Blessed James Alberione

The Pauline Family
"The Gospel urges me on…"

By Brother Aloysius Millela, SSP

When Father Alberione took the quite modest step in August 1914 to gather around him two young candidates for rudimentary training in typography, he had little presentiment that this was to be the first step in an eventual worldwide grouping to be known as the Pauline family.

The beginning was a whisper, the mustard seed settling into unassuming soil. Yet as the times required (the great war would soon burst out), it was a period of mountain size faith. First born was the Society of St. Paul, to be joined less than a year later by its feminine counterpart, the Daughters of St. Paul. "Collaborative ministry" was to echo in acceptable ecclesial vocabulary fifty-five years later, but its practical inception—so spontaneous and unobtrusive for these pioneer brothers and sisters—became the hallmark of Alberione's developing spiritual enterprise. Nine years later in 1924, the inspiration for the third institute came about with the addition of the semi-contemplative branch, the Sisters of the Divine Master. Others would follow, each autonomous but with convergent aims.

Father Alberione: "This diversified family is the same in spirit through devotion to Christ the Master, Way, Truth and Life, to Mary, Queen of the Apostles, and to St. Paul the Apostle. The different congregations have their own proper work, but the goal is the same: to serve the Church and humanity according to the needs of the time. Their spirit is one: their apostolic initiatives are varied…."

The Pauline family would gradually evolve into a prophetically inter-functional and complementary group of ten institutions comprising religious congregations, secular institutes, and a lay association (Cooperators). They were meant to respond, as Father Alberione directed, to certain necessities of the Church in the twentieth century, especially that of promoting the integral Christian message through the media of social communication, and of making the Gospel bear upon the cultural and social marketplace through the most effective contemporary means..

DISCIPLES OF ST. PAUL

To do this, Father Alberione made himself one of the most ardent disciples and imitators of St. Paul in our times. Through his multi-form institutions and the media apostolate/ministry, he strove to revive within the church the figure of the Apostle of the Gentiles. What would St. Paul do today? How would he love Christ in today's milieu? What would he do to announce the message to men and women of our time?

So, St. Paul became the focal point of the various institutes of the Pauline Family, the specific patron of two of its Congregations, any number of churches, hundreds of book and media centers, and many other related apostolic works which he wanted to be nourished and sustained with the great openness and courage of the Pauline spirit.

In Father Alberione's words: "If St. Paul were alive today, he would still burn with the double flame of the same fire: zeal for God and his Christ, and zeal for people of every land. And in order to be heard, he would mount the most commanding pulpits and multiply his words with the current means of progress: the press, film, radio, television, etc. His doctrine would not be cold or abstract. Whenever he reached a given place he did not give but an occasional conference. He stayed and he formed. He won intellectual consent, persuaded, converted, united people in Christ, started others on the road to a fuller Christian life. He did not leave until there was the moral certainty that his own would persevere…."

WORLDWIDE

More than eighty years have passed. True to its intended universal charism, the Pauline Family is found today in over 50 nations of the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the northern to southern hemispheres, from Europe and the Americas to Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Orient. Its members distinguish themselves in a witness to the Word of God and in cultured communication through multi-media expertise and organization, book and magazine publishing, electronic programming and transmission, periodicals, catechesis and pastoral instruction, the promotion of the liturgy and the liturgical arts, and innumerable other like services.

As individually established and formed by Father James Alberione, the Pauline Family is made up of the following institutes:

* Society of St. Paul, founded on august 20th, 1914, made up of Priests and Brothers who give themselves exclusively to a pastoral and educational ministry through multi-media production, transmission and distribution.

*Daughters of St. Paul, founded on June 15th, 1915, women consecrated to the Gospel who serve of the same media to communicate the "…unparalleled message of love and salvation found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

*Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, founded on February 10th, 1924, for the threefold apostolate of Eucharistic Adoration, service to the priesthood, and promotion of Liturgy.

*Sisters of Jesus the Good Shepherd, founded on October 7th, 1938, to assist in pastoral and catechetical ministry at the parish level according to the needs of pastors and dioceses.

*Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, founded on September 8th, 1956, in support and promotion of vocations. Through prayer and specialized methods they foster and direct vocations. to the diocesan clergy, religious communities, and lay apostolates.

*Institute of Mary of the Annunciation, founded in 1958 as a secular institute for women living in a secular situation, observing the religious vows, and involved in apostolates depending on the circumstances at hand.

*Institute of St. Gabriel the Archangel, founded in 1959 as a secular institute for men living in a secular situation, observing the religious vows, and accomplishing an apostolate in the world using the world's means.

*Jesus Priest Institute, founded in 1960 as a means of sustaining the secular clergy in their diocesan and parish obligations by observing the evangelical counsels and associating themselves to the apostolic ideals of the Pauline mission.

*Holy Family Institute, founded in 1960 for married couples who aspire to live the evangelical counsels in the heart of their families.

*Association of Cooperators, a lay association founded in 1917 to collaborate and share in the apostolic and spiritual goals of the Pauline Family.

THE MISSION OF THE WORD

The world has not felt the full, exhilarating impact of the Good News. When it does it will be transformed. For the present, it goes about dazed and diverted by its own hunger for something it cannot define.

Like a pathetic, sightless thing, it blunders after the eternal ideals of love, beauty, peace, and beatitude—only to stumble against hatred, ugliness, discord, and unhappiness. Its tragedy lies not in a hopeless pursuit, but in deception; not in irredeemable selfishness, but in failure to recognize that its goals are really one, Personified, inseparable: God.

With great courtesy God reveals himself in Scripture. He breaths out upon the world, knowing that contact with his word is the beginning of life. "The word of God" says St. Paul, "is living and operative, keener than any two-edged sword; it penetrates deep enough to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and disentangles the thoughts and designs of our hearts." What is conversion if not a head-on collision with the Word, either in Scripture, in a saintly life, or in the action of charity?

Whoever, then, can introduce the world to its Personified ideals, to the Word, will begin its transformation.

This is the mission embraced by the Pauline Family. While its objective is universal, the Pauline method is singular. An article in the SSP Constitutions reads: "Members must devote themselves to the spreading of the Divine Word in a popular way, by means of the apostolate of communications."

While every religious family has the fundamental mission of propagating the Christian message, this simple directive implies much more. By the very nature of the media—press, radio, TV, film, etc., the Pauline Family is intrinsically linked to the Word and is, in a unique way, its custodian. Are not communications, shaped by and dependent on words as they are, the bloodstream of progress, knowledge, and harmony among people? But "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and was made flesh," and in this incomprehensible moment became a living "communication" to us.

Today, concomitant with the vigorous effort of focusing on ecclesial essentials, there is a widespread revival of Scriptural exegesis and interest. Paulines are in eager step. One of the historical first ventures of the infant Society of St. Paul was to publish the Bible in five languages and then seeing to its widest possible distribution.

"I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart," the Psalmist says. "Be good to your servant, that I may live and keep your words." This is meant to be a universal cry, not just a poetic expression. Sometimes one gets the impression that God's message is not really for everyone but directed only to categories of people. But what of the lonely, forgotten people, the despised and outcast, the imprisoned and persecuted, the aged and the poor?

These too need the hope, the healing comfort of the Word, and they are eminently within the range of modern communications. But merely to put Scripture in their hands is not enough. The eunuch whom Philip encountered on the road to Jerusalem discovered this. "How am I to know," he said, "unless someone teach me?" And St. Paul, writing to Timothy, observed: "All Scripture inspired by God is profitable to teach, to instruct.... that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work."

Christ himself is the true teacher, but Pauline custodianship of the Word is the channel of his art. Out of its own devotion to Jesus Master, Way, Truth and Life is born a means to sanctify man's mind, will and heart.

As the Pauline diffuses the Word, he/she diffuses also the Master, the supreme teacher who was proclaimed such by his Father during the transfiguration: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear him." And at the Last Supper by himself: "You call me master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am."

It diffuses the Way, that beacon of rectitude, infallibly bright, which leads souls to the father and which showed humanity how to live long before formality of instruction.

It diffuses the Truth. "This is why I was born and why I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth." He inspires that first search for truth man makes in himself: Who am I? Where am I going?

It diffuses the Life, grace-laden and full of promise: "I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly." This, more than any other expression, is for the heart of humanity.

The synthesis of Christianity, then, consists in conforming to the norm laid down and exemplified by Christ the Master: "this is the sum of eternal life—their knowing you, the only true God, and your ambassador Jesus Christ."

To propagate the transforming word may well be the work of a millennium before mankind comes around full circle to the Truth. Or it may be sooner. But in the plan of God it will be done.

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