The request for communion

87.  Globalization  proposes an  organizational  model of endorsement n that Influences on the family, school and other institutions.  The network of relationships and of exchange brings them ever closer to distant realities.  Yet, in these, our times, persons can still feel alone.  Entire communities suffer marginalization and exclusion.  The competition connotes  the actual reality of social and political citizenship . From here, we see the request for closeness, sociability,, solidarity, encounter  and communion.  John Paul II proposes it to the whole Church when he invites them to live a spirituality of communion (cf NMI 43).

Family spirit in the viewpoint of the spirituality of communion

88.  From the syntheses of the responses of the Province Chapters we see the urgency of a return to the charismatic roots to re-appropriate for ourselves the family spirit, which is, for us, the specific way of living the spirituality of communion in the new situations (cf C 50).   It sends us back to the theo-anthropological foundations of the person created in the image of God, living unity in the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The spirituality of this communion is generated in the womb of the Trinity and is manifested in the style of a reciprocity lived in a dynamic of giving and receiving, of gratuitousness and of gratefulness that constitutes the most suitable climate to express today the charismatic force of the Preventive System.  This is the gift that renders us humbly available in the Church  (cf PF 25-28).

Our being together in the following of Jesus that calls us to a mission helps us, in fact, to live an alternative lifestyle characterized by the reciprocal gift in the line of evangelical citizenship.  In it we are not strangers.  Each person is welcomed as a brother and sister.  Our community then becomes a school of vital relationships, a workshop of inter-culture and evangelical solidarity.

In reciprocal accompaniment

89.  The family spirit, typical of Salesian spirituality, is revealed in the fabric of everyday relationships as trust and friendship, solicitude in caring for one another, together with the young people whom God entrusts to us.

Today more than ever before we are called to accompany one another reciprocally in the journey of human growth and in the commitment to become like Jesus, to live in His spousal love and to proclaim His Gospel in its missionary dimension.

In a circular style of animation

90.  In this light we understand how important it is to be inspired by a circular model of animation where those called to the service of authority in the Salesian style make themselves available to listen to different voices, inviting the participation and confrontation in the sharing of the choices for the common mission.  It also has the task of accompanying persons and the community in the direction of a creative fidelity to the charism. (cf PF 40-42).

In dialogue with the other vocations

91.  The spirituality of communion that we also share with the young people and

adult  laity, particularly in the Salesian Family, opens us to the recognition of the wealth of the different enables us sto weave a profitable dialogue with all.

We are aware that the path of fruitfulness and of the future lies in this extended communion, sign of hope for the world, an expression of a citizenship beginning from acceptance and reciprocal appreciation.

Available for acceptance and forgiveness

92. Interpersonal relationships lived in the educating community, show some stresses in reference to the needs of communion.  We are aware of the need to empower attitudes of acceptance, trust, participation and appreciation of the other person in his/her diversity.  There is a strong desire to create humanizing relationships that help to overcome the mere functionality of relationships and to experience the gift of the koinonia where the presence of Jesus dwells.

Living this gift requires a journey of inner freedom so as to be able to handle the inevitable conflicts through forgiveness offered and received.

As an experience of the mercy of the Father and a process of ascesis, forgiveness leads us to consider others as brothers and sisters, to make a place for them and to rejoice with them for the gift of a new heart.

The capacity for forgiveness is at the basis of every journey of communion; it leads to the appreciation of the sacrament of Reconciliation, to living in a state of continual conversion and to collaborating for building a more just future in solidarity.

Forgiveness questions the community, educating it to raise its glance toward the future and to discover a perspective of trust and of justice that has the face of love and of mercy.

Community for the Kingdom

93.  The missionary yearning experienced by our Sisters in Mornese finds nourishment in a community climate saturated with reciprocal acceptance, appreciation and a tension toward a mission without frontiers.

Even today, the spirituality of communion generates communities for the Kingdom projected toward the mission of evangelizing through education and, therefore, open to the signs of the times and places through which the Spirit helps us to see future pathways.

The sterility that we see at times in our communities could possibly have a correlation in the difficulty of living a strong experience of faith, of centering ourselves on the basic motive of our being together.  On the contrary, if we are attentive to the mystery that we hold within, if we focus on that which humanizes our relationships and nourishes a true and profound friendship, we experience the fruitfulness of that communion that leads us to share the great causes of humanity.

In an attitude of exodus

94.  The actual situation of our communities asks us to live in an attitude of exodus, to decentralize ourselves, to accept the lack of guarantees.  It asks us, at the same time, to look to the future with hope, even when in some parts of the world the progressive diminishing of forces does not allow us to respond to the requests of the Church and the areas that ask us to place our educational charism at their disposal.

Living vocational unity

95.  We are aware that the urgencies of the mission require us to live discernment with the wise attitude of those who sit down to evaluate the situation before building a tower in order  to respond to the many requests for education.  This implies the responsibility of rooting ourselves ever more in listening to the Word in order to grow in vocational unity as a commitment to live the prophecy of the beatitudes in openness to the perspectives of the Kingdom of God.