The question of a renewed experience of God

83. This question emerges from a context marked ever more by materialism and its consequences of productivity and efficiency that emphasize the «doing» over the «being.»  On the one side, the resulting spiritual emptiness weakens the relationship with God, and on the other urges it toward new religious quests. In all the contexts, though in different expressions and ways and in diverse proportions, the tendency to marginalize Christianity is present. The need for inner life, coherence and spirituality that can respond to the question of life’s meaning - because it is rooted in the experience of God - challenges each one of us and the educational communities to witness to a courageous, active  faith, and to stimulate  young people to seek genuine values.

The primacy of God

84. In the FMA communities there insistently emerges the need to recognize the primacy of God. It is a profound question that expresses the need of recentering our life continually in Jesus Christ, the rock of our salvation, in order to face, as citizens according to the gospel, the complex reality, in which we live spending all our energies in it unconsciously. Immersed in the flow of history, we may feel currents that can often lead us along paths that distance us from the ways of the Gospel and from total fidelity to the charism.  It is relatively easy to succumb to the pressures that come from many places and to align ourselves with lifestyles and choices publicized by fads that weaken the witness of our radical adherence to the project of God.  For us, for many people, for the young the separation between faith and life is a constant danger and it is, therefore, urgent that we walk coherently toward vocational unity.

Discernment

85. The present context marked by a pluralism of proposals, by rapid and continual socio-cultural changes, by a mentality that often appears to be superficial, demands that we assume a constant attitude of discernment.  This habit of discerning makes us women of reflection, who know how to go beyond contingencies and immediacy in order to enter into the heart of history with an evangelical mentality.  Discernment makes us capable of listening to reality, of asking ourselves in what measure we collaborate in a project that does not come from us, how to decipher it continually in the light of the charism and, above all, of the word of Jesus which makes us «truly wise» (L22, 10).

Salesian spirituality lived in the feminine style

86.From the voices expressed in the Province Chapters, there results with particular relevance the need to assume and deepen Salesian spirituality, beginning from our experience of being women educators. We are to be women who do not cease to be attentive to the Spirit and continually compare themselves with the demands of the charism, with the foundational intentions of Don Bosco and Maria Domenica Mazzarello. In preceding General Chapters, we had already become aware of our «responsibility to express the richness of our femininity, both in community and in our educative mission» (Acts GCXX 48). Recent history has seen us actively committed on various occasions and in collaboration with other women religious and laity, to situations in which the fundamental rights of the person were threatened.  We have taken a position, in opportune places, in defense of those who have no voice and in proclaiming that human life is sacred and inviolable. We have done this on the five continents with the educational daring of the Preventive System, following in the path of loving-kindness.

We need, nevertheless, to discover other ways in which to express our authentic physiognomy in the Church and in society. In this search, Mary, woman of the Covenant, mother and educator, becomes an effective guide in reading history and in acting in the spirit of the evangelical beatitudes.  As the Plan of Formation states, we will be then a living memory of Mary and able to bring to reality «unknown» waiting to be incarnated into the pedagogy of «caring for», of reciprocal accompaniment, seeking for ways that foster peace, solidarity and creativity in defending and promoting life on every level.