213 Zbigniew Piłat, MIC Italy, Rome, General Secretary and Procurator I’m truly happy that I could participate in the beatifi cation ceremonies in Licheń. Those couple of days in Poland gave me lots of joy and satisfaction. Our Congregation presented itself as an international [Institute]: brethren have come from all over the “Marian” world. A good atmosphere was created between us, the Marians from various countries, and even language barriers did not impede communication, we had no problem fi nding common ground which is our fraternity. Another reason for joy comes from the publication of Father Founder’s Pisma zebrane [Collected works]: sure, it is not a mystery novel, but it reads well. I’m glad that we can fi nally reach to the sources themselves, for these are not commentaries [on his work], although they are also important. Finally, we can glimpse at our Blessed Founder directly, touch the source, as it were. I regard the beatifi cation as an invitation to conversion. Just as the Church gives us Advent and Lent to refl ect on our life, similarly, the Congregation has its special moments, and the beatifi cation was undoubtedly one of them: the moment containing a strong call for conversion. This is also being repeated now, during the time of this Convention. We see that the goal of every religious order, the very fi rst one, which is personal sanctifi cation, has been strongly outlined, because it is the basic goal. I want to evoke here an image from Fr. Founder’s Pisma (Collected Works) which tells us that membership in a religious order does not automatically mean salvation. A religious order is a place of privilege on the road to salvation; we can cross the waters by sailboat, but woe to us if we take the sail down too fast, because we may just never reach the port that looks so near. This image has made quite an impression and stayed with me. I brought it up also in the context of Fr. Dariusz Mażewski’s speech about the kerygma and evangelization, because it strongly reverberated there, too. As to our superiors, I would ask them not to regard us as perfect Religious. Please don’t try to seek only communal ideals for we are all sinners and will probably remain such to the end. I hope that in our time of conversion, the Lord God will have patience and mercy for us sinners; He gave me life so that I would convert. We meet and interact in the concrete circumstances of life; it is a process and there is a chance that I’ll convert today, but will fall back into the same sins tomorrow. Let a superior near me understand my sinfulness and my failures, but also let him see my efforts. In his speech, Father House Superior drew quite a pessimistic picture of our [Roman] community. I would like to straighten it up a bit. I’ve been in this community for 10 years now. It is constantly changing. New students arrive. Father Provincial was also here, along with Fr. Wojciech Skóra and the others.
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