INTRODUCTION

            I would like to begin my conference with the story of an experience and a testimony of charismatic, spiritual and apostolic communion that can help us be faithful to our spiritual and apostolic solidarity: the example of St. Teresa of Jesus in her time.

            Those who visit the temple dedicated to her in Avila, and enter the chapel where she was born, find, on the two sides, four pictures that represent four religious orders who influenced her formation.  In one we see a group of Carmelites with an inscription in Latin that refers to the gift of prayer given to Teresa by their order (spiritum orationis). In a second we see a group of Franciscans who offered her the gift of a spirit of poverty, as the Latin inscription says (spiritum paupertatis); the Dominicans, in another, because they gave her the spirit of wisdom (spiritum sapientiae); the Jesuits in the other, because they gave Teresa the ecclesial spirit of religion (spiritum religionis)…

            There we have in an artistic expression the statement that, in her time, Teresa was fashioned by the spiritual communion of her time: Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits: the spirituality movements of her era, from the reformist movements to modern devotion, from humanism to Erasmianism which called for a special attention to “interior Christianity”, but all in the equilibrium of ecclesiality.  Her life and her apostolate are marked by the ecclesial vitality of her time. Teresa is fruit of communion, of the grace that made her, from her position of separation,  discover communion in reciprocity. For this reason, when she was accused by the Inquisition, she was able to defend herself by naming the many confessors of the various orders who had been her advisors, among whom there were future saints, as though wanting to invoke the spiritual solidarity of her formators belonging to the religious families of her time.  She received and she gave, because this is the law of Church communion.  In the vast Teresan iconography, there are pictures in which the Saint appears teaching a group of religious and laity of different orders from the pulpit of a church. And an inscription in Latin says “Ab ipsis edocta docens”: “Teresa teacher of those who had her as disciple.”

            The  examples could be multiplied. The affinity between holy founders and foundresses, the exchange of gifts and mutual help is a beautiful page to be rediscovered in the history of consecrated life. Perhaps more eloquent and rich than that of the rivalries between the different families! They speak, in fact, of the communion between Dominic and Francis, and in some pictures they add as a third guest, the Carmelite Angelo of Sicily. The relationships of spiritual friendship and collaboration between the Roman saints of the 16^th and 17^th centuries with Philip Neri are well-known, like Felix of Cantalice, of the holy men and women “of charity” of the 19^th century at Turin and Verona. Spiritual affinity and the closeness to God have made men and women founders who cultivated a real and true spiritual friendship and a generous apostolic collaboration. VC n. 52 recalls this: “Mindful of the spiritual friendship which often united founders and foundresses during their lives, consecrated persons, while remaining faithful to the character of their own Institute, are called to practice a fraternity which is exemplary and which will serve to encourage the other members of the Church in the daily task of bearing witness to the Gospel.”

            Solidarity and spiritual communion is a felt need in our time, time of communion and mission, of fraternal solidarity and concrete need for mutual and reciprocal help in the consecrated life at every level.

            The time of isolation and self-sufficiency is finished. The moment of communion in solidarity has arrived, also as a positive fruit of a “purification” of the Spirit who enlarges hearts and opens them more to communion as a reciprocal need and gift.

            The experience of the Church communion demands it, as family, an ever more engaging mission, the preparation of persons, the planning of unified projects of presence and of simultaneous, harmonious action.

            VC already spoke of this in n. 74 under the meaningful title Ecclesial cooperation and apostolic spirituality: “Everything must be done in communion and dialogue with all other sectors of the Church. The challenges of evangelization are such that they cannot be effectively faced without the cooperation, both in discernment and action, of all the Church’s members.”  A collaboration that initiates from the relationship of communion between consecrated persons and their institutes.

            It does not begin from the top. There is a positive experience going on. There are valid structures of communion at every level, for a greater reciprocity in consecrated life: on the level of the universal Church, in the concreteness of the local Churches.

            But we must proceed with an open view toward the future which will have more and more need of a dynamic reciprocity.

            NB. Not being able to develop the whole topic, I am neglecting what is said about mutual help in formation, a sector by now rather clear and organized and for which one can look at the document of CICLSAL (CIVCSVA)  of 1999, cited below.