In the Pauline Family

Urged on by the action of the Holy Spirit, from 1914 to 1959, Father James Alberione founded various institutes united among themselves by the same spirituality and a bond of profound communion: the Pauline Family.  The institutes of the Pauline Family are: five religious congregations, one lay association, and four aggregated institutes.

Each Institute that the Lord called into existence through Father Alberione is “entirely of the Pauline Family”.  The words of the Founder define this intense bond: “There is a close relationship, because all are born of the Tabernacle.  There is one spirit: to live Jesus Christ and serve the Church” and one apostolate: to make Jesus Christ, Way, Truth, and Life known to the men and women of our time.

He himself narrates his experience as a seminarian which determined his future work and the spirit of the Pauline Family:

“The night that divided the last century from the present (the night between December 31, 1900, and January 1, 1901) was crucial for the specific mission and particular spirit in which the Pauline Family would come to light and live.  After the solemn midnight Mass in the Cathedral of Alba, exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament followed.  The seminarians in Philosophy and Theology were free to remain for as long as they liked. 

Not long before there had been a congress (the first he had attended).  He had fully grasped Toniolo’s calm but profound and fascinating speech.  He had read Leo XIII’s invitation to pray for the coming century.  Both spoke of the Church’s needs, of the new means of evil, of the duty to combat the press with the press, organization with organization, of the need to get the gospel [message] across to the people, of social issues… Particular enlightenment came from the Host, and a greater understanding of that invitation of Jesus: – Come to me, all of you – (Mt 11:28)… He felt deeply obliged to prepare himself to do something for the Lord and for the women and men of the new century with whom he would spend his life”. (James Alberione, Abundantes divitiae, 13-15)

Revisiting the experience of our Founder over the span of his long life, an organic project is revealed that develops step by step in fidelity to God and to the people of his time: to give Jesus Christ, Way, Truth and Life, to all people with the means that human progress and ingenuity  make available over time.

We are grateful to God that we belong to this Family born of the Eucharist, in which we fulfill a Marian ministry of prayerful presence and charity, generating, in the maturity of faith, new apostles of social communication, and with our Eucharistic life we remind all of the primacy of God who is to be adored and thanked.

 

The Institutes of the Pauline Family are:

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