During the spiritual exercises, we should courageously try to take stock of our lives, to see whether our house is built on sand, despite our acquired fame, or on the rock that is Christ.
When I have to choose where to go to live the time of the annual spiritual exercises, preferably followed within the Congregation, I first choose the preacher and then the place.
The preacher is fundamental because, in addition to the theological-spiritual preparation, he must transmit to me his experience of the encounter with the Risen Lord, otherwise he is nothing more than a repeater of concepts or spiritual experiences of others.
It is fundamental to remember that the spiritual exercises are a means to consolidate the encounter with the Risen One. One should not think that they will perform the miracle of transforming one’s life. If anything, they can be a beginning of that transformation, or a means to further strengthen one’s vocation, but this must be there!
Therefore, a priest of the Mission and a Daughter of Charity must be clear that their life can only be lived in this vocation: none of us can think of his life except as a priest of the Mission or as a Daughter of Charity. This is the only way for us to fulfil the promises expressed on the day of our baptism and confirmed afterwards with the relative sacrament and on the day of the making of vows, which for our sisters is renewed every year.
Only in such a situation will the spiritual exercises bear fruit and not be reduced to one of many things to be done…..!
It is very dangerous to reduce the spiritual exercises to things to be done, this indicates that, as priests of the Mission and Daughters of Charity, we delude ourselves that we have been called by the Lord, in reality, it is we who have decided to live in a state of life to which we have not been called by the Spirit, and the results are visible: we compensate ourselves with work, which leads us to alienate ourselves from the community; or we toil, both in the community and in other spheres, to occupy the first places, so as to delude ourselves – even with God – that we are persons of worth, when in fact the reality is quite different and, those who have understood who we really are, are esteemed as persons with few resources, feeding on them more than a prejudice.
This is why, during the spiritual exercises, we should courageously try to take stock of our lives, to see if our house is built on sand, despite the fame we have acquired, or on the rock that is Christ, who gave us the example, with his life, and who did not know what to do with fame, and Christ’s life is a model for every Christian…!
To care daily for the call that the Holy Spirit has given us, as Priests of the Mission and Daughters of Charity, in my opinion, means – I am thinking of my Western world because I do not know the other realities and I apologise – to care for community life: the liturgy of the Hours; the celebration of the Eucharist; the pastoral ministry and the service of the poor must always be an expression of a community that evangelises and serves and never express the commitment of the individual person: we are not called to personal work. Even when a brother or sister is forced to serve individually, their co-workers and those who meet them must always breathe their belonging to the congregation of the Mission and to the company of the Daughters of Charity, and also, and this is fundamental, their unity in working together to serve the Church, because this is what St Vincent and St Louise wanted.
It will be the quality of common life within our Houses that will ensure that the young men and women, whom the Holy Spirit is calling to be Missionaries and Daughters of Charity, can respond to the call they have received. Community can be the means the Holy Spirit uses and also the obstacle to the Holy Spirit. This is why one must never become an immovable master in a House, but be poor in Spirit and useless servants, ready for obedience, which is what makes the vow of poverty relevant.
The spiritual exercises, when they serve to take stock of our life and not just one thing among many to be done, are truly a gift of the Father’s love, which helps us to be happy Vincentians, even in the hard times of life, to be called to live in Community.
By Fr Giorgio Bontempi c.m.
