(a) Gentleness
One peculiar quality that was noted by all who passed in the life of Fr. Allamano was the fact that he was among other things a very gentle man. Generally, when we speak of gentleness, the words that come in our minds include tenderness, kindness, compassion, etc. Gentleness is therefore the tender and compassionate approach toward others, and especially towards their weaknesses and limitations. Gentleness is a strong hand with a soft touch. This is why those who are easygoing are called gentlemen. Speaking to the seminarians, he always wanted them to be gentle on things. He presented outward carelessness as a sign of lack of gentleness. As such, he demanded gentleness even in ordinary daily activities. Fr. Allamano was not only quiet but also peaceful and rather temperate. His soft voice is mentioned by many, who wondered when it was that he got annoyed.
Whenever he spoke, his acknowledgement of the sensitivity of the others was in his mind. He seemed to measure his words not to hurt people. This does not mean that he was dodgy on truth. He spoke the truth, sometimes even painful truth, but in doing so he also guarded his tone so that the truth could be well received. Fr. Allamano knew that even truth if it is badly put it ends up hurting people more than lies do. The manner of delivering the truth expresses the internal disposition of the person delivering it. That is why gentleness is contrasted with anger and cruelty or brutality. A gentle person is serene, composed and relaxed, but one who is not gentle is agitated, excited or worked up.
Since a gentle person understands the importance of being sensitive to people situations, he is also said to be understanding, lenient and forgiving, or simply humane. This explains why gentleness is closely associated with religiosity. It is in fact an outgrowth of love. It is when we care enough to choose not to be harsh, rash, angry, or rough. Having been made a formator immediately after his ordination, Fr. Allamano found himself with the burden of balancing being friend of the students and also their formator. With a duty of correcting them, he had to state out the regulations that they may not have wished to hear. His gentleness is what won them. They realized that he was out not to harm them, but to help them attain their goal of formation and education. Gentleness is choosing to act in a way that does not hurt others, or make them angry. To those who spoke against his effort to start the Institute so as to discourage him, Fr. Allamano either gave a gentle response or the gentlest response: silence. He knew that a gentle response tends to create fewer enemies and more friends. As such, by not antagonizing them, he pulled many to himself. At the end even those who were against him changed their minds.
It is not natural for human beings to be gentle. From the beginning of life, competition is part of us. Survival for the fittest is a rule of nature, and by the time we are born the principle is already in act. As a result, gentleness goes beyond ‘instinct’, or ‘education’, or ‘society’s influence’. We are simply not gentle creatures. As we grow, the merciless reality of the competitiveness of life forces us to develop hard edges that if not smoothened end up becoming the face of cruelty. This is the reason we are called to learn in the school of Christ. Why? Because in truth, gentleness is a fruit of the spirit of the Lord. Like the other spiritual fruits, gentleness is an aspect of God’s character which God’s followers take on as they
follow Christ (Gal. 5:22-23). The spirit of Christ enables us to be more like him (Eph. 4:14-16). When we are filled with the Spirit’s fruit of gentleness, we will correct others with easiness instead of arguing in resentment and anger, we will forgive readily, because any offense towards us is nothing compared to our offenses against God. Gentleness reduces competition and sectarianism as the goal becomes less about ourselves and more about preaching the gospel. The success which Fr. Allamano’s pastoral efforts demonstrated prove to us that gentleness does not mean being weak. The competition that we see in life today, tend to present gentleness as a weakness. Those who are gentle are seen as people who lack the capacity to defend their course, to fight for their rights and those of others, and to guard what they believe in. Contrary to this view of things, Fr. Allamano gentleness made him to be loved, to be trusted, and to be believed. He seems to have known that sometimes it is not the strength that cracks the hardest shell but gentleness. As a result, he excelled where few would have thought he would.
Lastly, it is not difficult to see that a person’s gentleness is usually a sign of and a fruit of his or her inner disposition. A person who is gentle is also a person who is sufficiently emotionally stable. The fact that Fr. Allamano was a gentle person means that he was very emotionally stable. That was the only way he managed to live serenely with the experiences of many people who tried to hinder or sabotage his missionary project. Essentially, we are saying that the fruit of his gentleness towards everyone regardless of what they had done to him, showed a very refined and balanced interpretation capacity of whatever he encountered. To explain this well, an example is appropriate. In my responsibility as a formator, one day I was teaching psychology to my students. Particularly, we were talking about emotions. I asked the students, “what would you think if one morning you greeted me and I kept quiet?” Three students responded.
One student said, “I would think that I did a mistake and you are annoyed with me.” The second student said, “I would think that you have not heard my greetings”. The third student said, “I would think that you are indifferent – that you don’t care”. Seeing that they had responded differently, I asked them what would be the result of what each had thought. The first acknowledged that he would become fearful and anxious, because my silence would probably mean that later I would call him for punishment. The second one said that he would remain calm and peaceful, because my failure to respond to his greetings would not have been the result of any hostility between us. The third one said that he would become very angry because my silence would have shown my ‘don’t care attitude’ towards others. From that episode, it is not difficult to see that the emotional outcome of the students was a result of how each one of them would have interpreted my silence. In other words, although the action of not responding to the greetings would be common to all, each would have reacted differently, due to the interpretation he would have made of the action. That is how the same action would produce fear, peace and anger to different individuals. This shows us how ideas in our minds become concrete and end up affecting our lives practically. What the students would have thought (about my action) would be their ideas, but what they would feel and demonstrate would not be ideas but lived experiences in the community. Their emotional response would not particularly depend on my action of not answering their greetings, but especially on their own interpretation of the same.
This is what makes Fr. Allamano unique. A person’s gentle response to all people regardless of what they do to him is a sign of his positive interpretation of whatever they do. Yet the positive interpretation depends on how stable emotionally one is. Fr. Allamano should have been one bitter man, after people presented themselves as obstacles of his dream of founding the missionary Institute, to an extent of spreading pessimism about it and about his capacity to run it. His gentle response was a clear sign of his emotional stability. This is something that is key in life. In truth, it is due to lack of it that most conflicts begin. When we interpret wrongly people’s actions and words, we end up reacting wrongly as well. For example, if a woman interprets her husband’s lateness as a sign of extra marital affair, she becomes anxious, fearful for her marriage and angry against him, even if his lateness was due to commitments in the office, a flat tyre, traffic jam, etc. Her anger and anxiety may easily turn physical, the moment she picks up a fight with her husband. That way, what begins as a thought ends up getting fresh as family conflicts. Fr. Allamano, by interpreting the actions and words of his distracters positively, as tests of his determination, he did not need to get annoyed with them. He knew that they were indirectly helping him to succeed by sharpening or motivating his determination to be a founder and to see Africa evangelized by his missionaries.
(b) Firmness
In addition to being gentle, Fr. Allamano was a very firm person. A quick look into the meaning of the word firm gives us words like strong, well-founded, unyielding, determined, etc. Were it not for this quality, Fr. Allamano would not have even become a priest. His brothers advised him otherwise, but he remained strong that God was calling him then, and he did not know if the Lord would continue calling him. Fr. Allamano’s health failed him many times. A clear example was his inability to become a missionary, his being rejected in the military service and his near-death experience in 1900. He also had to leave school many times on account of his health, but then he would resume when things calmed down. In that situation, Fr. Allamano did not allow his health issues stop him from becoming a priest. When he finally became a priest, his style of life reflected a solid man who would not yield to pressure. To the students Fr. Allamano’s inflexibility in bending the regulations was clear. He could not just bend the rules to make them happy. His insistence about universal obedience to the seminarians for example, tells us how much grounded the Founder was on firmness.
In silence and prayer, Fr. Allamano commanded authority to be imitated. The firmness of Fr. Allamano came to the fore more clearly when he decided to start a missionary Institute. If he had not been firm enough, today the congregation would not be alive. The discouragement, gossips and malicious talk that followed his effort should have killed his morale. However, that was not the case. He knew that when toxic people cannot control a person, they try to control how others see him or her. That is why he did not waste time responding back. Even when he was accused of threatening the stability of the diocese by taking young people to Africa to die there, Fr. Allamano stood firm. He did not flinch even an inch. He knew gosspis reveal more of the gossipers than of their victim. As such, he remained resolute to go on with his mission. That quality kept him going even when failure directly stared at his face. The episode of the empty house and the doomsayers raising their choruses of “we told you about Fr. Ortalda” should have broken Fr. Allamano’s spirit, but surprising, it didn’t. That is why firmness is easily linked to perseverance, courage, and patience. Firm people are not shaken by little things. They are also ready to go through anything for a given aim. It is on this quality that all the achievements that Fr. Allamano got are hinged.
It is however important to know that firmness is not authoritarianism. It is not a better name for inflexibility or rigidity. Firmness is the resoluteness to follow up things to their logical conclusion without wavering. This is a very important quality for leaders. Leaders who lack firmness end up becoming under-achievers, since they allow the opinions and suggestions of others to confuse their decision-making capacity. Lack of firmness leads to indecision. One who is not firm is not able to tell which option to take among many. Faced with needy missions in Kenya and Bishop Perlo demanding for ‘hundreds’ of missionaries, Fr. Allamano’s firmness carried the day: no one was to leave Turin having not finished his formation, regardless of what need was there in the missions. Those kinds of decisions are the once which saved the Institute many years of regret – poor prepared missionaries would have been a disaster. Fr. Allamano’s conviction that people had to be thoroughly prepared before going for mission explains why he always used to say, “An ignorant priest is an image of sadness and disappointment, for the anger of God and the desolation of the people”. Today, there is a need to relook the teachings and lifestyle of Fr. Allamano if we have to understand him well and live as he did.
(c) Respect of Authority
As human beings we always have a natural tendency of craving for some kind of independence, and usually independence from authority even when we know that life would be chaotic if there was no authority over us. As such children resist the authority of parents, pupils the authority of teachers, employees the authority of management, citizens the authority of their government, formees the authority of their formators, etc. It’s an inherent human tendency, which is changed by our learning the meaning and purpose of authority. One of the things that made Fr. Allamano tick was his natural inclination to respect authority.
When Archbishop Gastaldi sent him to the seminary instead of sending him to a parish as he would have wished, Fr. Allamano expressed his wish, but obeyed immediately. Of course, he did not know that he was being prepared for similar but greater roles of formation, nevertheless he obeyed straightaway. When the archbishop sent him to the Consolata Shrine, again he expressed his wish (to have Fr. Camisassa as his bursar), but went at once. Fr. Allamano was convinced that respecting and obeying his superiors was obeying not just them, but God who worked through them. That perspective of obedience made it easy for him to obey even when what was being proposed was not of his liking.
Fr. Allamano knew that one could not separate respecting the authority and obeying. Speaking about the duties of the members of the Institute towards the superior, the Founder said, “your duties are three: reverence, love and obedience” (SL. 62). Today, like in Fr. Allamano’s time, when people obey not because they respect the authority and what it represents, they are not truly obeying. In fact, such a situation is more of slavery than obedience. When we respect the authority and what it represents, our obedience is true obedience. It is false obedience when we obey out of fear, when we obey grudgingly and when we obey only to please a person. Fr. Allamano knew and taught that God authorizes both ecclesial and civil authority, because He knows it’s absolutely essential for society’s survival and development. A chaotic world indeed would exist if everyone did as he likes in his own eyes. That’s why God through St. Paul tells us to be subject to the higher powers (Rom. 13:1-7). He has ordained them for our good. For us to resist these powers is to resist the ordinances of God. Respect of authority gives us the right to be listened.
Since Fr. Allamano respected authority, Archbishop Gastaldi listened to him and even opened the Pastoral Institute in 1882, after it had been closed for years due to controversies about moral theology. The respect of authority gave Fr. Allamano a diplomatic way of presenting issues that were a thorn in the flesh of many. Certainly, Fr. Allamano was never a sycophant. His respect of authority did not mean bootlicking as modern English puts it. Fr. Allamano happened to have a natural sincere way of dealing with his superiors, which revealed his honesty. With such kind of a character it was obvious that he would be a darling of many. Respect and obedience of authority gave Fr. Allamano almost a child’s innocence. If that was not so how would you explain his petition to Pope Pius X. The pope must have been taken aback by the courage of Fr. Allamano, but the language which Fr. Allamano and his colleagues used possibly presented them as the most frank priests the pope had ever met.
The example of Fr. Allamano leaves us thinking deeply. Just like children are to respect and obey their parents, parents their rulers, employees their employers, teachers their principals, citizens their government, formees their formators, so also, religious should respect and obey their superiors. And they should do so not because they have no alternative (Rom. 13:5), but because in them they see the author of authority. Of course, leaders, especially religious leaders, have a duty to represent faithfully the author of authority: God. Religious are supposed to remember the words of Jesus: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18).
With these words in our minds, it becomes easy to see that if we will all submit ourselves first to the authority of Jesus, then the matter of our submitting to the authority of others will be taken care of because we will want to please Jesus through them. This makes it evident that the issue of respecting and obeying leaders depends heavily on our attitude. If our attitude is right towards authority, we will realize that authority is approved by God and, as his children, we are to respect it. A bad attitude, toward authority will sabotage one’s whole future and opportunity to please God and our fellow man. This explains why Fr. Allamano insisted to the seminarians and missionaries that they were supposed to respect Bishop Perlo whose leadership style was a bit authoritarian. It was not that he approved everything that Bishop Perlo was doing, but being the man at the helm, he had to be respected as the symbol of unity in the community, but also because he was a human being like those under him and as such he had his own weaknesses just like they had theirs. Fr. Allamano wrote extensively about obedience as both virtue and vow, in that way left behind what he himself lived throughout his life.
This whole business of authority and our responsibility toward it begins in the home. Children who aren’t taught obedience in the home usually have a hard time submitting to authority of any kind - that of teacher, boss, policeman, formator, or even God. Submission to authority is learned more easily while people are young than at any other time. Formators should insist on it from the onset in formation. When this aspect lacks, there is no doubt that the candidate even if he appears holy, will later have problems with his superiors. When formators don’t insist on respect and obedience to authority because they want to appear humble and friendly to the students, or because they claim to believe in equity, they do disservice to the congregation since not even the African culture equates a son to his father.
In formation, especially the early stages, the formators must be like Fr. Allamano who “like a music teacher” could not overlook even a tiny mistake, but corrected it promptly and gently. That is the only way the Institute can ensure that those joining it from a poor parental background do not end up becoming a bother to the superiors later. Failure to do that, many students who have a negative attitude towards authority will sulk every time they are corrected, because they consider all authority oppressive, or because they see correction as humiliation. Each candidate of religious life must learn to imitate the attitude of Fr. Allamano on authority.
Even after Propaganda Fide was pleased by his suggestion to start a regional missionary Institute and in fact invited Fr. Allamano and Fr. Camisassa to Rome to discuss the issue, Fr. Allamano through Fr. Camisassa wrote to Propaganda Fide saying “We cannot proceed against the wishes of our Bishop” since they had not yet informed Archbishop Alimonda. As if to prove his point on respect and obedience to authority, even when Archbishop Alimonda died in 30th May 1891, Fr. Allamano did not take advantage of the vacuum to initiate the process with Rome before another Archbishop was elected. Instead, while sending the overall plan for the Missionary Institute to Cardinal Simeoni, he still insisted that he was not ready to do anything until he was sure that the new Archbishop would approve his idea. In other words, Fr. Allamano would never proceed into anything until and unless his superiors approved it. We too could benefit from Fr. Allamano’s attitude on this issue. Speaking to his young missionaries he once said, “I can affirm that the good spirit in a community blossoms or withers away in proportion to how well the practice of respecting the superiors is maintained”. The founder knew and taught that respecting legitimate authorities could not be separated from obeying them. One could not say that he respected the authority when he did not obey. That was the reason the Founder always taught his seminarians that they had to develop a universal obedience.
A universal obedience meant first obeying all superiors without distinction. It did not matter if the person infront of them was the Regional superior, a superior of a certain house of the Consolata Missionary Institute or their formator – they had to learn to respect all superiors. Again, it did not matter whether the superior in front of them was old or young, highly learned or not, saintly or otherwise – they had no option but to obey. At some point in fact, he told the seminarians, “You should obey me just the same as if I were a saint”. Second, universal obedience also meant obeying the commands or directives of the superiors regardless of how they were given. It did not matter if the superior spoke in a polite language or a harsh one. (Cf. SL. 287). Third, universal obedience meant not making distinction between important commands of the superiors and less important ones. The Founder expected them to respond to all the directives of the superiors regardless of whether they were real orders or “mere” suggestions. One had to obey each and every command of the superior, and each superior as if obeying Christ the Lord. Fr. Allamano himself had no equal in this. He was convinced beyond any doubt that God spoke through the superiors, and therefore if a religious person wanted to do the will of God, he only needed to do what the superiors commanded. This explains why Fr. Allamano always said to the young missionaries and the seminarians “You must see God in the superiors”. As if to emphasize what he had been saying for sometime, one time Fr. Allamano told the young missionaries at the Mother House, “most of the problems that arise in the missions trace their origin to failures in obedience” (This I want you to be, pg 162). Aware of the truth of the Founder’s sentiments, we must imitate his supernatural motive of obedience: respecting and obeying our superiors because we see God in them. When that is done, as the Founder himself said, we will not obey a superior due to his intelligence, age, sanctity, or wisdom. On the contrary, we will obey the young as well as the elderly superiors, the wise as well as the unwise, the intelligent as well as the less intelligent superiors, the holy as well as the humanly weak superiors, etc. Why? Because we will be obeying the God speaking and acting through them (Cf. SL. 285).
(d) Love of quality
To many, quality is just one of the nine Aristotelian accidents of things. However, usually when we talk of quality, at the back of our minds we contrast it with quantity. Quality is the attribute that speaks of the degree of excellence of something. Fr. Allamano grew up as a unique person as far as this aspect is concerned. He never went for what was just available. That attribute of his was evident in everything he did and said. Love of quality meant never accepting anything that was below excellence. Certainly, that characteristic said a lot about the Founder himself. When we are people who accept anything and everything we depict ourselves as worthless too. It means we do not consider ourselves worthy enough for what is valuable. When we fall for anything we undermine ourselves and by doing so mock even our creator. Fr. Allamano never went for just what was given. As a formator, he insisted that he needed first quality missionaries. Of course, the founder did not mean that he needed angels. On the contrary he understood that all people have to be guided to attain perfection, which in truth they never achieve in this life. He was sure that readiness to be accompanied and personal effort to change were key in achieving not only a certain level of perfection, but also holiness. Fr. Allamano insisted that his missionaries had to be saints. He did not understand why with good will and reverence to the saints one would not be a saint. He did not want missionaries who were just good people.
Speaking to his seminarians about responding to the vocation in the Mother House, the Founder once told them “for some people, it is enough to be just good. They don’t care to become saints. They respond with little generosity, study and work a little, obey to a certain point and pray only to the bare minimum” (C.f. SL. 29). To the Founder, such people did not merit to be his missionaries, because they were mediocre. He needed quality seminarians who would in turn become quality missionaries. And for him quality missionaries meant holy missionaries – nothing less. These words of Fr. Allamano show that to him it was not enough for a candidate to avoid doing wrong or avoid getting into trouble. In other words, avoiding doing wrong or getting into trouble did not point to the presence of a vocation to the priesthood. Simply put, lack of negative evidence in a candidate did not point to vocation to priesthood. A seminarian had to manifest positive evidence of an authentic calling and that evidence had to be visible in the life of the person and open to the scrutiny of the formative team. To the Founder, growth to holiness was the pointer or evidence of one’s vocation and that growth had to be manifested in the change of attitude, behaviour and capacity as a result of the formation programme. This explains why he always gave examples of saints in his talks, and at the end he even proposed sixteen saints to be models of the Institute. Why? Because he was convinced that only those who had lived a quality life could inspire and assist his missionaries to do the same. Fr. Allamano did not have doubt that quality seminarians would certainly be reliable enough to produce quality missionaries. It was that conviction that made him not to not accept just anyone into religious life. Reliability is the question of how well a thing or a person maintains his original level of quality over time and through various conditions. Aware of the missionary challenges that awaited them in the missions, Fr. Allamano knew that only quality seminarians could be able to produce missionaries who would withstand the test of the time and remain to be evangelical forces to reckon with in the apostolate. In other words, it was only they who would be reliable enough to transform themselves into reliable missionaries. It was that love of quality that made the founder to say:
This is what I want: few candidates but good ones, ones in order: they should have spirit; they should be both willing and capable to work for others It is not quantity but quality that counts - quality and spirit Numbers can be important if they are accompanied by quality.
Fr. Allamano’s love for quality had a practical implication. He himself noted “it is not easy to train many (candidates) well as it is to train a few…. Better fewer candidates but first-rate candidates” (this I want you to be, pg 81). Even for the people who wanted to join the Congregation while already priest, Fr. Allamano did not loosen his standard to favour them or make their entrance into the Institute. One time a bishop told him that he had a priest who wanted to join the Institute. Fr. Allamano for the love of quality told the bishop “if that priest is as white as the flour that makes the Eucharistic hosts, let him come. Otherwise, keep him”. This shows that although Fr. Allamano needed missionaries in his congregation, he did not need just anyone, and neither was he desperate to have the institute full of people. Our Founder’s sentiments should be a means through which we can evaluate the Institute and ourselves. Do we love quality as much as he did? Probably if we understood the Founder’s concerns very well, today we would re-look our animation and formation process deeper. May be, we would even find a way of reducing the many problems in the Institute, many of which can be traced back to the animation-formation strategies and processes.
Fr. Allamano’s love for quality was not just about formees and the young priests. It was also about the missions. Several times the Founder told Bishop Perlo that it was better few but well looked after missions than many missions done haphazardly. With the speed with which Bishop Perlo was opening missions, Fr. Allamano saw the risk of having huge territories which the Institute would not be able to run effectively. Our Founder knew of the desire of many superiors to have their congregations all over, as a way of making a name for themselves. He was however never attracted by such presences which only existed nominally. To him a Consolata presence anywhere was supposed to be one which had tangible impact in the lives of the people and their environment. Even today, Fr. Allamano would frown at the idea of parishes with only one priest. Why? Because it is not difficult to see that the Christians in such parishes only get the bare minimum from the allegedly celebrated Consolata presence. There is no way such a priest can be in the office, visiting the sick, celebrating the sacraments in the parish and its outstations, visiting and following up pastoral program in the academic institutions around the parish, coordinating and following up catechetical formation of the catechists in the parish, as well as doing administrative duties calmly. In other words, the issue of personnel (availability, scarcity and distribution) does not escape Fr. Allamano’s trait of love of quality. Probably, if the Founder was to meet us today, he would remind us that few overloaded missionaries do not give the best of themselves, and neither do they give the best testimony. Having too much to do means divided attention, fatigue and being moody all the time. Those are not the traits of people who are likely to offer quality evangelization anywhere. Therefore, If Fr. Allamano was to speak to us today, his words would probably be as follows:
“My dear sons, to me it is absolutely unacceptable that some of our missionaries suffer loneliness and extreme fatigue because of living alone. What adds salt to injury is that such loneliness and extreme fatigue are as a result of Regions deciding to multiply our presences in a country. First, it is not fair at all to the particular missionaries who have to work unnecessarily extra hard. Second, the 12th General Chapter demanded that at least all Consolata communities should have at least two members, and mostly important, it is unfair to the Christians who lack necessary services just because a priest is alone in the parish. It is better that several priests live in a parish with one or few outstations, since their service will be thorough, well focused and personalized to the needs of the people. Such priests will have more impact in the lives of the people than a priest whose only service is the celebration of the Mass in numerous outstations, leaving people yearning for more moments of encounter with Christ – which are not available. In short, my sons, put quality as a priority over quantity – as I have always taught you”
(e) Missionary Zeal
Zeal is the energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective. Other words that express the same notion include: passion, commitment, dedication, enthusiasm, fire, love, tireless devotion, etc. Naturally, zeal is that force that moves people beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures. It is a positive obsession of doing something. We attribute missionary zeal to Fr. Allamano because from a very young age, he wished to be a missionary. Even when he was a seminarian, he wished to be a missionary like Massaia who worked in Ethiopia. In truth, were it not for his health, Fr. Allamano would have ended up as a missionary. All of us have an inclination to something. When we are able to align our inclinations and vocations or missions, miracles happen. The fact that although Fr. Allamano did not become a missionary but managed to create a community of missionaries point to his inclination. Missionary force was within him. However, sometimes in religious life we may not end up in what is aligned to our natural inclination and for that reason, we have to initiate and develop a passion for it since passion is some kind of strength that pushes us ahead. Given that as missionaries we participate in the mission of Christ, it is demanded that the task through which we live and participate in Christ’s mission be done in exemplary way. This is where missionary zeal comes in. Missionary zeal is therefore:
- That passion with which we participate in the missionary command of Christ.
- The fire that lights the desire of making Christ known, loved and served.
- The passion of seeing people living their Christian life.
- The passion for evangelization. The passion of seeing people know their faith.
- The passion of seeing people’s standards of living changing for the better as a means of making them acknowledge the love and generosity of God that works through others.
- The passion of being a finger of God among the people one finds himself.
- The strong desire of seeing charisms which are gifts of the Holy Spirit propagated for the benefit of the people of God.
Although this may touch a number of things, it particularly involves:
(i) Being fired by the Holy Spirit
To be able to work zealously, one has to be fired, or better inspired by the Spirit of God. As Christians we easily say that St. Paul had zeal in his work due to the accomplishments that he achieved regardless of the challenges and obstacles that he went through. That portrays a power beyond him. His words “woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16) showed one who was under obligation. Having been chosen and sent, the missionary has to avail himself to the Holy Spirit who lives in him. We have a duty to preach Christ and to imitate him. Since humanly speaking there is a level to which we can perform whatever action we choose, when one is able to achieve beyond that level, we see not only the dedication of the person but also the power of a hidden hand behind him. Spiritually speaking, missionary zeal is therefore the work of the Spirit of God in us, since it is the Holy Spirit who gives us the gifts that we are supposed to present in the community of believers. The Holy Spirit gives not only the gifts but also different tasks and how they are to be used in the Church for the common good of everyone. This is what St. Paul tells us: to some, his gift was that they should be apostles; to some prophets; to some evangelists; to some pastors and teachers; so that the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ… (Eph. 4:11-16).
(ii) Personal devotion
Given that passion may also be due to dreams of achievement and recognition, true zeal in anything is seen in the capacity of doing it well. Missionary zeal in addition to being a fruit of cooperation with the Holy Spirit, is also the personal effort that people put in the effort of making sure that the gospel message takes effect in the way of life of people (culture). That task demands knowing well the way of life of people, knowing the gospel of Christ, and how our understanding and acceptance of the people’s way of life can impact on the two. The fact that Fr. Allamano was fired by a missionary zeal is seen not only in the fact he was fired by the Holy Spirit, but also by the readiness that he demonstrated in availing himself to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. In other words, he was not passive. He read much about missionary life, tried to be a missionary, and overcame the obstacles of founding the Institute, and patiently formed communities of missionaries from his office at the Consolata Shrine – just to say that he put himself into it.
(iii) Insertion in the community
Given that being a missionary means “being sent”, and usually to people of other cultures, it is important to try to understand the mentality, outlook of life and the worldview of the people for whom and with whom one is to work. Since Fr. Allamano could not go to the missions himself, he did so through others. Through letters and diaries, he got the wind of what was happening in the missions as if he was there. To those who were in the missions in person, Fr. Allamano taught that they had to try to insert themselves harmoniously among the natives. The Founder knew that one could not talk of having missionary zeal if he was not able to coexist with those he was expecting to serve. It would have been even worse, for a missionary to be unable to fit in his own community. The capacity to live and work with others from the same community was the basis of true evangelization, that is why Fr. Allamano said, “each one has to learn to tolerate the weakness of the others, as he works on his own”. Fr. Allamano did not need to be reminded that working in Africa was different from working in Europe or America or even Asia. Even today, we say Africans and Asians are animated while Europeans and the Americans are calm and reserved. Certainly, this is a very broad way of looking at the continents and without a doubt it involves a vast generalization. However, it shows that no person is a photocopy of the other. A missionary therefore must try to understand the people he is intending to serve, if he has to add any value to their way of life by changing that which needs to be changed using the word of God. The minister has to help the people to assimilate the word of God in their culture, but to do that he has to be more or less one of them because only then can they trust him and entrust themselves to him. That process of the missionary transforming himself to fit in a given cultural context is called adaptation.
In truth, adaptation is a fundamental requirement in missionary life. A missionary who is not able to adapt and to fit in a given society cannot talk of missionary zeal. True missionary zeal is contextualized by the capacity to adapt. This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians saying
Though I was not a slave to any human being, I put myself in slavery to all people, to win as many as I could To the Jews I made myself a Jew, to win the Jews; to those under the law as one under the law (though I am not), in order to win those under the law; to those outside the law as one outside the law, though I am not outside the law To the weak I made myself weak, to win the weak I accommodate myself to people in all kinds of situation, so that by all possible means I might bring some to salvation All this I do for the sake of the gospel, that I may share its benefits with others “(1 Cor. 9:19-23).
St. Paul was able to adapt to all situations so that those who were in those situations could benefit from the gospel treasure that he was carrying. Probably that was the reason Fr. Allamano chose St. Paul among the models of the Institute. Today we also say that it was the reason Fr. Allamano ensured that the young missionaries who were being prepared in the Mother House were taught as many practical skills as possible. They were supposed to be able to settle fairly well in a land they had never been, and a land which would turn to be their home together with the natives of those lands. Fr. Allamano’s aim was therefore not aiming at offering just technical skills. His aim was to prepare the missionaries into an experience of personal conversion, in which they would forget themselves, their country, and plunge themselves totally in the new surroundings. That did not need the missionaries to deny or reject the values of their own cultures. Instead, it demanded them to universalize their good values integrated with Christian faith because that way they would offer a balanced gospel to the natives.
In other words, the whole effort of Fr. Allamano was to ensure that the lads were prepared well to be able to adapt in the environment they would find themselves. Even today, “adaptation is not separated from vocation discernment” (Vocations and their Formation today, pg 89). From the moment a young man enters the house of Formation, he has to start opening himself up to live with new colleagues, to be far from his family, to follow a strict program of life, and to be ready to be guided, corrected and shaped into a future minister in the Church. That is adaptation already. Of course, adaptation does not end with the ending of the basic formation. It is a lifelong process that gives us the capacity to serve the people of God happily and devotedly wherever we find ourselves.