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Rule of Life
Keep the law of the Lord your God,
1st Book of Kings 2, 3
proceeding in its ways
And executing his laws,
his commands,
Its standards and instructions,
As it is written in the law of Moses,
for you to succeed
In everything you’re going to do
And wherever you turn
The Magnificat Community finds its definition and identifies its horizons in a series of texts that, formed in the flow of its history, constitute its Rule of Life:
Historical Background
Preliminary Considerations
Foreword
Bylaws
Regulations
Regulations for Consecrated Persons
Guidelines on Spiritual Accompaniment in Community
Since that 1978 in which the Magnificat Community was born with its first ecclesiastical recognition, as community life has been developing in ever broader and more complex spheres, it has been necessary for the Statute and the various Regulations to respond to the new needs that arise and to be able to indicate the most correct and fruitful ways to incarnate the “dream of God” in the concrete life of the Fraternities. Among the texts of the Rule of Life is in particular that of the Bylaws, which had to be gradually clarified and expanded to meet the changed conditions in which the Community found itself living. This page gives an account of the various passages, from 1979 to the present.
1979
The first Statute approved by the competent ecclesiastical authority, brief but already essentially filled with what the Lord had shown, dates back to February 1979, signed by Archbishop of Perugia Monsignor Ferdinando Lambruschini.
1980s
After that first document, the Community attempted to give itself a more substantial rule, out of which work came a booklet that collected in parenetic and spiritual form the Community experience, but not juridical. That booklet has remained in the memory of the Community as the Red Rule, from the color of its cover, but, precisely because of the style in which it was drafted, it did not receive canonical approval.
1995
Archbishop Ennio Antonelli of Perugia, shortly after taking office in January 1994, asked for and established a commission of Community members to draft a Statute that could receive canonical approval, and after a year and a half of work in which he himself was involved, he recognized the Magnificat Community as a private association of lay faithful and approved its Statute ad experimentum for three years.
2003
In 2003, in the midst of a crisis that was seeing the Community experiencing a deep split with one of its component zones, Archbishop Giuseppe Chiaretti of Perugia established a new commission to revise the Statute. Precisely in the final phase of that commission’s work, in the fall of 2004, as the Chapter of Elders was preparing to vote on the new text, the split with almost the entire zone of Foggia was consummated, partly because of an issue related precisely to the drafting of the Rule. At the urging of the Archbishop, the approval of the text proceeded, which took place on December 24 of that year.
2013-2022
In the years that followed, the Community experienced further growth, this time crossing Italian borders and beginning to take the community experience to other nations, on different continents. In response to this evolution, the Archbishop of Perugia, Gualtiero Bassetti, urged the Community in 2013 to seek recognition of its reality from the Pontifical Council for the Laity, at the same time establishing a commission for a rewrite of the Statute to adapt it to the Community’s growth.
The work of the new commission was very extensive and aimed at involving all allies in the reflection. After many years, long reflections, comparisons, prayers, external consultations and voting, finally, in the fall of 2020, the Community submitted a shared text for approval by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life and – currently – is awaiting its response.