Viva Memoria N. 37

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Viva Memoria n. 37

The Redemptoristine's Theological Journal

November 2015

Viva Memoria 37

Editorial

Viva Memoria, n. 37

The Redemptoristine’s Theological Journal

November, 2015

Dear Sisters, Dear Readers,

While there are rather diverse and varied themes running through these articles we, have agreed that there is a common thread weaving these together into a general theme, namely: “Mother Mary Celeste, St. Alphonsus and the religious family of --- “The Most Holy Redeemer” --- which they began and which continues today in this year ‘Dedicated to the Consecrated Life’.

We have chosen as the lead article by Rev. Michael Brehl, C.Ss.R., Father General, entitled: “St. Alphonsus and Mary, the Mother of God.” Yes, Mary the Mother of God held a very special place in the heart and spirit of St. Alphonsus and Father Brehl gives the reason: “St. Alphonsus believed that since God has given us Jesus through Mary, then the surest way for us to come to Jesus is through Mary.” “Jesus and Celeste” – by Sister Giovanna Lauritano, O.Ss.R. of Scala, and its subtitle: “The Gospels become life and life becomes the Gospels,” emphasizes the importance that our Mother Celeste found in the heart of the Gospel. There she found Christ in the images which He used in His parables and teachings. Sr. Giovanna has presented also some M. Celeste's images from the “Dialogues” (as the sea, the bird, crystal, echo, the dolphin, the seal) and she has shared her insights on them with us. This article was edited by Maddalena Vuolo.

“The Spirituality of Maria Celeste Crostarosa” is another inspired article by Rev. Emilio Lage, C.Ss.R.! Again in this reflection on the spirituality of Mother Celeste, we find Christ in all His redemptive mysteries. “Christ, the Word, the man God, is contemplated (by Mother Celeste) in the fullness of His being and his action. ... it is Christ’s entire life that she has in mind:” ( Father Lage). Father stresses that apart from the divine inspiration, M. Celeste drew her ideas from the Scripture, the liturgy

Viva Memoria 37 and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Thus it appears that she had a significant religious culture and knew some theological notions used at her times. The culmination of her spirituality is the Eucharist. Her spirituality may be a valid proposition for all the whole Church.

Sister Gabrielle of the Dublin community and a member of the Service Board is preparing some articles on Formation, in the hope that they will help formators to implement the “Ratio Formationis.” Here we present Part 1 on the theme of “Chastity.” Sister proposes that “intimacy and affective maturity- ... must be found within one’s being at least in seed form and in a human and spiritual harmony.”

“Preaching the Gospel Ever Anew in the Spirit of St. Alphonsus,” by Rev. Brendan J. Kelly, C.Ss.R. brings us again to the ‘spirit’ of St. Alphonsus, specifically in the context of Alphonsus the ‘Missionary.’ Father Kelly explains how Alphonsus: “... saw himself called not just to see Christ in the poor, but rather to identify himself with the Redeemer ‘who became poor that we might become rich’” (2 Cor. 8:9).

“A LOVELY FIFTY DAYS – PENTECOST” - a short but very meaningful reflection for the Redemptoristines by Sr. Anna Maria Ceneri, O.Ss.R. The living flames of the Spirit of Love, shone on Mother Maria Celeste and the first Redemptoristines on Pentecost, 1731, the birthday of our Order. Sr. Anna Maria quotes our Mother Celeste: “Live only on love, in love and for love, burn with love until you become totally and without any difference, fire with Fire!” This is Pentecost!

Sister Ewa Klaczak , O.Ss.R. of Bielsko-Biala and her article: “What does Pope Francis remind us about in the Year of Consecrated Life” brings us back to where we began – ‘... this year Dedicated to the Consecrated Life.’ As the Holy Father exhorts religious to “live the present with passion,” Sister Ewa shows us how Mother Maria Celeste lived her consecrated life with ‘passion.’ Other articles in this #37 show us how St. Alphonsus lived his consecrated life with ‘passion.’ Alphonsus and Celeste: “experts in communion,” with Jesus, Redeemer.

Your editors:

Sr. Joan Calver, Sr. Gabrielle Fox, Sr. Magdalena Schumann, Sr. Ewa Dobrzelecka, Sr. Imma Di Stefano

Viva Memoria 37

INDEX

St. Alphonsus and Mary, the Mother of God - Father General Michael Brehl, C.Ss.R., Rome

Jesus and Celeste - The Gospels become life and life becomes the Gospels” – Giovanna Lauritano, O.Ss.R., Scala

The Spirituality of Maria Celeste Crostarosa - Emilio Lage, C.Ss.R., Rome

Formation part I - Chastity – Gabrielle Fox, O.Ss.R., Dublin

Preaching the Gospel Ever Anew in the Spirit of St. Alphonsus - Brendan J. Kelly, C.Ss.R., Rome

A LOVELY FIFTY DAYS – PENTECOST - Anna Maria Ceneri, O.Ss.R., Saint Agatha dei Goti

What does Pope Francis remind us about in the Year of Consecrated Life - Ewa Klaczak , O.Ss.R., Bielsko-Biała

AN APPENDIX

BEFORE THE CROSS – REDEMPTORISTINE NUNS: LIVING MEMORIES OF JESUS the REDEEMER - Archbishop Robert J. Carlson

THE REDEMPTORISTINES OF HUAMBO - A new O.Ss.R. foundation in Huambo, Angola, Sisters of Diabo, Burkina Faso.

A ‘Redemptoristine’ Prayer for the 25th Redemptorist General Chapter – S. Joan Calver, O.Ss.R., Thailand)

Viva Memoria 37

Translators

Sr. Petra Maria Amershuber, O.Ss.R., Dublin John Bradbury, Australia Fr. Sylwester Cabała, C.Ss.R.,Tuchów, Poland Elisabeth Chestnut, U.S.A. Fr. Mirosław Dawlewicz, C.Ss.R., Poland – Russia Peter Gross, Germany Fr. Emilo Lage, CSsR, Rome Rafael Leon, Puerto Rico Fr. Patrice Nyanda, C.Ss.R., Sr. Magdalena Schumann, O.Ss.R., Dublin Sr.Maria d’Amato, O.Ss.R., Scala, Italy Sr. Hilde de Paepe, O.Ss.R., Dublin Sr. Ewa Dobrzelecka, O.Ss.R., Bielsko-Biała Alena Diabolkova, O.Ss.R, Dublin Pictures: Sr. Maria Volkova, O.Ss.r., Keżmarok Małgorzata Batko, Kraków, Poland, Alena Diabolkova, O.Ss.R, Dublin and others….

Thank you Dziękujemy vielen Dank ขอบคุณมาก RingRaziamo Ngibonga Ďakujem ありがとう Gracias Merci

Viva Memoria 37

S. Alphonsus and Mary, the Mother of God

Father General, Michael Brehl, CSsR

Introduction:

It has been said that the story of each vocation is very different from one person to another, but all have one point in common: the gentle and decisive intervention of Mary. However, among the saints there are some for whom this relationship with Mary, the mother of Jesus, is lived much more intensely. There are some for whom their relationship with Mary is much more of a son or daughter with a mother. Among these ‘Marian saints’, we can certainly number St. Alphonsus. This in no way diminishes the absolute centrality of the person of Jesus Christ in his spirituality, theology, and morality. His very centre is distinctly ‘Christological’.

St. Alphonsus believed that since God has given us Jesus through Mary, then the surest way for us to come to Jesus is through Mary. In fact, Alphonsus is so thoroughly ‘Marian’ because he is so completely ‘Christological’. This is the first and fundamental basis on which we can speak of St. Alphonsus and Mary.

1. The Family Life, Culture, Education of Alphonsus

At the time of Alphonsus’ childhood and adolescence, there were 214 Sanctuaries dedicated to Mary in Naples. The co-patron of the City of Naples was Our Lady of Carmel, the “Brown Madonna”.

The parents of Alphonsus lived and breathed in this Marian culture – and it marked their son. Alphonsus was born at their ‘country’ residence of Marianella. He was baptized at Santa Maria delle Vergini at his mother’s insistence, and he was consecrated to Mary, receiving ‘Maria’ as his second of nine names.

Alphonsus was raised to pray before various statues and images of Mary, especially, to pray the rosary. Graduating in 1713 from the University in Naples, he professed the ‘blood oath’ to defend the Marian privilege of the Immaculate Conception. For him, this was not a mere formality. Years

Viva Memoria 37 later, he renewed the oath he had taken so solemnly at the age of 16, and he wrote of the significance of this act in The Glories of Mary.

From 1715, he became a member of the pious Congregation of S. Maria della Misericordia, and also the Congregation of the Visitation. In August 1723, the ‘Year of his Conversion’, after losing the case concerning Amatrice, and after participating in both the Novena and then the Octave of the Assumption, he decided to abandon the ‘world’, and consecrate his life to God, leaving his sword, the sign of his nobility, at the altar in the church of the Madonna della Mercede. Again, years later, looking on the image of the Madonna della Mercede, he said that ‘It was she who took me from the world and made me enter the clerical state’.

As a young cleric, he became a member of the ‘Company of Santa Maria sucurre miseris’ – the help of the miserable. In 1729-1730, he came to the small shrine of Santa Maria dei Monti above Scala, where he could read the mysteries of the Redemption in the Madonna with the child in one arm and the bible in the other. Here he received the inspiration for his missionary project.

Of course, we also know of the many extraordinary experiences of Mary which marked his life: the appearances of Mary, and her words in the grotto at Scala; the experiences in Foggia, Amalfi, Castel S. Giorgio, Arienzo, and many other places.

In 1762, while in Rome to be ordained Bishop, he made a pilgrimage to Loreto – as far as we know, it was the only formal pilgrimage he made.

In 1787, as he was dying in Pagani, he held an image of Mary in his hands. At the sound of the Angelus, he breathed his last.

There can be no doubt of the love that Alphonsus bore for May, the mother of Jesus. His life was marked by her constant presence. He knew her as his own mother. If further proof of this relationship were required, we have only to look at his writings on Mary, his prayers, his paintings, his songs.

But always, this love for Mary was lived in the context of Jesus Christ as the absolute centre of his life. He believed and witnessed to the fact that there is no Marian theology or spirituality apart from Christology. It is Jesus who is central, and from whom Marian devotion takes its meaning.

Viva Memoria 37

2. Marian devotion in the culture of the time

It is important to remember that in the context of the popular piety of 18th century Naples, the Blessed Virgin Mary held a very important place – the 214 sanctuaries to her in the city itself testifies to this, as do the devotions, especially the rosary and the scapular, and the art and music. However, something was changing.

Among the educated classes, including certain ecclesiastical authorities and theologians, there was a growing anti-Marian sentiment. This was due to the impact of the enlightenment, the growing influence of the Jansenist spirit and theology, and what were perceived as the Marian excesses of the pre-reformation age which some maintained put Mary in the ‘place of Christ’.

The growing influence of Jansenist spirituality criticized the popular devotion to Mary for excessive sentimentalism, and an erroneous trust in Mary’s power to protect and save. Those influenced by the Jansenist theology were especially provoked by the ‘misguided and pernicious’ title of Mary as ‘our hope’. Another title that evoked the anger of the Jansenist or Rigorist school was Mary as the ‘Mother of Mercy’. This school of spirituality was also totally against the ‘dangerous’ doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as an affront to the divine justice faced with the common depravity of all human nature. It is in this climate that Alphonsus continued not only to practice his personal living and life-giving Marian spirituality, but he zealously promoted it for all people as a sure way to Jesus Christ, plentiful redemption, and a moral Christian life.

For Alphonsus, Marian devotion was not just a personal or aesthetic choice, but a clear option for an orthodox theology of mercy and grace, leading to communion with Jesus Christ the Redeemer.

3. Mary in Art, Literature and Music

In the Neapolitan culture at the time of Alphonsus, Mary was most often pictured as a regal, powerful and distant figure. She was placed on a pedestal. Certainly, she was a model to be emulated, especially by the upper classes, in her culture, beauty, chastity, etc. But she was presented as somewhat remote from the everyday experience of ordinary people, especially the poor. Images and statues of Mary were usually crowned, robed in splendour, even with a sceptre. This was the image of the Queen –

Viva Memoria 37 like the ‘Infanta’ of the Spanish Royal Family, or the great Catholic Queen, Isabel.

Hymns were usually sung to her in Latin, and with complicated musical settings. We can think of some of the ‘Ave Marias’ which we continue to use in concerts today. As a model, the emphasis was placed on images of ‘courtly love’, chastity, obedience, passivity.

Alphonsus develops a very different approach to Mary. Consider his own paintings of her: she is portrayed as a young girl, in peasant dress, with a gentle smile. Not a court portrait for sure. Or the paintings he commissioned and used on the missions, like the Divina Pastora, a large copy of which hangs in the Monastery of Sant’Agata, his gift to the Nuns. In this painting, Mary is wearing a straw hat, as is her Son, the Redeemer. They are surrounded by sheep. She is a shepherd – exercising a mission and ministry – and she seems to be delighted that she is leading the sheep to her Son who is playing with them.

Think of the hymns that Alphonsus writes, in Neapolitan or Italian, and which could be and still are sung by ordinary people: lullabies for the baby, ‘Tu scendi dalle stelle’, really a hymn addressed to Jesus in which Mary plays a major part, ‘O Bella Mia Speranza’, which flies in the face of the Jansenist reservations about hope – and communicates to ordinary people a sense of hope-filled optimism.

The peasants and poor then, as now, often experienced that those who love them have no power to help them, and those who have power do not love them. Alphonsus presents Mary, and the Redeemer, as those who love them and have power to help them. This is revolutionary. A Madonna who is a shepherdess, close to the sheep, the smell of the sheep on her dress and apron – This is a powerful symbol of a woman in mission and ministry usually reserved to men. A mother who sings a lullaby to her son who shivers in the cold. A young girl who receives the Holy Spirit without full understanding of all that this will mean…

4. Alphonsus and a theology and spirituality of Mary

In this presentation, I cannot fully develop the theology and spirituality of Mary which Alphonsus presents in quite many books,

Viva Memoria 37 sermons, treatises, as well as in his prayers and art. So, briefly, I would like to underline some elements of his Marian spirituality which I think are still relevant today. I’ll begin by examining the titles for Mary which he used most frequently.

a. Preferred titles for Mary: i. Mother

Above all, Alphonsus relates to Mary as ‘Mother’. This is the word he uses whenever he addresses her. He was deeply aware that when Jesus entrusted Mary to the beloved disciple from the cross, he was first of all entrusting the disciple to his mother. Alphonsus realized that Jesus was mandating Mary with a mission – to become the mother of all believers. She is a missionary. And it is her maternal care which provides the framework for all Marian devotion.

This emphasis of Alphonsus finds an echo in Pope Francis. Fr. Majorano spoke of this similarity in an interview earlier this year. This particular emphasis on the mission entrusted to Mary from the cross finds explicit mention in Evangelii Gaudium (#285-286). Pope Francis affirms that there is a “Marian style to the Church’s work of evangelization. Whenever we look to Mary we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness.”(EG 288).

Is it any wonder that when he visited Naples, Francis made reference to The Glories of Mary with respect and affection.

ii. ‘Mother of Mercy’

After the simple name of ‘Mother’, and intimately connected with it, Alphonsus prays to Mary as ‘Mother of Mercy’. This title is found throughout his writing, on practically every page of The Glories of Mary, and in so many of his sermons and prayers. As a mother, it is not possible for Mary to be anything other than ‘mother of mercy’. Her one desire is to communicate God’s mercy and redemption to all. As some have written commenting on Alphonsus, in Mary, the justice of God and the compassion/mercy of God meet.

For Alphonsus, as Mother of Mercy, Mary is not only concerned for our souls – but she also points us to the corporal works of mercy, and care for whole persons – body and soul. Alphonsus belonged to the

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Misericordiella – a pious congregation to care for the poor, to visit the sick, to accompany those about condemned to die.

Alphonsus recounts many ‘esempi’, stories of the mercy of Mary for the abandoned poor. And he bases the first part of his Glories of Mary as a commentary on the Salve Regina, mater Misericordiae. The mercy of Mary flows from her mandate to be our Mother, the mother of all believers, a mission entrusted to her on the cross. As sons and daughters of such a mother, we are called to the works of Mercy ourselves.

Perhaps it is an act of Providence that the Holy Father has proclaimed an extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy as we are honouring Mother of Perpetual Help. This is truly a ‘Redemptorist’ opportunity, and for us, a ‘Marian’ opportunity as well.

iii. ‘Mary, our Hope’

It seems that no other title for Mary could arouse the anger of the Jansenist and Rigorist School as much as this one – Mary, our Hope. With such a pessimistic view of human nature, and the conviction that only a few would be saved, for them it was heresy to speak of Mary as our hope. Christ is our only hope, and even then it is best not to be presumptuous as those who will be saved is already determined, and there is no hope for others.

For this reason, when Alphonsus chose the frontispiece for The Glories of Mary, a picture of Mary with the words ‘spes nostra’ – ‘our hope’, he was making a clear statement of his conviction that God’s redemption is plentiful, for everyone. And that God’s mercy has no limits. Mary becomes for us a sign of this hope – O bella mia speranza.

Alphonsus’ hope is not presumptuous, but he is convinced that God gives everyone the grace to pray, and that everyone who prays will receive the grace necessary for salvation. Just as a mother never despairs of her children, so God never closes the door to us. And Mary is a sign and guarantee of this hope for each one of us.

iv. Immaculate Conception

As you are all aware, Alphonsus dedicated his new Institute to the patronage of the Immaculate Conception. He was convinced of this unique privilege of Mary, granted to prepare her to be a fitting temple of the Holy Spirit and Mother of God. But he also believed that this privilege is granted

Viva Memoria 37 to her as a sign of hope for us – what she has received from the beginning is what we also hope to receive – copiosa redemptio, plentiful redemption. For Mary, the grace of redemption prevented her from falling. For us, the grace of redemption can raise us up after the fall.

The Immaculate Conception clearly demonstrates what God can do with our fragile and wounded human nature. For Mary is redeemed as surely as we are. Again, the Jansenists and Rigorists cried out against the Immaculate Conception. Human nature is hopelessly depraved, and all are doomed. Alphonsus could not accept this pessimistic view of humanity, nor this limited notion of God’s grace and mercy.

In his spirited defense and treatment of the Immaculate Conception, Alphonsus defended two very important principles of Catholic orthodoxy – the sensus fidelium, the sense of the faithful; and the ever present action of the Holy Spirit guiding the Church in doctrine and worship. Revelation is not a static moment in time, long past. Rather, the Holy Spirit continues to guide the Church, and the People of God, through faith and popular piety, doctrine and worship.

v. ‘Help of the Miserable’

I think that it was no accident that Alphonsus transferred to the pious association of S. Maria, succurre miserabilis when he was accepted as a cleric for the Archdiocese of Naples. Through this association, he continued the very practical and concrete actions of help, of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, for the abandoned and the poor.

In his writings, he often refers to Mary as the Help of the miserable and the poor. Was God providentially preparing us through this experience of Alphonsus to accept the Icon of Perpetual Help? Alphonsus never knew this devotion and Icon personally – unless he happened to visit St. Matthew’s while in Rome for his episcopal ordination. But the Icon of Perpetual Help certainly embodies all these mysteries of motherhood, mercy, redemption, hope, tenderness, and perpetual help.

vi. Madonna of Ransom

We cannot forget that Alphonsus left his sword at the feet of the Madonna della mercede – the Madonna of Ransom, of Redemption, of Mercy. In this gesture, we catch up a glimpse of the project and promise of

Viva Memoria 37 the Institute he would found. From the very beginning, Mary has marked his life, his dreams, his mission, and ours.

vii. Queen of Apostles

Alphonsus did honour Mary as his queen, and he believed that she transformed what it means to be queen. After all, his commentary on the Salve Regina invoked her under this title. But he goes on to underline that true royal dignity is found in service. Mary is that queen who has the power to help the poor, and who knows and loves the poor. They are abandoned no longer. As Queen of Apostles she seeks them out, and accompanies every mission .

b. Works of Alphonsus on Mary:

Alphonsus wrote many works addressed to Mary, or about Mary. As he writes in the preface to the Glories of Mary, and repeats on several occasions, “There are those who protest that they have a great love for the Blessed Mother, but they do not speak of her often, and they do not speak with her daily. Such shows little proof of love.” This could certainly not be said of Alphonsus! Even in those works which are not dedicated especially to Mary, there is scarcely a page without a prayer, a reference, or an example invoking her presence. However, the context in which Alphonsus speaks and writes about her is the context of his Christo-centric theology, spirituality, morality, and devotion. Jesus Christ always is at the centre.

Two good examples of this Christo-centric Mariology are the Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin, and The Glories of Mary. Both of these works, among the most popular writings of Alphonsus, are dedicated to Jesus Christ: “My most loving Redeemer and Lord Jesus Christ, I, your unworthy servant, know how much pleasure anyone gives you who strives to praise and glorify your most holy Mother. You love her so tenderly. I know how much you desire to see her known and loved by everybody. And so I have resolved to publish this book which treats of her glories. I do not know to whom I could better dedicate it than to you, who have her glory so much at heart.”

Alphonsus intends his Marian prayers and writings to increase the confidence that his readers have in God’s copiosa redemptio, to deepen their love and devotion for the Mother of Jesus, to correct the errors and exaggerations of the Jansenists and Rigorists, and to provide preachers with

Viva Memoria 37 thoughtful reflections to help them not only talk about Mary, but to speak to her, and so to move others to a greater love and confidence in her. Among his most popular works about Mary are the following:

Prayers to the Blessed Virgin for every day of the week i. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary ii. The Glories of Mary

However, Alphonsus also wrote many other smaller treatises, sermons, letters, and articles in larger works. As well, he often writes a thought about Mary or a prayer to her in his works such as the Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ.

5. Alphonsus and pastoral practice with Mary

For Alphonsus, all his prayer, writing, devotion and practice is essentially missionary. So, it is no wonder that he understands Mary as the first and greatest missionary who must accompany his Redemptorists on every mission. He believes that she has the power to attract the most hardened sinners to God and God’s divine mercy. He compares her to Ruth, who gleans the fields of all the wheat that the harvesters have passed over. He believes that for Mary, no person can be overlooked - no matter how sinful, humble, poor, abandoned, uneducated or bitter.

a. Mary as the missioner

As I stated above, in his understanding of Mary as the missionary disciple par excellence, Alphonsus prepares the way for a more mature Mariology. This Mariology finds an echo in the writings of Pope Francis, especially in Evangelii Gaudium. Here in Brazil, you know that Mary, nossa Mae Aparecida, has accompanied the Redemptorist missionaries through the length and breadth of this country. As well, Mother of Perpetual Help - here in Brazil, in other countries across America Latina, and indeed in every continent, - has proven to be the most effective missionary presence announcing copiosa redemptio for all, but especially for the abandoned poor.

On this note, I think that I will conclude this presentation. Thank you for your kind attention. I have very much enjoyed preparing for this meeting. The invitation to speak about Mary and Alphonsus has given me the opportunity to read again the writings of our founder, and to immerse

Viva Memoria 37 myself once more in his spirit of filial devotion to her, and with her, to Jesus the Redeemer.

In the Spirit of our Founder, it is very important that during this Jubilee Year of Perpetual Help, we not only speak about Mary, explaining the Icon and tradition. It is most important that we speak with Mary, and teach and invite others to do the same. She is not only our model, but also our helper, our intercessor, our friend, and above all, our Mother.

Our Constitution 32 beautifully captures this spirit, which I hope will animate our year of celebration:

Let them take the Blessed Virgin Mary as their model and helper. For she went on her pilgrim way in faith, and embraced with her whole heart the saving will of God. She dedicated herself completely as a handmaid of the Lord to the person of her Son and to his work, and thus served the mystery of redemption. Indeed she still serves it, as the perpetual help of God’s people in Christ. Therefore, let them relate to her as a mother with all the love and veneration they owe her as sons…

Viva Memoria 37

Giovanna LAURITANO, O.Ss.R., Scala

(INTRODUCTION by Maddalena Vuolo)

This series of reflections is based on the Spiritual Dialogues of Mother Celeste Crostarosa. This work was written over a long period of time, 1724 – 1751 and is considered by biographers and critics of the Venerable as a diary “sui generis’ (born of itself) whose main feature is dialogues with her Spouse.

The Dialogues also contain many images, similar to many natural brushstrokes which elevate the mind and the spirit.

The communicative power of images has always accompanied man in his human and divine interactions. The “burning bush” of the Old Testament, “the eye of a needle” and “the mustard seed” of the New are examples of a “visual” language that is the medium for the transmission of contents and profound messages. The Venerable accepts this typology of language as a preferential means for transmitting her intense mystical experience. A young nun of enclosure in the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer in Scala was attracted by the images put forward by the Venerable, probably because they reminded her of a natural context well known to her, the same that inspired the Venerable Mother Crostarosa herself in the 1700s and only partly modified by the passage of time, but basically eloquent because of their beauty, today as well as yesterday.

One image in particular brought back a personal experience to the young author which led her to the Divine Reality: “the drop of water is lost in the ocean, so that she herself may become the ocean.” And one image draws forth another and they all lead her to God…

Thus was born the idea of locating the Crostarosan text as a kind of bridge between the Gospels and life. The fascination of the images which evoke sentiments and emotions is inductive to an encounter with God, and this is the connecting thread behind the selection of reflections.

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Some of the most vivid and significant images, extrapolated from the Dialogues, can be linked to the Gospels and used as meditations.

The immediate and polished language of the reflections responds to the style of the readers, including young ones, who are in search of authentic and long-lasting values. The young author asks the reader to complete the picture drawn by the Venerable with her own inks and shading, which would then lead to a deeper understanding of the works of the Venerable Mother and a much wider public knowledge of the charism of her Rule.

My profound thanks are addressed to the entire Redemptoristine Community of Scala for strongly supporting this publication.

We hope for other suggestions about the spiritual life from the nuns and whoever are close and drawing close to the evangelical message by means of the Venerable Mother.

THE OCEAN

“If anyone wishes to follow me, let him renounce himself, take up his cross every day and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his own life shall lose it, but he who will lose his own life for me, shall save it.” (Lk. 9: 23-24).

“You have been showing me, in this Holy Communion, how You are one enormous ocean of perfect and infinite goodness, and I am like a drop of water falling into You and changing into that enormous ocean, where, once my being is lost, I see myself becoming an ocean of every goodness, in which, when I have lost the knowledge of my limited and miserable being, and my littleness, I sense a new being, enormous and divine, in which no fear is felt, nor the affliction of time; but instead there is a force, a power, an infinite greatness and a goodness without limits”. (From Dialogue IX).

Reading the Gospel with life and life with the Gospel… The practical experience of Mother Celeste can help us to understand the true and profound meaning of the words of Jesus, even those which at times can seem hard, even outside place and time… Like for example this discourse

Viva Memoria 37 on losing our own life in order to find it. But why Lord, do You, the Loving God of life, ask us to lose it? Is it perhaps a strange form of masochism? You have given us life and now you want us to let it go? Why? And how?

Between saying and doing … in between is the ocean! Yes, the ocean indeed! I do not know if Celeste in her time actually knew this proverb. I don’t believe so! It is a fact that the horizon in Scala has the colour of the ocean and from it our Mother has drawn the key to the interpretation of this passage from Luke’s Gospel. God is the Ocean, and we are little drops of water. Becoming aware of this is a fundamental step. God is the Creator, and we are the creatures. We often hear it said that many drops of water together make a bucketful of water, perhaps a basinful and in an extreme case, a small lake! Never an ocean… The infinite Ocean is God alone. What then must our courage be? That of plunging ourselves into this ocean and “when we have lost our own being, we see ourselves become an ocean of every good.” Yes, losing our own being. This is what it means to lose our own lives. It does not mean putting an end to ourselves. Here courage means abandoning our own little and insignificant ego in order to “be transformed” into God. I am no longer a drop of water, I am the ocean… It is a fact that at times it is convenient to be drops of water, and taking pleasure in feeling powerless in not being able to irrigate any field, or water any arid land. Instead we are called to be the ocean, the open and unconfined ocean, the ocean of goodness.

All that drops of water can do are to plunge themselves… it is the ocean which transform them into itself… In the proverbs of Jesus, what is abandoned is never lost but always earned! The drop is made of water and is naturally attracted to the Ocean, just like the soul is infinite and naturally longs to unite herself to the Infinite.

THE SEAL

“Do not earn the bread which perishes, but the one which lasts unto eternal life, and which the Son of man will give you. Because upon it God the Father has placed his seal” (Jn. 6:27).

“Sweetest Spouse of my soul, my Lord, the one and only breath of my spirit, in the bosom of the eternal Father You are like a seal in the hands of Him who engraves it, for this is exactly how I find

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You, with which all the just souls are stamped with the source of justice. With this seal of love many chosen souls are stamped and, from one alone, many inspired portraits of Your unique Love are engraved. (From Dialogue I).

In the Bible the image and category of the seal occurs many times and certainly the Venerable Mother must have been inspired by it. The Greek word for “seal” is σφραγίς (sfraghìs), which appears in Italian as “sfregio”, with a rather negative meaning. Nonetheless, a “sfregio”, a seal, remains something indelible, which leaves a sign, and indicates “belonging”. The Greek authors used to place their sfraghìs (signature!) on a written work, and it was a species of copyright!.

In the same way God the Father places upon each one of us, on every soul, his own “autograph” … We are His work! Like a skilful sculptor imprints his seal on us, the Son Himself, makes us the image and likeness of Him who is Love. And so we are in the heart of the Gospel, and in the heart of Crostarosan spirituality.

Engraved with the seal which is Christ, we are inspired portraits of Him, the living Memorial of the love with which the Father has loved us by sending us the Son. It can seem like a play on words, but in fact it is reality. We are works of art, master-pieces in the hands of God, with all of us having within us the “form of sanctity!” The mission of the Christian is one of becoming aware of the prodigy we are, not in order to glorify ourselves, but so that each of us can recognize in herself the form that makes her an image of God and a child of the Light. Certainly, if we believe we have been made by our own hands, it will be difficult to “convince” others, since in truth we are not very “famous”! We are intelligent beings … we show the signature written within us… The seal is original and never goes out of fashion. It is Jesus’ own seal!

THE MOUNTAIN

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever is humbled will be exalted”. (Lk. 14:11)

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“I am a mountain of boundless greatness, and I have the peak of this mountain in heaven and the base of it on earth… This mountain contains within it all the attributes of My divinity and in it, like a mine of the richest jewels, is every source of wealth and precious stones, of every colour and kind. There are in abundance streams of crystal-clear water in the valleys by which this mountain is surrounded. These valleys are the wayfaring souls who are those who love Me in this life. They are valleys through their annihilation, and with holy humility and self-knowledge they are the hollows that surround this mountain of ours, and therefore they are capable of receiving the abundant waters of My grace… My Humanity was the solid foundation of the lofty mountain of My divinity.” (Dialogue III).

In reality this image can be understood as a single thing. God is the mountain, the humanity of Christ is its foundation, and the loving souls are the valleys that surround it. Suggestions about this image can in fact be without number.

“Whoever is humbled will be exalted”, said Jesus and Sr. Maria Celeste confirms this with the humility of the valleys. There is no discussion about climbing the mountain. God is not seeking to worry us and force us beyond measure to be like Him and climb up to Him. He Himself has descended and has made Himself like us. Celeste understood it very well… If Christ is the base of the mountain, then what man has to do is not aim at climbing the mountain, but make himself a deep valley so that “the deeper it is the more abundant the torrent of My blessings will be that I shall pour into you”. These valleys are thus closer to the foundation which is Christ. What Mother Celeste is teaching us is not an invitation to passivity, but rather a call to acceptance. We find ourselves facing a particularly “feminine” image. This woman has described herself, in essence and naturally, as being a valley, a womb that welcomes life and is capable of giving it. It is enough to think of Mary, the humble and accepting Mother, accepting because she is humble. Not a passive woman certainly, but a helpful and strong woman, willing to welcome something new into her life and be filled with it to the point of giving birth to it for the good of humanity.

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And so every mother, every consecrated woman is called to be a profound valley in order to house within herself the graces that flow from God. “Make yourself capable and I shall make Myself a torrent” said Jesus to Saint Clare of Assisi. And let us not deceive ourselves that we have to excavate who knows what chasm within us, and that we have to empty ourselves frantically of everything in order to be “worthy” of receiving the water. No… It is the same grace of God which, when it our turn to plunge ourselves into him, makes room for us. It is His Presence which makes other presences depart, and it is His Fullness which fills the void and fills us right to the point of making us overflow.

This acceptance is not a sign of weakness, but of humility and intelligence. It means knowing how to recognize the greatness of a gift, conceive it, guard it and give birth to it. Like the valley with its water and Mary with Jesus.

FLYING HIGH

“Jesus then said to those Jews who had believed in Him: “If you remain faithful to My words, you will indeed be My disciples; you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. (Jn. 8:31).

“And the Christian soul, too, is all the more secure and free from every predator when in the flight of her contemplation she rises higher and higher in the most pure air that lies under the heaven of My Divinity. Then you will find all this machine of the world like a round cage which imprisons all those creatures who live with their feet on the earth. On the other hand, those who are in liberty enjoy an uninterrupted happiness, a happy liberty and a supreme peace of heart, and the most fortunate are those who have the most strength in their wings, so they can go up higher. Whoever knows how to soar upwards on these wings of the nothingness that are all the things of up here, and of the nothingness which is her own self in herself, will rise ever higher, towards the infinite All of every blessing”. (Dialogue IV).

Yes, Lord, we want to be your disciples, and we want to know the truth, the truth that sets us free. But what is the truth?

We are given another image of a Mother who gives the Truth two wings, one of the consciousness of the nothingness that we are, and the

Viva Memoria 37 other of the nothingness that all things are. Perhaps this example could seem gloomy, a little obscurantist, old-fashioned, out-of-date… It would be so, in fact, if there was no motivation to live in this awareness of the “nothing” that we are. Celeste never fails to indicate the “why?” In this case, the Machiavellian expression is important: “The end justifies the means.” These wings, in fact, permit us to fly up higher, “towards the whole infinity of every good thing”, and permit us to break loose from the earth, and fly in the pure air of the divinity. And here Celeste uses a likeness in a likeness. What, indeed, does the soul see, when like a bird she soars into the sky? She sees the world … like a cage. Paradoxically, this is what was said by a woman from the 1700s, even more so by an enclosed nun. It was she who was in a cage, and “imprisoned” between the four walls of the monastery, limited to a restricted space, deprived of her liberty, enclosed from everyone and everything. On the other hand, no, the situation was the other way round… True liberty is what comes from the Truth and the Truth is Christ. The cage is the world when we make it absolute, give it the name of God and make it our all … becoming its slaves, and thinking of becoming free. We can be free in a “cage” and slaves even if we possess the entire universe! At times we wander over this world begging for a love it cannot give us, but which can help us to find it if we force ourselves to discover in it the signs of the presence of God, who is the true and liberating Love.

Jesus has told us: “Know the truth and the truth will set you free if … you will be My disciples. From this “if”, which is our free choice, depends our whole future. An “if” which can be transformed into a “yes” … the monosyllable of happiness!!!

THE SUN AND THE CRYSTAL

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… In Him was life and the life was the light of men…” (Jn. 1:1,4). “Jesus, You are the eternal sun, clothed by Your Father, the supreme and wise Artificer; and He, wishing to illumine the world which was in darkness, made for Your divinity a vestment of luminous and transparent crystal, which was Your Humanity, by means of which were to be revealed the divine splendours, the treasures and the infinite riches of the Word. He placed this sun in the world, so that there would be light for all men… Your sacred Humanity is the ark of every wealth! How is it possible for me to

Viva Memoria 37 look at my divine sun, enclosed in You, without first contemplating the splendour of the crystalline cover, by means of which this divine sun is shared? I cannot do otherwise than love my sun in the ark and the ark that envelops my sun.” (from Dialogue IX). A sun enclosed in a crystal… This is how our Mother presents Christ, the true man and true God. The first suggestion to take note of is the importance Celeste attaches to the humanity of Jesus described as a most pure crystal, out of which His divinity radiates. What a dignity the Lord has given to our body, and how much He gave it value by clothing His own Son with it!

If it is true that the centre of the Redemptoristine charism is the memorial of the Redeemer, and if it is true that this spirituality must be a property of every baptized person, it must then follow that each one of us is a crystal which bears the Sun within her. How do we live this reality in our daily lives? By imitating Christ and … the crystal! By being for ourselves and for others the transparency of what is profound and essential. And by being limpid, clear and like a crystal… We are not the light but we possess it. Letting ourselves progress by it is the only way to illumine our own path and that of whoever the Lord entrusts to us. If the crystal is opaque, if it is darkened by our own ambiguity, if it is stained by our own egoism and the mediocrity we have within ourselves … we have closed off the sun in a room, and thus impeded us and others from knowing the light of the truth.

Our pastoral initiatives, while certainly important, sometimes drag us into a frenetic vortex in which what counts is the activities that “have to be done”. Jesus and Celeste remind us that it is not “doing” which counts but “being”. Being the witnesses of love and light. For this reason, great publicity campaigns are not necessary. What is enough is our own lives and our own encounter with God in ourselves… We must keep the crystal clean … the rest will be done by the Sun!

THE ECHO

“I have descended from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who has sent me… You will be my friends, if you do what I command you”. (Jn. 6:38 and 15:14).

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“My bride, leave to My disposition and providence alone your free choice in willing and not willing. Make yourself the echo of My will; and if I tell you in My good pleasure: “cross, reply with your will: “cross; if I say: “humiliations and contempt, be my echo and say: “contempt; if I say: “kiss Me with the kiss of the sweet union, with a most sweet echo of love, tell me: “kiss me”. (from Dialogue II).

Let us imagine the scene… God on the top of a hill shouts out a sentence which echoes through the valley and reaches the mountain in front of Him. That mountain (just as hard as a rock, indeed!) is us who receive God’s cry and make it ricochet against us and return exactly the same, to the sender. This is the echo of our will which comes from the Father, and like a boomerang, returns to him. ATTENTION! It is our own will to be the echo of His own, and not vice versa. At times it makes us say to God what in reality we are saying! It is He who is speaking, or rather, He is the Word, and we once again humbly welcome and expect it.

An echo is not a banal repetition. Rather, it can be understood as a symbol of fidelity, of complete adhesion to the one who speaks, who after all permits her to exist. It is what our Saint Alphonsus calls “uniformity with the will of God.” Uniformity which is more than conformity. In other words, knowing that the joy we seek is the same as what the Lord wants for us.

Jesus is the loftiest model of this uniformity. He is the Word sent from the Father to be received by us… A Word which demands a reply, and seeks to reverberate in us in order to fill the whole valley with itself, and all humanity. The world howls so many words at us, of which we make ourselves the echo, and we are the slaves of a thousand voices which prevent us from recognizing the only truly liberating Voice.

So let us be silent and listen, for God is continually speaking from that hill which is our heart. Can you not hear him? He says: “I LOVE YOU”… Do not elt this cry of love be lost in the void. Let the whole world be filled with your own echo: “I LOOOVE YOU!!!”

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THE DOLPHIN

“Jesus said to Simon: “Do not fear, from now on you will be a fisher of men”. (Lk. 5:10).

“My bride, you are for me like the dolphin fish which is like an ally of man which always follows him and then guides the fish into the net for him. And you too, beloved friend of My divinity made human, follow Me with a loving devotion, guiding souls for Me into the net of My grace”. (from Dialogue II).

The life of the dolphin is the waves of the ocean and its greatest entertainment is to leap among them… If the sea is calm and it is a time when there are no waves, the dolphin goes in search of waves wherever they are found, and then it is often seen swimming in stupendous acrobatics alongside ships. It has no knowledge of danger, but only the desire to seize the wave which for some seconds permits it to leave the sea in order to touch the sky with … its flipper! It is most beautiful and its “charm”, as Celeste calls it, attracts a large number of fish into the fishermen’s nets. A trap? Perhaps! But let us transfer this imagine in the real world to our spiritual “ocean”…

The dolphins are those souls who have chosen to live their lives “on the crest of a wave”, the wave of prayer which, like a trampoline, makes them leap out of the water of daily life in order to take a mouthful of Heaven! And then they return to the blue sea water with a velocity increased by their great leap which permits them to attract many fish into the nets of the grace of God. A trap of love…

“You will be fishers of men,” Jesus said, but not from the deck of a ship, because you are not privileged… You will be fishers of men by swimming among them, sharing their labours, listening to their joys and their anxieties and making their questions your own. You will not have to do miracles, nor trouble them to seek new methods of fishing. I hold the nets, I am the Fisherman. It is your job to busy yourself in the waves of prayer … and the fish will be abundant!

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The Spirituality of Maria Celeste Crostarosa

Emilio Lage, C.Ss.R., Rome

I. Spirituality

1. - Sister Maria Celeste, ever since she was a child, throughout her life and through her writings, was always centered on the person of Christ, the Word, the man God. She did not choose as central any one particular aspect of the life of Christ, nor did she get involved in subsidiary themes derived from it or in forms of piety or devotion. She constantly goes back to that which she presents in the introduction to the Rules and in the Inner Garden as the central nucleus around which she develops her own life and her thinking. It is the Father’s design who participates his own Spirit to men through the Word become man. Creation and redemption are directed toward the deification of man. This project of the Father and its unfolding is the constant theme of all of her writings. Her perspective is similar to that of the Letter to the Ephesians and of the Vatican II constitution Lumen Gentium.

Christ, the Word, the man God, is contemplated in the fullness of his being and his action. It is not a specific mystery (the infancy or the passion), but it is Christ’s entire life that she has in mind; Christ alive on earth, Christ the wayfarer, always insisting that this person is the Eternal Word.

2. - The first source of her spirituality is Sacred Scripture, which is read, meditated upon and constantly quoted. Even before entering Marigliano, Sister Maria Celeste read the Gospel, and in order to comment on it, she subsequently wrote four books. In the longest one (600 pages), the Inner Garden, the gospel is widely commented (nearly 450 quotes), and the Old Testament (widely quoted), is interpreted in the context of the history of salvation. It is not a matter of occasional quotes, as one could find

Viva Memoria 37 in the writings of other religious, learned by heart through the recitation of the Divine Office and from the preaching she heard. They are citations that presuppose a keen and meditated attention to the biblical story, interpreted and commented to illustrate the carrying out of the Father’s project for the soul.

3. - For Sister Celeste, a second source of inspiration for spirituality is the liturgy, lived to the rhythm of the liturgical year, meditating the liturgical texts from the missal or the breviary. In her Trattenimenti, several times she refers to the liturgical season or the feast being celebrated: Advent, Christmas, Pentecost, the Holy Name of Jesus, the Visitation, saints Peter and Paul, saint James. In the Degrees of prayer (Number 16), Sister Celeste talks about participating in the joy of the Virgin and of the other saints in Heaven at the time corresponding to their liturgical feast. In the meditations for Advent and Christmas, we find texts taken right out of the liturgy proper of the season. It is not a matter of simple biblical texts, but also other texts taken from the patristic readings in the Divine Office.

4. - This is another characteristic of the spirituality of Sister Maria Celeste: her writings have a patristic flavor that can be readily spotted. Apart from the quotes taken from the texts of saint Leo, saint Gregory, saint Augustine, saint Ambrose, the influence of the Fathers in her writings is also perceived in the importance she gives to the deification of man through the work of the Trinity, in line with the Eastern fathers, underscoring the effects of the Incarnation as the moment and the fundamental act of the Redemption. In line with the Fathers, she manifests the initiative of God in the work of sanctification, in the direct action of the Holy Spirit who leads the soul to union with the Trinity and the transformation into God through love, through the emphasis on the importance of the sacrament of Baptism as the beginning of the new life in Christ and of the Sacrament of the Eucharist as union and transformation. Christ, the image of the Father, who reproduces his image in us, Christ the New Adam, who forms in us the new man, are themes from Sacred Scripture and from Patristics, but they are also themes that are frequently commented on by Sister Maria Celeste, out of her lived experience. I pose two examples. “The mystery of the God who becomes man, the divinization of man assumed by the Word, represents the sum total of the good things Christ has given us, the revelation of the divine plan and the defeat of every presumptuous human self-sufficiency.” These

Viva Memoria 37 words can sum up the central theme, which guides Sister Maria Celeste in her spirituality: these are not, however, her own words, but those of Saint Andrew of Crete (Office of Readings, September 8). We know well the meaning, for Sister Maria Celeste, of the image of Christ as a seal in the hand of the Father, by means of which He reproduces his image in us. “Indeed, he has loved us first (see John 4, 10), and with the example of his love, he has become for us like a seal to render us according to his own image, stripping us of the earthly man and dressing us again of the heavenly man… You, exemplar of all beauty and model of all holiness, carve my heart according to your image.” These, although similar, are not the words of Sister Maria Celeste, but those of Baldwin of Canterbury (Office of Readings, ordinary time, Thursday XVIII). This is how Sister Maria Celeste starts the book Trattenimenti: “Sweetest spouse of my soul, my Lord, the only breath of my spirit! Thou are in the bosom of the Father as a seal in the hand of the one who presses it, as such, precisely, do I discover you, with which all the righteous souls are imprinted in the being of justice. With this loving seal so many chosen souls have been imprinted, and in one stroke, you have carved so many living images of your own unique love” (Trattenimenti, I).

5.- We do not know how many and which were the readings made by Celeste, but observing her writings, we must conclude that she had acquired a noteworthy religious culture. She knew well the mysticism of the North, and the speculations about the non-being, and un-knowing as means of attaining the being and true knowledge. She knows well and explicitly quotes St. Francis Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena. She handles well the scholastic expressions of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the hypostatic union, sufficient and efficacious grace and free will. She had assimilated the teachings of the two great masters of the Carmelite school, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa. The formula “Exercise of love”, that she frequently uses in her writings, and that she will use as the title of two books (The Exercise of the Love of God for Every Day of the Year, The Exercise of Love for Lent), she surely borrowed from St. John of the Cross. The Spiritual Canticle in the Italian translation of the time, was precisely titled Exercise of love between the soul and Christ, her spouse (Venice, 1729). An echo of the Canticle appears in stanza 19 where it says: “Already forgotten by the people/ I have no other office/ but only in the Beloved is my exercise”, we hear it when Sister Maria Celeste says that the soul “thus stabilized in

Viva Memoria 37 following her Beloved, has no other exercise but the exercise of his divine love” (Giardinetto, August 2). “The soul lives more where it loves, than in the body where it dwells” says St. John of the Cross (Canticle, stanza 8). “The soul is no longer her own, because she lives more where she loves than where she animates” says Sister Maria Celeste (Giardinetto, April 6); or a she says elsewhere, explaining why the senses are not involved in the goods the soul enjoys: “The soul lives where it loves and not where she dwells” (Giardinetto, February 27). Her dependence on St. John of the Cross seems obvious in this invitation of Sister Maria Celeste to the soul: “Ask all creatures where your Jesus is, your Lover, your treasure, and tell them that you yearn, suffer and die for the desire of possessing his sweet presence; and you shall hear that all these creatures will respond that he passed by quickly and adorned them with their beauty.” (Meditations, January 2).

6. - A spirituality that we have qualified as liturgical, necessarily must take into account that which constitutes the culmination of the liturgy the Eucharist. The Eucharist as presence, as sacrifice and as food that creates the union and the transformation of the soul in God is always present in the writings of Sister Maria Celeste. The purpose of the institution of the Eucharist was, precisely, the union and transformation in God: “Thus, it is through the soul feeding in this Most Divine Sacrament of the Word God made man through that hypostatic union that Jesus enjoyed united to the Word, that the soul, loving spouse, feeding on the flesh of the man God, comes to participate in the admirable union that the most holy soul of Jesus united with God enjoys; and through the union which with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit possessed the most holy soul of Jesus, of which we are all members, the soul-spouse in Jesus Christ, is given a participation in this divine union through this most divine Sacrament. The real union is this, based on that full word which he himself pronounced, that is: “Whoever eats of me shall live by me”. In addition, because the soul-spouse is fed on God, through participation she has life in God. Here follows the other word of the Lord, who says: “Whoever eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood abides in me and I in him.” (Giardinetto, June 4)

8. - A spirituality based on the “Design of the Father”, a project in which creation and redemption equally seek to communicate the divine love to the soul, could not forget the most sublime work of the Trinity: Mary Most Holy. To describe the wonders God worked in Mary and those

Viva Memoria 37 that, through her, he continues to work in the souls, Sister Maria Celeste dedicated many pages of deep theological intensity and of the flaming love of a loving soul.

9. - I add one other important characteristic: it is a spirituality for all, not just for religious and cloistered nuns. She describes the work of God in the soul, in all the souls that set themselves to receive that which God wants to work in them; it always has to do with evangelical perfection, with Christian virtues.

Summing up. The spirituality of Sister Maria Celeste is a spirituality that is 1) Trinitarian and Christocentric, centered on Christ, the man God; 2) biblical; 3) liturgical; 4) patristic; 5) faithful to tradition; 6) Eucharistic; 7) Marian; 8) for all.

10. - Viva memoria

A characteristic expression of Sister Maria Celeste and of the Order she founded is the expression “viva memorial”. Sister Maria Celeste talks about remembering, making memory of the life of Jesus Christ, of all the moments of his life; and also about being a living memory, not just each sister individually, but mainly as a community. The memory as a remembrance of Jesus Christ that pushes us to follow and imitate him, to put into practice the virtues and to achieve perfection, has not been an original concept of Sister Maria Celeste. Saint Alphonsus also speaks of making a “continuous and loving memory”, “a continuous and grateful memory”, “a living memory” of the love shown us by Christ in his passion, or a “living memory” of the presence of God. Nevertheless, for Sister Maria Celeste, the “living memory” is more than just remembering; it means getting to be a living memory of Christ; it is allowing yourself to be transformed by the Spirit of Jesus so that He will work his project of continuing to live his life in us. “Here the soul understands that her Jesus died to live risen in his creatures through similarity and a life of true life and true living”, says Sister Maria Celeste (Gradi di orazione, XIV).

“This is the spirit of your institute: the living memory and imitation of me, as if I still lived among you: Your life consists in taking the part of the Magdalen in holy contemplation”… “With the desire united with Jesus, we will have the will to be sacrificed in Jesus to the Divine Father and satisfy for the

Viva Memoria 37 sins of our neighbor, and to cooperate in the Redemption with Jesus, to satisfy the love of our one and only good.” (Trattenimenti, IX)

The spiritual doctrine of Sister Maria Celeste, as she formulated it, has a universal value, beyond the Institute of the Most Holy Redeemer.

“The consecrated life ‘more faithfully imitates and continually represents in the Church’, through the impulse of the Holy Spirit, the form of life that Jesus, the supreme consecrated and missionary of the Father for his Kingdom, has embraced and proposed to the disciples who followed him… Truly, the consecrated life constitutes a living memory of the mode of existing and acting of Jesus as the incarnate Word before the Father and before the brethren. It is a living tradition of the life and the message of the Savior” (Vita consecrata, n. 22).

On the occasion of his trip to the Holy Land, John Paul II celebrated the Mass in Corazin (March 24, 2000). During the greeting, at the beginning of the mass, a young man said to him: “Holy Father, we are ready to listen to your voice as shepherd… Confirm us in faith, so that we may incarnate our special identity of being in every time and among all peoples the living memory of the historical event called Jesus Christ.”

In the writings of Sister Maria Celeste the same value of being a “living memory” is found in other expressions, such as image, divine similarity, living image, a live and animated portrait, living copy and original portrait, seal of love and imprint of His image.

(2004)

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Formation part I - Chastity: healthy intimacy and affective maturity Gabrielle Fox, O.Ss.R., Dublin

The letter of Fr General Michael Brehl, which followed the meeting of the C.Ss.R Secretariate to which the Service Board members were invited from May 4-6 at the Generalate in Rome questions: ‘Formation Ratio formationis ‘To what extend are the communities using the O.Ss.R. Ratio formationis, approved by the General Assembly and the Holy See?’ The development of the implementation of the Ratio formationis for initial and on-going formation is one of the areas to which the Service Board are mandated to serve. We are willing to help further in its application. It seems strange to me that the allusions to Chastity according to our statutes is limited to just one single directive, that is, 02, in comparison to poverty, which runs from 03-013 and obedience from 014-022. The Redemptoristine Ratio Formationis’ draws attention to the core concept of chastity as a response to the ‘Intent of God the Father’ manifested through Jesus in (1 Jn 4:16): ‘God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him’. Certain aspects of its criteria can be looked at afresh. One such facet is that of ‘intimacy and healthy maturity’. A crucial aspect of healthy religious formation involves assessing a candidate’s capacity for intimacy and affective maturity. Consequently the following is an effort to explore these two aspects of the vow of Chastity, that is, healthy intimacy and affective maturity as mentioned above. The word intimacy is derived from two Latin words, Intimus referring to that which is innermost, and the word intimare means to hint at, announce, publish or make known.1 Combining these meanings leads us to see the process of intimacy as ‘making known that which is innermost.’ Knowing, that healthy relating and connections with self, others and God as (partner of the Absolute)2 are crucial to effective and fulfilling Redemptoristine life and can help a candidate to grow in this capacity. It is a

1 Kevin P. McClone, Intimacy and Healthy Affective Maturity - Guidelines for Formation. http://www.issmcclone.com/pblctns/Intimacy%20and%20Healthy%20Affective%20Maturaity_fa-winter09b.pdf (Accessed 25th June 2015). 2 John Paul II, The Redemption of the Body and Sacramentality of Marriage (Theology of the Body), http://www.catholicprimer.org/papal/theology_of_the_body.pdf (accessed June 2015). 32

Viva Memoria 37 vital energy that surges and subsides throughout life. Thomas Malone notes in his book, the Art of Intimacy, an excellent exploration of intimacy and its dynamics, that the outstanding quality of the intimate experience is the ‘sense of being in touch with our real selves’ where the mystery of God is to be found in an unique way by each individual. ‘Your divine glance gives my soul your very self.’3 Benedict XVI, for example, returns to the ancient image of eros as an apt image of God’s radical love found in intimacy.4 It is experienced as affection and also as compassion, in desire and also in hope, it folds into love described in the Bible as agape.5 Its vital energy courses throughout the world, enlivening and healing human hearts and enables ‘the creative giving, which springs from Love’.6 To risk self-disclosure in initial formation in particular presupposes a certain self-awareness and self-intimacy that allows the candidate to share who she is. Affective maturity involves having the relational skills to more effectively identify, understand and express her real feelings in prayer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, with the appropriate persons that make up her community, a suitable external confessor, councillor and/or spiritual director. These supporters, as is expected will have in turn a growing capacity to listen, understand, and empathize with the candidates experiences. Adapting the criteria in our Ratio to the subject at hand, namely ‘intimacy and affective maturity’ ‘they must be found within one’s being at least in seed form and in a human and spiritual harmony, in order for them to have the potential to increase’. With the grace of God and the continual purification of her desires and aptitudes will contribute to the transformation of the sister into Christ and to her progressive internalization of our charism at the service of Christ’s mission.’ The community in turn nourishes each of us in our common call in the universal mission of Jesus, giving witness to God’s empowering love for the world. Since there is no dualism between the body vs soul, passion vs reason, eros vs agape, we will look at some practical questions to explore. They may well help us grow in understanding of our capacity for intimacy and affective maturity: How well do I know myself?

3 Brendan Leahy, A meditation on Jesus’ loving glance’:Ven M. Celeste Crostarosa. Redemptoristine Monastery, Dublin. Manuscript. 1995. 4 Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, Libreria Editrice Vaticana (2005).

5 James D. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, Holy Eros, (New York: Orbis Books, 2009). 6 John Paul II, The Redemption of the Body and Sacramentality of Marriage (Theology of the Body) in http://www.catholicprimer.org/papal/theology_of_the_body.pdf (accessed June 2015). 33

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Do I have a balanced sense of my strengths and weaknesses? Do I know myself well enough to share my authentic self with others? Do I like the person that I am becoming? Do I esteem myself? Do I have close friends with whom I can share deeply? Am I comfortable being alone with myself as well as being with others? How am I growing in my intimacy with God? How do I relate to women? How do I relate to men? How can I be more my real self, while relating to other persons? How comfortable am I relating to those in authority? What obstacles stand in the way of my growth in healthy intimacy and affective maturity? Am I comfortable with my own sexuality and do I seek to integrate it respectfully in the commitments that I make?

I. Capacities for Healthy Intimacy and Affective Maturity

When exploring key capacities for healthy intimacy and affective maturity a core place to begin is looking at one’s capacity for healthy relationships. Based on the model of Trinatarian life, to be an effective Redemptoristine in community, in prayer and the church of today is to be relational. This implies the growing capacity to relate in more honest and conscious ways with oneself, with others and with God. These various relational dimensions are interconnected and influence each other’s growth. For example, to the degree that I become more in touch with my true self, I grow to be more authentic in my relationships with others and my intimacy with God deepens. In sum, intimacy demands a more active engagement in taking the necessary risks to grow in self-intimacy, interpersonal intimacy and intimacy with God. The formator may inquire: to what degree does this candidate demonstrate a growing capacity to relate to a diversity of persons, to other enriching cultures as in our Dublin community, to unity and beyond, in a way that builds deeper connections, tolerance for diversity and support.

Viva Memoria 37

Preaching the Gospel Ever Anew

in the Spirit of St. Alphonsus

Brendan J. Kelly, C.Ss.R

Introduction:

I’d like to begin this reflection by returning to our foundation as a Congregation in the early eighteenth century. It was a complex era, a time of transition. The Protestant Reformation of the previous century had torn the Christian world apart. For more than a century war was the order of the day. In the midst of this chaos, structures that had ensured some level of care for the poor and needy were undermined and, as Roger Charles points out, “The basic solidarity that existed in the medieval village and town, and which ensured that the problems were recognized and social efforts to combat them could be organized, had crumbled.”7 It was a new era that called for new responses. We, too, live in a complex era, a time of transition. It is a time that calls for new responses. If we look back to our foundation, is there anything from the experience of Alphonsus that can be of help to us as we respond to the realities of today?

Alphonsus and the “new” world situation:

Alphonsus lived precisely at the transition from the end of the European medieval worldview to the beginning of modernity, particularly in its philosophical, economic and political manifestations. He was a man of his times, so it is important that we do not make him say things that he did not say. Nevertheless he had a vision of how things could be different and he appreciated much of what was positive in the new era. He valued, for example, the importance of reason in theological argumentation. He struggled for respect and esteem for the person vis-à-vis institutions, traditional practices and norms that enslaved the individual conscience and the person. But perhaps most significant of all, it pained Alphonsus to see so many poor people simply ignored, especially by a Church that did not or could not give them the spiritual assistance to which they had a right and in a way which brought awareness of the love of God directly and effectively into their lives.

7 Charles, R. Christian Social Witness and Teaching, Vol. 1, (Wiltshire, UK., 1998), 247-248

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No doubt all of us are familiar with the brilliance Alphonsus displayed in his career as a lawyer. And we are equally familiar with his loss of an important case in 1723 that led Alphonsus, disillusioned with the law, to leave the courtroom never to return, with the words, “Oh world I know you now.”8 This incident can be described as the first important moment in the conversion of Alphonsus. His abandonment of the law courts should not be taken simply as a gesture caused by bitterness over defeat or by crushed ambition. Commenting on this incident, Juan Lasso de la Vega, holds that it is “in this moment he received from God an insight which brought about a disillusionment with a society which promised justice but which would permit injustice to triumph in its very courts of law.”9 He adds:

“While we cannot expect of Alphonsus a critical analysis of society, we certainly discover in his spirit of detachment a critical sensitivity which shaped his understanding of the social world in which he lived. He perceived an injustice and corruption which went beyond a lost legal case and which penetrated the customs, the norms and the values of the dominant society of his day.”10

Leaving the courtroom, Alphonsus changed direction in life and devoted himself to working among the poor of the Incurabili.11 Here Alphonsus worked tirelessly, making beds, changing linen, washing the sick, feeding the weak and performing other duties as demanded by geriatric and incurable patients. Frederick Jones claims that “it was here that he first experienced the real happiness to be found in God’s service and appropriately enough it was here that God finally and unmistakably called him to the priesthood.”12 On the night of August 29, 1723, Alphonsus heard God call him twice: “Leave the world and give yourself to me.”13

This was to be the second moment in the conversion of Alphonsus and set him on course for the ordained ministry. But even as a seminarian Alphonsus displayed his attraction to the poor. As a seminarian he attended and helped out in his first parish mission. The choice of the place is of

8 Rey-Mermet, T., St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Tireless Worker for the Most Abandoned, (Translated by Jehanne-Marie Marchesi – New York: New City Press, 1989), 120 9 J.M. Lasso de la Vega, “Saint Alphonsus: Missionary to the Poor: A Reflection on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Death,” Communicanda 10 (Rome: General Curia C.Ss.R, 1987) n.5. 10 Ibid. 11 The Incurabili was the name given to the hospital of Santa Maria del Populo, the refuge of the poor and needy, a name given to similar hospitals in nearly every Italian city at that time. Venice, for example, had its Incurabili where Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola worked side by side. Prior to the loss of his court case, Alphonsus had helped out in this institution for a number of years. 12 F. Jones, Alphonsus de Ligouri: The Saint of Bourbon Naples, 1696-1787 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992), 25. 13 Rey-Mermet, St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Tireless Worker, 122. 36

Viva Memoria 37 significance. It was not in a wealthy part of the city of Naples. The Church of Sant’ Eligio Maggiore was situated in a poverty-stricken area. In the 1720s, its six or seven thousand parishioners comprised some of the most despised and most feared elements living in the capital. T. Rey-Mermet describes the area: “The hungry, idle, boatmen, shopmen, smugglers, and naked children swarmed amidst the hubbub of gambling and fighting … it was unadvisable to penetrate this jungle.”14

Alphonsus was more than just a careful listener during his first mission. Though still a seminarian, he was fully involved, leading the crowds in singing and prayer, visiting the elderly and sick in the hovels they called home and reaching out to the hardhearted and irreligious throughout the area. Rey-Mermet asks: “Might it be a sign from God that he had been sent on his first mission among the poorest, the most despised, the social and moral dregs of his people?”15

Alphonsus was ordained priest in 1726. However, he was not just another priest among the surprisingly large number of priests in Naples.16 As a member of the Apostolic Mission he undertook the work of preaching missions. Despite this, his apostolic zeal was not satisfied. He found a further outlet among the poor of Naples, those referred to as the lazzari or lazzaroni.17

For Alphonsus, the urgent need was for organized instruction in a manner adapted to the special needs and situation of the lazzaroni, as they were naturally suspicious of the clergy. In response, Alphonsus, clearly indicating his ability to immerse himself in the culture of the poor, devised such a programme.

The movement spread; so numerous were the centres where the lazzaroni gathered that there were insufficient priests or seminarians with apostolic interest to act as chaplains. Lay catechists were the alternative. Alphonsus and a group of like- minded priests trained a group of catechists who took charge of the gatherings when clerics were not available. Historians have given this lay movement the name Capelle Serotine or the ‘Evening Chapels.’ The Capelle Serotine became a feature of Catholic life throughout the city, catering for the religious formation and general

14 Ibid., 152. 15 Ibid., 152. 16 For a very good description of the lifestyle of Neapolitan clergy at the time of Alphonsus, see Jones, Alphonsus de Ligouri, 58-59 17 Lazzaroni, named after the biblical beggar Lazarus. They were a unique band of urban proletariat and even then a legend in Europe. See Jones, Alphonsus de Ligouri, 61-62.

Viva Memoria 37 development of the most abandoned and deprived elements of Neapolitan society. Rey-Mermet describes the impact: “These groups became a ‘grass roots’ movement for education; for social improvement and the reformation of morals; for mutual help and sharing with the poor; for control of gambling, carousing, drinking, and debauchery in which the meagre income of households used to be spent; for a new found professional conscience among the thousands of servants, artisans, workers, tradesmen; for working instead of pilfering; for daggers and pistols being handed over to confessors and replaced with rosaries and pamphlets of meditations on the eternal truths or the Passion of Christ.”18 Three aspects of the Cappelle Serotine are significant: a) They were aimed at poor people, who though not excluded from parishes, were marginalized from the ministry of the Church; b) Each of the groups became centres of conversion and schools of holiness; and, c) The chapels were the apostolate of the laity, carried out by the laity and with lay leadership. The leader was a worker, a poor person like the rest. The priest was merely an assistant.19 Alphonsus did not have a sociological perspective in organizing these people, but his work in the Cappelle Serotine indicates an important quality, namely, his readiness to experiment and initiate a new form of evangelization at the service of the poor. Alphonsus was able to detach himself from the world of wealth and privilege and enter another world: the world of the spiritually abandoned, abandoned because they were marginalized and counted for nothing in the society in which he lived. For this reason, Lasso de la Vega concludes: “We cannot expect to find in Alphonsus the same understanding of poverty or option for the poor which the Church has in our own day. There is no doubt, however, that he made a real option for the poor in his life.”20

Alphonsus the Founder:

In early 1730, while vacationing with a number of companions, Alphonsus encountered a new class of poor. These were the shepherds, goatherds and other rural inhabitants around the small town of Scala. Struck by their isolation and seeming abandonment, he turned his attention to them, again organizing catechism and various devotional activities. But the time came when he had to return to Naples and his work in the Cappelle Serotine. However, he was a changed person. Rey-Mermet describes the changed Alphonsus:

18 Rey-Mermet, St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Tireless Worker, 181. 19 Rey-Mermet, “The Founder”, in The History of the Congregation, 99-142 at 105-106. 20 Lasso de la Vega, “St. Alphonsus: Missionary to the Poor,” n. 7.

Viva Memoria 37

“He had not entirely returned [to Naples]. His heart stayed at Santa Maria dei Monti [as the parish of Scala was known]. He never really left his beloved shepherds and goatherds. The thought of their need made him weep as he prayed God to choose, among the children of Abraham, somebody who would care for their welfare. If no one more worthy than he took up the challenge, might this not be his vocation?”21 Here we find the third moment of Alphonsus’ conversion. The poor and abandoned of the countryside became the preoccupation of his life. For two years he prayed and consulted others as to his future. Influenced, among others, by Maria Celeste Crostarosa, the foundress the Redemptoristines, Alphonsus established a congregation whose special vocation would be to proclaim the Word of God to the abandoned people of the rural areas. And so, on November 2, 1732, Alphonsus left Naples, symbolically, on a donkey to return to Scala and take up the task of evangelizing the poor and abandoned of the countryside. He had finally found the people to whom he was called to dedicate his life and to announce the Gospel with all his strength. Rey-Mermet states, Alphonsus “broke with his class and his culture and descended to the planet of the poor who were deprived of any spiritual help.”22 Following the example of the Redeemer, he began his mission by incarnating himself among the abandoned of his time.

We can now see the thrust of Alphonsus’ detachment. It was part of his exodus-conversion from one world to a life-giving commitment to another world. It moved him from disenchantment with, and total renunciation of, one type of society to the acceptance of another as the place where he was to encounter Christ the Redeemer.

In the process of his conversion, Alphonsus came to discover how Christ was to become incarnate for him in the world of the abandoned poor. He saw himself called not just to see Christ in the poor, but rather to identify himself with the Redeemer “who became poor that we might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

For Alphonsus, the poor became a criterion for understanding the redeeming love of God. We see this in so many of his ascetical works. In his Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, for example, he writes: “So that everyone could easily receive him, he remained present under the species of bread. If he had remained under the species of some other rare or expensive food, the poor would have been deprived of him.

21 Rey-Mermet, St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Tireless Worker, 216. 22 Rey-Mermet, St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Tireless Worker, 216 39

Viva Memoria 37

But no, Jesus decided to stay under the species of bread, which costs little and is found all over, so that everyone in every village could find him and receive him.”23 The drive to respond to the needs of the abandoned poor led Alphonsus to hone in on the very mystery of redemption as he saw it: in Jesus and his mission we find our identity. When Alphonsus discovered those to whom he was called, he placed all his efforts and talents at their service: Alphonsus the writer and musician composed simple meditations and hymns; Alphonsus the theologian devised the ‘vita devota’ and taught confessors to bring mercy and not judgment to the abandoned; Alphonsus the preacher invented a simple style of preaching and mission renewal; Alphonsus the bishop fed the hungry during time of famine. Everything in him was to be united in order to bring the Gospel to the abandoned poor. And, as Lasso de la Vega points out, “It was only for the sake of those who were abandoned because they were poor that he will become Alphonsus the Founder. Precisely for them he will begin his greatest labour; he will develop an apostolic community, the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.”24 It is important to note that rather than any mystical experience, the experience that moved Alphonsus to found his Congregation was his encounter with the most abandoned and his desire to respond to their needs. In establishing the Congregation, Alphonsus knew that he had to adopt a new approach and find new structures. Felix Catala tells us that “the Church practice at that time allowed for the founding of new Institutes, but they had to adopt one of the traditional and approved Rules [normally Benedictine or Franciscan]. Alphonsus insisted on a new Rule.”25 Despite having being told that it would not be accepted, he persisted. In the original Rule he drew up, the so-called Trascrizione Cossali, he states his intention for the new Congregation: “The purpose of this Institute is to form a Congregation of secular priests living a community life under the title of the Most Holy Saviour,26 subject to the jurisdiction of the bishops: its sole purpose will be to follow the example of our Saviour Jesus Christ in preaching the divine word to the

23 “Pratica di Amar Gesu Cristo” in Opere Ascetiche, Vol. 1 (Rome: 1933) 17, cited in F. Catala, “The Option for the Poor and Its Challenge for Us in the Living of the Sexennial Theme” (unpublished talk given at Redemptorists’ Mission Colloquium in Thailand, August 2007) 11. 24Lasso de la Vega, “Saint Alphonsus: Missionary to the Poor,” n.14. 25 Catala, “The Option for the Poor”, page 7. 26 The original name of the Congregation was the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, later changed by the Holy See to Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. 40

Viva Memoria 37 poor, as the Lord already said of himself, ‘He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor…’” (Luke 4:18) 27 Alphonsus had in mind a specific model of religious life that departed from the monastic model and mentality. His intuition led him to work with structures that made possible the living out of redemption, the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, through the challenge of responding to the needs of the poor. This he consistently emphasized to the members of the new Congregation: “He who is called to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer will never be a true follower of Jesus Christ nor will he ever become a saint if he does not tend towards the objective of his vocation and does not have the spirit of the Institute, which consists in saving souls, the souls most destitute of spiritual assistance, such as the poor in countryside.”28 Such a love for the poor was nothing more than love for the Redeemer himself, the love that was to ground the vocation of members of the Institute: “When he wished to test if Peter loved him, he did not ask but that he dedicate himself to the salvation of souls: ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ (Jn 21:15ff) … He did not ask of him, as St. John Chrysostom says, penances, prayer or any other thing but only that he take care of his sheep. … Jesus Christ proclaimed that he understood as done to himself all the good we did in favour of the least of our neighbours: ‘I tell you the truth,: whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me.’” (Mt. 25:40).29 In the light of this, Lasso de la Vega concludes it is clear that “to follow the Redeemer and to live for the poor always constituted for Alphonsus a single reality which flowed directly from his lived experience. And it constitutes the single purpose of his Congregation.”30 In the light of the above, can it not be said that Alphonus truly personifies the theme chosen by the XXIV General Chapter to guide the Congregation today as we undertake to restructure ourselves in order to continue this purpose of the Congregation: ‘To Preach the Gospel Ever Anew’ Renewed Hope, Renewed Hearts, Renewed Structures for Mission? “To follow the Redeemer and to live for the poor” is the continuing challenge presented not only to Redemptorists but to the universal Church as she continues the mission of that same Redeemer in the radically changed world of today.

27 C. Hoegerl, (ed.) Founding Texts of Redemptorists’ Early Rules and Allied Documents (Rome: Collegio Sant’ Alfonso, 1986) 266-267. 28 Sant’ Alfonso de Ligouri, Opuscolo III, Considerazione XIII in Opuscoli relative allo stato religioso, (Roma: Tip. Della S.C. De Propaganda Fide, 1868) 94, cited by Catala in “The Option for the Poor,” 9. 29 Ibid. 30 Lasso de la Vega, “St. Alphonsus, Missionary to the Poor”, 21. 41

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A “new” World Situation:

That world, the world we live in today, has seen a period of change unlike any other in the history of humankind. In the post Second World War era we witnessed the collapse of colonial empires, the establishment of numerous new independent nation states, rapid innovation in the areas of technology, manufacturing and healthcare, wonderful new ways of travel and communication and so on. All of this has brought tremendous benefits to humanity, making a reality of the term “global village.”

However, along with the positive dimensions of these developments there has been a downside! While we recognize the good that this phenomenon, latterly termed termed “globalization,” has brought us, there is a remarkable downside. While it is true that much wealth has been produced as a result, that wealth is unevenly distributed. This has resulted in an unbridgeable gap between the rich and the poor. The globalization of market economy has given birth to “new victims” like the new poor created by the current world financial crisis, the increasing exploitation of women and children in the sex industry, the vast numbers who work on a casual basis with few, if any, benefits and the reality of undocumented migrants which raises serious problems for both the countries they leave and the countries they aspire to live in. New forms of poverty will continue to be created in the wake of increased globalization if the present trends are to be believed. Poverty is always dehumanizing. Hence, whatever its form, it will always pose a challenge to those of us who are committed to a “mission of preaching plentiful redemption.”

At a deeper level we can also say that today more than ever our society is fragmented and divided in various ways by ethnicity, race, caste, gender, culture, religion and the like. Growing individualism is breaking up communities including religious communities. Families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. Since persons are born in particular historical situations which are often broken and fragmented, they grow up with various psychological burdens. Many are victimized due to social evils such as child abuse, rape, prostitution, domestic violence etc. “There are many in today’s world who experience a sense of being alone, lack of self-respect and self –acceptance. Many have internalized negative attitudes like anger that is directed against oneself or others. Some people even seek evasion in drugs, alcohol or violence. Amidst all these, there is a growing search by many for interior peace.”31

31 Shalini Mulackal, pbvm, “Consecrated Life Today: Trends and Challenges in Society and Church,” Paper presented at the National Consultation (India), organized by Streevani, Pune, 24-25 January 2009. 42

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Looking at the reality of today’s world, the word I best think can describe it is the word “complexity.” Yet this complex world has a profound theological significance for us as Redemptorists. It is not something to be endured or something to be avoided, but a reality that has to be contemplated through the eyes of God and loved as it is loved by the God. “It is a reality that becomes an opportunity to follow Christ more closely. In this sense we can say that in the reality of man and woman today, following Christ is not something merely optional – even less so for the Religious – but a characterizing ingredient of that discipleship.”32

New Wineskins for New Wine:

Just like Alphonus, we live today in a period of transition, transition from what has been understood as “modernity” to what, for want of a better name, is referred to as “post-modernity.” And just as Alphonsus was inspired to establish the Congregation to respond to the needs of his new era, today we are called to “re-found” ourselves as a Congregation, with “renewed hearts” and “renewed hope” that will enable us to establish “new structures for our mission” in order that we can “preach the Gospel ever anew” to this complex world.

This “call” is evident from a careful reading of recent General Chapters, beginning with the Chapter of 1991. It is clear that there has been a feeling that something more was needed to help us deal with the complexities of modern life and society while at the same time being true to our identity as sons of St. Alphonsus, sent to continue the mission of Jesus by preaching the Good News to the poor, especially the most abandoned. At General Chapters, Regional Gatherings, Secretariat Meetings, one can sense a certain unease with our apostolic dynamism as a Congregation. This is best expressed in the words of the Instrumentum Laboris of the XXIV General Chapter (2009) …. The question is asked if we have lost our “cutting edge” in terms of liberation, salvation of the whole human person, the promotion of the fundamental rights to justice and freedom (Const. 5), etc. Perhaps there is a blurring of our sense of mission and nervousness in the face of new apostolic challenges (migrants and itinerant people, prejudice, xenophobia, the “exclusion” of the poor, etc.) For some there is a real concern that the prophetic aspect of our Redemptorist vocation is either ignored or compromised. Have we largely settled down in surroundings and with structures in which our work is no longer missionary, not withstanding what

32 José Rodriguez Carballo, ofm., “Formation for Consecrated Life in a

Viva Memoria 37 is said in Const. 15? It is asked if we have given up on asking and responding to searching and uncomfortable questions, such as ‘Where does God want us to be?’ or ‘Who are the abandoned poor?’

The decision of the XXIV General Chapter of 2009 to undertake a process of re-structuring in the Congregation, as well as the adoption of the theme To Preach The Gospel Ever Anew: Renewed Hope, Renewed Hearts, Renewed Structures for Mission to guide us in this process, is, I believe, the work of the Spirit leading us to answer some of these difficult questions.

“We share in the mission of the Church by ‘evangelization in the strict sense together with the choice in favor of the poor.’ (Const. 5) We also want to be faithful to our tradition to preach the Gospel ever anew. At this time, we are keenly aware of new situations of mission which urgently need evangelization. … We need new structures in order to preach the Gospel anew today and respond to the new areas of urgent pastoral need”.33

A Redemptorist Response in the Spirit of St. Alphonsus

What then are these new situations of mission which urgently need evangelization and what are the new structures we need in order to respond to these new situations? In other words, what is the context in which we, as Redemptorists, carry out our mission today? I think it can be generally agreed that our contemporary world has four specific characteristics: 1. Globalization 2. Secularization 3. A widening gap between the rich and the poor 4. The reality of religious pluralism.

Each of the aforementioned characteristics of the contemporary world has its own particular features which very often will differ from place to place. What I would suggest, however, is that each of these four characteristics will be found in any part of the globe in which we as Redemptorists find ourselves living and ministering. As Fr. Francis Jeyaraj Rasiah, Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Sri Lanka, points out:

“The Church needs to pay attention to this changed situation and create ministries to respond to the new context to help people cope with this unfamiliar and threatening situation. Our traditional religious practices

33 “Message of the XXIV General Chapter,” 9. 44

Viva Memoria 37 need to be revised and to be made dynamic to respond to the needs of our youth, broken and displaced people, the poor, children, etc.”34

This is precisely what Alphonsus did in Naples and the surrounding countryside in the early eighteenth century when he searched for new and dynamic ways in which to reach out to the people of his time in order to help them cope with a life situation that was both unfamiliar to them and threatening. So how do we respond today? Keeping in mind the four characteristics mentioned above, I believe that as Redemptorists we are challenged to undertake our mission in today’s world in very specific ways.

In relation to Globalization as religious men charged with the task of being prophetic we need to more and more understand our mission as counter-cultural. In particular, we need to examine how we as Redemptorists witness to the truth that we proclaim. Perhaps here we could call to mind the words of Paul VI in Evangelii nuntiandi: “Modern Man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”35 I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Religious life in general is in a state of crisis. Often the deliberations of our General and Provincial Chapters which reflect a high degree of radicalism and hard options remain so only on paper for many of us. If we are honest with ourselves we would have to agree that many of us are cocooned in comfort zones of security. This has resulted in a lot of cynicism and disillusionment among us. The widespread malaise of individualism, consumerism and careerism has considerably weakened the spirit of commitment and availability among many of us. The words of Chittister may be worth considering. “Francis of Assisi was a scandal; Teresa of Avila was a scandal; Mary Ward was a scandal; Mother McAuley was a scandal; Benedicta Riep was a scandal; Charles de Foucauld was a scandal; Vincent de Paul was a scandal [Alphonsus was a scandal]. We, on the other hand, have become the most proper of the proper. We scandalize few, least of all the mighty.”36 Can we deny this? Can we change this?

Turning to secularization, it has to be said that this has been taking place quietly for many years now. Again, just like globalization, no part of the world escapes its influence. As we see the influence of religion and faith gradually undermined or pushed to the margins nothing emerges to take its place. Whereas in previous generations faith and religious based groups often provided a sense of belonging for many people, today people often

34 Francis Jeyaraj Rasiah, S.J., “Consecrated Life Today: Trends and Challenges in Society and Church.” Talk given to Congress of Religious Meeting in the Philippines, accessible at www.aops.org/art/art-jeyarajl.htm 35 Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi(, 1975), 41 36 Shalini Mulackal, pbvm., “Consecrated Life Today.” 45

Viva Memoria 37 find themselves alone, marginalized, on the outside looking in. Oftentimes these people are not the materially poor. They can even be quite wealthy, economically secure yet deeply insecure and frightened. Such people are devoid of any sort of interior peace. This is particularly true of many of our young people. A close examination of youth culture in many parts of the world will reveal numerous young people, feeling excluded, turning to drugs, alcohol and other forms of abuse as a way of dealing with the pressure encountered. All too often this ends in the taking of life itself. Unfortunately, even within the Church, the Community of Believers, many also feel excluded, unwelcome, for one reason or another. These are the people I believe that are referred to in Statute 012 of our Constitutions and Statutes: Those who do not receive the Church’s Message as the ‘Good News.’ In this context, mission for us as Redemptorists demands that we actively search for and reach out to these peoples and groups with the compassion revealed in the person of Jesus, the compassion that led him to reach out to the woman caught in adultery and the Samaritan Woman. How do we do this? Clearly each apostolic unit will have to find its own ways of doing so but the fact remains that these people are there and are in need of our presence and support.

While the process of globalization may have transformed the skyline of some countries, it has not, however, altered the ugly face of poverty in many others. On the contrary, it has widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The globalization of the market economy has given birth to "new victims" (e.g., the "new poor" created by the recent financial crisis, persons with AIDS/HIV, child prostitutes, street children, child laborers, undocumented migrants) and has further endangered the ecological balance in our world. The poor and their life realities have been significantly affecting consecrated life in the Church, especially in the post- Vatican II era. For us, the reality of the poor has become the optic for re- interpreting our charism, provoking a radical review and renewal of life. Often these efforts started with more conscious attempts at greater exposure to and immersion among the poor. Reflected on in the light of the Gospel and our charism in renewal sessions or Chapter deliberations, this experience with the poor has led to revision of works, lifestyle, structures and formation programs. In our ministry, this "re-reading" of the charism through the "optic of the poor" has effected significant shifts: from working for the marginalized to being with, being evangelized by, receiving from, and working with them.

But the process has not been easy. Like the Church in general, we, too, have to struggle to break away from the burden of being associated for

Viva Memoria 37 years with the rich - or at least the middle class. "The vow of poverty has no more witnessing value in many countries. Our material possessions alienate us from the poor to whom we are called to announce the Good News".37 And even those who initially may have succeeded in reorienting themselves towards the poor have experienced difficulty in sustaining this commitment. A kind of "taming of the militant elements" among religious, or a cooling off of the "passion for the poor" that characterized the 70s and the early 80s, have been noted. “The victory of liberal democracy, signaled by the collapse of various socialist regimes, and the idealization of technology as having all the answers to the questions raised by social activists, are said to account for this phenomenon.”38 As already mentioned, new forms of poverty will continue to be created in the wake of increased globalization, if the present trends are to be believed. Whatever its form, it will always pose a challenge to us religious who are committed to a "mission of promoting fullness of life and plentiful redemption." As Redemptorists, today we are asked to continue our tradition by focusing our mission on the poor and most abandoned. This is made very clear to us in Statute 09b: Redemptorists can never be deaf to the cry of the poor and the oppressed, but have the duty to search for ways of helping them, so that they themselves will be able to overcome the evils that oppress them. This essential element of the Gospel must never be lacking in the proclamation of the Word of God. In other words, an essential component of mission for us today must be a commitment to life-giving solidarity with the poor and deprived. This is underlined for us by Principle 3 of the Guiding Principles of Restructuring: Restructuring for mission should seek out and accompany the most abandoned, especially the poor.

Thirty years ago Hans Kung wrote: “There can be no peace between the nations without peace between the religions; no peace between the religions without dialogue between the religions; and no dialogue between the religions without research into theological foundations.” Today these words seem more relevant and more challenging than ever. Let us begin with a typical exercise of St. Ignatius Loyola, and imagine ourselves with the Trinity looking down on the earth as the third millennium of Christianity unfolds. What would we see? Over 6 billion human beings - some male, some female; some rich, some poor; some Asian, some African, some American, some European, some Christian (1.9 billion); some Muslim (1 billion); some Hindu (3/4 billion); some Buddhist (341 million); some followers of new religious movements (128 million); some of traditional

37 Julma Neo, DC., “The Witness of Consecrated Life in Asia Today,” Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences Paper No. 92b, January 2010. 38 Ibid. 47

Viva Memoria 37 religions (c. 200 million); some Jews (14 million); some agnostic or of no religion persuasion (1.1 billion). We must surely ask ourselves what significance does this rich ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism that characterises God’s world today have for our lives and our witness as disciples of Christ? And how should we respond to the racism, cultural prejudice, religious fundamentalism, naked intolerance and raw hatred that so mark and mar the relationships between people of different religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds in today’s world? As I write this paper, newspapers and news channels are full of reports of violence worldwide in response to a film/movie (Innocence of Muslims) which portrays Islam in a negative light. As Redemptorists who live and work in all continents we cannot help but encounter the reality of religious pluralism. We cannot ignore this reality. In my later years working in Asia, the birthplace of all the great world religions and where Christians find themselves in a minority, it never failed to amaze at just how little attention we gave to this reality. Yet if we are to heed the words of Kung it is imperative that we explore how we can respond in our mission to this pressing reality. How do we, in the work we undertake, promote unity in diversity? Principle 6 of the Guiding Principles of Restructuring challenges us here: A vital part of our mission, both historically and in our time, is theological reflection rooted in spiritual and pastoral experience. New deployment of our theological resources is essential to the challenge of restructuring for mission today. Surely the issue of religious pluralism is one of the most burning theological issues of our time and deserves our attention.

Conclusion: Formation for Renewal:

I was asked to write this reflection in the context of formation. In doing so I was guided by one important conviction: formation is a journey, but a journey that lasts a lifetime. Formation does not refer only, as the document, Walking from Christ39expressly states, to the years in which we prepare for first or final profession. Rather, being formed is something that never ends, or better yet, something that starts with the first call of the Lord and ends with the visit of “sister bodily death.” This was also affirmed by John Paul II – “Precisely because of its purpose of transforming the whole person, the requirements of formation never end. Indeed, it is necessary that Consecrated Persons be provided the opportunity to grow in their commitment to the charism and mission of their Institute.”40

39 Caminando desde Cristo, (Walking from Christ), Rome 2002, 15 40 Vita Consecrata (1996), 65 48

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The same document, Vita Consecrata, describes formation as a “progressive assimilation of the sentiments of Christ.”41 Formation is simply “being converted”,42 transforming the mind and heart according to the mind and heart of Christ. Formation is a dynamic process of growth in which each person opens his heart to the Gospel in daily life, committing oneself to the ongoing conversion to follow Christ with ever greater fidelity to his charism. “Conversion” is clearly the key word here and we are reminded of this by the Decision of the XXIV General Chapter: Restructuring for mission is a call to conversion and to a profound renewal of our Vita apostolica in all its dimensions (1.3) …. Missionary conversion is a challenge to all Redemptorists, irrespective of age. (1.5)

This missionary conversion, which transforms our minds and hearts according to the mind and heart of Christ, brings us close to the joys and sufferings of our brothers and sisters, the men and women of today. It also allows us to place ourselves in a “reality which changes many times at a frenetic pace.”43 It allows us “to respond not only to a time of changes – like many of those in history where novelty abounded – but also to a time of change, in an historical moment where changes are so complex and accelerated that it is easy to get the sense that we do not know where to step.”44 It should be a conversion full of kindness and empathy toward the world as God loves and criticizes it (cf. Jn 17.9). It should imbue us with an outlook that does not stop from projecting a positive and evangelical outlook regarding the contexts and cultures in which we find ourselves, while discovering the unprecedented opportunities of grace which the Lord offers us. This missionary conversion should help us “set out to sea”45 and delve fearlessly into the new Areopagus.46 Finally, this missionary conversion will help us “move from the familiar to new and prophetic missionary opportunities [as] we follow the example of St. Alphonsus in his exodus from Naples to the abandoned poor of Scala.” (Message of the XXIV General Chapter, 10)

41 VC, 65 42 VC, 109 43 Caminando desde Cristo, 15 44 José Rodriguez Carballo, Formation for Consecrated Life in a Period of Change 45 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, Rome 2000, 1. 46 Vita Consecrata, 96-99 49

Viva Memoria 37

A lovely fifty days!

Anna Maria Ceneri, O.Ss.R., Saint Agatha

Pentecost is a revolutionary feast whose importance we have still not fully grasped.

A beautiful period of fifty days in which to pass from the painful wounds of Christ to the radiant wounds which breathe a vital energy and a new life! But let us take it in order and start with its history.

Shevuot, the feast of the harvest – Pentecost to the faithful Greeks who remember their celebration fifty days after Pesah (Easter) – was an agricultural feast which, with the passage of the centuries, became enriched by another interpretation: on that day they remembered the gift of the Torah (the Law) upon mount Sinai.

Israel was very proud of the Law which God had entrusted to them; and although they were the smallest of all the peoples, they had been chosen to give witness to the world of the true face of the Merciful one.

Jesus did not add precepts to the many present in the oral Law, but He simplified them, reduced them, and cut them back to the essential ones. A single precept, that of love, was requested from the disciples. His new Law is a movement of the Spirit which brings as a gift a taste of the totality, fullness, and completeness which Jesus points out in three ways: teaching everything, remembering everything, and remaining forever. And the liturgy echoes it: with Your Spirit, O Lord, the earth is full. In him man, and the cosmos, find their fullness: inhabiting the future is liberty, inhabiting the Wind and the Fire, like nomads of Love.

Keep the Spirit in a drawer, please. It is dangerous, devastating, worrying: thunder, clouds, fire and wind!

Viva Memoria 37

When the Church stagnates or declines, Saints are born to bring it back.

When you think your life is finished, negated, His loving glance is turned upon you.

When our parishes languish, become empty, become boring and grow weary, He shakes them to their foundation, makes the palaces of rhetoric collapse and spurs us to go out onto the streets to proclaim God.

It is Him, if you wish, brothers and sisters, who can redirect our lives to the ways of sanctity.

Here I shall tell you about my Foundress, and hold ready the vigils of fire since she is capable of filling you with fire! Well then, what a coincidence! She founded the Order of the Redemptoristine Nuns on precisely the day of Pentecost in 1731, and immediately wanted her Sisters to be clothed in a tunic of a dark red colour, in memory of the ardent love of God for every creature! All the fault of the Spirit!

Even though she is already the Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa, she is little known. And yet she was the close friend of two great Saints venerated throughout the whole world: Alphonsus de’ Liguori, Doctor of the Church, Bishop of St. Agatha of the Goths, and founder of the Congregation of Redemptorist Missionaries, and Gerard Maiella, the Redemptorist brother and Patron of mothers and children.

Maria Celeste did not want to hear the title of “founder” spoken of. For her there was but one single founder of the Nuns of the Most Holy Redeemer. One single one: Jesus the Redeemer. Yet she worked at the foundation of this Order courageously, conscious of the fact that the Lord was its first artisan.

She does not have a lowly spirituality. She invites her Nuns, not to scrupulously complete little devotions or recite long formulas of prayer, but to elevate themselves to the contemplation the God of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.

A mystic of the 18th Century, the Century of Lights and reason characterised by the rejection of any mysticism, in an epoch in which

Viva Memoria 37 women counted for nothing in society, and even less in the Church, Mother Celeste was a strong, persevering, energetic and decisive woman. She always knew how to say “yes” to God. When there was a need, she knew how to say “no” to men, meaning the men of the Church. She tells the story of her spiritual life and illumines our own, and with very beautiful images she invites us to the journey of Christian faith. She writes, trying to humbly and lovingly put into her womanly language what the Lord revealed to her. She was not a theologian, but a warm-hearted woman of Naples. She fell in love with Christ when she was just a little girl, and entrusts us with the secrets she received from her passionate love for God. In her writings we find at least ninety times the expression “the tenderness of God”, and more than five hundred and fifty times the word “love”. Her message is not reserved for contemplatives, but is addressed to all Christians. She invites us to discover the Lord Himself, who comes to meet us in the Eucharist to speak to us, purify us of our sins, communicate His Life to us, reveal His Love to us, transform us and send us out into the world to continue His work of salvation. With faith, joy and the fire of the Spirit of love for Jesus, she tells us privately:

May love be the nourishment and the flame in which you will burn day and night until you become fire! May your whole being be but fire alone, in such a way that fire consumes you! … Live only on love, in love and for love, burn with love until you become totally and without any difference, fire with Fire!

Viva Memoria 37

What does Pope Francis remind us about in the Year of Consecrated Life?

Ewa Klaczak, O.Ss.R., Bielsko-Biała

I. Let us be grateful!

Pope Francis wrote an Apostolic Letter to all religious including many valuable suggestions and proposals regarding the celebration of this Year of the Consecrated. He encouraged religious to go back to the historical and charismatic origins of their Orders and Congregations in the spirit of thanksgiving for their founders, for the whole process of constituting and developing every religious family.

“During this Year, it would be appropriate for each charismatic family to reflect on its origins and history, in order to thank God who grants the Church a variety of gifts which embellish her and equip her for every good work (cf. Lumen Gentium, 12). Recounting our history is essential for preserving our identity, for strengthening our unity as a family and our common sense of belonging. More than an exercise in archaeology or the cultivation of mere nostalgia, it calls for following in the footsteps of past generations in order to grasp the high ideals, and the vision and values which inspired them, beginning with the founders.” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, 1 ).

Thus let us also remember our foundress, Maria Celeste Crostarosa (1696-1755), in a climate of gratitude. On June 3rd, 2013, Pope Francis signed a decree regarding her heroic virtues. The content of the decree presents Mary Celeste “as a strong woman of Holy Scripture and as an eminent mystic,” as she actually was. Let us recall the letter she wrote to her father before leaving the monastery at Scala:

“Most beloved Father, she wrote to her father, Joseph Crostarosa, in 1733.

I have to advise you that these good nuns of the Monastery, because of my imperfections, have dismissed me and want me to leave this Monastery of theirs, as disposed by God. So I beg you to let us find another Monastery to be

Viva Memoria 37 preserved there until whatever God disposes, because it is not good for us to be in a secular house. I beg you not to distress yourself, for God will provide, and bless me, and I kiss your feet” (Ch. 51).

She was preparing to leave the monastery at Scala, a place where she received a special grace from the Lord and the revelation concerning the creation of a new Order in the Church. At the moment, when she was constrained to leave the community, that great work of God seemed to be a failure, a disaster, an "exalted" nun’s illusion. Maria Celeste had to suffer harassment and was scorned. The sisters removed her from the monastery. She was going through difficult moments, she felt abandoned by all. Perhaps then she recalled the words once written in a letter to St. Alphonsus: "Let us love God sincerely, and he will think about everything." This woman in her thirties was experiencing Divine love and she loved her Spouse passionately. Perhaps then the phrase: "Think about it, O Lord”- (Pensaci tu, O Signore)- came to her heart.

She was to undergo a great trial... On April 25th, 1725, she received a significant revelation: as she writes, "I realized that the Lord was going to give a new Order to the world." At the beginning this new idea was accepted and approved by the bishop, but later opposition and hostility arose. In a long letter to her confessor, Father Pietro Romano, Maria Celeste wrote:

“I am grieved and displeased that up till now I have had (47) to live with the fact that Monsignor Falcoia and other persons have made me public as deluded and have spoken to my discredit, ….even though this displeasure was not for my own honour or to regret my dishonour, but because it seemed to me that in this there would be damage to the interests of my Lord. …in what concerns His honour and His glory, it falls to him to defend what is His: He can and He knows how to do it, and has no need of me… because I want only to please my God and Him alone.”

To rely exclusively on God, choose God only, was the experience of the patriarchs, the prophets, of the early Christians and saints. They accomplished great things through faith and in faith. One of the almost contemporary bishops, the late Vietnamese Mons., Francis Nguyen Van Thuan, tells about his experience of inner anguish, when he was closed in a

47 auto: ‘vuto’ – ‘had’; see n. 23 above 54

Viva Memoria 37 communist prison for several years and was cut off from his diocese and from all the Church affairs:

"I was a young bishop, with eight years of pastoral experience. I could not sleep, tormented by the thought that I had to abandon the

Diocese, that all the pastoral work, I initiated for the glory of God will be destroyed ... All my existence was experiencing a shock.

One night, I heard a voice in my heart: "Why are you so tormented? You need to distinguish God from God’s works. All that you have done and what you wish to continue: pastoral visits, education of seminarians, of monks, of nuns, of lay people, of young people, building schools, creating a mission to develop and evangelize new Christians ... - all this is a wonderful work of God, but not God. If God wants you to give it all up, do it immediately, and trust Him! God will make everything infinitely better than you would. Entrust your work to others who are much more capable than you. You have chosen God, not His works!"

His experience can help us to understand what Mother Celeste felt, when she was leaving her convent, the whole “God’s work”, she was dedicated to with such readiness and devotion. She also chose God, not God's work! When she was leaving Scala, this option was made in her heart. She trusted that God, she loved so ardently, will think about everything. She went on with pain, but with new strength, knowing that the Lord knows what is best, most necessary, that her vision of his work ("the opera”) still needs to be purified. And after several years God led her to Foggia and realized hr dream to found a new monastery.

I think that what we Redemptoristines discover again and again in our Foundress is that "inspiring spark." – Let us be grateful for it!

II. Let us live the present with passion.

“This Year - Pope Francis writes in his letter to the consecrated - also calls us to live the present with passion. Grateful remembrance of the past leads us, as we listen attentively to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church today, to implement ever more fully the essential aspects of our consecrated life - (...). For the various founders and foundresses, the Gospel was the absolute rule, whereas every other rule was meant merely to be an ‘expression of the Gospel and a means of living the Gospel to the full.’ For

Viva Memoria 37 them, the ideal was Christ; they sought to be interiorly united to him and thus to be able to say with Saint Paul: “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21). Their vows were intended as a concrete expression of this passionate love."

And now there abides these three: Purity Poverty Obedience, … the greatest of these is Love (Father Boleslaw Slota – C.Ss.R.)

To live the present with passion – this is what the Church invites us to in the words of Pope Francis, in this year of Consecrated Life. This beautiful phrase, full of ardour is a valuable suggestion for us and for all the people of God for the new millennium. To live here and now, in the circumstances and situations that we face with genuine passion, zeal, enthusiasm, as people who have met Christ, who have believed Him and have given their life to Him. “What is life for, if not to give it away and to give it to the Most High,” –a Kazakh thinker and poet Ahmed Jassawi, quoted by St. John Paul II in Astana (Kazakhstan), repeated often his poems.

It is necessary to give away one’s own life with passion, our everyday life, especially within enclosure. Otherwise being here, in a cloistered, confined space, would not make any sense. Nevertheless passion should not be identified with activity and action. Passion in our cloistered life is expressed in living intensely, experiencing intimately all, what the day brings, with its specific rhythm of prayer, work and community meetings. Living the present with passion, when Christ guides us to solitude, to be in what belongs to his Father, and when he puts into our hearts the necessity, of which he himself tells Mary and Joseph, when they anxiously look for him in Jerusalem: “Do you not know that I must be in what belongs to my Father?”

Our daily prayer behind the enclosure could look like this:

Oh my Lord and Father! You consume my interior being with Your love. My whole soul has been converted into a flame, but not to enjoy rest, for I am always on vigil, and I do not know who awakens me and wounds me in the midst of my peace, as if someone was telling me: “What are you doing, if you are not making the effort for some work that will give glory and honour to your supreme Good, and wasting the days of this life which are precious for

Viva Memoria 37 those who love? Forget about yourself; think no more about yourself; do in your neighbour some works of glory for this great monarch, with prayer, with an example and with words”- (M.C. Crostarosa, Dialogues).

Is this not the prayer of a person, who wants to live with passion the reality given to her by God? Cloistered life should burn with hidden fire which provides new energy to the world. What great passion had our Foundress - the seventeenth-century mystic, Maria Celeste Crostarosa, in living this reality. She shares it in her work “Grades of prayer”, when she speaks about the soul of a person stimulated to love, using words full of ardour:

“…with no regard to her own interests, such a soul becomes detached and uninterested in her own self, seeking the good of others, to have company with love; she willingly leaves the happiness that she would otherwise enjoy in the corner of her heart, the repose of her senses and the peace of the solitude that she experiences; for the salvation of one soul alone she would die a thousand deaths; she hastens with great affection to the needs of her neighbour, be they spiritual or temporal, becoming everything to everyone..." (10th Grade).

Authentic zeal and commitment radiates from this text, though in an atmosphere of silence, of being hidden within enclosure. Let us treat very personally Pope Francis’ invitation to live religious life "with passion," because whatever we do, as Mother Celeste Crostarosa states - “when she eats, sleeps, works, is silent, prays, writes or reads, and whatever else she does, she always transforms everything into the unity of love” – we can always love involving ourselves to the full.

III. Experts in communion

Pope Francis reminds us also that the founders of religious congregations were fascinated by the communion that characterized the first community of Jerusalem, a community of "one heart and one soul". Thus we also have to become "masters" and "models" of communion or "experts in communion.” In today's world it is a particularly important, since in our society there are so many conflicts, caused by the difficult coexistence of different cultures and mentalities, the oppression of the weakest, sectarian antagonisms. That is why the Pope urges religious to

Viva Memoria 37 lead by example, to create communities, where the dignity of each person is affirmed and the gifts, we have received from God, are being shared with each other. This may allow us to live in fraternal relations.

We often hear in the church that modern man no longer accepts words, "sermons," edifying talks, but he or she is open to the dimension of witness.

Pope John Paul II in his Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte encouraged us to promote the spirituality of communion. He perceived it as a great call for the new millennium. He wrote in a concrete way, what the spirituality of communion is, how it begins and what is its goal. The Holy Pope firmly outlined that it is not all about the level of action, which could be another temptation for today's man. External instruments without spiritual attitude, without internalization, become mechanisms without a soul.

The Pope encouraged a caring with a deep bond for people living beside us, to perceive them as someone close, with whom we can share our joys and sorrows, discern their desires, meet their needs and give them space in our lives.

Living in a contemplative community, always in the same cloistered environment, we can lose the freshness of our gaze at our Sisters. It seems sometimes that nothing new could be told, nothing can surprise, amaze, fascinate. Staying constantly together can make blunt one’s freshness, the ability to see the uniqueness of a person, to notice her as the gift of God for me. Daily relations may then become a kind of routine, they are marked by insensitivity. What is needed is a profound conversion to be with another person in a creative and joyful way, even though we may have known this person for many years, so that others may perceive God’s love present in this relationship.

When we try to promote a spirit of communion in our life, it is easier for us to talk to people who call, who come to our parlors, asking for prayer, because they have problems in their family life. We pray for them, but we also share our experience of building our religious community with them, which is after all also a family. Our Community, here in Poland consists of sisters of three nationalities: Ukrainian, Slovak and Polish. There are some sisters of the Eastern Rite – the Greek-Catholics from Ukraine, the nation

Viva Memoria 37 particularly experienced by the ongoing war on its eastern frontiers. How important is our empathy in regard to this drama. We try to share their pain with them. Despite the difficult situation in Ukraine, we are preparing to establish a Redemptoristine community there. We hope for the new monastery to be erected in the area of Lviv, God willing.

Common Prayer leads to communion. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta once pronounced a very significant sentence: "A family that prays together, stays together." May we also become “experts in communion” thanks to our daily remaining before the Lord. Without Him we can do nothing! When the Redemptoristine Order was created in Italy, Maria Celeste Crostarosa heard in her heart that special inspiration to give witness to the beauty of community life: "Whoever sees you – (Jesus said to her) – may see Me." We ask Him, through His power and grace, to become reliable signs of unity and mutual love for the contemporary world!

Viva Memoria 37

AN APPENDIX

BEFORE THE CROSS - Redemptoristine Nuns: Living memories of Jesus the Redeemer

By Archbishop Robert J. Carlson (Reprinted with Permission)

“The charity of Christ urges us to be a living memorial of the paschal mystery of Redemption... a living witness of God’s love in the Church and the world.”

Not many religious communities can claim to have a Rule written by God – but the Redemptoristines can. Their original Rule of Life was given by Jesus to their foundress, Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa, in a vision on April 25, 1725.

Like the Pink Sisters, who have a companion order in the Society of the Divine Word, and like the Poor Clares, who have a companion order in the Franciscans, the Redemptoristines are part of a “double institute:” their companion congregation is the Redemptorists. In this case, the Redemptoristines were founded first, in 1731, with the Redemptorists a year later.

You won’t see them often – after all, they live a hidden life of prayer. But if you ever do, you’ll easily recognize the Redemptoristines by their dark red habit. The dark red reminds the world of God’s infinite love. If you have the good fortune to meet them, however, you might come away thinking the dark red means joy.

The Redemptoristines’ charism – and the key to their rule of life – is to be “living memories” of Jesus the Redeemer, not only remembering Jesus themselves but also reminding others of who Jesus is and His love for them. They say: “Let His words be your words. Let His thoughts be your thoughts. Let His action be your actions.”

That’s a lesson for us. We’re called to be a “living memory” of Jesus. The Redemptoristines show us how to do it. The Redemptoristines focus prayer on two main points: No. 1, the apostolic work of the Redemptorists –

Viva Memoria 37 for example the work of Liguori Publications or the missions of Redemptorist priests; and No. 2, prayer for the poorest and abandoned.

In addition, they also pray for the archdiocese and take requests, too. The sisters say that even though there might be spiritual clouds over the world, prayers shine through them. They take prayer requests via phone, letters, and e-mail. (They currently have requests from 15 countries.)

When they arrived in St. Louis in 1960, Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter didn’t have the sisters immediately enter their enclosure. First, he told them to travel around and meet the people for whom they would be praying. So they did; they met people, visited places and interacted with other religious communities. Some founding sisters are still with us and they credit this for greatly benefitting their ministry. In fact, this group has helped found monasteries in the Philippines, Thailand and South Africa.

The Redemptoristine sisters are a living lesson for us. May what is said of them be said of us: that we’re living memories of Jesus.

We’re called by God to follow Jesus Christ our Holy Redeemer and to be a living memory of Him. Through our lives of prayer and sacrifice, we pray for the Church, the world and all of God’s people.

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New foundation in Angola The Redemptoristines

of Huambo

On 19th March 2015, on the feast of Saint Joseph, in Diabo, Burkina Faso, in the church of the monastery of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Monsignor Pierre-Claver Malgo, the Bishop of the Diocese, celebrated the Eucharist and the ceremony of sending three Sisters: Mother Valentine, Sr. M. Gerard and Sr. M. Odette, on their Mission.

These three Sisters are leaving for Angola to join their three Sisters who went there in July 2014 to learn Portuguese, the official language of Angola. These were Sisters Marie Celeste, Marie Valentine and Marie Euphrasie. The three last Sisters left on 21st March 2015. They departed by plane from Ouagadougou at 10 o’clock for Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), where they spent the night. Father Patrice, the Superior of Redemptorist Scholasticate in Ouagadougou is accompanying them.

After a pleasant journey, they arrived in Luanda about 1 p.m., local time. Father Tito met them at the airport and brought us to the community of the Vice-Provincial, where we met Father Armando and Brother Philippe. After being welcomed, a meal and some rest, Father Patrice celebrated the Mass for us. At the moment of our departure for a religious community where we will stay for three days, Father Eugenio the Vice Provincial arrived to greet us. On the morning of the 26th March,

Father Patrice arrived in a car with a good driver for the journey to Huambo where our three Sisters are waiting for us. After a journey of 700 km along a road which is not always good, we arrived at Huambo at 8 p.m. We entered a religious House where we three Sisters will be staying for 3 weeks. There we also met Father Bento, Father Nelson, Father Guillaume and another Redemptorist Deacon, Matthieu. We were made very welcome. There were also the religious Sisters of the House and some others who were part of our Alphonsian family.

After a good meal, we took possession of the little House which has been loaned to us, not far from the house of the Sisters of the Holy Saviour where we were made welcome. The following day, Monsignor Jose Queiros

Viva Memoria 37 and his secretary came for a first Mass in our House where we shall be staying until the first building of our future monastery is constructed. After this first Eucharist, Monsignor blessed the House. Besides the Bishop, Father Eugenio, who came specially from Luanda, and Father Bento and those already present yesterday. We also noted the presence of Father Jamba, who asked us for this foundation in Diabo 40 years ago! He was very moved. There were also 5 or 6 pre-Postulants of our neighbouring Sisters and the Superior of their community.

Eight days later our bishop came to see us to present his project of the future monastery. He answered our questions. We found him very understanding and generous to us.

Please, pray for this foundation! May Our Mother of Perpetual Help, St. Alphonsus M. Celeste watch over us and over all the houses of our Institute.

Viva Memoria 37

PRAYER FOR THE 25TH GENERAL CHAPTER, 2016 Sr. Joan Calver, O.Ss.R., Thailand

Let us Pray:

Father of Mercy, who out of love has given us Your Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Redeemer; Pour out your Holy Spirit upon the Redemptorist Congregation on their communities, and on each one of their member, as they prepare for their General Chapter.

Guide their searching and their decisions according to your will: Provoke in them a greater missionary fidelity to proclaim the Gospel in situations of urgent pastoral need, among the most abandoned, especially the poor.

Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help, with St. Alphonsus, Venerable Mother Maria Celeste, all the Saints, Blessed and Martyrs of the Congregation, watch over the Redemptorists as God renews their call to be Apostles who are - strong in faith, rejoicing in hope, burning with Charity and on fire with zeal.

Leader: Mother of Perpetual Help

All: Hear our prayer

Leader: Alphonsus, Mother Maria Celeste

All: Hear our prayer.