Dearest Sisters,
It is with immense joy that I present to you the renewed text of our Constitutions, in light of the guidance offered by the Church, the Magisterium, and our Traditions.
Following the Second Vatican Council and the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law, great effort was made to place in our hands the renewed 1986 edition. I had the grace of being present at that moving moment when the Superior General, Sister Giacinta Cammarata, handed each of us a copy of the Constitutions and the Directory. It was a historic occasion, as we were celebrating the centenary of our Congregation. During the 2002 Chapter, with the establishment of the Province of Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe (Brazil-Bolivia), some necessary additions were made.
Over the past thirty-four years, many changes have taken place within society, the Church, and our Congregation. We have felt the need to revisit the Constitutions and the Directory in the light of the Word of God and the documents of the Church, in order to give greater visibility to our Franciscan identity and new vitality to our mission.
We submitted to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life the modifications to the Constitutions entrusted to us by the XIII General Chapter, celebrated in November 2018. Since then, we have worked to meet the requirements the Congregation set before us. And now, to wonderfully conclude the Centenary of the heavenly birth of our Venerable Founder, Father Angelico Lipani, we receive as a divine gift and grace the new renewed text, approved in accordance with the Code of Canon Law.
I understand that renewal does not come simply by the desire for it, but by remaining faithful to our charism amidst the changing circumstances of ecclesial and social life. Therefore, we must see our Congregation both in its historical and “theological” dimension—as a place and space for God’s manifestation. And we must become “experts” in fraternal, prayerful, and missionary life, in order to embody God in history, following the example of Mary of Nazareth, the servant par excellence.
The experience lived by our first Sisters under the paternal gaze of our Founder—and the efforts made following the Second Vatican Council, particularly over the past twenty years—must enlighten our “today,” as we are called to renew ourselves by returning to our roots, to our origins.
In this sense, there arises the need to value our traditions while at the same time recognising that our current experience of life must always be verified in relation to the Gospel, the Magisterium of the Church, and our Constitutions.
The Church understands our consecration in close connection with the Kingdom of God. This demands that we embrace the vocation to holiness as a gift, a commitment, and an ideal.
A gift, because it is the Spirit who shapes our lives after the life of the Son, awakening in us the desire to seek what He seeks and to love what He loves in our daily lives. The Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate states that “holiness is living in union with Him” (GEx 20).
A commitment, because as consecrated women, we are enabled by the Spirit of holiness to inspire others, involving them in the path we walk, helping them to “grow towards that unique and unrepeatable plan that God has willed for each one” (GEx 13). Since love is fruitful, it cannot remain only between ourselves and God; as disciples, we are also missionaries of love, and through the power of the Spirit, we are called to have “a constant openness to go forth and to offer others the love of God” (EG 127).
An ideal, because we will be missionaries insofar as we ourselves experience God’s love in Christ Jesus.
To “experience” means to make one’s existence a meaningful, narratable, and communicable journey. For this reason, we no longer speak of being “disciples” and “missionaries” as two distinct identities, but of being always “disciple-missionaries” (cf. EG 120). Because “the real missionary, who never ceases to be a disciple, knows that Jesus walks with him, speaks to him, breathes with him, works with him. He feels Jesus alive with him in the midst of the missionary endeavour. Unless he experiences this presence, he soon loses enthusiasm and certainty in what he communicates; he lacks strength and passion. And a person who is not convinced, enthusiastic, certain, in love, will convince nobody” (EG 266–267).
There is a danger that our activities might be “badly lived, without adequate motivation, without a spirituality which would permeate and guide them” (EG 82); or that we give excessive weight to rational calculations of social advantage, reducing faith experience to moralism or doctrinalism.
It may even happen that spiritual life is confused with “a few religious exercises which can offer a certain comfort” (EG 78), yet do not nourish any real action.
Therefore, dearest Sisters, whatever action we carry out and whatever role we play, we must seek creative fidelity—a renewal that does not lose the values essential to our sanctification.
St Bonaventure used the symbolism of wasps and bees to help us understand that brilliance in knowledge, without a spirit of prayer, prudence, and humility, makes us like wasps that build hives without honey (cf. St Bonaventure, FF, p. 45). Divine wisdom must be our guide in all things (cf. Wis 9:11), so that in the continual effort to act according to the example of Christ, we may shape within ourselves a new and holy woman.
Just as it was not the cross itself that saved humanity, but the love with which Jesus embraced it, so too the Constitutions cannot sanctify us without a free, loving, and faithful adherence to them, an adherence that enables us to realise God’s dream for each one of us, for the Congregation, for the Church, and for all humanity.
The law does not imprison a heart that lives in freedom, but gives meaning to every “yes” and every “no” spoken in love.
Holiness, the primary goal of our Charism, is the fruit of a lived experience of maternity, fraternity, and perfect joy, which is made concrete through the faithful observance of our documents and traditions.
For this reason, every word contained in the Constitutions must be received as a gift from the Trinity for our sanctification, to be embraced and lived both personally and communally.
Dear Sisters, let us therefore strive to observe the norms of our Constitutions without distorting their true meaning through free and individual interpretations—for here we find our identity and our mission.
Here we find a constant invitation to renew the radical nature of our baptism and to bear witness to the strength and tenderness of our particular way of following Jesus Christ.
The trilogy of verbs to love - to serve - to educate runs throughout the text, giving life and substance to our Charism: “To be holy by living the total gift of ourselves in love, in fraternity, following Christ in the exercise of spiritual and educational motherhood.”
May this exhortation become for each of you a blessing, and may this 15 October 2020 mark for us the beginning of a renewed journey toward holiness, one that makes us servants in motherhood, fraternity, and prophecy, in a world ever more in need of Love, Light, and Truth.
In Chiara and Francesco, Angelico and Giuseppina.
Sister Priscilla Dutra Moreira
Superior General
Rome, 15 October 2020, Closure of the Jubilee Year of the 1st Centenary of the heavenly birth of the Venerable Father Angelico Lipani
