ITALIAN LANGUAGE CONSTELLATION

Schedule B

1. At the school of the young people: they gave particular emphasis to community life in the consecrated life.

It is believed that the future of the consecrated life will develop from the experience of a community life in which the values of consecration are truly celebrated and where the brothers become the spokesmen of this singular experience in the apostolate.

Thus the emphasis is placed on the quality of relationships, on communion, on the celebration of life. We understand that it is necessary to celebrate joy, to be together, to express values in life is an experience which should bring maturity in religious communities. The very experience of the congress has been a value, has had importance because the idea, the value, have become an experience of life (somewhat like in the USG gatherings were we appreciate the speaker’s talks, the discussions, but also appreciate the dialogue among us, where we learn about life).

It was said that communities are becoming communion through a process of purification, asceticism and suffering.

It has been pointed out how necessary it is that in communities there is a celebration of life, suffering, detachment, the cross. It is necessary to recognize, accept, and love the brethren for what they are, with their values.

It is necessary to find a place within the community where one is not afraid of one’s own fragility, weakness, or problems; lived with faith, they are values which are part of the mystery of the cross.

It should also be recalled that the experience of community life has a formative value. Various charisms enrich one another mutually and they all need one another. In mutual relationships the charism grows, develops, and is shared; unless this is true, it is extinguished, just like charity, which must grow if it is to remain alive.

The young people want to live radicalness, a radicalness which is concrete and incarnate.

The novelty of this congress is not in its content, but in the experience of life, in the radical way of incarnating ideals.

2. Once again the fraternal life, community, are emphasized. The community is the first place of the missionary aspect, which people build together in order to be more authentic in mission.

It is the place where ideals and life are communicated and shared.

Young people want to communicate, welcome life; they want to dialogue in order to share the values in which they believe, their journeys of faith and charity.

Therefore they have a different vision of spirituality and their way of living it as well, which is more evangelical and involved.

Along these lines we understand the young people’s request to have well-prepared formators, courageous guides, those who can reconcile the ideal with the real, who can help them to create concrete syntheses, who are witnesses rather than masters. Mission demands a visible witness of community. Many young people emphasized the fact that the consecrated life has lost touch with the truly needy of today’s world. The invitation is that witness should be inserted into the context of the truly needy: apostolic activity should correspond to today’s poverty. It is, of course, urgent that the experiences of apostolate of work, are thoroughly accompanied and authenticated.

3. What are the tasks which we superiors general have in regard to the young people?

·They want genuine formators who are witnesses as well as teachers.
·They point out that the whole congregation, provinces and local communities must be true places of formation and the formator is also called to transmit these real, concrete common values.
·The superiors of the community should be ready to welcome the young, accompanying them through a journey of formation in life: they should enter into dialogue with them and always be available to meet with them.
·They should help the young people to learn the lessons offered in daily living because they are opportunities for growth; that they should help them in reconciling differences in order to create harmony, respect and commitment within the community.
·We are asked: "What type of communities should we give our young people?" Authentic, concrete communities with gifts and defects, but communities that are seriously committed to a path of asceticism and apostolate.

The words heard most frequently were:
Existential dialogue (eye-to-eye, called by name),
Experience of communion
Celebration of life; joie de vivre
Emotional involvement
Reconciling the ideal and the real
Apostolic activity as a response to those in need
Spirituality that is real life, which takes daily living into account
Formation as "mediation"
All aspects of life are part of formation.

Schedule D

The group reflected on these two points:

1. First of all, formation: they are self-forming communities, communities in which one is formed (a living presence which is welcoming and formative).

It is our common conviction that every community must become a formative environment. But how can this take place?

We are asked to return to the priority of this concrete choice: to build communities which experience the precariousness of daily living but which bear witness to the effort and continuing tendency towards asceticism, to

Develop the structures of sharing and participation so that everyone feels a responsibility for witness and mission, each with his or her own role (e.g., between the young people and the elderly of the community and in daily living).

The community must fulfil a plan of life: at the level of the spiritual and of mission. It must foster encounter, dialogue, relationships, sharing, information.

Projects should be shared, assumed and carried out with the involvement of all; no one should be excluded, and each person should participate according to his means. In community gatherings the brothers grow in communion, in the values acquired, in the choices to act in fare, for a daily living that is always God’s call. Create very concrete formative processes in which there is an actual encounter with daily living, which is just what it is, but which is to be lived with faith, love and dedication. Experiment with new methods of prayer. Never reduce the time for community prayer. Devote sufficient time to spiritual exercises, the review of life, to sharing on the Word.

Involve the young people with responsibility in real community living and in the various aspects of mission.

2. The intercongregational aspect:

·Experience of reciprocal formation among congregations.
·Promote meetings (congresses), forms of openness and collaboration among various congregations.
·Spiritual exercises....

·Support attendance at schools which develop ecclesial interchange, diverse cultures, reciprocal knowledge of charisms; there is no need to fear these if formation has fostered an "authentic sense of belonging to one’s own religious family"; on the contrary, it always is a source of ever greater appreciation of one’s own charism and of communion in order to be a sign of communion in the local and universal Church.

·Theological institutes should try to promote various types of gatherings among consecrated persons and their meeting with others.
·Make it possible for formators to have sufficient periodic training (e.g., a traveling team which offers help in formation and updating).
·Create a "web site" which can offer an array of possibilities to draw upon (persons, groups, meetings, courses, institutions).