(Extract from PELOSO,
Flavio,
“Hemeneutica orionina per conoscere Don Orione da figli”
in Mesaggi di Don Orione.)
We
will deepen three different kinds of knowledge of St. Luigi Orione: spiritual,
historical and pedagogic ones. All of them are necessary and complementary to
understand him.
Spiritual
Knowledge of St. Luigi Orione
We
may knowledge Don Orione as his sons, as people who have his “same spirit”. We
will read his writings and his life, study the charism and the Constitutions,
but we will try to get into his inner life. To know Don Orione it is not enough
to read his life, writings or articles about him, we need to get into his heart
really to understand him[1].
A charism, first of all, is a gift or the
Holy Spirit. It is not a specific apostolate, or religious ideology or a way of
praying. A charism has apostolate, a way of praying and working, etc, but it is
more than all these things together. A charism is a “soul”, a gift of the Holy
Spirit which gives form and configures everything: prayer, apostolate,
community life, etc.
Fr.
Luigi Orione was a saint, a person full of God; as saint, his life was unified
in God. John Paul II said: “It is impossible to summarize in a few sentences the adventurous and
sometimes dramatic life of one who called himself, humbly, but shrewdly:
"God's porter". But we can state that he was doubtlessly one of the
most outstanding personalities of this century, because of his openly professed
Christian faith”[2].
Some years after, John Paul II said: “It is, however, important to ask ourselves what is the
unifying charism, on which his work is built, and what is it that distinguishes
it from other Congregations which emerged in the same historical period and
which were equally dedicated to the service of the poor”.[3]
His
writings and deeds are expressions of his heart. We should know them, but
really to understand and to know him, we need to go further; we have to enter
his heart.
In
the records of the canonization process of Don Orione we find the account of an
episode witnessed by Fr Giovanni Venturelli: “When Don Orione was still
alive, among the confreres, we started asking which was the most profound
aspect, the one that justified all the life and works of our Father; people
gave varied answers: some would explain the Don Orione ‘phenomenon' by charity,
others by his prayer life, others by other particular aspects of his
personality. Then Fr Biagio Marabotto, of happy memory, stood up and everyone
went silent: “What are you all saying: what is the essence of Don Orione? Is it
not God? This is what Don Orione is, above all: a man who lives on God”[4].
That
is why we should study his charism. The charism unites all the aspects of the life of St. Luigi Orione and it may unite
all the aspects of our life. We should avoid any reduction of his life, thoughts
or deeds. Sometimes “we cannot see the
forest for the trees”.
Historical
Knowledge of St. Luigi Orione
We
are Christian, we believe in Jesus, the incarnated God, John said that “the Word became flesh, he lived among us” (Jn
1:14). In the same way, a charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit in a concrete
time and place.
St.
Luigi Orione’s holiness took place in a historical moment, in a concrete
situation (country, time, customs, etc), that is why we need some historical
knowledge to understand him and to discover in the deepest and real sense of
his thoughts and actions without wrong interpretations. We need to understand
his Sitz im Lebem. He was Italian and
European, died more than 60 years ago, another time, another Church, others
traditions and customs.
So that, we have to know his
biography, the historical context, etc. But, let us be aware that we cannot
explain and understand everything.
Pedagogic
Knowledge of St. Luigi Orione
Another
way to approach his heart is to know him as formator. He transmitted us his experience
of God, his charism. First of all, the founder is our formator.
He gives us what he experienced, as Paul who
said, talking about the Eucharist: “For I
received from the Lord what I also passed on to you” (1 Cor 11: 23).
In
the transmission of his experience to his disciple, we can verify the validity
of the charism. We should integrate all the knowledge: historical, spiritual
and pedagogic ones.
Let us summarize, to understand the
orionine charism, we need to combine: the spiritual knowledge, placed in the
history and verified in his pedagogy as formator.
On
the other hand, the charism is not a thing in the past; it goes beyond St.
Luigi Orione and lives today. Because it is Evangelic and Catholic, it has the
capacity of incarnation in different places, cultures, times, conditions,
vocations, etc. The charism was born in concrete time and place, but it is
alive, so it continues taking place in the history, in different times and
places.
On the other hand, because the charism has the
capacity of inculturation, we have to ask ourselves: What did St. Luigi do in
Italy, Argentina, Brazil, etc? What would Don Orione do in Italy, Argentina, Brazil, etc,
today (in a different context)? What
would St. Luigi do now, in the Philippines, Kenya, India, etc?
[1] For example: many priests,
brothers, sisters and lay people lived and live St. Luigi Orione’s charism
without studying it.
[2] Homily of the Beatification Mass
(1980).
[3] Letter for the 50th Anniversary, in
L’Osservatore Romano, 12/13 March
1990.
[4]
Summarium, p. 993. But Don Orione himself taught his
seminarians and confreres: “I wish to confide you a great secret. What is
the great secret to succeed in the works of apostolate, to obtain satisfactory
results in our work, in the field of Christian charity? The secret is the union
with God, to live with God, in God, united to God, having always the spirit
raised to God. In other words, it is a profound prayer. Everything that we do
is transformed, thus, in gold, because everything is done for the glory of God
and everything becomes prayer”. Scritti
(26th September 1937).
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