©Comunità dei figli di Dio, Community of God's Sons and Daughters, C.F.D., Settignano, Florence, Italy

COMUNITÀ DEI FIGLI DI DIO/ COMMUNITY OF

GOD'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS

NOTIZIARIO/ NEWSLETTER

FEBRUARY, 1999

Month's Motto:

'Yes, that's the secret of my life: I have found God, and with God I have found joy. A joyousness that is ever present in myself, in the form of a great serenity, even when I live through times and moments of sorrow. I have felt that just in this proof I ought not lose the trust of divine love. I have had the perception that my love for God is worth more than all other desires or hopes that I could have in the world'.

Don Divo Barsotti, Vivere la fede oggi/ Living Faith Today, p. 26.

FROM THE FATHER:

WHY EVIL?

If all is ordained and directed from blind fate, it makes no sense to ask who is responsible for the evil in the universe. But if it is not a blind necessity which governs the universe, then we ask the question: who then is responsible for the evil in the world? God cannot be judged by us; a God who needs to be judged is no longer God, for this God would be under a law. But at least we cannot make him be responsible for evil.

Who then is responsible for the evil in the world? Undoubtedly if God does not will the evil, it is not to say that he does not permit it: nothing in fact is outside his will. Jesus himself, before the Passion, taught this: 'If you will, take this chalice from me'. God therefore, though he does not directly will evil, nevertheless does not stop it.

The problem of evil remains a formidable one. It would be less a scandal if God permitted us only physical evil. But no, God allows even moral evil, permits even the sin, permits even our revolt against justice and love. Permits even that we can make an attempt on the life of God himself; that we could give death to the Son of God. Perhaps we could accept all this, without asking ourselves and God the reason for it all. Why evil?

If Creation was drawn out of nothing by the omnipotence of God, evidently it does not possess in itself the capacity to sustain itself and without the positive will of God - who sustains it above the abyss of nothingness - by itself would anew be hurled down into nothingnes. Here is therefore in the mystery of the Creation the reason for evil. By itself Creation falls into the invincible attraction of negation: the sustaining of Creation is in the act of a God who freely sustains it above an abyss.

But we could say something more: how much greater is the creature, so much greater is the possibility of evil. In fact evil does not presuppose only the abyssing of oneself as creature into nothing: it bring even to possibility that man could desire the destruction and the annihilation of God. If therefore physical evil creates scandal, so is the evil of the creature utterly inconceivable who could revolt against the Creator and would wish him dead.

But still we have not yet resolved the problem. Why therefore does the creature desire the end and even the 'death' of God? From it is born this will of revolt against the Creator. The liberty of God seems to require the possibility of evil that is in the creature should explode with all its force, because He can overcome evil. To stop what the evil could produce of itself is at base no longer the victory of the good, but rather an undoing of God.

To stop evil is not to say to deny it: the possibility of returning into nothing for the Creation, the possibility of 'giving the death' to God for man to manifest in himself all his obscure power, because God finally overcomes real evil and even all possible evil which is of Creation, above all of ourselves in our freedom. The Father did not stop the death of the Son, the evil exploded in an unconceivable death on the cross. In permitting this death, He thus has realized the victory of a love that overcomes - infinitely - all the evil of humanity. Even the supreme evil, which was the death of Christ, the death of God will by man, became through God the occasion of supreme victory: no evil could any more contaminate God's work, compromising the omnipotence of his love, because even the more grave evil that the creature could have done became the the condition of a definitive victory of the Good, of the Love of God.

We wish to walk in this Lent, day by day, fixing our gaze on this crucified Love of God.

Il padre/ The father

PADRE'S POETRY

The Knowledge of God

If God truly is your end
you cannot say you do not know Him,
you ought to say rather
that you do not with to meet Him.

Thousands upon thousands are the idols That tie and draw us
in thousands of different ways
and thus we are lost.

In vain, without living the gift
wholly of himself in love
believing we can save our live
keeping it to ourselves;

but if one would give oneself
in an undivided love
then we will know Him
and be saved in that Love,

because our nature
is to become fire
and Love, only so, without end,
feeds the flames.

24 December 1979

A Thank You from Padre

During the Christmas Season I received hundreds of letters and cards. I thank all those who were wanting to write to me. I exchange these greetings with great affection and promise prayers. I am truly sorry not to be able to reply in writing, but I no longer have the capacity to do so in way that would be legible; I myself cannot read what I have written. I therefore ask myself if I should write such letters giving them to those who would receive them the joy of knowing they are remembered by me, but certainly with that joy would be the annoyment of not understanding what I have written.

It seems the moment has come to reduce my correspondence. I won't stop it altogether, but will write only when it is truly necessary that I respond. I thank all those who have written to me with all my heart and I beg them to forgive me for not replying. Be assured I remember and love all who have written to me. I carry you in my heart.

The Father/Il padre

LIGHT ON MY PATH

THE RECOGNITION OF SIN

Only God can give us true knowledge of our sin. There is in fact in sin a shadowing of the heart that clouds our reason. And so it, mostly, hides itself from the sinner. Each distancing from God, even partial, carries with it the lessening of the true knowledge of oneself, while all spiritual light is instead armed with a more profound perception of our present reality. Sin tends thus to hide itself: we can only have a precise knowledge of our sin if we are gathered into the light which God gives us, forgiving us. Thus, through having the true knowledge of our sin, we ought to know ourselves sinners.

The recognition of sin comes about in the word of the Confession.

Confession is the word with which the sinner assumes their own fault. Confession is the word with which one socially takes up as author one's sin. Confession is a speech act, not only because it is composed of words, but also because it is an effective word. In Confession the word does what it says.

When Nathan presented himself before King David and told him the parable of the poor man who was robbed of his one lamb, to the angry king the prophet replied, 'You are the man!' David listened to the Lord's judgement pronounced through the Prophet and acknowledged it: 'I have sinned against the Lord' (2 Samuel 12.13). This example clearly shows us that Confession does not consist just in the communication of a fact. David has made nothing known about his own conduct, neither to God nor to his prophet. The most important thing in Confession is not therefore the description of its content: to confess is not, so to say, to recount in a detailed way the whole series of thoughts and acts.

To Confess means, very simply, to say 'I am I!'

Confession consists in accepting oneself as a sinner before God. To recognize oneself as a sinner without ever accusing oneself of a precise act of sin, is something not given to many.

What disturbs our relationship with God is not so much our weaknesses as such, but rather the fact that we do not know them and that we deny them. In battling with a society lacking hope, the anguish of sinfulness cannot even be assumed. If we do not become acquitted of these nor are they made to go away, they will become negated, above all through the three strategies of social discourse: accusation, self-justification, denial of the fault. Accusation is the daily discovery of violence in social relations. This procedure, with all that is most archaic, comes together with the repeated attempts at self-justification, where the habitual discourse is lost in the defenses of the imagination of oneself. As to the denying of the knowledge, that consists in giving an outlet to a suffering which one cannot name, to unreachable spaces, distant from daily life. Only the words of the Confession constitute a subject. Who dares to say 'I am!', recognizes themselves responsibile, assumes their own past and the totality of all they have lived fearing the word of the other.

Our society suffers terribly from the absence of practical and symbolical practices of reconciliation. Only the words of forgiveness, just because they give a name to the sin, can permit one to be free from the burden of blame and of being willing to be loved as one is in truth.

From J.P. Van Schoote and J.C. Sagne, Miseria e Misericordia/ Misery and Mercy, Qiqajon

SEEDS OF RUSSIAN SPIRITUALITY

PRAY WITH FERVOUR

If you see defects and passions in your neighbour, pray for him. Pray for all, even for your enemies. If you perceive your brother to be proud and stubborn, pray for him, that God illumine his mind and warm his heart with the flames of grace, and repeat: 'Lord, teach sweetness and the humility to your servant who has fallen to the pride of Satan: distance his heart from the shadows and the weight of this evil pride'. If you see your brother in a rage, pray thus: Lord, with your grace make this servant become good!'

In this and in other ways pray for all sinners and never allow yourself to despise anyone because of your sin, or correct him with harshness; it will only serve to increase his proudfulness; correct him instead with counsel, admonition and castigation adapted to restrain the evil and to contain it within certain limits.

Do not take to listening to your heart when it becomes carnal, shadowy, unbelieving, with excesses in eating and drinking, worldly distractions, making it cold, when you live with the head and not with heart, when you exercise the mind and avoid the heart. In the moments of wellbeing, of satisfaction in the flesh, this last is aroused with all its passions; instead in the periods of oppression and difficulty, it becomes tamed along with the passions. Our spiritual condition that is exempt from spiritual trials and from bodily illnesses can undoubtedly be wicked, especially when it joys in all the satisfactions of this world.

When you pray, pay attention to this rule,: it is better to pronounce five words from the depth of the heart that ten thousand only with the tongue. If you know your heart is cold, that you are not ready to pray, put aside prayer and warm your heart recalling your evil, your spiritual poverty, your misery and your blindness, or think on all the gifts that God showers incessantly upon you and all people, specially the Christian, praying slowly and with fervour.

If you do not have time to recite all the prayers, it doesn't matter: one prayer said slowly and with fervour will be far more useful to you than all your prayers recited in a hurry and without the participation of the heart. 'I prefer to say five words with my understanding than ten thousand with an unknowing tongue' (1 Corinthians 14.19).

The Lord does not abandon those who work for Him without troubling about the time they dedicate to him.

It is a good thing to pray at length and incessantly, but 'not all can understand this, but only those to whom that is given'. Those who cannot make long prayers it is better that they make short prayers but with a fervent spirit.

Some say they quickly become tired of praying. How could this be? Because we do not have our strength in the Lord, who is always at our right hand. Watch constantly with the eyes of the heart and then you will not tire, even if shall you need to spend all the night in prayer. What did I say, all night? You could stay two or three nights in prayer without tiring.

Already in the life we perceive something of what will be our union with God in the world that is to come, as it will be for us rising into light, peace, joy and happiness. During prayer, when our soul is turned completely to God and is united to him, we feel happy and uplifted, like babies nestling in the laps of their mothers. What thing could ever test us now when we are truly united to God in full truth, when the images and the shadows are scattered and the Kingdom of reality and of vision will commence? Oh, how we ought to hold all our lives, incessantly, towards the future beatitude, towards the union with God.

Little Paul and Olga, two babies in the village, have been cured of the illness which they endured. The sickness left little Paul while he was asleep, while Olga became calm, and her shadowed face also. I went myself to pray with them nine times in trust, being certain that even if only from my insistence, God would fulfil my request; if the unjust judge of the parable finally satisfied the widow who molested him, the universal Judge will surely grant my poor prayer for these innocent babies. And it is right that the Lord has done so: I went to their house for the tenth time and the babies were cured.

LENT 1999

Lent begins in the month of February, a time of penitence in preparation for Easter. This year we are preparing also for a further event, that of the Holy Year of 2000, which - so we do not forget - we wish to be a year of conversion and return to God, while it seems sometimes only to be the exterior aspect of the masses that is happening. What ought to be moving us are our hearts, otherwise the Holy Year will not celebrate anything.

Each Lent the Comunita` has always given some suggestions for ways to express a waiting with purification, with penance, with renunciation, with sobriety. Also this year we shall do so, inviting all to participate fully and dutifully in this time, with suggested indictions, which remain thus indications. We ask that you observe the spirit within them, more than their practice.

The fast is a milestone of Christian spirituality. Jesus fasted to prepare himself for his mission, and asks this fast also of us ('This kind of demon is not expulsed except by fasting'), and we read in the lives of the Saints that there is not one who has not at least lived a part of life in fasting. The recent Marian apparitions similarly continue this call. To fast then is very important, and we ought to be attentive that we do not undervalue this aspect. The father himself - to order to remain in our family - has always asked that in the houses of the Common Life there be a form of fasting, carried out the whole year, even if not in a drastic way.

In Lent the fast from eating in the houses of the common life consists in this:

Total abstention from sweets for all the forty days. Wednesday and Friday, only one dish at lunch and tea and bread at dinner. We can suggest this to all.

Other forms of sobriety are: regarding reading matter, avoiding magazines and useless reading; regarding recreation, renouncing all which waste time; regarding television, reducing to a minimum time watching banal things. The Lord watches the heart for these things, for what is a small renunciation (a football match, some programme, a cigarette, a hard drink) but which is done with love has an inestimable value in his eyes, as St Therese of the Child Jesus, Doctor of the Church, has taught us.

In this Lent we will seek to observe as much as possible, silence. It is a form of ascetism that is little valued. Could we avoid all vain words (the prayer of St Ephraim), perhaps saying a few dozen words a day? One must want to resist all useless words and long conversations, on the telephone or not, that waste time. We should try to say only useful and good words, needed for reciprocal edification. To be sometimes withdrawn in one's own room in silence is not the same as being disdainful of people, but the willingness to reestablish a climate adapted to personal prayer. The struggle against vain words will be without doubt the hardest of all.

It is also necessary to live a spirituality of compunction and of contrition. This is typical of monastic spirituality (of the Fathers of the Desert right up to Silvanus of Mount Athos), and therefore also we ought to understand and live this. For this we ought to pray the more for those who live immersed in sin, for those who do not know the salvation of Christ, to feel the drama of the lack of faith. 'The world burns', sobbed St Teresa of Jesus, 'and we would waste time over problems about nothing'. Pray therefore more livingly, with a sense of duty taken more seriously. The Church puts at our disposition the most elaborate and rich means: the Liturgy of the Hours. We ask therefore of all the consecrated people the force of faith of forty days of Liturgy: Lauds and Vespers for all as a base requirement, the other Hours wherever possible. This ought to be now a common practice, but in the cases where it is not, the renewed task will renew also our consecration.

Where it is possible, pray in the family, shamelessly! Husbands with wives, parents with children, brothers with sisters, whoever is present in the home. It is no longer a time in which to fear giving testimony to our faith, and even making it be obviousd that we have the breviary and that we use it for prayer.

The Sacrament to live most seriously during the time of Lent is Confession. We cannot speak of it now in a way to deepen it. We suggest only that we begin Lent with a good Confession, returning to that half way, for verification, and confessing again at the end, close to Holy Week. The fight against sin is a serious thing, and one of the most efficacious means certainly is Confession, because it is a Sacrament.

Seek to sort out the sin which grips you most, and root it out from yourself. Lent should be a manifestation of the decision to be finally all and totally of the Lord. 'Let not sin reign any longer in your mortal body, if you do not give in to your desires; do not offer your members as instruments of injustice to sin, but offer yourselves to God as the living turned from the dead and you members as instruments of justice for God. Sin in fact will not dominate further over you because you will no longer be under the law, but under grace'. (Romans 6.12-14).

It says the truth: do you not feel yourselves truly like the living returned from the dead? Respond by making Lent be your answer.

A Holy Lent to everyone!

CASA SAN SERGIO

The month of December began with a particular event: a young man from Livorno, after his path of preparation, professed his first Vows of the Third Branch here in the Chapel of San Sergio. He is Daniele Pertici, 24 years old, consecrated for some time. His Vows are for all of us a gift, for he will live them very naturally. For a young person in the world, without specific help and continuing what the Common Life guarantees, this step represents truly an important event and stimulus for all of us to journey with generosity in the way of evangelical perfection from the days in which we began to answer 'Yes'.

Only three days passed after Daniele's Vows, and Casa San Sergio found itself living one of the most beautiful days of its year: we have with us the Archbishop of Melbourne, Monsignor George Pell, the auxillary Bishop of the Diocese, Monsignor George Hart, and the Bishop of the Diocese (always Australian) of Wagga-Wagga, Monsignor William Brennan. Three Bishops at one go doesn't happen every day. They were in Rome for the Synod of the Oceanian Bishops, which lasted a month, and for the occasion we had asked if the Archbishop of Melbourne could come up to us in Florence to meet father, since now our Comunita` is even in his archdiocese.

Not only did he come, but he came in threes. To see the young Archbishop (who speaks perfect Italian as do the rest of the other two) next to padre created quite an effect; the first, two metres tall, with the shoulders of a rugby player, the second, curved, with a low tone of voice, but you could see they understood each other at once. We of the Common Life were present at Compline, including naturally Matthew, who has come from Melbourne to test our life and who now lives at the Madonna del Sasso. We witnessed an extraordinary day, a moment of the Church, a profound communion between our little Community and a bishop of a great diocese. During the sermon the Archbishop of Melbourne encouraged us to follow our pilgrimage, whether in Italy, whether in Australia, seeking the original inspiration of the father founder. The brief conversation with father had left a profound impression. 'I ask you', said Monsignor Pell, 'to come to us and to live as consecrated persons, that is as experts of God'. That expression, 'experts of God', 'experienced in God', had us tremble, that is what he said of us. The dinner in the modest refectory of Casa San Sergio was truly joyous; the three bishops seeming all at ease, and the bishop of Wagga-Wagga (an aboriginal term meaning 'land with many crows') told us this to our surprise. The impression they left was of three men of the Church, but without any possessiveness or artificiality or superiority; very firm in their convictions (we spoke of the situation of the seminaries, of the situation of the young in Australia, of other things, and we could see that they have very clear and definite ideas concerning evangelization, the strait way, the Truth), but also that they are open and sincerely happy to be here. We read in them a great admiration for father, whom they know only a little, more through intuition than from actual acquaintance.

Left to Right: Monsignor William Brennan, Bishop of Wagga-Wagga, Monsignor George Pell, Archbishop of Melbourne, padre, Matthew Bishop, Monsignor Denis Hart, Auxillary Bishop of Melbourne, at San Sergio.

When they left us they left behind an unexpected sense of emptiness, but also a profound joy and the knowledge of having lived with them an unrepeatable moment of the Church.

6 December Elia left for a Comunita` visit: he is going to Trentino Alto Adige to visit the groups of Bolzano and the Val Gardena. Some of us brothers are asking why these visits in the mountains which Elia organizes always come about in the month of December? . . . We watch in case Elia has not hidden in his knapsack a pair of skis, but there is always someone who suggests smilingly that with these feet (size 48) Elia has no need of skis.

Over the Feast of the Immaculate Conception four young people were with us from the Comunita` in Brindisi, Piero and Maria Pia Calcagno, Massimo Lopez and Marina Lanzafame, then Antonietta Petrosina of San Severo, in her flying visit. During that time emerged the idea of the Consecration of Marina, and so it was done, the next day Marina (ex basketball player, nearly two metres tall) consecrated herself to God at the hands of father. The best basket shot of all.

8 December, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, was another special day: After Melbourne and its Archbishop, it became the turn of Sri Lanka. In late evening arrived from that Asian island two young men, Romesh and Chamida, who have asked to come and test their vocation to our common life. Also they, like Matthew, knew not a word of Italian, and for now only speak English. Also we had to take countermeasures; it is padre Bernardo who is now to direct them, because he knows English. At their arrival they seemed rather lost, being surprised at the festive greeting of the brothers: Stefano and Doroteo with the guitar, Silverio as showman, after drinking hot tea together, launched into some welcoming songs: there were also padre, who joyously participated, and all the Sri-Lankan Sisters from Argenta, who came to Fiumicino Airport in Rome to meet them. Welcome, brothers.

Saturday 12 December we welcomed the Comunita` of San Leolino, whose leader, Carmelo Mezzasalma, is a great admirer of father. The exchange between our community and theirs was a fertile occasion of deepest spirituality.

Monday afternoon, 14 December, was arranged for a meeting of father at Casa San Sergio with a group of Seminarians from Florence on the theme of the Eucharist. At lunch father made it known that the day before the retreat he was a little tired. But, thinking it over, he gave his consent to it. Evidently he had recharged his batteries well, for he massacred the seminarians with a meditation of an hour and a quarter on his warhorse theme, which is precisely the Eucharist. At the end the young people were enthusiastic: and this when father is ill?

Friday 18 December was a historic day for our fra Sergio: after thirty-nine years of an honoured career at the University of Jurisprudence fra Sergio has retired. There was a celebration at the University, and also that evening at Casa San Sergio, with the presence of all the Sisters of the Common Life, with lots of ballad singing.

22 November we had with us a Ukrainian priest (with perfect Italian), ex-general of the Order of Catholic Basilian monks of the Eastern Rite. In these breaks you can see how lovely it is to live at Casa San Sergio: these people who come to meet padre (how well-known padre is!) bringing us the living testimony of their experience. Take for example the Ukrainian priest: we would not have known what has happened and suddenly in these years, had there not come to us this Basilian monk, who could speak to us in the first person of the Ukrainian Church and of the Eastern Church in general.

The long chronicle closes with the 1st of January of the New Year, 1999, with the reentry into retreat of 50 young people who are with padre Serafino at the prayer meeting at the New Year's Day. They were laden and filled with joy. One of them, Luigi from Palermo, stayed a day longer at San Sergio. The meeting ended with his entry into aspirancy.

Finally we give to all the news of the changing of the guard at San Sergio: responsibility for the house now goes to padre Paolo Radice, who comes to us from Biella, while Elia is transferred to the Madonna del Sasso. Sergio has gone up to the Casa San Gregorio at Biella. We ask prayers for these changes and for the new duties of our brothers of the Common Life, that all may be done in peace and in the wisdom of living always in the Will of God.

The brothers of the Casa San Sergio.

Apologies about the lack of colour photographs in this issue. These have gone to Bologna where the Notiziario is now printed. But padre Benedetto Ravano and I are shortly to be actually with you in Melbourne. Beyond mere pictures! If any of you want to find a copy of Julian of Norwich in any bookstore, do so. Have just finished a five volume edition of her Showing of Love to be published here in Florence. She is one of don Divo Barsotti, C.F.D.'s favourite mystic theologians.

Alan Oldfield, Australian painter, 'The Revelations of Julian of Norwich', St Gabriel's Chapel, Ditchingham, Bungay, Suffolk, England, Courtesy of the Friends of Julian of Norwich and Community of All Hallows, Ditchingham.

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