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Italian version
 Sandra
Mazzolini was born on July 9, 1956, in Gorizia, where she graduated with
a thesis on some aspects of the Jesuits Pastoral in hereditary
territories of Asbury, at the end of XVI century. She attained the
Licentiate in theology and the doctorate in dogmatic theology from the
Pontifical Gregorian University. Since May 2004, she is an associated
professor in the Faculty of Missiology of the Urbaniana Pontifical
University. Moreover, she collaborates with other Theological
institutions in Rome as invited professor. She is a member of the high
institute for the catechesis and missionary spirituality of the PUU
(since the 2001-2002 academic year). From 2005, she is a member of the
Commission for the library of the PUU and of the Commission for the
Institutes affiliated to the Faculty of Missiology of the PUU, as well
as of the Commission for the actualisation of the "Bologna Process"
(PUU).
From 2002, she is a member of the Scientific Committee of
the magazine Ad Gentes. From 2005, she partakes in the Presidency
Council of co-ordination of the Italian women theologians. Moreover, she
publishes reviews on
La Civiltà Cattolica.
We have made some questions to her on the thematic
concerning the consecrated life and the family on the occasion of the
World Congress of the Catholic Families in Valencia, Spain.
The Holy Father
has defined the commitment of consecrated life as "an ever more
demanding and contrasted one", which implies a constant presence,
capable of "helping persons to correspond to the call of the Spirit,
with an ever renewed faithfulness. Do you share this statement of Pope
Benedict XVI?
In the talk of
Benedict XVI to Major Superiors of the Institutes of Consecrated Life
and societies of Apostolic life (May 22, 2006), these statements are
more specifically referred to the service of authority, "an always
demanding and sometimes contrasted commitment. It requires a constant
presence, capable of animating and proposing, of reminding the motives
of consecrated life, of helping the persons entrusted to you to
correspond with an ever renewed faithfulness to the call of the Spirit".
This expressed recognition of the service of authority brings to light
what qualifies this commitment (always demanding and sometimes
contrasted) and its modality of actuation in terms of a "constant
presence", which concretises in a triple capacity of animation and
proposal, of recalling to mind and of help.
To me, utilising
this lexicon, the Bishop of Rome underlines directly that we cannot
avoid the service of authority in the different forms of consecrated
life; indirectly he highlights the fact that it can in no way be a
substitutive of the personal response to the call of the Spirit on
behalf of any religious. It emerges the fact that consecrated and
apostolic life is a dynamic process, which implies a correspondence on
behalf of the human being "with an ever renewed faithfulness".
Often solitude
is a companion of the consecrated person, the Pope reiterates, but this
condition must not eliminate the sense of responsibility for the other.
Is the solitude of the consecrated person, according to you, such an
element capable of affecting deeply our relations with the external
world? Can we turn this situation into a positive one?
In the light of
the above-mentioned talk of Benedict XVI, the theme of solitude takes us
back to the service of authority. Exercised according to the
co-ordinates shown by the Pope, the service of authority is often
accompanied by the Cross and, at times, also by a solitude requiring a
deep sense of responsibility, a generosity which does not know any loss
and a constant self-forgetfulness". However, the extension of the
solitude category, with reference to consecrated persons does not seem
improper. The experience of solitude, which accompanies every human
being, is not negative in itself, but becomes negative if it transforms
or is transformed into isolation, marginalisation, exclusion etc.
To understand the
sense of human solitude, we may refer to the ambivalent image of the
desert. According to the texts of the Old and New Testament, the desert
is a place of privation, of danger, of attacks and punishments. It is
also the place, in which God frees His people, provides and reveals
himself. We can find meaningful elements, in this sense, at the origin
of the monastic experience. The radical way of living the Gospel sine
glossa requires a context of several-faced solitude, which, however,
is never an end to itself.
Solitude,
instead, is a means, which configures an itinerary of self-discovery,
even of the evil making its nest in our heart. It is a means of a
progressive allowing the Spirit to take possession of us. This
experience does not transform the monk into a solitary man, who does not
get interested in his brothers, but into a true spiritual father, into a
point of reference even for those who do not share the same experience.
To me, the Biblical metaphor of the desert and the experience of the
first monks can offer useful elements to understand positively the value
of solitude in the consecrated life. We can say that it as a peculiar
space and time of encounter with God, as well as a specific witnessing
modality of the primacy of God, to whom we surrender our own existence.
"In an epoch
marked by multiple deceits, the consecrated persons have the task of
witnessing to the transfiguring presence of God". To look at our time
with the eyes of faith: according to your sensitivity, how can we
translate the exigency referred to by the Pope?
Today the Church
lives and operates in absolutely newer situations. This is the fruit not
only of the continuity with the past, but also of undeniable fractures.
Synthetically speaking, our contemporary age witnesses processes of
globalisation, which refer to the various fields of human life. These
processes actually question also the life of our Institutes of
consecrated life, inserted in the history of men and women. In a
positive sense, there is no doubt that these processes constitute a
modality of knowing the diversity, that it implies the acceptance and
integration in a complex and not uniform system. The difficulties of
this acceptance and integration are before our eyes and, when they
change into open and violent collisions, they appear in the first pages
of newspapers, thus creating uncertainties and fear, caused by supposed
or real clashes of civilisation.
The communion
dimension of consecrated life, concretised in our community life, in
which different subjects under different profiles (age, culture,
formation, ethnic belonging, etc) interact, assumes a considerable
relevance in this context. This happens because, before the
understanding of diversity as an element of division, it gives the
testimony that diversity, on the contrary, is a condition for the unity
of human beings. The communities of the consecrated persons, therefore,
offer, though in analogous way, a privileged space of visibility and
evaluation of the Trinitarian relation, in which unity does not
subordinate itself to diversity and, even less does not mean an
alternative in conflict.
Nevertheless,
there is also a negative face in these processes of globalisation. They
imply a privatisation of faith on behalf of the single subjects and
groups. It is not free from the risk of syncretism, which the diffusion
of sects and new forms of religiosity favours. This privatisation
expresses itself in three areas. It expresses itself in the declaration
of one's own belonging to the Catholic tradition, despite reservations
on the content of the single articles of the Christian Creed; in the
selection of the moral teaching of the Church; in the sense attributed
to the celebration of the sacraments and to the ecclesial mediation with
reference to one's own life of faith. The negative implications of
privatisation are evident. They touch also the ecclesial dimension of
the act of faith. This dimension is a principle of the ecclesial
existence from which flows the relational net of the church essentially
determined by it. However, the analyses of the negative profile of our
contemporary age cannot limit themselves to sterile lamentations. On the
contrary, they presuppose a major commitment to decline new forms of
presence of the ecclesial subjects. We can say this also of the
consecrated life, in terms of an increased clarification of its
religious and spiritual profile. It can be said in terms of more
attention to the profile of relation , which may consent to the person
to get out of its suffocating anonymous state; of offering, mainly to
adults, a not homologating formation journeys, finalised to the
formation of free persons, adult in faith, capable of dialogue and
commitment.
Based on
personal experience in our Country, can consecrated persons "look at
man, the world and history in the light of Christ Crucified and Risen”?
It is not easy to
answer this question for several reasons. I need to make clear that my
experience in this regard has a double profile: it is an experience
flowing from my contacts both with religious and with the lay world.
Because of these two perspectives, my answer cannot but be partial (it
concerns only what I know in the first person, and we cannot decline it
in absolute and general terms).and different (according to the assumed
angle of view) and must consider a datus of principle and a datus of
fact. The datus of principle implies that, starting from Vatican II, we
decline the relation between the different forms of consecrated life and
the Church and with the world in terms different from those of the
pre-council. This has affected the understanding of religious life and
its formation journeys, sometimes causing enough difficulties.
To me, the
presence of consecrated life in the history of men and women has
positively been underlined. There has been a certain overcoming of
seeing this life as fuga mundi. This has undoubtedly implied new
modalities in the relations of the consecrated beings with the Church in
her whole and with the world.
Objectively
speaking, there have been new possibilities of looking at man, the world
and history with the eyes of faith in the Incarnate Word, who died a
rose for the salvation of the human being, of every human being.
The datus of
fact, instead, relays us to a more subjective dimension, to how each
consecrated person receives this offered possibility and to the
perception, which other baptised persons have of the consecrated life.
It is difficult
to lead the many possible answers to common denominators, though we
admit that many persons nourish the idea that consecrated life is alien
from the daily life of men and women, often living with fatigue and
worry. This perception has different roots: I think that we can partly
individuate them in a passage of the already quoted talk of Benedict
XVI, who, near the "undoubted generous enthusiasm, capable of testimony
and total offering, mentions (…) the deceit of mediocrity, the
bourgeoisification and consumerist mentality".
Benedict XVI
will participate in the “World Meeting of the Families”, planned in
Valencia, Spain, for the month of July. He has often treated this topic,
demanding more attention for the family institution. Is there anything
that consecrated life could contribute with this regard?
The reiterated
request of more attention for the family institution, often an object of
prejudicial and not founded interpretations, can be adequately
understood by reading again the numbers, which Gaudium et Spes,
pastoral constitution of Vatican II on the Church in contemporary world,
dedicates to matrimony and the family (see GS 47-52). The illustration
of the dignity of matrimony and family and the consequent evaluation,
starts from this statement, "the salvation of the person and of the
human and Christian society is strictly connected with a happy situation
of the conjugal and family community" (GS 47). It ends with a reference
to the testimony "of this mystery of love, which the Lord has revealed
to the world with his death and resurrection" (GS 52). We render this
testimony to the world of the parents, created to the image of God, in
an authentic personal dignity, "united by an equal mutual affection, by
the same way of feeling and by common holiness".
The relevance of
the family weighs also on the auto-understanding that the Church has of
her own identity and mission. This is verifiable, for instance, in the
fact that the ecclesial model of the Church as a family of God has been
assumed, with reference also to entire continental realities (it is the
case of the African church), as configuring in the human history the
presence of the ecclesial community, in its wholeness and in its
different articulations. If it is legitimate to ask ourselves what
specific contribution the family offers to consecrated life, it is
equally legitimate to ask the contrary. To be brief, limiting myself to
the movement from consecrated life to the life of the family, I think
that an indisputable contribution can be found in the gratuity as a
connoting element of love, a gratuity, which overcomes the "until I like
it, until I feel to do it, etc."
The sense of
gratuity of the communion relations lived in different communities of
consecrated life sends us back to the gratuity of God's love, of a One
and Triune God. He creates man and woman as relational beings, capable
of living and realising themselves within an ample communion network,
for good. Lived in community, we evaluate this sense of gratuity
concretely in the capacity of reciprocal forgiveness, demanded by the
limits of the creatures, even that of sin, which is present in every
human existence and experience. In this perspective, it sends us back to
the gratuity of the love of God the Father, who never tires, not even in
the sin of the human being created by him. He renews his creatures
definitively in Christ and in the Spirit, with numberless possibilities
of realising the ultimate and full sense of our life, or through the
call to communion with self and with the other human beings.
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