrapped by His light" (9). Otherwise "the ceremony cannot go on", spiritual life withers and the dangerous snare of a restless activism re-appears. This would cause interior emptiness ending by throwing us into the anguish of non-sense.

            In concrete, consecrated life has its right to exist if it is truly "salt" that makes the earth tasty in the measure in which, without evasion from ordinary life, it becomes a "mystical" experience; if -mind it!-  it is not a form of elitist holiness, with patches of extraordinary apparitions, but an authentic opening to the "mystery of God, of Christ: way to the Father in the Holy Spirit, to the mystery of man and his reality, of the whole reality in its deep essence" (10). In other words, it is our mud paste which, surrendering itself trustfully into the hands of the Divine Potter, lets itself be moulded with docility, while joyfully welcoming the mystery of the Love's daily shining, in the fire manifestation of the Word that frees and saves:  just there where we are, in the things we do because of the love that burns within us "like a flame of the Lord" (Ct 8,7).

In the gift of the nuptial covenant

It's good to dig deeper in this nuptial condition, moving along the ordinary ways of authentic mystic life and innervating in the events of history, as a Gospel alternative and rehabilitative therapy against the spiritual suffocation, which weighs upon contemporary man.

            Let us fish again the image of the nuptial ring. What is it a sign of? It is a sign of welcomed and given love, sealed by nuptial faithfulness. A love which, between two spouses truly united under the same light and suave "yoke" of Christ, does not get exhausted soon after the honeymoon, when the magic dreams dampen and give way to the ordinary reality, but, on the contrary,  it matures among joys and toils in the ceaseless, daily, reciprocal  welcoming each other.

            It is to this unswerving love that Jesus alludes to, when, turning to his disciples in the intimacy of the Last Supper, he says, "Remain in me … Remain in my love" (Jo 15, 4-9). And, to make the effects of these words concrete, he puts under their eyes the tangible signs of his loving them intensely usque ad finem , till his last breath : the humble signs of the basin and of the towel, which will inspire Don Tonino Bello, Bishop of Molfetta, with the icon of the "Church in apron": as "service, sharing and direct involvement in the life of the poor" (11),

Love in "action": the three photograms of the service

"Jesus", John the evangelist notes, "having loved those who were his in the world, loved them to the end. They were at supper, … He got up from table, removed his outer garments and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist; He then poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel He was wearing …. and said to them: I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you (Jo 13, 1-15).

            This is the love consecrated life is pregnant with!

            It is the love of the Bridegroom who gives up himself till the end, in the totality of time, in the intensity of affection, overflowing with fruitful oblation. Humble and full of compassion. But it is also the love of the bride, mine and yours, that urges us to go out of ourselves because we have been "conquered"  and  "seized" by Christ, chaste in heart and mind, docile and sober, after chasing away the temptation of barricading ourselves into cerebral sterile pieces of lucubration, or sinking into the magma of continuous frustrations.

            Therefore, we are free to love, but also free to serve. In fact, this love, safeguarded in the heart and transfused into life, wins our fears up to the hidden places of the soul and of the psyche, enabling us to give ourselves "definitively" to the exigencies of an on going conversion, and at the same time, making us capable of  bringing clearly to focus the three photograms of love in action":

            - " He got up from the table", which means to meet the other by welcoming the challenge of an on going missionary dynamism, never sedentary or plastered;

            - "removed his outer garments", that is: He assumed the transparency of simplicity and the nakedness of communion that depose every day the masks of pride and self-interest on the earth of humility;

-          "wrapped a towel round his waist", that is "accomodating ourselves to people in all kinds

of different situations" (1 Cor 9,22), so that our service may be an authentic "sign of God's tenderness towards mankind" (12), as Basil the Great had so very well intuited: "We do not need to be masters of ourselves, but we must feel and act as  persons surrendered to God for the service to the brethren, who are one soul with Him" (13).

Conclusions

            As we can see here and there, but above all within ourselves, not even religious life, at least in some of its dimensions, has succeeded in subtracting itself from the "erosion" produced by the prevailing mentality of consumerism and achievements.  These are the latent signs of a weak proceeding, destined to die. But, thanking God, there are other things also. They are the prophetic signs imprinted on the forehead of men and women who, in the weekday mystic life, have said "yes" to the action of the Spirit. No matter whether they are few or many, they prove the faithfulness of God and the certainty that even today the Church can say, "I am glad that I have every confidence in you" (2 Cor 7, 16).

To the provoking question made to me on the sense of religious life today I can give the answer, "Yes, today more than ever! But on one condition: that every consecrated man may become what he is meant to be: "love in God-love" (14).

·         Member of a Monastic Community in the diocese of Locri-Gerace, she is in charge of formation and co-ordinates the diocesan Biblical pastoral activity.

1 Cfr V. Solov'ev, Breve racconto dell'Anticristo, in Tre dialoghi, Marietti, Torino 1975, pages 184-217.

2 Ibidem.

3. A. Louf, La vita spirituale, Qiqajon, Magnano (Bl) 2001, page 168.

4. Ibidem, page 150

5. VC 105.

6. Ibidem.

7. Cfr. P. Rattin, Il discorso della montagna, Ed. Diocesane, Trento 1993, page 15.

8. D. Lifschiz, La saggezza dei chassidim, Piemme, Casale Monferrato (Al) 1997?, page 214.

9.VC, No 15.

10. M.P. Giudici, Cercare Dio con cuore semplice. Un cammino di essenzialità alla luce della Parola, Ed. Appunti di Viaggio, Roma 2004, page 18.

11. T. Bello, Temi generatori, a cura di R. Brucoli, Ed. Insieme, Terlizzi (BA) 1995, page 150.

12. VC, No. 57. Cfr. also No. 75.

13. Basil from Cesarea, Lettera, page 22,I.

14. M.P. Giudici, Diventa chi sei, Ed. Appunti di Viaggio, Roma 2002, page 166.