Round table and debate on the reports proposed by the Theological Commissions of Europe and North America. The contribution of Fr. Stefan Tertünte director of the Dehonian Study Center (Rome) on the connection between Sint unum and sin in the experience of faith for Fr. Dehon.
The fourth day of the theological seminar began with the projection of a video about the daily life of the community in the Generalate: a concrete way of showing how the Sint Unum is lived. This is an idea that should be re-launched during the theological seminar.
Online work continued in two stages. The first part of the seminar took place in the form of a round table discussion. Today it was the turn of the Theological Commissions of North America and Europe who presented the work previously elaborated on the biblical, theological and psychological context of the correlation between Sint Unum and sin. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for a thorough discussion of the contributions offered by the Commissions.
In the second part Fr. Stefan Tertünte proposed a conference on the experience of faith for Fr. Dehon in relation to Sint Unum and the concept of sin (Cst. 4).
Sint unum as reparative act
The founder’s experience of faith must be reread in the light of the social and ecclesial context of his time; but there is an aspect that is characteristic in Fr. Dehon: to speak of sin is to speak, above all, of love; the “sensitivity of sin” is in relation to the “refusal of Love”. Faith in Fr. Dehon – continued the speaker – embraces three aspects: the gift, oblation and the desire to respond. On the contrary, sin is not opening oneself to the love of Christ and, consequently, not loving him.
According to Fr. Stefan the Sint Unum is a reparative act, an intuition born even before founding the Congregation: “Fr. Dehon had nourished, from his spirituality and from his life practice, the spiritual intuition of the importance of the testimony of successful unity for the proclamation of the Kingdom of God”.
In his speech, Fr. Stefan remarked how some typical expressions of Dehonian spirituality were deepened: Ecce venio, Ecce ancilla, Adveniat Regnum tuum. This cannot be said with reference to the theme of Sint unum. The correlation between solidarity and the concept of Sint unum should be better explored: “solidarity becomes a charismatically fraternal charity that must be spelled out as ‘unity’ in its practical side”.
