Spirituality of the Religious Life According to St. Stanislaus Papczyński 46 Fr. Papczyński believes – “in total ignorance of all the virtues by which we ascend to Heaven.”56 In one of his meditations on the evangelical incentive for mutual charity and unity between the ‘brothers’ (Mt 5:25), Fr. Papczyński states: “He who does not burn with the love of neighbor, is unworthy of the love of God,” because “eternal life is founded on the love of God and neighbor.”57 The matter of the supernatural virtue of love in its aspect of love of neighbor was discussed at length in works about the organization of the religious life of the first Marian communities. However, in the case of the principles given in Norma vitae (and later in the Statuta of 1723) that concerned the Marians, the directives of St. Stanislaus’ take on a specific meaning because they are intended to communicate the inner substance to the religious community, which should be exactly the virtue of love. For this reason, one of the chapters of Norma vitae entitled Love contains Fr. Papczyński’s suggestions on mutual love among members of the same institute. One of these suggestions, which refers to 1 Cor 16:14, became part of our Institute’s tradition: “Let everything you do, be done in love.”58 Supernatural love is linked so closely to the theological virtue of faith that sometimes, it is difficult to define which one is first, as Papczyński remarks. Meditating on the vocation of the Apostle Andrew (Mt 4:18) in his Inspectio cordis, Papczyński points out that “the light of the divine gaze” that Christ bestowed on that fisherman, appointing him an apostle, created something of a new reality similar to the act of creation. Just like God created the world out of the “unfathomable abyss, surrounded 56 IC, Quinquagesima Sunday, AHC, pt. 1. 57 IC, V Sunday after Pentecost, AHC, pt. 2; XII Sunday after Pentecost, AHC, pt. 3. Page 67v of the IC manuscript displays this sentence in bold characters in order to emphasize the weight of its meaning: “indignum esse amore Dei, qui non flagrat amore proximi”. 58 It is worth recalling that the Marian tradition makes references to that very sentence as to the characteristic element of the Marian charism in both written works and art. For example, the novitiate chapel in Skórzec (Poland) has a bas-relief showing Papczyński and the inscription “Omnia apud vos in charitate fiant.” Also, Krzyżanowski used this sentence as the motto of his Doctoral thesis. Cf. also W. Nieciecki, W poszukiwaniu mariańskiej drogi, Ed. J. Kumala, Licheń, 2004, p. 221.
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