Piarist Community Life - The Piarist Fathers

Piarist Community Life
We all are aware that our religious life is a call to a total consecration of our lives in
Christ, for the Kingdom. This consecration is built upon the experience of our
community life, and it is expressed in our specific mission of evangelizing through
education.
Our Piarist Order has clearly stated what our fraternal life should be like:
a. The Piarist religious lives in community as an active subject and protagonist of
the community and the Piarist mission, beyond any individualism and protagonist
ambition.
b. He matches well the personal and community projects in a fruitful dynamic at the
service of the religious and his community.
c. The Piarist combines unity with autonomy, in a healthy interdependence that
enriches community life. They should not be confounded with fusion, independence,
and anarchy, which are always destructive for both the religious and the community.
d. Dialogue, listening, intimate communication, together with the internal and
external tasks and works, lived with freedom and in fraternal atmosphere, become the
permanent attitudes in which every community lives and evaluates its life. Community
meetings are important evaluators of Community life.
e. The superior is an animator more than a manager; at the same time he is not a
paterfamilias of each religious; at times religious life infantilizes its members.
f. Our community life must always be open to the laity, especially those who share
our mission and charism. We invite them to share our prayer, the Eucharistic, our
meals, in fraternal and welcoming atmosphere, so that our communities become living
sign of the Gospel.
g. From time to time we practice the Lectio Divina in community, above all at
special liturgical periods such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter; and at relevant
events such as death, sickness, social crisis, ecclesial crisis, etc.
h. The joy of fraternal life in community is the best sign that shows the bond
between our personal and community actions.
i. In loving manner we practice the art of fraternal correction, seeking above the
good of our brother, in a climate of dialogue and discernment. We also practice
fraternal animation which fosters the necessary self-esteem required by all.
j. The Piarist community life is significant for every religious and for those who
watch and see us from the outside.
Having established the above mentioned points as a referential framework, it is now
time to explore practical elements of our Piarist community life, as guided by our
Constitutions.

THE PIARIST COMMUNITY, REALM OF OUR CONSECRATION
Community life is not a decorative element of our being Piarist religious but is an
essential part of it. The commandment of love, applied universally to every Christian, is
lived in the Church differently, according to the diverse call granted by the Holy Spirit.
We, Piarists, live it out in a manner that brings us together as brothers for a specific
ministry of evangelizing children and Young people, not forgetting the natural and
permanent context in which they live, their families.
We are not a Non-Government Organization (NGO) with statutes to follow in order
to carry out the service of teaching and educating. This would be too poor to sustain
meaningfully our whole life. We are a religious community focused on the Risen Lord,
who has called us after looking at us with merciful eyes, to be with Him and to
announce that He is alive and that his Kingdom is already in our midst. We do thus
focus on the words of Jesus, “Unless you change and become like children, you will not
enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, and also, “Whoever welcomes one of these little ones in
my name, welcomes me.”
Before anything else, we need to be with Him, like the 12 apostles around the
Master, learning from Him to be disciples who listen and learn the discipline of a Master
who teaches us the way of Truth so that we may become “Cooperators with the Truth.”
Number 25 of our Constitutions say that “we imitate the life style of Christ with His
disciples.” Thus we are an apostolic community as we imitate the life style of the
Twelve with Jesus, with Him and for the mission.
WE ARE A COMMUNITY OF FAITH
Number 25, which begins Chapter III, the chapter about Community Life, begins like
this, “Gathered in community of faith by the love the Father has poured on us…” Thus,
it is faith that attracted us to Him, and from Him we have been convoked by the
Father’s love. Therefore the binomial faith and love are essential to fully understand our
Piarist consecrated life. This factor distinguishes us essentially from any other
humanitarian association no matter how philanthropic and generous it might be.
This faith community, the Pious Schools, becomes concrete in each local
community, and calls us to stability and a permanent presence in a peculiar life style
that distinguishes us from the other life styles in the Church.

We are therefore a faith community in Christ Jesus, He is our Rock. It is a faith that
works through love. It is the love we freely received from the Father who is the source,
through Jesus who is the mediator, as He became one with us and like us, so that we
may be like Him in the love of the Father.
Where does our desire to bring the Good News of the Kingdom come from? No. 25
answers, “Imitating the way of life which Jesus carried out with His disciples and which
the early Church together with Mary also followed, we become, in some way, ministers
of hope of the Kingdom to come and of fraternal union among all people.” It is
therefore the Spirit of the Risen Lord who came upon the disciples at Pentecost, who
animates and pushes us to go out and announce that the Kingdom is in our midst.
We express this urgency through our evangelizing mission crystallized in the
evangelization of children and young people, especially the poor, from their most tender
age, through integral education. But we do this above all in the context of a Piarist
religious community.
THE PIARIST COMMUNITY, TRANSVERSAL AXIS OF OUR WHOLE LIFE
We live in a worldwide culture well known as “post-modern”. Its essential
characteristic is that it focuses on the concrete, forgetting the whole. The narratives of
the past, which gave cohesion and harmony to the historical unwrapping of personal
and community processes, are now cornered out; what matters is the here-and-now,
right now in the present. Consequently, fragmentation is its main mentality.
Without devaluing this culture in which there are many beautiful treasures to
discover and lessons to learn, we can say that this fragmented culture is in dire need of
a counterbalance, of global understanding, of an understanding of the personalindividual
seen from a global perspective. In this way, we will redeem it from the
partiality that at the long run leaves the person unarticulated and vulnerable, unable to
find his/her interior strength that gives him/her consistency and harmony.
Applied to community life, we must approach it in a global, holistic manner, beyond
the pure organizational understanding, beyond the timetables to follow, and beyond the
constraint of certain activities to put up with. Piarist community life is above all
fraternity lived in simplicity, joy, spontaneity, and thanksgiving for being called and
loved.
In the Piarist community life style, all the essential elements of our being and doing
are interconnected. Community life is a laboratory in which all the fundamental accents
of our being and acting as religious are tested.

The current General Superior, Very Rev. Pedro Aguado, Sch.P., while visiting the
communities of the Order, spoke of ten main keys that sustain our Piarist identity
everywhere in the world, no matter the culture or the nation. They are, in no particular
hierarchy of importance:
1. We must have a very well systematized Vocation Ministry, so as to create a
“vocational culture” through which we all feel responsible to call, welcome, and
accompany those who come to us.
2. We must look after the Initial Formation, with well structured and progressive
projects, based on the experience of God and the accompaniment as the main
guarantees.
3. Our communities should be renewed so that they may bear abundant life, with
a soul that welcomes, with deep spirituality, and a renewed missionary
enthusiasm.
4. Ongoing Formation must be born from the personal desire to grow, to be
renewed, and to be converted according to our personal developmental cycles.
5. Our Piarist Ministry will be fed as a sacred fire that illumines and purifies our
Calasanzian identity. This ministry must be done in collaboration with the laity,
and with a great evangelizing desire at the service of the poor.
6. The laity are of great concern, for the more they share our vision the better will
they collaborate in our mission and ministry. They are cooperators in our
mission, and thus we will invite them to be part of our Piarist Fraternities and to
share our specific ministries.
7. Restructuring is an essential key. This requires a flexible movement in which
we are already pioneers, for our Province is the fruit of a merger, which has
been carefully followed by several other demarcations in the Order.
8. The Process of Growth in our Order: This process requires a double exercise
of consolidation and expansion. This demands the capacity to make decisions
that are always rooted in a process of discernment.
9. Finances: Here the Order demands from us solidarity so that from our poverty
we may help the expansion of the Order in places of first implantation where
material resources are rather scarce. The emphasis is on centralization and
sharing.
10. The person of CALASANZ: Our Holy Founder is the bolt that brings together
the previous keys. We must re-discover him, and deepen the knowledge of his
life, his vision, and the multiplying effect of his work in our days.
Taking these ten elements as reference points, it is now possible to expand upon
and develop each one of them and relate them to the Piarist Constitutions, while
emphasizing what the Order needs from its members today.

- VOCATIONAL MINISTRY
“By our community way of life, with the help of God, we will best recommend our
Institute and will attract more efficaciously to the harvest of the Lord those who are in
close contact with us, especially children and adolescents.” (CC 39)
The method of contagion in the vocational ministry is most appropriate because it is
the most sincere and efficacious. It bears a conviction and it expresses itself from the
desire to reach out others with the very life that gives meaning and sense of direction
to oneself and to others.
Though each community has a vocations coordinator, it is the task of each and
everyone to be qualified witnesses in the mission of awakening, calling, accompanying,
and helping grow the vocations the Lord gives us. But the witness of a welcoming
community plays an essential role. A community reaches out and makes space for
others to enter, and it connects to and listens for the cry of the poor.
What we say in a vocations campaign will be put to the test in our community life
style; if necessary, we should question, change, amend, or purify it. In the long run, the
most efficient method to attract vocations to Religious and Priestly Life is contagion, for
through it the power of conviction eliminates the ambivalence of empty and inconsistent
speech.
We will never deceive the young, for they are the best critique to our life styles, and
to our desire to say an unconditional YES to the Lord in the Church. Jesus of Nazareth
and his living style teach us the exceptional method of contagion through which with
only Twelve Apostles, operated the greatest change ever happened in human history:
the coming of the Kingdom of God. And it continues being our task today.
- INITIAL FORMATION
“With special care and love we embrace those just beginning our life.” (CC 33)
Generally speaking, we should ask ourselves: does our life style sustain the process of
receiving, accompanying and helping to grow any of the younger brothers we have in
the process of initial formation? If the answer is NO, then we should start doing
something about it in order to change and improve.

To have vocations and to accompany them is like being a family with children,
assuming the commitment to help them grow in every possible aspect of their
personality (physical, psychological, spiritual, affective, intellectual, etc.)
We have to learn to be communities who receive the gift of new brothers as if they
were heaven’s gift. This requires from us to go beyond our established patterns, and
start over a process of descent and irrelevance in order to connect with the soul of our
younger brothers.
We must consider that our younger professed brothers are de facto and by right
members of our communities, and thus we should treat them like adults whom we help
to be introduced in the global dynamic of our Piarist life and ministry.
- OUR COMMUNITIES
“We all undertook the responsibility of making and fostering community life when
we chose religious life as our own.”(CC 34)
Community life is both grace (“Joined together by a bond of love which the Father
gave us…” (CC 25)) and task. Therefore we acquire the responsibility to create and
foster community life. How do we do it? Our constitutions give us some clues:
1. Trying to be mature in charity and other virtues such as sincerity, affability,
mutual respect, dialogue, and contribution to unity in diversity. (29)
2. With simplicity, respect, goodness, tolerance and fraternal correction. (30)
3. With co-responsibility, mutual collaboration and self-denial (31)
4. With solidarity, active participation in moments of prayer, community meetings,
programming, community evaluation, and faithfulness to the timetable (32)
5. Looking after the younger brothers, the elderly and the sick, and praying for the
members of the Piarist celestial brotherhood. (33)
When we live fraternity beyond mediocrity, our spiritual life advances and becomes
strong, for nobody can say “I love God” whom I cannot see, if I do not love first my
brother whom I see. St. Augustine gives us a very simple and clear statement of what
community life is about:
“A community is a group of people
who pray together and speak together;
they laugh in common and exchange favours together;
they joke together and learn to be serious together.
They might have disagreements,

ut without any anger within,
just as a person deals with himself at times,
using the disagreement to reinforce their habitual harmony.
They learn mutually from one another.
They miss those who are absent
and welcome those who arrive.
They manifest their mutual love with sparks
coming out from their hearts,
expressed in their faces, tongues and eyes,
in thousands of tender gestures.
They cook together the food at home
where the souls gather together in a single bond
and where many, at last, become ONE”
(St. Augustine in the CONFESSIONS)
- ONGOING FORMATION
When we refer to a human person, we refer to the overall structure of his/her
being, at the spiritual, psychological, physical, ambient and social levels. To form a
person is to help him/her grow in the harmony that brings about the “new man”, Christ,
in a steady process, as it were the magnificent Moses coming out of the irregular rock
carved by Michelangelo with chisel and hammer.
The artist is the Spirit of the Risen Lord, and our model is He, the New Man. This
process requires that we allow Him to work in us, accepting that “active passivity “or
that “passive activity” through which He acts with our cooperation. Thus we learn to
love and to serve. Some places for the implementation of our ongoing formation are:
Socrates said that a life not self-reflected is not worth being lived. Thus, a
privileged place for our ongoing formation is our capacity to reflect upon our life, our
experiences, feelings, reactions, intuitions, motions, etc. In that way, we are open to
the art of “living awake”, learning from each spark of truth we find dwelling
everywhere.
Prayer as a relationship with the One who called me is very important. Prayer is
“quality time” with the One who loves me and trusts in me, with Him who challenges
me always, and who, in front of distress He tells me time and again: “You must be born
again, from the water and the Spirit, from the Lord.”
Our daily work must be combined with a playful attitude of leisure and silence, to
be alone and to experience the gratuitousness of human relationships. We need those
friends, those significant persons with whom we may share everything about us without
being judged. They are real treasures who help us be our real selves according to God’s
plan. Persons like these could be: soul friends, spiritual guides, members of our
communities, etc.

Intercultural communities are also a very important locus, a good platform for
permanent formation. Many of our current communities are situated in diverse
intercultural and international locales, and we have come to accept this situation as
something normal. How good it would be if our differences enriched us with the values
each different culture bears! Our differences are not our enemies, but our allies to
acquire flexibility, tolerance, mutual understanding, and the joy of complementarity.
Our ministerial updating according to the demands of our service to the Church
is also a locus for our ongoing formation. It requires creativity, for we are sent to do
something important which demands open eyes, large mentality, and generous heart,
so that in the ministerial action we may learn to read the signs of time, and answer with
a sense of contemporary suitability.
- OUR PIARIST MINISTRY
We live an ecclesial springtime with the election of Pope Francis, who invites us to
live in a Church with the poor and for the poor. His missionary enthusiasm reminds us
of Francis of Assisi who one day invited Brother Leo to go with him to preach in the
surroundings. They started off. After a few hours of conversation through the
pathways, greeting and sharing with people, and laughing with them, Brother Leo,
realizing that they were about to go back home spoke to Francisco: “Why are we going
back home if we have not yet started preaching? And Francisco replied: “We have been
evangelizing indeed when they saw us in fraternity, smiling and greeting them.”
Our first Piarist apostolate consists in giving joyful witness as a vibrant community
that rejoices in being loved in Jesus Christ. A community lives the Calasanzian spirit
expressed in our constitutions.
Besides, it is in the context of community life that the evangelizing ministry of
education finds its way, as we encourage one another by the bond of our common
vocation joyfully lived. This is what essentially identifies us as Piarists.
Number 38 of the constitutions makes explicit what is the style we should live in
communion with the Church, connected with the world: “Our community as part of the
whole family and always ready to serve, shares willingly and fervently our joy and
hopes, grief and anguish with all, especially the human group in which we live.”

- THE LAITY
Nobody doubts today that collaboration with the laity is not a strategic policy for
survival; on the contrary it is an ecclesial consequence derived from the Vatican II
teachings of an ecclesiology that speaks of communion and mutual cooperation.
Our shared mission and work must bring an ongoing discovery of our identity, while
we also open our hearts to the beauty of the lay vocation, which bears the charismatic
Piarist germ in it; and in which we are mutually connected in the task of building up the
Church.
Under this light, we understand better number 36 of our constitutions: “The life of
the Piarist family is shared, to some extent, by non professed candidates and by lay
people partaking in our spirituality and mission according to different modalities.”
Whatever the modality of the lay persons working or collaborating with us, we must
consider them a real gift, and we must feel the responsibility to give them a solid
Calasanzian formation; the closer they are to our vision and mission, the better we will
carry out with them the shared mission of which we speak herein.
RESTRUCTURING
We all know, as we are practically enjoying and suffering the waves of restructuring
in our different demarcations, that it implies a great dose of flexibility, positive
disposition, creativity and generosity.
To that purpose our communities must be strong, without rifts through which part
of the necessary energies to create something new can be spilled out because of
frustration, mediocrity, or hopelessness.
Restructuring is about having life in fullness. “We become in some way ministers of
hope of the kingdom to come and of fraternal union among all people.” (CC 25) Our
plenitude is the Kingdom already present in our midst and yet constantly evolving
towards the infinite plenitude. Our task is nothing less than allowing it to grow within
us, helping it grow outside of us, wherever the Spirit may lead us.
In all demarcations where a merger has already taken place, we need to look after
our community life, our fraternal life in community; otherwise we run the risk to have
done a wonderful paperwork, printed and sealed, but without any consistent ground.

We need to go beyond the boundaries imposed by the inertia and the routine of the
years past.
Having an ecclesiology of communion as the point of departure, and feeling
intensely the urge to be in communion with the Church, it will consequently be easier
the process of restructuring in which we are now immersed by an explicit mandate of
the 46th General Chapter of our Order.
- EXPANSION OF THE ORDER
Also by mandate of the general chapter, we are in a vibrant process of expansion,
beyond the already known boundaries. This requires a missionary spirit from the Order,
which will crystallize in an enthusiastic missionary spirit of some to whom the Spirit has
granted this beautiful vocation.
But we should not be naïve, for every progress toward the Kingdom, every
implantation and expansion requires not only generosity, but deep community spirit in
those who are sent as pioneers by the lawful superiors.
The missionary experience requires the essential ingredient of lively communities.
Otherwise frustrations, tiredness, individualism, loneliness, and consequently desertion
and abandonment of beautiful things, such as a new foundation, will take place. Our
Holy Founder spoke with deep enthusiasm of these missions, for he wished that all of
the novices had the spirit of the founders. He himself would have loved to go outside
Rome to found communities in new and unknown places.
The original community experience of any new demarcation, for better or for worse,
bears the DNA of the future development of that demarcation. “The Piarist family,
consisting of all the members in all times and places, is manifested in more concrete
and visible way in the Local Community, formed by professed members assigned there.
All Local Communities are part of larger communities, namely the Province and the
whole Order.”(CC 36)
Interculturality and internationality in our communities are fruits of this expansion. A
few years ago there was total ignorance of the different demarcations in the Order.
Today, thank God, we have broken the vicious cycle and more and more we have
members in our communities not only from different demarcations and nations, but
from different continents too.
Beyond naiveté we must work hard, for the ghosts of our cultural diversities emerge
from time to time; thus we should pay attention more to what unites us than to what

separates us. “The culture of Order”, of a religious life which transcends all boundaries
in order to bring us to the experience of being citizens of the world and universal
brothers, must penetrate our being, in such a way that we may become a
countercultural element that speaks by itself of the Kingdom we announce as already
present in our midst.
- FINANCES
The way we deal with finances differs from the way humanitarian NGOs or business
organizations deal with them. Out leitmotif is faith. Thus even though those
organizations may really do a good deal at the service of humanity, we are bound by a
vow of poverty which, lived in the local community, in the provincial demarcation, and
in the Order, stirs us to the imitation of Christ poor and humble among the poor, and to
“share everything”(CC26)
Therefore, for us Piarists to share with others is an essential element that breaks
through our possessive and calculating ego, in order to be generously detached and
responsible. Thus we share our joys and hopes, our grief and anguish with all. (CC 38)
Transparency and responsibility in the use of money are essential factors for us who
profess the vow of poverty as a distinct element of our consecration. Pope Francis has
already given us beautiful examples, especially when he went to his lodging hotel to
pay his bill after becoming Pope for “we should not spend carelessly the Church’s
money”. We could transfer this conviction applied to “the Order’s money.”
Besides, in this historical moment of expansion, it is a beautiful gesture to contribute
to the common fund of the Order to share with those demarcations that, with scarcity
of means, are Little by Little growing and being founded.
- CALASANZ, OUR FOUNDER
This aspect, Calasanz, is the most important one for it creates our essential identity
as Piarists, It is not only about knowing in depth historical or biographical data, but it is
about the vision Calasanz casts upon us after 400 years since his initial intuition, so
that, creatively, we may be evermore faithful to his “daring and ever-enduring patience
”to the work of the Holy Spirit in him.” (CC 1)

Without falling into idolatry towards our Holy Founder, I believe that the Piarists
must come out from our anonymity and fear in order to make St. Joseph Calasanz
better known and loved.
Above all we must unify our whole being as persons and communities in the altar of
our specific ministry handed over to us, under the motto of “evangelizing by educating.”
After having elaborated upon the ten identifying keys given to each community by
Fr. General, in the context of fraternal life in community, it is now time to mention
certain other important elements that can be explored under the light of our
Constitutions.
COMMUNITY LIFE AND THE EUCHARIST
We know that the Eucharistic celebration has two parts in which the Risen Lord is
present in the Christian Community. The first one is the Liturgy of the Word, and the
other the Sacramental presence of Jesus in his body and blood. Both have the same
intensity regarding Christ’s presence among His people; He is the Word who was made
flesh (first part), and the flesh for our spiritual growth while we walk toward the
plenitude of the Kingdom (second part).
Number 27 of our Constitutions states that, “called to communal life by the Word of
God, we shall become a sign of unity in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass, actualizing
within ourselves the death and resurrection of Christ so that we may grow continually in
the service of our brothers.”
This number, brought to the arena of our daily lives, speaks of our Piarist lifestyle in
community, it is about an existential Eucharist where we help one another to be faithful
and docile to the Word of God who convoked us, and to communicate (communion)
with the brother with whom I am also “body of Christ”, and with whom I live and work.
At the end of the Eucharist the priest dismisses the congregation with the phrase
”Go in Peace!” It is a send off to live what we celebrate. Likewise we are in community
life a real Eucharistic celebration where we celebrate the presence of the Risen Lord by
listening to his Word and by practicing his commandment of fraternal love. Thus we
“constantly grow in the service we render to our brothers.” (CC 27)
Therefore, it is difficult to understand that there are brothers who in fact reject the
frequent con-celebration of the Eucharist in community. In the Eucharistic celebration
we express who we really are and we are also strengthened for the mission God
entrusts us.

COMMUNITY LIFE AND RELIGIOUS CONSECRATION
We have already said that we live our consecration and our specific ministry in the
context of community life. It has been clearly stated that community life is not an
aesthetic element of our religious life; on the contrary it is something essential and
necessary.
That’s why the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, together with the
fourth vow of education and teaching, are lived in community and each of them
contributes to our fraternal life in a distinctive manner. Number 26 of our constitutions
says that “in our form of community life, we more fully love our brothers through
chastity, we share everything with them through poverty, and, more closely united
through obedience, we fulfill God’s will more surely.”
It is beautiful to underline these community aspects derived from the way we live
our vows:
- Chastity: stirs in us the desire to love more fully our brothers, for to be
consecrated in celibacy is about advancing evermore in the total integration of
our hearts in Christ, in whose bosom there are no exclusions, nor calculative
speculations bound to mediocrity and laxity. Our celibate love stirs in us a
passionate love similar to that of the spouses who promise to be in love till death
do them part. The difference is that in our hearts the whole world is contained
for He loved us first. We live faithfully in chastity. (CC16)
- Poverty: moves us to share everything. Poverty is not only about not
possessing, but is about sharing what we have, especially with our brothers in
community. The most precious thing we have is our time and the gifts given by
God to our persons. The gift of poverty goes along with freedom and joy. That’s
why our Constitutions, number 66, say that “we joyfully devote our talents, given
by nature and grace, our time and our work for the common good.” “We live
joyfully in poverty.”(CC 16)
- Obedience: stirs in us the desire to be in communion so that we may better do
God’s will. Obedience implies the capacity to listen to God who wishes to
communicate with us always. Nobody goes to the invisible God without going
through the brothers. In the context of community life, obedience establishes a
horizontal line without which we cannot be faithful to the Word of the Lord. Only
in this horizontal line will we be able to answer to his permanent call. “All
religious, united in reflection and prayer, will endeavor to learn his will,
manifested to us by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the earnest wishes of the
community, or any sign given through the Superiors, our brothers, events and
circumstances.” (CC 77) We are docile in obedience (CC 16)

ROLE OF THE LOCAL SUPERIOR
The main task of the local superior is to be a catalyst of unity. He must listen and
understand, he is the servant of all in the process of helping them grow in fidelity
towards their Piarist vocation. Number 34 of our Constitutions says clearly: “the
responsibility of making and fostering community life… belongs principally to him who,
by his office, has to invigorate the community, and also to those whose duty it is to
establish communities in the Province.”
Here we have the role of the Major Superior too, who holds the great responsibility
to appoint those who preside over the different communities, having taken into account
the profile a superior must be:
1. A man psychologically balanced: serene, realistic, open minded, impartial, positive, a
good communicator, joyful, creative, and faithful.
2. A man of God, with a solid interior life and with rich spiritual experience.
3. A man of communion with the Church, incarnated in the particular ecclesial
dynamics
4. A generator of fraternal dynamism, in a faithful and creative community, able to
promote vocations to religious life among young people and the laity in general
5. One who promotes and favors participation and co-responsibility; a good listener
who knows how to discern in fraternal dialogue the place and the role each religious
has in the community, the demarcation, and the Order.
6. A leader with an evangelical style, who speaks and acts proactively, in dialoguing
and possessing a creative attitude which fosters responsibility among brothers.
7. One who is in love with the Piarist charism and mission, has a thorough knowledge
of our Founder and of the Pious Schools, of our basic documents, and above all the
Rules and Constitutions and our internal legislation.
8. Available to the brothers and the laity, whom he serves in evangelical spirit; he loves
those whom he serves and serves those whom he loves, avoiding paternalism and
independence.
9. Someone with a capacity to empower personal and community projects, in
permanent dialogue with the leaders of the different areas of the Piarist work entrusted
to the community or the demarcation.
10. Sensitive and participative in the environmental reality, above all with the poor, the
children and the youth’s reality.

11. Ready to be assessed and accompanied, with democratic attitudes for teamwork; a
man of community, an agent of fraternity, and a community builder; a man of
reconciliation and hope amidst adversities.
12. A man who represents the Piarist demarcation or the Piarist work in a worthy and
positive manner before the ecclesial, religious and civil institutions.
13. Enthusiastic about the Piarist life, the Gospel and the Calasanzian charism; he
promotes, fosters, and accompanies new vocations in our Piarist family, in union with
the brothers in the context of fraternal life.
14. A person that knows the Order’s mentality and lives and acts accordingly and who
is open to the new waves of global vision fostered by the Order. In addition, he must
be able to transmit this to the demarcation where he lives.
15. Accepting of his limitations with realism and simplicity. And thus, he accepts the
service entrusted to him by his brothers and superiors, and is aware of the words “My
grace suffices”
16. Aware of his profile as superior, as well as being well versed in the Rules and
Constitutions, and in the Pauline letters of the New Testament.
17. In communion with superiors of other demarcations and circumscriptions of the
Order.
18. Looking out after his personal and his brothers’ ongoing formation, using all the
possible mediations offered by the Order and other ecclesial and inter-congregational
institutions in the different countries
FRATERNAL LIFE IN COMMUNITY: FINAL REMARKS
Fraternal life in community is not optional; it is much more than a simple
canonical belonging to a community. Fraternal life in community underlines the value of
interpersonal relationships based on faith that acts through love.
Christ called those who believed in him to live in unity by the bond of love; this is
well reflected in the experience of the 12 Apostles with Jesus, the apostolic community.
The most relevant event occurred on Pentecost day. The Spirit brings diversity into
unity. (Act 4, 32-35)
Our fraternal love in community is an attempt to live as the first Christian
communities did: the believers shared everything, were compassionate and committed
with the poor and the needy. (Act 4, 32-35)

Community life is much more than belonging to a group; it is about establishing
warm relationships, friendly connections, and without excluding anybody from our
decision to love. Each community member is God’s gift, as I am thus for them. (Eph 4,
7-16)
Community life demands that we recognize our personal values and talents at
the service of the common good. It also requires humility, an awareness that humility is
to walk in the truth.
Do not demand from others what you are not ready to give; be not bitter with
your community brothers for they are your family. Remember that this is the place
where God wants you to grow in holiness, come what it may.
Amidst community difficulties, think always this way: “What can I do to improve
the situation? How could I better help this or that other brother who appears as
impertinent, silent, arrogant, individualistic, narcissistic, etc?
Permit others to correct you. Fraternal correction, even when it might not be
totally objective, may become a golden opportunity to grow in love. (Mt 18, 15-18)
Do not recoil yourself in self-pity. You are not the only one in the world passing
through traumas or difficulties. Learn to laugh at yourself and at whatever happens in
your life; simplify everything that comes on your way and, most important, learn to
trust ever more in God’s goodness for you.
Community life is both grace and personal responsibility.
Don’t give up on you, don’t give up on anybody. When you understand how
much God loves and trusts you, you will learn to love and trust others. This is the secret
of life, the treasure hidden in your heart. You are love, and your real name is “love”. (1
Co 3, 16-17)
You will discover the deep joy of which Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John, “you
will have such a joy that nobody will be able to take it away.” (Jn 16, 22)
Community life brings us to human maturity. If it doesn’t, it means that that we
are not well focused on the whole meaning of religious life.
If a process of sanctity does not help you be fully human and fully alive, then it
is a fake one. Remember that most of our fraternal conflicts and cutoffs are caused by
a lack of human maturity. (Jn 10, 10)
Remember too that fraternal life in community is an essential prerequisite to
make our lives and apostolate credible. (Jn 17, 23)

The testimony of community life is our main apostolate, for we are always
exposed to the sight of people; they expect from us much more than we think. Besides,
Jesus’ will is, “Father, let them be one, as we are one, you in me and I in you, that the
world may believe that you have sent me”.
Think of others as gift, not as threat. If you act this way you will experience how
lovely and pleasant it is to live together, learning from each other, being enriched by
everybody’s giftedness. (Eph 4, 1-6)
IN CONCLUSION
It is in our communities where we build the being and doing of the Piarist Order.
Without a fulfilling experience of fraternal life we are bound to activism, fragmentation,
and frustration.
The experiences of Piarist missionaries suggests that the original brand of
community life in a new foundations bears the DNA of what that demarcation will be
like in the near future.
Thus, we must believe that community life is essential factor of growth, leisure,
reconciliation, work healing, a place to find peace and solace, fraternal confrontation,
missionary animation, joyful service to the poor, ongoing formation, vocational
attraction, experience of God, progressive integration of our lives in Christ, identification
with the Calasanzian charism, permanent conversion, festival around the person of the
Risen Lord who sends us to be is qualified witnesses.
It is appropriate to conclude with a text from our Holy Founder, St. Joseph
Calasanz: “The religious institutes have been founded so that brothers may live in
charity; may they seek, with holy emulation, the acquisition of virtues, particularly the
virtue of humility, which is so agreeable to God.”(DC No. 860 / 8-24-1630)

I WANT TO LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST; THEREFORE:
1. I will never store resentment towards anything or anybody. Thus, I shall work on myself in
order to discover that in me and in others there is a great deal of goodness.
2. I am convinced that Love is the energy that directs the world. Love is both creative and
strong.
3. I will simplify my mind, and I will clean every day the hard disk of my memory; thus, I will
become as simple and spontaneous as a child.
4. Patience and the desire to understand others are the tools towards unity, and I will use them,
even though I may be misunderstood.
5. I shall always be the first to love. I will be ready to descend to the hell of my contradictions,
loneliness and pains in order to redeem them under the light of God’s compassionate eyes
6. I do not want to dramatize my life, for if I look around, I will always find people with worse
experiences than mine
7. Every morning I shall welcome the day in thanksgiving to God for the gift of life
8. I shall rejoice in the simplicity of human experiences: a smile, a love letter received or sent,
the sunrise, the birds’ songs… everything!
9. I shall never flee from fears, frustrations and pains. They are my loving companions towards
growth. They remind me that after the storm a brilliant sun awaits me
10. I will be at peace with my limitations. They are the solid ground to experience the joy of
being human while searching for the divine. This is the real ground to become a man of peace,
a peacemaker

11. I shall always believe in the original beauty and goodness with which God created me. His
plan is that I make them grow with his grace.
12. I am the only responsible person of my life. I shall therefore own responsibility for everything
that happens to me.
13. I will stop blaming others for my disappointments. Many disappointments are born out of my
unfulfilled expectations.
14. I will be reconciled with every aspect of my broken history, as I know that everything is part
of God’s loving plan for me in my search for love and truth.
15. I will become a catalyst of UNITY. Thus, I shall rejoice in the diversity of people. Their
differences complement me as I complement theirs.
16. I know we make things happen. My dreams will come true if I trust in God’s plan for me.
Very Rev. Fernando Negro Marco, Sch.P.
Provincial Superior
Easter 2013