5.      THE INFLUENCE OF COMMUNION WITH LAITY IN OUR LIFE

1.      New understanding of the charism

The relationship with laity helps us understand our charism in a new way. What Antonio Maria Sicari says in a recent study of his seems very interesting to me .⁶ The charism, in the original, has the ability of being lived not only by the consecrated persons, but of giving a spiritual identity also to the lay faithful. The originating charism of many ancient Orders actually touched also the “non-consecrated” who shared it. If it found its strong point in consecrated persons and could not develop all its “lay” potentiality, that was due to the strict separation that was in vogue between the states of life. Today, thanks to the new ecclesiology of communion, charisms can be expressed through all states of life, and therefore, in more varied ways, according to the different vocations, of course. According to Sicari it is not that religious are sharing their charism with the laity, as though it were an adaptation in a lay form of an originally religious reality. The charism precedes its incarnation in a context of consecration or laicism. We are therefore all called, consecrated and lay, to go to the genuine font of the charism in order to understand the ways of expression of the charism, both in the way of consecration and in the way of laity.

So, what Vita consecrata expects from religious-lay relationships is not utopian: “unexpected and rich insights into certain aspects of the charism, leading to a more spiritual interpretation of it, and helping to draw from it directions for new activities in the apostolate.” (n. 55)