Charity as the Basis and Source of the Spirituality of the Religious Life 101 rich passage from Norma vitae was considerably reduced in the Marian Constitutions’ subsequent edition of 1723. Although the Statuta largely quote Papczyński’s statements in their chapter VII entitled De mutua charitate et correctione fraterna, the meaning of charitas is limited there to indicate the love of neighbor and its correlation to fraternal admonition. In addition, the Statuta changed one of the Founder’s most characteristic statements that “the soul of his Institute is love,” saying that “the soul of the Institute is mutual love” (charitas mutua), out of which they draw conclusions, directly referring to ascetic practices. Basically, the quoted sentence is regarded as an introduction to practical instructions.209 While Papczyński embeds the entirety of the religious life, including the category of theological love (charitas) in a broader theological context, in the case of the Statuta,we notice a tendency to center on the ascetic and moral point of view. We may say that the theological dimension was partly limited in this way. In a religious community with its institutional, outward dimension, Saint Stanislaus Papczyński tries to discern the innermost substance of the life of the early Church described by the Acts of the Apostles. The ideal of this community of Christ’s first disciples, invoked in his Norma vitae, serves the Founder not only to indicate that the community of believers were of one heart and one mind, but also to note that “the Apostles, stirred up by this heavenly Spirit” who were “fearlessly preaching the glory of Jesus” and, being “scourged for this preaching” “rejoiced susurrationes, oblocutiones, vexationes, ambitionem, aliorum contemptum, perturbationem, tumultum, rixas, lites; et ut sui animi traquillitati, sic alienae et domesticae studiosus charitatis custos, invigilabit. Denique tam a tota Congregatione, quam ab eius quolibet membro, quodvis malum convenienter propulsabit. Mementote dilectionis primaevae Ecclesiae, de qua Apostolicorum Auctor scriptor: «Multitudinis», inquit, «credentium erat cor unum, et aninma una» [Act 4,32]”. NV II, 4. 209 The corresponding first article of the Statuta reads: “Ante omnia mutuam Charitatem inter se semper studeant habere, sine qua, nec propria, nec proximi salus obtineri potest. Anima vestri Instituti sit charitas mutua, a qua quantum recedent, tantum a vita, memores illius sint Christi Domini mandati toties repetiti; Hoc est praeceptum meum, ut diligatis invicem; Itaque evitabitis illam pestiferam luem, invidiam, odium, rancorem, antipatiam, sympatiam, aliaque dissidii semina, et fomites, omnes se invicem honore Superiores oboedientia, et reverentia prosequantur ex officio se nominantes, qui illud habent”. Statuta VII, 1.
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