CONSECRATION AND FRATERNAL LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY
I have the task - not easy, for various reasons - to
introduce a reflection, certainly partial, on the themes of consecration
through the profession of the evangelical counsels and of fraternal life in the community.
I will do it, for what I can, looking above all at the global vision of Fr.
Alberione, as it has been concretized in our Constitutions, Rules and Statutes.
CONSECRATION BY THE PROFESSION OF THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS
Consecrated to God, delivered to the brothers
The offering of oneself to God concerns every Christian,
because we are all consecrated to him through baptism. We are all called to
offer ourselves to the Father with Jesus and like Jesus, making of our life a
generous gift (...). However, this consecration is lived in a special way by
the religious, by the monks, by the consecrated laity, who by the profession of
the vows belong to God in a full and exclusive way. This belonging to the Lord
allows those who live it in an authentic way to offer a special witness to the
Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Totally consecrated to God, they are totally
handed over to the brothers, to bring the light of Christ to where the darkness
is most intense. spread his hope in the disheartened hearts. Consecrated persons
are a sign of God in the different environments of life, they are leaven for
the growth of a more just and fraternal society, they are a prophecy of sharing
with the little ones and the poor ....
As Pope Francis often repeats, with baptism we are all
introduced into the Christian life which is, first of all, the consecrated
life. In fact, every Christian, thanks to baptism, is inserted into Christ (see
Romans 6: 3-4) and sanctified in him, sent to continue his mission, made
capable of growing in love and in the service of the Lord. The baptismal
consecration constitutes and defines the identity and mission of the Christian,
which is holiness.
On the day of baptism, we received the greatest gift that
God can give to men and women. There are no honors and recognitions that can
equal value. Because we have been freed from sin and united with Jesus Christ
and his body, the Church. On that day, and every day that followed him, we were
chosen to "be holy and immaculate in his sight in love" (Eph 1: 4).
In baptism the Christian identity is determined
Christologically, that is, configured by the relationship with Christ, by his
death and resurrection (see Col 2:12, Rom 6: 1-11), by the gift of the Spirit;
and it is qualified on the ecclesial level, because whoever is baptized in the
faith of the Church is incorporated into the body of Christ (see Gal 3: 26-28),
see also LG 9) and participates in his mission in a unique and singular way.
Thirdly - and this is a characteristic trait often forgotten or underestimated
- an eschatologically determined identity is given in baptism: who is baptized
receives an open identity, stretched between the "already" of the
Kingdom and its fulfillment "not yet "Happened.
Consecrated life specifies these traits, Christologically
and ecclesially determined by the common baptismal root, highlighting in
particular the prophetic charge connected to the eschatological dimension of
the baptismal identity. It therefore expresses a peculiar way of living in the
Church, a special way of adhering to the life of faith and service begun with
baptism. The option is characterized by the evangelical counsels, through which
the consecrated live a Christian life in a new way, committing themselves to
"reproduce" in their own existence the form of life practiced by
Jesus.
An effective synthesis of what has been said so far is
found in the Scrutinized Letter which, with regard to Lumen gentium chapter VI,
emphasizes:
(...) the Church recognizes among the many ways to
holiness the gift of consecrated life, received from her Lord and kept at all
times by her grace (see LG 43). The baptismal root of the consecration, on the
teaching of Paul VI, is highlighted with joy, while indicating the style of
life lived in the sequela Christi as a permanent and effective representation
of the form of existence that the Son of God embraced in his earthly existence.
Lastly, consecrated life is indicated as a sign for the People of God in the
fulfillment of the common Christian vocation and manifestation of the grace of
the Risen Lord and of the power of the Holy Spirit who works wonders in the
Church (see here, 44).
The vision of
Don Alberione
Fr. Alberione was a protagonist of the renewal of
religious life, not primarily in the theoretical field but in the concrete one,
with his foundational work. Despite the tradition, he is an innovator.
From the very beginning of the Pauline Family,
consecration and mission are like a single reality that responds to the
particular light that the Founder had received in 1910:
On the one hand bring souls to the highest perfection,
that of those who also practice the evangelical counsels, and the merit of the
apostolic life. On the other hand, giving more unity, more stability, more
continuity, more supernaturality to the apostolate (AD 24).
We therefore situate ourselves in the typology of
apostolic religious life, illustrated by n. 8 of Perfectae caritatis and that
the 1983 Code of Canon Law summarizes:
In the Institutes dedicated to the apostolate, apostolic
action belongs to their very nature. Therefore the whole life of the members is
permeated by an apostolic spirit, and on the other hand all the apostolic
activity is animated by a religious spirit (CDC 675.1).
In the overall picture of religious-apostolic life, the
Pauline life is characterized by some notes that we also find in chapter V of
Lumen gentium on the universal vocation to holiness. These notes give our
specific apostolates a particular spiritual fruitfulness.
1. Vocation to
holiness = striving for holiness - In a meditation
held in Alba at the Daughters of St. Paul, on November 23, 1931, the Primo
Maestro says: «Religious life is the profession of becoming saints, observing
the evangelical counsels and the Rules . These things are the marrow of
religious life, the essence, the profession that is elected: all the rest is
accessory, consequence ". The holiness proposed is the life of Christ:
"His life is a law: as He lived, so it is law that we must live".
This insistence on sanctity allows us to understand n. 90 of AD: "The
first care of the Pauline Family will be the sanctity of life, the second the
sanctity of the doctrine".
2. Holiness as
a configuration to Christ Master VVV - Here too,
Fr. Alberione anticipates the Council. Holiness does not consist in external perfection,
but in union with Christ Master Way, Truth and Life (see LG 39, 40). This union
and conformity with Christ is the core of our Constitutions. Therefore,
"... fundamental articles are those that say that piety must be conformed
to the devotion to Jesus Master Way, Truth and Life; and that the study must
conform to the devotion to Jesus Master Way, Truth and Life; and that the
apostolate must give Jesus Master Way, Truth and Life. And there would still be
a point which, however, is implicitly indicated: all Pauline life is inserted,
that is, uniformed to Jesus Christ Way, Truth and Life ». It is a matter of
"taking the whole Master in his light, in his spirit, in his examples and
in his grace. Living in him, for him, with him, by him ".
3. Religious
life as a total donation - Still in harmony
with LG 44, where it is said that the religious through the evangelical
counsels "gives himself totally to the beloved God, so as to be, with new
and special title, destined for service and honor of God ", Fr. Alberione
expresses in profoundity the profound meaning of the profession:" St. Paul
suggests to you the form of your profession: "I offer everything, gift,
consecration". Everything, here's the big word. Your holiness depends on
that whole. If we give ourselves entirely to the Lord, if we give him the mind,
the will, the heart, the body, what we have and what we will have, we will
truly belong to the Lord ".
4. The
evangelical counsels source of spiritual and apostolic fruitfulness - For Fr. Alberione, vows are a gift of God and a special vocation, a path
of following Christ that leads to holiness, the sign and prophecy of the
Kingdom and the proposal of psycho-spiritual integration which acquires greater
depth to the extent that it is advanced. In this journey both the consecrated
person and the community are involved, because we are communitarianly committed
to assume an evangelical style of chaste, poor, obedient life. The Founder
always links evangelical counsels and mission. I quote a text that seems very
significant:
The Religious shine and become effective in their
ministry for three precious gems: chastity, poverty, docility. History is proof
of this. Whoever wants to bring men to the ideals of holiness must be poor in
spirit. Whoever wants to bring men to the purity of the costumes must be
chaste, virgin. Whoever wants to bring men to order in the family, in society,
in the unity of the Church, must be subjugated. Many wanted to reform the
Church, but not to reform themselves: they possessed neither mission, nor
virtue, nor true piety. (...) The Religious, through the three vows, transforms
his life into virtue and strength of apostolate; it is the secret of eternal
happiness. In fact, poverty is the greatest wealth (...). Chastity is the
greatest love for God and for souls (...). Obedience is the utmost freedom,
making us superior to the passions and preparing ourselves for the possession
of God.
It may be useful to have a few more words on the
individual vows, as Fr. Alberione lived them and gave them to us.
Poverty - "We start from poverty and then we gradually get to other virtues.
So it is very important to start with it otherwise you never get there ...
Jesus went to start in the crib ... From there you start. From there he began
St. Anthony with the undressing of everything; St. Basil leaving the family and
retiring; St. Benedict leaving the house and going into a cave; and so St.
Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, St. Ignatius and all the saints ... And you who
say you are disciples of Jesus, you want to start from where ... Reflect, do
you want to leave or not leave? ".
It is evident that the poverty of departure is not the
service to those who are poor, but in imitation of Christ, it is to make
oneself poor, with nothing in the heart and little available: effective and
affective poverty.
During his last years, Fr. Alberione structures the path
of poverty around five verbs: "renunciation, production, preservation,
provision, edification". For us, therefore, poverty is not only negative,
but has a strong positive dimension that, in the itinerary of following,
involves everything: the person and the apostolate, being and having, to direct
everything to the Father in Christ and use everything to better enter into the
mystery of his life and his mission: "This is the positive part of poverty
which consists not only in depriving us of certain things, but in a
supernatural detachment, just as we get from the Gospel and it is practiced by
Mary ". It is a journey of following that leads us to have in us the feelings
of Jesus.
The Founder draws us a broad path of poverty that gives
people and communities a tone of simplicity, sobriety, disinterest, and the
handing over to God of the hands and mind. This lived poverty produces fruits:
spirit of prayer, celestial wisdom, gifts of the Holy Spirit, beatitudes. And
there is a fruit particularly linked to the mission: communion.
Chastity - Fr. Alberione presents to us chastity not so much as a renunciation, but
as a choice of God and a commitment to service the cause of the Gospel, to
which we dedicate our every faculty and possibility. For him there is no true
chastity without Jesus Master being at the center of life.
The Primo Maestro likes to linger over and over again on
the mystical vision of the Apocalypse, where those who have chosen the Lord in
such a radical form "follow the Lamb wherever he goes" and sing a
"new song" that only they understand (Ap 14 1 ff). And he prefers the
passage of the Letter to the Corinthians in which the body is proclaimed the
abode of the Spirit: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit, which is in you? You have received it from God and you do not
belong to yourselves ... Glorify God in your body "(1 Cor 6:19). It is
with mystical power that he defines the body "a pyxis, a chalice" in
which the Lord dwells. It is generated between the one who chose the Lord above
all and the Lord a union so profound that it is spousal: "... all these
forces that are in the soul and in the body are all given to Jesus and all
given to Jesus in love for souls. Love for him and love for souls. This
intimacy with Jesus reflects what is said in the Scriptures: "Erunt duo in
carne una". You will be two, you and Jesus, in one person: "Lives
live in me Christus, I live, but Christ lives in me". Two in one. Life in
two. Other than to say that atrophy the heart by giving oneself to God! ».
This "life in two" makes us enter into the
interests of the Kingdom; and then the Lord's commands left to the first
apostolic community become ours: the ecumenical commitment, the preaching to
the peoples of conversion and the forgiveness of sins, the witness in the whole
world of the death and resurrection of the Lord (Lk 24,47) , fraternal
communion ...
It is in the light of this that we must read n. 24 of Abundantes
divitiae and that exultation that the Founder was trying to warn that those who
would have worked in evangelization with the quickest and most effective means
would have been mystically delivered to God ("Forming an organization, but
religious; united, where the dedication is total, where the doctrine will be
purer, society of souls that love God with all the mind, the strength, the
heart "). We are far from an efficient vision that sees the votes
according to an activity ...
Chastity presents itself as a path, a "studium
perfectionis": perfecting the mind, the heart, the will, the body, the
works ... to enter the life of spirituality and mission. This is why chastity
requires the ascent of the senses, the activity ("in prayer, in fervor, in
ejaculations, activities in studies, activities and development of devotion and
zeal in the apostolate. ... Activity in poverty: why if you do not grow even in
the four parts, you are always in danger, you do not have the energies and
virtue, succeed in one thing, it also facilitates, but you have to do the four
religious parts "), dresses in poverty, requires loneliness, surrounds of
prayer, is nourished in a serene community atmosphere.
Obedience - If we retrace the writings of the Founder, we note how he considers obedience,
at any level, as a fundamental cornerstone in the structure of Pauline
religious life, "the keystone ... the virtue that ensures the whole life
of an institute ... a practice that facilitates the whole of life of
sanctification ... mother and guardian of every virtue ".
Fr Alberione speaks of it continually, makes it the
subject of meditations in retreats and exercises, he writes, warns against not
observing it: the consequences result in great harm for the person and the
institutions.
For him, the foundation of obedience is threefold: the
authority represented by the superior; religious profession, which has a
character of donation: "I am no longer mine, but of the Institute";
the vote which is a sacred commitment. Obedience "must be whole (integral),
that is, made with the mind, with the will, with the heart and with the
body". It represents "the greatest freedom, making us superior to the
unruly passions and preparing us to possess God". And it is "surely
the way of peace, of merit, of grace, of the blessings of God in the
apostolate. God blesses only what he is
according to his will ". The Lord's will that
"manifests itself with his Word, through superiors, in events, in
things".
I like to emphasize this reference - very wise - to
obedience "through events and things". We should consider more - even
in initial and continuing formation - this obedience that assumes the
connotations of the «discomforts of the season, illnesses, misfortunes,
malevolences, criticisms, difficulties in the environment, persecutions, the
same temptations, and a thousand things that fill the years and the days
". If the exercise of obedience leads to the realization of the goal of
the life of consecration to God: holiness, those instruments are desired or
permitted "by God for our sanctification".
I fully report a tasty summary of dangers and enemies of
obedience:
The religious state has many goods; but also trouble and
danger with every step; that form «the uncertainties of the trade»: danger of
receiving boring, painful, painful orders; danger of falling into the hands of
an obnoxious and harsh Superior; and between brothers unwelcome; danger of
being misunderstood and put in a corner (and those who have suffered such
proof! ...); danger of being sent to difficult places, even to health; danger
of being moved at any moment; danger of an ungrateful task, which perhaps also
seems disproportionate. And when what is danger became reality? Then look at
Jesus: «Do not mea sed your voluntas fiat» ...
Enemies of obedience: lack of clear ideas in the superior
or in the subject; rationalist spirit, false maxims, age, temperament;
individualism: forming a life of its own, such as islets or nests in the
community; superiors not balanced in orders; current world trends; laxity and bad
examples.
I close with a mention of Fr. Alberione to a serious risk
and an enemy of obedience:
The internal divisions in an institute lead to the most
serious consequences: divisions of thought, of address, of character, of
doctrine, of works, etc. They destroy the spirit of the institute in the base
and in life. The union is such good that for it we must sacrifice goods and
particular views. The division between the major superiors, general council and
provincial superiors is very bad. On the other hand, a cordial understanding is
of great edification.
2.
FRATERNAL LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY
Community
configured by the Mission
At the origin there is a conviction of some believers on
the part of God to live together with other disciples of Christ according to a
charism that embodies and interprets the mystery of Christ, accentuating in
particular some of its aspects, and with which - for a gift of the Spirit - one
feels spiritually in tune:
[In the religious community] there is a convergence of
"yes" to God, which unites the various consecrated persons in the
same community of life. Consecrated together, united in the same
"yes", united in the Holy Spirit, the religious discover every day
that their following of Christ "obedient, poor and chaste" is lived
in fraternity, like the disciples who followed Jesus in his ministry. United to
Christ and therefore called to be united among themselves. United in the
mission to oppose prophetically the idolatry of power, of having, of pleasure.
And so obedience binds and unites the different wills in the same fraternal
community endowed with a specific mission to be accomplished in the Church.
Obedience is a "yes" to God's plan that has entrusted a particular
task to a group of people. It involves a link with the mission, but also with
the community that must realize here and now and its service together; it also
requires a lucid glance of faith on superiors who "carry out their duty of
service and guidance" and mustto protect the conformity of apostolic work
with the mission ... And so in communion with them one must realize the divine
will, the only one that can save.
One and the same call of God has gathered together the
members of a community or institute; a single will to seek God who continues to
guide them.
From this initial convocation-communion then comes a
double service: ad intra (the joint research of the will of God and the
fraternal coexistence) and ad extra (the apostolic mission).
Community life connotes the charism with its value as a
crucifying gift, which molds, shapes and grows, freeing itself from selfishness
and enabling one another to serve one another. Gym of freedom and creativity,
it is a dynamic reality, which is built every day in the communion of faith,
hope and charity, and in the service of evangelization, of which it is an
indispensable premise.
Communion is what makes consecrated life attractive. We
are attracted to two things: from love and beauty. The Christian East says that
beauty is synonymous with holiness, like love. Consecrated persons, called to
holiness, are experts in beauty, love, unity and transfiguration. They are
"artists" of the Spirit.
What attracts in the consecrated life is not the formal
perfection of the members but to see people in concrete relationships,
struggling not to give in to evil; men and women who, transformed by the daily
encounter with Christ in the Eucharist and in the Word, learn "to discover
Jesus in the face of others, in their voice, in their requests" (EG 91),
declining the mysticism of living together with the mysticism of the encounter,
letting itself be "illuminated by the relationship of love that passes
between the three Divine persons as a model of all interpersonal
relationships".
Being a community is action and process. The community is
built day by day; it is not a conquest achieved thanks to our efforts.
Community is gracious when we recognize God as our Father and Mary as our
Mother, and we feel like sons / daughters and brothers / sisters; when we
welcome the presence and the word of the Risen Lord and recognize ourselves as
disciples of the one Master, moved by the love that the Spirit pours into our
hearts. The community is a grace in synodality, when we walk together with
different roles and functions, in the common obedience to a revealed Word that
calls for conversion and exercise of discernment. This kind of community makes
the mission credible!
The Church invites consecrated persons to grow in the
dimension of "communities configured by the Mission", witnesses of
the primacy of God - against every kind of idolatry - and proclamation of the
Gospel of the new Covenant. Communities that are "home and school of
communion", because the grace of listening, of dialogue, of reconciliation
flows from inside to outside. Communities infected by joy and witnesses of joy.
When Francis speaks of consecrated life, he strongly
emphasizes that «the beauty of consecration is joy, joy ...». And he adds that
he who has encountered the Lord and follows him with fidelity is a messenger of
the joy of the Spirit. "Only through this encounter or re-encounter with
the love of God, which turns into happy friendship, are we redeemed from our
isolated conscience and from self-referentiality" (EG 8). Rejoice! To joy
is dedicated, his Letter to the consecrated and consecrated persons for the
year of the consecrated life.
Pope Francis presents us with the experience of joy, the
joy of living of a Presence, the joy of telling the Good News that is a gift of
life. We are called to the diaconia of joy. The need for love in the consecrated
life is measured by the joy that illuminates the faces. And joy is also an
excellent vocational promotion. A splendid image of the Sufi mystique compares
the servant of God to an hourglass that is emptied with joy: joy comes from a
certainty: the hourglass knows that soon, that suddenly, a Hand will overturn
it ...
The Pauline
community according to Fr. Alberione
The community, as our documents well underline, is a
place in which our identity as disciples and apostles of the Master matures and
strengthens; the area in which communion with him and among us expands in the
mission.
In Christ the community, nourished by the Word and the
Eucharist, becomes light. "From here I want to enlighten", explained
the Founder, he started from the Tabernacle and from the community, which the
Master has invested in a specific mission: "I am your light and I will use
you to enlighten. I give you this mission and I want you to do it "(AD
157). Therefore, a great light must start from the community, even if it is
threatened by many difficulties, because Christ is in the community: "I am
with you, that is with your Family, which I desired, which is mine, that food,
of which I belong, as a leader. Do not waver! If also there are many
difficulties; but that I can always be with you! Do not sin ... "(AD 156).
Community = Jesus and us. The community that lets itself be inhabited by Him is
light. Its radiant light is the light of communion, the light of the lived
Gospel, the light of the proclamation.
Fr Alberione did not leave us a treatise on "common
life" and, in reality, did not speak explicitly of the community in
itself. He was rather interested in how his communities lived concretely, he
was attentive to the realities - personal and not - in which the life of the
communities was incarnated.
A first community nucleus was established in Alba around
1916. The Founder was pleased to highlight two characteristic elements: the
"Pauline spirit" and the "love for the nascent family". The
style of life is the familiar one and also the language adapts: one speaks of
family, home, father, sons and daughters ... Toward the twenties and thirties
he begins, however, to reorganize, even canonically, the Pauline communities
that pass from personal management of the authority to share responsibilities.
Later, during the period of full expansion, Fr. Alberione had to intervene with
a long article on St. Paul to prevent the "pharaonic" temptations in
the buildings and recall to the essential: "The first and decisive
criterion [to be followed in the construction projects] is keep in mind the
service which the house must make ", that is, to make the life of
recollection and the exercise of the apostolate easier".
Fr Alberione does not renounce, to the family model and
so he reiterates, in the spring of 1957, opening the Chapter of the Pious
Society of Saint Paul: "The full concept of the Institute is this:
religious family modeled on the house of Nazareth and regulated by canonical
norms ..." .
In 1964, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the
foundation, the Founder translates his vision of the Pauline community into an
image taken from the peasant world: that of a four-wheeled cart that serves the
community to transport the Gospel. These wheels, in a circular dated 22 June
1933, are defined as follows: «1. Spirit; 2. Study; 3. Zeal; 4. Poverty ». In
these four fields Fr. Alberione saw the life of the Pauline communities as
summarized, then summarized in Abundantes divitiae: "All man in Christ for
a total love of God: intelligence, will, heart, physical forces. Everything,
nature and grace and vocation, for the apostolate. Chariot that runs on the
four wheels: holiness, study, apostolate, poverty "(AD 100).
Essential
elements of the Pauline community
The Lord wanted us to unite in order to accompany us on
the path towards religious perfection and our apostolate, and has charged me,
the most miserable of all, to communicate to you his most wise and most loving
will, our devotion, the grace of the Holy Spirit. and our particular life ...
You will have blessings and consolations and spiritual children to the extent
that you will follow, living the Pauline life as it results from the
Constitutions ... Let us love each other, very well ... The grace of the Lord,
his light, his comfort are always with me and with each of the brothers and
sisters: for life, death, eternity.
These,
therefore, are the essential elements of the Pauline community:
1. Communion
in Christ Master (sanctifying community) - Thanks to this union with Christ, the sign of ecclesial unity is
realized. A bond of spiritual communion is common prayer, the "spirit of
piety" which gives our Institutes "a marked and manifest Pauline
color". Individualism and the singularity of prayer is "a specious
temptation"; rather, it is a rejection of community life. Therefore
"it is necessary that after [having] embraced the common life with the
profession, we do not reject it with a way of living and of individual praying
...". To guarantee spiritual union, the Founder particularly suggested two
means: to frequently use the Book of Prayers ("serving as a guide")
and "to celebrate our feasts with the greatest solemnity outside and with
inner joy".
2. The
heritage of St. Paul (community of apostolate) - It is clear to Fr. Alberione that "for us the common life was born
of the apostolate and in view of the apostolate ... we are at the service of
the souls; religious-apostles ... ». Religious-apostles: this binomial defines
us and also determines the community style. This is why the Pauline communities
are religious communities and their members are consecrated: to be more
authentically apostles, like St. Paul. This is also the case of secular
institutes, which lack only the common life in the material sense; that is, the
house in the same house, meals in common, the same exercises together, etc.
".
3. The
superior and the community of formation - Capital element is, according to our Founder, the figure of the superior
in the community and his function of service: "In our family the
government is in Christ Master Way, Truth and Life ... a large exercise of
charity ...; to govern is a broader and deeper sacrifice; to govern is to
precede in holiness, prayer, example ...; To govern means to gather strength
and organize them for the benefit of the community and of individuals ".
In the service of authority the brothers share the community virtue of
obedience: "Obedience learned from the example and teaching of the Divine
Master, in a docility that sounds cordial collaboration ... The ultimate" social
bonum "is the union ... Now on the one hand, the solicitude of the
master-superiors for all and, on the other, the mutual goodness between
brothers and the obedience of the members realize the ut unum sint, if charity
prevails ».
4. The model
of Nazareth: the fraternal community - To indicate
the climate, attitudes and type of relationships that must be valid within the
Pauline communities, we have seen that Fr. Alberione refers to the Family of
Nazareth. It "gave us the best example of this religious family life on earth";
its members - Jesus, Mary and Joseph - living in perfect communion and salvific
cooperation, made it a harmonious and industrious community.
In the light of the Holy Family, all members of the
Pauline communities must learn the evangelical attitude of fraternity and the
sense of belonging, that is, the true "family spirit".
"Relationships between religious [Paulines] should be inspired by
fraternal love, but in a more perfect degree than in the natural family. The
"cor unum et anima una" is necessary, as was said of the early
Christians. It is therefore necessary to eliminate what could generate
divisions, rancor: not deduction, not unjustified relationships, not mutual
criticism ... but union of mind, union of heart, union of works and prayers, in
solidarity with the brothers until after death ».
In 1949, the Primo Maestro wrote to the Daughters of
Saint Paul about our "penitences": "The first is common to all
religious: common life lived lovingly, constantly, joyously". In reality,
the content of this penance suggests us to translate the expression of Don
Alberione with the words of Psalm 133: "Behold, how beautiful and how
sweet it is that the brothers [the sisters] live together!" ...
