ANGELA MERICI: SANCTITY FOR TODAY By Fr Alberto Margoni *
(*Born in Desenzano (Brescia), the birth place of St Angela Merici, Fr Margoni is a priest in the diocese of Verona. He is also a journalist and the director of the weekly periodical Verona Fedele since 1st October 2006. Fr Margoni writes in the daily paper Avvenire and L’Osservatore Romano. He is the author of the book ‘Angela Merici, L’Intuizione della spirtualita secolare (Soveria Mannelli, 2000). For three years Fr Margoni was the Archbishop’s delegate for the Company of St Ursula – Daughters of St Angela Merici of Verona.
Here is an extract from Fr Margoni’s article. Foot notes have been left out.
4. Living in the city: A pledge for testimony
We will now discuss the importance of giving first preference to our testimony. Never before was it so important for a Christian or even more a consecrated person to feel the need of being called to live in the city and be the yeast that has the power to change, re generate and lead persons to Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI said,” Your apostolic work should reach all mankind. Be it in the Christian or the civil community, you must strive to do good, to communicate with all and be witness by your Christian behaviour to give sense to a disorientated and confused society, because of its multicultural and multi religious members.”
And what a better place to draw a study of human nature than from the writings of Angela Merici, where a person is really the centre of importance because it is only through Christ and in our relation with others that our existence really finds meaning.
This is the real meaning of living in the city. There, where we find good and evil, holiness and sin, a reality that is confusing if not ambiguous. Nevertheless, it is in the city where man is privileged enough to meet God. It is built, inhabited, sanctified, consoled, made cheerful and saved by the Lord. Yet in it, we find human pride, confusion, idolatry, sin and misery. In the very heart of the city, a Christian finds himself struggling to please God against evil. The lay consecrated person has to fight suffocating erotic deeds, the greed for money and the quest for power, with poverty, humility and purity (even if not bound by the vow of chastity). No monastery will help you pray better, nature will not give you serenity, and the walls of the cloister will not safeguard your virtues.
The city that puts you to the test, purifies and sanctifies you. However, it is also a city where one can live, practise evangelic charity, and be a witness of Christian hope, which is so urgently needed by the world today. Even if it is true to say that St. Angela did not specify particular Apostolic and social pledges, the consecrated person who lives in the world like any other Christian is still called to generate hope in the places where she lives by her way of life and to practice Christ’s charity. In the meeting which the church held in Verona on the 4th October, the Pope, in one of his early speeches, said, ” We know it is not easy to hang on to our faith and to follow Christ, on the contrary it is a continuous battle. The church is therefore still a sign of contradiction in following Christ’s footsteps. However, we must not lose hope, on the contrary we should always be ready with an answer when asked about our hope. We must answer “with courtesy, respect and with a clear conscience” (l Pt 3, 15 – 16), with that gentle strength which comes from our union with Christ. This must be shown by our thoughts, words, actions and behaviour.”
Our testimony is given by all we do in our daily life; at home, at work, in the church, during festivities, in all that concerns our culture and citizenship. It is only by means of these various testimonies in the world that one can understand Christ’s love for humanity when He gave in to His Father. In a similar way, the testimonies can be a proof of your saying yes to God’s will. This yes involves man’s freedom and intelligence, his will and faith. Moreover, once we freely chose to say yes to consecrated life, we are able to give ourselves fully to God, and by having faith in Him we can bring joy to others in the world.
5. A project for life to be made known
I have already quoted the Pope about public testimony. This helps me to touch on a last point and which helps me to go deeper into the theme I was asked to talk about, which is of utmost importance today, Communication. It is not my intention to be a sociologist or a mass media reporter. However, having had some limited experience when I assisted the Company of St. Ursula in the town where I live (This will be my starting point) helped me to consider and go deeper in the subject and come up with more mature ideas which I am now pointing out to you. I start by quoting the title of the article in a magazine that dealt deeply with the various aspects of religious life. 9 You will be right in stating that it does not concern you. However, I will touch briefly on this subject as an introduction. One of the articles was “A world out of this world” 1 and a paragraph discussed the theme “A world that is slightly known, distant and strange”. This referred to all religious and consecrated institutions, to the fact that they were recognised only by their habits, their structural organisation and the way they communicated with the media, only by means of reports in magazines. Therefore, I wonder what is said today about secular institutions where members are not recognised by their habits, do not live in a community and where communication with the media is still lacking although this is of fundamental importance. If you are not seen, you are non-existent.
Let us put aside the question of the habit, which is not important for secular institutions (even if it is only a question of wearing a belt). “The same can be said of living in community. However, let us question what is being done today to make people aware of 1) our existence, 2) who we really are and 3) what our charism is.
Once a seminarian, a student of theology, referred to his aunt, a daughter of St. Angela, as “my aunt, the nun”. This I could not contradict because of my limited experience. If a student of theology thought this of his aunt, imagine what ideas the priests of the diocese had! If they are aware of their existence, how many people still think of the daughters of St. Angela as nuns or lay nuns, or consecrated persons whose duty it is to teach, to be catechists or to be a help to the clergy in their parish or as housekeepers to the priests. If this is what a great number of priests think, I dare not imagine the confused ideas of the lay people. So I ask, besides having contacts with many people, besides the importance of being the invisible yeast which is absorbed in the pastry yet gives it shape (it is the only ingredient which makes the dough rise not the sugar, nor the flour), are you known to the clergy and lay people? Are you mentioned in the weekly Catholic periodicals? Do the Catholic radio stations talk about you? What are you doing to make yourselves and your special charism known? I am aware that these are stupid questions. Nevertheless, how can a person think about your charism, your project for life, if he does not even know that you exist? Now, do not think of invading the mass media. Just consider the most effective way of communication as your primary objective; this is a pressing necessity for all religious and secular institutions, movements, associations and even the parishes.
Besides being informative, this communication can also help to increase vocations. As for myself, prior to my ordination, were it not for the publication of my testimony in the periodical of which I am now editor, I would not have taken a deeper interest in the life of St. Angela. Thanks to the support and help of the Federation (to which I am eternally grateful), I am sure I would not be here with you today (even if some of you might think you are better off without me). Joking apart, I will be presumptuous to the very end, knowing that you will forgive me. If Angela were to repeat to her daughters, the words “Take action, move, believe, try hard, hope, and shout out to the Lord ….) I think she would not mind the necessary communication, because this does not invade one’s privacy but can also serve as an announcement for vocations. Remember the words of Christ “The sons of darkness are smarter than those of the light”.
Conclusion
We still ought to be grateful to the Lord today for the way St. Angela founded the Company and the secular institute for consecrated life, her life two centuries ago and her canonisation by the church made her a model for all Christians to follow. She opened the way to holiness and through her, even today, we follow the path of holiness and therefore every woman who lives in the world finds her fulfilment. Let me mention Elisa Tarolli and many others with her.
Their testimony and your daily testimony tell us that Angela Merici’s life has the power even today to lead women to answer to God’s call for holiness.
Not many people respond to a call to a vocation to a secular institute and in part, I believe it is because few people even know about their existence. I myself heard about it only because the retreat master I had for my retreats then was a well-informed Jesuit who was able to guide me in the right direction. I had never heard of secular institutes and even after I had joined one, I continue to be surprised that so many people, including priests and religious, have no idea what secular institutes are all about.
Are we to remain a secret? I hope not.
What is a secular institute? A secular institute is an organization which helps the faithful strive to mirror Christ more faithfully in their daily lives by following the evangelical counsels. Priests and laity may join a secular institute and it is a good vocation. However, the public consecration of vows or promises does not change the canonical status of the individual. Thus, those of the laity who profess the evangelical counsels in the form of vows do not enter the consecrated state but remain in the world and in the lay state in the Church.
Secular institutes are usually composed of members who live separately. They support themselves and contribute to their secular institute. The idea is that a member of a secular institute is to live as leaven in the world. They are to be a good example to others in the daily routine of normal living.
It is because the members of secular institutes are not within the consecrated state but are dedicated to Christ’s service in either the priesthood or lay state that they do not wear a habit or uniform. The members blend in society and bear witness to Christ.
Members of secular institutes profess vows or sacred bonds of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These vows are understood according to the rules of the institute. Poverty is not a renunciation of ownership of goods. Chastity means celibacy for the sake of the kingdom and obedience will be defined in the rules.
The elements of a secular institute are different in that they seem to be that of the evangelical counsels, life as leaven in the world, and the apostolate. It is to follow Christ more thoroughly in the world “secular manner” that people choose to embrace the evangelical counsels in the context of a non-religious institute lifestyle.
Consecrated Women: Pivotal for Evangelization Their Ranks Top 855,000 Worldwide VATICAN CITY, FEB. 2, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican’s evangelization dicastery paid particular homage to consecrated women, whose contribution it sees as crucial for spreading the Gospel.
Anticipating today’s 10th World Day of Consecrated Life, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in recent weeks had published, through its Fides news agency, a lengthy report to highlight “the precious contribution offered by the consecrated woman.”
“In a thousand ways, in every place of the earth,” it said, the consecrated woman “take[s] the joyful proclamation of salvation, above all with the testimony of a life entirely given to God and brothers and, consequently, with her painstaking charity,” at times unto martyrdom.
It continued: “The ‘weight’ of the contribution of feminine consecrated life in the evangelizing and pastoral activity of the Church is of such solidity that Pope John Paul II affirmed that ‘the future of the new evangelization (…) is unthinkable without a renewed contribution from women, especially consecrated women.’”
As of year-end 2003 there were 855,655 consecrated women “at the service of the Church and brothers, especially the neediest” in the world, according to the report, citing the Statistical Yearbook of the Church.
3,589 convents The number of women religious of active life, both of pontifical as well as diocesan right, reached 776,269. There were 56,409 in Africa; 222,643 in the Americas; 148,225 in Asia; 338,688 in Europe; and 10,304 in Oceania.
Those who belong to feminine secular institutes reached a worldwide total of 28,916. There were 474 in Africa; 5,763 in the Americas; 1,440 in Asia; 21,194 in Europe; and 45 in Oceania.
Also, within contemplative life, there are 3,589 convents with close to 50,470 nuns: 30,435 in Europe; 14,479 in the Americas; 3,400 in Asia; 1,926 in Africa; and 230 in Oceania.
Secular Institutes: The Vocation of the New Millennium by Patricia Skarda, Chair, Vocation Committee U.S. Conference of Secular Institutes
Pope Paul VI, who saw consecrated seculars as “the advance wing of the Church,” characterized members of secular institutes as “spiritual mountaineers.”
Members of secular institutes are “in the world and not of the world, but for the world.” They live in whatever providential circumstances God gives them, but they wholly consecrate their lives to God through the evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience, and chastity. They are the newest vocation in the Catholic Church, and many say they are the vocation of the new millennium.
Pope John Paul II said that secular institutes provide “evangelical yeast” to leaven all the dough of the world through the radical living out of the baptismal promises and so change the world from within by becoming “life-giving leaven.” The treasure of secular institutes is a new gift of the Spirit, combining consecration and secularity. The result is an apostolate of testimony, Christian commitment to society, and evangelization. The institute provides a genuine fraternity that, without being defined by a shared life, is a true communion.
Each consecrated secular immerses his or her entire life in special consecration, totally available to the will of the Father. Together in one of the 30 secular institutes in the United States, consecrated seculars are an “experimental laboratory, in which the Church tests the ways she relates concretely to the world (Pope Paul VI).
Secular institutes are not a club with occasional social or purposeful meetings; they are instead a vocation, a call as clear as that to the priesthood or religious life. They are not apostolic societies with a singular missionary purpose in which all participate; instead they are committed to encouraging individual striving for holiness in a vast variety of apostolates with common gospel values. They are not religious communities with a common house and public vows and financial responsibility for members; instead, they are organizations of like-minded Catholic laity or clerics who share a certain vision lived out personally, not communally.
Over 80% of the secular institutes in the United States and throughout the world are lay women, though 20% are for lay men or for diocesan clerics who wish to profess vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity without entering a religious congregation or community. Over 200 institutes exist in the world, with as many as 60,000 members. Pope Pius XII, who first recognized secular institutes in Provida Mater Ecclesia (1947), described them as “societies, clerical or lay, whose members make profession of the evangelical counsels, living in a secular condition for the purpose of Christian perfection and full apostolate. Later documents like Cum Sanctissimus and Primo Feliciter ( 1948 ) characterize secular institutes as “salt and light” to the world. Canon Law recognizes secular institutes in canons 710-730. Christifideles Laici ( 1988 ) further endorsed this form of vocation based on 1 Peter 4:10: “like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you have received.” And in 1996, Vita Consecrata noted that secular institutes, each in accord with its specific nature, “help to ensure that the Church has an effective presence in society.”
Perhaps Lydia at Philippi (Acts 16:11-15) formed a group to live the life prescribed by secular institutes today. Historically, the way of life in a secular institute dates back to the sixteenth century, when St. Angela Merici in Italy envisioned a group of women who were consecrated to God by the evangelical counsels but who lived and exercised their apostolate in the world without habit or life in common. During the French Revolution and the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, French Jesuit Père Pierre-Joseph Picot de Clorivière (1735-1820) founded societies which, at first, he envisioned as a new type of religious, professing the three evangelical counsels, but living fully in the world, religious before God but not before men. Pioneering foundations multiplied, especially in nineteenth century Italy and twentieth century Germany. The Italian Franciscan Agostino Gemelli (1875-1959) founded the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ; Dominican Joseph-Marie Perrin (1905-2002) founded Caritas Christi; German Father Joseph Kentenich ( 1885-1968 ) founded five institutes within the Schoenstatt Movement, two of which (one for priests and one for lay women) are in the United States.
Most secular institutes have no common house or even headquarters because the work of the institute is not centralized. In fact, the work of each individual member constitutes not the work of the institute, but the work of the consecrated secular. A teacher in northern California and a nurse in New Hampshire and an artist in Missouri share the same commitment: that of living their baptismal promises to the full and bringing Christ to their families and workplaces, parishes and civic organizations, boardrooms and reading groups. They are very certainly in the world, doing the work of their ordinary circumstances, but using the means of the world to make Christ known and loved. Their lives are marked by prayer, daily celebration of the liturgy, and concentration of purpose. It is not what they do that matters so much as what they are.
Each secular institute bears the unique charism of its founders and traditions, and each celebrates its “communion” by annual retreats, meetings, common daily prayer, and friendships that evolve quite naturally from living a similar life in God despite differences in profession or work in the world. A web of connectedness grows over time, linking the members to one another inextricably. For all consecrated seculars, the vocation undergirds all they undertake because it becomes the essence of what they are in God’s eye.
For more information on secular institutes…turn to a wonderful compilation of all Pope John Paul II has said about secular institutes: The Private Prayers of Pope John Paul II: Words of Inspiration (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2001). The last is God’s gift to consecrated seculars and to the world, where Catholics who find that the parish is not enough will turn to this newest form of consecrated life: secular institutes.
This article first appeared in seraaUSA, February 2003. http://www.voluntasdeiusa.org/USCSI/article1.htm
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World Conference of Secular Institutes, 2007 Event Marks 60th Anniversary of Pius XII Document VATICAN CITY, FEB. 6, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says that members of secular institutes are called to work in the Christian community as well as in the wider civil arena.
The Pope made that observation Saturday when he met with participants in the World Conference of Secular Institutes, gathered in Rome for a two-day symposium.
The Holy Father invited them to be a visible sign of Christ’s beauty and a “laboratory of dialogue with the world.”
The gathering marked the 60th anniversary of the Pope Pius XII’s apostolic constitution “Provida Mater Ecclesia,” the document that delineated the secular-institute members’ form of consecration.
It was Benedict XVI’s first meeting with members of these institutes as a whole.
The Pontiff explained: “That juridical act did not represent a point of arrival but rather the starting point of a journey whose objective was to delineate a new form of consecration: that of lay faithful and diocesan presbyters, called to live with evangelical radicalism the secularism in which they are immersed due to their existential condition or pastoral ministry.”
Secular institutes are “one of the innumerable gifts with which the Holy Spirit accompanies the Church’s journey and renews her in all the centuries,” he said.
Song of beauty The Holy Father told them: “Your passion is born of having discovered the beauty of Christ, his unique way of loving, of meeting others, of healing life, of making it joyful and of consoling it.
“And your lives should be a song of this beauty so that your existence in the world is a sign of your existence in Christ.”
The Pope outlined the characteristics of the secular mission including exemplary conduct and “the testimony of human virtues, such as justice, peace, joy.”
He also mentioned the “commitment to building a society that recognizes in the different realms the dignity of the person and the imperative values for his or her fulfillment: from politics to economics, from education to commitment to public health, from management of services to scientific research.”
The Holy Father continued: “Every pain, every injustice, every search for the truth of beauty and goodness must challenge you, not because you have the solution to all problems, but because every circumstance in which the human being lives and dies is for us an opportunity to witness to the salvific work of God.”
“To conform one’s life with Christ’s” not only calls for a “profound change of mentality” and “a different way of relating to Christ,” but for “concrete commitments and gestures of ‘mountain climbers of the spirit,’” he said.
In the world Lay members of secular institutes live a common life; they are consecrated to God and profess the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. Clerical members of secular institutes become a help to other priests through the testimony of consecrated life.
The Pontiff invited these persons to engage in “a profound relationship with the signs of the times, which you are called to discern, personally and communally, in the light of the Gospel” to “be a laboratory of dialogue with the world.”
Benedict XVI explained: “The place of your apostolate, therefore, is everything human, whether within the Christian community, or within the civil community in which the relationship is applied in the search for the common good, in dialogue with all.”
In this way, members of secular institutes will be able “to witness that anthropology which is a proposal of meaning in a disoriented and confused society because of the multicultural and multireligious climate that characterizes it.”
The Pope urged them: “Be seekers of truth, of the human revelation of God in life. Proclaim the beauty of God and of his creation. Following the example of Christ, be obedient to love, men and women of meekness and mercy, capable of going on the paths of the world doing only the good.
“May the beatitudes be the center of your lives, contradicting human logic, to express unconditional trust in God who wills that the human being be happy.”
“The Church is also in need of you,” the Holy Father added. “Be seeds of holiness sown generously in the furrows of history.”
Secular institutes entered ecclesiastic legislation in 1947 and the Code of Canon Law in 1983.
They result from and favor the ecclesial recognition of the laity’s vocation and mission proposed by the Second Vatican Council.
Of the 215 secular institutes in the Church, the great majority feminine, 143 are of diocesan right and 72 of pontifical right.
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Secular Institutes Study Sanctity in the World Consecrated Persons and Vatican Officials Meet for Symposium VATICAN CITY, FEB. 7, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Secular institutes are one of the ways that the Holy Spirit accompanies the Church, Benedict XVI says.
The Holy Father said this to some 400 superiors of secular institutes, gathered in Rome on Saturday and Sunday, to mark the 60th anniversary of “Provida Mater Ecclesia.” With this apostolic constitution, signed Feb. 2, 1947, Pope Pius XII recognized secular institutes.
“That juridical act,” Benedict XVI explained to the superiors in his address on Saturday, “did not represent a point of arrival but rather the starting point of a journey whose objective was to delineate a new form of consecration.”
The meeting was organized by the World Conference of Secular Institutes, to which 160 feminine institutes, seven masculine institutes, and 15 priestly institutes belong, as well as one with both masculine and feminine branches.
Members of secular institutes commit themselves to live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience in the world, without exterior signs. The 1983 Code of Canon Law dedicated Canons 710-730 to these institutions.
Called to holiness Ewa Kusz, president of the group, explained that “our vocation means living in the world, like all lay people, but also in full consecration, like all consecrated persons, since all are called to holiness, and all are called in different places and in different ways. According to our way, we can be saints in the world.”
“Our life is different from religious life,” clarified Kusz, who belongs to the Immaculate Mother Institute. That Church entity, founded in Poland, is present in Germany, Ukraine, Slovakia, Brazil and Rome.
“We have no works; therefore, we cannot say what we have done,” she said. “We are like salt and leaven. The fruits are in the different places in which we live.”
To explain her vocation, she quoted the Epistle to Diognetus, a second century Christian text addressed by the author to a pagan in which he says, among other things: “To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world.”
Archbishop Gianfranco Agostino Gardin, secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, also addressed the group.
Saints in the world Cardinal Georges Cottier, retired theologian of the Pontifical Household, analyzed the term “world” in his address.
In the face of a society that lives “as if God did not exist,” the believer has the task to purify and sanctify the world, showing the work of God that acts in the lives of people, the cardinal explained.
Luigi Franco Pizzolato, dean of the faculty of classics and philosophy at the University of Milan, illustrated the Epistle to Diognetus, presenting it as a model of reflection on the presence of Christians in the world.
In this document, “the reasons for the distinction between being in the world and not being of the world find their synthesis in the faithful’s belonging to the Church, which summarizes the mysteries of testimony and knowledge, of participation and identity,” Pizzolato said.
Sister Sharon Holland, canonist and member of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, explained how “to make Christ the heart of the world,” and spoke of the directives the Code of Canon Law gives the secular institutes.
Leah Lillera Priscilla from the Philippines, Emilio Sánchez from Spain, Miroslaw Bogacki from Poland, Perpetue Kakese from Congo, Denise Dube from Canada and María Cecilia Comuzzi from Argentina gave their testimonies of consecrated life in the world.
The prefect of the Vatican congregation, Cardinal Franc Rodé, gave the last intervention, presenting the points of view and goals that this meeting offered to the secular institutes.
The symposium was closed in St. Peter’s Basilica, where representatives of the secular institutes placed before the altar the commitments that arose during the two days of study and analysis.
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