The Superior General’s experience of Spiritan apostolic communities, where members have embraced a prayerful lifestyle contrasts “other places” he visited where “we see an unacknowledged spiritual crisis developing.”
In these places, he observed “a relationship with God that has become impoverished, erased, where we no longer have a sufficient relationship with God to be able to live from it.”
To underscore the danger of allowing the “unacknowledged spiritual crisis” to develop, Fr. Mayama, the first African Spiritan Superior General, cites Pope Francis, the Spiritan Rule of Life (SRL), and the two founders of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Claude François Poullart des Places and François Marie Paul Libermann.
Pope Francis has drawn the attention of members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (ICLSAL) to “the danger of neglecting the interior life and adapting to the style of the world,” the Superior General of the Spiritans since his election in October 2021 says in his Christmas 2024 message referring to the Holy Father’s address to women and men Religious during the 2024 World Day of Consecrated Life, on February 2.
“The Holy Father is concerned about the inability of some consecrated people to slow down and make room for God’s action within them,” Fr. Mayama says, adding that the Pontiff is faulting “the growing tendency to get too caught up in our apostolic activity, at the risk of turning Christian and religious life into ‘a lot of things to do’ and neglecting the daily search for the Lord in prayer and meditation.”
The link between prayer and apostolic work is emphasized in the SRL, the Rome-based Superior General says and goes on to cite SRL #87 that states, “our prayer and our apostolic work are ultimately linked. They complement each other. Union with God in prayer leads us to be of service to others, and the apostolic work we do is, in its turn, a worship offered to God in the Spirit (Rom 1:9) and a deepening of our union with Him.”
The native of Congo-Brazzaville lauds the two founders of the Spiritans for demonstrating the link between prayer and pastoral activity.
Claude Poullart des Places and Libermann, Fr. Mayama says, “are our models of the link between union with God and pastoral activity. They didn’t become founders overnight, nor as a result of a well-developed, preconceived strategic plan, but rather thanks to a personal and persevering spiritual experience, a desire to be in the presence of the Lord, listening to Him and worshipping Him.
Poullart des Places, a native of France who gave up the practice of law to study for the Priesthood founded a community for youthful men with the wish to become Priests in 1703. He dedicated the community to the Holy Spirit, calling it the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.
Some 150 years later, Libermann, a converted Jew, established another religious family also in France, bearing the name, the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thus the official name, the “Congregation of the Holy Spirit under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary”.