Pastoral letter

June, 2016

Called to Faithfulness!
The Holy Spirit enriches the entire Church, which also evangelizes through
different charisms. Those charisms are given to renew and to build up the
Church. They are not a closed patrimony, given to one group to be
protected; rather, they are gifts of the Spirit integrated into the ecclesial
body, drawn toward the center, which is Christ, out of whom they flow in
an evangelizing movement.
Evangelii Gaudium, No. 130

Charisms are born out of the incessant action of the Spirit, who infuses into peoples hearts ways of
being that accentuate certain aspects of the Gospel. Charisms are windows open to the mystery of
God that attract, capture, and engage peoples attention in a very precise way. Charism and mission
flow forth from one and the same source. Faithfulness to those charisms that are recognized and
promoted in the Church constantly renews the prophetic character that is proper to religious families.
Charisms are special times (kairos) that define the present moment and break the sense of isolation
by inscribing those who practice them within a wider history, a history that is precious and holy. Yes,
that is what gives strength to charisms: since they come from the Spirit of God, they create a faith
response for today that finds new words to relaunch the history of those men and women who want
to continue moving forward. While congregations, religious families, can come to a point of
extinction, charisms never die since they are born out of the Word and are tirelessly in search of the
words and forms that will create new kairos moments for the world to see. Trying to restrict a charism
to a way of thinking or to imprison a charism in history does not cause a charism to die, but it does
render totally powerless those who ought to be practicing that charism.

This present pastoral letter, being written several months before the next General Assembly of the
Viatorian Community, wishes to help us to situate our faithfulness. To what are we really being called?
To what attitudes does the movement that faithfulness creates commit us?
First of all, we will situate ourselves within our particular context and we will see that a world that
constantly challenges our convictions cannot do otherwise than call forth faithfulness that is alert and
creative. Our world is not opposed to convictions of faith, but it wants them to reflect real life and to
be committed to making that life more genuine, just, and beautiful. That faithfulness places us at the
heart of history by constantly situating us between what is given and what is offered, between the
past and the future, which then introduce the present moment as a unique and chosen moment, as
Gods moment, as Gods moment for us.
It is then the space of the God of mercy that appears. It leans down toward us, with its palpitating
heart indicating how we are to live. Rather than being a response, mercy is essentially a long and deep
silence, which permits a heart that is totally in love with God to react to the suffering that overwhelms
us. It is only then that the vibrant heart comes to awaken our own heart by once again proposing love
in its most beautiful dimension pardon offered in the here and now.
Faithfulness leads us to become aware that, because we are an integral part of the history of a
congregation such as ours, we can recognize the inspired intuition of our Founder, his particular
charism, and the responsibility that we have to not isolate it from history, but to call upon it constantly
to find the right words so that it will continue to be a kairos moment for us and for those who are
served by our mission. The charism of a founder continues through the founders heirs, who always
receive it with the mission not to re-invent it for the action of the Spirit cannot be re-created but
to search, at the very heart of ones strengths, for those life situations upon which it wants to shed
light. As Pope Francis has said so well, it is out of this precise moment in history, in our lived reality,
that a strong desire to evangelize is ceaselessly reborn.

Relationships among people have changed

While, in the recent past, ways of being and of acting were generally known and agreed upon, things
are entirely different today. We live in a world that constantly calls upon people to resituate
themselves, to review their reciprocal relationships. In our society, differences are no longer
theoretical questions with which we must deal, but are realities that demand interaction and that
change and create new ways of living together.
From all evidence, accessibility to information and to means of communication is a key factor in this
social change and a major reason why our way of being has been transformed. Not only do we have
the world at our fingertips thanks to the Internet, but the development of 24-hour television news
channels is distorting even more the time frame that we establish with events, all of which now
appear to be taking place in the present. With a hint of irony, it is often said that specialized television
news channels are present, not only at the heart of happenings, but that they even precede the
events. Information responds to a need for immediacy, leaving it up to the spectators to establish the
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necessary links among everything that is presented to them and then to draw conclusions. Images
come from everywhere, pile up at a rapid rate, and require spectators to understand them and to resituate themselves with respect to that multitude of events that ask them questions.
Having the world at ones fingertips (Internet) and seeing directly what is happening here and there
amounts to profoundly changing the space where people live and the human relationships that such
space engenders. All have to re-situate themselves in that world that is both so large and so small,
that was inaccessible not so long ago, but that today is without borders. That is certainly a personal
endeavor, creating the world of someone called upon to come into contact with an environment,
a family, a life setting, a work situation, other cultures, and so forth. The elements presented must
be joined together so as to become information; that information, for its part, must network people
so as not to entrap them in an individualism that is not aligned with real life, but that will create
openings that will engender human beings who are more aware, open, and ready to live fully in the
world.
Even more so, the new phenomenon of televised reality that is becoming more and more frequent
on our little screens (which, incidentally, are less and less little) has forced open the doors of our
homes, has unveiled the intimate universe of people, families, and the relationships that they
maintain. It is as if this new television vogue was in the process of bringing forth a new right the
right to know everything about people, their way of living, their habits, and their secrets. This
tendency, which no longer seems to have any limits, has assumed the mission of breaking down all
barriers to knowledge, establishing a deep contempt between genuine information and the
inadmissible intrusion of people and even of organizations into lifes private spaces. Thus, human
persons must re-situate themselves in this world without walls where everyone has access to
everything.

Faithfulness interpreted
Human beings, having to constantly re-position themselves in a world with wider and wider borders,
develop different ways of living and of belonging. Having to re-situate oneself means having to choose
once again. Where a person belongs takes place at the heart of a movement that is constantly forcing
the human person to make choices. Consequently, faithfulness is no longer presented uniquely under
the angle of persistence in a previously-made choice, an untouchable decision, but in a continual
process of questioning that leads people to always re-embrace their choices at the heart of a life that
never ceases challenging its places of coherency. Faithfulness, a point of support for human maturity,
is thus presented under a dynamic form: once again and always re-situating ones options and choices
at the heart of life, a genuine place for verifying its foundations and its coherency. Laurent Boisvert,
O.F.M., in an article dealing with human and Christian attitudes in the chapter decisions of religious
congregations, insists upon lucidity. His words are certainly not foreign to our reflection:
An attitude of lucidity requires courage, since it implies an effort to try to find the light; an
availability to modify ones reading of reality in accord with information received; the risk of
being destabilized by a new awareness of reality; frustration at not being able to see the whole

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picture; and so forth. But an attitude of lucidity is indispensable in order to make a good
decision.1
Human beings who are called upon to re-situate themselves and to re-make their choices, at the risk
of recompensing them, present faithfulness not so much under the static angle of the result, but of a
process that confirms them as beings in relationships, beings in communication 2, and therefore as
beings having choices. Faithful men and women are constantly in tension between what is possible
in life and the option of what is better for the present moment, the fruit of the recognition of a
destiny. It is out of the intensity of this what is better for the present moment that comes forth an
entrance into the future. Faithfulness is therefore evaluated not only with respect to the initial point
of a commitment, but also in its capacity to maintain its depth and duration, that spark that illumines
the present and that opens up the prospect for continuing and for becoming in the future. Only
choices made in the present open those doors to the future.
The fundamental truths of the human person appear less as incontestable points of support that are
filed far away than as places that are open to meeting other people with their differences and that
are available for sharing, for exchanging, for questioning, and even for challenging.
We are historical beings. The knowledge of our personal and collective history and the links that are
woven with the places where we belong have been set free. Human beings henceforth act upstream
and downstream from their personal histories and those of their circle of friends. Taking a position
with respect to the choices that they have made and that they will be called upon to make, they
unleash the present action and interact with its past and its present as well as with its future. Once
again, the relationship with what has been is no longer untouchable. Is not that evolution of the
relationships of human beings with their environment and their history a promising sign of a new
historical reality that will open up other perspectives, a rediscovery of what is truly a tradition?
The relationship with what we call the truth has also undergone a metamorphosis. Not only do we
find ourselves facing a gigantic crossword puzzle of I, for my part, believe that , but that truth, as
retained by one group or another, cannot suffice for a simple affirmative statement. The search for
truth in which every human person is involved must be carried out by participation at the heart of
the back-and-forth movement of words, the common space for research and for dialogue. That
dialogue bears witness to a relationship with another that is defined by the need: the person that I
encounter is less a person to be convinced of my convictions than an active party who is necessary
for my own search for meaning and for truth.
In brief, even though relationships among humans have changed considerably, we are not permitted
to affirm that that has taken place to the detriment of faithfulness, which is defined in another way
and which draws its source of re-positioning from our choices and our convictions as dictated by
todays life. That faithfulness is rooted in the past by continually questioning the present, with the
truth that comes forth being called hope and future. That creative faithfulness emanates from the
1 Laurent Boisvert, O.F.M., "Human and Christian Attitudes in Chapter Decisions, En son nom Vie
consacre aujourdhui, Volume 66, Number 3, May-June 2008, page 183.
2 Andr Fossion, La catchse dans le champ de la communication, ses enjeux pour linculturation de la
foi, Paris, les ditions du Cerf, 1990, p. 82.
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dialogue between the heritage for which we are responsible and the present moment, which is always
searching for meaning and happiness.

Called to bold faithfulness by the Holy Spirit

For it is not a spirit of fear that God has given us, but a spirit of power and of love and of
prudence.
2 Timothy 1:7
In the closing lines of his first apostolic exhortation (Evangelii Gaudium), Pope Francis reminds us that
there is no greater freedom than to allow oneself to be guided by the Spirit, by renouncing a desire
to calculate and control everything, and to permit the Spirit to enlighten us, to guide us, to direct us,
and to lead us wherever he wishes. The Spirit knows what we need in every age and at every moment.
We call that being mysteriously fruitful (No. 280). Following Christ through the action of the Spirit
opens us up to the greatest human freedom, that of faithfulness. Faithfulness to the action of the
Spirit renders our listening mysteriously fruitful, as well as our willingness to accomplish the mission
that the Church confides to us. Saint Paul confirms that it is a spirit of power and of love and of
prudence that the Father and the Son offer us continually.
The charism of Father Querbes must always call out to us, since it is indeed acting within the spiritual
heritage confided to his children. That same Spirit, which provided inspiration at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, continues to guide his sons and daughters, religious and associates, so that those
traits particular to the mystery of Christ and his Gospel contained in the charism will unceasingly raise
up forms of presence and of action that are apt to guide us. What we have called the charism of the
Congregation, the charism of the Viatorian Community, is that same inspired intuition of our
Founder placed in the hands of the Spirit who calls us and guides us so that we can be disciples for
today. It is our faithfulness to the Spirit that makes it possible for the charism to remain alive and
meaningful for our world.
At its very source, a charism is life and dynamism because it is the action of the Spirit for today. The
grace that the Spirit grants to a religious family through the charism of its founder must unceasingly
keep its heirs in that healthy tension between the heritage to be understood, welcomed, and
preciously preserved and the essential effort to listen for and to be attentive to the signs of the times.
At every stage of history, like the milestones of a genuine and tenacious faithfulness, the Spirit invites
us unceasingly to examine our fundamental convictions and to re-state them in the language that
comes forth from the challenges of men and women today.
While we are committed to sustaining the cause of our Founder so that he might be presented to the
Universal Church as a privileged witness to the faith, the greatest gesture of respect that we can offer
him is faithfulness to the Spirit who inflates the sails of his inspired intuition, the one that he
transmitted to us in urging us to believe in Providence.

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Faithfulness and Creativity

In his apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata, Pope John Paul II called for the fidelity of Religious
Institutes by binding together faithfulness and creativity:
Institutes are therefore invited to courageously rediscover the enterprising spirit, the
inventiveness, and the holiness of founders and foundresses, in response to the signs of
the times that appear in todays world. That is especially a question of a call to persevere
on the road to holiness, through material and spiritual difficulties encountered in the
vicissitudes of daily life. But it is also a call to acquire a necessary competence in ones
work and to maintain a dynamic faithfulness in the mission, by adopting, when necessary,
the ways of acting to new situations and to different needs, in full docility to divine
inspirations and ecclesial discernment. In all cases, one must remain firmly convinced that
striving to conform oneself more and more fully to the Lord is the authenticating condition
for all renewal efforts that want to remain faithful to the foundational inspiration (No.
37).
In other words, the present Pope dissipates our fears of laying claim to a charism whose faithfulness
calls for creativity:
Jesus Christ can also break the troubling schemas in which we pretend to enclose him and
he surprises us with his constant divine creativity. Every time that we try to return to the
source in order to recapture the original freshness of the Gospel, there come forth new
ways, creative methods, other forms of expression, more eloquent signs, words filled with
renewed meaning for todays world. In reality, every authentic act of evangelization is
always new (Evangelii Gaudium, No. 11).
Therefore, we must always be inspired and made fruitful by a faithfulness that erects solid bridges
between and among:

What is being lived by the people whom we are called upon to serve. In order to do that, we
must be Viatorians who love, who dare to live, and who devote themselves to whoever wants a
life that is more genuine, more just, and more beautiful.
The charism of our Founder and the task of his heirs to re-read it ceaselessly in order to find
therein words for today. In order to do that, we must be Viatorians who know their history and
who inscribe it in a tradition that is always searching for a way in which hope will bring to birth a
future for our words and our actions.
And the Spirit who guides us and sustains us so that we never lose sight of those who are
confided to our pastoral benevolence. In order to do that, we must be Pentecost Viatorians who
remember that they have been sent forth on mission: Go forth. I am with you always!

The movement that creates the interaction among these three pillars presents our faithfulness to us
under its most beautiful expression, under its most dynamic form. I dare to hope that that faithfulness
will nourish the immediate preparations of all religious and associates for the important meeting that
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will bring together delegates of the International Viatorian Community along with their shepherds.
May that faithfulness also strongly inspire the work that we will have to do in Madrid at the end of
this current year.
Using the words of Saint Paul to Timothy, may faithfulness, after dissipating all fears,
remain with us as a spirit of power and of love and of prudence.

Conclusion
Why have I chosen to write this pastoral letter on the theme of faithfulness? Because we are called
to faithfulness as men and women, as Christians also, and because faithfulness presupposes an entire
process of confronting our deepest convictions with the reality of todays world. That is what gives
credibility to faithfulness; in order to do that, we must accept being called into question. The world
has changed and the isolation of convictions does not make sense.
Our membership in the Congregation and in the Viatorian Community invites us more than ever to
fashion that dynamic and creative faithfulness into the ferment of our unity. So we must convince
ourselves that the ways of the world and we must recall that our world has become one large village
are the places to express and to confirm our faithfulness. If faithfulness is not called on to bear
witness, to what avail is it? The place for giving witness is the world as it is now! Without desiring to
meet others, those who are close to me, but also those others who ask me questions, all faithfulness
remains theoretical and very fragile.
The process of reflecting upon and evaluating the Viatorian Community, in which we have been
involved now for a number of months, has made it possible for us to isolate some basic concepts,
some well-rooted convictions, some challenges and also some fears, some reasons for uneasiness,
and some instances of reticence. That does not challenge our unity insofar as we are living this
moment in our history in the dynamism of a true, open, and active faithfulness. If that faithfulness is
a place that is open to meeting others and to dialoguing, it will take root in our history in such a way
that it will offer a precious testimony.
It is the result of this exercise and of the Spirit who has led us that we will be called upon later to
present to the Church, the ultimate guardian of our faithfulness to the charism of Father Querbes.
We will do that with all the force that we receive from the unity of those men and women who strive
to offer to the Church the fruits of a charism that is still very much alive. We will do that also by
adopting an attitude of listening, dialoguing, and being respectful.
Adored and loved be Jesus!
Alain Ambeault, C.S.V.,
Superior General
May 6, 2016
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