In different times we have celebrated or we are celebrating the anniversaries of the foundation of our communities: Domodossola, Borgomanero, Biella, Intra…also Marasthra is already in its fifth year since the foundation .We ask sister Luisangela, our historian and researcher, who is very proud of her work, to answer a few questions:
What does it mean to us rosminians to celebrate the past? Why do we have to remember and give thanks for? What does this has to do with the future that is changing so fast and radically? These are the provocations caused not only by the different events but above all by the letter of the Pope to the religious in the year of the consecrated life:”to look at the past with gratitude”, ”to live the present with passion “,”to embrace the future with hope”.
Why do we celebrate the anniversaries of the foundation of our religious institutes?
Every sister has to ask herself and share it with her community begging the Lord that we can carry out, through us, His will as He desires.
Jesus said: do this in memory of me
To do in His memory doesn’t mean to say a lot of prayers, but to live every day in what the Lord gave us freely and wanted for us to achieve from 1831 to today 2016.
Only then we’ll be amazed to became aware of it and to remember the circumstances, the persons that God chose to realize His plan.
First surprise: God for His will chooses anyone He wants.
The first one chosen by God was don Giovanni Battista Loewenbruck, a thoughtless, hasty, disobedient muddler, but who fascinated Rosmini for his zeal and humility. It was truly him that pushed Don Antonio to start the Institute of Charity, it was him who drove a crowd of young women,” rough peasants, unsuited for learning “as the Superior reproached him. For these poor girls, two teachers arrived from France Mother Teodora Collin and Sister Xaveria Droin, who were accustomed to a steady regularity, to a well to do kind of life. They could not stand the ignorance of the novices, the narrowness of the house, the poor refectory and they always complained, they couldn’t discover the pearls that God had given them: sister Eusebia Alvazzi, sister Maria Giovanna Antonietti, sister Francesca Parea. The French nuns were unable to stand the sacrifices, required by the task entrusted them by the Lord, so they were recalled to Portieux by Father Feys, a holy man of God, so the novices were left without a leader.
All that is good in this society must be attributed to the help of the Holy Ghost. A. Rosmini in Proem Constitutions Institute of Charity. From this poor humanity we were born, the Rosminian Nuns. In 1932-33 the first institutes were founded in Locarno, Intragna, Torino, Barolo House, it was all a cunning work of Don Giovanni. The Holy Ghost showed his might in sister Eusebia, sister Giovanna, sister Francesca Parea who, with sister Anastasia Samonini, was chosen to open wide the minimum institute to the mission ad gentes in a foreign country, they didn’t know the language, with serious problems due to the industrial revolution, that had as an aim the enrichment of a middle class becoming greedier and greedier.
Send us your heroes.
Then Rosmini was compelled by the circumstances to adopt us, to bring us to the Institute. He was a father and a legislator, who could temper the request of obedience at the cost of sacrifice, with the most tactful tenderness of one who can recognize the strengths and at same time to have pity on the weaknesses of the persons.
As Rosmini learns to us to do memory
At page 174 of the first attempt of the Founding Father to give us a Rule he wrote: ”but before beginning the Rules I must declare that you are born and you’ve been delivered into the hands of the divine Providence and I must also let you know who she was, who from the divine Providence of the Lord obtained the execution of this work and led it just here. She is the greatest among the daughters of Providence, she was elected our Mother under the cross.
Jesus said: thank you Father, because you hid these things to the the
great and the wise (persons) and made the little ones know.
TO GIVE THANKS
Certainly, because gratitude is a feeling of loving and grateful thanks for a good that was given to us, without our merit .The consciousness that we didn’t make ourselves but that all was given to us as a gift, gushes in us a feeling of gratitude that generates our actions. This free gift keeps in the facts and in the things that were born in the past; so each of us in the present is enriched with all that the others made yesterday and a hundred years ago. This is the hundred- fold promised by Jesus to those who follow Him, leaving behind parents and home. It’s a wealth that’s more powerful in all human relations, a way to look
at the creation ,the human beings, myself, it’s the way I beg:”my Lord, forgive me, sinner”, and this makes me more genuine, because I’m really a sinner. From this fountain arises a fertile awareness that is communication of ourselves, of our intelligence, of our will, of our heart, of our time, of our life. And say:”Lord teach me to give my life for my sisters. Jesus I’m unable but if you want it you can carry out in me your work. I beg you:”Crea in me Domine quod vis. Father you see the depth of my soul. Make me be Good”!
TO LIVE THE PRESENT WITH PASSION AND TO HUG THE FUTURE WITH HOPE
Looking at our reality in old Europe, we may be overcome by sadness and anxiety, but this can be a suggestion of the Providence that says: I’ll make you live this hard moment because I want you to understand how much I loved you and you can’t forget that I redeemed you by my beloved Son’s death. But the Son rose again! The seed that was sowed and gave fruits in Africa and in India lands of martyrs, of poor reminding us of our origin: born for the poor. So our story in the continuity of the resurrection of Christ. Every place, every moment of the story is for us the way to live the mystery of the passion, death and resurrection. At the end of the story we, and the world, will understand what God wanted to reveal with grace, overwhelmed with love He filled our heart.
PS. In the first photo: Padre Clemente Rebora while celebrating Mass; he lived very deeply the rosminian charism.
In the second photo (By the painter Giuseppe Craffonara.In the first middle of XIX century, dated 1835) Our Lady of Sorrows wanted by Rosmini for his home town. The congregation of the rosminian nuns was consecrated, by blessed Rosmini, to Christ Crucified and to His mother Our Lady of Sorrows.
