Rome (Italy). The Superior General of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Mother Chiara Cazzuola, inserted the reflection of Circular no. 1047 in the framework of the Lenten journey, a time “of conversion and return to the essential” in which to receive the recent text published by the Institute – The Constitutions of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: a journey of holiness in daily life – as “a call to a new vocational fecundity”.
Our Covenant with God
Mother refers to the biblical category of the Covenant to talk about the FMA Institute’s Constitutions, which “teach how to read the history of the world, the Church, and the Institute as a history of salvation,” to see and read therefore their own history and that of their communities as “the fabric on which God acts and works, where He works great things with simple and poor creatures as we all are.”
In this perspective, daily life becomes rich in signs to discover and to welcome as a gift, in which the rules and discipline should not be seen as an impediment to the realization of the “dream of being Daughters of Mary Help of Christians holy, generative of life, and therefore, happy here and now” and in which fidelity to the Constitutions is a “personal and free response to the call of God.”
In this regard, Mother Chiara leaves some questions: “Are we convinced that the missionary and vocational fecundity of the Institute passes through the full assumption of the Constitutions? Are we aware that they are for us the mediation of a charismatic plan, a life plan shaped on the Gospel, rather than a collection of laws to be observed?”
“The Constitutions are the ‘pact of our covenant with God, sure guide to holiness’.” Quoting article 173, Mother highlights how fidelity to this Covenant constitutes the basis on which the unity and consistency of the person is founded, “communion within the Institute; it guides the inculturation of the charism and opens to interculturality in a missionary dimension.”
Gift of Don Bosco and of Mother Mazzarello
Both for Don Bosco, who ends his existence by asking the FMA to continue to love him with the exact observance of the Rules, as in Mother Mazzarello – who recommends to Sister Giuseppina Pacotto, missionary in departure – the observance of the Constitutions is not only an outward formality, but a guarantee of a path in full fidelity, which fully reveals the identity of the Daughter of Mary Help of Christians:
“To be faithful to the Constitutions, therefore, is to realize the dream of our Founders. There is, in fact, an indissoluble link between Constitutions and charismatic identity.”
The first articles of the Constitutions describe the Founders as people totally open to the gift of the Spirit and to humanity, to the calls of God and to listening to the expectations of young people and of their times, which led them to generate life and dream of “open and flexible communities, capable of great horizons.”
The strong missionary impulse that leads the Salesian Family to open vast horizons, has its charismatic core in the apostolic charity founded on the love of Christ the Good Shepherd (cf. C 1) that urges Don Bosco to go to meet young people, making him “father and teacher of a multitude of youth”. The same experience of apostolic charity is lived in creative fidelity by Mary Domenica Mazzarello, so that the da mihi animas cetera tolle and the I entrust them to you, become “clear and courageous proclamation of the Lord Jesus, in the search for His face in every person, without preconceptions or prejudices, but with a free heart, passionate for the good of all.”
Move from written text to lived text
Ten years after the distribution to all FMA – which took place in 2015 – of the last re-edition of the text of the Constitutions, approved by CG XXIII, Mother recognizes in the text of the Practical Commentary to the Constitutions, just published, a help for “making more concrete the commitment to move from the written text to the lived text, in the changed historical situations compared to the origins, but always of great actuality.”
Recalling the legacy left by Don Bosco on his last visit to the house in Nizza Monferrato in August 1885, in which he recommended to the Sisters to put into practice the Rule and saw Mary walking inside and laying her cloak on the House, Mother Chiara states: “We will be more and more the living memory of Mary the more our life will be a faithful transparency of the spirit of Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.”
Mother concludes the Circular wishing a Happy Easter, also on behalf of the Sisters of the General Council, to all the Sisters and their loved ones, “to the little ones and young people of our houses, to the associations, to the educating communities, to all the collaborators, in particular to the priests who in various parts of the world give us the Word of God, the Bread of life, the Forgiveness of the Father.”
Recalling the upcoming World Feast of Gratitude which will be celebrated on 26 April in Vietnam with the theme, “Lighting the Gospel of hope”, she thanked the Vicar General, Sister María del Rosario García Ribas, for the useful communications, that this annual encounter “may be a new family encounter, because new is our will to make the paschal light shine with the charism that has been handed over to us and which, as the Salesian Family, we wish to make ever more luminous and contagious”.
Not lacking is the remembrance of Pope Francis – still hospitalized in the “Agostino Gemelli” Hospital – with the renewed request to continue praying “so that the Lord may support him in recovering his health and give him the strength necessary to live this moment of physical fragility and trial, certain that the Lord is all his hope.”
