4) Any practical reason for a differentiated experiencing it is not always easy, either from a charismatic viewpoint or from a social one

            I would like here to give some partial and practical advice. For the rest, please refer to either the documents of the recent Magistery (PC 13, ET 16-20, CDC 600, 610, 634-640, 668-670, EE III 20-21, RD 12, PI 14, VFC 28, 44, VC 82, 89-90, RdC 8, 13, 17, 22, 34, 35, 45), or the Rules, Constitutions and Directors of each group.

            It is not easy to offer some pieces of advice about the way of living today’s poverty. The reason lies on the diversity of circumstances, but also on the contradiction in which we often find ourselves, either at a world level or at the individual’s instruction level. On the one hand, on their constitutional or capitular documents the Institutes insist upon a radicalism either in the personal experience, or in the going out and meet the poor; on the other hand, we are in a society that offers us new and useful possibilities, e.g. in the training area, but it also pushes us, without even being us able to notice it, towards a consumption and a progressive bourgeois-oriented type of life, which is one of the most serious and urgent problems of CL today. A mentality, contrary to a poor life, even an austere one, that tries to possess us daily, sometimes in a bold way, sometimes overlapped, creating “demands and rights” that cannot stand the comparison with the constitutional and capitular criteria. And, I would also like to remind you that all this, thanks to the social media, has no boundaries at all, it conditions not only the active religious people, but also the contemplative ones, the religious people of the First World, but also those of the Third World, either when they are with us, or when they go back to their places.

            Having said this, I would like to come to a halt on three issues, which you can afterwards think them over

1)         Firstly, such contradictory situation in which poverty is often found – especially collective – in the present CL. For example, works more or less big, or with an objective that is more lucrative than apostolic, which we have built perhaps with so much effort and sacrifice in the ‘50s or the ‘60s (and even recent ones!); works that have not enjoyed (perhaps they could not have it!) that prophetic discernment that would have been auspicious, but that, due to the change of mentality and the shortage of vocations, become more a weight and an anti-testimony. Places, where, sometimes, a number each time more reduced of religious people, among a number each time bigger of white-collar workers, carry out a work that, reducing itself little by little to a directional or marginal role, becomes extremely exhausting, and often not pleasant and little instructive (some schools, hospitals, properties, boarding houses, hotels, apartments, offices…).

It is necessary to have the courage of discerning, according to the evangelical and numerical possibilities, and decide. This has been said for so many years, and only with a lot of effort some steps are being taken. This also means to close or change some venerable and venerated works, which have lost the evangelical value that might have had in other times; and not only because being fewer we are no longer able to carry them out, but also because it is necessary to open others according to their own charisma and the “new social poverties”.

            On the other hand, sometimes – as I said – one religious person lives in those works of heroic working timetables. The testimony of one single person is emptied by the anti-testimony (at least apparent) of the Institute or the community. And it sometimes happens, instead, that there are still religious people, exemplifying poor (they are those who lead a bourgeois-oriented life) who do not do anything or much less than what they could do.  

            There are, so, religious people who are exploited by the congregational or ecclesiastical institutions. Think about some working timetable in some hospitals, schools or parishes. Parish priests or bishops who take advantage and then do not pay well the religious women services. Superiors who take advantage of the subjects with the excuse of the “spirit of sacrifice” and that it is necessary to carry out a work that has no longer a future, etc. Students, girls or boys, who are not able to study, as they were ordered to, because at home they have so many things to do… To take advantage of the religious person is always anti-Christian, as it is the fact of religious people who take advantage of the institutions to live on the others back. The religious person has definitively to cooperate with community life, and as well has the right to rest, to have the time to pray in peace, experiment the community brotherhood, cultivate his/her own permanent instruction (cf. CDC 659-661, PI 58-71), according to the features of some Institutes (cf. VC 69-71). Communities should not become boarding houses of workers stressed, taciturn, and lonely. Work is a duty for everybody; but exploitation or tiredness is not something good for anybody. Then, we get surprised when an exhausted religious person has a breakdown… If we tell the families that spouses should find each other and as well with their children, it is also necessary to in parallel apply it to the religious people among them.  

2)         Another problem is how to prepare to poverty today. There is the risk to offer to those receiving instruction so many possibilities and comfort (money, work instruments, trips, entertainment, etc.) so that we prepare them wrongly for a life of joyful abnegation, which should be their CL later. We are certainly not preparing a good future for the Institute or the Church, if candidates grow up humanly and spiritually weak, unwilling, stubborn or bourgeois-oriented. A risk that involves not only the case of a candidate born and brought up within an economic situation that was lower, and who now is “richer” than before, and with a vote for poverty (cf. PO 9a, RPU 23-24, PI 14, VC 65-68).

Obviously, if it is possible and prudent, and besides in conformity with the own charisma and mission, new religious people should be offered those possibilities of human, cultural and spiritual instruction that perhaps did not have the precedent generations, but which today are considered valid and even necessary. In other words, it is no use saying: “In my times… this did not exist, we did not have it, was not necessary…”, and so, “not even you…”. Life changes, history moves. However, I think that one should not be afraid of stopping the possible young request of means always newer and more sophisticated, or of continuing experiences when they only lead to dispersion, to a going around here and there, to superficiality, to begin so many things and not finish any, or not to take care of the instruction of the will, the praying spirit, either personal or community one, or the cooperation with the other co-brothers or co-sisters in the works also humble of the community or the Institute. 

The young being instructed needs, in this period of his/her life, a strong experience among other things of community life. And this does not happen if the individuals are left almost alone, as if their instructors did not know or did not have the strength to lead their instruction, or because they are engaged in other activities more “interesting” or more gratifying (cf. PI 28); which can often happen in the male field. Or, on the contrary, the instructor is so present that does not let the young person even “breath”, or have his/her own initiatives and responsibilities (when perhaps before beginning the studies he/she had already had social and apostolic responsibilities!) or when the relationship instructor-person being instructed risks choking the relationship between the person being instructed and the community; which can often happen in the female field.  

It is, furthermore, true that the candidate has to experiment by him/herself that life costs and that he/she has to make his/her living. In the instruction houses there is sometimes this risk of having the candidate in a kind of ideal balloon, which is not instructive, whereas the coetaneous people get exhausted! In this way, we are not shaping him/her for the future, but we are just treating him/her like a child, we keep him/her in a immature situation and socially false. The convent cannot become “the big mother” who has to furnish everything to their “kids”! I do not mean that to avoid all this the candidate should get a job outside; but study, do the catechesis, answer the phone at the reception, clean the community areas, and similar tasks, are valid means of making one’s own living. Let’s not forget that there are no jobs or services unworthy or humiliating for anybody, if it is in the middle charity and humbleness… And this is not only valid in the case of the new candidates, but also in the case of the adults, having either important positions or tasks, or not: it is just necessary to watch the life of so many Founders, and specially Christ (“the Lord and the Master”, (Jh 13,14), washing the disciples’ feet and exhorting them to wash them among each other (Jh 13,1-17), to serve each other (cf. Mk 10,35-45), as reminds us the VC 75. And if any habit or culture did not admit all this, it should be transformed, evangelized and converted, in order to be considered a “Christian” one.

3)         Finally, the spirit of evangelical poverty should not be confused with misery or lack of joy and happiness. On entering CL, the religious person is looking for that one who he/she believes is his/her happiness, not only spiritual, but also human! It would mean to take the wrong street to highlight or conceive the root of CL as a kind of masochism disguised by spirituality, by earthly purgatory, or a denial to any type of satisfaction waiting for the happy eternity… The religious person, as any other Christian, has of course to accept boldly the joys and renouncements of his/her vocation; but he/she has also have to be able to show and proclaim with his/her existence that consecration to God and to the brothers makes him/her happy, not only spiritually, but also humanly! There is no worse anti-testimony than that one of an immature, childish, unsatisfied, frustrated, ill-tempered, grim or sad religious person. Do read what accurately says VFC 28.

Actually, the resurrected Lord is not followed on the street of an endless holy Friday, but on the paschal and human joy of thoroughly belonging to Him. The religious person does not make a vote of perpetual discouragement, as well he/she does not consecrate to God to avoid familiar disturbances. His/her life will be simple, austere, working-oriented and responsible, quiet, realist and joyful, humanly and Christianly mature, and he/she will be as much as he/she can available to God and the brothers. 

Consequently, it is not about worldliness, chaos or confusion, or to create in community an environment of continuous party; but, that profound joy, adult and mature, that comes from faith, which enlightens the life of the religious person and helps him/her embrace with decision, love and realism, either the happiness of living, or the risks and the difficulty of each human life and of his/her own one. “I know whom I have believed”, as Paul used to say (2Tm 1,12): this is the inexhaustible source of responsibility and profoundness of his/her life, and at the same time of his/her joy and calmness.

I am convinced that these are some of the aspects – among others – of the testimony that our world expects from us today, with respect to poverty. We cannot cheat the world. They have the right to our coherence and faithfulness, because our life is a gift that God gave them in us. We cannot disappoint them or God.