Fr. Luigi Brioni sx
No, I did not want to become a convent friar when I left my seminary of Cremona for the Xaverian novitiate. I just wanted to be a missionary, that is to go for the sake of Christ wherever poor souls were abandoned to hell destiny, so that I could save them. This was the mission in those days, and, if the words must be different today, the purpose of mission is not that far away from the past!
However, as soon as the Xaverian formation started for me, I realized that, if I wanted to be a Xaverian, I had to accept becoming also a friar, someone with the three religious vows and the life in a community. I easily accepted that added element as necessary to my missionary vocation, without much arguing neither with the Lord nor anyone else, except that I felt its pinch when the novice master asked all of us novices to turn every single penny to him because of the incoming vow of poverty.
Eventually I realized that it was the Founder himself who insisted that his missionaries would be religious, something so valuable to him that he was ready to cancel the whole project of our Institute if that virtue would not be approved by Rome. He himself was not religious in the formal sense of the term, but he solemnly professed his religious vows on the very morning of his episcopal ordination in Rome in 1902. What a holy choice!
Why then did the Founder plan for his own missionary sons to be also and necessarily religious, a characteristic this that seems at odds with the very freedom and boldness an apostle needs to proclaim the Gospel everywhere, at all times, and without the ties of vows? The answer to this question is for me no better to be found than in his Testament Letter, the supreme summary of his holiness and mission for all us. There we all understand how our missionary vocation exists only if it is married to religious, or better, consecrated life. This unity is the essential charism that we have accepted to live by when we made our Xaverian profession, and its value cannot be discussed or changed if we remain Xaverian.
But how is the Founder’s Testament truly understood and practiced by all Xaverians today, by us in the Region of Sierra Leone? In my 50 and more years of Xaverianity and with a non-small experience of people, places, and roles, I may say that at times we have forgotten the Xaverian religious life the Founder offered us as essential to our vocation, both in theory and mostly in practice.
We know that some Xaverian superiors, in the immediate years after Saint Guido’s death, tried to make us monks. We have not forgotten how one regional chapter, almost unanimously, approved that the old Xaverian Confreres’ pension could be used as “free” money. We know the disastrous financial deals of several Xaverian bursars over the years in many a Region. Even the Founder in his trip to China, during and soon afterwards, had to suffer so much for divisions among his apostles because of money and the financial needs of the mission. He never mentioned them in the diary of his apostolic trip, but, as we came to know later on, they were for him so real and so crucifying!
And the list can continue. The few readers of this reflection may say that I speak only of religious life for its vow of poverty. Yes, true, for I believe that it is with the use of money, “that tainted thing” of the Gospel, that we can manifest ourselves most clearly as witnesses to the mission of Christ in the world.
The Founder did his utmost best to make his missionary Institute religious because in his holiness he felt the beauty of living together, but “he left an Institute that stressed so much the value of personal individuality as no other.”
I am taking this quote and some that are following from the yet unpublished biography of Mons. Conforti by Fr. Silvestro Volta sx, written in 1943. He also writes, “In the formation of novices and professed, the Founder was attentive to save their personality even in their smallest manifestations. That’s why almost all the practices of piety are individual, the morning prayers while they are getting dressed; the meditation by themselves at their seat; the midday examination of conscience by themselves and not even in church; the rosary walking up and down … two by two; and finally the night prayers alone. … Moreover the Founder was encouraging us to pray outside church … and without kneeling down, for he was concerned to prepare men that would need to be most of the time on the road and to live by themselves. To everyone a specific responsibility was given, and the community was an organism made of responsible members.”
Here it is interesting also to remember that the first ever school of medicine for missionaries started in Parma in 1927, with classes of two months during summer for four years! Another novelty encouraged by the Founder was film making, something unheard in 1924 in those ecclesiastical circles. A project that in seven years produced three films of appreciated quality, like Fiamme, that was so meaningful in touching the hearts of many people for the missions!
We now know the life and spirit of our Founder even better than our old Confreres because of the many historical researches Xaverians and non Xaverians have done in the last 30 years since the famous meeting of Pamplona in 1984. And we all know how creative he was in his life, zeal, and holiness. He was not so much a follower but a leader, an initiator in many activities, and he wanted us, his dearest family, to mold our life and mission in the same way.
So, what does the Founder tell us today over and above the tons of documents printed after him and now gathering dust on our bookshelves? Allow me only a few practical suggestions:
- To remain always a loving community, no matter what, with great respect for our individual differences and without losing our personal gifts in the caldron of anonymity;
- to live our vow of poverty with consecrated charity for the real poor around us, beginning with our workers;
- to be missionary with ever greater zeal for those we are sent to, without judging them and without counting the cost. (If so, we will all be also free from some unnecessary fears about conditioning those who will follow us!)
I believe that the above suggestions could help all of us, starting from me, to provoke some evaluation of our missionary/religious identity and change us to be better sons of Saint Guido, above words, documents, and meetings. It is up to all of us to decide together to live the Founder’s charism here and now at its best.
In conclusion, if I have not been very clear in my exposition, I am sorry, but I hope and pray we Xaverians can grow ever more joyful in the blessedness and mission of the Founder. Amen.
No, I did not want to become a convent friar when I left my seminary of Cremona for the Xaverian novitiate. I just wanted to be a missionary, that is to go for the sake of Christ wherever poor souls were abandoned to hell destiny, so that I could save them. This was the mission in those days, and, if the words must be different today, the purpose of mission is not that far away from the past!
However, as soon as the Xaverian formation started for me, I realized that, if I wanted to be a Xaverian, I had to accept becoming also a friar, someone with the three religious vows and the life in a community. I easily accepted that added element as necessary to my missionary vocation, without much arguing neither with the Lord nor anyone else, except that I felt its pinch when the novice master asked all of us novices to turn every single penny to him because of the incoming vow of poverty.
Eventually I realized that it was the Founder himself who insisted that his missionaries would be religious, something so valuable to him that he was ready to cancel the whole project of our Institute if that virtue would not be approved by Rome. He himself was not religious in the formal sense of the term, but he solemnly professed his religious vows on the very morning of his episcopal ordination in Rome in 1902. What a holy choice!
Why then did the Founder plan for his own missionary sons to be also and necessarily religious, a characteristic this that seems at odds with the very freedom and boldness an apostle needs to proclaim the Gospel everywhere, at all times, and without the ties of vows? The answer to this question is for me no better to be found than in his Testament Letter, the supreme summary of his holiness and mission for all us. There we all understand how our missionary vocation exists only if it is married to religious, or better, consecrated life. This unity is the essential charism that we have accepted to live by when we made our Xaverian profession, and its value cannot be discussed or changed if we remain Xaverian.
But how is the Founder’s Testament truly understood and practiced by all Xaverians today, by us in the Region of Sierra Leone? In my 50 and more years of Xaverianity and with a non-small experience of people, places, and roles, I may say that at times we have forgotten the Xaverian religious life the Founder offered us as essential to our vocation, both in theory and mostly in practice.
We know that some Xaverian superiors, in the immediate years after Saint Guido’s death, tried to make us monks. We have not forgotten how one regional chapter, almost unanimously, approved that the old Xaverian Confreres’ pension could be used as “free” money. We know the disastrous financial deals of several Xaverian bursars over the years in many a Region. Even the Founder in his trip to China, during and soon afterwards, had to suffer so much for divisions among his apostles because of money and the financial needs of the mission. He never mentioned them in the diary of his apostolic trip, but, as we came to know later on, they were for him so real and so crucifying!
And the list can continue. The few readers of this reflection may say that I speak only of religious life for its vow of poverty. Yes, true, for I believe that it is with the use of money, “that tainted thing” of the Gospel, that we can manifest ourselves most clearly as witnesses to the mission of Christ in the world.
The Founder did his utmost best to make his missionary Institute religious because in his holiness he felt the beauty of living together, but “he left an Institute that stressed so much the value of personal individuality as no other.”
I am taking this quote and some that are following from the yet unpublished biography of Mons. Conforti by Fr. Silvestro Volta sx, written in 1943. He also writes, “In the formation of novices and professed, the Founder was attentive to save their personality even in their smallest manifestations. That’s why almost all the practices of piety are individual, the morning prayers while they are getting dressed; the meditation by themselves at their seat; the midday examination of conscience by themselves and not even in church; the rosary walking up and down … two by two; and finally the night prayers alone. … Moreover the Founder was encouraging us to pray outside church … and without kneeling down, for he was concerned to prepare men that would need to be most of the time on the road and to live by themselves. To everyone a specific responsibility was given, and the community was an organism made of responsible members.”
Here it is interesting also to remember that the first ever school of medicine for missionaries started in Parma in 1927, with classes of two months during summer for four years! Another novelty encouraged by the Founder was film making, something unheard in 1924 in those ecclesiastical circles. A project that in seven years produced three films of appreciated quality, like Fiamme, that was so meaningful in touching the hearts of many people for the missions!
We now know the life and spirit of our Founder even better than our old Confreres because of the many historical researches Xaverians and non Xaverians have done in the last 30 years since the famous meeting of Pamplona in 1984. And we all know how creative he was in his life, zeal, and holiness. He was not so much a follower but a leader, an initiator in many activities, and he wanted us, his dearest family, to mold our life and mission in the same way.
So, what does the Founder tell us today over and above the tons of documents printed after him and now gathering dust on our bookshelves? Allow me only a few practical suggestions:
- To remain always a loving community, no matter what, with great respect for our individual differences and without losing our personal gifts in the caldron of anonymity;
- to live our vow of poverty with consecrated charity for the real poor around us, beginning with our workers;
- to be missionary with ever greater zeal for those we are sent to, without judging them and without counting the cost. (If so, we will all be also free from some unnecessary fears about conditioning those who will follow us!)
I believe that the above suggestions could help all of us, starting from me, to provoke some evaluation of our missionary/religious identity and change us to be better sons of Saint Guido, above words, documents, and meetings. It is up to all of us to decide together to live the Founder’s charism here and now at its best.
In conclusion, if I have not been very clear in my exposition, I am sorry, but I hope and pray we Xaverians can grow ever more joyful in the blessedness and mission of the Founder. Amen.