CMIS – WORLD CONFERENCE OF SECULAR INSTITUTES
CONGRESS AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY
ASSISI – 23-28 July 2012
(Domus Pacis – Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi – Italy)

LISTENING TO GOD “IN THE FURROWS OF HISTORY”:
SECULARITY SPEAKS TO CONSECRATION

SECULAR INSTITUTES AND ECCLESIAL COMMUNION

Joao Braz Cardinal DE AVIZ
Prefect of the CIVCSVA

Dearest consecrated laywomen, consecrated laymen and priests of secular institutes,

I am pleased to be here with you at the outset of these days abounding with expectations, days when you will first be involved in the Congress, a time and place for listening, discussing and digesting food for thought, and then your Assembly. This year the Assembly is particularly important because you will be approving the new Statutes. My hope in this regard is that the effort to delve deeply with your mind’s eye into the norms that regulate your journey in common in order to delineate its forms may help you live communion in full, not so all differences may be eliminated, but to journey together, each at his or her own pace, within the same furrow: the furrow of consecrated secularity. This is indeed a far from smooth pathway, but only at this price will the fruits of good able to see the light of day.

My presence here is an expression of that communion binding the World Conference of Secular Institutes to the Hoy Father through the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life. This is the Sentire cum Ecclesia to which the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata dedicated N° 46, whose opening words read as follows: “A great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the Church as communion, so strongly proposed by the Second Vatican Council. Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion as "witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design”. The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking and acting which enables the Church to grow in depth and extension. The life of communion in fact "becomes a sign for all the world and a compelling force that leads people to faith in Christ ... In this way communion leads to mission, and itself becomes mission"; indeed, "communion begets communion: in essence it is a communion that is missionary".

Bear with me if I quote the words of Benedict XVI addressed to Ms Ewa Kusz, president of the Executive Council, sent through the good offices of the Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Cardinale Bertone and read a few moments ago:

“The work you are about to embark upon will hence concentrate on the specificity of secular consecration in the search for how secularity speaks to consecration, for just how the characteristic features of Jesus – the chaste, poor and obedient one –become constantly ‘visible’ in the midst of the world (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, n°1) in and through your daily life. His Holiness wishes to bring to your attention three ambits upon which to focus.

Firstly, the total donation of your life as the response to a personal and vital encounter with the love of God. You have discovered God is everything for you; you have decided to give everything to God and do so in a special way: remaining laypersons among laypersons, priests among priests. This calls for special watchfulness so your life styles may ever reveal the richness, beauty and radicality of the evangelical counsels.

Secondly, the spiritual life; an ever-present and absolutely necessary point, a sure reference for nourishing that desire to forge unity in Christ that is the underlying tension in the life of each and every Christian, and all the more so in the life of those who respond to a call for the total giving of self. The measure of the depths of your spiritual life is not the extent of your many activities, which nonetheless call for resolute commitment, but rather the ability to seek God in the heart of each event and to bring all things back to Christ. It is the “recapitulating” all things in Christ of which the Apostle Paul speaks (cf. Eph 1:10). Only in Christ, the Lord of history, do history and all histories take on sense and unity.

Therefore, in prayer and listening to the Word of God is this yearning to be nourished. In the celebration of the Eucharist you find the root for becoming the bread of Love broken for all. Deeply set in contemplation and in the gaze of faith enlightened by grace are to be the roots for the commitment to share with each man and women the profound questions abiding in one and all so hope and trust may be constructed.

Thirdly, formation, which disregards no one, no matter what their age may be, because it is a matter of living one’s life in fullness, educating self to that wisdom which is ever aware of human creaturehood and the greatness of the Creator. Look for contents and modes of formation that may make you laypersons and priests able to let yourselves be questioned by the complexity of the world in which we are now living, to remain open to the entreaties issuing forth from the relationship you live with the brothers and sisters you meet along the pathways of life, and to engage in a discernment of history in the light of the Word of Life. Together with the seekers of truth be prepared and willing to construct itineraries of common good neither prefabricated solutions nor fear of the questions that remain questions, but ever ready to put your life on the line with the conviction that if the kernel of grain falls upon the round and dies, it bears abundant fruit (cf. Jn 12:24). Be creative, because the Spirit brings forth new things; nourish gazes embracing the future and roots firmly planted in Christ the Lord, so you may voice to our time as well the experience of love that lies at the very foundations of the life of each person. With charity embrace the wounds of the world and the Church. Above all, live a life which is joyful and full, receptive and forgiving because it is founded upon Jesus Christ, the definitive Word of God’s Love for man.”

I would like to dwell with you today precisely on ecclesial communion. I do this not in order to lessen the importance of the specific theme of your Congress, upon which you will be able to reflect and meditate during these days, but almost as a context, as an horizon of sense and meaning for your discussions and reflections.

Your vocation only has meaning if you begin from its being rooted in the Church, because your mission is the mission of the Church. In the priestly prayer we read in the Gospel according to John the intensity of the relationship between the Father and the Son is one and the same with the force of the mission of love. It is by bringing about this communion of love that the Church becomes a sign and an instrument able to create communion with God and among men (cf Lumen Gentium 1).

It is in such terms that Paul VI exhorted you: “Do not be taken off guard. Keep your hearts well clear of the temptation – so seductive these days – to think you can have true communion with Christ and yet be out of tune, out of accord, with the ecclesial community governed by lawful pastors. It would be a snare and a delusion. What can an individual do, or a group, with the best of intentions and the highest of ideals, outside this communion? Christ requires it of us as a condition of communion with Him, just as He requires our love of each other as proof of our love of Him.” (Paul VI, ‘Once more’; address to the Heads of Secular Institutes delivered on 20 September 1972)

And all the more so did the heart of Benedict XVI cry out when he said to you: “The Church also needs you to give completeness to her mission. Be seeds of holiness scattered by the handful in the furrows of history” (Benedict XVI to the participants in the international symposium, 3 February 2007). There is no communion that does not open constantly to the mission, nor is there mission that does not spring forth from communion. These two aspects touch the living and throbbing heart of the entire Church, enabling it to undertake a new reading of reality, a search for meaning and perhaps even solutions that seek to be a response, albeit a partial one, but flowing forth from an ever more authentically evangelical heart.

A further consideration driving me to focus on this theme is as follows: one of the first concerns brought to my attention as Prefect in encounters with secular institutes has been this: “In the Church we are little known or ill known”.

The profound bond between knowledge and communion strikes me as fundamental in a dual sense. Only through knowledge, which means listening, attention and harmony of hearts can there be communion, which in its turn generates authentic knowledge precisely because it goes to the roots of what is essential and fosters encounter.

This is why I will dwell on a few considerations linked to ecclesial communion, leaving aside for the time being the issue of communion within each institute (a topic that would deserve discussion on its own). I do so on the basis of the document sent by the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes to Episcopal Conferences after the Plenary Meeting held in March 1983.

When retracing the origins of this vocation I was able to note how immediately coming together in the new form legally recognized with the Apostolic Constitution Provida Mater were realities vastly different from one another, especially because of differences in their respective apostolic aims. The meetings organized by what would later become the World Conference of Secular Institutes were what provided for and permitted mutual knowledge, which, as I read in the aforementioned document, “led the Institutes to accept diversity (so-called pluralism), while feeling the need to clarify the boundaries of this same diversity” , (Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, Secular Institutes: their identity and their mission, 3-6 May 1983, n. 4).

This strikes me as a fundamental point. I also believe this work of mutual acceptance is still underway, and never to be lost sight of is the importance of keeping ever alive the positive tension to continue exploring this pathway. It is also important to keep forging ahead in the comprehension of what the aforementioned document refers to as “the boundaries of this same diversity”. Boundaries, or confines as well, with roots in both the essence of the Spirit, who never ceases to shower new gifts upon the earth, and the moment now being lived by the Church. Looking ahead as well to the Year of the Faith convened by Benedict XVI on the 50th anniversary of Vatican Council II, this is a moment in the life of the Church when the people of God, consecrated persons, priests, pastoral experts, canonists and everyone at large are called to collaborate so that constructed together may be new pathways of evangelization and companionship for the men and women of our time.

You well understand that such discernment means you must have a fundamental attitude: that of not claiming to know the true (and hence unique) identity of a secular institute. What is actually needed is an essential openness that enables you to discover how others, in their own spirituality and with their own mission and way of life, decline the synthesis between consecration and secularity; and how in the various social, cultural and ecclesial ambits it may be possible, albeit in different ways, to manifest the originality and uniqueness of their vocation.

Only though this dynamic process of listening and being receptive, which calls for sapiential discernment, will you discover yourselves to be all the richer. And this because you will thereby be able to experience the greatness of God, who, in order to manifest His great love for the world, does not let Himself be circumscribed within the littleness of our human itineraries or endeavors, but knows how and when to give rise to responses that may well strike us as bizarre, but most certainly have something to say and give to the life of each person. Therefore, beginning from what you share in common you will be able to engage in open discussion not only about diversities, but likewise about the ever new challenges the world poses in particular to you, called as you are to spend your life in the ‘frontier of the world’. In the face of new questions and issues you are urged and prompted to seek new itineraries that project the timeliness of your mission, ever ready to revisit them in open discussion when times and places so demand.

Coming to mind is one of the questions asked of me during my encounter with the Polish Conference of Secular Institutes in November 2011. I was asked to share my thoughts about the need for a member of a secular institute to remain discreet or reserved about his/her vocation. What I said in response was less of an answer and more of an invitation to individual institutes to undertake some serious thinking and discussion among their own members about the reasons for this discretion or reserve, and ask themselves: “Why was this felt to be necessary? What does it mean to the Church and the world?” There may well be different answers to these questions for each institute, each country and each period in history, but in order to verify the timeliness and efficacy of an instrument it is always necessary to begin from the foundation, from the value intended to be realized and expressed.

I do believe this may be a possible method or way to activate that knowledge that can lead to communion, and which issues forth from communion.

Therefore, listen to one another without any preset positions or ideas both within institutes and in fora of discussion in order to reach a goal, which, as you know so very well, is but one stage in the journey of the Spirit!

Realize that you are not alone in this work: the Church is accompanying you through the words of the Pontiffs and the service of the Congregation I represent.

At this point I would like to bring to your attention yet another aspect, and that is communion with the local Church. Here as well I will cite the words spoken by Blessed John Paul II at the end of the aforementioned Plenary: “If there will be a development and strengthening of secular institutes, the local Churches will benefit from that as well”.

Following this is a dual invitation addressed to secular institutes and pastors. While respecting their characteristics, secular institutes must understand and take upon themselves the pastoral urgencies of the local Churches and urge their members to live with attentive participation the hopes and the hardships, the plans and the concerns, the spiritual riches and the limits: in brief, communion with their concrete local Church.

Moreover, pastors are to be solicitous in acknowledging and seeking their contribution according to the nature proper to them. In particular, incumbent upon pastors is yet another responsibility: that of offering secular institutes all the spiritual richness they need. They want to be part of the world and ennoble temporal realities by ordering and uplifting them so everything may tend to Christ as head (cf, Eph 1:10). Therefore, to be given to these institutes is all the wealth of Catholic doctrine regarding creation, the incarnation and redemption so they may assume God’s wise and mysterious designs for man, history and the world as their own.

The following question is compulsory today: where do we stand along this journey?

Quite naturally I am addressing you here today, urging you to think about and discuss the journey you have traveled so far. But it is also a question posed to the pastors of the Church, who are summoned “to foster among the faithful neither approximate nor complaisant understanding, but an exact and respectful comprehension of the qualifying features . . .of this difficult yet beautiful vocation (words addressed by Blessed John Paul II to the Plenary).

Let us never forget something: the communion of which we speak is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and this gift creates unity in the love for and mutual acceptance of diversities. Prior to concrete expressions in terms of communication and structures, it “calls for a spirituality of communion, without which”, Blessed John Paul II clearly reiterated, “we must have no illusions. Unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, ‘masks’ of communion rather than its means of expression and growth”. (Novo millennio ineunte, n. 43).

Each one of you feels challenged as person, as institute and as Conference to identify ways and means whereby the ideal of a full ecclesial communion projected in so many of the Church’s documents may become real communion in history.

The priority here as well is a fundamental attitude: never succumb to the temptation to abandon the task at hand. It may happen at times that your efforts fail to bear fruit and the journey is at a standstill; in such cases as well do not give up the goal! Do not stop in the face of failures, but from them draw new force and strength to activate creativity; know how to move from resentment to availability, from suspicion to openness. Bring the wounds of ecclesial communion into your prayers; read your responsibilities with truthfulness; leave nothing untried, and in discernment resume the toilsome journey towards communion.

In March of this year we had an encounter at the Congregation with the Executive Council of CMIS, and the council members raised a few topics we could tackle together: mutual knowledge, criteria for the discernment of the identity of secular institutes, the role of the CMIS.

We as dicasterium very willingly accepted the proposal and indicated a way it could be implemented: that this Assembly identify the first topic upon which to begin joint reflection, and above all determine the ways whereby all the institutes could take part in this effort. An example of ecclesial communion we are in the process of constructing!

In closing I would like to extend another invitation to you: be promoters of communion with the other expressions of consecrated life and other ecclesial realities that share with you some aspects of your identity or mission. I have in mind the other forms of consecrated life with which you have in common consecration for the profession of the evangelical counsels in the canonical sense. I am also thinking about those associations and movements with which you share an evangelical presence in the world, while ever conserving a profoundly different mission and style of life. This may strike you as a somewhat audacious proposal, but it is suggested by your selfsame vocation, which leads you to experience the richness of diversity within your respective institutes and makes your living ‘a laboratory of dialogue’.

Be willing to learn about and know these realities, and above all let yourselves be known by them. You have nothing to defend yourselves against; you have but to show the beauty of your vocation, which, together with those of so many other brothers and sisters, is an expression of the richness and constant workings of the Trinitarian Love; that surprising and creative Love so far beyond anything we may imagine, and which makes the Church a magnificent garden where the multitude of flowers and plants enables each person to savor the variety of scents and colors, and therein experience the depth and the joyfulness of full and good life.

NB.: I wish to thank Ms Daniela Leggio, a staff member of the CICSVA, for her research work on documents regarding secular institutes.

Note from the CMIS: the original text is in Italian.