Piety manifests a person’s thirst for God, makes him capable of generosity and sacrifice. It is the way in which the faith received is incarnated and transmitted.
It is a disposition of the soul that becomes a virtue when one voluntarily chooses God in one’s life, seeks his will, works for his glory.
This way of being was taught to us by Jesus who made us know the Father and to adore him in spirit and truth. Piety is therefore the fruit of the Gospel received, loved and assimilated.
According to Blessed Rosmini, piety is the gift of the whole man, of all his faculties, but above all of the will, service and love of God.
The essential traits of Rosminian piety are:
- Universal prayer. Love is universal for itself; it rises to God, it stretches out to all creatures, it embraces everyone, it excludes no one. Therefore, our prayer must also be universal, asking God for the good of all.
- The search for one’s own holiness by purifying conscience, removing evil from ourselves, desiring deeply in our hearts, with sincerity, liberation from all that offends God.
- We must bring intelligence into our prayer, have a clear awareness of what we do and what we say to God in the Sacraments, in the celebrations of the Church, in the Liturgy.
- The spirit of generosity, activity, and self-denial must pervade our piety to the point of offering one’s own blood.
- Everything we do in prayer and deeds is recapitulated in the Eucharistic blessing. God in creating the world has as it sown seeds that were to grow and bear fruit. This initial blessing continues in the Eucharist. Each of us is called to bear fruit and contribute to the fruiting of the seeds of good already scattered throughout the world. The Eucharist, from the very beginning of the Church, has been the source and summit, the continuous insertion of the action of the Father, of Jesus and of the Spirit in all creation, is the response to the concern of the contemporary world also for the ecological balance.
For further information:
“Lineamenti di pietà rosminiana” Giuseppe Bozzetti Ed. Sodalitas
Blessed Antonio Rosmini – “Call of all men to holiness in Christ”
curated by Cirillo Bergamaschi
Stresa International Centre for Rosminian Studies – 2007
