Contemplative life today
according to sr M. Teresa dell’Eucaristia              
 

in the words of
Sr. Eliana Pasini
  


Courtesy of Rita Salerno


 

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Italian version

Sr. Eliana Pasini, together with Sergio Zavoli and Enrico Garlaschelli, is the author of a book centred on the personality and spiritual journey of Sr. Mary Theresa of the Eucharist, a Carmelite nun, who left the Carmel and founded, at Spello, the community of the Little Sisters of Mary. The title of the book is “Mother Theresa of the Eucharist”.

Sr. Eliana Pasini, from the diocese of Mantova, has been living since 1976 and still lives in the hermitage of the Transfiguration. It is her first choice of consecration. She followed Sr. Mary Theresa over all the phases of her journey, sharing the graces and countless difficulties of her life. On the night of 17-18, she witnessed the encounter of Mother M. Theresa with the Lord: the end that Mother Theresa had constantly being aiming at, and which was her most relevant testimony of faith starting from the documentary “Cloister”.

In 1990, she drafted the Rule of the Little Sisters of Mary under the revision and approval of Mother Theresa. She is the responsible person of the Hermitage of the Transfiguration since 2005. We have asked her some questions on consecrated life and on the new form of contemplative life founded by Mother Theresa.


Who was Mother Theresa of the Eucharist and how would you introduce her to persons who do not know her?

 

“Mother Theresa was a Carmelite nun who, while living intensely and with dedication her own monastic life, had intuitions and matured innovative news in the area of monastic structure, as well as in the way of locating the contemplative vocation in the mystery and structure of a Church/communion, according to the Council and in openness to the world.

I present Mother M. Theresa just as she was, namely, as a Testimony of God. We can imagine her in every human reality, near every person as an instrument of God’s presence. Whoever approached her caught the presence of the Other who lived within and beyond her polyhedral humanity. She was simply a woman of prayer and a presence of God for the brethren”.


 What is the message that Mother Mary Theresa leaves behind for men of the street?


  “She mentioned silence as an indispensable value for all men and women, with the end of knowing the truth in ourselves and, therefore, the Truth, namely God: silence with oneself to the end of unveiling God. In fact, she said, “Our silence must be alive with God”. She pointed at charity, which makes every person to feel brother or sister always and before every other identification or evaluation. Charity is the fruit of true silence….She acted in such a way as everyone might look always beyond, towards a goal full of hope. She pointed at the present, a very concrete present; as well as at the future as at a very certain reality towards which we must constantly tend. In other words, she witnessed to a present God, to His Love and goal of everything”.
 
Why have you written this book dedicated to Mother Mary Theresa?


The idea of a book dedicated to her was born at the end of the Congress held in Piacenza on 23rd February 2008. Sergio Zavoli proposed it after observing the interest of a vast public for the figure and mission of Mother Mary Theresa. He felt that the Congress had not exhausted the presentation of her personality. He spoke about this with the journalist Enrico Garlaschelli, in the presence of other organisers of the Congress. I got involved in it”.


Mother Mary Theresa of the Eucharist brought to life the community of the Little Sisters of Mary in the Hermitage of Transfiguration. Would you, please, tell us its genesis?


“Mother Theresa founded the community of the Little Sisters of Mary before realising the Hermitage of Transfiguration. As soon as she obtained the exlaustration in 1964, another sister, Ida Pinto, joined her and started the new journey with her. After years of exodus, in 1872, finally, she shifted to the hermitage which, meanwhile, during 1970-1972, she had managed to have fully edified and which she had named Transfiguration. The charism has specific characteristics, such as reference to Mary and universal openness. However, its main value is in its being an arduous way of renewal for the contemplative life in the Church. It is the matter of a radical innovation in the three directions mentioned above and in some other sense. For instance, we find precise well-embanked strands of spirituality in the contemplative life. This charism, instead, has its precise and solid banks, yet at the same time it overflows everywhere. I would define it as the contemplative life of the Church”.

 

How do you live the contemplative life in relation with the external world?


“The concept that the contemplative life requires the cloister indispensably is so much rooted as we find it difficult to catch the truth of a totally contemplative life that includes the presence of the “world”.

This should make us to reflect: in fact, it is clear what Scripture tells us; what contemplative persons of Holy Scripture witness; what Jesus himself says about it, for instance, “…neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem you shall adore the Father…but in Spirit and  truth, since the Father seeks this type of adorers”. (John: 4, 21. 23). If we safeguard the gift of God in the truth, the world cannot disturb or divert it. Mother Mary Theresa made the important discovery of understanding that our brothers cannot divert us from our concentration in God. She discovered that we must guard the gift of God in our intimacy and then we must offer it to others.

This is how things go on in our community: in the hermitage, we live a rhythm of liturgical and personal prayer of adoration. We experience the cell and the wood in which we live. We exercise manual work and pay attention to the brothers and sisters who pass by or who sometimes share our life. Thus, the world comes to the hermitage, that is, it enters its means, SUCH AS SILENCE, SOLITUDE AND COMMUNITY, through which the Lord normally speaks. These means help us to enter the truth, to listen to the cry of the Spirit and His inspirations.

If then we move outside the hermitage, nothing surprises us and we can live among the others naturally and simply, without diaphragms. We can neither hide nor show off the gift of contemplation: it has its own way of bringing fruit, the fruit wanted by God, “Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty” (John: 15,5) We believe and do not need to see. If we see, we do not rejoice in it, because our comprehension will anyhow be imprecise and insecure. We trust: that is all.

 
How can you bring the cloister in contact with the spiritual demands of others?


“I state beforehand that by the term Cloister we mean (physical) solitude with God, or attention and docility to Him, even when we are amidst others, amidst persons with different vocations. We understand that our openness helps every one of us to orient ourselves to God, by offering the possibility to accompany us in this orientation.   

We see the contemplative life as a reality that passes from the desert into the world and the world that enters the desert and the desert that moves towards the world. In other words, contemplation is a dimension of the Church that needs its extension and diffusion among all the members, as the first source of evangelisation.

In fact, it is faith in the action of God; to witness to God we must leave out more space for Him so that He may manifest Himself. It is not true that we must do everything, though for given vocations, like that of the laity, men and women need more space for autonomous works. However, I must confess that this new journey knows its difficulties, which experience teaches us how to overcome. We must say that to live it we need self-denial, courage in solitude and denial in openness.

We need a long time of formation to grow in our own contemplative vocation, to be and stay with others, any other without distinction, in a fruitful manner. This is what we try to do: Mother Mary Theresa succeeded in it and we go on in the full awareness of the great need of the World: the concrete need to encounter and know the Lord through contemplative persons”.   


Is it possible today to live such a rigorous ascetical journey as that of Mother Mary Theresa?


“I believe that the ascetical rigour is indispensable for this vocation. For Mother Mary Theresa the mystical and ascetical experiences were interwoven: it must be so. However, the way she expressed the ascesis, which she had learned, was different from the way we must express it today. What matters is the journey of growth, which must be solid both at human and contemplative levels. Mother Mary Theresa had achieved an integral human maturity, not perfect, but surely elevated and favoured by a positive family experience. Her maturity allowed her to establish a human relation of intense love with the Lord, in line with the modality of St. Theresa from Avila, and the theological virtues were well rooted in her prayer life.  I think that our vocation is very much challenging because very soon it has to face huge trials: spiritual trials, because the hermitage is a wrestling place; human trials because of the demanded detachment from all fronts. 

However, every vocation aiming at a high goal requires commitment to achieve and sustain the proposed goal. Of course, the implied goal is holiness. Today it is very difficult for a mediocre vocational response to persevere, for which we need an asceticism understood as modality of constant and serious coherence, adherent to one’s vocation. Thinking of Mother Mary Theresa, I can say that she expressed rigour in silence, vigilance, self-dominion and the sacrifice she had to face “whatever its cost”.


How would you synthesise the spiritual journey of Mother Mary Theresa of the Eucharist?


“Are we not living beings, we who follow You closer, o eternal newness? Are we not responsible persons who have received the call to give a personal and conscientious response?” (No, I have not jumped over the wall page 136). “Though Yahweh punished me sternly, He has not abandoned me to death” (Psalm: 117, 18).

Perhaps it is not possible to synthesise the spiritual experience and the events, which characterise the journey of Mother Mary Theresa. I have chosen the following two passages: one written by her in the far off 1956, and the other chosen by her as “leit-motif" of many following years, when everything seemed to come to an end and the trial of failure seemed to overhang.  Mother Theresa remained “alive” up to the end and I am not afraid of making a mistake in witnessing that death did not overtake her, not even at the last moment, and that now she is absolutely alive”. 


To serve Jesus is a daily challenge for a Woman Religious of contemplative life. Which means do you need in order to face this daily challenge?

“I think that there are common means for all women religious, and then there are those for our personal journey, because the trials are different for each person, due to the diversity of nature (character, personal history, etc.), as well as because of the never repeatable gifts and projects of God.

The means common to everyone are: faithfulness to prayer, to the Word, the Sacraments, the Rule etc.

The personal means are: attention to inspirations, listening to God who dwells in us and expects a vigilant faith from us; perseverance in adversities, trustful abandonment when we do not understand… In other words, they are a personal faithfulness to Love, to the end of realising God’s project, which is unique for each person also in the “communitarian missions”.


Which ideals do you draw inspiration from?


“We do not take ideals into account, but seek God alone, in the Trinitarian mystery, in the mystery of Incarnation and of Easter, in the mystery of the Church as Body of Christ, in Humanity as the Object of God’s passionate love.

Moreover, we say that we feel our contemplative mission also as a struggle against the invisible evil and all the evils that afflict men. Our faith and our prayer are very much oriented towards these fights, which, as Moses witnesses, find us always victorious, since we know how to keep our arms raised up in prayer perseveringly.

In the faith, in the listening and docile attitude of Mary, Mother Mary Theresa saw guidance and a model of this form of contemplative life. A form that wants to be free from the crystallisation of structures, with the ability of remaining always and newly oriented to God. Therefore, the characteristic of this contemplative charism is the availability to adapt the forms, aiming at expressing what is more appropriate to witness in a given context. Now we express this way opened by Mother Mary Theresa in the Hermitage of Transfiguration with a precise modality, which anyhow will surely undergo diversification elsewhere. Concluding, we may define the way opened by Mother Mary Theresa as a way in constant becoming, tending to the search of God’s will, and not of an ideal”.

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