Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It is a great joy to participate in this meeting of the PASPAC Assembly and the General Council with the commission of restructuring and the meeting of the Economes here in the monastery of Glen Osmond. We are certainly enjoying the beauty and warm and fraternal hospitality of this community, the natural beauty surrounding us, and the friends of the community and the faithful of the parish. Thank you. I was to greet also the Passionist Sisters here present, the Economes of the Provinces, Vice Provinces and Vicariates who came upon this occasion and met for the first time with the General Econome, Father Battista Ramponi. I also wish to greet Father Kevin Dance, representative of the Congregation to the United Nations. On behalf of the General Council I sincerely hope that we can all live with intensity these next days of reflection and prayer.

The Holy Spirit, titular of the Province that is welcoming us, may open our hearts and minds so that we can follow him and across the Red Sea of Restructuring. May God makes instruments of his Spirit so that we may not make vain the Cross of Christ (1 Corinthians 1: 17) and our vocation of contemplation and preaching of the word of the Cross.

I am pleased to know that the first three days of the PASPAC meeting are structured as a Retreat with moments of silence and contemplation on our Passionist values. Only after contemplating and meditating on Ca1vary gathered as a community we will be able to pull down the Cross in order to make a bridge so we may pass from human misunderstanding, individualism, injustice to fraternity, solidarity, compassion. The Cross is the only bridge of love and charity.

What charism and what spiritual gift would God have given to St. Paul of the Cross for today's world? To what vocation would God have called him... and what Congregation would St. Paul of the Cross have founded today? Would not St. Paul of the Cross be still convinced that the cause of the evils of our time is the forgetfulness of the Passion of Jesus? And that only the Passion of Jesus is the most efficacious remedy for the evils of our time? We realize that the forgetfulness that Paul spoke of is the same as Paul the Apostle when he spoke of "the risk of making vain the Cross of Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:17) The Cross is the only mystery of our salvation and only from this we can take part of the tribulation of humanity especially of the most poor and abandoned (Constitutions 3). Here the Crucified One claims his concrete name. And also our participation in His passion. (Constitutions 65).

The Disciples asked "Master, where do you live?" (John 1 :38). And we can clearly hear his answer: "I live among the crucified ones of today". He himself throws us back into the violent reality of the different situations of our world. What does the "Memoria Passionis" mean today? Jesus, the Crucified One, is the space offered by the Father in which happens the marvellous possibility of salvation. It is on the Cross that we understand who God is and who we are. And we can also understand the solidarity that exists that between the Crucified One and those who are crucified and how the death of Jesus is a project of life for us. It is is the supreme evidence of God's love. And from the Cross is born a new understanding of our world. The Cross reveals the God of our future, of the new creation in which will take place the peace predicted by the Prophets of the Messianic times: peace with ourselves; peace with our brothers and sisters; peace with nature. This can happen only by embracing the spirit of the Passion. Only the full recovering of our identity in the Congregation with the "Memoria Passionis" will give vitality and possibility of life with a higher credibility and so the possibility to have new vocations with major perseverance and authentic witness.

It is not primarily the amount of work that makes a religious community grow; but the quality: you do not organize a community but you generate it with fruitfulness of its' charisms. And among all of them, sanctity is the most fruitful. And this brings us back to the need of making God and his Word the centre of our lives. We must live our lives. on the level of faith and it is one this level that we have to see and judge our lives. The greatest expression of the life of Jesus was his death on the Cross, in total obedience to the will of the Father and his gift of Love. While he accepted the extreme futility of his death, emptying himself of every power on earth and in heaven, he was realizing the highest fruitfulness that re-establishes a new covenant with the Supreme act of love for his Father and for us. It is on this level of love and obedience that the Passionist must live his own difficulties: physical concerns, weaknesses, aging, illness, all situations that are beyond our control. It is the participation in the Paschal mystery of Jesus and its constancy.

With the General Synod celebrated in Rome last December, we have started the process of restructuring of our Congregation. The task of the Synod was to discern the design and will of God referring to our Congregation and its structures. We have reflected Congregationally of being a part of a globalised world, and the efficacy of our global mission. We certainly do not want to hide the difficulties of restructuring. We will certainly will have to struggle and overcome the obstacles that present themselves; we also need clarity even though at the beginning it will not always appear clear. Sometimes it may appear very dark. What is hidden and what tend to ignore are the ways that God is preparing for the Congregation. Many times we feel like blind men searching for the light. But as to Israel, the Lord says: "I will make the blind go through paths that they do not know. And I will guide them as they pass through unknown paths." (Isaiah 42:16) God is our certainty, and our guide in the journey of restructuring. We will be able to go forward only if we our choices will be projects of life. The answers and the indications are not pre- conceived. They will be the fruit the process of discernment done by the entire Congregation.

In fact, among the other decisions of the General Synod, a letter of commencement of the process of restructuring was sent to the Congregation. With the help of the Commission of restructuring, Father Nicholas Postlethwaite, Father Denis Travers, Father Adolfo Lippi, we have sent letters to each religious to the communities and to the major superiors and their councils. An involvement that will continue and will certainly be an essential part of the next General Chapter in October 2006.

Restructuring is a possibility offered by the Spirit. It is an opening of doors and must be lived as a opportunity of enrichment and not of debasement; it must be lived in a climate of mutual charity and solidarity. I believe we must go forward with trust and hope; because despite the difficulties we have the potential to do well.

May the Lord help us in the journey towards the Emmaus of our restructuring, illuminating those of us who take part in the process, including the wider Passionist family.

The charism is strong and present. We have a great sense of identity but we must have the courage to free ourselves from the things that weaken us and entrench us. The Lord of Life is with us and we cannot miss this historical opportunity. It is the last call before the spouse arrives and closes the door as said in the parable of the wise virgins.

Certainly the first restructuring must take place in our own hearts with a recovering of a strong interior life based on the Passion of Jesus, but at the same time we must not fear the change of our structures even at the juridical level. Let us recall how St. Paul of the Cross changed the rules even a few months before his death. We have the possibility of giving a new impulse to the Congregation today. So I say to myself and to you: Let us move on, even though we do not see everything clearly, because the Lord wants us to go in this direction, the Lord wants it! He wants the Passionists to be on the journey to renewal. Let us put all of our fears at the foot of the Cross, like our Founder used to do. With the Lord in our boat, we can easily reach the opposite shore.

I am convinced that Paul of the Cross would want this journey firmly based on a strong communion with the Lord focused on his Paschal mystery of his death and resurrection. We can see this in his letters where he reminds us that we must be base our lives on the life of God for the efficacy of our mission. As a good Father, he knows our fragility, and so he knows what it takes for us to establish again our spiritual lives. I would like to recall a few elements of his and our Passionist spirituality.

Paul of the Cross had a particular devotion to the Child Jesus sleeping on the Cross. We have until today an image that he used of this type. He was moved to tears on the eve of Christmas when he would carry in procession into the Church with his community the statue of the Child Jesus for the celebration of the feast. The mystery of the Incarnation is already a mystery of love and passion. For Paul of the Cross the child adored by the three Wise Men was not less King of the Jews than the man who died under the proclamation of Pontius Pilate: Jesus, the Nazarene, King of Jews. The grotto of Bethlehem and of Calvary are part of the same design of love.

Silence is the possibility to listen in recollection. The silence that quiets the noise around us, gives us the permission to listen to the quiet Word and Spirit of Love that comes from the Father. Detaching ourselves from the business and chaos that surround us and setting them aside will help us to be the "nothing that receives all". God will speak and communicate to us in silence. The silent meditation on the Passion of Jesus, with the entire Passionist community gathered together in a chapel,wil15ethe secret and mysterious communion of love that will lead us to understand the sufferings of Jesus.

Solitude is the place where silence is possible. It is the space where God and nature speak. On the mountain alone with ourselves and with God we can emerge ourselves in the loving presence of God. The noise of the world is far, we re-establish the critical distance from those things that distract us. The foundation of the "retreats" on the mountain in solitude was to be closer to God and to recover from the missions. There it is possible to be emerged in prayer and to contemplate the mystery of God. There you can feel the presence of God. Orlandini used to say about the Founder when they were living in the hermitage of St. Anthony on Monte Argentario: "Frequently during the evening he used to hide himself between two rocks to stay in prayer in the silence of the night 'til the dawn."

And Rosa Calabressi said "his prayer was high, and his life was a continuous prayer." One day with great fervour Paul said to Brother Francesco: "I cannot understand how can exist someone who never thinks of God." He used to keep and protect the conditions that allowed him to pray. In a letter in which he speaks about contemplation done in silence or in spirit and truth, he concludes: "This divine fishing in the sea of Divine Love from which follows the sea of the holy Passion of Jesus are of the same waters. This is done in the interior kingdom of the spirit in pure faith and burning love."

Poverty will be another value that will allow us to be emerged in the mystery of God because of the freedom that it gives from the attachment to things. Our founder gave major importance to this standard "under which the Congregation must grow in freedom of spirit".

We cannot conclude without remembering Mary. St. Paul of the Cross, having understood that the only remedy to the evils of this world is in Passion of Jesus, the miracle of miracles of love, had also a great Marian spirituality. The Passion of Jesus and that of his Sorrowful Mother are really one and the same thing. He compared the sufferings of Mary to an ocean and says: In the passion of Jesus, there are two oceans of sorrows. One is of the Son, the other is of the Mother.

The two sorrows are at the same time so different. but at the same time so close that you cannot see the distance between the two. The mother, who dies in her heart stands next to her son, whose heart shed it's last.

She stood beneath the cross - weakness and strength
She had only a glimmer of life on her face
While Jerusalem was piercing her heart.
She remembered the time of Nazareth - an invisible balm upon her wounds,