sim GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD BECAUSE HE IS GOOD, BECAUSE HIS LOVE IS ETERNAL From Psalm 107

Transcription

1 sim GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD BECAUSE HE IS GOOD, BECAUSE HIS LOVE IS ETERNAL From Psalm 107

2 Inscribed upon the stone base of the altar at San Damiano Assisi: CURA FRANCISCALIUM SORORUM CONGREG. TERTII ORDINIS A SACRATISSIMO CORDE JESU DIE XIX NOVEMBRIS A.D. MCMXIX QUAE CONGREG. EST ERECTA DE JURE PONTIFICIO IN INSTITUTUM SECULARE MISSIONARIARUM A REGAL CHRISTI A.D. MCMXLVIII By the Franciscan Sisters of the Third Order of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus on the 19 th day of November of the year of the Lord 1919 This congregation, with Pontifical Right, was erected in Secular Institute of the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ in the year of the Lord This booklet is a collection of some writings of Armida Barelli. Published by the Italian territory for the 90 th anniversary of the Institute. 2

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4 The Secular Institute of the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ is composed of laywomen consecrated to God who bear witness to the possibility, in the secular condition, to live the Holy Gospel in following Christ obedient, poor and chaste. The Institute came into being on November 19, 1919, at San Damiano in Assisi, issuing forth from the spiritual experience of Armida Barelli and the insight of Father Agostino Gemelli. (Constitutions Art. 1) 4

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6 THE INTUITION : Year of grace! After three years of ups and downs, fervor and resistance to grace, God s mercy and my own misery, when I was about to despair about myself, convinced of my own inability [ ] grace invested me. [ ] Chanting in my soul is the love of the Lord[ ]. Yes, God has invested me! 1 The idea of the convent once again raced through my mind and behold, Fr. Gemelli writes to me: No, don t think about the convent.... Writing from Rome in February 1913 he hammered home again on the same nail: May the Lord assist you and make you a holy laywoman in the true sense of the word, not like the nuns at home, but as were the Christian virgins and martyrs who swelled the mission of women in the world. And who knows what role they had in the spread of Christianity! That s what you must do a laywoman, but a holy laywoman. 2 A QUESTION IS ASKED Ida was happy as she departed from Rome. The prayer she had said the previous October 3 at the Porziuncola: Lord, will you give me sisters who want to dedicate themselves totally to the apostolate in order to make You known and loved in the world? was about to be answered A. Barelli La mia vita, manuscript of 1933 (In: M.Rosaria Del Genio Armida Barelli un esperienza di mistica apostolica laicale Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002) 2 A. Barelli, La nostra storia pro manuscripto, pg (1918, n.d.r.) 4 M. Sticco, Una donna fra due secoli, Vita e Pensiero, 1967 pg

7 ...AND BECOMES HISTORY Father Gemelli...had called the reclutes together by sending them a personal letter saying the encounter was set for Assisi from 17 to 20 November. This small handful of women met at San Damiano under the guidance of Fr. Arcangelo Mazzotti and there had the revelation of the Franciscan spirituality and their own specialization: they had this revelation in an atmosphere of Little Flowers, the fragrant ones of lemon scented verbena and myrtle, which in such a gentleman-like fashion Friar Bonaventura Marrani had scattered all over the uneven brick floor of the choir under the striding feet of the pilgrims as they arrived. But this was an atmosphere of genuine Little Flowers, not romanticized ones! No comfort in this life: a friar s fare with vegetables and a bit of olive oil, kneeling on hard stones, small rooms with no heating ibid. pg

8 A SMALL COMMUNITY OF WOMEN EMBRACES THE GIFT... Around 10:30 on the morning of 17 November 1919 the women called to the nascent Franciscan family met at the Assisi train station. There were three religious guiding them; two Franciscans, Fr. Gemelli and Fr. Arcangelo Mazzotti, and an Oblate, Fr. Mauri. The green Umbrian countryside seemed to have donned early winter attire: it was snowing. But when getting off the train a young Milanese woman cried out: Long live St. Francis! Long live Assisi, much to the astonishment of someone else who couldn t understand how anyone could scream in that land of silence. Giuseppina Taddei, who had come from Florence, and Maria Bonaventura, who had come from a small town in Umbria, had met the larger group from Milan on the train itself. Aunt Beppina hung on to the arm of her adopted niece because her eyes, ears and legs just weren t what they used to be, and as they made off towards St. Mary of he Angels, asked: - How many are we? Maria Bonaventura counted out loud: twelve. - Young? - Almost everyone. Only two have graying hair. - All dressed up? - A few. One more than the others. - What do they look like? - Three are really pretty. The others aren t bad. - Maria! admonished Aunt Beppina with a smile when are you going to start looking at things with a supernatural eye? I mean what do they look like in religious terms. - Like nuns, no; don t worry about that. They re very relaxed. - Fine! Tell me everything, I implore you. I can see and hear practically nothing at all. - I will be your eyes and ears. They crossed the threshold into St. Mary of the Angels. The ancient stones that had witnessed the shearing of Clare s flowing locks of her own volition now looked upon those twelve unsung women, who, like her but without her heroism, were about to rush headlong onto an unexplored road in an unknown and uncertain spiritual adventure with 8

9 only one clear idea in mind: that of wanting to be Franciscans and certain that St. Francis would not have rejected them, even though many of them knew him and loved him as out of fame one falls in love. About to flower on the longstanding Franciscan tree was a new bud: was it to take on life? That day San Damiano didn t even have the richness of blue shades. Tiny and grey under the November skies at the foot of the Subasio hill clothed in layers of fog, this church repaired by the very hands of St. Francis appeared so humble and poor amidst pale olive trees. The inside would have been dark had it not been for the beam of light that entered by the door in the back and shed light on the main altar, so small under the pointed and smoke-ridden arch framing it and setting it apart from the rustic choir. Visible were scrapped walls with remains of frescoes here and there, very plain side altars. The difference between the grandiose appearance of the basilicas from which the twelve had come and that catacomb-like bareness was striking beyond belief. Truly was this the countenance of Franciscan poverty. It seized the heart of more than one of the twelve forever. Imbued with the holiness of the place the twelve took their places in the last stalls, the ones used by St, Clare and her fellow sisters. They fit right into them as if those stalls had also been waiting for them. The preacher spoke near the door on the left side of the altar, standing in front of a small table with a crucifix on it. A small lamp in the center of the choir cast weak beams of light on the grey walls and the faces of his listeners, giving the impression of a gathering in the catacombs. Father Gemelli evoked the names of the Saints who had passed among these same walls and in their name summoned those gathered there to prayer, recollection, exterior and interior silence, because the retreat was about to begin, a very special retreat, the beginning of their probation... After having received the gift of the Franciscan rosary and reciting it together, the twelve women returned to Assisi in silence... When alone in the room prepared for them, Aunt Beppina said to Maria: - And the sisters? Maria described them in her own words: the one with gray hair and a pair of glasses sliding up and down her nose, who speaks in short bursts but 9

10 serves everyone by attending energetically to the practical organization of the group comes from Brescia; the brunette with a Madonna like face comes from Reggio, has a degree in French and lives with her family in Perugia; that tiny one with bright eyes and a pale face comes from Turin and works in an office in Milan; those two short ones often strolling together as they chat in French are two university graduates from Milan and both are Belgian by origin...that thin, elegant blond with a cameo profile and gentle voice is Argene Fati, who works in an office in Rome; and then there s Armida Barelli whom you know so well, so pretty and strong-willed; and then there s the two of us... The next day the new Tertiaries had to take their religious name. From the lectern in the small choir Father Bonaventura took the list of St. Clare s early companions so each one of them could choose the ideal fellow-sister and protector from the names on that list, and each one followed her own taste, that is to say let herself be named by her companions according to the characteristics they saw in her.... They all adored the immense goodness of God, who called them to things greater than they had ever dreamed... The end of the Retreat was celebrated on Friday, 21 November, at the same place where it had begun: the tomb of St. Francis.... For practically all the Tertiaries that Retreat had been the revelation of a new way to live Catholicism. They had discovered the wellsprings of joy. No sorrow would ever scare them again, all creatures appeared to them with the countenance of goodness, life as a whole shone forth in God s love, death was called sister. They were happy. Some of them departed that same afternoon, while others the majority visited the Jails, where, after refreshments provided as a result of caring concern on the part of Friar Jacopo, Armida Barelli entreated and almost compelled Maria Ortolana to speak about her impressions of those days, and Maria did so in such a lofty way that everyone present was enchanted. Revealed in that pale office worker enflamed and practically transfigured by the eloquence of her heart was the soul of the apostle. Even that friar with a face the color of reddish clayware and who lived there in the Jails listened to her with rapt attention and will never forget her. 10

11 Since it has yet to be constituted in due and proper form, the new spiritual family with the name of The Franciscan Tertiaries of the Social Kingdom of the Sacred Heart was to be governed by an acting Council made up of the three spiritual directors and two counselors in the persons of Miss Taddei and Miss Barelli, and would hold its encounters in Milan every fortnight. That is what Maria Bonaventure narrates for us. With our prayers do we thank her for this gift of hers to all the present and future Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ. 6 6 A. Barelli, La nostra storia op.cit., taken pg

12 IN FAITH The Lord does not want to give us the joy of security, but wants us to entrust ourselves to Him. 7 What a cluster of hardships! What uncertainty about the future! How much trepidation! How much mourning! What terror, what poverty, what desolation! How many tears! It seems like everything is collapsing, it seems as if God has abandoned society to its own devices! It seems like what we see unfolding before our eyes is something similar to the Tower of Babel! Disoriented and dumbfounded is the only way to describe how we feel. And yet we who possess the gift of faith know God permits evil, but only with a view to good. We know of the golden threat of His divine Providence, which may be hidden to our eyes, but never breaks! 8 IN LOVE AT WORK Giving and giving self make up the need of love. Oh Jesus, here is what I have and who I am. Take everything I do and place it in what You do, and with it carry out the work of Your glory. Tell me what You want, I will want it too: send me wherever You will, I will want that as well; load me down with work, I will dedicate myself entirely to that; pain itself will I transform (with Your grace) into love. 9 Yes, He is above all a King of love and if He has told us that His burden is light and His yoke is sweet He wanted to say that His Kingship is a kingship of Love and that the fullness of the law is Love. 10 With Jesus will we pray and suffer, rejoice and work, rest and live. Hour by hour with Him! Oh, how will our entire life be transformed is we live minute by minute with Him! 11 7 A. Barelli, F.85, to Ms Pallavicino, 1924, in: M. R. Del Genio Armida Barelli op.cit. pg A. Barelli, F. 46, 1943, ibid. pg A. Barelli, F.1, , ibid. pg A. Barelli, F.43, 1929, ibid.- pg A. Barelli, in: M. Rosaria Del Genio Armida Barelli - Mi canta nell anima l amore del Signore - Libreria Editrice Vaticana, pg

13 UNTO THE VERY END I will ask the King of Love to invest you one by one with the fire of His charity so you may be His loving and bountiful Missionaries. So you may forget yourselves in order to live for Him and love Him and make Him loved...! You live in the world, my sisters, without surrendering anything to the world! Work ceaselessly, pray ceaselessly, but above all love, love, love A. Barelli, from the Testament to the Missionaries of the Longship of Christ 13

14 Grateful because the Father, the Son and the Spirit dreamt us, thought us, willed us, called us, received us and accompanied us into history among our fellowmen, we ask to be there contemplating and bearing witness to the beauty of the Kingdom to come! 14