Ottorino Vanzaghi df

"The Community could be thought of as a building site in the course of construction". Let’s use this image provided by sister Anna Mary Mukamwezi to tell how young people at the Congress received the challenge of the Communion by reopening "the building site" of the Community. Opening a building site in which a hole in the ground must be dug, means also having the courage to lower oneself down to see what is happening and having the strength to work inside at any cost. I believe that the young religious at this Congress have demonstrated these qualities of courage and strength.

Don’t worry, dear older brothers, we are not saying we have more than you, but I believe it’s just a matter of having the call of God fresher in our hearts that shows us as being more courageous and strong. So it’s only that many of our older brothers are suffering from "cardiac fatigue" (you must admit... after a certain age you can’t expect to go pot-holing or bungee-jumping...). But several of our younger brothers suffer this same problem! Returning to another of sister Anna Mary’s images, we must in any case take care that the heart, although ill, does not age in its capacity to love and pulse ceaselessly; just as in African culture the Community is conceived as: "the heart and center of brotherly life". Thus we are not speaking of a marginal aspect of our consecration, but we have all tried it, some as younger brothers, others as superiors, and this is the central point of identity of our own lives, we are all communionally saved (Mark 8:35). We would like to let you know that it is at this point that our Congress became enthusiastic, from the general atmosphere in the assembly hall, through to the formal and informal constellations and linguistic groups. We immediately perceived that it was precisely around this session of the Communion that in the near future the new awareness of the treasure bestowed upon us by our Founders will be revealed.

They thought fraternity, but now aren’t ours often just aseptic workplaces? They wanted peaceful oases in which to pray and study, but aren’t they now often just large and efficient companies for us and our co-workers? They answered the call to build Communities even warmer than simple families, but aren’t we often now only respectful colleagues or just people who live in the same buildings?

Brothers, once again we wish to thank you for having had the courage to give us the unique opportunity of this international Congress and for taking the risk of letting us express ourselves together. Let’s be sincere, it’s nice for us to have General Superiors as courageous as you! Anyway "now that you’re at the hall you must dance", as they say in Italy! Now you must help us more by listening, and perhaps orienting and mixing our great dreams of fraternal Communion more successfully into our daily lives. Knowing that I cannot be complete and unbiased, I will try to schematically express these dreams and challenges that we young religious women and men leave to your consideration:

We religious are ordinary people, women and men, weak, imperfect, needy of each other (even teachers of training or superiors), we try to accept our vulnerability together and our continuing incapacity of loving, wanting to be happy and serene people that let the beauty of the Consecration to God in essence, virginity and obedience shine. We offer our lives in order to have communities that teach people to fully live and liberate themselves in love and pardon, in which one doesn’t feel judged, and has no fear of making mistakes, open communities that accommodate the unique facets of each member, that are against every form of competition, even those between different vocational pastorals. We keep alive the mystery of the Communion today, which is always more disturbing and unsure than not being able to marry, than putting our earnings together, than abandoning often and willingly affections and services; so that our living together in free will, is not because it is convenient, but because we are attracted by the Lord. We proclaim by our lifestyles and the appearance of our homes that we are prophets against materialism; for greater simplicity and nearer to the people we serve. We preserve ourselves from the eroticism in which we too are immersed, helping each other to cure the different expressions of our affection, friendship or personal creative realization, and to teach the youth of today, better than in the past, how to grow serenely and carefully. We clearly declare through our lives that obedience is not oppression, but a permanent school for becoming masters of serving, sharing and solidarity, as was Jesus. We have promised each other, and now we say to you, that out of respect towards others, we will try to say yes to every request, every brother, each collaboration with lay women, men, other institutions, confessions, religions because only in consciousness, meeting and further consciousness will we find our identity, also in inter-congregational experiences and even in possible fusions of different Congregations. We don’t want to be identified by fixed schemes, nor time schedules, nor our exterior mold, rather we want to be recognized as disciples of God by the fact of being prayer communities which share the profound experience of God, radical communities through the strong choices that are made, not by what we succeed in putting into practice each day, dynamic communities in tune with the time and culture, faithful only in a creative faith taught by our Father. We ask, lastly, to have a sincere dialogue with you, our Superiors, where we can feel we have received real unbiased wisdom and experience, and also without fear of a constant need for novelty and enthusiasm, in order that a full communion can be lived even with our different languages. Dear older brothers, I can tell you that the only intention that I had was to make you aware that more than talking of communion, we young religious have made an experience of communion: we lived, shared, rejoiced, sang, suffered and hoped together.

We represented 700 different institutes (125 in the Italian constellation), 700 young faces, sometimes a little crazy, it hasn’t been easy meeting in this multi-cultural environment, but without running away, and with difficulty, we understood that unity is not uni-formity, but pluri-formity. Perhaps it is exactly with this "spade" of the Holy Ghost that together we should start to dig our new site for the Community.