ALBERIONE AND THE
PASTORAL
INVOLVEMENT OF WOMAN
Sr. Angiolina Rossini, sjbp
At the time of my
initial formation, I have had the grace to meet several times Fr.
James Alberione, already elderly and sickly, and it is in the vivid
remembrance of those intense moments that I dare to write something
about the pastoral involvement of woman so
strongly wanted by him.
It is not an
exacting analysis of the female institutes founded by him, but a
global look that allows us to pick up the peculiar characteristics
of the woman in the Pauline Family at the service of the Church and
humanity: the woman called to be an apostle and shepherd-guide, in a
great mission of announcing the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ
who died and rose again.
It is the image of
woman that Alberione wants to be committed in all the dimensions of
church life: evangelization, catechesis, liturgy, charity, “care of
souls”, vocational guidance, witness in the ordinary places of life
accompanied by joy and sorrow, hard work and hope.
From his youth
Alberione confesses that he appreciates in particular two
characteristics of the woman: the intuition of her heart and her
capacity to “enliven” every thing; therefore she is expected to
assume the burden of the moral, religious, social and economic
healing of the family and society today, as she did in the past, by
forming the consciences of the young generations.
But when he wants
persons who are totally dedicated to the announcement of Jesus
Christ, Way, Truth and Life, in order to reach the whole man
and all men through all modern means, he thinks of the
consecrated woman. Typographer or writer, cook or liturgist,
formator or theologian: nothing is barred from her on condition that
she be a “holy” woman, that is, living a spiritual dynamic of
continuing conversion until Christ be formed in her (cf. Gal
4,19). As a person totally given to the Father so as to make herself
“all for all” in the following of Jesus, Master and Shepherd,
learning from Mary, Queen of the Apostles and Shepherdess, and
having as models Peter and Paul. As a woman who does not act on her
own, but in the name of a community: union of minds and hearts and a
strong organization are, in fact, considered as fundamental aspects
to reach the goal rapidly and efficaciously.
I am convinced
that first in the heart of Blessed James
Alberione was not so much the “promotion” of woman as the
demonstration of the efficacy of her presence and work in the
Church, at the service of the Gospel, in consideration of her as
“the most powerful of all the means” that pastoral has at its
disposition.
These are
affirmations that, far from being restrictive, lead to the
importance attributed by Alberione to the man-woman and, above all,
priest-sister collaboration, in the dynamics of reciprocal
complementarity for a single project: to announce the Gospel, so
that humanity may know salvation and adhere to it. It is an
involvement, therefore, in the pastoral mission of the Church that
is rooted in a strong ecclesial sensitivity and that is
written with the alphabet of communion with its Pastors.
We could also say
that the door of access to the use of the fastest and most
efficacious means of communication and to the ways on which
interpersonal relations are woven is opened by a single intense
passion called pastoral zeal: to have at heart the salvation of the
other, of all the others, in encounter with the Lord of life.
It is involvement
of the woman in the pastoral action of the Church, implying co-responsibility
and a talent for mediation in the manner of a mother, sister,
friend, teacher, or a shepherd-guide: feminine faces of “caretaking”
for persons, so that they may have life and have it in abundance
(cf. Jn 10, 10b).
It is a pastoral
action that is intense, vast, passionate, always open to the appeals
of becoming actual in order to respond to new needs, to more complex
questions and to a never ending search, so as to walk together, men
and women, pilgrims on the pathways of the world, targeting the
ultimate meaning, the beyond that ends up in Trinitarian
Love. |
