Foundations of evangelical citizenship

Understanding and experience of the Covenant

9.  From the data collected there emerges the fact that the Covenant is understood as and lived as a pact of love.   God calls us together for communion and mission.  The Covenant has its foundation in the gratuitous initiative of the love of God that embraces all enters into solidarity with all of humanity and provokes a response of free adherence.  The Covenant is rooted in the Trinity, source of life and of communion and is made possible by the yes of the Son and by the unconditional availability of Mary.  The Covenant, furthermore, is understood as a total belonging to God, as a sign of the response of spousal love, that requires fidelity and creativity, authenticity and radicality on our part.  The expression of the Covenant is the awareness of belonging to God, of being part of the people chosen to realize a mission.  Concretely, it is lived in a community called to be a response of salvation to the expectations of the young people. (cf C 1).

The experience of spousal love, that gradually conforms us to Christ, favors the construction of communities open to the challenges of today’s socio-culture.

Among the evangelical counsels the contributions of the provinces particularly emphasize the vow of poverty understood as a serious and essential lifestyle.  They also indicate a response of fidelity to the Lord that commits the FMA to assume the evangelical counsels in the spirit of the Beatitudes and to live them in communion with the Sisters in the joyous witness of daily life.

Centrality of the Word of God

10.  In all the provinces listening to the Word of God is held to be a priority choice, a criteria of discernment to reading the reality on a personal, community level and in the educational mission.   The Word of God, listened to especially in the daily participation in the Eucharist, illumines and fortifies the person, training her to act as Jesus did in every situation and in every encounter, rendering her capable of a contemplative glance.

Shared in community, it becomes the content of dialogue, of discernment, of comparison and of collaboration.  At the same time, it can qualify the relationship, purifying it from forms of egoism, superficiality and fragmentation  in order to open it, in freedom, to  unconditional  love toward others.

In reference to the mission, the Word of God, read, prayed and shared with the young people and the educating community, increases the educational passion, becomes criteria for interpreting reality, discerning the will of God within the fabric of history and opening self, in the Church, to a mission more in solidarity with the poor.

Dynamic reality of the Covenant in Christ

11.  In the commitment to translate the exigencies of the Covenant into daily life, the community has brought to light a dynamic reality.  Living the Covenant implies, in fact, a journey of continual conversion and of acceptance of one’s own life in the paschal mystery of Christ.  This process requires availability to change in an attitude of Exodus, be it on a personal  and community level. It is an occasion of human and Christian growth.  It disposes the person to accept and appreciate difficulty, trials and suffering in the reality of the evangelical paradox of death for life, and it opens to the commitment of solidarity toward the poor.

In the Syntheses of the Province Chapters, the Eucharist is understood as the foundation of the new and eternal Covenant, source of gratuity of gift, of interpersonal relationships marked by communion and solidarity with the poor.  The sacrament of Reconciliation is considered to be a concrete experience of the goodness and mercy of God who liberates and recreates the person from within.  It is understood as a place of a dynamic exercise of pardon given and received, making us women capable of building in everyday life communion, solidarity and peace.

There is a recurrent recall to simple, creative and vital prayer that reflects the needs of the  world, prayer that is incarnated, shared with the people.  Notwithstanding this, there exists the difficulty of managing time and space for sacramental life, prayer itself, reflection. We also note the danger of conceiving the Covenant in a self-centered, individualistic manner that does not influence the evangelical quality of daily life.  On the other hand, it has been brought out that activism leads to fragmentation, dichotomy between faith and life, incoherence and superficiality, the weakness of  vocational unity and discouragement.

Mary, woman of the Covenant

12.  The Province Chapters see Mary as the woman of the Covenant, present in the life of the FMA as a companion on the journey who guides us toward being faithful to the plan of God in history.  She, disciple of the Word, the first who lived in depth the Beatitudes, stimulates each person to live the following of Christ radically.  Like her, the FMA seek to witness, in the Church, through communion and solidarity, to the fundamental role of the woman in the building up of a more humane world.  After the example of Mary, woman of her people, they are aware of being called to evangelize the cultures, to care for young people through the educational mission, in particular, favoring in young women the development of specific feminine resources.

In the furrow traced out by the Founders

13.  The provinces show the awareness of being inserted into the Covenant that God has established with Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.  They know of the call to be actively present in the Salesian Family with a specific Marian and feminine contribution (cf C 3 end 4). They also bring out that the force of the charism guides the communities to live in optimism in the educational passion and in the sharing of Salesian spirituality with the laity.

They empahsize the importance on taking a chance on what is new, together with them, to express the charism in a more efficacious manner, traveling the road of co-responsibility, reciprocity, dialogue and pardon.

We commit ourselves to developing and promoting a culture of life that places at its center the dignity of the person according to God’s plan.