I, the word Communion, at one point I got tired of being fetched and tugged from all sides and I said bluntly: "Without love I am nothing" (1 Cor 13). I was used in every way: Communion against the Hierarchy, which has responded by creating the curious oxymoron "hierarchical communion". Someone has even founded a magazine with my name (Communio), to terminate the union with another journal (Concilium) which aligned itself just to that Council that has put in vogue the concept of communion.

Within the consecrated religious life I have been used to break the monopoly of the command, and sometimes the communion of the Superiors men and women, in favor of a more distribution of  competence, with varying results. At one point I was considered the central ecclesiological category of Vatican II, in competition and corrective of the other no less farfetched category "People of God." And so it was believed to resume the path of ecclesiology in the expression: "by the Church as a hierarchy to a Church as communion."

I had the impression of being used in times of crisis, such as emergency exit. In practice,  the ideal of unity, of being formed all the same, has been replaced by the ideal of diversity as a richness that comes from above, not to repress, but to do converge. Unity in difference: here is a great program. Which is easier said than done.

I do not think however that it was not useful in various fields of theology and ecclesial practice. Far from it! I do not want to commit suicide, nor mutilate the undoubted progress made in my name, but I want to put some in order not to be illegal cited or to be the cause of an inflation that would take away to me the reliable authority that not fatuous things deserve.
Here I limit myself to the field of consecrated life.

 

Use and Abuse of the word

 

One of the areas where the consecrated life has more worked was that of the community, where I was used in a considerable extent, to endorse values ​​hitherto alien to much of traditional religious life: dialogue in the exercise of authority, respect for person and his responsibility, active participation in decisions. Values ​​that have to humanize our coexistence.
I realized, though, and soon, that in my name two objectives, very different, are pursuing:  the "beautiful souls" sincerely wanted the growth of the community, while  the "realists" wanted to subtly promote a greater personal freedom. Of course, others, in an unconscious manner, mingled the two objectives, increasing the confusion.

Here I saw that it was the presence or the absence of the charity which distinguished the use or the misuse of my name. Communion without charity can be reduced to organization, to "social engineering", a technique of human relations. Communion with charity, it means intimate relationship with God. He pours out his love into the hearts of believers and makes possible a new community, even a new humanity, where you approach to the ideal of brotherhood, ideal always dreamed of and rarely achieved. For I, Communion, am "Daughter of Charity," I’m built by the charity, I’m kept alive by the charity. "Without love I am nothing."

Communion and fraternal life

Sometimes I was tempted to say, especially to those who in my name promoted the self-realization: "Do not name my name in vain." Their program seems to weaken the authority in the name of the communion, and then dissolve it in the name of respect for human person, to end by exalting the self, and disguised as legitimate and desirable our self-realization. Other times I said the same thing, when the authority used my name to "be in communion with me", that is, obey without debating so much. But I do not want to grow old grumbling, even though the moment I will set aside will be a sad moment, because it represents a return to authoritarianism, justified by the reaction to the anarchy.

I want to remain young talking about love and spreading charity as fundamental reality. The only obedience don’t built me, if there isn’t  the primacy of charity in the one that commands and who obeys. Charity pushes to go out by himself, to make available to others. It is the necessary exodus to build the fraternity that is the finest accomplishment to which I tend.
Daughter of charity, I produce fraternity. The great Augustine has understood better than others my genealogy and my posterity: "Do you want to know where you are with your spiritual journey? Consider  yourself advanced to the extent that you prefer things common to yours." Love makes you prefer the construction of the communion which generates fraternal life.

 

And today?

Today the situation, at least here, has changed. The communities are reduced, the work multiplies, reduces the time for the community, the fraternity seems a luxury, the communion is primarily used to indicate the Eucharistic communion. Which, in fact, has much to do with me.
Yet, I see me rediscovered, at least as a necessity and desire, by the community of older people who would love to feel a greater warmth of brotherhood. But often you collect what you have sown, at least collectively. If you cared fraternal life, you can expect to find fellowship. If you think that it is an utopia, you collect empty wind. Who believed in me and was grown me, will be able to give and receive attention, to be recognized and to feel an oasis in frequent desert. Those who sow communion will reap fellowship. He who sows himself, will collect the  little that he has. The grain of wheat that dies in the name of charity gives much fruit of the fraternity. The grain of wheat that wants to be successful, aging lonely and sad.
I find it hard to build me! What is a joy on the other hand  to those who built  me, throwing the seeds of our own being, often in tears, but supported by the force of charity, which creates the future and makes brighter every sunset.

Pier Giordano Cabra csf
Via Piamarta, 6 - 25121 Brescia