Rebirth requires learning /13 - The transformation of a charisma in the organisational phase, from the founder's first generation to the second
by Luigino Bruni
published in Città Nuova on 21/02/2025 - From the Città Nuova magazine, n.9/2024
The Bible is a composite of many things together. It is also a great map for times of crisis and community transition. I'm talking about the whole Bible, especially its prophets, who are the model for every charisma, because to understand community founders and their movements there is no better paradigm than that of the biblical prophets.
The book of the prophet Daniel is a complex text, dominated by the dreams and interpretations that Daniel manages to find for his own dreams and those of others. In general Daniel has a great ability for the exegesis of dreams. However, there is one vision, that of the he-goat-unicorn, that Daniel is unable to decipher, despite the help he receives from Gabriel, the angel-interpreter. In fact, at the end of the vision he writes, ‘I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. [...] I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding’ (Daniel 8:27). Sometimes prophets understand their visions, at other times they don't.
Unlike false prophets, true prophets are not able to interpret all the visions they receive from God, because they are not the masters of their dreams, they are not technicians with ready-made solutions for every problem. This inability of prophets to interpret certain dreams also applies to the dreams of the form of collective prophecy consisting of communities and movements born of charismas and founders: the founder is not the only prophet, the whole community shares in the prophetic gift.
In the phase of transition from the founder's generation to the next, it is frequent and normal for communities to be unable to interpret the visions, both those of yesterday and the (rarer) ones of today. Two operations become difficult: (a) to interpret today the dreams and visions that the founder had yesterday, (b) to decipher the new dreams that keep coming. This double difficulty hides much of the secret that allows movements born in the twentieth century to continue their charismatic journey today. Let's see how.
In fact, a real paradox occurs. A charisma comes to earth to realise a word, different and new, even if it is already present in the tradition. This word is announced and experienced in the first generation as the dawn of a bright day, which then continues and in some way is fulfilled only in future generations. But it often happens, if not always, that when that word begins to be truly fulfilled, the community that yesterday had understood it, when it was still an announcement, today is no longer able to interpret yesterday's prophetic ‘dream’. It becomes afraid, discouraged, it experiences collective disappointment, and is unable to understand its dream while it is being realised.
It is much easier to understand it when it is announced as a future project, but as soon as it begins to be realised in history something very similar to what Daniel experienced happens: ‘I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days’, precisely because he could not understand his vision. The vision had been given to him, but it was he himself who did not understand it. Often one remains ‘worn out’ for many years, decades, until something happens, which doesn't always happen: a reform or a new light that is lit somewhere in the community.
Let's think, for example, of a charisma that came to shed new spiritual light on the abandonment of Jesus and his death. In the founding phase, when everything speaks of light and life, Jesus' abandonment on the cross is clear, fascinating and luminous. The founder and all the members of his community understand the heart of the charisma, that is, that ‘God is there where he isn’t there’, that there is light in the darkness, that the Risen One is already in the Crucified One, that there is a mysterious but true value in diminishing, in becoming little. Then the decades pass, the founder dies, the community shrinks, they become less powerful, less strong, smaller, more fragile, and that reality announced yesterday in the light of dawn begins to fade.
In reality, if we were able to interpret the dream correctly, we would have to say that the charisma is finally being fulfilled just as we are becoming small and fragile, but what was fascinating when it was first announced, now, in its fulfilment, is no longer understood and is only frightening. One cannot see the dawn within the dusk, because that collective body that is finally getting to embody its own charisma cannot look at itself from outside and from afar, which is the only vision that would allow it to truly understand what is happening.
This is the time when we must return to the Bible, to its prophets, and use their essential maps to take a look at the real story that is being written, from outside and from above. To continue the race.