Congregation of Don Orione

This theme appears new and innovative in not a few of its features. We come, in fact, from a millennium in which there has been very little in the ecclesial field that has not originated from a monk who was subsequently followed both by the clergy and the people. Instead, now, suddenly, from the conscience of the people of God, one finds a coupling of “religious and laity” emerging and making its way. The magisterium of the Church has taken up this project and has re-launched it energetically.

From the conscience of the people of God, the coupling of “religious and laity”, which the magisterium of the Church takes up and re-launches energetically, is emerging and making its way.(1) It is an innovation which requires conversion because that little conjunction “and”, which has been placed between the two words - religious “and” laity - brings with it implications which have not yet been fully explored, especially from the existential and behavioral aspect. It is a conjunction that indicates a joint relationship between religious and laity, since both are “Christifideles”, members of the same body who have been called and consecrated for the same communion and mission. It is, however, a conjunction which actually unites two different entities: religious and lay.

This conjunction, which puts two differences in relation to each other, provokes in them the capacity to interact, to respect each other, to educate as well as make the most of each other, to collaborate in order to achieve a common mission (objective).

Theological Considerations on the Religious/Laity Relatinship

The soul of all this dynamism is a precise vision of the Church - The Second Vatican Council's ecclesiology of communion - which we cannot disregard if we do not wish to tackle the theme from a fragile basis, with mechanical motives and with a lack of perspectives.

The Council's View of the Church

It is well known that the Council Fathers who worked on the drafting of Lumen Gentium shared an extremely profound and tensely laborious experience. This was typical of Council work, day after day appearing increasingly to be an event of the Holy Spirit. In their experience they were instructed both in dialogue and in the need to leave themselves open and available to be changed by the Spirit. This means that we must approach Lumen Gentium not as if it is and not only as a document, but rather as a reflection of the living Church. Don Gino Moro wrote that the lesson of Lumen Gentium is that the greatest act of teaching springs into life when one is a disciple to the greatest degree. The Church exists to the extent that this happens, to the extent that we consent that this experience, which transcends us because it “is of God”, enters into us and is allowed to “exist in us”.(2) In any case we are Church in direct proportion to the intensity of communion, and not of the lucidity of its definition: from charity is born the Church (“da caritate Ecclesia”).

Now the awareness that the Church has of itself is also expressed through the new and different architecture of the constituting dimensions of its being. It would be useful for us to recall them briefly:

a) Its Foundation on the Trinity and on Mystery - The pre-Council situation was characterized by a strong clericalization, almost a papalization, of the Church. Consequently the figure of Christ, the Founder of the Church and head of the mystic Body, made itself visible and almost exhausted itself in the powers of the “supreme pontiff”, the bishops and the priests. The importance of the Spirit was minimum and made itself felt above all in the series of mystical revelations, private and feminine, which fed popular devotions.

It is a joy today to garner from Lumen Gentium the importance that is given to the Trinity (LG 2-4, AA 2-4). Studying the form of the three divine Persons becomes a great training in prayer and spirituality. What is new is as much in the theological-spiritual inspiration as it is in the fact that this inspiration wants to exercise its influence on visible things, in other words, on the historical model of the Church. It wants, that is, for the Trinitarian richness to be the mirror upon which to structure the way in which the Church is community.

b) The Communal View - Under the influence of its juridical conception (societas perfecta) and of the program of counter-reform, the Church had ended up by accentuating its social trait and emphasizing its juridical and teaching power, setting up, as a consequence, relationships which were unequal. The clergy on one side and the religious on another were high up, whereas the laity were low: disciples as opposed to teachers, uncultured as opposed to erudite, “worldly” as opposed to “spiritual”.

It was precisely the recovery of the Church's foundation on the Trinity and on mystery, as well as its intimate connection to the new historical context marked by social revolution, by the end of the concept and by the aristocratic organization of society, that allowed the emergence of a new conception of the Church: in the Church, before any differences, there is the universal equality of all the Christifideles. This is a fundamental equality in the sense that it is the baptismal grace which founds and constitutes being a Christian.

This was a reversal of the way things were approached, a reversal which left nothing as it had been before. Some theologians, when faced with the chapter on the people of God, saw a Copernican revolution taking place. Language, however, is analogical by default. The overcoming of the pyramidal reasoning which starts from the top (and was often criticized but not overcome by contestation, which instead started from the bottom), can only take place through conversion to the logic of communion.

Communion, however, means human relationships regenerated by the mystery of God: from this mystery they are born, it is this mystery they reflect, to this mystery they lean and return. It is a divine socialization which has nothing to do with subjective revendication, with the desire for autonomy, or with the weakening of relational bonds and commitments. “Communion” is a very new word for our culture; so new that all thought (theology), all living (spirituality), all action (ministry), and all structures (organization) are today timidly taking their first steps along this road.

Well then, since we have been placed within this concept of mystery, both of the Trinity and of communion, we must see the re-evaluation of the laity as an ecclesial subject which exists fully in its own right. Hidden for an extremely long time under the protective mantle of the priest or the monk, viewed as a third estate without a real and valid ecclesial citizenship, today the laity is finally reborn with its own dignity.(3) This is one of the most important and most fully pregnant facts for the Church of the third millennium.(4)

c) The Ecumenical View - Within the communal view, and like its expansion, there is currently taking shape an inversion of how we think about the painful divisions which shattered the unity of the Church with the two great wounds suffered in the first and second millennium. After the phase of protest and opposition the Churches are baptizing themselves - in their own wounds and their own expectations, in their own thoughts and prayers - diving into the great sea of the Trinity and the fullness of Christ, which no confession can exhaust on its own. It is a question of going, together with Christ, towards the Father, under the action of the Spirit, and going towards reconciled differences.

d) The Missionary View - The Council saw a radical change of psychological attitude and view, also with regard to the world which has now escaped from the protective umbrella of the ecclesial hierarchy: “pastoral” categories are entering into the higher echelons. “Pastoral” is the key word needed to understand and effect the conversion which the Spirit made alive to the Council Fathers and which then extended to the entire Church.

Thus was born the Church of dialogue, of the contemplative gaze at the happenings in the world; a missionary Church, before which is opening out not only geographical zones, but also the space of modern man and the new post-Christian epoch, its new land of mission.(5)

After the Synods on the Laity and the Clergy, That on Religious Orders and the Religious Life

From the Second Vatican Council's ecclesiology of communion there re-emerges, in all of its theological, sacramental and historical importance, the people of God. The entire Church is mystery, the entire Church is sacrament, the entire Church is called to sanctity and to mission, even if it is in different and complimentary ways, according to the various charisms and states of life.

With the publication of “The Consecrated Life” came the completion of the triptych with which the teaching body of the Church aimed to revisit and go more deeply into this ecclesiology of communion, with the object of favoring not only a deeper reception but also its development in experiential and missionary terms. The Pope himself affirms this when he writes “This Synod (The first one on the consecrated life), coming after the ones dedicated to the lay faithful and to priests, completes the treatment of the distinctive features of the states of life willed by the Lord Jesus for his Church”.(6)

In fact, communion in the Church is not uniformity, it is the gift of the Spirit which flows also through all the various charisms and states of life. The greater the respect for their identity, the more useful they will be to the Church and its mission. In fact, every gift of the Spirit is granted so that it may bear fruit for the Lord, developing fraternity and the mission.

Having by now gone beyond the stage of “Christian society” we find ourselves facing a new awareness of a Church which feels the duty to regard itself in relation to the world, to other cultures and to other religions, and of doing so no longer according to the category of superiority but according to the more biblical categories of signs, of witness and of service. And, in order to do this, it realizes the need that within itself all components should be expressive and recapitulative of its belief, as well as adult and capable of holiness, of taking on responsibilities, of specific roles...

And so, after the recapitulations of belief in the two figures of the minister and the monk, which were dominant in “social” ecclesiology, the Spirit makes the recapitulation of belief re-emerge also in the figure of the laity. This is a tendency which has elements of a genuinely new character; but, at the same time, it is not easy to accomplish and it is not without difficulties.

Religious and Laity, an Uncomfortable but Promising Partnership

At the very beginning of the exhortation “Christifideles Laici” the Pope pointed out how the post-Councilor path for the faithful laity would not be without “difficulties and dangers” and he immediately cites two of them:

- “the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world;

- “and the temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world”.(7)

The Pope, therefore, is not unaware that his ministers are faced with a precise challenge: that of identifying the concrete approaches so that the splendid doctrine on the laity, expressed by the Council, may become authentic Church practice.

In reality, the two traditional figures which sum up the faith (ordained ministers and religious) find themselves unprepared when faced with the emergence of this third figure, the lay faithful. And probably it is we priests and religious who are mostly responsible for the prevailing interest on the part of certain lay faithful for service and tasks within the Church which the Pope speaks of. It is an interest which has led (but where?) not a few “committed” lay people to the practical abandonment of their specific responsibilities in the world. In any case it cannot be thought that in only a few years the laity can invent a spirituality which is suitable to them and fitting to their state, as well as to the new role which they have been given and to the expectations which have arisen around their tasks. This is due, at least in part, to the previous situation, lacking in many elements. A situation which we can summarize in this way:

- paucity of lai(ci)ty in the Church;

- paucity of the concept of world in spirituality;

- paucity of a sense of history in the religious life.

What is needed, therefore, is a way of looking at the laity and laicity with a view that is high (not short, suspicious, frightened, jealous...). The Pope, in Christifideles laici, starts from the contemplation of “this great moment in history made especially dramatic by occurring on the threshold of the third millennium”, to profit to the full from “the lay faithful's hearkening to the call of Christ the Lord to work in his vineyard, to take an active, conscientious and responsible part in the mission of the Church”.(8) But immediately there was an anxiousness to identify and look at the specific and typical characteristics of their vocation more profoundly; he writes: “Because of the one dignity flowing from Baptism, each member of the lay faithful, together with ordained ministers and men and women religious, shares responsibility for the Church's mission. But among the lay faithful this one baptismal dignity takes on a manner of life which sets a person apart, without however bringing about a separation from the ministerial priesthood or from men and women religious. The Second Vatican Council has described this manner of life as the 'secular character'“(9) (also cf. LG 32).

A manner of life - continues the Pope - whose theological consequence must be gone into more deeply, “in light of God's plan of salvation and in the context of the mystery of the Church”. He reminds us how the whole Church has a “secular dimension” (cf. Paul VI address to the Secular Institutes, February 2, 1972) and how, in fact, the Church lives in the world even if it is not of the world. He then advances on to two explanations of this secular manner of life saying:

- The world is “the place in which they receive their call from God”. A condition to be considered “not simply an external and environmental framework, but as a reality destined to find in Jesus Christ the fullness of its meaning”. Therefore they “are not called to abandon the position that they have in the world”, because for the lay faithful, being and acting in the world is a reality which is not only anthropological and sociological, but also “in a specific way theological and ecclesiological”.(10)

- The world then is the place in which the laity live their vocation to holiness and in which, in fact, they sanctify themselves. It is a sanctity which is “intimately connected with mission” and which, therefore, contributes both to “the building of the Church itself” and to the growth of the kingdom of God in history.(11)

The special role of the lay faithful can be summarized in the following points:

- seeking the kingdom of God by dealing with temporal things;

- responding to God's call for the sanctification of the world;

- making Christ visible in the world by bearing witness;

- illuminating and orienting reality towards Christ.

Faced with this role, so specific for every baptized person, what positions are taken, not only by the laity but also by ordained ministers and male and female religious?

Perhaps it would not hurt anyone to review, before God and before the urgent needs of history, the quality of his or her own contribution to the development and the consolidation of the various vocations within the Church.

The Pope indicates a path to us. It is a path which is of revision and, at the same time, of opening to new perspectives:

“In Church communion the states of life, by being ordered one to the other, are thus bound together among themselves. They all share in a deeply basic meaning: that of being the manner of living out the commonly shared Christian dignity and the universal call to holiness in the perfection of love. They are different yet complementary, in the sense that each of them has a basic and unmistakable character which sets each apart, while at the same time each of them is seen in relation to the other and placed at each other's service.

“Thus the lay state of life has its distinctive feature in its secular character. It fulfills an ecclesial service in bearing witness to and, in its own way, recalling for priests, women and men religious, the significance of the earthly and temporal realities in the salvific plan of God.

“In turn, the ministerial priesthood represents in different times and places the permanent guarantee of the sacramental presence of Christ, the Redeemer.

“The religious state bears witness to the eschatological character of the Church, that is, the straining toward the kingdom of God that is prefigured and in some way anticipated and experienced even now through the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.

“All the states of life, whether taken collectively or individually in relation to the others, are at the service of the Church's growth. While different in expression, they are deeply united in the Church's “mystery of communion” and are dynamically coordinated in its unique mission”.(12)

In the Pope's words we religious can understand more than just an indication; it is also a challenge, one which we find in the laity and in their emmersion in the reality of the world. This is not a situation to ignore or to look down at from above, it is a fundamental interlocutor for the meaning and the legibility of our very consecration. And the reason for this is that even though our very vows send us back to the ecclesial components or realities, they send us back even more to the components which are very much of the world itself: economic, affective and political components; the components of having, of loving, of power.

Only within this profound re-thinking - on our part and on that of the laity - of one's own mode of being and making Church, all together, community/people in the mission that is in history, will we be able to move forward in the exploration of the new road hypothesized by the sharing of charism.

Te Urgent Need for Formation and Conversion

Firs, for we Religious

1. The Rethinking of Our Vocation and of the Role of the Consecrated Life in the Church and in the World. - When, at the General Chapter of 1992, we (Work of Don Orione) faced the theme “promotion of the vocation and the role of the laity” for the first time, the first objective we proposed for ourselves as a Congregation was the specific formation of lay Orions on the following themes:

- the Church and its mission as people of God;

- the vocation and laity's specific role in the Church;

- the recognition and maximization of the charism and the spiritual and ministerial role of women in the family, in society and in the Church;

- the vocation-mission of religious in relation to that of the clergy and of the laity within the Church, with a view to a communal sharing of the life of the Church.(13)

The other objectives (formation of the laity, lay-secular consecrated life, structures of animation, opening towards all the laity, unity of the Don Orioni Family) were added later. This was not because they were less important, but because it was clear that at the basis of the new relationship with the laity either there would have to be a serious reassesment of the vocation and the role of religious or there would be a series of misunderstandings which, in the end, would have disappointed everyone.

How can one ignore, in fact, the spiritual, cultural and psychological situation of many religious who, in good faith, and certainly not out of malice, see:

- in opening up to the world, the risk of a return to the world;

- in the participation of the laity, the risk that the work will slip out of their hands;

- in the revision of their specific role in terms of “animation”, the abdication of tasks and styles of presence which for generations had constituted the pivot of their identity and mission?

For religious who have made of their apostolic work the fulcrum of their asceticism and who, with generosity, have for years had before their eyes only “the good to be done”, it is not easy to understand and accept:

- that the mission of a congregation of apostolic life may extend beyond its works;

- that congregation and works do not coincide;

- that mission and works do not have the same identity;

- that the charism of the Founder can expand and be fertile even beyond works.

Tackling similar challenges, which disorient not a few religious and create a sense of bewilderment in the community, obviously implies processes of ongoing formation run in a climate of creativity and hope (not in one of resignation), and therefore capable of involving adult (and active) persons in a rethinking, which is not individual but collective and communal, of their own consecration and mission in a society and Church which are changing.

Providentially, along the post-Capitular road, not immediately but after opportune preparation, some circumstances occurred which were capable of influencing more than words. The first event took place in 1995, when more than 100 persons (made up of male and female religious and laity of the Orioni Family) were involved in a competent experience of “formation to charism”.

It was there that we “collectively” came to the realization that “reading the charism together” (that is, as masculine, as feminine and according to the way of the laity) not only helped us to understand it, to translate it, to transmit it and to love it even more, but also helped us to identify the potential which the charism is able to liberate in individuals and in groups, helped us to listen to the expectations which the charism aroused in the various individuals and groups, and to take them into account.

In this way, one began to discover that taking reciprocal expectations into consideration was already enacting and experiencing a first form of collaboration and participation.

That gathering regarding formation to charism gave birth to three projects, with their respective benefits:

- one for formation (initial) to charism;(14)

- one for the ongoing formation of religious;(15)

- one for the formation of lay people to charism.(16)

That gathering also produced a programmatic letter from the Director General (December 12, 1995) which, with the creation and the coordination of groups on international, provincial and local levels, gave birth to the Orione Lay Movement.

The creation of flexible and stabile structures for the coordination of the various Orione lay organizations, including dependent ones, brought about:

- the qualified involvement of lay people in these experiences;

- the request for the religious to increasingly present the “word of God” and the “word of the Founder”;

- and, above all, in 1977, the international gathering of the Orione Lay Movement.

These structures, in a crescendo of visibility and necessity, produced “trying words” for the religious, words that regarded what they jealously considered “their own” (and therefore closed to intruders); such as their vocation, their role, the way they live their presence in the works, the importance of their community life even outside the community, the capacity to maintain a relationship with the territory and with the local Church.

These experiences and these facts, more than words, contributed to wake us up and to make us realize that we are gradually but irreversibly migrating into a new context, one where we shall increasingly often run into lay people (beneficiaries, employees, ex-students, friends, voluntary workers, conscientious objectors, ministry workers...) who will no longer simply ask us for assistance, structures, organizations, a job or a space for service, but also, and above all, for spirituality, formative itineraries, sharing of charism and mission, as well as collaboration in the programming and the management of the Institute's works.

Obviously, all of this sweeps away a certain figure of the religious and a certain view of apostolic works. It obliges us to become involved in research, dialogue, conversion. Each of these is a dynamism which inevitably demands a rethinking of consecration and of our specific function and mission:

- within history, which today is to be thought of “theologically”, an attitude which implies the passage from flight to insertion;

- within a Church, which today is to be thought of “as mystery”, an attitude which implies the maximization of one's own identity alongside and, in some cases, in the service of the identity and the function of ordained ministers and laity.

2. Reassessment of the Works - The reassessment of the consecrated life is not exhausted in the conversion of people. It also involves the works, for these are not businesses, they are signs, they are the concrete translation of a charitable passion which has been inflamed by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Founder and of those who follow him.

It is well known that Founders seek the kingdom of God and the radiation of the Gospel in hearts and in society; and they do this by translating a word or a feature of the mystery of Christ (or of the Church) into a charitable intervention in the needful situations that they meet, that is, in the situations of poverty which most people are not aware of or do not consider; and they do this in the most varied ways and forms.

However, concentrated as they are on the true needs of society and of the Church, read and discovered in and by the light of God, they would not accept, even for one hour, the survival of a work which did not present “an evident and valid means” to the charitable end which absorbs them entirely.

The followers of the Founders, on the other hand, sometimes become fixed and immovable in a repetitive way regarding the works which they have received as their inheritance and, when the times change, they do not realize that they can fall into a serious contradiction; losing track of their apostolic end in order to conserve works which have now become obsolete.

From this point of view the character of our times (State, society, culture....) is implacable: it sweeps away the definition of many of our works and, more deeply, it affects the very concept of the works. Hence the question of the validity of the individual works, the labor to recover their apostolic aim and, sometimes, the “crisis” when faced by the works which are so dear to the memory of a congregation, but through which it is impossible to preach Christ and bear credible witness of Church. So, what is to be done?

Today one begins to admit that the works are not automatically the radiation of the love which God and the Church have for the poor, the way it was when the “welfare state” did not yet exist. When works become simply duplicates of the activities of the State, on what basis and according to what criteria can their validity, their meaning and their apostolic value be justified.

Hence, there arise some questions which are disturbing: Do we continue the works simply as a memory of the past or do we make a free and mature discernment? Do we dedicate energy and means and time more to their operation, or shall we be truly committed to their transparent significance so that they may be “pulpits of the love of Christ and of the Church for the poor”? (Don Orione).

In a framework of the sharing of charism with the laity these questions, on the sense and meaning of the works, become grounds for confrontation and very delicate discernment. Therefore, it would not hurt us if, when we are thinking of them, we also think of where our works are going, of their organization and management, and their apostolic and charismatic objective. Naturally, all this must be seen in the context of a Church which wants to be missionary (and therefore visible and credible in the marks it makes), and in the context of a secularized world (which, however, does not give anyone a patent of credibility).

A similar study leads us once again to the problem of our formation, for in it there appear certain “tendencies of character” which often condition our way of acting. We can describe them as tendencies which are:

- more concerned with execution than with animation;

- more interested in their role than in objectives or ends;

- more involved in management than in planning;

- more based on doing than on evangelizing messages;

- more addressed to those who come to us than to the environment as a whole;

- more rooted in the logic of the Congregation than in the logic of the Church.

- more based on individuals than on communion and collaboration;

- more based on competence than on spirituality and its diffusion;

- more aligned towards the criteria of employees than of participation.

The problem lies in the fact that for the communities to reach a new way of being present and active we would have to pass through the conversion of our “ways of thinking and of being”, and to do so with progressive and orderly stages of consent. Instead, what is preferred is a ritual optimism, not very rigorous and not very critical, even when faced with questions whose solution belongs not to the world of good will but to that of great intuition.

The Laity Card

From what has been said, it can clearly be seen that the question of the sharing of charism with the laity cannot be reduced to the simple addition of new and copious forces to share the conducting and management of the works: almost as an operation which must be suffered due to the numerical decrease of members, rather than an occurrence which is desired and prepared.

The problem is even more complex. If we do not set it in a logic of “Church-communion-in-mission” we compromise all its richness and its potential development. The sharing of charism with the laity, which is revealing itself in the Church as a gift of the Spirit, is first of all an occasion and an opportunity for growth and development for everyone: ministers, consecrated people and laity. If we place ourselves in the framework of this positive perspective “the consecrated life will not be limited to reading the signs of the times, but will also contribute to elaborating and putting into effect new initiatives of evangelization for present day situations”.(17) If, on the contrary, other reasonings prevail, I think that we will lose a providential opportunity of renewal and a prophetic appointment with history.

Playing the “laity card”, which is theoretically possible and valid, demands intellectual and ascetic rigor, for it continuously needs for us to find the place where it should be rightfully implied, not only on the plane of theology and intentions, but also on that of facts and situations.

“A person in a crisis of meaning and of his place in the world”, admonished Don Gino Morrow during a spiritual retreat, “drags down also the person whom he clutches for help. Two sick people do not make one healthy one, nor can two blind men explore a forest. In other words, the meeting with the laity is valid and fruitful only if we religious - in our lifestyle and in our strategies of presence and of action - accept that we must pass under the cross of conversion. Otherwise there will only be empty words to cover our misunderstandings. We will act on the basis of unsolved and postponed problems. But this will not take us very far. The lay person cannot bear, in addition to his own crisis, also the more subtle crisis of meaning which we as religious have. Nor can he substitute with his numerical abundance our paucity of direction and meaning. An alliance is victorious if it is made between healthy subjects and systems.

The First Steps on the Road to the Sharing of Charism

While I was working on the preparation of this report, the letter by the Director General of the Orione, Don Roberto Simionato: “We want to see Jesus” was issued. In part this is the echo of the 1997 International Convention of the Orione Lay Movement, and, in part, an evaluation of six years of experience on the sharing front, with a view to the fact that the General Chapter of the Institute would be dedicated precisely to these themes.

I therefore decided that for the final part of the report I would draw from this document, because it leads us to think directly on living experience rather than on theories, and because it moves more in the field of facts than of abstractions. And every so often we need to listen to the voice of facts, the voice of life.

Starting from the message by John Paul II to the Orione Lay Movement in 1997, Don Simionato specified that the Movement was born precisely “with the purpose (and he quotes the words of the Pope) of offering, to the different components of the associations which have arisen around the institutions of the Institute, the possibility of living the following of Christ”. And one learns to follow Christ (Once again in the words of the Pope) “by sharing the Orione charism with the Children of Divine Providence and with the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity”.

The word of command was “sharing of charism”. The discourse then became immediately spiritual, demanding, keeping its distance from any possible reciprocal instrumentality. To evangelize, bearing witness to the charism, is one of our profound requirements, it comes before any other preoccupation for a possible collaboration regarding works in progress. First the kingdom of God and then all the rest.

What is Happening Among the Religious

Many Lay People Around Us: A Discovery Which Provokes an Awareness of Conscience.

The recent initiatives which led to the birth of the Movement have the merit of placing before the religious (physically and visibly) the impressive numerical and qualitative potential of the laity who, in various activities, move within and around the works of the Institute. Not a few of them consider themselves true “children” of Don Orione.

And that was like a discovery. In the beginning, in fact, we were used to looking mainly at our spirituality, our works, our problems... Now, however, our gaze rests on the people whom Providence has involved in the adventure of our charism.

There Exist, However, Fears and Risks:

- a closed conception of the religious life, one which allows religious to isolate themselves too much;

- some experiences of opening to them have ended badly, and this advises us to prudence;

- the fear that certain situations will get out of hand if they do not remain in the hands of the Institute;

- an instinct of defense and fear of those who infiltrate solely for reasons of their own interest;

- a feeling of disorientation, due to the incapacity to give oneself a new animating role within the Works.

There Are Also Experiences Which Are “Apparently” Good, But Turn Out Not To Be Good:

- when one turns to the laity only because there is a lack of religious, asking only for efficient service without giving a spiritual content;

- when a religious does many things with the laity, but only for his own account, so that the lay people he frequents are only an alibi for his lack of community life;

There are, however, “caricatures” of participation which consolidate individualism. Sharing with the laity, on the other hand, is born from a super abundance, from an extension of community life, not from its negation. So what is really at stake?

In sharing our charism with the laity what is at stake is our capacity for true relationships, first with the religious community and then with the world, with the world of today and with the times in which the Church is living.

Awareness of Conscience Regarding A New Task

Today we cannot take the transmission of our charism for granted. We must program it explicitly. What is to be defended and recuperated is the whole subject of the pastoralism of our works, and this must be done starting from the heart of the religious, a heart which must not lose its apostolic instinct.

For us, this is like a journey of ongoing formation. By stirring and re-stirring, the coffee eventually becomes sweet. But this is true only if you have put the sugar in first. If we do not start from within, that which we will share with the laity will only be ministry initiatives, assistance structures, techniques of work, all the while “believing” to be sharing our charism. But sharing charism is something much deeper. It is as if we were planting in hearts that seed of life which gave stupendous fruits in our Founder.

Transmitting our charism to the laity means always sending them back to our most interior reality, that is, to that secret of our vocation which has caused us to leave everything to serve the Lord in absolute fidelity to the Church.

The laity cannot share our charism if we cannot find words and facts which allow them to perceive the roots of our profound choice, our spiritual motivations. The laity will not share our charism if first of all they have not found Him: “We want to see Jesus”.

The Reactions of the religious, faced with the road they have undertaken for the sharing of the charism with the laity, offer a very varied panorama: they stretch from enthusiasm, to more or less reserved evaluations, and go as far as skepticism.

Probably some have only gathered the external, folkloric aspect of the phenomenon, without calculating its true importance. However, with time, we see that there is an increasing number of religious who are intuitively aware that opening to the laity will bring a necessary revision on the plane of spirituality, of lifestyle, of the quality of the consecration, and of the capacity of maintaining relationships among ourselves, with other people, with society and with the local Church. And this will involve, naturally, a profound revision in our works (style of presence, administrative transparency, respect for roles and fields of competence, professionalism).

A fine job. However, it requires a big investment in formation: and this is one of the most serious expectations.

First of all formation of the religious in the communities and, in perspective, preparation of the religious to increasingly take on the role of formation directors, masters of spirituality, witnesses, taking off some of the more habitual role of “fa-totum”, of “I can do everything myself”... What is expected of us is much; our fears are no less. It is to be hoped that faith will be greater than either.

Right Approaches and Wrong Approaches

There are two passages in Don Simionato's letter that I would like to quote in full. They concern two types of approach to the theme of sharing: one starting from the needs of the Works, the other from the richness of our charism.

“There is always a risk of restricting the subject of the sharing of charism, of letting ourselves be mentally blocked by our preoccupation about the Works and thinking of the laity as the great solution for saving some of them. However, if we give away the Works in just any old manner, it will save neither the Works nor the charism, even if we assume that by giving them away they will survive. This restricted view always leads to failure.

“Every problem must find its solution in the right environment. The participation of the laity must not become an alibi for postponing necessary measures. If a Province sees its religious personnel reduced by half, it must make serious decisions about rethinking the aspect of the situation. Such a task, even if it is ordurous and painful, must be faced with courage and with the necessary discernment (Cf. Vita Consecrata (Consecrated Life), 63). That the laity may be able to help us in some particular situations may also be true, but presenting the problem in a reductive form is a very dangerous temptation”.(18)

“There is another process. The laity does not deserve to merely be given the leftovers of religious management, using them simply to fill in for the lack of personnel. They deserve a fully aware journey of growth in the sharing of our charism.

“We have perceived our charism as a gift for the Church. We cannot keep it hidden. Transmitting it is our mission; it must be carried out anyway, by vocation, even if we have no need of the laity for the Works. Let us thank the Lord that in this time of scarcity we are being given the opportunity for transmitting out richness. But we must not mistake the way we do it. This may seem like playing with words, but I want to express it in this way. It is not right to say: 'We must transmit our charism because there are few of us and (unfortunately) we need the laity'. Instead we must say: 'We need the laity because we have a charism to transmit'. In the end, as a result of collaborating with us, it may even happen that some works will be taken away from the laity, but this must be a consequence, as one might say, a side-effect. If the laity assimilates the charism it may well happen that the circle of charity may be enlarged by their setting up similar works on their own initiative. But everything must start from the contagion...of charity and of the charism”.(19)

What is Happening Among the Laity

A brief premise - we know that today the word “laity” has a multiplicity of meanings and diverse applications. For this reason, when the plan of sharing the charism with the laity was started, someone immediately asked the question: “Charism with the laity, yes, but with which laity?” After a certain consideration it was agreed to not set up a-priori discriminations or preclusions of any sort, because of the fact that “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34), and because the charism is a “gift from God for all mankind”. We are not, therefore, authorized to be the ones to say yes to some people and no to others. We are, therefore, directed to include all those who, for any reason, have come in contact with us and with our works.

By “laity”, accordingly, we indicate the people that we are assisting, their families and their dependents, ex-pupils, friends, benefactors, voluntary workers, conscientious objectors, ministry workers, youth groups, consecrated lay people...

When we started to set up the provincial coordination and the coordination of local groups, and presented the proposal of sharing our charism to all the local components in their individual houses, the reactions were varied.

The responses went from “And about time too!” by those more formed to the life of faith and those who were trained in ministry experience, to “What does that mean? What do the priests want now?” by those whose relationship with our works was solely one of a business character.

In all of them, however, we noted respect for the fact that we wanted to be what we are and that we also desired that our works should have a precise identity in the territory.

The initiatives that followed (formative meetings which gradually became more systematic, the finalization of certain meetings associated with formation to the charism where before there had been discontinuity of content and method, the figure of the laity emerging and assuming roles along the lines of coordination and formation...) made expectations increase.

For example when, after some years, it was decided that the theme of the Institute's General Chapter should be the sharing of our charism with the laity, and that also their representatives, chosen from each Province and delegation, should intervene, many people were very impressed and a new interest was aroused. It became obvious that we were really serious about doing this.

All the same, the laity also do not under-evaluate possible risks and misunderstandings: the extent of Works and of the jobs that are available, the distribution of roles, the passing of certain responsibilities to our colleagues (sometimes dealing with a priest is better than dealing with a professional)... But in this phase that which principally remains predominant, at least for us, is the requirement of spirituality and formation.

1^. Cf. for example “Christifideles Laici” 18-24; - “Vita Consecrata” (Consecrated Life) 31 and 54-56.

2^. Cf. The study by Fr. Gino Moro entitled “Quanto alla mutua relazione Religiosi-Laici” (Concerning the Mutual Relationship of Religious-Laity), Sacrofano, 1997, p.5.

3^. Cf. LG 30-38, which is then developed in 33 numbers of the “Apostolicam Actuositatem”.

4^. The seed of LG 17 becomes a tree in “Unitatis Redintegratio”.

5^. These new positions are developed later: LG 17 in 42 numbers of “Ad Gentes”, and LG 1 in 93 numbers of “Gaudium et Spes”.

6^. Apostolic Exhortation “Vita Consecrata” (The Consecrated Life), 1996, n.4.

7^. “Christifideles Laici”, n.2.

8^. (8) ChL. n.3.

9^. ChL n.15.

10^. ChL n.15

11^. ChL n. 17.

12^. ChL n. 55.

13^. Cf. Minutes of the X General Chapter of the Institute of Don Orione, 1992, p. 82.

14^. Cf. In the Steps of Don Orione, EDB, Bologna, 1996.

15^. Cf. The annual publications with forms, for use by the formative meetings of religious communities.

16^. Cf. “Go You Also Into My Vineyard”: an aid for the formation to charism, drafted by a group made up mainly of lay people. Starting with the congress on formation to charism, the laity also receive a yearly publication regarding the monthly meetings of formation to charism.

17^. “Vita Consecrata” (The Consecrated Life) n.73.

18^. Letter of R. Simionato, p. 278.

19^. Ibid, pp. 278-279 (with some liberal modifications).