Congregation for Institutes of  Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life

Below find the Introduction of the Instruction from the Congregation courtesy of www.vatican.org. To view the complete Instruction click the Holy Father above.

THE SERVICE OF AUTHORITY

AND OBEDIENCE  

Faciem tuam, Domine, requiram

Instruction

 CONGREGATION FOR INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED

LIFE AND SOCIETIES OF APOSTOLIC LIFE

THE SERVICE OF AUTHORITY

AND OBEDIENCE

Faciem tuam, Domine, requiram  

Instruction

INTRODUCTION

“Let your face shine upon us and we shall be saved”

(Ps 79:4)

Consecrated Life as a witness of the search for God

1. “Faciem tuam, Domine, requiram”: your face, O Lord, I seek (Ps 27:8). A pilgrim seeking the meaning of life, enwrapped in the great mystery that surrounds him, the human person, even if unconsciously, does, in fact, seek the face of the Lord. “Your ways, O Lord, make known to me, teach me your paths” (Ps 25:4): no one can ever take away from the heart of the human person the search for him of whom the Bible says “He is all” (Sir 43:27) and for the ways of reaching him.

Consecrated life, called to make the characteristic traits of the virginal, poor and obedient Jesus visible,1 flourishes in the ambience of this search for the face of the Lord and the ways that lead to him (cf. Jn 14:4-6). A search that leads to the experience of peace — “in his will is our peace” 2 — and which underlies each day's struggle, because God is God, and His ways and thoughts are not always our ways and thoughts (cf. Is 55:8). The consecrated person, therefore, gives witness to the task, at once joyful and laborious, of the diligent search for the divine will, and for this chooses to use every means available that helps one to know it and sustain it while bringing it to fulfilment.

Here, too, the religious community, a communion of consecrated persons who profess to seek together and carry out God's will: a community of sisters or brothers with a variety of roles but with the same goal and the same passion, finds its meaning. For this reason, while all in the community are called to seek what is pleasing to the Lord and to obey Him, some are called, usually temporarily, to exercise the particular task of being the sign of unity and the guide in the common search both personal and communitarian of carrying out the will of God. This is the service of authority. 

A path of liberation

2. The culture of Western Society, strongly centred on the subject, has contributed to the spread of the value of respect for the dignity of the human person, positively fostering the person's free development and autonomy.

Such recognition constitutes one of the most significant traits of modernity and is a providential given which requires new ways of conceiving authority and relating to it. One must also keep in mind that when freedom tends to become arbitrariness and the autonomy of the person, independence from the Creator and from relationships with others, then one finds oneself before forms of idolatry that do not increase freedom but rather enslave.

In such cases, believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the God of Jesus Christ, must embark upon a path of personal liberation from every idolatrous cult. It is a path which can find its motivation in the Exodus experience: a path of liberation which leads from the acceptance of the common scattered way of thinking to the freedom of adhering to the Lord and from the monotony of one way of looking at things to itineraries that bring one to communion with the living and true God.

The Exodus journey is guided by the cloud, both bright and obscure, of the Spirit of God, and, even if, at times, it seems to lose itself down paths which do not make sense, its destiny is the beatifying intimacy of the heart of God: “I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself” (Ex 19:4). A group of slaves is freed to become a holy people who know the joy of free service to God. The Exodus events are a paradigm which accompanies the entire biblical reality and is seen as a prophetic anticipation of the same earthly life of Jesus, who, in turn frees from slavery through obedience to the providential will of the Father.

Addressees, intent and limitations of the document

3. The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life during its last Plenary Session, which took place 28-30 September 2005, turned its attention to the theme of the exercise of authority and obedience in consecrated life. It was recognized that this theme calls for careful reflection, first of all because of the changes that have taken place in the internal lives of Institutes and communities in recent years, and also in light of what more recent Magisterial documents on the renewal of consecrated life have proposed.

The present Instruction, the fruit of what emerged in the above cited Plenary Session and in the reflection of this Dicastery that followed, is addressed to members of institutes of consecrated life who live a community life, that is to all men and women who belong to religious institutes, to which societies of apostolic life are very similar. However, other consecrated persons, in relation to their type of life, can also cull useful information from it. This document hopes to offer help and encouragement to all those, called to witness to the primacy of God through free obedience to his will, to live their yes to the Lord in joy.

In confronting the theme of this Instruction, it is well recognized that its implications are many and that there exists in the vast world of consecrated life today not only a great variety of charismatic projects and of missionary commitments, but also a certain diversity of models of governance and practices of obedience, differences often influenced by the various cultural contexts.3 Moreover, one must keep in mind the differences that characterize also under the psychological profile, communities of men and women. In addition one must consider the new problems which the numerous forms of missionary collaboration, particularly those with the laity, pose to the exercise of authority. Also the different weights, attributed to local and central authorities in various religious institutes, determine ways of practicing authority and obedience that are not uniform. Finally one must not forget that consecrated life commonly sees, in the “synodal” figure of the general chapter (or of analogous gatherings), the supreme authority of the institute,4 to which all the members, beginning with the superiors, must make reference.

To all this one must add the realization that in recent years the way of listening to and living authority and obedience has changed both in the Church and in society. This is due to, among other things: the coming to awareness of the value of the individual person, with his or her vocation, and intellectual, affective and spiritual gifts, with his or her freedom and rational abilities; the centrality of the spirituality of communion,5 with the valuing of the instruments that hlp one to live it; a different and less individualistic way of understanding mission, in the sharing of all members of the People of God, with the resulting forms of concrete collaboration.

Nevertheless, considering some elements of the present cultural influence one must recall that the desire for self realization can at times enter into conflict with community projects; the search for personal well-being, be it spiritual or material, can render total dedication to the service of the common mission difficult; visions of the charism and of apostolic service which are too subjective can weaken fraternal sharing and collaboration.  

Also not to be excluded is the recognition that in some settings the opposite problems are prevalent, determined by an unbalanced vision on the side of collectivity and of excessive uniformity, with the risk of stifling the growth and responsibility of the individuals. The balance between the individual and community is not an easy one and thus neither is that between authority and obedience.

This Instruction does not intend to treat all the problems raised by the various elements and sensibilities just cited. These remain, so to say, at the base of the reflections and those directions which are proposed. The principle intent of this Instruction is that of reaffirming that obedience and authority, even though practiced in many ways, always have a relation to the Lord Jesus, the obedient Servant. Moreover, it proposes to help authority in its triple service: to the individual persons called to live their own consecration (first part); to construct fraternal communities (second part); to participate in the common mission (third part).

The considerations and directives which follow are proposed in continuity with those of the documents which have accompanied the path of consecrated life in these past not easy years, especially Potissimum institutioni of 1990,6 Fraternal Life in Community of 1994,7 the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita consecrata of 1996 8 and the 2002 Instruction, Starting Afresh from Christ: A Renewed Commitment to Consecrated Life in the Third Millennium.9 

For complete text click image of the His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI above