226 There is something extraordinary in what Blessed Stanislaus reminds us of: that the greatest work we have to do in this world is not churches or institutions, but ourselves, because Our Lord God is concerned with us above all. 2. I’d like to go back to what Fr. Andrzej Pakuła said, although I did not consult him—or anybody else, for this matter—while preparing this little speech. I have in mind the matter of strengthening the Congregation because of our Founder’s beatifi cation. May more and more of our Congregation’s members be beatifi ed and canonized, but the step that the Church made now in the case of our Founder has a special meaning. This is a confi rmation—and a confi rmation given in our day—that the Holy Spirit wants the Congregation of Marian Fathers to go on. We believe that in Fr. Stanislaus’s times, our Congregation was consistent with Divine inspiration and that the Church needed it throughout the past 300 years. But in the present beatifi cation, I see the sign that it is still important and may be valuable now also, on the threshold of the 21st century, and that our Lord God cares for us, the Marians. 3. However, we have to deal with the co-relation between Blessed Stanislaus and Blessed George, and we must clearly formulate this problem because the moment of the beatifi cation of our Congregation’s Founder coincides with the Jubilee of Renewal. We must not patch up this problem with easy phrases and assurances that in fact it has always been the same Congregation; nor shall we use easy comparisons saying that the orientation of the Marians today is taken from Father Renovator. This is far too important a problem—and the beatifi cation has made it even more timely—than to be dealt with in hasty, and thus superfi cial, inaccurate phrases, however skillfully composed they may be. Let us please differentiate between skillfully composed formulas and the profound understanding and integration of sorts within the Congregation of the spirituality of our two Blessed Fathers whom we want to keep in our hearts. 4. It is necessary to note that there are three types of apostolic congregations. To oversimplify, it can be said that some congregations, like the Divine Word Fathers or the Salesians, have a clearly defi ned goal: e.g., the missions or work with the youth. Others, like the Jesuits—who were the model community according to Blessed George Matulewicz—are communities whose specifi cs is not so much the ministry that they run, as rather the manner and means in which these communities live within the Church and serve Christ and the Church. I’m saying this so that we may fully realize that some ministries—like running the shrines and spreading The Divine Mercy Message—are closer to us today then they ever were before, and that they justify our new missionary initiatives at least for the
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