BLESSED  JAMES  ALBERIONE  AND  THE  PASTORAL  SPIRIT
IN  THE  WORLD  OF  THE  PAULINE  FAMILY
Sr. Clara Cecilia Ariza, sjbp

At the root of Fr. Alberione’s pastoral orientation we find his sensitivity to assume the challenges that at the start of the century proposed the actuality and the use of the new technologies applied to evangelization. 

His charism as Founder of the “wonderful Pauline Family” is found to be strongly united  to his pastoral orientation, for which he has written precisely two works of pastoral: Appunti di Teologia Pastorale (Notes on Pastoral Theology) and La donna Associata al zelo sacerdotale[1] (Woman associated with priestly zeal), which are true programs for each of the Congregations and Institutes founded by him. For what Blessed James Alberione called the “pastoral spirit” of the Pauline Family, great influence have had the Canon Chiesa and, as he himself declares in  Abundantes Divitiae gratiae suae [2],  two great  pastoral authors of the Church, Swoboda and Krieg.

In Appunti di Teologia Pastorale, Fr. Alberione indicates the criterion of personal contact  in the care of souls, and affirms that “it is the personal action of Jesus Christ and of his Church  exercised by the priest for the salvation of souls”[3]. And in the book La donna Associata allo zelo sacerdotale we find reaffirmed this same idea.[4]

The pastoral vision of Alberione finds development in Christ Way, Truth and Life, in line with an affirmation by Krieg: “the spiritual life, the new creature, they arise in the pulpit - I am the Truth; the altar  - I am the life; the confessional - I am the way”. In 1935, while talking to the Paulines about pastoral, he cites the two great pastors of the Church, Peter and Paul, and with a very suggestive mother image, affirms:

      “Pastoral is the science and art of using the priestly talents for the salvation of souls...A mother prepares the food and transforms it into milk for the nourishment of her baby, so in the meaning of S. Paul, the apostle elaborates wisdom and with it nurses the little ones in Christ.  Saint Peter then recommends to the faithful: ‘like newborn babes, yearn for the pure spiritual milk, so as to grow with it unto salvation: if truly you have already tasted how good is the Lord’”[5].

Pastoral is a great unity that can be expressed in various forms. Alberione makes it a point so that every Congregation and Institute of the Pauline Family may be a concrete expression of the specific needs that this involves, the only objective being “to save souls”. In 1954, in an autobiographical text, he affirms:

“In the complex of the four Pauline Families, being represented is the Divine Master who offers to men the truth, the way, the life. The Pious Society of Saint Paul with the Daughters of Saint Paul represent Jesus who says: ‘I am the truth’; the Pious Disciples represent Jesus who says: ‘I am the life’; the Pastorelle represent Jesus who says: ‘I am the way’.

The four Families complete each other to attain the common goal, to save souls: the Pious Society of Saint Paul then gives the Christian doctrine to the general populace; while application is made for individuals through the prayers of the Pious Disciples and the action of the Pastorelle.[6]

Certainly, this great work will expand and become strong with the succeeding foundation of the other Institutes that make up the Family.

And because all of us are born of the Eucharist, the Founder advises us: 

“We have just one spirit: to live Jesus Christ and to serve the Church. One represents all  through interceding before the Tabernacle; one spreads as if from on high the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and another goes near to every soul. There is in the Pauline Family a close collaboration that is spiritual, intellectual, moral, economic”.[7]

On account of this, the center of our spiritual life is the Eucharist as sacrifice, sacrament, and real presence. And thus the title of Christ as Pastor has been given to the Pastorelle in a special manner: the Pauline Family in all its apostolates lives the pastoral spirit because our mission as Family is precisely that of nourishing the people of God.

To see Christ Way, Truth and Life as Master/Pastor, is at the same time content and method that the Holy Spirit has given to us as charism, through Fr. Alberione. Because of this, the Pauline Family in her diversity but at the same time in the unity of the Spirit, is called to live the reality of magisterium and pastoral in her vocation to be Teacher and Shepherdess.

In order to be able to realize this great mission in the Church, it is therefore of great importance that the spiritual work of all the children of  Fr. Alberione be done not only in extension but also in profundity, because our hearts must have a single center towards which to direct themselves and this is the heart of Jesus present in the Tabernacle. This is a prayer in which all of us are called to “progress a little everyday”; and at the same time so that everything may ever be more  pastoral. Because of this, the devotions that the Founder has given us are in conformity with the Spirit and with the specifically pastoral mission that he has left us. 

Fr. Alberione, a man of God and at the same time a man of synthesis, gives to the Pauline Family as method and strategy the trinomial Jesus Way, Truth and Life. The trinomial involves  the whole person with all his faculties: mind, will and heart; and it involves the “four wheels” of the “Alberionian cart”: piety, study, apostolate and poverty... The motivation is so that every member of the Pauline Family in his whole being may tend to his full identification with Christ and come to be, according to the thought of the Founder, an apostle for today for the men and women of today.