Extracts from Don Divo Barsotti, C.F.D,'s Meditations. Edition revised, corrected, 1994.

LA COMUNITÀ DEI FIGLI DI DIO

VADEMECUM DI DON DIVO BARSOTTI, C.F.D.

GUIDEBOOK OF THE COMMUNITY OF

GOD'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS

PART TWO

Chapter 4

THE WHOLE COMMUNITY AS A FAMILY TO WHICH GOD HAS CALLED US

Contents:

THE WHOLE COMMUNITY AS A FAMILY TO WHICH THE LORD HAS CALLED US

The C.F.D.

The C.F.D. is a family of souls bound, more than by laws, by love, by supernatural charity.

How many times it comes to be asked of us and how many times it is asked of us why we are reunited in a monastic family. To this question it is easy to answer, but the reply does not leave out the mystery, it even makes it more evident. We are united into one family because the Lord has called us and the reply to his call unites us amongst ourselves.

But why does a reply that we have given to the Lord require amongst us a bond that is so intimate and so strong? We could say simply that He has wanted this; we cannot ignore for others the reason for His will: to us it is important to obey docilely, abandoning ourselves with tranquil trust to the action of His grace which moves us and prompts us without which it would be necessay to know where he is taking us. We feel that the monastic family which unites us is not secondary to the vocation which we have received from God, but we have not wished first of all to create this family: the family is born of the answer we have made to the Lord; in answering Him we find ourselves bound tightly amongst ourselves: that is all.

Certainly there would be no possibility of a recognition of us on the part of the Church if the bonds which unite us amongst ourselves were not a specific, precise requirement, determined by laws to achieve this perfection of charity.

It is noted that the mystery of the filial adoption, central to Christian spirituality, implies a decidedly Trinitarian spirituality. The fundamental mystery of our spirituality, as with all Christian life, is the mystery of the Trinity. To live the life of God is to say in some way to participate in this mystery, not being apart from God; and this, so to say, entering into a personal, living relationship, with the divine Persons. All our spirituality has its basis in the docility to the Holy Spirit; of which the importance that it ought to have for us is a purification of the soul, because only in the pure soul can the Holy Spirit act. And we ought to consider that this docility is impossible until we have regained a certain interior purification, most amongst the fundamental instincts of our nature inclined to evil following sin: purification from that of ambition, of the will to power, of avarice, of lust, of egoism, selfishness, as can be seen as following from the instincts of our bodily nature, while those following from our spiritual nature are: pride, affirmation of oneself, self importance, vanity, the sense of a personality.

We recall (and this is a fundamental point for us who live in the twentieth century in which so much affirms the respect and the esteem of each person, of the personal character of each one) that the Incarnation is fulfilled in the assumption of human nature and not of a personality. It is only the persona of the Word that subsists in assumed nature. And we only have a personality to give it, to abandon to it in love.

Thus the one use that we can have of our personality, inasmuch as it remains always distinct from the persona of Christ, is the use which the bride makes of her persona in joining with her spouse: if we are two, Christ and I, and we are not one body but we are even two personas, we will remain two in order to be myself the bride and He the Spouse. But the bride lives her nuptial rapport with the spouse precisely in renouncing herself, in the abandonment of herself which she lives in joining to her spouse. We ought not to affirm our independence; we ought rather to exercise all our personality in renouncing it to live his will, to make it so that He lives and we live through Him.

We will always remain separate from Him, but like the bride from the spouse, through living a simple abandonment, a simple dependence, a total gift of ourselves. Purification, therefore. As much as God acts in us so much are we purified. Naturally, when we would be entirely purified, it would no longer be possible even to speak of docility; it would be the same Holy Spirit then drawing us; but as if this purification would not ever be complete, for this we must first bind ourselves to obedience to God's Commandments, where God remains as if as a stranger and commands us from outside; then to the docility to a secret act of God.

This is all the spiritual life of the Community.

Through living then this docility and this union with Christ in such a way that even visibly and structurally it would guarantee to us an efficacy in our task, placing on it guidance; it places on it a superior who directs, who guides, who gives sanctions; it places on it counsel; it places on it preparedness, a cultural, spiritual formation, a test for judging the right intentions of those who come, of the real possibility of a soul to respond to God; it places a precise social duty in meeting with others, because the others in their turn feel themselves engaged to us.

Consecration in the Community is not something made only to God: he has bound us also to the others who have made the same Consecration, in such a way that all ought to feel themselves bound through each to each for all.

We do not live a life that is only personal: we live for all our brothers and sisters, we are bound to pray for them, above all that they tend to perfection.

The Community promises nothing; in the Community we will always be disillusioned if we do not seek God only: this we ought always to hold present.

We ought therefore to know how to free ourselves from all promptings of pride, of ambition. We ought to free ouselves from whatever human motive. God only. It is easy when, coming to the Lord, even consecrated to Him, we do not believe in the absolute necessity of a total purification, and thus we transform our human instincts, we transplant them, but do not free ourselves of them. It is necessary that in us there be only the desire for God, otherwise the Community at first or later will always be deluded. Not having a mission, not seeking another, it is inevitable, for the one who does not seek God only, to prove delusory sooner or later. It is not enough to have chosen God; to choose Him does not mean to follow Him or even to possess Him.

The means for this purification are poverty, humility, silence, sweetness, interior purity. serene acceptance of the incomprehension, if not the contempt of others. And it is our programme: The Beatitudes. Blessed are those who are persecuted.

Do not seek to tame God. Certainly, when we do not purify our soul, it is inevitable that the union with God will become impossible.

The danger which threatens each religious soul is this: not understanding the necessity to purify oneself. We ought to consider what serves holiness only and not how we can achieve it if we do not purify ourselves of the instincts of a nature which sin has tarnished, turning to the good what is beneath and taken from God. We ought always to fear our very selves, to have God serve us. Only the nakedness of the spirit is the place of God, only in stripping ourselves totally can we possess God.

The monastic life is not only a compensation or even an above all: the religious life ought to be all, at the risk of being nothing. God is all our life. Truly it is necesary that in us there be a sincere will to will Him only.

If then God does not require of us an actual poverty, if He does not take from us the esteem of other, the professional successes, we should consider all this as nothing. If there are goods, we thank God, but our heart does not feel anything is necessary apart from what God gives us.

Seek God only: all the rest is nothing.

We ought to be attentive: without paying heed, if we are not purified, our instincts will lord it over us, causing us to refill our lives with things that are not Him.

More than anything else the negation of ourselves is necessary. Nothing will uproot us more than the virtue of obedience, in which we sacrifice not only each thing but even our very self: our spirit, our personality that no one can take from us if we did not wish to give it.

The destruction therefore of all selfishness; to live to sacrifice ourselves, to live only our death. Only thus will we live a religious life.

To Possess God. And what thing can be this possession of God if not a life lived in poverty, an insignificant exterior, to seek an always greater intimacy with God?

To the measure of our stripping can our possession of God become real.

That our poverty become full of God! We must love our poverty as a condition for intimacy with God. We must seek to taste in a pause of silence, divine intimacy. We must be based in this poverty to live with Him, in silence. All that we seek from the outside is already within us, in our most intimate being. It is in the centre of the soul that St John of the Cross tells us is based for living in Him. In ourselves is already that Paradise if God dwells there. Do not be afraid of emptiness, of solitude. The fasting from all our powers will become the joy of a possession without end.

God cannot be taken from us by any human force, except only by our own will.

Let nothing disturb you, nothing afright you, only God suffices.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MEETINGS, GATHERINGS AND MONTHLY RETREATS

We can make our spiritual life an individual task, but it helps us to exchange our resources with each other in true friendship. Brotherl, neighbourly love ought not only be affective, but also effective: it ought to be love that is expressed in deeds. Love can never be idle.

How can we love each other and how can we love each other more?

The fundamental acts of the Community are the weekly meeting, the monthly gathering and the retreat. How can we love each other if we do not feel the need to stay together? The beginning of love is love itself: love does not bond us where we are not loved. Charity resembles nothing else. If we wish to come to the perfection of charity we ought to use the means that are nourished by charity.

It is necessary to be faithful to the weekly meeting. The Assistants maintain continual contact with those they assist. They need to create a family: the group should be tied with a bond of love especially between the members and the Assistant which ought not necessarily have a charismatic quality: above all there ought not to be between the Assistants and those they assist a bond that is only formal. It is necessary that the group transform itself into a family, and this love should be achieved through the initiative of charity whether amongst the members of the group or whether through the work recommended by the Community.

Some Assistants are very sensitive: they follow with discretion but with love their sons and their daughters; being interested in them, seeking to be always ready to fulfil each one's needs. In a way God entrusts to them souls which are dear to Him, whom He loves with a jealous and most tender love. We should be patient, full of charity, but firm in carrying out our faithfulness to religious tasks. They should love the Community with a great love because they can make it love. There will never be too much that they can do for those they assist. Above all they do not forget ever to pray for them, in particular recommending to God the weakest ones, those who are most shy: with delicacy they invite them to return and make them more at ease with their love.

Each teaching is always insufficient if it is not love itself who is the teacher, if love is not the light and the force of their working. This love ought to pray each day to the Lord with humility and only this love can justify all their activity within the bosom of the group, within the bosom of the Community.

They would ready the meetings with sensitive preparation, establishing deeper contact between the Assistants and those assisted.

The encounters ought to be affectioniate, cordial; all ought to participate, presenting their own problems so that in the light of each all are served. The meetings should be a spontaneous communion of souls, a free exchange of ideas, an opening of souls in order to know what are the principles of our religious life: Sacred Scripture, the Divine Office, the spirituality of the C.F.D.

Our task is precisely to live the religious life of the Community; and the proof that this task is alive and real will be seen in the interest carried into our midst that the Community offers us. The meeting should be a humble means for realizing the common life of religious intent.

Faithfulness to the encounters is recommended. This is one of the most important things. Only through the meetings can a necessary faithfulness in spirit be acquired.

The greatest fruit of the Community is the creation of the Community itself, as of that love that is the sign of Christianity. All is secondary to the unity of love that binds us. As with brotherly, neighbourly love which makes of all one sole body in Christ be the fruit of the Redemption, so our brotherly love is the fruit of our unity.

The Community, today, in the Church, though still so little, I believe can be one one of the greatest things, because it is truly difficult to come together, as we have come together, persons of different conditions and walks of life, people with culture with people who have almost none, young and old, married and people who are bound to the utmost even in the spiritual life.

 But the groups ought not to become closed cells, each with the features of its own Assistant; there is only one face, that of Christ.

We ought to be one sole family, united with one sole force: love.

This is our apostolate: the manifestation of love that brings us closer and which we bring to others. Our apostolate is love, 'In this others will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another'.

The words said at the Last Supper by Jesus are the same also for us.

The monthly gathering has a communal character that is larger: it liberates us from the closedness that could come about in the circle that is more restricted of the group, and it brings to us a sense of greater openness. It is good that there be this openness, that at least once a month one lives in a larger ambience, that one feels one belongs to a more complex family, with greater and more serious problems than those which we can find in the life of the group.

In the gathering we establish relations with a greater number of persons - in fact which prays together for the needs of the Community and for single members with the Litany from the Byzantine liturgy - and this opens to us a cultural formation that is deeper through the monthly relations that come to be held according to an organized plan of study established each year. The gathering ought to help us to live a life of love with all the families.

But the gathering and the encounters are not all there is : in fact one could attend them only from obedience. There needs instead to be the will to overcome a certain interior hardness of heart and of pride that we often cultivate. We seek to break with our own self-centredness, with our egoism, our selfishness, and to love our brothers and sisters with unconditional and free love. God has not waited to be loved in order to love us.

The monthly retreat finally is the time in which we find ourselves not through speaking with each other, but through favouring and living the communal prayer. It is the personal rapport with God which dominates. Above all and to the greatest extent it shall be through silence, the space in which the single soul can find with greatest ease a deepening in worship and finding in the silence the right spiritual restoration in intimacy with God.

The retreat is for all, and required of the II, III, IV branches. It can last an entire day or half a day, and it is of great importance that it begins or ends with the Mass.

The CFD is a community of prayer, and it is therefore in the monthly retreat that it lives most easily its specific nature. Without a monthly space in which the person is gathered and gives three to four hours of time entirely to God, we would easily lose this. The typical frenzy and rush of today's world radically counters the requirements of the soul, which has real need of peace and silence. God is Spirit, and the rapport with Him requires recollection and silence, virtues which monasticism has always sought to cultivate and defend with a drawn sword. The retreat therefore, more than an obligation, is a need for the religious soul, of the soul in love, that comes to be drawn to the Father in the wilderness where He can find it to be more attentive and receptive. In fact God says in the book of the prophet Hosea, referring to the unfaithful spouse, symbol of each soul: 'Behold, I will draw you to me, I will lead you through the wilderness and speak to your heart' (Hosea 2.16).

First to speak of the love for one's neighbour it is necessary to be more precise to avoid delusion and discouragement.

The word 'love' is a worn out term from the use that is made of it and which has contributed to making even its meaning, its authentic value suspect. To recover the true sense of the term we must remember some essential principles: we err, when we believe that we ourselves are capable of loving someone, even of overcoming antipathy to them, differences of character, of education, of emotions. We, instead, are created to become God through participating and thus through welcoming in us his love according to our very limited capacity.

Because God has created us free, it is only up to us consciously and freely to gather into ourselves the love of God that is ever present, inexhaustible, flowing, and which, as in the trinitarian life, cannot be closed in itself, but ought to communicate from all to all. We ought always to be ready to gather into ourselves, according to its dimension, the Holy Spirit, which does not depend upon our will, which acts freely, surprisingly and which does not leave us to guide or draw it. It comes in us to be able to act, through us, even upon those who live alongside us and who even may be distracted or unaware.

For this love cannot be commanded, but can be found flowing through our opening up towards our neighbours, our brothers, our sisters, and through the various occasions of our lives. It is an embracing of life, of warmth, of blessedness that comes about unexpectedly and which is not to be confounded with any other sentiment. Not so, philanthropic charity! Which does not reach our intimate depths, does not turn us around; which opens us only on a human level.

Instead the love of God, the touch of the Holy Spirit achieves miracles and places us in the greatest humility. [Read the Retreat Address of Florence, 21.11.1993.]

FRATERNAL, NEIGHBOURLY LOVE

The Community brings a communion, a fraternal charity, a love of our neighbour. It recalls us to neighbourly love with all those who request it, whether in relations amongst ourselves, whether in relations with others. But fraternal charity ought not overshadow the duties of the religious life. Visits to the sick and even the need to come together and the duties of charity ought not to dispense us from living the entire life of the Community with its fundamental obligations and above all that of prayer.

Nothing can excuse us from meditation, the reading of Sacred Scripture. Otherwise our charity would end by not having a spiritual quality, that is the character of true charity.

Truly we delude ourselves in a charity that is not lived in union with God; and it is in vain if we delude ourselves that we can live in union with God without being recollected.

The Community is a community of souls who love and are loved. It is love which cements us, which unites us.

Fraternal love, neighbourly charity, is the law of the New Covenant, this shared love which is the love itself of Christ: 'Love each other as I have loved you'. It is not a gift of whatever is asked, but the total giving of ourself, of our time, of our talents, of our life, of all, to others.

As much as we come to know how to realize the Community in this love which unites us amongst ourselves, so much shall we manifest that God lives in us.

And this is the revelation that we ought to give to the others living in the world: a divine force which manifests, moves and lives in us. We live in the world and the world does not know the spiritual love that is apart from natural laws. It is precisely in fraternal love, which distinguishes us, that we are a community, notwithstanding that on the outside there are amongst us differences in condition, age, culture, etc. In this love, in this union God himself is shown present among us, and also the Virgin Mary, his Mother.

We ought to live this love with a total giving of ourselves to the Lord, through all that come close to us: a love of understanding, of piety, of humility, of sympathy, love of service, of dedication, of simplicity, of joy.

The Community's unity is ecclesial, a communion of charity, which is that of the Church of God.

The first Christians were fused into one life only, in one prayer only, in one love only: 'They have', says Acts, 'but one heart and one soul'.

Love ought to be the spirit which animates us and distinguishes us, the living character of our spiritual life: this charity which is manifested in Jesus who is born, in Jesus who wishes to live one life through us, of poverty, of humility, of simplicity.

God not only loves us, but assumes our life in order not to be distinguished from us. The saints in this way distinguish themselves. But Jesus, not: 'he is the son of the carpenter'. This is the love which he has himself taken in such a way as to be alike to all. So ought we to become our brothers and sisters in love.

We contemplate Jesus in the manger: to understand the life to attain the Father. God manifests himself to us in the simplicity of a life which has nothing to distinguish it from the lives of others.

How to live this mystery? How to achieve it? How can we renew in ourselves the mystery of this birth?

We shall live the life of the sons of God if we come to know how to serve all brothers and sisters, all neighbours, to the ill, to the poor, and even to the rich, to those who know and to those who do not know, to the old and to the young, in such a way that each feels in us something they understand and love, and no one feels excluded.

Our Community will not have achieved its ideal if it transforms itself into a church cult, into a little elite.

Beware of these dangers.

The Community must be open. We are God's sons and daughters. Many, better than ourselves, live better than us this life of God's sons and daughters, but we, though weak, have felt the need to reunite ourselves to help ourselves and each other. But not to feel that those who do not come are excluded; they are all our brothers and sisters.

We have this readiness of love that is open to all.

CONTACTS OF LOVE

'You are humility. You are patience . . . '

If Christian life means an incarnation of Jesus as Son of God and Son of man, in contemplating the mystery of His birth we find the ways to reach the Father: humility, poverty, simplicity, sweetness of a life that is a relation of love with the heavenly Father. Not great works, not great sacrifices, not great things, but to live as well-loved sons and daughters before God's eyes.

Our vocation calls us to be a witness to the world: our strengths ought to be those passive ones: humility, sweetness, peace, purity of heart, simplicity. Our life has a justification in itself in the fact that it is a life of love.

In fraternal charity, which ought to unite us amongst ourselves, it would be easy to exercise all the Christian virtues: which require of us the exercise of mortification, of patience, of humility, of love of all, of chastity which requires us to sublimate the deep affections that bind us in such a way that they do not become ever human, but rather the sign of a presence of God. Our life should be an exercise of virtue because the divine charity that is the soul and the life of each religious community, requires and consumes all of them.

We have no defense against love: neither our virtues nor our vices. All are truly common because one is the life of all. We ought to be in the Church of God the witness of a divine presence and we shall only be so, overcoming what is human, if we become an Other who lives in us and is in all of us the same: Jesus.

To overcome always what is human, that is the religious life. The Lord, as to his disciples, says to us who are His disciples in the world of today, to us who follow Jesus, 'You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world'.

We are such poor things, though we are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. Were not perhaps even Peter and James and John and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew? And they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world. And we are that today, we ought to be that while, listening to Christ's word, we live it. That is the word he said one day to the rich young man, 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, then come and follow me'. Follow me!

What are the negative virtues upon which above all we ought to insist? Poverty, chastity, obedience.

But with all these virtues what is being asked? What is the first need of the soul to live as testimony to the future world?

The requirement is to live in the divine presence, in the divine reality and the living in the divine presence strips the soul of all pretenses, of all feelings about itself, of all self-importance, of self worth.

What is the fundamental virtue which expresses this living of ours in the divine presence, our being in the future world? It is humility.

If we would truly live in the divine presence, we would always be lost in His light, having no more weight, no more importance; we would remain as blinded by this light, rendered mute by such splendour.

Turning itself to God is the soul's entire pilgrimage. Don't turn away any more from the Lord but place yourself in front of Him in such a way that the soul in front of the divine being disappears and all things disappear for the soul and nothing remains, but the Lord. God only is.

To live in God's presence one could say is to reach at last the depth of this double abyss, as Blessed Angela of Foligno said, 'The all of God and the nothing of the creature'.

Humility, that is the path of the soul; being stripped. And it is not just any stripping; it is a throwing into the chasm of nothingness. It is a disappearing of the soul into infinite light. God only remains.

So we ought to be the more humble the greater is our vocation. The vocation to the Community is the highest vocation: to live a contemplative life, the sense of the divine transcendence, to total dedication to Him even in the conditions in which Providence has placed us . . . One's own raising through the vocation requires humility.

We ought to be humble, not having more faith in our means, in our human p ossibilities, in our natural gifts, in our talents, in our life.

To lean upon ourselves in following Christ would so to say compromise our reply. We respond to God only through a grace which comes to us from Him, with which we are called.

The soul must be stripped of itself into emptiness, torn from all roots, must be without weight.

To live in humility is as if to say to live in the presence of a God who, alone, is absolute. We should live in this divine presense and then we would learn to be humble.

Who is humble can do all, who is humble is not afraid because in the one who is stripped of self the power itself of God can act, in whom the soul has placed itself.

We should be humble and then we will know how to respond to the Lord. Your humility is a condition of the presence of God to others through you. It is only the humility of the saints that gives to us the sense of a divine presence. Those who do not shout imply to others the sense of God.

To make way for the Lord: this is necessary to the soul.

But humility will only be to the measure that you are poor. Humility and poverty go together, are inseperable. And then the sweetness: having no further interior rigidity. Being capable of the will of God, here is the obedience that empowers me, frees me, creates me.

Obedience is a good in itself: one should not obey the Superior because he is wiser, but because obedience itself is the perfect act, because it is the gift of oneself and because it is an act of love.

Silence. One cannot listen to God without being silent, a silence that means a separation from the world, from things, and from people, a distance even from ourselves, a going out from ourselves, a knowing how to be silent even in the most intimate place of our soul.

We have need of silence to listen to God. The soul cannot listen to Him, nor can it longer see when entering the darkness, which deepens in the silence as in death.

You need to listen to God when you speak. You need to pay heed to His presence and live in the spirit of faith in the hope in Him whom you love. He is always present through you like love.

This is the way to reach a more intimate life with God, to a more intimate communion in silence.

If we do not wish to close ourselves up in ourselves to defend ourselves, we ought always to exercise patience. One does not have fraternal charity without the virtue of Patience. One does not have fraternal charity without continuing patience. A charity that is always satisfying, that gives giving sweetness, peace and joy is not possible; fraternal charity requires constant patience both within and without.

We seek to exercise ourselves in this virtue as much as possible while we live in the world. Charity and patience are indissolubly joined. Already in Christ is conjoined the supreme act of His charity with his Passion. So it is in us.

Help each other. St Paul defined the exercise of charity in this way, 'Carry each others' burdens, for this fulfils Christ's law'. Fulfil thus all the law in loving supportiveness, patiently, with a patience that is neither forced nor violent, but sweet, and always fair.

If we will exercise ourselves in patience, we will always live in a relationship livened by love with others. Love without patience does not exist and neither does patience without love. It is love which makes it possible to blunt our pride, in order not to compromise charity, to remain constant in this constant dying to ourselves. But for dying to ourselves what is needed is to love.

Patience, therefore!

We will do what the Lord asks us over and over again, without evasion. Each avoidance, whether of the spirit or of the act, is always a refinding of us ourselves. Now this is avoided very often; that we shall not succeed in maintaining ourselves constantly in patience is because this is avoided. One should live outside what we do; if one thinks of what we shall do tomorrow or what we could do or what we could have if things had turned out a certain way: one does not live the present moment.

We must live the present moment with humility and simplicity! We must not seek to avoid it. Each evasion not only makes the continuous contact with God more difficult, but is itself always a seeking to flee from the constant task of a peaceful patience, of a humble and serene prayer.

Let us therefore be patient, humble and simple and constant in our lives. Let us not seek out new things: that each day follows the other, is modeled on the other, as in a perfect form in such a way that we can live a life without history, but full of love, full of this silence and of this peace which are the sign, the seal of this presence in our daily living.

The divine life manifests itself in us to the extent that we live in the renunciation of all human values and deepen ourselves in humility.

We should love silence and hiddenness not for itself: the silence, the hiddenness is the veil which covers our divine life, the life of God's sons and daughters which God has communicated to us. We should think of Our Lady, we should live like Her, deepened in the divine mystery, withdrawn, dead to this world.

'Be dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God'.

We should live therefore in the faith of the hidenness of the Son of God on earth and in our tabernacles. The world did not recognize Him, nor will we recognize ourselves, but we will know Him. One day shall be our glory, if today it is our humility.

The Community wishes to teach, communicate, nourish this spirit of hiddenness, of silence, of joy, of peace in the possession of God.

Joy, yes, but it ought to be that which enlarges the spirit: not a joy which swells us, but a pure joy that enlarges and deepens us and makes us truly simple and pure like infants, that makes us truly small before God who is the immensity.

The supreme commandment for Christians is to rejoice: the laws of the New Testament are the Beatitudes. But we are only capable of rejoicing to the extent that we are capable of loving.

We should know how to love ourselves in earnest, we should know how to love all because all are Jesus. This love requires patience, sweetness, humility, mutual respect; it is necessary to uncover in each soul the possibility of good that God has placed in us.

'Be dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God'. These words of the Apostle are our programme.

This life of death requires simplicity, humility, poverty, peace in our lives as God's sons and daughters. Nothing ought to recall us to others' attention. Our life is in silence, in the sweetest waiting on God, in an interior gaze turned always upon Him, in the incessant adoration of his presence.

Humility which eclipses itself, which hides itself.

Simplicity which has need of little things; great and profound simplicity . . . Nothing of its own, neither ends not means.

Simplicity that adapts to all things in life, but which requires a purity that is always increasing, because we can come to see no more than God. As God's sons and daughters our treasure is in heaven, is God.

Poverty, humility, simplicity, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit and in the Kingdom of God.

To reach all this one thing is necessary, Love.

Chapter V

OUR GREAT FEAST DAYS

Contents

OUR GREAT FEAST DAYS

THE FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

The Son of God Himself was transfigured before the eyes of Peter and the ears of the Apostle heard the word of the Father. St Peter not only opposed Christian truth to pagan myth, but also spoke of a participation in this mystery for which we ought to be gently prepared through a process: that of listening to the divine Word.

The Word of God should be placed in the soul through direct action by God, by a communication that God makes of Himself intimately, personally, to each one. In the Transfiguration of Christ, the apostles hear at the top of the mountain the words which respond to the experience of each one of us.

'May the star of the morning rise in your hearts'. This expression is of an importance, of a greatness, that terrifies us because first of all it is a mystical experience, even beyond Christianity, very often it is a truly supernatural experience. When Hindus speak of a seed, as small as that of the mustard seed, from which comes the largest and grandest tree of the world, they are referring to a presence of God in the intimacy of the human heart, the experience of which the Apostle Paul speaks.

It seems we ought to agree with one of the greatest living testimonies of Christian contemplation when it is said that all of mysticism, even Indian, is but an intruduction to the true mysticism of Christianity itself. We in our nothing ought to plunge ourselves into God's immensity but in this plunging behold there rises a light and the soul hears a voice: that which the Father gives to the Son and the Son to the Father. The soul hears: `You are my Son, this day I have given you birth'; and the Son to the Father, and with the Son, the soul itself is assumed into a participation of the life and the relation with the Father, saying one word only: 'Father'.

Here only is the life of divine charity which turns upon infinite light.

Ours is an experience of 'dark brightness', as Pseudo-Dionysius said.

God communicates Himself to us, to our body and to our spirit, transcending both body and spirit.

We westerners identify, at least in practice, the created spirit with the uncreated Spirit and we believe that the experience of God would be a purely spiritual experience and not also of the body. And then how could our body come to be glorified? What then would be the necessity for the resurrection of the body?

In fact God communicates Himself to the physical world as much as to the spiritual world, He who reigns, who transcends infinitely from one to the other world. But this is drawn from a communication of light and as such would be known by those who have seen it. No one could ever teach to a soul who is God, if God did not himself reveal Himself to the soul. We can only stammer something about God, but our words justly are analogues: they speak and do not speak, both revealing and concealing Him.

How can we live meaningfully the passage from the purely ontological plane to the phychological and moral plane, what is an activity proper to our being, this being the proper activity of this world of grace to which God has introduced us - which is His divine world, which is God himself - implied in an experience of God.

Simeon the New Theologian is right when he says: 'Do not hope to see God in the other world whom you have not seen here below'.

It is normal that we while living acquire a consciousness of our state of grace, an experience of God.

For the religious soul to have known God, to love God, to live in union with Him, would be to say as affirmed the Apostle Peter: it is a light which kindles the depths of our being, from which it gradually arises like a dawn. Justly in Holy Scripture our Lord is called 'O Oriens', 'O Rising Sun' (this is the name with which His birth is proclaimed in the Christmas novena, in the Great O Antiphons).

He is not separable from us; Christian life prolongs the divine Incarnation. That Christian state is like the experience of the dawning of the day. From the darkness of a pure faith - in the sense in which it is imperfect, there is received in pure adhesion a revelation which comes from without, signifying (that is, nourished by the sacraments which are signs of divine mystery) of a Teaching, a Magisterium - gradually penetrated by the light; it is the ascetic life and the presentiment of God, as it is here the presentiment of the dawn amongst created things.

At a certain moment, if we are faithful to the grace, we have the feeling of something that is different, we feel ourselves as if suspended in silence and all life becomes a waiting, but we do not know for what. We feel ourselves turned to the mystery of an inpenetrable night into which we totally flow, but in this there is a mysterious pulsing of light which comes and for which you wait. You wait in a silence of adoration or better, of fear and even of a certain dismay. Then you perceive light . . . it is a light which gradually begins to delineate the contours of the mountains and makes them still more black in the depths of the sky which begins to pale their summits. You live this resurrection of light, this dayspring from on high.

When will it be that the light truly gives a colour to things, that it will make splendid and renew the creation of God? Will it be when this light dazzles, destroys, eclipses in such a way all the forms that it remains itself alone? The process is precisely this: first the darkness of the night, then the beginning of a pallid light; finally the light of the sun reveals the distant mountains, rising in a luminous sky. And this light not only gives the contours of things, but gradually illumines them totally. Evagrius said: 'Begin with contemplation, then it will follow that the essence of things will acquire their more true meaning and value inasmuch as the light of the sun garbs them. Then the things are cancelled out not by the darkness, but by the light which makes all fade away to remain itself alone.' And such is what happens in the midst of day: one does not any longer see the stars or the moon, the light of the sun makes all things fade and it itself only remains.

And this is so even with our spiritual life: it is the dawning of the light in your soul. It is not, as would be seen with the mystic Hindu, the human soul: it is something more intimate even than our soul because God is more near to us than we are to ourselves. What is this thing - how to explain it? - that is more real and distinct: Christ the Lord, the Word of God, entering into you and assuming you into his own life, in the act itself where He returns Himself to the Father.

We note well the words of the Apostle Peter repeating and anticipating a definition that the Apocalypse will give to Jesus: 'I am the star of the morning', in St John, and St Peter saying, 'until the morning star rises in your heart'.

And it is Christ who dawns, who comes to be in you. Before, you were alone and in your solitude you lived nothing but the night. It will be in the presentiment of His coming and this living outside of Christianity that the souls yearn for God. But He lives in you to the measure that He enters, that He dawns in you, and gradually this light crescendoes in your depths, in such a way that not only your soul, but also your body is transfigured in Christ. He comes to penetrate you, to seize you, leaving nothing but Him, seizing you so that you cannot live your own life, but you become His light, His word.

Let us be possessed by Christ, let us be what dawns: He is risen in us, the day is come.

It is now the hour of morning: Christianity does not live in the night. The dawning of the light implies the dawning of that sun which begins in the depths of our conscience, of our knowing.

Let Him rise in you. Find the way of leaving that profound abyss that is your soul. What stones, what obstacles impede this light from coming, from flowing out into its strength! Even the power of this sun will conquer your nature, your sin, while you wait peacefully, remaining in silent waiting, finally the star of the morning will rise in you heart.

This of our filial adoption is the mystery of the Transfiguration: the experience of a gift of grace, of a revelation.

'Give us the abundance of love in the knowledge of your grace', says the hymn of the Transfiguration.

Jesus was Son of God even before He was transfigured in the eyes of His disciples and we are God's sons and daughters even before participating in this transfiguration. But we can celebrate the mystery of the Transfiguration, only to the measure that we become in some way conscious of this filial adoption.

Do we sense ourselves to be God's sons and daughters? Do we sense in ourselves this filial relation, this generation of the Word which is fulfilled as in a birthing of the Word in the womb of our nature?

The birthing of the Word comes through divinity, in the womb of the Father, but when He becomes flesh it comes into the womb of a Mother, into the womb of humanity. Now from the most intimate depths of nature springs this dawning of light: it is a flood of living water which rises even to the sky and this light illuminates everything. This is the Christian life: the birth of the Word in our hearts. This is what the New Testament, the Fathers, the Mystics, the spiritual writers ancient and modern all say.

The birth of Christ in our hearts brings about our unity with Him: we are distinct, yet we are but one thing, through living the same life, the same glory, the same sanctity and the same joy: the Beatitude itself of God. He Himself in birthing unites us to Him and to the measure that He springs from us He brings us into Himself. It is the light which illumines, it is the living water which, rising to the heavens, brings all with it, even our souls, all our powers, even our very bodies. The light then which dawns from within is transformed into that light: 'the intellectual light full of love' as Dante said. An immense light which is knowledge and love, which is contemplation and blessing, a life below here and now and of the heavens; it is none other than the glory of God.

To live this: 'and the star of the morning shall dawn in your hearts. To the measure that it is not risen, listen again to the prophetic words, maintain yourself in humble obedience to the Church's Magisterium; and as in plain daylight you cannot but realize this in the present life, the dependence upon the Church remains even for the greatest mystic, but no longer any dependence upon any outside law.

The pilgrimage of our dependence comes side by side with our freedom; together with the nature of God, so is it with the Magisterium of the Church. You see this in the saints; Abbot Joseph raises his fingers: they become ten flaming torches while he prays; St Sergius celebrates the divine Eucharist and flames enter the chalice, flowing about all the altar, seeming to burn even the celebrant himself; St Seraphim of Sarov speaks of the mystery of another life and inclines his face as in adoration of a presence and slowly while he bends there emanates a light which is also sweetness and peace and which seems to melt him and the sister who listens to him. But remember also that Seraphim's transfiguration was in the middle of winter. We are in January of 1821 and the snow is falling on the earth; even in the middle of the day, in the darkness and the cold of central Russia, Seraphim speaks of the acquisition of the Holy Spirit: saying that the goal of Christian life is this gift of the Holy Spirit which he receives. Motovilov listens to him and understands nothing: 'But how do I know if I can receive it?' he says. Verbal assurance is not enough, he would have the experience of this gift. And Seraphim then, not being able to convince him with words, which can do nothing, prays for an instant, 'Give to your servant the understanding of these words', and immediately emanates from Seraphim an immense light which dazzles Motovilov's eyes, which he he feels shatter, as if sweeping the eyes through their incapacity to capture so much light . . . and the forest disappears. And even Seraphim disappears and Motovilov feels only the weight of the hands which the old man places on his shoulders. All is become light, an immense light, which not only is outside himself, but which also penetrates within; it is an immense sweetness and a warmth greater than that of Turkish baths.

It is the divine life, which does not mean only a transfiguration of the spirit in the knowledge of God, but also a transformation of the body not longer subjected to cold and hunger, to any deprivation. The body, in contact with God, is already risen, and already in some way participates in the future Transfiguration.

And this is truly through our body and even more truly through our soul, because Christ truly rises like the dawn in the intimacy of your being, healing your intelligence, your will and first of all re-tuning the harmony in your inner life. What peace the soul finds in contact with God!

And we shall live in plain daylight, blinded by our powerlessness to see, to perceive nothing else than this light, to possess the joy of God?

No, we are not yet joined. We ought to recognise this. The star of the morning is already risen and we feel this unconquerable call of the light, this recalling not only ineffable, but also irresistable to God's peace. We cannot withdaw from Him. Our senses, the temptations which rise up can be dispersed, but always the recalling is continuous, secret, irresistable. Our life possesses only this unity. God is risen in our inner self and calls to Himself all our powers, drawing our soul and body invincibly to Himself. We can seek sometimes to rebel, to flee from this seizing of God, but He always more sweetly, invincibly, draws us with a centrifugal force and at the same time assumes us.

Let us be taken, possessed, penetrated by God!

The Transfiguration of Christ should be our transfiguration, requirement and fulfilment of the present life and of the life of tomorrow, of light and of pure listening to the word of the Father: 'You are my Son, my Daughter', and, in reply, the words of the Son to the Father, 'Abba, Father'.

EPIPHANY

Epiphany is chosen as one of the Community's feasts for many reasons.

First of all because it is one of the greatest feasts of the Church. But we are particularly interested in this feast because, as descendants of the Magi, we continue their same pilgrimage and their same act in adoring the Child. We do not come from the Promised People, but from the pagan gentiles, like the Magi.

Even if we had not received the promise from God, we are all sons of Abraham, those sons that God had raised out of stone: so says the Gospel to signify the miracle of a descendence purely spiritual from the Patriarchs (as Paul emphasizes).

A gracious mercy has made us participants in an immense good to which we have no legal right. Jesus, born of the Hebrew people, of the race of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. . . and unknown among the gentiles. Only the Magi had the opportunity to be drawn and led to the Saviour; and even we, through mercy alone, can come and participate in this salvation that was promised legally only to the people of Israel.

The Community makes this its feast also because it is fundamentally inherent to its spirituality, to its task, to its apostolate. This is expressed in our Consecration, we say to the Virgin that we will make ourself 'revealers of the Father'.

The Community wishes therefore to be the permanent Epiphany of God, the manifestation of God on earth. The world should see in us the light of a divine revelation, God living in us.

We ought to transform ourselves into Christ. Who sees us ought to see Jesus and so ought to consider that God is truly present in the world. And this is our vocation, our task, our life: to show God. Speaking, walking, loving . . . it ought to be Jesus who speaks, loves, reveals Himself in us. This is our greatness; because the Epiphany is our feast.

And not only the feast which requires us to show the Lord, it is also the manifestation to us of Jesus: a showing at times secret, which enlarges the heart and fills it with ineffable sweetness: it is the feast of a divine manifestation to our soul.

How is He revealed? One needs faith to recognize Him. For the whole Octave we ask for this faith in the prayer:

With faith each of us comes to be carried to the Lord, in each creature shines the face of Jesus. Then all our life is for us a continuous manifestation of Jesus, an eternal joy.

The Magi see the star and follow it until they come to see the Child. A journey, a pilgrimage that has a means even here below in our present life: in the humility, the poverty and the simplicity of infancy. There is no teaching of the Feast of the Epiphany that is greater than this: we ought to hold to that. We cannot live a rapport of love with Him, if we do not knowingly recognize him in the humility, the poverty, and the simplicity of infancy.

He will only appear to you if you know how to free yourself from the instincts of ambition, of wealth, of riches, of power, if you reduce yourself to the simplicity that is appropriate for those to whom the Kingdom of God is promised.

In the Epiphany we contemplate God in the poverty of the cave, we adore him in the simplicity of the Child. But justly Christian contemplation is transformed; we would never love poverty if we did not ourselves become poor; we can only sincerely love humility, to the measure that we become humble, that we strip ourselves of all our pretenses; we can only truly contemplate God in the silence of the Child if we ourselves become silent.

Another theme that we ought to consider regarding Epiphany is the Baptism of Jesus.

It is a primary event in the life of Christ. In the first three centuries the Church awarded more importance to the Baptism than even to the Birth and to the Annunciation. The Incarnation and the Birth belonged above all to a story of hidden preparation for the fulfilling of the divine promises, while in the manifestation on the banks of the Jordan God truly revealed Himself to the world and began His Redemption. In fact, in the Acts of the Apostles, when they had to replace Judas who had betrayed Him, they sought from amongst those who 'had been with the Lord Jesus from his Baptism until his Ascension'.

Now this is not to say that we ought to hold the Baptism to be more important than the Nativity, but certainly that we ought to give a true importance to the mystery which had such a great importance in the first centuries of the Church and which it still has in the Eastern Church: the Feast of the Epiphany is also the Feast of the Baptism. And justly so, because Jesus did not manifest himself only to the Magi but also to all humanity on the banks of the Jordan. The Magi were but three, even while representing all the unbelievers; at the Jordan instead was the whole crowd to whom John showed Him as His prophet, as one therefore, upon whom God placed the seal of a prophetic story so designed as to announce and present to the world the fulfilment of the divine promise.

All of sacred history has an aspect of announcing, not just ending in the Nativity, which was a hidden mystery, taking place at night, that is to say a quality intimate and private, even if with the Adoration of the Shepherds and after a certain time the Adoration of the Magi. So intimate and private was it that two of the Gospels do not even speak of it, while all the Evangelists speak of the Baptism of Jesus, because the Good News, the 'Gospel', begins there.

The Good News brought to the world begins precisely on the banks of the Jordan when John the Baptist proclaims Jesus the Lamb of God, and the Father from the sky also more solemnly says, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'.

The importance of the Baptism in the life of the Lord and in the life of Christians is not just singular: it has an aspect that is truly exceptional. In fact it is presented in the Church not only as the function of the Virgin but also that of John the Baptist, even to the end of the world, even until when Jesus shall be manifested to all humanity as Son of God. There is in the Church the presence of Mary and of John the Baptist.

The presence of John the Baptist gives, it could be said, to religious life a justification, its own mission. Our vocation in the womb of the Church is that of being, like John the Baptist, with those who announce the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

Also we ought to make present and announce in our lives, in our words, the life of Heaven, the praise of the saints and angels, anticipating Christ.

How grateful we ought to be to the Lord and how much we ought to be aware that in that day we receive the investiture as Christians! Was it not in that day that John showed Jesus on the banks of the Jordan? In that day we are Consecrated to God or at least we renew our Consecration which on that day gives it its own significance: today we are invested with this mission: to say to the world what it is and for what purpose, what it will be for infinite glory to dawn and for making God Himself present to us in His love, in His immense life. We ought to say this with a life that would be truly ever more a putting under of what is mortal to be always more filled with that which is immortal: from God.

The mystery of death and of resurrection: of a dying to death, but of a living to life: to die to death because all that which is earthly is mortal, all that which is earthly is already dead.

To die to death to be invaded by God: this is our message.

To anticipate the heavenly life: this is our task. We must remember this often. While living here below our soul is in heaven or, rather, through us the sky is upon the earth because we carry it in our heart, through showing it, through revealing it to the world. We are witnesses of the invisible and will be so precisely inasmuch as we realize the Beatitudes.

Epiphany is also the heavenly wedding feast.

The text of Lauds more than any other liturgical text tells us what is today's feast:

Christ on this day has married the Church. The incarnation of the Word is the only condition to this marvellous mystery where a God weds humanity. The hypostatic union, which is the union of human nature and that of divine nature in Christ, is not yet the divine wedding feast. The wedding feast implies the union of two wills, of two persons in one sole body, the union of Christ and the Church: this is the mystery of this feast.

But the mystery of this divine feast is repeated, as much as it is made present, in the gift which each one of us makes of ourselves to Christ. It is for this that we have chosen Epiphany as the feast of our consecrations, as the feast for renewing the gift of ourselves to the Lord. Just as He gave all of Himself, becoming flesh for us and for us dying on the Cross, without saving anything for Himself to be totally ours, so are we in this day called to give ourselves entirely to Him to be his sons and daughters. Truly, we are to God as His creatures, thus we ought to be His because only in being possessed by Him can we find the fact of our Beatitude and our life; this gift of ourselves to Him in all ways ought to ratified by a conscious will, of a real task of all our life. And it is this that the Lord asks of all of us this day.

What gift can we carry to Him who has given Himself entirely to us if not all our being? Since He gives Himself totally to us and for always, ought not we give to Him ourselves totally and for ever? Certainly God gives us infinite riches of His divinity and we have nothing more to bring to Him than our poverty, our misery; but what effects the wedding is not so much the greatness of the gift as much as it is the fact that the gift must be total. At least in this we can live the task itself that God Himself assumed for us; just as He gave all, so ought we all to immolate ourselves. It is the totality of our gift that effects the nuptial union, holding nothing back in reserve, not having it any longer belong to us, not wishing to be anything other than to be His. And that is what the Lord asks of us all at the feast of Epiphany: that we should want to free ourselves from all witholding, that we should not desire any more any conditions to His love, that we should wish to possess nothing of our own, but become His possession. Each spouse has the right to the other; the husband does not belong to himself - said Paul - but belongs to the wife and the wife does not belong any more to herself: she belongs to her husband. This properly defines the marriage union; not only - be it noted - love as much as love is a total gift of ourselves even to the other: a total gift that cannot ever be taken back.

Now we ought precisely to live this; this itself is demanded by our Christian vocation and so much more by our religious monastic vocation: to be totally of God, for ever.

We can repeat in full truth the prayer of St John of the Cross: 'Mine is the sky and mine is the earth, mine the angels, mine the saints, mine the Mother of God because Christ is mine, and all for me'.

Today the Church for me is wedded to Christ. Epiphany is the day of this divine wedding feast, of the marriage of our soul to Him.

And finally the fundamental theme of Epiphany is the glory of God, as it is in the Transfiguration.

It seems that a text of Paul's in the Epistle to the Corinthians justifies the choice of these two feasts as belonging to the Community which wishes to give primacy to the contemplative values; for this we ought to celebrate these feasts of glory.

The contemplative soul is that which, contemplating the glory of the Lord, from His light becomes transformed from glory into glory as of the Spirit of Jesus. St Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians (Reading of the Midday Office of Sext for the Feast of the Transfiguration):

It is one of the most beautiful texts of the New Testament, the most dense in doctrine, and above all most important for us. In it in fact is the entire programme for our monastic life, which consists of a life of prayer, of contemplation. But the contemplation is transformed in Christianity; therefore that the measure that contemplate the light, in the light we are transformed from glory into glory, through a process which always more and more assimilates us to God; and this transformation comes through the power of the Spirit of Christ.

The monastic soul lives in the presence of God: contemplating His ineffable glory becomes itself light, just as does a crystal illuminated by the sun become itself a source of light.

The first task of the Community is to live in this presence, in this vision, of contemplating God, of being illuminated by the light of the Lord.

The second task, which derives necessarily from the first, is of being a sign for the others: to the measure that we contemplate, we are illuminated and being illuminated we ourselves become signs of glory for the others.

Each one of us, if we are truly Christian, is an epiphany of the Lord.

This is the entire programme of the Community; to let ourselves be possessed by Him. That He may be! That He alone remain.

That God may be God! In these words is our entire answer.

MARY'S MOTHERHOOD

Our devotion to Mary is expressed in great part in the Consecration that we make to Her as Mother of Christ because she gives birth to us in Christ. Her motherhood determines our attachment of filial reverence, tender, serene, confident of being sons and daughters towards our Mother.

A quality of our devotion to Mary is our considering her in her relation to the Trinity: with the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit. This divine life of hers is proposed as a model for our interior life: because we ought to see in her the Bride of the Trinity and the Mother of Christ. She as Mother of Christ gives birth to Him who unites Himself to all humanity as members of one sole Mystic body: He is the Head, we the members: we are Christ. The Mother bears one Child, gives birth to Christ in us, unites us to Him in such a way that we are Him. This is the motherhood of Mary.

There are different kinds of Motherhood which exist amongst us. In this the son, growing, always becomes more independent of the mother; in that one it is the opposite: the motherhood of Mary becomes always more and more intimate and profound as the soul grows in perfection. The relation of the son to the mother is begun even from the beginning that the son possesses grace; it is a relation of potential, not of action; through this other relation instead comes about the state of grace.

The motherhood of Mary grows in relation that is like that of the divine paternity of the only begotten Son: an act of eternal generation, perfect. Now the motherhood of Mary requires that this same motherhood be a most intimate act and which endures for ever. We shall possess all our spiritual life in union to Mary in an eternal birthing which is centred in her womb. It is a physical bond, intimate, from us to her, which lasts eternally. A motherhood which does not give physical life, but which is a true motherhood. This which God gives us we could not have but through the means of the Mother who brings us to birth. Our rapport with the Mother ought to be tender, filial, profound. We cannot be drawn away from her. We are never alone, we are with the Trinity, with Christ (one cannot break the Body of Christ), with the Mother who is always with us. She continues the mystery of the Visitation, she comes to carry Jesus to us every moment, she conceives us, repeating the Incarnation.

This mystery is realized even when we cannot pay attention to it.

We ought to realize this ontological relation of the Christian life bringing to life again our filial sentiments towards our Mother. Mary is our celestial Mother who ought to become every day more our Mother and we ought to depend each day more and more upon her. We ought to immerse ourselves each day more her womb, until in eternity we rejoin the total perfect union, as with Christ.

Love and sweetest abandonment to Her: our life is a following of the true grace which Mary has obtained for us.

Christ and the Virgin are inseparable. In the incarnate Word, God as a divine person assumes human nature, but as the power of grace transfigures nature, so is it when He is communicated to a person.

We cannot adore Mary, certainly, yet our adoration of God passes through Mary, that is through the humanity which She has given to the Word, through the Son of God who is also her Son.

As in Christ I see the Father, so ought I contemplate the Mother; as in Christ I cannot separate the Son from the Father, so ought I not separate the Son from the Mother, Mary.

While that is true there is also another thing even more important still, that is not only that the woman is associated with divinity, but that it is a historical, concrete woman.

We ought not to contemplate the divine mystery as something that is abstract, that is pushed away from us: at the centre of this mystery is a humble Virgin, a little child (it is thought that she was fifteen years old when she conceived the Word of God in her womb). How the mystery of God could have as its centre this woman, this virgin, so truly this mystery of God touches me, seizes hold of me, I am in this centre, I in my concreteness. So it is the impression that here is all the greatness of the mystery of Mary and of her function in Christian mystery: not something which took place accidentally in Christian mystery, but an indispensable element of the mystery, which is the most profound and essential association of concrete humanity to revelation, to communication with God.

God is not without Man. Man is not without God, but likewise God is not without Man: I do not say this for myself, nor for the angels, nor for the archangels and the cherubim and seraphim. Further. God is not without Woman, without the Virgin, just as He is not without Man.

This Woman is truly the centre of all and also today is that woman: not the woman, but that woman. Mary's individual character is not lost even when she is glorified in heaven. Too often the glorification tends to transform Mary Most Holy into a pure ideal of femininity. No: she is that woman: this is the greatness of Christian mystery. Thus it is true also that all eternity lives in the act in which this Virgin responds to the annunciation of the angel. All eternity is in that act, all creation is practically centred on this, is reassumed in this creature.

Let us note that the function of Mary in Christian religion is a function so necessary that, whether I consciously know it or no, She remains forever associated with the mystery of God and I cannot reach Him unless She be present.

But my worship does not end in her: in Mary I praise, celebrate, exalt God who through Mary gives the supreme revelation, because she gives Christ to humanity.

Catholicism is truly so, that it is not only the fulfillment of Judaism, but also of all the religious aspirations of humanity, of a religion even physical, even immanent not because God is immanent in creation but because he is associates so intimately to her that creation is now, in Mary, inseparable from God. Mary and God are united for ever, the one as Father and the other as Mother.

With Most Holy Mary the cosmic religion comes to a new assumption in its positive values, a creation again sanctified by God, become pure, become immaculate through divine grace.Thus creation cannot any more separate itself from God, but in Mary creation and God manifest the most intimate and inseparable union and even matriarchal religions and celestial religions become one sole religion, the religion which is truly Catholic.

Most Holy Mary is the Great Mother, the virgin land, the Immaculate. She is all the earth, she is creation itself, but sanctified by the Word.

Mary makes herself present as symbol and hypostasis of the entire creation. The Great Mother is She who conceives not men, not things, but the Word.

In this function creation begins and returns to being truly as the monstrance of the divinity which lives only to conceive something greater than itself: God Himself.

Creation realizes its mystery, lives its ultimate function, realizes its supreme vocation as much from her, in dependence upon her, when God reveals Himself, God communicates Himself, God is born.

'Terra dedit fructum suum'. 'The earth brings forth its fruit'.

Chapter Six

THE SPIRIT OF PENANCE IN THE C.F.D.

Contents:

THE SPIRIT OF PENANCE IN THE C.F.D.

Penance assumes contact with God. It is like the rod of Moses which breaks the rock so that water may gush forth; it is the touch of a divine reality that makes us overcome, that makes us enter into another world, in contact with another reality.

How justly the ancient Fathers said that through the baptism of tears our eyes can become capable of seeing God who is present even when hidden, who is present even for those who have not purified their eyes with sobs and who remain blind!

Penance supposes this contact and the overcoming of our purely earthly, human, natural condition; it grants new eyes for contemplating a reality that otherwise we would not see, new ears to hear a word that otherwise we would not be able to hear; it gives a new heart for love that otherwise we could not love.

That the rod of God beat us and break in us all rigidity, all hardness; that it truly open our hearts, open our eyes!

'Quo fonte manavit nefas - fluent perennes lacrimae - si virgo poenitentiae - cordis rigorem conterat,' 'From that fount of remaining crimes - flow eternal tears - if the rod of penance - break the stoney heart', so is chanted the Hymn at Lauds in Lent. Christian weeping does not bring pain, even if the weeping is from penance, it is not a sign of punishment, of anguish, of bitterness, but one can say rather it is the profound emotion of all beings in contact with God. All our being rises above and is renewed; our hardness is broken, our rigidity is bent, all become liquid, like the melting of ice that precedes Spring, the new flowers of a life made of sweetness, of humility, of love, of light; a living with God, a living in Him, in the Lord.

How could it be possible that the human being touch God, that God touch the human being and that something not rise, not be broken, not be renewed?

It is the sense of our poverty, of our misery before God; the sense of infinite disproportion of scale that there is between our selves being so miserable and He being so great. It is the sense even of the impossibility of escape, of flight, because He has already embraced us and we know not how to flee from Him. All that remains for us is to trust in Him, as if we were to trust in fire: to abandon ourselves to Him as one would abandon oneself to a water gorge that drags us with it.

That is penance.

Let us not live mortification through mortification as such. Penance is in confronting God with the recognition of our sin, and of our disproportion: a sense of loss, but also of abandon: the contact with Him makes us melt. It is the reaction of being human, specially of a real person, who is a sinner, in contact with God. The contact with God gives the soul the sense of its own poverty, of its own misery; it is like the rod which breaks us and makes flow from us watery tears. Contrition implies precisely what breaks us from without just as compunction implies that thing from without that blames us: 'compungere', with piercing, 'conterere', with breaking.

GOD CREATES PENANCE IN US

It is God alone who creates penance within us

Penance is not therefore only the bitterness of having failed, the suffering of feeling ourselves poor and miserable: before there being bitterness, sorrow and suffering, is the transcending of one touched by God and that is the beginning of an religious experience that, for one, is born from this. As long as there is no penance we remain closed in the world of sin, in an opaque world unlighted by grace. Only the contact with God wakes the soul from its torpor, breaks the hardness of heart, wounds it, and from this contact is born not only penance, but according to the ancient spiritual writers, the sobs, the tears.

We ought to pay ever more attention to the necessity of this virtue which begins the pilgrimage to God for all.

The examination of our conscience we make is in reference to penance, we thus ought to take into account that just as we are adapted as a living being, so also in us comes the desire to be better than what we are, to be saints. The Word of God in us is a living thing to renew us, to prod, to demand, to work in us the 'metanoia' (that is a change)? The most serious thing in the monastic life is that the Word of God joined to us to transform us can stay sleeping in slumber and be only a beautiful human word which caresses our vanity, not like a creating word that ought to work something. If you hear the Word of God only to judge it, to see in it the truth, for the pleasure of its beauty, your interior attachment transforms the Word of God, for you, into a human word. The Word of God instead is efficacious in the listening in faith and letting it model you by itself, not judging it but letting it guide you by itself.

If the Word of God requires and works first of all the turning to Christian penance, the penance is not only the initial act, but accompanies the soul during all its pilgrimage, which is an eternal conversion. In the growth of a plant or animal there is an organic continuity; instead the growth of the Christian life implies always a new contact with God and on the part of the soul a recognition that is increasingly painfull of its own distance, its own sin.

'Repent for the King of Heaven is at hand' If we do not repent, we cannot enter into this realm; we will remain outside, in exile, far from Him.

And to repent means to break with our pride, not just to recognize it. Only then do we live for God when we renounce ourselves. And penance is as if to say above all that we renounce ourselves and recognize our sins.

This therefore God wants first of all from us. The growth in grace requires a growth in penance, a recognition that is always more vivid and filled with sorrow of our otherness, even when there might not be for us a true and conscious opposition to the infinite sanctity of God.

'The heart of a saint', said the Cure of Ars, 'melts'. We do not think that Christian penance would be something that would destroy us; it destroys but renews us. It mortifies us, but makes us rise again; it destroys our pride, so that our human nature becomes renewed and shapeable in the hands of God, like fused metal, to be newly shaped according to the divine image and likeness. In sensing our sin during penance all in us is melted and God reshapes, reforms, us.

That we live penance is shown in the presence in us of love. That is the teaching which Jesus gives us in the pardon given to the Magdalen: 'Cui minus dimittitur minus diligit' 'He who pardons little, loves little' (Luke 7.47). It is shown in a love which is compassion, sweetness, humility, mercy; in a love for God which is gratitude and praise.

Piety is the manifestation of a victory over our egoism, over our interior hardness which makes us judge others too easily.

To see if we are penitents or not, we have an easy enough text: let us: examine ourselves to see if we judge others too easily. If so, we are not penitent, though we may not know it. It is a sign that we are hard in ourselves, closed as in a breastplate in our pride, and that we make the measure and norm of sanctity for the others, judging them. If instead we judge and condemn ourselves, the straightjacket bursts, the hardness struggles with itself and not only becomes malleable in the hands of God, but is piety, sweetness, compassion for all.

And we consider even our attachment in meeting with God; if it is that which is pleasing and an abandoning of oneself, for which God is praised as he ought to be for all things, if we remit to Him fully, not trusting anymore in ourselves, but rather totally trusting in His infinite mercy which transcends all our faults, all our misery.

THE FOUR SEASONS

After the Second Vatican Council the four Seasons that the Church found in all nations of the world were taken away out of use, while the liturgical cycle, reflecting our hemisphere, was continued. The Council had wanted to affirm the continuity amongst the religions of the world and Christianity in as much as all religions are an 'evangelical preparation' (praeparatio evangelica'; but the Community has wished to preserve and continue to celebrate them, because they favour and sanctify the seasons in a normal way, time as a cycle of seasons, putting us in religous communion with all of humanity. We wish to assume all the life of the universe which can bring it to God and not just Christian humanity, but all who seek God, who mysteriously adhere to Him, even without knowing it, without having a full conscience of God, but only the sense of mystery, of the divine.

Our decision does not wish to be a minimizing or refusal to accept and live with humility and with total dedication in our spirit the directives given by the Church for its liturgical and pastoral renewal and nor does it wish to be a expression of nostalgia and being still in the past. But we only wish to live the religious and liturgical life even a communion with all the religious souls of the world, who seek to realize their union with God across the mystery of time, in the succession of the seasons, of the weeks and of the months that religions since the beginning have desired to sanctify. For the rest, our greatest liturgical feasts clearly relate to the seasons, even if they have received first from prophetic revelation and then by the Christian one a more rich and profound religious content. Christmas is the feast of the winter solstice, as is Easter the feast of the spring equinox; Pentecost comes to be celebrated towards the summer solstice, while the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, which takes over the Feast of the Tabernacles, falls towards the autum equinox: the celebration of the last harvesting of the fruits of the earth.

In our monastic life, the four Seasons will remain as fixed points for a more intimate and cordial encounter amongst ourselves, for the renewing of our duties for God with a concrete realization of the religious ideal which has inspired our pilgrimage. It is fine, at the beginning of each Season, to feel ourselves greatly obliged to the Church, whether it be in prayer or in offerings for particular needs that we have selected, without in any way excluding other needs that could come about. Thus the four Seasons are for us occasions that Providence gives us a task for us take up concretely, all together as a Community, towards our brothers and sisters, towards the whole Church.

Sanctifying our rapport with nature, our monastic life seems to obey with greater ease and spontaneity to the call itself of God. In fact the religous life of Christians is not in opposition to nature even if it surpasses it: nature, in being in opposition to grace, is the 'humus', the earth, from which religious life draws its natural nourishment. Is it not perhaps winter which gives a particular enchantment to Christmas with the intimacy that its cold fosters and its joy? Woe to Christianity if it does not avail itself of what nature spontaneously thrusts upon it to live more spontaneously its message! In an opposition of grace with nature we remain insanely divided even in ourselves, deprived of a psychical and moral balance.

Therefore for this we believe that the Christian life, and so much more the monastic life, cannot take away the necessary relationship that we have with the creation in which we live and the relationship with time in which our life takes place.

We therefore will continue to celebrate the four Season for the reasons for which we have always sanctified them. The Advent Tempora, in preparation for Christmas, will be lived in a missionary spirit to obtain light and grace for the souls that have not known Christ, the Saviour of the world, and in fact all the Church which ought to reveal to the people that still languish in the 'shadows of idolatry and of Islamicism'. These words, which are from Pius XI, certainly do not wish to be an accusation and a condemnation: the ecumenical climate to which the Second Vatican Council has introduced us excludes a purely negative attitude in our encounters with other religions. Nevertheless we cannot renounce the belief that Jesus be the unique Saviour of the world and much less the mission which He has conferred as testimony for all peoples. We would renounce being Christian if we were to renounce our mission, if we did not feel obliged to reveal Christ, to communicate to the world the grace of a redemption that Christ has wished to communicate through the Church visible of which we are a part, a living organ and sacrament of His love.

We will live the Season of Lent in a spirit of penance and of reparation for our sins and of all the brothers and sisters with whom we feel ourselves a part. How can we celebrate the Lord's Easter if we do not feel ourselves participants in a redemption which we have implored in the consciousness of our unworthiness, in the intense and burning sense of our unfaithfulness, in the absolute trust in the gift of love from the God who saves us? But how on the other hand could we pretend that this love is only for ourselves if in fact all have need of it? To the universal responsibility for sin the universal gift of love responds.

The Lenten Season ought to recall for us each year those living sentiments of collective responsibility for the sins of all humanity who remain unfaithful to their God; not knowing him and not loving him as they ought. In what way are we better than others? Or, rather, for what reasons should we not be the most blameworthy of all, for from the moment that He has first called us, he has given us more grace and has wanted that we continue the mission itself of the Church in the world?

The Spring Season, at the beginning of Lent, ought to bring about in us a more vivid sense of our responsibility; becoming more conscious of one thing with all, we ought to beg for forgiveness, for ourselves and for all to obtain this newness of life that is the grace of the Pascal Resurrection.

The Pentecost Season we celebrate because it shines forth increasingly as a sign and sacrament of God of the unity of the Church. It is the gift of the Spirit that humanity become one body, the body of Christ. Our prayer in these days should be to implore the gift of the Spirit so that it renews in our days the miracle of the newly-born Church when all the faithful were of one heart and one soul. How much ought to resound in us in these days the prayer of John XXIII when dying: 'Ut unum sint', 'May they be one', which was the prayer of Jesus Himself!

In the Season of September, at the end of the Community's year, we will lift up our humble prayer to God for the perseverence of the just, for the sanctification of monastic souls and that all the Church give even more witness to the presence of God upon earth in true living charity, in humility, in peace, in the pure joy of prayer. In these days we will pray that God multiply the vocations to the priesthood and to the religous life, we will ask of God to live even more intensely the ineffable mystery of the communion of saints.

The required prayers on the days of the four Seasons will be the litany which begins the Matins of the Resurrection. We would wish above all that in these days that the Mass, the Holy Communion and the Divine Office should have for us a more emphasized penitential quality. We would wish that to measure that it is possible that during these seasons there should be appropriate reading for deepening and meditating more seriously our fundamental intentions. A good thing would be the recital of the Litany of the Saints at these times.

We should continue to prescribe a free offering on the part of those who are in the Community. As much as shall be collected shall be distributed as was already determined. Always the destination of these collections should be free from taxation; from time to time a better destination should be considered for a living exercise of all in charity and because, as we are needy of the charity of God, so does He generously give to us participation in this that we are aware of the needs of our brothers and sisters.

First of all the Seasons are times of prayer. They lack a character of song and praise, or of religious exaltation - except perhaps that of September - but rather they are of supplication, of imploring, of prayer. It seems that God would make the life of the universe dependent upon the prayers of humanity, of the Church. What is realized in the four Seasons, one could say, is what is affirmed by Aristide of the Christian Church, that which is said by the Hebrew mystic of Israel, that which was always thought amongst the most ancient peoples: that the life of the universe depends upon our prayers, the sustaining of the creation. God has created things, then left to humanity the task of governing them, of assisting them. He makes dependent upon us the sustenance of the universe, its progress, but also its ruin.

Humanity alone does not have the responsibility regarding other people ('Of the death of the wicked, I will hold you accountable' said God to Ezekiel 3.18); God asks us to be responsible for all creation: all of the creation depends upon us.

Humanity exercises power over creation, continuing and cooperating with the divine action with prayer and supplication. Humanity's power remains thus so limited that we practically, in a direct way, can do very little, almost nothing. It seems therefore ridiculous for us to be entrusted with this mission, of the survival of humanity, and of that creation which flees not only from our control but also from our knowledge. It is so vast that we could not embrace it with our tools for control nor even with our imagination. To us is entrusted the survival of creation.

Not for nothing primitive peoples saw in the Season of September - in September begins the new year - that human prayer hindered the nothing that creation would rush towards. Everything seemed to fall, going towards death: human prayer recreated anew. making rise again each year that universe which God at the beginning had made from nothing. As today in the Mass the human act makes present the redemptive act of Christ, so in the archaic liturgy the human liturgical act in the four Seasons made present the act with which God had created things; with prayer, effectively, is rendered present the act of the Creator. Creation bounds anew out of nothing.

So then this creation can be on the Christian level even a redemption, a divinization of the world, which does not destroy the first conception that the primitive peoples had, then Israel, and finally the Church, through whom, for us, for me, is all entrusted; all depends upon me, from my prayer as if God Himself could tie up His hands and not want to work except through our help; through you is made present His creative act as through you is made present His redemptive act. Our powerfulness is the supplicating power of prayer: we can do all only through prayer which entreats. Our competence is achieved precisely in prayer. The Four Seasons ought to make us evermore conscious of this universal responsibility.

From this we understand the necessity of prayer in these times. So we ought always to live this responsibility, particularly living it (in reference to archaic religions) through the same astronomical rhythms, when the creation seems to undergo rough and dangerous passages. From the September equinox creation seems to decline towards nothing: the days decrease, the night advances, darkness seems to invade the earth, cold freezes it, numbs it, takes its life . . . it seems as if all goes precipitously towards death. But the Christian is called to prayer specially and solemnly in the Winter solstice. More even than for the Hebrew people this seems right since we ought to celebrate the beginning of the new year which not for nothing for us coincides with the birth of Christ, the birth of the 'Sol invictus', 'The Unconquerable Sun'.

In fact Christmas is the feast of the sun victorious over the shadows, because just after 22 December the nights begin to diminish and the light begins to grow a little. Thus the light conquers the darkness, Creation again renews itself.

That this time coincides for us Christians with Christmas is just, and even a marvellous thing. One sees how the intuition of the primitive peoples had an almost prophetic character: Creation itself is renewed, drawn anew from the shadows of sin in the birth of Jesus. But it depends upon you, humanity, - Jesus is born in fact for you -, that the Creation can rise up, survive, that the shadows of sin and of death all return to life, to light.

An immense weight of human responsibility such that we ought to feel the need for prayer, from the moment which the unique force that we have for responding to this responsibility is prayer! In no day of the year are we called so much to prayer as we are in these times.

But if the four Seasons always indicate a brusque and dangerous passage for creation, our prayer impies another, even an expiation, because Creation, according to the conception of primitive peoples, is precipated into nothing through our sin. And can we obtain from God a renewing of the act of Creation if we do not first repent, expiating this sin? This is because to prayer is always joined, in the four Seasons of the year, whether in the primitive liturgy or now in the Christian liturgy, the fast.

Penance and Prayer. Through expiation and penitential practices one seeks first to destroy the evil taking on the punishment for our sin, because penance implies the voluntary acceptance of a condemnation. If we accept it voluntarily, we take on the punishment through love and are absolved of the sin. Then, destroying the sin, your prayer can obtain that divine omnipotence again achieving that Creation that you expect from God and that God offers only as an answer to your prayer.

Thus in a few words what are the four Seasons: the universal responsibility of humanity in relation to God, who holds us accountable for the survival of all creation, and requires from us an answer for all our brothers and sisters. A sense therefore of a universal solidarity of ourselves in relation to creation, of humanity; solidarity for which we ought to submit to castigation, to punishment. And not only ought, but desire and with love accept the punishment for all the evil of creation, of the world, because undergoing the punishment, this evil can disappear from the beginning, and God through human prayer can intervene again and make Himself present in His creative act.

'It is through the prayer of the Christians that the world is sustained', said Aristide.

From which it is necessary that the Christian, in these days of the four Seasons, accept voluntarily the punishment for a sin, for a universal evil because our act of love can eliminate that evil and that prayer entreat the new intervention of a creative omnipotence that is also the omnipotence of love which redeems.

You are associated with Christ, you cannot separate yourself from Him, you live with Him the same task, the same mission, the same universal salvation. And not only, in those saved, you participate in this salvation, but you participate in the redemptive act of Christ. As He took upon Himself all the punishment for human sin in the Passion, so can you take the punishment for this evil of the world in your penance.

And our penance is the voluntary acceptance of our punishment, of our suffering, a loving acceptance in patience. And then even a little of fasting, which won't do much harm!

But our penance and our prayer ought to be in love, because the same passion of Jesus would have been of no value at all if it were not done as an act of love where He, bending to the will of the Father, offered all to the infinite majesty of God.

We ought to live the four Seasons in union with Christ. Justly even in the four Seasons the Church reassumes all its liturgical acts in the Mass, making present and alive the act of Christ. And all of us who live the four Seasons above all will be participating in this mystery.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE SEASONS IN THE C.F.D.

Intentions for prayer in the Seasons:

In the Autumn Season prayer is for the sanctification of Consecrated souls and for priestly Vocations.

The offerings are destined for the Families' Treasuries for Requiem Masses.

In the Advent Season prayer is for non-Christian religions.

The offering is for missionaries.

In the Lenten Season prayer is for sinners.

The offering is destined for the poor.

In the Pentecost Season prayer is for the unity of the Church.

The offering is intended for our Houses of the Common Life or for the Families' Funds for the travel expenses of its own members participating in the periodic reunions held at the Centre.

The offering for the members of the Third and Second Branches is set at the equivalent of a day's work.

All the Branches are required to pray the Litany from the Matins of the Resurrection in all the three days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday).

Finally the Fourth Branch must observe the Fast and the Abstinence in all three days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday).

For the Third and Second Branch the Fast and the Abstinence is only observed on Friday.

For the First Branch there are no obligations, but it is recommended that one conform as much as possible to the next two Branches.

Concerning the Fast, in particular during Lent. In the Houses of the Common Life Wednesday and Friday the Fast consists of a normal breakfast, but sober. Lunch is one dish and Dinner is tea and bread. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday one should want to limit oneself to bread and water.

During Lent sweets, candies, cakes and puddings are not eaten.

The Father wrote in the January 1993 Notiziario: 'It seems right to suggest and ask some things that can make us enter into the spirit of this sacred time better. I suggest that those who smoke abstain from smoking until Easter. I suggest a Fast from televion, reduced only to news or cultural programmes; eliminating the reading of novels or magazines which only nourish a useless curiosity. To those who live in Houses of the Common Life, a reduction of correspondence to only two letters to one's parents until Easter is prescribed and the abolition of the use of the telephone except in grave emergencies'.

PRAYER, FASTING, ALMS-GIVING

Prayer, fasting, alms-giving are the three works with the Church calls us to overcome in some way our mediocrity, our powerless to suffer with that love with which Jesus suffered.

Alms-giving is the other face of penance and also more efficacious; it is a sacrifice because it is a stripping. But alms-giving, concrete help, ought to be only the sign authenticating our prayer: therefore valued. And it can be the sign of humility where we consider our penance to be a small thing and having need of manifesting itself in a real way in so much as to join it to the giving of what we possess.

We must give above all importance to the Litany that, being a particular prayer that distinguishes these days from the others, ought to give the tone to our life in the days of the four Seasons. To give the tone is to say to give to each one the sense of our responsibility in relation to the others, because the monastic life cannot only be lived for one's own salvation and for one's own sanctification, but through the redemption of humanity, through pleading for that help from them for what they need.

The intention of the prayers of the four Seasons of the Church are limited by our poverty, but that does not reduce our solidarity and our responsibility that in the first place ought to be in each one of us altogether, universally.

We should therefore live the particular intentions that the Church suggests to us, that the Community recommends to us from time to time, without ever forgetting that these intentions do not exclude the universal task of making present, during our prayer, the creative act itself of God who draws creation from nothing. who draws it anew from its abyss, redeems it, transfigures it and divinizes it raising it up to Himself.

HOW TO LIVE THE FOUR SEASONS

Monastic life is a pilgrimage that does not pause; because we ought to live with a consciousness and a depth that increases even more greatly during the sacred days of the Seasons. Here are some of Father's exhortations drawn from the retreat made at Padua, 26 November 1984.

The Season of September. Our life passes like a lamp and without perceiving it we find ourselves confronting eternity. We ought now to open ourselves to divine joy, to the presence of God, to His Beatitudes, to His infinite ocean into which our life will soon be dispersed. All that we live here below is only a preparation, a message of the infinite and eternal joy which awaits all of us. We should live, therefore, this Season in the expectancy, in the hope, in the desire of the blessed life.

The Season of Advent. We ought to live in that waiting in which all people in all times have lived and live now before the revelation of God. Even if they do not know precisely what they await, nevertheless they continue to wait. This waiting continues for those who have not yet known God and continues even for us because we have always known the Christ too little who comes each year and each year we ought to know Him better, yearn more for Him and make it so that He is revealed to us ever more fully. It is the missionary fervour which ought to animate us; it is the uniting of ourselves with all of humanity awaiting a liberation. First of all we ought to feel the need for us to know God better, to always hope ever more for His grace, to open the soul to the gift which He makes to us of Himself; thus to ask and to obtain that many souls open themselves to a true aspiration to Christ as Lord, guiding them in the obscurity which surrounds us and goes before us on the way which leads us to the Celestial Country.

The Season of Lent. We ask that all souls recognise their sins and implore pardon of God. Each one feels that one cannot be saved by oneself alone, because whoever is satisfied in the self, who believes in one's own means for one's own salvation, already excludes oneself from what is a free gift of divine mercy. We ought to seek to deepen for ourselves and for the world the sense of sin of which God alone can free us; but God cannot give you salvation against your will which ought to consent to God, recognizing your sin and imploring His mercy. There is always sin, it is true, but today there are very few souls who feel truly the need for divine mercy.

The Season of Pentecost. This asks of us the abandonment to the action of the Holy Spirit because it is He who moves us, makes us live, to become the form of the human spirit, which is a principle of life. St Paul says, 'All who are guided by the Spirit of God, these are God's sons and daughters' (Romans 8.14).

Let us, therefore, be carried by the Spirit, yielding to His actions.

At the same time we ought to feel how necessary it is that all humanity be in some way invested with the Holy Spirit to continue in the pilgrimage of life that raises us above ourselves even in the ineffable communion with God; we ought to consider that the Holy Spirit does not only live in our heart but also in the heart of the universe. In Wisdom we read:

Her beauty shows the salvation of the universe through the splendour which gathers all things invested and transfigured by the Spirit of God.

For this the Church sings on the day of Pentecost:

It is more beautiful in Latin:

Turn to Part Three of the Vademecum

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