monastic community of Camaldoli - Italy *** Camaldoli in history

     Camaldoli has a thousand years of history behind it.
Isn't it amazing to realize that a monastic community born in a historical and cultural context so distant from our own, could still have a message capable of interesting the lives of men and women in our own time?
It is true that a certain alternative tourism seeks out places a bit off the beaten track, offers ancient culinary recipes, and suggests 'clever vacations' in monasteries, but...I

    To follow Camaldoli through its history is really like following a great adventure of the spirit, lived by monks and nuns touched by a great love of God, awakened in them by the example and teaching of St. Romuald (+1027).
People and communities capable of great creative outbursts and amazement.

    But as in every authentic falling in love, even in the more obscure moments, a secret attraction to the original spiritual experience that drew St. Romuald and his disciples to give birth to Camaldoli has continued to persist in their memory and consciousness.
These thousand years have witnessed moments of intense vitality, weaknesses, vigorous renewals, and spiritual, cultural and organizational creativity.
This should not astonish one because the Camaldolese monastic experience has also reaped the urgencies and challenges of the historical epochs through which it passed.

    In some way, the history of Romuald and Camaldoli is also the history of each of us. The history of lives marked by mysterious encounters with God.

The long and troubled historical journey has rendered us ever more aware that the spiritual heritage of St. Romuald and Camaldoli holds within itself a richness and dynamism that is also a complexity not confined to any single line.

The message that can also present itself to monks and people attentive to the Spirit is simultaneously manifold and whole:

Following the Lord and faithfulness to the gospel as the ultimate criterion of guidance in various historical situations;

Centrality of the person in God's plan as well as in the pastoral life of the Church;--structural flexibility that better serves people;

Recognition of diffeent gifts and sensibilities stemming from the one Spirit as source of mutual enrichment;

Communion in diversity in which pluralism becomes cordial welcome of the other in mutual recognition of our own limited gifts; dialogue as a way of being;

Awareness tha the fullness of potentialities innate within gifts and the monastic vocation, and each of us, does not reside in the past but in the future, in the work of the Lord still to be realized.

This makes us aware that the pluralism of expressions in the churches and monastic traditions does not pertain merely to the past but is constitutive of today, in line with the ecclesiology of communion outlines by the Council.
The "new monastic communities", Camaldolese and others, springing up during these decades in Italy and elsewhere, and inspired by various traditions, arre welcome interlocutors.
In a fertile dialogue between traditions and innovation, a reciprocal enrichment at the service of Gospel and church will result.
Radicality in tradition and openness to the future constitute the naturla basis for an authentic dialogue in the ecumenical and interreligious field, and in the relations with men and women of every origin and in sincere seach for values and meaning. Perhaps this is why a greater number of laypeople approach monastic communities in a spirit of sincere friendship and reciprocal welcome.