New intergenerational narratives of justice and reconciliation in a European context
September 2024
by Fiorella Capasso, partner in mission
It is the register of the heart that captured our attention; the Letter from the Congregational Leadership Team last March hit the mark: we felt very much challenged by the “new narrative”[1] through which the General Level commits to engage and motivate us to “embrace new beginnings, with hope, courage and resilience.” In the “lessons learned and insights” that emerged from their reflection on the experience of engagement two years after the mandate received by the 31st Congregational Chapter, we witness beauty and integrated gazes that inspire courage and confidence:
“…we cherish the meaningful and heartfelt encounters we have had seeing, hearing, and experiencing our partners in mission, especially the Units’ Leadership Teams, the trainers, the Unit treasurers, the Contemplative Sisters, the younger sisters and the partners in mission. All that we learned through these sessions and our visits to the Unit offered us both joyful and painful experiences, in which our hearts rejoiced and saddened with you.”[2]
In the wake of their journey, we feel accompanied to “become spiritual leaders who breathe life into every interaction and guide each other toward new ways of being, seeing, thinking and acting… in which to exercise accountability and transparency.”[3] Such qualities in “rel-actions” are crucial to initiating new narratives capable of nurturing attachments while simultaneously touching the hearts of the youngest generations, with whom we are given to share precisely these times of narrative crisis.[4] Today, in fact, the rupture of community ties and the excess of information that fragments and intoxicates personal, community and social life, risks blocking and isolating us in an eternal and empty present lacking credible, coherent and generative references. Information proceeds by addition, accumulation and consumption, and does not carry any meaning. On the contrary, sense does flow in the narrative, in the story. The original meaning of “sense” is, indeed, “direction”, “way”.
In the new narrative summarized in the Letter of the Congregational Leadership Team, we recognized the way that we too have been trying to follow for some time, to take up the challenge of intergenerational “transmission” of the charism and style of the Good Shepherd in the Southern European Region. We are trying with zeal and tenacity, taking into account penalizing historical and cultural circumstances that are undoubtedly different from other Regions of the Congregation. Here, in the Italian context specifically, we are operating in times of stagnation and general disaffection for ideals, so much so that the Censis 2023 Report depicts a country of somnambulists, ‘blind’ and frightened before the omens: “Some economic and social processes that are largely predictable in their effects seem removed from the country’s collective agenda, or at least underestimated… Italian society seems to be affected by a widespread somnambulism, plunged into a deep sleep of the rational calculation that would be necessary to deal with structural, long-term dynamics with potentially fatal effects.” [5]
In Italy, the challenge of intergenerational “transmission” poses structural difficulties also highlighted by the phenomenon of “fleeing from social work”, which might hinder the dynamics of “intergenerational transmission of charisma” in place, despite a great deployment of human, spiritual and economic efforts: “Transmission is not a one-way movement…It is not about transferring an object from one hand to another. It requires a double action: by the person who transmits and by the person who receives the transmission. When seen in the interplay between generations, it is linked to the wishes of both the old and the new ones. The new generations are responsible for determining whether they are willing to inherit and what it is in the legacy that interests them. The old ones are asked to listen to the request, to move their language towards another one… It is evident that not everything will go away, that certain elements to which we were very attached will be superseded or retransformed, while others will be recognized as tracks and will prove fruitful… History does not proceed by addition but by restructuring… Our hope always lies in the element of newness that each generation brings with it…”[6] What a profound and radical transformation awaits us to ensure the continuity of the values of justice and reconciliation “inherited” from our founders! It is a transformation of consciences that we are to experience together with all partners, in mission and of the mission, apostolic and lay, public and private, who continue to dream of a world of women and men capable of reconciliation, justice and responsibility.
Today we are called to walk as partners who intertwine their paths with those of the women and men of their own time. This, after all, is
what Pope Francis also invites us to with his three fundamental verbs for living synodality – encounter, listen and discern – that we find at the root of his anthropological vision, characterized by an openness to meeting the other rather than to the transmission of principles and prescriptions. To encounter, to listen, and to discern can also be considered as the verbs of governance understood as a process of coordination of players, groups, and institutions that meet and, by acknowledging each other, choose to form an alliance for chorally discussed and defined goals in fragmented and uncertain spheres, for the benefit of each and the Common Good.
This is perhaps why the letter from the Leadership Team felt so comforting to us: we felt united by shared visions and perspectives, in synergy with the two directions proposed by the Team: “realizing a universal culture of justice… being a reconciling presence.” We felt as if we were walking together, under the “appreciative” and encouraging gaze of the Leadership Team. And this in continuity with the foresight of the Congregational Leader elected at the 30th Chapter; Ellen Kelly exhorted us to have the courage to move Forwards: “Move Forwards, even when what is Forwards is unknown. God will meet us while we walk towards the future.”
It is no coincidence that we chose an image of the Visitation so representative of the practices adopted by the current Leadership Team in the governance of the Congregation, all aimed at fostering “relationships, integrations and teamwork.” The intergenerational embrace at the center of the painting conveys tenderness, understanding, and gratitude for the wonder of the path set before us by God. Gazes are the main characters in the work of this Italian artist who lived in the 16th century, conveying over time the experience of a privileged interpersonal moment and urging us too, today, not to be afraid of individual and community limits and fears. The future calls us[7] with its spiritual power and attracts us by transforming hopes into actions for the Personal and Common Good: “Even when we don’t desire it, God is ripening.”[8] This is an image that evokes the mystery of nascent life, the mystery of regenerated mission, the mystery of Grace and, above all, of the intergenerational dimension, which is so challenging for us partners who – especially in the West, and, more particularly, in Europe – live in dark times, times of decline of authority,[9] of rupture of the covenant between generations,[10] with a consequent crisis of narrative. This, however, like any other crisis,[11] presents dangers and opportunities. Danger constantly inhabits our liquid society.[12] But, as the poets suggest: “Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.”[13]
The art of narration as a post-modern way to the “salvation of souls” according to the language of our Founders, today is learned within a life lived in “narrative contexts,” in processes in which to recognize each other within the Congregation and in the world, with others-than-us. “Our values of love, compassion and equity will drive us to accompany one another through our vulnerabilities as we support, celebrate and embrace our strengths.”[14]
The novelty of a narrative that embraces and repairs the world today – to re-actualize the language of our Founders – lies in recognizing that we are all, without distinction, vulnerable: the widespread but denied pain that makes our time dark originates from the fragility of relationships that do not generate bonds. This pain asks to be listened to, understood, welcomed and addressed with care and foresight, at a personal, interpersonal, community and apostolic level. It is a pain that rises from humanity as a whole and affects us directly: the last 500 years of European history, in particular, leave us this tragic legacy. The increasing inhumanity that characterizes the way we, in Europe, are treating migrants in particular and foreigners more generally “cuts to the heart” (Acts 2:37).
“Brothers, what shall we do?”
With this reference to the Acts of the Apostles we want to emphasize Peter’s words (his narrative): they succeed in cutting to the hearts of those who hear them. Peter had been changed by the pain of Jesus, who bore his sins as well in his body on the wood of the cross, and from whose wounds he had been healed, too, by that Love who had looked upon him, forgiving him and rescuing him: a lost sheep who no longer knew how to find himself and continue living. His wisdom is that which comes from the experience of mercy and forgiveness.
Peter’s words to the crowd are like a sharp arrow that hits the mark because he knows exactly where to aim, for he was the first to be hit. So when Peter speaks, he knows what he is saying; his words vibrate with the certainty of someone who has “been there” and has finally understood. That is why he not only teaches, but also begs and exhorts.
Only those who have known love and have learned to love, those who have felt like wanderers and have been found “by the shepherd and
guardian of his soul,” are able to cut to the heart, to convey a healthy restlessness that, however, at the same time also tastes like peace.[15]
The Congregational Leadership seems to invite us to animate processes of resilience and paths of humanity in the wake of the Positions re-actualized by the Justice and Peace Office on the Protection of Women and Minors against Gender-Based Violence and Trafficking, on Migration, on Integral Ecology, and on Economic Justice, to unleash healing gazes, words, gestures and actions.
The change of era in which we are immersed presents us with a strange and complicated world that challenges us and forces us – especially in Europe – to face a painful sense of loss and inadequacy. This is an era of multiple crises in which charismatic organizations more than other human communities find themselves suffering the travails of an epochal transition filled with confusions and uncertainties, but they are potentially better able to “re-equip” themselves to discover other paths and regenerate the joy of the Gospel out of the signs of the times. Participating in the Church’s journey prompts one to think and rethink, to ask new and old questions, in line with a conception of Christianity that “continues to reflect on these issues in fruitful dialogue with changing historical situations.”[16]
After all, those who believed in Jesus, before they were given the name Christians, were called those “of the Way” (Acts 9:2). With every change of era, the Spirit, who makes newness, opened new ways:
- With the Benedictines at the time of the barbarian invasions
- With the mendicant orders and St. Francis in the Middle Ages
- With St. Vincent de Paul in the 1600s and St. John Eudes for the spiritual renewal of the Church and the dedication to the poor, in a charity that leads back to the heart of the Gospel, the centrality of God’s mercy;
- With the flowering (or re-flowering) of Congregations and Institutes from the 1800s onward, to prevent/reduce suffering and injustice in a world turned upside down by several revolutions that altered power relationships and created the new economic-social and cultural settings. In this latter context, the prophetic newness and boldness of St. Mary Euphrasia emerged.
Today – through the way of narrative – prophecy can arise from the transformative energy of weakness capable of recognition and reconciliation with the “other”, which is precisely the opposite of a society of indifference, walls and non-integration. An energy that is transformative because it is intergenerational and intercultural. Exposed as we all are – especially in Europe – to structural vulnerabilities that bring out painful, almost always unprecedented, unconscious and unsettling personal fragilities, the present time calls us, evangelically, to make weakness a strength, and to invite others to do the same, in the everyday life of the Community and the Services, in every phase, condition and context of life, narrating and re-actualizing the compass of the values that we recognize in the spiritual and apostolic life of St. Mary Euphrasia: in the storm, God just like the rock, is there; love with a grateful love; appreciate them in their own eyes; in every person there is a flame… FOWARDS!
You, people who believe,
you, people who hope,
run every street, every square
and unveil the great secret...
Go tell the four winds
that the night will pass
that everything makes sense
that wars end
that history has an outcome
that love will eventually overcome oblivion
and life will defeat death.
You who have sensed this through grace
continue the journey
spread your joy
continue to say
that hope has no boundaries.
David Maria Turoldo