THE APOSTOLIC mindset OF FR. ALBERIONE
Sr. Anna Caiazza, fsp
“During
one night of adoration the Lord made us understand that with the
start of the new century, it was necessary to establish our life on
the Eucharist and on activity”.
Thus said Fr. Alberione in 1952, in a meditation given to the
Daughters of St. Paul.
An intense
and captivating spiritual event had conferred on his life a decisive
impression. And Fr. Alberione was becoming aware of his mission:
first, a generic “to prepare himself to do something for the Lord
and for the men of the new century with whom he would have lived”
(AD 15); then the ever more evident awareness of being called
and sent by God “to serve the Church, the men of the new
century and work with others”. (AD 20). Until the understanding
of such mission that involves others – many others, the “wonderful
Pauline Family” –, it is “to live and give
to the world
Jesus Christ Way, Truth and Life”,
by means of the press and all the instruments of communication that
progress would have gradually offered mankind.
That “half-blind
who is being guided; and as he moves along is enlightened from
time to time” (AD 202) does not understand everything and
immediately: there is a progressive maturation in him, an interior
waiting, an availability to the signs of the times to which he
always pays much attention. Because it is God who guides, it is God
who opens the paths: for us it’s enough to watch in peace (cf AD
43-44).
That
“founding” light will accompany the entire journey of Fr. Alberione,
will nourish his “passion” for God and for humanity, will make him
a great contemplative and a man of enterprising and bold action,
because “love, true love, is inventive. When you have fire in
your heart you find many initiatives and things to do. True love is
that which shows itself in the hard work of everyday for the
apostolate: it makes us think, organize, run” (Haec meditare
II/8, p.182).
At the end of
his life, Fr. Alberione will be able to say:
“I have followed the work of the Apostolate from 1914
to 1968, aided by divine grace. Now I have come to 84 years of my
life that is closing in time and is passing into eternity; every
hour I say the prayers of faith, hope and love for God and for
souls. All united in eternal joy”.
The secret
at bottom of the spiritual-apostolic dynamism that had given a
face to the prophecy of Fr. Alberione lay undoubtedly in his
personal and vital encounter with the Master, renewed everyday, his
only and constant reference as far as his being and operation are
concerned. Because the apostle “oozes with
God from all his pores:
by means of his words, prayers, gestures, behavior; in public or in
private; from his whole being. To live of God! And to give God!”
(UPS, IV, p.
278).
But we cannot
leave out here those that were the other “pillars” that
characterized his apostolic mindset and that like that “secret”,
connote the identity of every Pauline apostle:
Attention
to history. As a
great fan of history, an acute reader and interpreter of every
event in the light of the plan of God and of the Gospel,
impassioned researcher of the “new” that the Spirit continually
makes to sprout, Fr. Alberione has looked at the society of his time
with love and empathy and, according to the Eucharistic style
learned at the school of the Master, has said a word of blessing on
the humanity of his days so full of the seeds of the Word; he has
“incarnated” himself in the most concrete and problematic
situations; has given attention to those “poor of heavenly wisdom”
as also to the youth, the agents of culture, the believers, and
those far from the faith...; has spoken with the languages his
contemporaries are familiar with.
Universality and integrality.
The term that synthesizes this fundamental characteristic of the
Alberionian apostolic mindset is the so-called “tuttismo”
(everything-ism, whole-ism), as what the Founder writes in his
autobiography shows well: “The Family has a large opening towards
the whole world in all the apostolate: studies, apostolate, piety,
action, editions. Editions for all the categories of persons; all
questions and facts judged in light of the Gospel; the aspirations:
those of the Heart of Jesus in the Mass; in the only apostolate: “to
make known Jesus Christ”, to enlighten and support every apostolate
and every good work; to carry in your heart all peoples; to let the
presence of the Church be felt in every problem; spirit of
adaptation and understanding for all public and private needs; the
totality of cult, law, the combining of justice and charity” (AD
65). From here comes the need to assume pastorally the concrete
situation wherein one lives and operates; from here the need to open
oneself ever more to the needs of communication and its instruments,
and to enter in dialog with cultures and religions.
Pastorality,
as constant attention to the recipients of the apostolate,
expressed in the formulation of contents, in technical work and in
diffusion, by means of which the Word arrives directly into the
heart of every person: “For all and for each one [the Institute]
must provide the bread of the spirit, breaking it widely and
adapting it to the needs of the individual” (UPS, III, pp.
133ff.). From here the tormenting thought of reaching “all men”.
Ecclesiality,
because the same vocation of Fr. Alberione is “in Christ and in
the Church” (AD 3), and because he never felt himself as an
“independent batter” of the Christian message. Rather, he has lived
with awareness and responsibility his being part of the Church, in
fidelity to the Magisterium and conscious of participating in the
Church’s work of evangelization by means of an untried manner of
apostolate, through the fastest and most efficacious means of
communication.
Paulinity.
The agitated cry
of Paul: “Woe to me if I don’t preach the Gospel” (1Cor 9,16)
expresses itself well in “he felt obliged to prepare himself to
do something for the Lord and for the men of the new century with
whom he would have lived” (AD 15). It’s almost to show that
perfect syntony that Fr. Alberione always lived in comparison to the
Apostle of the Gentiles who he felt as father and model and even as
“form” of our being disciples and apostles. The Pauline apostle has,
in fact, the missionary daring of Paul, his universal horizons and
his capability to adapt: “The apostle must learn from his model
the art of “making himself all to all” and that elasticity of
adaptation whereby he can deal with men according to their physical,
intellectual, moral, religious and civil conditions” (Apostolato
delle edizioni, p. 59).
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