Within the wisdom reality, to govern means thinking with Wisdom, namely entering, participating in the vision that God has of persons, of the individual sisters He has entrusted us, and governing, or seeing that the divine vision of God be realised. This is your service of government. I have never been a superior and, in this sense, I am a free man, thus I can speak to you freely.. To govern means to participate, somehow, in the sapiential vision that God has in creating persons. God has addressed a word to everyone. Which word? His vision coincides with each one’s vocation, with the call to life; it is not an abstract thing because, as we have seen, it is condensed in Christ and lives in the Church. It has a unique example in the Mother of God, whom many authors, in the first centuries of the Church, saw as "Seat of Wisdom". Wisdom does not need a seat of marble throne. The seat of Wisdom is the living person in Christ. .

Therefore, to govern means serving salvation, to work in such a way as it may be realised and may reach the persons that are governed. God has called them to salvation, has prepared salvation for them and has realised it in Christ. God waits for them in the Church and I must see that the encounter between the Saviour and the person may take place. It is not only the matter of co-operating so that the presence may be saved, but also that it may be set available for the Saviour as best as possible, so that salvation may reach the entire world.

I see the service of government as preparing the way and making it easy so that salvation may pass better and reach the persons. In Gregory Nazianzen we find the image of God who created man addressing his Word to him. But, being inclined to dialogue and because of temptation and the sin of Adam, man has not given any answer to the said Word. He has uttered other words, but has not answered the Word that the Creator addressed to him. Christ is the answer to the Father and salvation is for him who, in the Son and with the strength of the Holy Spirit, can pronounce the words,"Abbà, Father".

The work of the government is to see that the person passes from the servile condition of slave on to that of sons and daughters: this is the service of the Government. It is to see that the persons may feel to be children loved by the Father, engrafted in the Son, vivified by the Spirit who moves them towards the Son: the Spirit moves the whole humanity towards this filial relation, for which we can pronounce, "Abbà".

In more concrete terms, this means that we are "useless" servants. However, a servant is never useless. In fact, if you tell a servant: bring me a glass of water, he brings it, thus he is not useless. In reality we are servants "without utility", which is quite different. Exegesis teaches us that the term "without" has been translated into"in". We are servants without use, namely without wage.

To understand all this, we must go a little back. The Hebrew were allowed to give their servants a minimum of remuneration, however they had to give it. We have an example of what is due when the older son of the parable (brother of the younger one who was a spendthrift, a little unbridled), very serious and precise in doing things dutifully, according to traditional norms, returning from the fields and seeing the feast they were celebrating for his brother, reveals the mentality of a servant who believe that a remuneration is due to him –faithful servant- "All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours. Yet you never offered me so much as a kid…" (Luke: 15, 29). The father is shocked. His son had not understood that whatever belongs to the father is also his property. Thus, the son who remained at home is identical to the prodigal son. This had asked his father to give him his due and he would manage it, the older son practically asks the same thing: something is due to him because of his service.

This mentality keeps on living among us in different forms. A sabbatical year is due also to the Mother General after 6 or 12 years of service. It is clear that it is a gift, it is curious, but there truly exists the mentality that something is due to us, because we have rendered a service. Since I have done many things, now I can enjoy the TV at least for three hours. Since I have done plenty of good works and I have got tired in the Mission, I must at least have beautiful holidays "It is due to me".

However we know that "useless servants" means without pay: we work like mad people and we are given nothing. How to understand this? A servant cannot say "I am without wage", otherwise he does not speak as a servant. Only a son can say it. The communion with the Master, with the Lord is, for me, more than any possible wage. Communion with my Lord, with my master, the union and friendship with him is everything for me. But I know that only faith tells me all this. A loving eye tells me this, never the commercial "eye" of a trader.

Therefore, in concrete terms, to give a government service means to be a servant without pay. We need to be children, free persons to possess this mentality. In even more concrete terms, this means to serve without seeking interests or utility. We are called to be totally disinterested: if you seek the vision of God, then you are it; if, instead, you seek yourselves, then you want your interest.

Let us open a bracket that could enlighten us a lot in the comprehension of what we are saying.

In the spiritual maternity/paternity they speak of the so called cardiognosia, the knowledge of the heart. Fr. Pius came close and told you everything of yourself. To the boy who asked the permission to go to Turin for confession, Don Bosco recommended him not to forget a certain sin. Then, there was no more need of going to Turin, because it had already been said.

Cardiognosia means that when a person comes to speak to me, if I am in an attitude of prayer while the woman speaks I address her to God. Lord, this sister is telling me that she suffers with rheumatism, with pains of the bones and because of some sisters… I say all these things directly to the Lord. This is the prayer of the one who listens, the attitude with which we can dialogue-

Prayer means, "Lord, I entrust to you all that the other is saying, I am only a means". I recount everything to the Lord and when the person finishes speaking, I tell him/her the first thought that comes to my mind… It is surely a spiritual thought, because it is without personal interest. Should the person ask me how I have understood it, I answer: I do not know, it has come to my mind.. This is simply a Marian attitude, totally open. "This thought has come to my mind and I say it to you: if it is good for you, okay, otherwise throw it away". The other may answer,"It is just this that I have been waiting for during the past ten year: nobody has ever said it to me". …

However, if I listen to a person and think, "See, this man can use the computer very well and can very well transcribe this conference so that by three o’clock in the afternoon it will be ready. Since the Curia in Milan has asked me a sister who can use the computer, I think that this is just the person fit for that post". Meanwhile she goes on speaking and I hardly listen to what she says, without entrusting her to the Lord and without listening to the Spirit, provided I can follow my reasoning. It follows that anything I tell her at the end will be wrong.

The knowledge of the heart is a thing we can acquire through experience, because all of us sin more or less in the same way, do the same things: selfishness is always traditionalist. To be servants without utility, instead, means governing with a free attitude and not with one’s own interests. The only interest must be that the person may encounter the Lord, that salvation may be transmitted, that God’s vision on the person may be realised.

You would say that there are many concrete things, "There is the Congregation, there are the works, there are houses to be closed and others to be opened, what to do? " True, but all these things are to be put behind, in the background, in order to give the first place to God, so that he may realise salvation in the given person, otherwise we shall never avoid the personal interest. In fact, we so much radically wed the interests of the Congregation, of the apostolic works and mission, of a bishop or the other as we are unable to see whether the Lord is saying something else to these persons. I cannot listen to the Lord if I have already elaborated in anticipation where the person could be assigned; feeling too sure that this is the will of God.

We have now reached the point, which I hope to express clearly.

If I reason according to needs and necessities, I have a way of reasoning; if instead I reason according to Wisdom, my reasoning is one with Life, because Wisdom is one with Life like the heart with the human being.

If we read the passages of Wisdom, we soon become aware of how much alive Wisdom is. He who thinks with Wisdom enjoys a living thought, namely he favours, minds and takes care of life. It is a maternal thought. The Russians paint Wisdom like a woman, because it is something feminine. The prophet Malachi says that God has entrusted the woman with the breath of life. It is a feminine thought that cures life and the person, who lives only in communion, while it dies if it is alone. If I reason with Wisdom I reason with living persons, take care of their life, which means that I take care of their communion, trying to favour it because this is truly the vision of God. I could do many important things neglecting communion, but all I do has no weight before eternal life, and it is not said that it will go beyond the tomb and will reach the kingdom of heaven.

Reasoning with needs, necessities and analysis produces dead, abstract thoughts deprived of Wisdom. It is the same as reasoning with death. The logic of death can be recognised in the fact that we want to save ourselves. We must be attentive because we try to save our works, our Congregation, the vocations, risking exactly the typical reasoning and acting way of Adam after sinning: save yourself; save yourselves, if you can, but this is the logic of sin, of death and produces nothing but death

It suffices to know that the more we try to save ourselves, to have vocations and the less we obtain. Similarly, the more we try to save our positions and the more we grow tired, worried, tense and sick. It not clear whether God is telling us not to do like this because it is not according to his wisdom, but according to the vision of the world, of power, of action of assumed positions. This is the logic of the world which Wisdom will destroy, the Lord says.

The government is surely one of the most vulnerable things in the human logic. The difficulty of finding a sound modality of governing has been experienced also by the Church. In the midst of these worldly things, perhaps after centuries, we have succeeded in making a crystal clear government modality of the Church, which is called "collegiality". It is the matter of a more apostolic and authentic government, but how much fatigue it has required, since the government, willing or not willing is a power. It is actually a toy of the devil, because the possessive, affirmative and self-affirming law enters there.

Then, I am no longer a servant without utility, a friend of God towards which Wisdom moves me. Wisdom renders us friends of God, it affirms communion with God and with persons. In the government, instead, power, possession, impositions, organisations, managements gush out, but it is recognised through its fruit, namely death. It does not produce spiritual life, communion, the joy of living and loving. In fact, we are unable of producing love all alone, because it is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, the most delicate act of the one who governs is surely that of serving without utility, which means favouring communion. To serve the government means to work so that love can be realised, building a dike against individualistic and subjective interests. We must build a dike also so that the logic of saving oneself at any cost may not enter the government, knowing that God alone saves and that this is the vision that God wants to promote. I say this with a firm certainty. In fact, as an expert in missionary activities, I reason like this: if the two of us have not experienced salvation over here, in the mission, if salvation is not being realised in both of us, it is clear that what we are doing will not arouse the desire of salvation, because nobody will be able to see it.

If we do not arouse the desire of living the same vision, evangelisation remains flat, it is simply a proposal of contents in which nobody gets interested; it can be a dialectic debate with the liberal lay world, a neo-communist, neo-fascist world, but it is good for nothing. If I want to have an apostolic Congregation, an apostolic religious community, I as government must worry of only one thing: that the salvation of the Lord may truly pass throughout the Congregation and that these women, wherever they are, may arouse the desire, the appetite of salvation. If these persons, through our government will be guaranteed that they can truly experience communion, they will arouse it everywhere. They will be mothers who will generate for God, but if they are not, nothing will happen. The mother will generate for God so that man may no longer live for himself, but for him who has saved them. For this we need saved women, and to govern means to favour this.

At an even more concrete level, this means that before setting on with projects, I must think about the available persons, because this comes from wisdom. In fact wisdom is God himself who dreams the communion of persons. Therefore, it is the matter of governing the Congregation not with projects on the table, but by considering the persons and acting wisely. It is useless to say: let us open a community in Albania, and we must go there as sportswomen; there is no light, no warm water. What is the situation of the Congregation? The youngest sister is 68 years old and it is not worthwhile to send her to die in Albania.

Let us start thinking of persons with wisdom. What can we invent? We can invent nothing, because I must guarantee that salvation will be transmitted. Salvation calls all the sisters. If there is anyone who says: we want to work in this locality, well, we are here to discern, to see if this enters the vision of God.

We have said that Wisdom inhabits the Church. Where does the Church call us? What does the Pope say at the Sunday Angelus? What has he said in some of his encyclicals? Where does he want to launch the Church? Let us see whether we can answer him, keeping in view the available sisters. To reason with people means really to serve them. Wisdom unites the persons and safeguards them, together with their communion and the salvation that God works for them. Only thus they will becomes instruments of salvation in the world.

Otherwise, if these persons are not saved, and are full of resentments, of anger, what do we send them for? I want to repeat that to serve the government means to build dikes, blocking the subjective interests of individual persons, of groups and parties within the Congregation. In reality, at times, getting ready for a General Chapter is the same as preparing a war. "Now, we shall substitute a line with another".

Which line to we want to replace? We do not know. We think abstractly and passionately; we line up against persons with passionate mind, rather than with the intelligence of communion. We must learn to defend ourselves and the Congregation against a passionate way of thinking.

God gradually leads us to understand something until we desire to govern not just to carry on projects, but to verify whether the sisters love the Lord truly, whether they have truly fallen in love with Christ, if they seek the religious well-being, if the spiritual and religious life flourishes, if they live their salvation or they are all embittered. These are the questions we are supposed to answer to the end of setting on our journey.