n. 7/8
luglio/agosto 2008

 

Altri articoli disponibili

Italiano

Spirituality, holiness, demand of sense
A theological-pastoral perspective

of LORENZO PREZZI

 

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

The religious life is often qualified as gift, grace, charism, state of life, consecration, but very rarely as a resource. Perhaps this happens to avoid falling back to the bad habit of measuring its efficacy starting from the practical service that it can assume or, perhaps because of a lazy prejudice that places it among things of the past no longer capable of life and service. The connotation of resource is, anyhow, coherent with the committed statement of Consecrated Life:: «The Consecrated Life is in the very heart of the Church as a decisive element for her mission, because it expresses the intimate nature of the Christian vocation and the tension of the whole Church Bride towards union with the unique Bridegroom. In the synod, more than once it was stated,  that the consecrated Life has not only carried on in the past a role of help and support for the Church, but that it is a precious and necessary gift also today and for the future of God’s people, because it belongs intimately to her life, holiness and mission” (VC 3).

To enter the specific theme that has been given to me, I shall try to show the underground currents, which are not wholly perceived, using an indirect course. I shall proceed in a circular and ascension form, starting from some peripherals and far off elements, I shall progressively enter the direct experience of consecrated life, to catch from its heart the possibilities and the tasks of its ecclesial service.  For a proper discernment  I wish to avoid some dangers: The danger of getting drowned into our tiny difficulties, of transforming our contradictions into an epochal and definitive judgement. The danger of interiorising an inadequate and insufficient scheme: the identification of a decline with infidelity. A charism can historically get exhausted (it has happened many times) without  being caused by corruption and fault. There has never been so much Gospel in some congregations as before the spiritual trial of one’s own death. Finally, the danger of historical simplification that entrusts the heritage of the entire consecrated life to the new forms of common life. This is not an act of honesty, but of laziness. Church history teaches us that the new forms, to be accepted and valued as fruit of the Spirit, are composed with the most traditional experiences and with the most tried charisma.

Solidarity of the Benedictines with the Burmese monks

I would start from afar, rather from very far: from the extreme East. Between the months of August and October 2007, the media brought home the suggestive and grave images of the manifestations that the Buddhist monks of Myanmar (Burma) accomplished along the city streets and the streets of the capital, Rangoon. The information and testimonies have explained to us the immediate reasons of the protest (the sudden rise of prices for goods of primary necessity), but also the deepest questions of pacification and respect as content of the well orderly processions , which were unluckily overthrown by the police violence of the local dictatorship. The upside down pots  shown by the photos evidently say that the traditional request of food for the monks was suspended because of the people’s hunger or, better, because of more radical and deeper demands (from democracy to the spiritual food) voluntarily ignored by an exercise of power without quality and consensus.

Out of all the expressed acts of solidarity in that occasion, an unusual letter from the Monks of France as support for the Burmese Monks was not paid the deserved attention. In that letter, the monks and nuns of Benedictine tradition, from France, expressed their “vivid emotion and sympathy”. This is what they wrote, “Peace is our uniform, We do not doubt that peace is shared by many more. We think that the search for peace nurtures the best part of all peoples and of the entire humanity. In this sense it is impossible for us not to see in the events, which sign the life of your Country, the will to advance further along the journey for peace. Thus we, unanimously deplore the violent repression at work to eradicate the formidable movement that has developed   within the Burmese people desirous of more dignity and true freedom. To us, there has been a huge wound  to the rights of man that moves in the opposite sense of every authentic effort for a lasting peace”. Signed by Don Philippe Piron, abbot of Sainte-Anne de Kergonan, on behalf of the Monastic Conference in France (CMF), the letter is, as I know, the first public and formal manifestation of institutional solidarity after decenniums of personal reports of study and attendance, which the monastic and religious world cultivates towards the expressions of monasticism of the Eastern regions. crossing the religions and resounded in some  reports of the international congress for Catholic Religious in 1993, as preparation for the Synod on Consecrated Life, which would be celebrated the successive year. It was not at all the matter of ignoring the specific Christological and ecclesiological identity of the Catholic consecrated life, or the vain search for a minimum common multiple that would constitute the common datus of the phenomenon, setting faiths aside. Rather, it was the perception of a possible alliance between men and women of different traditions concerning the spiritual demands of the human heart. Cardinal T. Spidlik wrote: the monastic phenomenon is “a universally human phenomenon. In all societies there are some persons who consider the life-style of men among whom they live, not entirely corresponding to the dignity of the human being, seen that their existence is externally and internally disturbed. Here is the birthplace of the desire of finding a different harmony with the world, with God, with others and with oneself” (T. Splidlik-M. Tenace-R. Cemus, Il monachesimo secondo la tradizione dell’Oriente cristiano, Lipa, Roma 2007, 286).

Along the Burmese city streets a phenomenon went on that was perceived as strange in our shores : a religious and spiritual class interpreted the most radical human questions of the people, as the Burmese monks had done in 1988 and as it had happened to the Philippine Catholics  in 1986, as well as in Timor in 2002 and in Sri Lanka, South Vietnam, Indonesia and Tibet, in which on the last days there were disorders and violence around the monastery in coincidence with the 49th anniversary of the rebellion against the Chinese dominion. It was a wave-length that the Western consecrated and monastic life perceived as synchronic and sharable. 

A flourishing of communities in the churches of the Reform 

A second passage allows us to enter the Christian tradition, but in the tradition that is more far away from the practice and evaluation of consecrated life: the protestant tradition. In April of last year (2007), a surprising document of evaluation  came out, full of appreciation for the experiences of communitarian life in the protestant context. The German Evangelical churches (EKD) shared a vote of the Council on “Community and society of spiritual life in the German Evangelical Church”. We remember that the reason of the very hard opposition of the Reform of monasteries and convents was due not to the fact in itself, but to the correlated behaviours and principles: the over-dimension of the papal role was seen as an impediment against the growth of the local churches and the elevation of the state of perfection of the religious prevented the development of spirituality linked with the family factor, with work and the civil commitment. In spite of this, from the very start of the Reform there was a surprising resistance of some communities  against the imperative of dispersion, and one of the first reformers, Martin Bucero, founded a community of common life in 1546. The pietistic wave of the ‘600 and ‘700 nurtured a residual, but resisting question of common life until the explosion of the deacons’ experience during the great changes of the industrial revolution of the eight hundred. Parallel to our social doctrine, numerous forms of common life were born in Germany, at the service of the needy and the class of workers. After the first and the second world wars  of ‘900 there were more waves of interest for the consecrated life. It suffices to remember the Bruderhaus of Bonhoeffer and the community of  Taizé.

Today the communities and the societies of active spiritual life in the Lutheran Churches and German reformed churches are 234:56; they are communities with the vow of a stable common life, 33 of them are fraternities of various type with the simultaneous presence of males and females, 28 are communities of families, 105 are fraternities of the charitable tradition, 12 are ecumenical. From 1978 a conference  of the evangelical communities is in action and  the meetings of the society of spiritual life are going on since 2003.

These numbers surprise all those who think that religious life does not exist in those shores; anyhow, they are very much reduced numbers if compared to our tradition and to the Orthodox tradition. The importance of this presence is significantly valued in co-relation with an important critical passage of the German evangelical churches. In January 2007, the representatives of the regional churches gathered  in Wittenberg with the aim of approving some orientation for the future of the churches. Missionary activities, identity and institutional renewal gave origin  to the proposal of some important reforms during the following decenniums, such as the reduction of regional churches from 23 to 12, the contraction of the pastors from 21.000 to 13.000; the strengthening of the non territorial  communities of faithful (the church of the youths or those of passing citizens) the reduction and specialisation of the many charitable activities. During this decennium, the evangelical churches have lost 3,4 million of faithful (measured with the specific tax for the church in action in Germany) and they foresee a fall, in the near future, from 25 to 17 million of faithful, because of the joint action of secularisation, less births and the aging of the population. All this is translated into  a drastic  re-dimensioning of the financial collection: it is foreseen a fall from 4 to 2 million euro per year. 

All this has pushed the protestant communities (which are still the beating heart and theologically the most consistent of the entire Protestantism, though the neo-protestants of the recent American tradition are growing strongly). It is just as if the appeal to the Gospel profile of one’s future crossed unavoidably the dimension of the testimony of common life. The text we starting from proclaims, “The communities and societies of the spiritual life of Protestant tradition are a specific figure of evangelical spirituality …. a treasure of the evangelical Churches to be nurtured and stabilised”.

Re-launching of the Orthodox monastic life

The third passage is on the side of the Orthodox monastic life. There is a singular re-launching, partly due to the fall of the communist regime, partly due to a growing attention paid to spirituality. The phenomenon of the sacred mount of Athos, an extra-ordinary concentration of monastic life by Ortodox tradition, today knows a renewed centrality. At the beginning of the past century, the population of the Athos  amounted to more than 4.700 monks. After the Russian revolution, that cut off every alimentation from that country, and after the civil war, which devastated Greece at the end of the second world war, the number of the monks fell reaching, in 1971, the minimum number  of 1.100 presences. In that event, some voices set seriously the question of the survival of the Athos, thinking that monasticism did no longer respond to the situation of the Church. In the half of ’70, the government of the colonels thought of a tourist development of the area, but the emergence of relevant figures, just in those years, such as Father  Iosiph the Hesichast, Father  Ephraim of Katounakia and Father Paisios, caused a slow  but constant inversion of tendency. The monk-citizens  and learned people, who were formed in a demanding spiritual school,  substituted the farmers-monks, By the end of ’70 there were 200 new entrances, which became 700 in half the ’90. Today the monks are more than 1.700 of much younger average age. In spite of unsolved problems (like the patriarchal excommunication of the Esphigmenou, the shared anti-ecumenical position, the corrosive force of tourism),  the Athos has come back to be a pole of reference for the entire Orthodoxy, even for the Russian one that has decided of favouring the presence of Russian monks, by allowing the “go ahead” of a specific foundation (in agreement with the political power) to sustain them economically.   

The expansion  of the monastic phenomenon in the territory of the Russian Patriarchate  is more comprehensible and more evident. Speaking to his priests in  December 2007, Patriarch Alexis mentioned 732 monasteries (four years ago they were 650), equally divided among

males and females with more than 10.000 presences. In a previous and organic report of 2004, he rejoiced at the enormous development of the monastic life, while indicating the most serious challenges: the constructive and financial emergence on one side and the formation and spiritual dimension on the other. “In some monasteries there are hermitages (skit), where the ascetical monks  from early in the morning until late at night  are busy with the care of domestic animals, pastures, orchard and more occupations of domestic kind. It is clear that the initial destination of the hermitage, as a place of caring for the soul and attentive efforts of prayer, goes lost in this case.

(See: Regno-documenti 1/2007, 50).

This is why the  entrance applications are to be supervised and the accompaniment  must be such as to take  into consideration the present challenges. According to the Synodal  disposition, the decisive figure of the starec (spiritual father) is, “The spiritual fathers, who are entrusted with the task of accompanying the brothers, are monks and nuns who have progressed in their spiritual life and are familiar with the Word of God, with the works and rules of the holy fathers and are capable to guide the spiritual life” (ibidem)

52). Less than half of today’s monasteries has a figure of this type. A renewal of internal discipline and the right position before the hierarchy can be born only from a spiritual deepening and from the liturgical and sacramental practice. We must keep in mind that the monastic authority is often more recognised  than that of the local Bishop

Cyril of Smolensk, metropolitan and responsible person of the department for the external ecclesiastical relations of the Patriarchate, has underlined another important tension: the tension that in our languages can be indicated as monastic life and active life. Having the contra-position of these two exigencies been considered not valid,  he tends to value the academic, wise and spiritual life, above all for the monks who are going to be Bishops and responsible of ecclesial functions. He indicates in the metropolitan  Nikodim, who died in 1978, a reference for this “school of wise monks”.

Religious life in the Catholic milieu

After this rapid excursion through the territories of non-Catholic and non-Christian common life, we enter the Catholic milieu. However, before facing directly the ecclesial services of consecrated life, I shall mention some experiences that are found towards the future of the religious experience..

The first one concerns a theme very much treated in these latest years by chapters and organisations of the religious: the link with the laity. Last October 1500 adherents to spiritual families, who nurture themselves with the charisma of religious orders and congregations, met in Lourdes. Behind them there are almost 35.000 persons who participate in different ways in a spiritual journey of the same type. A French bishop confirmed the amplitude of the phenomenon: while many are looking at the new communities (of which we shall speak later), few notice the emergence of this church milieu.  “At first I opposed it. It looked like an escape from the direct lay responsibility. The new communities also have  revealed themselves not to be apt to nurture the elementary and strong contact of faith which is typical of the parishes. I felt that also this phenomenon linked to the religious  was more dependent on emotions than on missionary tasks. However, I have been compelled to change my mind. They are often the most active persons in parishes, more available for diocesan services, more generous also in the civil ones, which of course require more formation, but within areas already amply experienced  and verified by tradition.

Thus, a world that felt to be in strong contraction and scarcely fruitful, like that of the religious (330 congregations, 40.000 religious, 5000 communities) has seen  around itself the flourishing of unexpected applications requesting a spiritual sharing . Though present in the traditional common life (third orders and similar ones) beyond 80% of lay groups were born after the ’70, out of which 50% after 1995. These groups have gone on growing at first with reference to individual religious or particular communities, then they have recognised themselves as “spiritual families”, thanks to the work of discernment made within the chapter of the religious life. They seek elements characterising their own ecclesial and spiritual sensitivity, a special way of praying, inspiring Biblical texts, well rooted in charisma proved by the history of the church.

The second one is not an experience, but a research realised in 2006 by the Georgetown

University of Washington among 259 new emerging communities of consecrated life and lay movements of communitarian character  in the United States. A more attentive skimming has found that the new communities are 165, divided into 88 dioceses and into 40 states of the Union. The great majority of the emerging forms is made up of women religious communities in conventional sense, namely of groups that intend to follow the traditional models of religious life, including the profession of vows and community life. There are also mixed forms (with or without vows; males and females), diversified belongings, co-presence of families. It is felt that the search of a definitive statute has not yet been concluded for a given number of these communities.  Most of them are public or private associations of faithful. There are also: one sixth of specific religious institutes, 2 secular institutes and 3 societies of apostolic life.

The most frequently evocated spiritualities as poles of reference are those of the Franciscans, of the Carmelites and the Benedictines. The Salesian, Dominican, Jesuit, Augustinian spirituality follow. One third of the communities does not identify with no one of the traditional spiritualities, stating that they have a new vision or spiritual centre. The devout  and traditional traits (Marian devotion, reference to the Pope, direct evangelisation) are combined with new attentions (poverty as life-style and ministry area). The evangelising and missionary task is linked  to prayer, retreats, people’s mission and catechesis, more than to  theological researches. More than two thirds share the common life.

About  a previous relevance, almost 60 communities have disappeared, while 68 are developing, and some twenty of them have been added. The situations are different also from the vocational view-point. Only the monastic experiences are without problems of new entrances, while the others have them, though in different number. While the traditional communities fall in number, the new ones keep on growing, though in a diversified form and in a way that cannot be compared with the development of the XIX century Institutes.

The new communities in Europe

I mention the new communities from our European viewpoint in addition to the new communities in the USA

The new communities and the new foundations had their incubation in the 40s and 50 (See: The essay by Giancarlo Rocca on  Informationes SCRIS, no. 4, 2004; and no. 12/2007 of “Consacrazione e Servizio”, 19-26) when the crisis of religious life began to appear in the West. The expansion of the phenomenon of secularisation, the development of the lay and conjugal spirituality and the renewed sense of the evangelical radical reality are some of the starting conditions. We must add to this Vatican II that reformulated the Ecclesial conscience approving a legitimately tentative that were previously looked at with suspicion and the social phenomena  that, for instance, at the end of the 60s, facilitated the rich-recognition of the most different communitarian experiences.  After 40-50 years the religious and ecclesial continuity of many experiences appears more evident, while the proximity with phenomena like the ’68, or similar one, was removed.  .

The number of foundations is uncertain; even more uncertain that of the adherents. In general we can say that the new communities impose themselves because of  their number. In Italy, for instance, the «Memores Domini» (common life proposed by some persons in the movement of Communion and liberation ) are almost one thousand. The Focolari (forming common life) are almost 1.500 (820 female, 650 male), some French communities like «Chemin Neuf», «Emmanuel», «Beatitudes» and «Fondation pour un monde nouveau» and the Spanish community “Adsis”. None of the other communities reach the number of 100 members. However, all together there are some hundreds of  different communities and the persons with vows or promises are some thousands. Let us think that the most consistent religious congregations count almost 20.000  and that, in the course of history the maximum limit was of 40.000 persons.

The journey of the new foundations (on the side of religious congregations as well as on that of the lay associations) is not yet without understandable fatigue and demanding verifications. Knowing the many complex passages crossed by our religious families, we should not be surprised before moments of tension and experiential sufferings of the new communities. I shall mention some cases.

Out of the religious congregations, during these decenniums, that of the “Legionaries of Christ” is the most relevant: 700 priests, 2500 seminarians in the pastoral activities  of 18 countries, 1000 consecrated lay persons, 85.000 members of the Regnum Christi, 22 university centres, 158 school institutes, 340.000 voluntary people, one pontifical university (Regina Apostolorum), one university (European University), some colleges and an average consistent presence (the Zenith, the monthly Il Timone dell’Editrice A.R.T). However, there is also a grave censorship  of the founder (recently disappeared)  from the Congregation of the doctrine of faith.  Or the “Congregation of St. John: almost 600 religious, 200 in formation present in some 20 countries, under severe criticism from the Bishop of reference (Monsignor S-guy of Autun) and an attentive supervision from the Congregation for religious. Or the community of the Beatitudes (1.500 brothers and sisters spread in 35 countries) called to give its account due to accusations of  past formation behaviours, not sufficiently supervised and attentive. Or the French community of the “Word of life” (some hundred adherents with 18 communities in France) that had to leave behind its own five founders to face with clarity the future challenges.

Which resources do we represent?

Which resource is represented by the 945.210 religious active in the Church (136.171 priests, 532 permanent deacons, 55.107 male religious, 753.400 female religious), 370.000 workers in Europe and 130.000 present in Italia? What is today their possible ecclesial service? I am not thinking of practical service, which my and your congregations know very well. I think of the spiritual and pastoral dimensions that shape the Christian testimony today. I shall identify four major axes of reflections. The religious can serve in an original way the ecclesial life in the order of sacraments of communion, of the common vocation to holiness, in the search for today’s spirituality, in keeping alive in the Church some decisive words of Vatican II (See: Vie religieuse, and vie consacrée aujourd’hui, Documents episcopat, 5/2007).

The sacramental aspect of communion 

Speaking of sacramental aspect of communion means going back to the role that the term

  “Sacrament “ had in Vatican II. In the international Congress of Consecrated Life, Father. J. B. Libanio had the perspective of sacramental type for the future of consecrated life.

 «The expression “Sacramental aspect of communion must be explained: At its back there is the experience of the church in the Council of Vatican II. The Church found herself before the famous dilemma: on one side the ecclesiological tradition of the Council of Trent and that of Vatican I, that strongly underlined the exterior elements of belonging to the church; on the other side there was the tradition of the Reform that insisted on the opposite pole…(…) the council found in the “sacramentum” category a bridge between the two traditions, thus overcoming the impasse (…). The fundamental problem of this model is that of asking oneself questions  on the sense, the meaning, the interior reality that the rules, the norms, the signs,  the symbols and the practices that the consecrated life possessed. If they do not favour any personal, interior and spiritual experience, they have no reason to exist. Equally, if the interiority does not exteriorise  in signs and practices, there is the fear that religious life may become a mere arbitrary subjectivity. The sacramental structure is converted into a criterion of discernment. Consecrated life takes its distance from mere interiority, affirming the incarnation of grace and avoiding Pharisee behaviours, legalism, exteriority of religious rites without any interior correspondence”  (J. B. Libanio, Passione per Cristo passione per l’umanità, Paoline, Milan 2005, 164-165).

If the church is a house and school of communion, consecrated life, in the variety of its charisma, expresses some of her practical declinations, a kind of sacramental figure of the mystery.  In the document Starting afresh from Christ we read, «In this journey of the entire church we expect the decisive contribution of the consecrated life  for her specific vocation to a life of communion in love.  In Vita Consecrata we read, “We ask the consecrated persons to be experts of communion and to practise its spirituality, as witnesses and artisans of that project of communion that is at the summit of man’s history according to God” (no. 46). […]. The perspective of the spirituality of communion is the spiritual climate of the church at the beginning of the third millennium, an active and exemplary task of consecrated life at all levels” (RdC 28 e 29).

This means concretely a spiritual work  on the communitarian life as the privileged place of communion, and as a capacity of exemplarity and dialogue with the other states of Christian life.

The common life constitutes a place particularly susceptible to signify the communion to which God calls the entire humanity. In fact, our communities gather up persons who have not chosen one another, persons that often have no affinity, but that have been convoked by the common call of the Lord who leads them towards relations of fraternity in view of the Kingdom. Faithfulness to this journey makes of the religious speaking signs of the communion to which God calls all men and women. In the variety of its forms “fraternal life in common” has always appeared as a radical realisation of the common fraternal spirit that unites all the Christians. The religious community makes visible the communion that founds the Church and also a prophecy of the unity to which she tends as final goal” (Fraternal life in community, 10).

The prophetic service of communion 

The present social and ecclesial context makes the prophetic service of communion particularly urgent. The growing individualism and the ever growing exposure of the single believer before the waves of agnosticism  arouse an increasing interest for the communitarian life, as shown by the ecclesial movements and the foundations of new communities. However, it is not the matter of external suggestion. A renewed demand of community is always present in the internal experience of consecrated life. After the Council, the apostolic communities also, or those deputed to single activities, have re-discovered the constitutive element of the community. In other words, the discernment and the communitarian mandate are decisive to prevent the slipping of one’s own activity and witness into diffused individualism. All the experience concerning the “little communities” or the “integrated communities” or the “mixed communities”  (religious and lay persons), or the inter-congregational communities  are the variation of a common conviction: the priority of a community as such over the many things and tasks of the individual persons

The capacity of the religious life to keep open the relation among different generations is part of the sacramental service of communion (which does not mean sacrificing the scarce young generations to the nursing service of the many aged sisters and of reconciling the different nationalities in the same community. The most famous Italian demographer, Massimo Livi Bacci, to those who asked him question about the level of intolerance for the presence of foreigners in society answered: there is no level; look at the Vatican and see how it is full of foreigners and yet the Vatican suffers no crisis. He could have said: look at the religious communities, where there is no insoluble problem.

The sacramental aspect of communion is valid also for the relations with the other states of life; for the new communities and ecclesial movements. The season of the opposition (more from the movements than from the religious) is truly at our back. The movements and the new communitarian forms can offer an example of evangelical and charismatic freshness, as well a generous and creative impulse to evangelisation. It is beautiful to see a certain clarity of vocation, the fervour in prayer, the time dedicated to the community, love for the Church and the Virgin Mary. Naturally movements and communities can learn from the religious life the serene, faithful and charismatic witness, as well as the custody of a rich spiritual patrimony and ecclesial experience.

       The same prophecy of communion is valid also for the laity, which we have mentioned speaking of the case in France; it is valid also in the relations between the consecrated life and the ecclesial hierarchy. We must recognise that in this area, at least for the Italian context, the contentious attitude has practically disappeared: During these decenniums I have counted some 80 decisions of the Italian Bishops on the theme of the neo-catechumenal celebration, but not even a single public  letter of criticism against religious orders. Most of the many tensions of the past are at our back. The accusation of a “parallel magisterium” survives in some  area of Latin America (more as slogans than as reality), but it has never been in our shores. Now it is the time for a wise  intervention and a calibrated face to offer strength and substance for the pastoral programmes of the local churches.

The common vocation to holiness 

The contribution of the religious is precious for the vocation of the Christian people to holiness. The evangelical counsels are not the property of the religious, “Every person re-generated in Christ is called to live, with the force that flows from the gift of the Spirit, chastity corresponding to one’s own state of life, obedience to God and to the Church, a reasonable detachment from material goods, because all are called to holiness, which consists in the perfection of charity. Baptism does not imply in itself the call to celibacy or to virginity, the renunciation to goods, the obedience to a superior, in the specific form of the evangelical counsels (VC 30). The same apostolic exhortation develops the quality of judgement that the practice of the vows engrafts  in the life of the world, in a hedonistic, materialistic and not truthful context, the public pronunciation of the vow introduces a powerful form of interrogation and of judgement of the culturally understood  and non discussed schemes.  However, the theological root of the vows is anchored with the Trinitarian life: “The reference of the evangelical counsels to the holy and sanctifying Trinity reveals their deepest sense. In fact, they are the expression of the love that the Son nourishes for the Father in the unity with the Holy Spirit. By practising them the consecrated person lives with particular intensity the Trinitarian and Christological character that distinguishes the Christian life” (VC 21).

Living chastity, therefore, is not primarily a renunciation to matrimony, but the efforts to love the other for what he is, after the example of the divine persons. Living poverty is surely the refusal of possessing goods, but above all it is the acceptance and the gift of self to the other in the way of the Trinity. The same thing we can say of obedience. It is not first of all a renunciation to one’s own will, but the availability of listening to, for a love journey like the Trinitarian proceeding. The vows are a proclamation of the Kingdom of God that sets us free.

Research of sense and spirituality

The sacramental aspect of religious life towards the demand of sense today is, above all, the recognition of the demand itself. Spirituality is the frontier of Christian testimony. The dissipation of the forms of life, the difficult construction of personal identity, the crumbling  of the great narrations and the ideology of progress, of the associative and cultural forces, suggest to recognise the centre of the believing conscience  and not the place where to start again speaking of the God of Jesus, of the Gospel Abba. The Christian spirituality is not the simple recognition of interiority, or emotion safe from the rational or dogmatic rigour.  It is not a specificity that cannot be narrated and subjected to the ecclesial recognition. It is the experience of men and women who believe progressively until they become personally believers, in other words, until the history and image of Christ emerge. in their lived experience. In other words, when the died and risen Christ leads his own disciples to a life-style. Therefore, there is a fundamental and essential common Christian spirituality.  which is specifically that of Baptism. It is only in reference to it that the various charisma of foundation take sense and beauty.

It is something  deeply different not only from the pursue of the spirituality of other religions and other contexts (from Buddhism to sciamanism, from scientology to druidism, etc.), but also with regard to the vague and never verified existences, which embody the holistic vision ( a complete and forcefully harmonic reality) up to the ecologic theory: from the androgenic form (form of indistinct sexuality) up to mysticism as harmony of the body

It is good to resist the “resignation side of today’s civil culture, which withdraws from the responsibility of pointing at or only recognising the models built up by a good life; and postpones  indefinitively the settling of existence around the stability of choices that must be simply honoured: instead of continually being put under discussion” » (P. Sequeri).

If spirituality is the hinge of a future Christianity and of a liveable Christian faith, it is clear that we cannot proceed along separated itineraries: here there is the religious life, there the married people, here the ordained ministry, there the lived one; here the formed Christian, there the Dominical Christian. What is actually pursued is the primacy of the Kingdom and the wisdom of life, the affirmation of the truth of Jesus and the daily mediations apt to persuade us with his bounty for everybody, the affirmation of freedom from the bonds of the flesh and the seriousness with which one forms a family and welcomes the children that come to life.

The diversity of charisma is functional for the administration of the common baptismal spirituality. Faithfulness to one’s own spirituality  is the service to answer the spread question of sense. “It is necessary to adhere always more to Christ, centre of the consecrated life, and to start vigorously a journey of conversion and renewal that, like the first experiences of the apostles before and after the Resurrection, has been a starting afresh from Christ, (…) To start again from Christ  means to proclaim that the consecrated life is a special following of Christ, “a living memory of the existing and acting way of Jesus as the Incarnate Word before the Father and the brothers”. This implies a particular communion of love with him, who has become the centre of life and the constant fountain of every initiative”  (RdC 21 e 22).

In the meeting of Benedict XVI with the executive council of superiors general on 18th February 2008, the Pope called to mind, “Many times, like my venerated predecessors,  I also have wanted to repeat that today’s men glimpse a strong religious and spiritual reminder, though they are ready to listen to and to follow only those who witness coherently their adhesion to Christ” (L’Osservatore romano, 20th February,  2008).

The disappeared words of Vatican II

I am going to close these reflections  on the fundamental orientations, that the religious can contribute to strengthen, with a hint on the “disappeared words”, those points of the Council’s  reference  that, after forty years, have seen the fading away of their fascination.

Poverty 

Let us start with the question of “poverty”. In 1962, in the Council, Cardinal G. Lercaro suggested poverty to be the “unifying and vivifying principle of the entire work of the Council: “Where shall we seek this vital impulse, this soul, this fullness of the Spirit? Just in this: in an act of supernatural docility of each of us and of the entire Council to the indication that seems to be ever clearer and imperative: this is the hour of the poor, of millions of poor persons; this is the hour of the mystery of Christ, above all of the poor”.

In the document Fraternal life in community, after thirty years, the journey fulfilled by the religious is summed up. The religious life has asked itself seriously how to be at the disposal of the evangelisation pauperibus”, but also how to be evangelised by the poor, how to be able to let oneself be evangelised by the contact with the world of the poor. In this great mobilisation, the religious have chosen the programme of being wholly “for the poor”, “many, with the poor”, “some, like the poor”. Fraternal life in community, 63). At th end of the progress ideologies and the political representation of the poor, their question has become invisible and the Christian communities themselves have come to know the fatigue of remaining in the altruistic dimension. As religious, we are helped by our international dimension. From our solidarity with the poor a new spirituality is born, which  “accepts the purifications of faith and the ascetical exigencies of evangelical abnegation, as consequence of solidarity with the world of the poor. This new spirituality seems to be the necessary condition to answer the cry of the poor and a mature fruit of this answer”  (C. Maccise, Cento temi di vita consacrata, Dehoniane, Bologna 2007, 151).

Woman

The second word is “woman”. Women are the great majority of the consecrated life, but not always, Father Maccise notices that their identity and their genius are recognised and appreciated, both in the monastic and the apostolic life. “We cannot, surely, deny that, starting from Vatican II, the consecrated women have started uttering their word of feminine perspective in the field of theology of the consecrated life. (…). The male theological reflection continues to dominate  also in what concerns the women religious life, especially the contemplative one, thus depriving theology of rich viewpoints valid not only for the women religious life, but also for the male one” (Ibidem, 364).

In a recent interview, Sr. Enrica Rosanna, sub-secretary of the Congregation for the Institutes of consecrated life, underlines, “I think that a considerable journey has been made to place at par the male and the female consecrated life, to free the women religious from the masculine protection, to allow the feminine genius to express its own richness, without sterile dangerous vindications. This does not mean that, in practice, there is no more journey to be made” (L’Osservatore Romano, 18-19th February, 2008).

I come to the conclusion with a quotation, which I feel to be interesting and provoking, a quotation from N. Hausman: «The moment women resemble men in a better way and men resemble women, we may ask ourselves whether the narcissistic homo-sexual and childish  dynamisms of omnipotence, necessary to steal from the other (I am speaking as a woman), might not have invested the consecrated life in many aspects. Now, one of the most difficult problems for tomorrow’s Church will not be te question of the woman’s role, but of what has still been left to man to be oneself according to the mind of God. To the end of being like man, the woman imposes to man the way of being less man. On the other hand, because of a certain affection in the contrary, he offers the woman to enter with him the narcissistic world, where each person makes the other unfruitful because of wanting to resemble each other. It pertains to the woman to return man to himself by making of him a spouse and a father, just as it pertains to the man to return the woman to herself in love and maternity”. 

Word

The “Word” is the third decisive question. We cannot say that the Word has disappeared from the ecclesial agenda. The proximity and practice of the Scriptures connote many aspects of these post-council decenniums and represent also one of its major characteristics. However, just in the Lineamenta of the next synod, which will be dedicated to the Word of God, a certain fatigue is denounced to widen the approach to the Word, “Despite many insistences, we must say that many Christians do not have an effective and personal contact with the Scriptures, and those who have it live theological and methodological uncertainties because of communication. (….) A robust, and credible promotion of the Word is becoming indispensable”. (Regno-documenti, 9/2007, 271).

The consecrated life has a relevant task in this matter, not only for the widening interest of the Scriptures, but also for the trustable approach that joins competence and devotion, communities and single persons through the lectio divina. The religious life is a kind of  ecclesial hermeneutic of the acta et passa of Christ, particularly in relation with the form of life that the religious have chosen for themselves and that the Virgin Mother embraced. It is not the fruit of an ecclesial claim, but of the task entrusted to the disciples, the task of witnessing to the mystery of the Incarnate Christ. For this reason the consecrated life is a living interpretation and a truly spiritual reading of the words of the Lord contained in the Gospel. Therefore, it is close to the origin of Jesus’ mystery, as well as to the fulfilment of the Kingdom.

«The consecrated life does not represent only a sort of spiritual reading of the Scriptures, but also the most authentic interpretation, because it testifies –as Ignatius of Loyola states at the end of the spiritual Exercises- how love is to be revealed more with works than with words. This means that the ecclesial tradition is capable to inspire not only those who participate in it, but also the other states of life, which it goes on confirming” (N. Hausman).

Signs of the time

The fourth word is “signs of the times”. Even in this case it is not the matter of removal. The peculiar characteristics of our generation and contemporary time are spoken of in many ways and through different media. Instead, what it seems to happen, if we compare the use of the term at the beginning of the Council with that of today, is the singular overturning of the frontiers. While at that time the expression meant strongly also positive elements of the civil life and the historical process, today the Church seems to have gone back (because of a long trace in the ecclesiastical preaching of the previous centuries) to denounce pertinently the negative phenomena without any adequate effort to indicate also the positive ones. It was a worried and negative approach in accordance with the “sad passions” connoting Zeit Geist, the spirit of our days.

For this reason it is useful for the Consecrated Life to shoulder, within the council hermeneutic indicated by Benedict XVI as “Hermeneutic of the reformation”, to indicate with the wisdom of the Gospel, today’s positive signs; in other words, to make the same gesture as that of John XXIII in the bull Humanae salutis with which he announced the Vatican II on 25th December 1961.

II. Going back to the last passage of the New Testament, in which the exhortation appears explicit (Matthew 16, 4), the document proposes once again the recommendation of knowing how to read one’s time, individuating, out of the dark elements,  the presence of not few indications, which make us hope about the Church and humanity

In the successive documents of the Council, we read many more coherent recognitions  with the invitation: the irreversible and growing sense of solidarity among the people, the progress of the economic-social of the working-class, the entering of women into the public life, the independence of peoples, the charter of rights and constitutions, the recourse to the negotiated to end the contrasts, the presence of international organisms; some of these titles show straightway their structure of promises not adequately kept, yet we are left with the task of nurturing the gift of discernment on today’s history; of repeating the gesture, in a time of proximity and prophecy, which has consented the Church to renew “her youth like an eagle” (Psalm: 103,5).

Lorenzo Prezzi

 Torna indietro