“A Place To Inhabit”
We gave you advance notice yesterday that today we would be concentrating on a particular missionary “place.” Which one? It might not be easy for you to guess because I don’t think many FSPs define it this way, so let’s abandon metaphors and get straight to the point.
Sr. Gabriella Santon, Bursar General, took us by the hand and accompanied us with great precision, punctuality and concreteness into the economic folds of our congregational realities. Yes, the “missionary place” we explored today was the economy. And no, you can’t just shake your head at this statement, thinking that it is just a catch-phrase.
“For us,” Sr. Gabriella said, “the economy is a place of mission because it is and must be at the service of good–a place in which we are called to bear witness to the Gospel. Administering wisely, utilizing material goods and making the most of human resources, is a ministry that is more than ever urgent and necessary today if we are to fulfill our mission of evangelization and witness to the fact that everything we have is at the service of the common good.”
With regard to our mission, Blessed James Alberione gave us an important mandate: a specific way of living poverty, which does not only consist of giving up possessions, of “not having” and of “not managing” things. The poverty we are asked to revitalize is a poverty that renounces, produces, preserves, provides and builds…. And today it is precisely this mandate that can be “the inspiring source of a new journey, of a structural change, of a new way of witnessing to the economy among ourselves and in society.”
As we know, “economy” is oikos-nomos: “the law of the house,” that is to say, that which allows the members of house to live, to open the door to those who knock on it, to offer others what we ourselves produce. To have the courage to inhabit this place in the spirit of the Gospel–striving to avoid the logic that urges human beings in the direction of profit and that replaces it instead with the criteria of what is good–can make every aspect of our life a place in which Life is generated, safeguarded, offered as a gift and multiplied. This is an indisputable challenge for all of us. It is an appeal that we feel it is necessary to take on today with fresh awareness, in solidarity with the Church and world.
For us, today began in the joyful atmosphere of African music and has ended with a lot of open questions….
And tomorrow? Tomorrow we will be knocking on the door of several different countries. See you soon! #staytune #capitolo_ON #restiamoconnessi
Ariccia, 15 September 2019
