19 deeper, his courage stronger so that he may better understand that he is God’s instrument, used in a new and unknown manner. The various ways in which the founders experienced the Spirit may be divided into direct and indirect inspirations. To the fi rst group we may attribute mystical visions, inward revelations, inner voices, spiritual movements that often come in prayer. The other group would contain specifi c historical circumstances, social and religious events, various external impulses and conditions (such as witnessing the tragedy of the sick and the poor, neglected youth or abandoned children). It may also be a meeting with someone whom the Lord uses to communicate His intentions to the founder, which would later become his inner light, intuition, vision, and challenge. However, in the founders’ perception it is always the Divine intervention, which they invoke while looking back on their work and their history of spiritual experiences. Understanding that founders are guided by the Holy Spirit is the foundation, on which they become convinced of their calling to create a new religious family. “To emphasize this Divine intervention, they do not hesitate to compare the riches of God’s gift to their own poverty. The more noticeable their insignifi - cance, the greater and freer is God’s powerful action in them.” In this way, they express their conviction of being only instruments, which God uses the way in which He pleases. Acting “under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,”20 the founders become men of the Spirit. Turning to Christ and Thirsting for Holiness The founding charism is always accompanied by a longing for perfection, a desire to change one’s life and to improve oneself, a zealous thirst for holiness. It is the Holy Spirit who fosters the growth of this thirst, turns it to Christ, opens the people to His words, enables them to understand and accept them with special sensitivity and concreteness. Thus the founder becomes something like an interpreter of Christ’s teachings for his times, which consequently makes him a “living Gospel.” Prompted by the Spirit to lead a fully evangelical life, he strives to imitate Christ in His words and actions as faithfully as possible, thus becoming ever more “the prolongation in history of a special presence of the Risen Lord”.21 And thus, from the outset of the consecrated life until the present day, the Holy Scriptures have always been the fi rst and most important “rule of life”. In these powerful words, the Second Vatican Council recapped: “Since 20 PC, 1. 21 VC, 19.
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