Riflessioni ad alta voce

The prayer heart of the Apostolate We will never say it enough: Apostolate is the work of the Apostles, those “sent” by the Lord with a special mission: to proclaim the Good News. The social work we do in our apostolate is a way to make those people we serve, to have an experience of the redeeming power of God. So apostolate is strictly tied with prayer. It has to be prepared in prayer and reviewed in prayer. The success of it cannot be measured merely from the human point of view but has to consider the spiritual impact. It is not only that prayer gives meaning to the apostolate, the other way round is also true: Apostolate gives a lot of content to our prayer. We come to the chapel in the morning, we have Mass, meditation, and we know that during the day we will have a lot of work to do. How can we possibly forget to pray, to offer the Mass, to reflect on what will fill up our day? So prayer is a necessary instrument for us to make sure that we act according to the wi...

A community in prayer Whenever two or more are gathered in my name I am there. This promise of Christ cannot be confined just to prayer. It is true for every aspect of community life, since all our community are built in the name of Christ. But, of course, this gets a very special meaning when the community is reunited in prayer. Our constitutions call the chapter on prayer: “a community united in prayer”. When prayer is a community act it receives a special meaning. As we have seen, in the Old Testament the liturgy of God’s people was very much based on the history of the community of believers (Passover, day of atonement) and on the life of the community (tabernacles, harvest, Pentecost, etc.). Also our communities are guided in the prayers by the history of salvation (the liturgical year) and by the history of the community itself (our patrons, our anniversaries etc.) A very special place holds the Eucharist. We call it communion, we receive together the body of Chri...

Prayer in the Old Testament and at the time of Jesus. For the old Jewish people, prayer was covering the main moments of every day. There was a special prayer for the early morning, for midday, evening and night. For each moment there were particular formulas to express the dedication of the day to God. Backbone of every moment of prayer were the psalms, which were well known to all and sang. They had been written exactly to celebrate the different occasions of the life of the king or of the people. Another special prayer was the “Shema Israel” (Dt 6,4). This passage of the Torah was repeated several times a day. Special moments of prayer were the Sabbaths in which the men adults (above 12) would go to the local synagogue to hear the word of God (usually a passage from the torah), and other commentaries taken from the prophets or the historical or wisdom books. During the year there were several liturgical feasts, the main one being the “Passover”, the Pentecost, the feas...

Prayer What is prayer? Entering in communication with the absolute, the creator. Every true communication is always a double way channel: we talk to God but we also listen to God. It is impossible here to make an exhaustive treaty about prayer; it would take so many pages and time. Since our prayer is a very personal matter, which is mostly intimate, it is impossible to apply rules on that, so our constitutions deal only with prayer from the external point of view, and on its value as community activity. The rest is left to the conscience of each person. St. Therese of Infant Jesus defined prayer as “a surge of the heart”, something that moves automatically our heart towards God from inside. We should have experienced this at least some times in our life. It is a desire for something more, something that pulls us towards heaven; it is an inner joy for the spiritual matters that we already have, and the desire to have more. Prayer, before passing through the intellige...

For the personal work: What are the challenges to our community life? Often the apostolate becomes a way of escaping from the community life. Relationships outside are easier than those inside. We see it monitoring the desire we have to go out or that to come back; how much do we speak about our community with our outside friends and what do we say about it? Do I like to gossip with my outside friends about the wrongs in my community? The emptiness and discomfort inside is covered by the busy activity outside. How easily do we accept commitments and activities in moments in which we should instead come back home where the community is having the common prayers, the meals, meetings recreations etc? How much do we speak to our brothers about our activities, and how much help we ask from them? Are we willing to share our activities with them? Somebody may be tempted to live in the community in a passive way, without joy or creativity, without any proposal, worried to di...

From the writings of Don Orione Community life Charity! Charity! Charity! There is nothing dearer to Jesus Christ, nothing more precious than brotherly love; we must therefore, my dear people, take extreme care to preserve it and to cause it to grow in ourselves and in the Congregation so as to be, in Christ, one for all and all for one, since it is this spirit of charity alone that edifies, bonds and unites in Christ. To the extent that we should abandon any subject, even those entered into through love for the truth and zeal for the glory of God, if it should ever, in however small a degree, embitter our hearts and weaken the spirit of charity. .............. My dear people, the Little Work of Divine Providence must be like a Family in Jesus Christ. Bound by charity, united as one indivisible heart in this moral body of our Congregation, oh, what great help we will have from the hand of God, and how joyful, happy and strong we will feel! The Congregation will prosper a...