Fr. Joseph Allamano lived and died as a diocesan priest of Turin. He was always proud to be so. Even as he founded the missionary Institute, he felt obliged to remain true to his identity as a diocesan priest. Interestingly, today we can affirm that since a tree is known by its fruits (Lk. 6:43-45), the characteristics of the Consolata Missionary Institute depict the deep-seated qualities that Fr. Allamano held in silence. Instead of speaking of the characteristics of the Consolata Missionary Institute, I believe it is more appropriate to speak of the six traits of Fr. Allamano, which gave birth to the shape the Institute ended up taking, and which today we call the characteristics of the Institute. The reason for this perspective is that the characteristics of the Consolata Missionary Institute are fruits of Fr. Allamano’s life, and a reflection of himself since they are his concretized character projected externally as an institution that today we call IMC.
(a) Fr. Allamano’s love of Mary
The Founder’s love of Mary was unmatched. True, the devotion to Our Lady is deeply embedded in the Church for centuries, but different people have taken it to different levels. To Fr. Allamano, Mary was not just the universal mother of the Church. On the contrary, she was our mother, refuge and model. In fact, Fr. Allamano did not consider himself the de facto founder of the Institute. He always said that he was just an instrument of Our Lady of Consolata in disseminating her consolation to the world. That is why he would never say much without mentioning her name. Speaking to his seminarians at the Mother House, the Founder once noted that if he failed to speak to them about Mary and the devotion due to her, he would be failing in his duty’ (C.f. SL. 566). In other words, to him it was an obligation to speak about Mary and to sing her praise. The fact that Fr. Allamano named the Institute after her most evident trait (consolation), says how much he considered her to be everything in his ministry. Again, speaking to his seminarians, one time the Founder said, “devotion to the Virgin Mary is necessary for us if we want to be saved” (SL. 567). Today, Fr. Allamano would not only tell us the same, but also add that the devotion to Our Lady is not just advisable but in fact essential for salvation. Speaking to his missionaries before they left for Africa, Fr. Allamano reminded them, “all the souls you will save will be saved through her” (SL. 567). This tells us that Fr. Allamano knew Our Lady of Consolation was not only crucial for personal spiritual growth but also for one’s success in the apostolate.
Without a doubt, Fr. Allamano must have been touched by Mary’s self-offering character that saw her allow God to ‘disrupt’ her plans by bringing in a pregnancy she had not premeditated upon. Probably the Founder was touched by Mary’s openness to the will of God that led her to accept willingly the consequences of what would have resulted from her ‘yes’ to the angel. Certainly Fr. Allamano must been touched by Mary’s sense of service that saw her walk kilometers under the scorching sun to the mountainous area where Elizabeth and Zachariah lived to assist her during her pregnancy – making her the first missionary – that is, the first carrier of Christ to others. Without a doubt the Founder was touched by Mary’s humility that saw her keep all things in her heart. Whatever touched him we may never know, but we know that the Founder saw everything he did and achieved as the work of Our Lady. That is why he kept saying:
There is no doubt that everything that has been done is the work of Our Lady of Consolation She has performed miracles every day for this society She has made stones shout She has made money flow to us in abundance. In sorrowful moments she has always intervened in extraordinary ways I have seen a lot, a lot…and if you are attentive you will see and understand that the good spirit found in the House and the desire you have to be holy – everything, everything is a grace of Our Lady of Consolation (SL 573)
This conviction of Fr. Allamano was also his expectation of all who would become his sons and daughters. In other words, to Fr. Allamano, his missionaries must also be able to say “we are the servants of the Lord, let his will be done to us”. This is to say, Fr. Allamano’s dream is to see his missionaries being open to the will of God, and being ready to do it regardless of the challenges they may face.
(b) Love of the Eucharist
Naturally, we love that which we understand. To love the Eucharist one has to understand ‘him’ well. Simply put, the Eucharist is Christ, God and man, in a sacramental form. As an activity, the Eucharist is the same sacrifice that Christ offered on the cross, offered on the altar in a sacramental manner. Fr. Allamano’s deep love for the Eucharist was evident in his life and teaching. He, having been brought up in the most Christian way possible, incarnated the love of the Eucharist at a tender age. That is seen through his emphasis on receiving the Holy Communion and going for confession regularly to remain pure and especially before receiving the Holy Communion. The Founder saw in the Eucharist Christ the son of God who due to his immense love for humanity offered himself as a tool of reconciliation between the father and the fallen human race. Fr. Allamano spent many hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament, because he saw Jesus the son of God, who had chosen to be a “victim, food, and friend” to us. The three have love as their denominator. It was out of his everlasting love that Christ accepted to be the lamb which bore the sin and wickedness of humanity. Aware that it was not easy to understand the depth of such a love, Fr. Allamano encourages us to “meditate more intensely on that mystery love” (This I want you to be, Pg 201). Fr. Allamano sentiments remind us that when we talk about the Eucharist, we do not just speak of a thing but a person. That is why he presents Christ as a victim (the one who saves the life of another by losing his life), food (he who enters us to ensure our continual healthy being) and a friend (a defense in time of adversity and a treasure) [Sirach 6:14].
Fr. Allamano’s observation on how to participate and celebrate the Eucharist depicted his loving devotion to the Eucharist. To his seminarians the Founder encouraged proper and active participation in the Mass. He always said that receiving the Holy Communion, visiting the Blessed Sacrament and adoration were ways of keeping faith alive. Fr. Allamano did not beat about the bush about how and who benefitted from participation in the Mass. To him, it is not enough to be in the chapel. One has to prepare his heart even before arriving in the chapel, since the participation in the Eucharistic celebration is just part of a long process of encountering the Lord. He who just walked into the chapel risked getting out of it as he entered – not touched. Even today, Fr. Allamano would tell us, “to benefit fully from the Mass you should prepare yourself by doing an examination of the conscience and going for confession if there is an issue to be addressed. At Mass, full and active participation means being aware of what is happening and doing consciously what we are supposed to do at different moments of the Mass, each according to his or her state in the Church. Fr. Allamano held that when we participate in the Mass fully, we come to realize that the Mass is the most beautiful moment of our life. Today, seeing the importance that Fr. Allamano gave to the Eucharist, we understand why love of the Eucharist must be a characteristic of the Institute: precisely because it was a trait of the Founder. As his sons and daughters, the Founder reminds us that the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is better than the physical presence that the Jews enjoyed. Unlike them, we do not have to go through the trouble of climbing a tree that Zacchaeus underwent to see Jesus. Why? Because we have him every day and night in the Tabernacle, as a “father, master and a friend” (SL. 547).
(c) Love of the Church: “Eccleasiality”
Fr. Allamano had a very wide picture of his existence in the world. He did not regard himself to be just an individual living next to, or among other individuals. On the contrary, he saw himself as a knot in a wide network of relationships formed in heaven but lived on earth. As such, when he said that the Institute must be papalino, he was not joking, and neither was he trying to impress the Vatican. He could not see the Institute in a different picture than that in which he saw himself. To Fr. Allamano, the world is made of complex web of intertwined relations, all of which find their centre in the creator. This explains why the Founder would never give even the simplest talk without citing the Church Fathers or the saints. To him all the people of God were one – the living, the dead and those in heaven - only that different people appeared on the planet at different times. What was important was that even those who had gone before left a trail for their brothers and sisters as they moved in the next world.
Fr. Allamano’s understanding of the Church as a communion of Christ’s disciples influenced his missionary appetite. While the Italian Church fought for self-preservation, Fr. Allamano’s heart was bleeding for the many non-Christians who were living in other continents. For him it was just not right for the European Church to be in a celebration mood due to the abundance of ministers, when the other continents were sinking into the sea of ignorance of Christ. It was not acceptable that a part of the human family was dying in darkness when someone was holding the light. Fr. Allamano could not imagine people dying without baptism, people living without the Eucharist, or people living without the sacrament of reconciliation when in many parishes in Turin, priests strolled around “smoking their pipes”.
From the look of things, Fr. Allamano’s push for unity as testimony throughout his life retained something of that demanding and heroic character that is evident in the New Testament concept of discipleship. A disciple according to Fr. Allamano had to be like the master. As Christ the Master had manifested that his presence was to do the will of his Father, the disciple had by all means to be ready to do the will of Christ. In other words, one could not claim to be a disciple without the capacity and willingness to obey the master. Given that Christ had left his authority and power in the hands of Church leaders, Fr. Allamano could not see how one could claim to be a disciple of Christ and yet disobey the people that Christ had delegated to continue his mission. This is to tell us that a true disciple of Christ must have respect for the Church leaders. The Founder himself as we saw in the section of respect to authority, had no equal in this aspect. He was convinced that God acts and speaks through the leaders that he puts in the Church. As an arm of the Church, the Consolata Missionary Institute, had by all means to acquire that trait of the Founder.
Today seeing how Fr. Allamano looked at himself in the Church, we can’t but see ourselves in the same light. We must always remember that we are part of the Church and one of its arms of evangelization. As such, we can’t afford to enter into antagonism with the leaders of the Church where we work. With times changing and people taking sides on the pronouncements of the Church leaders, we, the sons and daughters of Fr. Allamano must side with the people whom God anointed, and through whom he points the less traveled way (the narrow way), yet the only path that leads to his will. We must be ecclesial. That is the only way we can become authentic tools of God in the community of believers. We must be knots in that vast network or web of divine existence since faith must pass through a network of interpersonal relations for it to be a transforming force for the people of God.
(d) Love of work (Laboriosity)
Looking at the life of Fr. Allamano, we don’t need to struggle to see why the love of work ended up becoming a characteristic of the Institute: Fr. Allamano was an industrious man. He understood that man cannot live without work since he himself is a product of God’s tireless work. This explains why he saw work as a “duty and an honour” (SL. 156). Fr. Allamano was a silent industrious man. At some point in his life, he had so many responsibilities in the diocese that one wondered how he managed to balance himself to do all of them. Within a short duration after his ordination, the Founder became a formator, a spiritual director, the Rector of the Consolata Shrine, the Rector of St. Ignatius shrine and the Pastoral Centre all the three together, and yet also a lecturer of Moral theology. As time went by he also became a canon in the Turin Cathedral. At the apex of them all he became the founder of the Consolata Missionary Institute, a responsibility that involved being a formator for life. It was not true that Fr. Allamano just accumulated duties for the sake of pleasing his bishop. On the contrary, the fact that consecutive bishops gave him those responsibilities means that they saw him not only capable, but also willing and available to be of service to the diocese.
Aware that “work is a virtue and hence a means of sanctification (SL. 156), he gave himself fully to each and every duty he was given. Although many people even today see work as a punishment, Fr. Allamano saw work as privilege since it had been sanctified by the Holy Family and since God had created man to work in the first place (Gen. 2:15). To him work was reparation of the sins. Speaking to his seminarians, Fr. Allamano said often that “even the Virgin Mary did not spend her life kneeling in prayer – she worked a great deal to take care of the Holy Family”. Speaking to young priests who were expressing their desire to join the Institute, Fr. Allamano put things straight: if work is a duty for all people, then missionaries in particular must work – even manual work. The founder did not want people who saw religious life as an escape from the struggles of life, or as a route to adventure. He maintained that work is a school: in the process of working we learn a lot, even if it is only cooperation with others. The Founder never forgot to remind his seminarians that work was a means of implementing their talents, so that they do not become dormant.
Presenting work as an essential quality and condition of becoming a missionary, Fr. Allamano one time noted that “whoever was not ready to do menial jobs was not meant to be a missionary. Work, like readiness to obey and capacity to study, was one of the aspects without which according to the firm resolve of Fr. Allamano, one could not become a Consolata Missionary. In fact, the Founder noted that how one did such jobs was a sign of whether or not he was called to a particular life or not. Today, Fr. Allamano would not even change the statement “performing menial jobs carelessly is a sign that one is not called to be a missionary.” True missionaries according to Fr. Allamano do not waste time. They work with a sincere desire to learn, and in the process of working they keep order. They work with energy, diligence and help one another in duties. When some seminarians tried to be choosy in duties, Fr. Allamano rebuked the attitude saying “some people say I am not meant for this. Non sense! You are meant for everything” (SL. 159).
Today, we can tell that Fr. Allamano proposed St. Paul as one of the models of the Institute due to the fact that he was a courageous and hardworking man who did not want to be a burden to the Christians, but worked with his own hands to earn a honest living (1 Cor. 4:12). This explains why Fr. Allamano remained adamant to the young priests that a missionary who does not want to work, is not only not a true missionary, but also has something lacking in his vocation (SL. 158). In other words, Fr. Allamano saw work as connected to one’s purpose on earth and his destiny. That explains why even when he spoke about holidays, he considered vacations as change of duty. Speaking to his seminarians the Founder once said, “Our rest is to change occupation... We will have our holidays in heaven: first class holidays!” In a world in which the purpose of work has been manipulated to acquiring exaggerated material benefit, it is important to re-look again that quality of Fr. Allamano which became also a characteristic of the Institute.
Today, people work for financial freedom, since the more financially stable one becomes, the more comfortable he becomes in his or her life. As a result, work is seen as tool of classification of people in the society. Through it we talk of the poor and the rich, or the “haves and the have nots”. The fruit of that way of seeing things is cutthroat competition which forces many to use any means to get work, or to turn any activity into money-making project. In addition, the over-valuation of work has undone human dignity. Today, people are valued for what they do, what they are capable of doing, and who they are in terms of financial muscle. The result is neglecting of people who are unemployed, those who cannot work due to old age, sicknesses, disabilities, retirement, etc. As sons and daughters of Fr. Allamano, in our evangelization effort, it is our duty to sensitize people of the true value of work. i.e. we have to try to rid the misleading notions that have seen the human dignity turned into commodities of sale through exploitative labour in the world. We too must reach a point in which we do not distinguish ‘pastoral work’ from ‘ordinary work’. In other words, for us missionaries, every work must be pastoral, meaning an effort to reflect our supreme pastor, Jesus Christ, and to express him in every activity we undertake. This is the only way people can see difference between us and them, even when we do the same duties as theirs. Certainly, our aim should not be that “people see”, but that in our effort to do what should be done because it is the right thing, others may acquire an example to follow. May the silent industrious man enable us replicate him in the society today.
(e) Family spirit
Fr. Allamano was very concerned about the kind of Institute he was beginning. Having witnessed religious Institutes whose members lived as if in a college, Fr. Allamano wished to have a congregation whose difference from a family would be almost nil. He saw his effort to start a religious and missionary Institute as a continuation of the mission of the triune God through the Church. As such, just as the one God is a complex family of three persons, and each of them has a specific role in the history of salvation, the Church had been born to propagate that family spirit introduced to it by the second person of the Trinity who is also the son of God. If the Church is a family of God’s people, the arms through which the Church’s mission is accomplished have to share the same spirit. Seeing his Institute as a tool through which the Church continues her work of evangelization, Fr. Allamano encouraged his missionaries to create an atmosphere which favoured her mission and the wellbeing of its members.
To Fr. Allamano, the Consolata Missionary Institute is a family and not just a social Institution. That is why he encouraged family spirit among the members. To the Founder, nothing demonstrated the family spirit more than trust, order, involvement and love which involves helping one another to achieve holiness. He made it his chorous to say that mutual assistance was paramount if the members of any community of the Congregation had to live a happy life and be effective in the ministry.
Speaking to his seminarians, Fr. Allamano always said “The Society is not a boarding school; it is not even a seminary. It is a family. You are brothers. You must live together and prepare yourselves together in order to be able to work together the rest of your lives” (SL. 340). It was his way of saying that concern for one another was the foundation of a happy community. To the Founder, it was regrettable that in many religious Institutes, people entered “without knowing one another, lived for years without loving one another and buried each other after death without shedding tears for one another” (SL. 338). His emphasis on the family spirit was therefore aimed at helping the members to see that their presence in the Institute was not something to be undermined. Even today, Fr. Allamano would still tell us that our common presence in the Institute is not similar to a crowd of people in a bus stage, where no one cares where his neighbor is going, where he will alight or whether he will make it to his destination or not. That is why speaking about family spirit, the Founder first prioritized the commandment of love. It is not rocket science even for us to understand what the Founder meant when he spoke of the family spirit: self-giving for others. Today, all of us can attest that the success of our apostolate many times depends on the atmosphere in our communities. The effectiveness of any missionary also depends of the type of the community he lives in. This is why one time Christ said “they will know that you are my disciples by the way you love one another” (Jn. 13:35). As in Fr. Allamano’s time, today the health of a community is measured by how much the members of the community trust and confide in each other, how much they are ready and able to tolerate and forgive each other, how much they are able to involve each other and collaborate in work and community events and how much they actually pray for each other. The health of the community depends on the social health of the members. If Fr. Allamano was to speak to us today, he would warn us against divisive attitudes and language, against gossips and backbiting, against jealousy and competition that fuel hatred and bitterness among members of a given community. Like Christ, the Founder would categorically say that our unity and love for each other is not only a measure of our witness, but also a means to amicable co-existence. We don’t need to be geniuses to understand this! Today, any member of religious life knows that many problems in the world would disappear if we talked to each other instead of talking about each other. The Founder himself demonstrated the family spirit through his effort to live harmoniously with everyone, including those who opposed him.
(f) Love of liturgy
Fr. Allamano’s understanding of liturgy was quite unique. If we look in the spiritual life of our Founder, when he speaks about liturgy, he does not give lectures. Instead, he begins by showing that the Holy Trinity is the foundation of our faith, and goes on to speak about different seasons of the liturgical calendar and some key feasts in the Church. From this look of things, it seems that Fr. Allamano understood liturgy not particularly as rituals but as an encounter between God and his people; an encounter which is celebrated according to different moments of the salvation history as concretized in the liturgical calendar. Rather than having an intellectual perspective of liturgy, Fr. Allamano preferred the tangible view of liturgy, in which the participation of the people in meeting their God carried the day. Speaking about the liturgical year for example, the Founder noted that “as children of God and members of Church, we have a duty to appreciate the Church’s understanding of the year’s feasts but also to take an active part in them” (This I want you to be, Pg 97). The Founder always insisted on proper participation in the liturgical celebrations. He wanted his seminarians to understand that the gestures and words in the liturgy are not empty rhetoric. On the contrary, they carry a meaning and energy that becomes present and operative each time the given liturgical action is done. Fr. Allamano emphasized all the time that people benefit from that energy of the Holy Spirit if they are well disposed for the liturgical celebration. This explains why he kept reminding the seminarians to concentrate in the celebration at hand, to avoid distractions during the Mass and other liturgical celebrations, and to open their hearts to the Spirit of God who transforms all who are well disposed towards him.
At advent, he called on his audience to prepare for the coming of Jesus in their hearts. In Christmas he asked his audience to emulate the humility of Jesus who left his glory in heaven to be born as a little child. In lent the Founder reminded his listeners to take the 40 days as a moment of grace to work for their reconciliation with God and with other people. During Easter, he encouraged people to resurrect with Christ into new attitudes and behaviours. As such it is easy to see that Fr. Allamano had a very deep sense of the sacred. To him God’s people were supposed to be set aside from the common way of doing things. It was another way of affirming the words of Jesus: you are in the world but you are not of the world (Jn. 17:16). In other words, as the term sacred illustrates, the separation of what is holy from what is worldly, anyone who was associated with the sacred had to be chosen, set aside or better consecrated to God. This view of things is seen from the fact that Fr. Allamano’s outlook of liturgy involved celebrations. As if to confirm these sentiments, immediately after his analysis (in the spiritual life) of how the liturgical seasons are supposed to be lived, the Founder enumerates key liturgical feasts in the liturgical calendar. These include the epiphany, the ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the feast of all saints and that of all the souls. The aim of dwelling much in the festive character of liturgy was to show its separation from the ordinary. This is not difficult to see, because naturally, a celebration denotes an activity that is a break from the ordinary, and therefore like the term sacred, the word celebration connotes the idea of consecration.
Another aspect of liturgy that can be easily pointed out about Fr. Allamano’s view of liturgy is its social aspect. Liturgy evokes a social atmosphere. Every time Fr. Allamano spoke about the liturgy, he spoke in terms of “we”, “let us”, “our Lord”, etc. In other words he always spoke in plural and inclusive language. Fr. Allamano understood the liturgy as an activity of the people of God, an activity that involved the covenant between people and God; an activity in which God was praised and the human family was sanctified. He saw the liturgy as an action of the Church. Having seen how Fr. Allamano valued “eccleasility”, that is “being the Church or part and parcel of the Church”, it is easy to see how important he saw the liturgy as an activity of the chosen people. Today, as we reflect on this trait of Fr. Allamano that became also a characteristic of the Institute, we have to evaluate how much we love the liturgy, how well we celebrate the liturgy, and even more important, how much we believe that the liturgy is the action through which Christ acts in our time. This is essential. The way we celebrate the liturgy shows clearly if or not we truly believe that Christ works through the sacraments. A hurried celebration is a sign of lack of appreciation of what liturgy is. Such a celebration depicts that we either have other important things to do or that the liturgy is a necessary burden which we do just because we have no option. Worse still, when sermons are turned into tools of pushing certain agenda, fighting one another in front of the Christians, settling scores or painting one another in negative light, liturgy loses its value. This is why we need Fr. Allamano’s understanding of liturgy if we have to benefit from the celebrations we perform each day. Otherwise, we risk celebrating many beautifully animated ceremonies that are just empty human drama, that is, ceremonies that neither touch us nor touch anyone – but pure self-deception. May our Founder, he who in silence and prayer learned to meditate the marvels of God in the liturgy help us to emulate him in our time.