Part One: Spiritual Principles
Spirituality in General
Spirituality can be considered under a twofold concept: spiritual doctrine or spiritual life. As spiritual doctrine, it deals with the analysis of the principles which fundamentally underlie our relationship with God; it presents theoretical teachings. As spiritual life, it refers to a life- experience and it means our practical response to God’s grace. Essentially, both the spiritual doctrine and spiritual life aim at affecting union with God, as God Himself says through Hosea: “I will espouse you (unite you) to me through faith” (Hos 2:20). St. Vincent Pallotti would comment, “God is always seeking man/woman in order to give Himself wholly to them.”1
Fundamentally, there is only one guideline in our relationship with God: the Gospel. Therefore, there is only one spirituality: the Gospel Spirituality. Pallotti was very conscious of that. In fact, for four years he resisted his followers who requested a rule by saying, “You have the Gospel and that is enough.”2 The rule which he wrote in 1839 for all his followers (the members of the Union of Catholic Apostolate) is “the Gospel in practice.”3 Pallotti’s stress of the “Gospel spirituality” is confirmed in a letter that he wrote in 1816 to Fr. Melia, one of his followers living in London. In it, Vincent wrote: “The spirituality of the Union is the spirituality of the Church of Jesus Christ, which always upholds the observance of the Gospel.”4 The members of the Union must discharge their temporal duties conscientiously in response to the Gospel spirit. In studying Pallotti’s teachings, therefore, we have to look at them always in the Gospel context since the Gospel is the basis for them.
Certainly, both the Gospel teachings and its practice have a multiplicity of emphases and forms, which allow different currents of the Gospel doctrine and practice, in accordance with the diverse conditions of human persons. In the past, the different accentuation of the Gospel teachings and the responses to them have been characterized as schools of spirituality. Today one speaks of schools of spirituality in a wider sense, because Christ’s teaching is one, just as His person is one, even though He has infinite and inexhaustible richness.
Pallotti believed that the Gospel is fundamental for any spiritual life. The respect and esteem that he had for the teachings of the Gospel did not prevent him from stressing certain outlooks, insights, principles and aspects, which underlie God’s encounter with humanity and our human response to Him. These accentuations, or special motivations and focuses, can be considered the spiritual doctrine that he left to his foundation.
It is true that Pallotti did not organize his teachings in one text or manual. Instead he left to his followers a spiritual and apostolic heritage scattered in the Rule of 1839 5 and other writings. His intent was to search for different aspects and components of the spiritual and apostolic life and formulate his teachings for the “apostolic Christian.”
Although the Gospel tenets are the roots of St. Vincent Pallotti’s spiritual and apostolic tenents, he also had other sources. Like a bee, he took the best honey from the Gospel first, then from the teachings of other spiritual writers. Wisely, though, he made room for different applications of the Gospel, according to the different states, conditions and styles of the life of his followers. In fact the Rule that he wrote in 1839 6 was written for all the members of the Union, male and female, priests, religious and laypersons, leaving the practical adaptations to each individual’s state in life.7 He did this because there had to be only one spirituality inspiring all his followers.8 To be sure, the Rule was exclusively modeled on the life of Christ as described in the Gospel,9 and the texts of the Gospel prefaced each chapter of the Rule.
The Components of the Spiritual Life
Humankind’s journey to God, even though guided by the Gospel teachings, is a life of relationships, ending in communion with God.10 Ordinarily, the basic relationships of the spiritual life are formed by those components called God, humankind, Christ and Mary, having as their bond the principle of Love.11 The relational spiritual life is not only the conscious awareness and experience of these components; it is also a relationship of faith-encounter, interaction and especially communion. It is a rapport of kinship, a covenant of intimate communication which will eventually be expressed in the real life.
Usually these components are found in any spirituality. The focusing, the stressing or accentuation of a particular viewpoint, is what gives a spirituality a distinctive perspective. Such characteristics can be so systematized that they become a school of spirituality.
Pallotti did not arrange systematically the spiritual principles of the Union, but he left to it charismatic postulates for living an apostolic life adapted to modern times. These postulates, scattered in his writings, can be easily identified, because Pallotti refers to them over and over.
The following pages shall consider each principle-component separately, but it is very important to have a bird’s-eye view of them. For St. Vincent Pallotti, spiritual life is a life of relational communion between God and humankind, a fellowship which initiates and continues with God’s love and grace, always demanding humankind’s cooperation. It is a fellowship which occurs because God manifests Himself as a God of love and mercy, so that a person’s relationship with God is to become an encounter and a rapport between a son/daughter and a concerned and compassionate Father.
God, the loving and merciful Father, wants all to be saved (the salvific will of God) and wants everyone to cooperate in the salvation of others (the economy of salvation). The followers of Pallotti, in imitation of the only Model, Jesus Christ, have to live and proclaim with every means at their disposal the love and mercy of God. They must embrace the loving and merciful concern of God for the salvation of humankind by cooperating with Him unselfishly in the apostolate of salvation and sanctification.
The human person, for Pallotti, is a living image (Icon) of God, but wounded by sin. However, the human person is not a damned sinner; he/she has been redeemed by Jesus. All of Pallotti’s followers should have an optimistic view toward their failures and those of their neighbor. They should have always a sense of hope in their lives and in their apostolic endeavors because of Jesus’ Redemption.
In this divine-human encounter, Jesus Christ is the mediating and redeeming factor. He is the Apostle of the Eternal Father, sent to witness the love of the Father and to work His apostolate of love and mercy. He freed humankind from sin and re-established its friendship with the Father. Pallotti’s followers must strive to follow Jesus so intimately that they become His friends and His faithful co-workers.
Mary, after Christ, is the model of intimacy and apostolic life. She, without being a priest, became Queen of Apostles. She is, for Pallotti’s followers, the teacher, the mother, the queen and the advocate. To be devoted to Mary, for Pallotti, means to imitate Jesus, Mary’s Son, and to learn from her how to imitate Him.
The overall bond and link of all these components is the law of love, or the Agape Principle. Love not only cements all these elements, but also is the soul and foundation of their existence and activity. In fact the mutual interplay between God and humankind is essentially a communication and a relationship of love. There is a logical sequence and a strict nexus in Pallotti’s reflection of the main components of the spiritual life. They reflect the apostolic spiritual life which the members of his organization are called upon to live.
Apostolic Spirituality
Pallotti’s spiritual teachings are not aimed at forming contemplative people, but at creating apostolic persons. For Vincent, spiritual life or interior life is not an end in itself; it has to flower into apostolic life. If his teachings sometimes suggest a contemplative approach rather than an apostolic approach to life, it was meant only to stress the soul of all apostolate, namely a deep interior spiritual life. Pallotti, enthralled with the mission of Jesus as Apostle of the Father, wanted his followers to be not only true disciples of Christ, but also true apostles of Him. Only as true apostolic men and women can they be really called “saviors of the people of God.”12 This goal, saviors of the people of God, was foremost in Pallotti’s mind and educational teaching. It can only be achieved by both holiness of life and an apostolic life.
For Pallotti, holiness is a function of and a means of apostolate and the apostolate is a function of and a means for holiness. That is the reason why his spirituality is an apostolic spirituality. It aims at forming apostolic men and women; it urges them and helps them to strive for the perfection of charity because of the apostolate. This is his message and charismatic contribution to the formation of future apostles. Pallotti beautifully summarized all this by writing, “We must form all Saints, great Saints and true Apostolic Workers for Jesus Christ’s vineyard.”13 His spirituality is not an adornment of the soul; it is to be dynamism of relationships. He wants all his followers to be first reservoirs and then channels of God’s love.