CONCLUSION

71. A religious community, as an expression of the Church, is a fruit of the Spirit and a participation in the Trinitarian communion. For this reason, each and every religious is committed to feel co-responsible for fraternal life in common, so that it will manifest clearly their belonging to Christ, who chooses and calls brothers and sisters to live together in His name.

"The effectiveness of religious life depends on the quality of the fraternal life in common. Even more so, the current renewal in the Church and in religious life is characterised by a search for communion and community".(⁸⁷)

For some consecrated persons and for some communities, the task of beginning again to rebuild fraternal life in common may appear daunting, even utopian. In the face of certain past wounds and of difficulties in the present, the task may appear beyond feeble human capacities.

It is a question of taking up in faith a reflection on the theologal sense of fraternal life in common, of being convinced that through it the witness of consecration flows.

"The response to this invitation to build community together with the Lord, in patience every day," says our Holy Father, "takes place on the way of the Cross; it requires frequent self-denial".(⁸⁸)

United with Mary, Mother of Jesus, our communities invoke the Spirit, who has the power to create fraternal communities which radiate the joy of the Gospel and which are capable of attracting new disciples, following the example of the earliest community: "and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42), "and more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women" (Acts 5:14).

May Mary bring together religious communities and support them daily in invoking the Spirit, who is the bond, the ferment, and the source of all fraternal communion.

On 15 January 1994, the Holy Father approved this document of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and authorised its publication.

Rome, 2 February 1994, Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

Eduardo Card. Martínez Somalo
Prefect

+ Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa
Secretary