Anniversary of the approval of the Constitutions
3 July 2021(from the notes on the Constitutions)
(July 4)
The Constitutions reflect the experience of the Spirit that the Mother Foundress carried within herself and was confronting the Father Founder, Saint Anthony Maria Claret. Before being a written text, they were life. They express the founding charism, hence we find in them the most genuine formulations of the gift of the Spirit to the Church from the origin of the Institute and which should guide our life and mission.
At the same time, they are institutionalization of the charism, because approved by the Church they give sure orientation to the evangelical life.
They are also a universalization of the charism because they are unique for all the sisters, of all cultures and places. The Spirit continually enlivens them in contact with new signs of the times and always asks for new formulations according to the evolution of the Church and the world.
Our Founders did not first write a theoretical dissertation to which they later accommodated their life and mission, but rather they described a model of experiential identification with Jesus and his Gospel.
The Constitutions, as a book of life, are capable of generating in each sister a space of freedom and creativity that allows the appropriate application of these attitudes in each circumstance. Living the Constitutions faithfully is a process that perhaps begins with some knowledge, but deep down it synchronizes the life contained in the text with the life that each one of us feels beating within. As Claretians we are moved by the same spirit so that we feel identified with the Constitutions and we feel sad every time we move away from them.