22 Immersing in a Specific Aspect of Christ’s Mystery An unusual experience of Christ’s mystery lies at the base of the founding charism. Christ enchants, enraptures and attracts them with such power that nothing is able to impede them in realization of their vocation. Fascinated by the person of Christ, the founders strove to imitate Him fully. At the same time, each of them was aware of his own special path which existed within the framework of all of the various Christian ways of imitating Christ. This path led the founders to fi nd and contemplate a specifi c aspect of Christ’s mystery. This truth may also be depicted as follows: all founders live and proclaim the entire Gospel; however, the Holy Spirit gives to each one the Gospel opened to a different page so that he and his disciples would go through time and through the world, carrying this opened book. Thanks to this specifi c aspect of the selected Christ’s mystery, founders are confi dent that they call to life a new institute within the Church, which is needed, original, and unique. They are sure that they create an original spiritual physiognomy, through which shines a fragment of Christ’s image. This conviction is the principle element of the identity of the founder and his institute. Every new religious family is different from the other and each possesses its own profi le, order, and spirit. The most expressive characteristic of the identity is the defi nition of the special aspect of Christ’s mystery. The inspiration, which the Holy Spirit gives to the founder, also sheds a stronger light on the specifi c fragment of the Gospels which the founder practices in his or her life. In this way, the Lord Jesus’ specifi c features are refl ected in it. For example: the poor and humble Christ of St. Francis differs from St. Dominic’s Christ who teaches and prophesizes. Saint Alphonse’s Christ, who evangelizes the poor and the abandoned, is unlike St. Ignatius’s Christ, who fulfi lls the will of the Father in total obedience, or St. Adalbert’s Christ, who serves the most poor. This particular emphasis on some aspect of Christ’s person or a single passage from the Gospels is not a selective, diminishing or abating approach. It serves as a key to interpret the entire Gospel; it is, in a way, an observation point, from which the entirety of Christ’s work is contemplated. It is also a ray of light poured down, which allows one to more clearly see God’s plan for the founder and his institute. And fi nally, it is the criterion for choosing the forms of future realization of the community’s special mission.
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