Starting Points for Reflection

            “They are not the persons responsible(superiors) in a community because they are perfect, but because they have been chosen. A community is composed of human beings who have shadows and lights, poverty and riches, wounds and gifts, human beings who have heard the call of Jesus: ‘Come and follow me…’  A community is not made up of persons who resemble each other. Each one is different, but each one is necessary. Each one has a unique place in the community…”

            This passage is taken from a splendid little book of Jean Vanier entitled “Letter of the tenderness of God”, which you have certainly read, or which I suggest you read: it nourishes the soul and fills the heart with peace, especially for those who are in authority, because it is packed with practical matters and with faith.

            Dear sisters and brothers,  I wanted to introduce the topic that was entrusted to me with this quotation to tell you, first of all, something that seems to me very important: our Congregations and communities are not perfect, but they are journeying.  We must not forget it in order to move from idealism to the truth, above all to the Truth (with a capital T) because it is Truth that sets us free.

Jean Vanier continues:  “To (animate…) a community in the following of Jesus we must divest ourselves of the spirit of the world, the spirit of selfishness and of the absolute search for security, the spirit of dominion and control. In order to follow Jesus and walk in the light, to be an instrument of unity and peace, it is necessary to be converted every day…”

Conversion – I say it first of all for myself – is the highest rule, the golden rule of all animation. And I could stop here, but I have to develop the topic entrusted to me and try to enter into it in greater detail.

            “Launch out into the deep” the Pope told us in Novo millennio ineunte, and also “cultivate the creativity of charity”.  There, in my opinion, is the road mapped out, the journey to be made for animating a religious Congregation today, in a context of globalization and de-Christianization. There is no other. Let us seek together, then, to enter into this invitation, always keeping as background the main topic of this meeting.

            I will read again from Novo millennio ineunte at n. 43: “To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings.”

            But what, concretely, does this invitation mean: “To make the Church the home and the school of communion?”  What does it mean to make of our Congregations, our communities, the home and school of communion?

            The Pope again responds to this question: “Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed…, wherever families and communities are being built up…”

            It is within this program, lived personally and in community, that – in my opinion – the creativity of charity is played out; herein is enclosed that “high degree of holiness” that ought to characterize our daily service of animation; that every initiative of service and evangelization should take shape; that the dream of a Congregation will be able to be fulfilled, in which martirìa, koinonìa, diakonìa are truly lived in the name of and with the power of God.

            The spirituality of communion finds its source and its finality in the Trinitarian model.  It is only by entering into Trinitarian logic and dynamics that each of us can live and communicate that communion which renders our living together fruitful, because it enables us to move from the unification of self to union with God, from the commitment of reciprocity to gratuity, from a responsibility of solidarity to an unconditional gift of love.  And it is also by entering into this logic that we can help our sisters and brothers (and first of all ourselves) to live the vows in the spirit of the Beatitudes of the Reign. Allow me a parenthesis in this regard, mediating a happy reading of the vows from a hymn on the Beatitudes written by Fr. David Maria Turoldo:

Blessed, oh you poor, oh primary heirs

who already have your heart beyond things,

you are princes of divine descent.

Blessed, oh you clean of heart,

God is mirrored in you, as in a lake,

and you will see the Lord everywhere.

Blessed, oh you meek, oh you obedient: oh you

defenseless, you are the invincible strength of God.

You alone will possess the earth. 

            But what does the expression “spirituality of communion” mean, concretely, as applied to the topic that we are treating?

            NMI states: “A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart’s contemplation (very beautiful expression! I am reminded of Saint Exupéry’s expression: ‘One sees well only with the heart’) of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling within us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters…; it means an ability to think of our brothers…as ‘those who are part of me’…. to attend to their needs…;  it means an ability to see above all what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God for me…; it means ‘making room’ for our brothers and sisters, bearing ‘each other’s burdens’.”

            It is in the light of this paragraph that it seems to me we can read the criteria and operational lines for the service of animation.  This paragraph, in fact, it seems to me, contains the journey that the Lord wants us to undertake to collaborate in serving our brothers and sisters with a maternal and paternal heart.  Do you remember the beautiful painting of Rembrandt on the return of the prodigal son?  That painting, in which the father has one feminine hand and one masculine hand? Maternal and paternal hands and hearts.