We are different in age and state of life, but we all totally entrust our lives to God.
by Rosanna Tabasso
In the seventies a substantial part of Sermig was made up of families gathered around Ernesto Olivero and his wife Maria. They were determined to live the Gospel starting from their being family. They gave them the impetus and the ideals of the Council and felt that the Gospel was for everyone, not only for those in charge, priests and religious. They felt they were a Gospel cell in the world and wanted to experience it as protagonists. They were solid, united within and between them. They had ideas and spent themselves to make them concrete in the service of the kingdom. Their conviction aroused in young people the search for their own vocation, for the specific call of each one: who am I and who do I want to be? How can I enhance my talents? What am I asked to be at the service of the kingdom of God?
In the comparison many of us found the meaning of consecrated celibacy lived in fraternity. A road so different from that of marriage and yet so similar in its deepest root. Diversity is life among us: different in age, by state of life, married, celibate, consecrated persons who live in fraternity, young people, adults, different by origin, by social background, yet united because we are all of God. "One Lord , one faith, one baptism. One God the Father of all "(Eph 4,5-6), says Saint Paul and I like to think that he remembers it also to married people, consecrated celibates, priests ...
In the Fraternity we try to educate ourselves all to give primacy to God in our life, so that God is second to none, neither to the wife nor to the husband or to the children, nor to work nor to the commitments of common life; so that whatever our call - marriage, consecration or other forms of life - he is the center.
The more we meet, families and consecrated persons, the more we experience that in this time there is much more that which unites us than that which differentiates us. Because "No one who has put his hand to the plow and then looks back is suitable for the kingdom of God" (Lk 9:62) and this also applies to everyone. So we are all united by the effort to be for the Lord in a world that wants to pull us from a completely different place. Whoever chooses the Gospel, married, consecrated, priest, chooses the love that becomes grain of wheat, which allows itself to sink into the earth, splits to give life, up to the total gift of self for the other, for others: for someone it means spending waking nights with their children or taking shifts at the factory to support the family; for others, keep an Arsenal open night and day and welcome the homeless; for some to question themselves and not to resign themselves to the difficulty born in the couple; for others, to face the difficulties of common life every day, to get naked and make truth to face a deep knot or a difficulty in communicating with a brother or sister. There is no easier way if the center in everyone is God and everyone's tension is to love as he loves. However, we are all contaminated within by a worldly mentality that has accustomed us to confuse the like, I want it with love and fatigue, the difficulty, the suffering of living together as a negation of love. We all need a time, a method and teachers who can help us to change our perspective, to take the road of the Gospel and go back to being simply Christians.
Meeting the younger families of the Fraternity, I often think that God wanted to reveal himself as love in the sacrament that unites a man and a woman and wanted to lay down the transmission of life in their love. The family is also the root of every vocation; mine too was born with my parents, grew up in the love with which they welcomed me, educated me, accompanied me. I learned from them that God is Love (1 Jn 4,8), I let myself be loved and I learned to respond to his love, loving without seeking reciprocation, without bonds, without limits, everyone and everyone.