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THE PARISH EXPERIENCE
OF FR. ALBERIONE:
ITS MEANING AND
CONSEQUENCES
Sr Suzimara Barbosa de Almeida, sjbp
For all those who
have some knowledge of the life story of Fr. Alberione, this topic
could give rise to a question: could this his single and brief
experience of direct ministry in a parish as assistant parish
priest, have had consequences relevant to his future apostolate and
to those of his foundations?
In fact, we know
that after his priestly ordination, Fr. Alberione exercised for just
nine months the responsibility of assistant parish priest at Narzole.
During this period he was able to administer some baptisms,
celebrate functions with the people, give some homilies, send some
adolescents to the seminary – future Paulines? –, reflect on the
possibility of a female institute that could help in pastoral action,
besides other activities inherent in the care of souls of the time
that we could consider as of little relevance. Then, after having
been called by the Bishop to assume the mission of spiritual
director in the seminary of Alba, that parish experience ended.
However, the
same Fr. Alberione, when he narrates in
Abundantes divitiae gratiae suae
the historic growth of
the Pauline charism in the Church, makes us understand that his
parish experience was not reduced to this. In the same work he talks
of many other practical and theoretical activities that he realized
first as a cleric and then as a newly-ordained priest and that put
him in direct contact with the pastoral realities of his time and
that in a very incisive way contributed to direct his future
apostolate.
Exactly when he
talks about the “pastoral spirit” of the Pauline Family, he talks
about it as one of the “riches” that he received through the
enlightenment of Jesus-Host and thanks to the “tasks received and
accomplished in the spirit of obedience”. According to Alberione,
such tasks were the pastoral ministry exercised in the various
parishes where he was called for sermons, confessions, conferences,
Catholic Action.
Even as spiritual director of the seminary, he exercised various
functions that made him very active in the pastoral ministry, both
on the level of reflection and on the practical level.
Among the other
activities he remembers that both as a cleric and as a priest, for
six years he was a catechist in the cathedral and in the parish of
saints Cosmas and Damian. He studied pedagogy with the Brothers of
the Christian Schools and for four years from 1910 to 1914, he
studied catechetical methods, catechetical organization in the
parishes, the spiritual, intellectual and pedagogical formation of
catechists. He also had the chance to participate in catechetical
congresses, be a part of the diocesan catechetical commission
composed of three priests for the drafting of texts for the schools
and for the diocesan catechetical programs. Alberione furthermore
affirms that during this period he made catechism the particular
object of his study and apostolate
.
Besides this,
following the directives of Pius X on the necessity of strengthening
the catechism, he organized in the Diocese Bible Days in which
Scripture was explained in catechetical form with catechetical
applications, from which came out the edition of the Gospel with
catechetical notes.
He was also active
in the social area, taking part in congresses having this theme,
maintaining contact with the spokespersons of Catholic Action of his
time. With Canon Chiesa he took active part in giving life in the
parishes to Unione Popolare, after the break up of the Opera dei
Congressi.
Certainly, by means of these various contacts, he had the
opportunity to pick up the real necessities of pastoral activity.
As a professor in
the seminary, so as to enrich the direction to be given to the
seminarians and to guide them in their first steps as priests, he
reflected with the other priests on the pastoral question and
proposed concrete pointers: “For two years, in weekly conferences
with twelve priests, he studied the means for a good and updated
care of souls. On this matter he asked and received written
suggestions (that he transmtted to the clerics and to the young
priests) from about fifteen Vicars Forane. From all that came the
book (1913) Appunti di teologia pastorale”.
Besides reflecting
with others, Fr. Alberione read the best works of the time regarding
the pastoral question..
This opened for him new horizons about the real needs of the care
of souls of his time, above all about the need to reach the
masses ever straying far from Church. These perceptions were
transmitted in the formation of the new priests at Alba: “He
insisted on catechesis and on vocal preaching and to put alongside
it the written Word of God (school of eloquence 1912-1915), taking
into account all the categories of persons, especially the masses”.
At the same time
as such studies and reflections, during this same period Fr
Alberione started the publication of the magazine Vita Pastorale
(1912) directed to the Italian priests. Thst magazine accompanied
all the development of the Pauline foundations and favored church
pastoral, opening a channel of communication between him and the
priests. The publication of parish bulletins was a practice dating
to the first years of the apostolate of the Paulines, proof of this
syntony that exists with the context of the parish.
Returning now to
the question posited at the start, we can say that it is precisely
in his practical experience, in his direct and attentive contact
with the priests and with the people, through the various
commitments he carried out, his reading of reality, and his prayer
in front of the Eucharist, that Alberione gradually perceives the
need for something that turns a page in the traditional pastoral of
the Church. As he himself said, after his priestly ordination, “he
had various contacts and experiences with souls and ministries. He
evermore vividly felt: ‘Go, preach, teach, baptize’”. And thus being
born in his heart was the holy anxiety related to the need for a new
language, for a new form of exercising the two thousand-year
practice of pastoral care in the Church.
We can affirm that
exactly because of this parish experience Alberione little by little
arrives at equating the traditional pastoral care with that which
uses the new means of communication that are coming to light:
newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc.
He was a priest
inserted in the Diocese of Alba, in continuous relation with the
priests and parishes. Immersed in this reality, beside the priests
of his time, he looks for new paths, new languages, new methods to
reach the people. We know very well that at times he was not
understood in this search. He suffered, and much, to make accepted
in the Church his intuiion about the equivalence between oral
predication and the written one or any that can be transmitted by
other means. But we could never forget that the new, brought
by him and by his foundations, was born because he was deeply rooted
in the reality and in the concrete problems of the ecclesial fabric
in which he lived and operated. As a result it is not possible to
understand the whole mission of the Pauline Institutes apart from
this ecclesial relationship and going in its favor. A presence that
leads continually to the search for new horizons.
At various times
Fr. Alberione said that all the Pauline Institutes are at the
service of pastoral.
With this frame of mind, I would dare to say that the presence of
the Sisters of Jesus the Good Shepherd in the Pauline Family, with
their specific mission of “care of souls” in collaboration with the
pastors, has been and still is today, a reminder to maintain the
necessary bond with ecclesial pastoral with which all must remain in
continuous contact, in order to propose in an ever new and integral
way the good news of Jesus Master and Shepherd.
The words
addressed to Fr. Alberione by Pope Paul VI in 1969 remain prophetic:
“Behold him, humble, quiet, tireless, always vigilant (…), always
intent on scrutinizing the signs of the times, that is, the most
genial forms of reaching souls, our Don Alberione has given to the
Church new instruments to express herself, new means to give vigor
and breadth to her apostolate, new capacity and new awareness of the
validity and possibility of her mission in the modern world and
using modern means”.
It’s a permanent
invitation to not go away from the concreteness of ecclesial
pastoral, always proposing to it new horizons, wherever and
whenever.
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