Suchergebnisse

Issue 25.2 of the Review for Religious, 1966. ; Sanctification through Obedience by Charles A. Scldeck, C.S.C. 161 Decree on the Eastern Catholic Church~ by Vatican Council II 235 The Church's Holiness and Religious Life by Gustave Martelet, ~q.J. 246 Division of a Province by Albert A, Reed, C.PP.S. 269 The Young Religious and His Poverty by William M. Barbieri, S.J. 288 Religious Rule and Psychological Development by John W. Stafford, G.S.V. 294 Obedience and Subsidiarity by Kevin D. O'Rourke, O.P. 305 Religious Censorship of Private Communications by James Gaffney, S.J. 314 Survey of Roman Documents 320 Views, News, Previews 324 Questions and Answers 330 o Book Reviews 335 CHARLES A. SCHLECK, C.S.C. Sanctification through bedi en ce In the mind of the early Christians the practice of obedience was always considered as somehow or other essential, as necessarily included in their response to God's prevenient redeeming love. A study of the New Testament would reveal that obedience was seen as col-lective; it was an obedience that centered around the submission of the Ghurch to Christ. The members' of the Church, the earthly body of the glorified Christ, were on a voyage during which they were called upon to obey their guide, Christ speaking to them especially through the authorities he had established in the Church.x They considered themselves to be under the authority of the new commandment of charity, such that the accomplish-ment of this commandment included the accomplish-ment of all the others.~ They saw the primary exemplar of their life of Christian obedience in the person of Christ Himself. Every work of His life, all His life, is an ¯ act of obedience to the will of His Father.8 Since they considered that all authority came from God4 they were to obey not merely out of fear but from conscience or for the Lord,~ unless this authority attempted to abuse the power that had been given it. Slaves were to obey their masters,~ wives their husbands,7 children their parentsS; yet all were to love Christ even more. In short, according to the New Testament, any life that was truly Christian had to be filled and impreg-nated with obedience of one sort or another, obedience to God, to Christ, to the Church, to the state, to parents, 1 Heb 13:7. ~ Gal 5:14. SLk 22:42; Jn 17:4; Phil 2:8; Rom 5:19; Mt 9:13; 26:52. '.Mr 22:15 ft.; Rom 13:5. Sl Pt 2:13 ft. e Eph 6:5; Col 8:22. ~ 1 Cot 11:3 ft. SEph 6:1; Col 3:20. Father Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C., is a faculty member of Holy Cross Col-lege; 4001 Hare-wood Road N.E.; Washington,. D.C. 10017. VOLUME 25, 1966 161 + + + c. A. $chleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS to a husband, and so forth. Its characteristic mark was that it be shown to any.of these as to the Lord. It was this which g.ave concrete expressions of obedience their unity. From this it would seem that the entire Christian life in its ensemble was considered to be obedience. For everything in it was thought of as an implicit or formal accomplishment of the divine authoritative will speak-ing through the various organs capable of its revela-tion. The application of obedience for the early Chris-tians, if we are to judge from New Testament writings, was as vast as was the field of charity. In fact any and all obedience was considered as being the fulfillment o? charity in its diverse forms. Once an action was seen as necessary for the life of charity and recognized as such by the moral conscience, it became an obligation in virtue of the obligatory character of the precept of charity.9 It was seen not merely in the light of what we would call the virtue of justice but rather in the light of charity, and as such entered into the theologal life o( the Christian. It was a vital human activity of which God Himself was the object and the motive, and in the perfecting of which God was coactive. It was the life of grace in faith, hope, and love, and as such brought about a personal relationship with God.1° On the other side of the coin, those who were called to exercise authority in the Church were to do so as a service to the community, and this in imitation of the Lord who came not to be served but rather to serve,xl The disciples were chosen by Christ and sent to the children of Israel first and then to all the nations12 so that as sharers in His power they might make all peoples His members by sanctifying them and governing themAz They were given the task of ministering to it always under the guidance of the Lord and of guiding it or di-recting it all days even to the consummation of the world.~4 They were called upon to take up the service of the community, presiding in place of God over the community as shepherds of the flock of Christ; whoever listened to them listened to Christ; and whoever re-jected them, rejected Christ and Him who sent Christ, the FatherJ5 The ministry which these men were to exercise was threefold: the ministry of teaching sound 9See K. Truhlar, s.J., "L'ob6issance des la'ics," in La[cs et vie chrdtienne parfaite (Rome: Herder, 1963), p. 245. tOE. Schillebeeckx, O.P., Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), p. 16, nQte 14. u Mk 10:45; see also Y. Congar, O.P, Power and Poverty in the Church (Baltimore: Helicon, 1964), pp. 98-9. tO Rom 1:16. tO Mt 28:16-20; Mk 16:15; Lk 24:45-8; Jn 20:21-3. 1~ Mt 28:20. ~Lk 10:16. doctrinele; the ministry o[ sancti[ying17; and the ministry of. governing.~8 It is clear from this that authority is not used correctly whenever it turns into despotism or domi-nation, ae It is meant to be a service of love and in love (agap6) to the community, or a prelacy in the sense of supervision and surveillance for the unification of the community,s0 When we shift our gaze to the "first religious," the fathers of the desert (I think that we can trace the com-munal practice of obedience to this era), we see that for them obedience was one piece in a multitude of things which the ascetic had to be ready to assume in "leaving the world" to test his courage and strength against the temptations of the desert. The reason why this was de-manded was that the heart of an individual was so con-taminated by concupiscences of various kinds that he wo.uld be considered rash if in attempting to reach the perfection of the following of Christ he did not rely on or seek the direction of others in a spirit of humility. Obedience was considered as merely a kind of corollary of a frank soul testifying to its confidence in a spiritual master from whom advice was sought. It was an element of interior perfection and could almost have been re-duced to the practice of humility as a means of putting to death whatever was inordinate in the self-will of an individual. This desire to "follow Christ radically" was not what we often imz'gine it to be--a purely personal and inti-mate relationship with Christ. In the spirituality of the father of the monks, Antony, the "following of Christ" embraced a form that we would find extremely inter-esting today, Despite the apparent paradox, the imitation of Christ by the first hermits was essentially social. The first goal of those who gave themselves to this way of life was fraternal charity. And they were always pre-pared to see to its observance whenever khis was neces-sary. z~ Those who quickly gathered around Antony did so in an attempt to find the life of the primitive Church, a perfect fraternity, totally subject to the will of the as 2 Tim 4: I ft. 1~ Mt 28:19; 2 Cor 3:8--9. as I Pt 5:2 ft.; Acts 20:28. as Mk 10:42; Lk 22:25. ~o For all his insistence on the role of authority as ministry or service, Paul also referred to it as having power to make decisions; it is not simply a tool of the governed; see, for example, 1 Cor 7:10, 12,17; 2 Cor 10:8; 2 Th 3:9; Phm 8. The hierarchy has been es-tablished for service which includes teaching, ministry, and govern-ment. This service is in view of the community, in view of building up the Church to the glory of the Father. See P. Anciaux, L'dpiscopat darts l'Eglise (Bruges: Descl~e de Brouwer, 1963), pp. 56-7. a Antony returned to Alexandria to serve the Christians perse-cuted for their faith and serving in the mines. 4. + + Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 163: ÷ ÷ C. A. Sehleek, C.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 164 Lord, moving in perfect unity and harmony towards the second coming. This trend was merely more fully in-tensified the more cenobitical these groups became. In the beginning when men came together to live in common, and to follow the teaching of a master and to incorporate themselves more completely into a com-munity of worship and love, the practice of obedience was not regulated by any positive or organic legislation 'as it is today. In fact from the juridical and moral view-point it is difficult to sa~ whether or not the first cenobites were even considered to have vowed obedience to a spiritual father. From all the documentary evidence we have at our disposal it would seem as though the prac-tice of vowed obedience came in with the advent of St. Benedict upon the monastic scene. Yet the practice of obedience for all, hermits and cenobites, appears to have always remained fundamentally the same in its ends or goals. It was always regarded as an instrument for achieving Christian perfection (1) by imitating the ex-ample of the Divine Redeemer and His sacrifice, and (2) by bringing all into unity to constitute a community of worship and love.22 These basic eler~en~s and motives which marked the obedience of the first "religious" should also mark the contemporary practice in religious communities of to-day. The love of Christ, the following of His obedience to the Father, the practice of faith and humility, the desire for ecclesial unity, all of these form the very heart and core of all religious obedience regardless of epoch, place or form, or embodiment. There is, however, one difference that seems to stand out rather clearly in comparing the practice of obedience of modern com-munities with that of their earlier counterparts. And tfiat is~ the functional character of the obedience of the former in contrast with the domestic character of the latter.2n There should be no astonishment at this difference once we consider the environment in which the Bene-dictine life was established. It was set up within the framework of the notion of the Roman paterfamilias who had a rather complete control over those subject to himself, not only the slaves and workers but even over the members of his own immediate family, his wife and his children. For Benedict there was first of all in the monastic ideal, obedience; in fact, we might say there was nothing but obedience. As the Prologu~ of' m R. Carpentier, S.J., "Vers une th~ologie de la vie religieuse," in La vie religieuse darts l'Eglise du Christ (Bruges: Descl~e de Brouwer, 1964), pp. 65-71. m For these expressions, domestic and ]unctional, see J. Leclercq, The Religious Vocation (New York: Kenedy, 1955), pp. 134-5. the Rule states: "Hearken O my son, to the precept of your master, and incline the ear of your heart; willingly receive and faithfully fulfill the admonition of your loving Father, that you may return by the labor of obedience to Him from whom you had departed through the sloth of disobedience., so that renouncing your own will you will take Up the strong and bright weapons of obedience."~4 And again in Chapter 5 the Rule states: "Those who are impelled by the ardent desire of ascending to eternal life for that reason take the nar-row .way.n6t living by their own will or obeying their own desires and pleasures, they walk in accordance with the judgment and command of another; living in communities they desire to be ruled by an abbot." ~5 From the very beginning the Rule of St. Benedict speaks of the abbot who stands in the place of God. And after this it speaks of obedience, the first among the virtues, and of humility which begets obedience. Yet for all this emphasis on obedience, the Rule also indicates quite clearly its norm: the Rule itself. A very definite limitation was placed on the powers of the abbot, which is often forgotten. There was a sense in which the abbot had all the power, and there was another sense in which he had only that power given to him by the Rule. His mission was to make sure that the Rule was observed. But hd had no power to oblige any service not in accordance with the Rule. Moreover, Benedictine obedience was lived within the framework of the monastery. It was a kind of do-mestic obedience, to use an expression. It was obedience within the life of the family and was given to a superior who was always present. It was a hearkening to the voice of him who gave orders. It was an obedience that left what one was doing unfinished as soon as the voice made itself heard. Because it was domestic, Benedictine obedience was very profoundly human. In the monastery the relationship was that of person to person with the flexibility that is to be found in human relations. It did not have the more or less abstract character and regimentary appearance which it took on in later times due to its change in operation. This same interpersonal dimension of monastic or domestic obedience can be seen throughout Benedict's legislation as is evident from the following excerpts: Whenever any weighty matters are to be transacted in the monastery, let the abbot call together the whole community and make known the matter which is to be considered. Hav-ing heard the brethren's views let him weigh the matter with himself and do what he thinks best. It is for this reason that Prologue, Rule oI St. Benedict, § 1. Rule o] St. Benedict, Chapter 5. - 4. 4. ObedienCe VOLUME 25, 1966 165 REV1EWFOR RELigIOUS 166" we said that all should be called for counsel, because the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best. Let the brethren, however, give their advice with humble submission and let them not presume stubbornly to defend what seems right to them, for it must depend rather on the abbot's will so that all obey him in what he considers best. Bu~ as it becomes disciples to obey their master, so also it becomes the master' to dispose all things with prudence and justice. Therefore let all follow the Rule as their guide in everything, and let no one rashly depart from it . Let no one in the monastery follow the bent of his own heart, and let no one dare to dispute insolently with his abbot, either inside or outside the monastery. If any one dare do so, let" him be placed under the correction of the Rule . Let the abbot himself, however, do everything in the fear of the Lord, and out of reverence for the .Rule, knowing that beyond doubt he will have to give an account to God the most just Judge for all his rulings. If however, matters of'less importance having to do with the welfare of the monastery are to be treated of, let him use the counsel of the seniors only, as it is written: Do ~ill things with counsel, and thou shalt not. repent when thou hast done.~ From the moment when congregations or groups of men and women began to exercise apostolates and chari-table works that took them away from the immediacy of the monastery and the contemplative life, obedience began to. assume a different appearance. It became what we might call more functional in operation than do-mestic.: It began to center more and more around the beginnin~ of an action or task than around the actual manner in which it 'was to be carried out. We can say that it came into action when the course or activity was undertaken, leaving to the subject the manner in which it was to be carried out. The superior was free to fix the limits of the task but once the work was started, the religious was left free, at least to some extent, to follow his own initiative. Yet for all this personal initiative on the part of the subject, the entire work and not merely the task assigned was said to come under obedi-ence. I suppose that we find this practice of obedience rather clearly crystallized in the Jesuit approach to this element of religious life. Wishing to form men for service to the Church in all and every circumstance of its life and needs, Ignatius abandoned many forms and observances which were characteristic up to that time. In regard to obedience he attempted to give his fol-lowers a personal formation that would enable them to preserve their religious character and ideals without many of the external supports that were found in the monastic version of the religious life. His religious were to have such a strong character formation that they would be able to manage without any support, would undertake any responsibility, and would remain faithful ~ Rule of St. Benedict, Chapte~ 5 and 3. to their vocation under any and all circumstances by reason of the depth of their interior life. Yet they would be so trained in obedience that they could be en-trusted with or relieved of any function or activity at any given moment or sent to the ends of the earth with-out previous warning or explanation. As we can see, such obedience might seem to be less human to a certain extent, less interpersonal than that of the monastic version.2~ Yet it is not less radically detached. In fact, it is even more detached than that of the monastic type. For a Jesuit, ideally, can have no other attachment .than to the will of God and to His glory which is represented by an obedience the object of which is frequently that of undertaking rather serious responsibilities. He must be ready for every responsibility and yet at the same time be ready to give up without delay or discussion work to which he may have devoted, himself unreservedly for years. And quite recently Pope Pius XII asked them to continue to form their men in this same spirit of obedi-ence. 2s This form of functional obedience has been the state-ment of this practice of the religious life for most reli-gious communities since the arrival of the Jesuits. The only other development that has come on the scene in recent years is its statement or expression within the framework of secular institutes. Here a more free type of obedience is exercised, but basically it would seem to be merely an extension of the functional obedience which we have just described, From this it should be clear that evangelical obedience or religious obedience as well can be and has been em-bodied in different expressions or statements. These are or have been brought on by the demands of the Church peculiar to different epochs. Yet as we shall see later on in ~ Ignatius was quite understanding of his religious. When Father Nadal entered the Society at about the age of thirty-five Ignatius gave him a particularly pleasant room, had him dine with himself frequently, took him out walking, and chatted with him quite fre-quently. When. asked why, he answered that a temperament like Nadal's had to be treated with a soft touchl It is also recorded of him that he said on one occasion: "I have a great desire for a general indifference in all; and so presupposing obedience and ab-negation on the part o[ the subject, I find it very good to ]ollow his inclinations." When he wished to send one out to study or to a distant assignment or give him some rather heavy task he examined the person to find out what he was most inclined to; and then, if he found an obedient man, accommodated himself to his inclina-tions. See E. Polit, S.J., Per[ect Obedience (Westminster: Newman, 1947), p. 160. ~ Address to the General Congregation, 1957: "The form of gov-ernment in the Society is monarchical and is embodied in the de-cisions of a single superior" (The States oI PerIection, ed. G. Courtois [Westminster: Newman, 1962], p. 300). ÷ ÷ ÷ Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 167 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the article, for all these different expressions, in essence. and in its fundamental .outlines the practice of obedi-ence in all institutes of perfection remains the same. Its theology has in no wise changed.29 For all the cornerstone force, for all the excellence ~which the practice of. obedience has in the long tradition of the life of the counsels, there is no problem which present~ so many and so varied difficulties in our con-temporary religious life. I believe that if we were .to analyze the problem, trying to get at its roots or sources whence these difficulties come, we would find them to be several: the spirit of our times; certain trends in spiritu-ality, certain embodiments of authority and obedience,. and a misunderstanding of the theology of obedience. Each of these demands something of an explanation. Firstof all there is the "spirit of our times," or the civilization and historical epoch in which we live. This is characterized by an ever growing democratization of men and institutions. In such an environment the ideal that seems to be uppermost for many is that of "team. Work" or fraternal collaboration or a "democratic obedi-ence," in which if there is any authority whatsoever, this authority comes from the group in such a way that the leader more or less merely interpre~ or reflects the consensus or the mind of the group 'and acts as their spokesman .and is responsible before them. In fact, the idea that there can be an authority that comes from God rather than from the g~oup, an authority which-is superior to a group even though serving it and ordered to the common good, an authority that is not merely a servile instrument but the sign of ruling that is the power of the kingdom of God, an authority that is a service responsible primarily to God, all this is rather difficult for the youth coming to us today to under-stand. So Moreover, the spirituality of our day with its marvel-ous possession of a deeper psychological understanding of the workings of men and women, its recognition of ~Much of the current agitation regarding obedience and au-thority--- often generating more heat than light in our era of "stress writing"--is really an attempt to recover various aspects of this institution already found in previous embodiments; for exam, ple, (1) the dialogue" and communication ideal of Benedictine monasticism; (2) the functional ideal of the Society of Jesus; (3) the authority-service ideal of the New Testament. Bu( when any ~f these aspects is stressed (and the same is true of abnegation) so that it is seen outside of the total context of obedience-authority, it can cause a myopia which is disastrous to the overall picture. It is this exaggerated preoccupation with one or other element of obedience-authority out of due proportion that-is causing many of our problems today. .~Paul'VI, Address to the General Audience, July 14, 1965, NCWC Documentary News Service. man's intelligence, its cult of the dignity of the human person, its insistence on man's initiative and free re-sponse to God ir; facing the tasks of life, all this has set of[ without intending to, of course, a reaction against obedience and authority, at least for the moment, rather than a perfecting and balancing of it as originally in-tended. Again, a study of history shows quite clearly that down through the centuries there have been dit~erent .embodiments or statements of authority even within the Church. And this same study will show that some of the images of authority in history are not always faithful to its God-intended purpose and, therefore, not very felici-tous and certainly not to be clung to or defended,sl As a result of thes~facts and trends, the charge has been resounding for over ten years that obedience, espe-cially religious obedience, imperils the human dignity of the person, that it hampers or even goes counter to the development of human personality, that it stands be-tween him and God or interferes with his immediate and direct~relationship with God, that it creates weak and passive spirits not capable of meeting the chal-lenges of our times, that it affords a haven where persons afraid to face the world or assume responsibility can come to anchor. It is also argued that corpse-like obedi-ence is not even human, let alone religious. For human obedience should place all the capacities of man at the service of obedience. Consequently, it must be active and intelligent. While passive obedience (the kind so often reflected in the older ascetical writings usually intended for novices and contemplative religious) might be fitting for a very young child (although even this is questioned) since it is not yet capable of using its reason fully, the case of the adult is quite different. The latter's obedience must be mature, therefore, active and intelligent; otherwise it goes counter to the very nature of the human person. And so the plea has been raised again and again: more independence, initiative, and responsibility must be given to subjects. Efficiency can be achieved only when as much discretion and liberty as possible is left to sub-ordinate members. Professionals within the Church will do their best work in a situation where they have as much freedom and self-respect as possible. Thus, au-thority today must be exercised in a much more "fra- ~ Ibid.: "Experience and history offer us a unique picture of the images of authority which are not always faithful and not always happy ones. It is necessary to deepen the idea of the authority of the Church, to purify it of forms which are not essential to it (even if in given circumstances they we're legitimate, for example, temporal power) and to return to its original and Christian prin-ciple." Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 169 + 4. 4. C. A. Schleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 170 ternal,' sort of way, that is, in a way that is characterized by stable and purposeful involvement at.each level.32 It is because this has not been true enough in past years that we face a "crisis," not so much in regard to obedi-ence as rather in regard to authority today.3~ This is obviously only a very brief amalgam of the various ideas being circulated today. And what lends color and force to them is the fact that some of these things can and do happen and certainly have happened both in the Church and in religious communities even though they perhaps have happened elsewhere and are happening elsewhere in greater proportion. "Experience and history offer us images of authority which are not always faithful and are not always happy ones." a4 These gources of difficulty have given rise to still another, one more basic and fundamental and more crucial---the theological principles involved in the prac-tice of obedience. These are sometimes rather poorly misunderstood or distorted, not willingly or intentionally to be sure, but simply by over-preoccupation or concen-tration on some elements to the neglect of others. And one thing is certain--we are not allowed to exaggerate one element of a rather complex reality out of due proportion. If we do, we simply shift our error to an-other side. To avoid tilting at windmills we would do well to go back to the basic principles involved in the practice of obedience. This is necessary for both su-periors and subjects. On the one hand, religious obedi- =A. Greeley, "Fraternal Authority in the Church," Homiletic and Poztoral Review, v. 64 (1963-4), pp. 563-5. Some would go so far as to suggest a liberation from every form of juridical prescrip-tion by substituting the simple law of charity and reducing rules to an indispensable minimum. The problem is a minimum for what vocation and function in the Church? =As Father Gambari remarked: "Some think religious are less inclined to obey today. I do not think that this can be said without any qualification. There is a great generosity and spirit of sacrifice among them, and a deep desire to work for the good of their neighbor. But they do wish to obey with greater liberty, spon-taneity and intelligence. They are anxious to base their obedience on reason, not in the sense that they will obey only if the motives and scope of the command are reasonable but rather in the sense that the problem of obedience is seen in a little different light. In the past obedience was presented and practised with insistence on the negative aspect of self-renunciation or death to one's own will. Today we speak of obedience as perfecting the religious. Thus youth wish to seek in obedience the means of becoming associated to the action of God . Again it is true that religious wish Su-periors who do not only hold authority from God, but who know how to use it as God Himself does. It is this which lies at the basis of so much discussion of the following topics: obedience and formalism; obedience and liberty; authority and liberty; obedience and peisonality development; obedience and personal initiative and responsibility" (Proceedings o] 1958 Sisters" Institute o] Spirituality [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1959], pp. 137, 150-1). ~ Paul VI, Address to the General Audience, July 14, 1965. ence will be retarded in its spiritual effects to the degree that its theology is not known or is neglected. A superior cannot govern properly unless she understands why obedience confirmed by v6w enjoys the place it always has had in religious life. On the other~ hand, a religious subject will obey .constantly with spiritual profit to herself, the commufiity, and the Church and in an adult manner to the extent that she is convince~n all levels of her personality, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritualZ-of the reasons for the existence, practice, and importance of obedience in her state of life. The real question will then be seen to be not whether there is to be authority and obedience, but whether the cur-rent ways of exercising it are suited to the present condi-tion of the Church. As Pope Paul mentioned: "It is necessary to deepen the idea of authority in the Church, to purify it of forms which are not essential to it (even if in given circumstances they were legitimate, such as, for example temporal power) and to return it to its original and Christian principles." 35 ~ The danger in periods like our own where there is much questioning even to the point of a liberating disobedience is that the very foundations of an institu-tion will be weakened. Yet 'I believe that if we know how to read the designs of providence correctly, we can ~?egard this questioning as an invitation to advance and to grasp more firmly the foundations which might seem to be threatened and to use the very difficulties them-selves as an occasion to commit ourselves all the more profoundly to our own religious dedication. In this way both superiors and subjects will come out of these diffi-culties more deeply rooted and more fully developed. To live in the light it is usually necessary to pass through dark nights136 The treatment that I will follow in ,. approaching this problem or topic will be quite similar to that which was followed in regard to poverty and virginity: (1) obedi-ence in general; (2) what religious obedience adds to the practice of obedience in general; (3) the aims of religious obedience; (4) the qualities of religious obedience; (5) the fruits of religious obedience; and (6) some practical suggestions. The Virtue of Obedience in General The nature of obedience as a virtue might well be defined as follows: a natural or supernatural (dependi-ng upon its source and objective) disposition or bent or ~ Ibid, ~See J. Laplace, S.J., "Education to Obedience," in Religious Obedience ,and the Exercise o! Authority, "Donum Dei," v. 3 (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Religious Conference, 1961), p. 68. (Hereafter this work will be cited as "Donum Dei" 3.) Obedience VOLUME'25, 1966 . 171. C. A. Schleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS inclination or, better still, per[ectant of the faculty of the will which disposes a person to habitually submit himseff or herself to another's decision in reference to ¯ those things or areas in which this other has authority or decision-making power over one.~7 For example, in civil or domestic matters, a mayor or a governor or a president or a father or a mother has authority and ~The idea of virtue occupies a central position in moral and spiritual theology. A virtue is a dynamism or perfectant which does not create some automatic reflex type of reaction in situations. This would diminish the moral tonality of the action. No, a virtue is a good perfectant or dynamism that is operalive. It gives" the capacity for a power of action to accomplish the maximum of what it can accomplish. It is an active quality or perfectant that disposes one to produce the maximum of what he can on the moral and spiritual level. A natural virtue is acquired by the repetition of interior acts of the intellect and the will and therefore demands human effort. It is marked by the following qualities: (1) It is a constant disposi-tion of person. The repetition of victory over the passional dynam-ism or the other faculties, the will for example, on the part of the intelligence and reason engenders in the person a certain mastery which nothing can destroy save a change in the will of the individ-ual. (2) It gives promptitude and facility in action. This is the effect of the perfect ordination and unification of the interior principles of action of man where each elemeut enjoys its proper role. The reason and the will command and direct, and the sensibility obeys their impulse making its own contribution. It does away with the internal dissension that could so"easily destroy its function. (3) It gives joy in action, a triumphant joy that issues from the creation of a personal perfection. (4) It is acquired by education, respecting the personality of the persoia concerned. (5) It very often requires thee help o[ another and of discipline. We must insist more on the necessity of education to natural virtue, for it is only the intense presence o~: these ~perfectants and dynamisms in our human per-sonality that will make possible and facilitate the exercise of the so-called infused virtues given with grace. Today there is an excess of personal[sin rather current. Under the pretext of respecting the personality o17 another one does not dare intervene in his moral formation, for to do so would be to impose constraints on him; there is rejected any and all discipline which would impose itself on him, this being prompted by the apparently liberal project of leaving free play to the spontaneity of the individual, of placing entire confidence in the personality of each one. What happens is that'one often abandons others, especially the young, to themselves and their inexperience. One leaves them to the winds of moral mal-formation, to a spiritual life that is rather superficial, subjected to incessant agitation and changes of sentiments that are without much real depth. So many of those advocating this type ol: new formation were just a few years back the most rigid of personalities. This in itself should make us a little cautiotis in regard to any wholesale adoption of this thinking. Education to virtue is a difficult task and a complex one. It exacts the employment of authority and a pro-found respect for those one is educating, much understanding and finesse, and a firm will. One must beware of abusing authority and ofa liberalism which neglects its use: Only intelligent and prudent love for the one being educated will permit the discovery of this formula. See S. Pinckaers, O.P., "La vertu est tout autre chose qu'uhe habitude," Nouvelle revue thdologique, v. 82 (1960), pp. 387- 403. decision-making power over those under him or her in relation to certain actions. Obedience, therefore, is a natural or supernatural perfectant of the will which makes a person prompt in fulfilling the decisions of the one entrusted with this duty and service. By its very ¯ nature, negatively speaking, it involves a surrender of one's will, in a sense, in a given area of action. It means submission to another and implies a risk. For it means the channeling of efforts and energies in the direction marked out by the one charged with the de-cision- making, and this could go contrary to one's per-sonal tastes.and inclinations. As a result the practice of obedience requires submission to the command of another, inability to exercise, independent choice con-trary to the command given; therefore, it implies an evident restriction of freedom in action. If we concentrate only on these negative implications (and necessary ones to be sure)of obedience, it would be easy for us to conclude that some of the objections mentioned above are correct. Obedience could be seen merely as an obstacle to .self-fulfillment, to personal de-velopment; it could be viewed as a violation of personal dignity, even perhaps a kind of profanation of the charismatic spirit which is in each one to lead him to his or her perfection. For this reason, it is all the more necessary to see the positive side of the virtue of obedi-ence, and that is that it is a free and voluntary giving or snrrender or submission of one's person (will) to the decision-making duty and service (command) of a.: su-perior or one charged with the common good. As such, it is an action very much in conformity with our human dignity and self-mastery and quite capable of leading to our self-fulfillment, especially when it is motivated cor-rectly by the spirit of love. The basis of obedience is the very structure of society which requires authority at the service of the com-munity or the common good. This is God-willed and God-intended. There exists no authority except from God.as As John Chrysostom explains this: "Does this mean that every ruler is appointed by God? I do not say that, for I am not dealing now with individual rulers but with authority itself. What I say is that it is the divine wisdom and not mere chance that has or-dained that there should be government, that some should command and others obey." 29 God has willed that in the plan of leading men back ,to Himself ulti-mately, some should be subject to others, not because of any superiority of talent necessarily, whether this be intellectual or spiritual or social or administrative, but ~ Rom 13:1. ~In Epist. ad Rom., c. 13, hom. 23, P.G., v. 60, col. 615. Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 . A. SchlCec.$k.,~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS merely because God has given one person authority or decision-making power over others, even though He may .have done 'this using very human means and per-sons and even political maneuvering to designate this person. Authority is not to be thought a~ lacking all control. Since it is the power to decide or command according to right reason, it must derive its obligatory force from the moral order which has God for its firgt source and final end. If it can oblige men in conscience it is only because it is intrinsically related with the authority of God and shares in it. By this principle the dignity of men is protected. "As men they are equal (and as Christians also, if they are such), but as superior and inferior they are not equal, they are not on the same plane. To one God has given the service of commanding in the realization of His will and to others He has given the service of obeying. When in fact men obey their lawfully constituted rulers when "they rightfully exercise their authority, it is not at all men they obey. "It is God," as Pope John pointed out, "the provident Creator of all things whom they rever-ence. through their obedience, since He has decreed that men's dealings with one another should be regu-lated, by an order which He Himsdf has established. And in showing this due reverence to God, we do not debase ourselves, but rather perfect and ennoble our-selves. For to serve God is to rule." 40 Since the right to command is required by the moral order and has its source in God, it follows that if au-thority (eVen civil) legislates for or allows anything that is contrar)~ to that order and therefore contrary to th~ will of God, neither the laws made nor the authoriza-tions granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens, since we must obey God 'rather than men. If this were not so, then autho~:ity would break down com-pletely and would result in or be open to shameful abuse. The net result of this would be the degradation of the human person.41 Obedience, then, does not regard so much the persoh in authority as rather the authority of the person in charge. For obedience is given not so much to a per-son as rather to a norm or set of societal laws or rules or norms or constitutions which this authority is called upon to safeguard. Yet to a certain extent obedience is given also to a person, that is, to God who incarnates Himself in this' set, of expressions when they fulfill the definition of law: an ordinance of reason established for ~o Pacem in terris, America Press edition, § 50, p. 18; also, §§ 46-9, pp. 17-8. ~a Ibid., § 51, p. 18. the common good, promulgated by one who has rightful authority.42 From what we have seen, it. should be evident that the purpose of authority is the common good; in fact, this comes from the very etymology of the word. It is derived from the Latin word "augere" which means to increase or foster or enlarge. It is. of the very nature of anyone in authority to make decisions and move people about or command their wills but only in the interest of the common good. Thus, the motivating force behind one in authority cannot be merely the good of the individual member but rather the overall common good of the group or society over which he or she has charge. This end, of course, does not exclude the good of the individual either. Rather it includes it, since the indi-vidual pertains to the group as a part pertains to the whole. Authority exists for the sake of those over whom it is set. It is a service to God and to th~ community and to the individual member of this community. As Pope John mentioned: Indeed since the whole reason for the existence of civil authorities is the realization of the common good, it is clearly necessary that in pursuing this objective, they should respect its essential elements, and at the same time conform their laws to the needs of a given historical situation . For the common good is intimately bound up with human nature. It can never exist fully and completely unless its intimate nature and realization being what they are, the human person is taken into account.~ Authority is established to develop and lead to per-fection and fulfillment the self-respect of the group and of each individual member of the group, to impress upon the group as well as each individual member the per-sonality which is proper to it and to them, a personality which is determined by the end or purpose for which the society exists. It is not set up to be an opportunity to exercise a lordship or dominion, or to receive respect or reverence or service. It is a ministry unto unity, even while it fosters diversity. It can readily be seen that excessive severity or ri-gidity on the part of authority originates from a false idea. It comes most often from an over-estimation of oneself on the part of the one in authority, or from pedagogical incompetence, or from the inability to han-dle individual persons, or perhaps even from some sense of inferiority in the face of the subordinates one has ' to command. It is for one or more of these reasons that ~ This point would seem to have some relevance for women since modern psychology reveals that often they find it somewhat more difficult to abstract from the concrete person involved in superior-subject relationships. ~ Pacem in terris, §§ 54-5, pp. 19-20. ÷ ÷ ÷ Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 175 ÷ ÷ ÷ C. A. SchCle.Sc.kC,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS authority often ends up?by having to work at a distance from its subjects rather than in close collaboration with them and leadership of them; and in so doing it fails to accomplish the full perfection df the task that is assigned to it--the bringing out in the society and the individual members¯ of it the personality or the personalities that are proper to it.44 While ,the initial success of obedience rests on the wise and efficient Use of authority---on government ac-cording to reason rather than merely by will--still it can also be said that the ultimate success of this institu-tion and the realization of the common good rests upon the harmonious cooperation and collaboration of those who are subject to this authority. Individuals and inter-mediate groups are obliged to make their specific contri-butions to the common welfare. Thus, one of the chief consequences of this is that these individuals or groups must bring their own interests into harmony with the needs o] the community, and they must dispose of their goods and of their services as the legitimate authorities prescribe in.accord with the norms of justice and within the limits or, their competence.4~ It is on!y in that society or community in which each member consents to do his part, and all his part, and nothing but his part (that is, not interfering with others) that everything will be correctly done. Such is true of the workings of the human body, and.~such, is true of the' working of an orchestra. For only when each one executes faithfully what is on the sheet of music before him will the entire piece be a perfect success. If one of the members of the orchestra departs from the score, not harmony but cacophony and discord will result. While it is true that not all the parts o(the orchestra have equally exciting or exhilarating functions to play, .still each of them has to be performed correctly it the end ot the orchestra is going to be achieved. There are some per-sons who play a.ll the time, and there are 'others who play only an occasional note here and there throughout the entire piece. Yet it this occasional note, small as it is in comparison with the whole, is not played exactly when and where it is to be played, the overall beauty of the music would be marred. Granted it is not very enticing or alluring to have to count out measure after meas6re without doing anything active, still each mere-a By "personality" I mean the'harmonious development of all the human and supernatural qualities of a person in subordination to the common good, to God, the lesser good being subordinated to the greater good. So understood, there is no conflict between the personality and obedience. There will at times be need for re-nunciation by an individual or small group, but this will be asked for the common good. See "Donum Dei" 3, pp. 194-5. ~ Pacem in teriis, § 53, p. 19. ber of the orchestra knows that this inconvenience must be endured, since the concert is not merely for th~ players but for the audience listening to it. A similar thing is true in the case of any society. F6r the good of the society is attained only when those under authority perfectly fulfill the tasks and offices and duties to which they are assigned--and as human beings---and when authority learns to utilize the experience and training and talents of those it commands in reference to the community endeavor. Thus, the power of au-thority can be defined as a power of cooi:dination guaranteeing the unity of a communitary plurality;, but. only in proportion to the consciousness with which each member of the community lives his function will the unity actually be achieved.46 From this it should be clear that a true concept of obedience and its correlative authority is far from the limited distortion so often emphasized in "stress writ-ing" today. It is a positive force for the fulfillment of men and women, of persons, but within the sphere of community as well as within the sphere of their, private world. A community in which the members have the proper respect for those in authority and willingly and intelligently carry out their specific functions and roles must necessarily be one in which tranquility reigns.4~ Authentic obedience liberates a person once and for all from his personal instability, sentimentality, and blind passions. It is a free and voluntary option which leaves the spirit open and receptive to many values which pre-sent themselves. The person who never makes such a choice and who never commits himself is less open, less broad-minded than one who has anchored his life to an obedience, seeing his life in and through it as a building directed by God. Yet for all this, such a relationship~ obedience-authority---does involve a struggle, one that includes very painful aspects because it disturbs very deep desires in men who are not as yet totally harmonized and humanized by the power of Christ's redeeming grace. Religious Obedience: What It Adds to Obedience in General Today it is most important that we show that obedi-ence is universal in character and belongs to the very life of the Church. It is, therefore, not entirely correct to call it the virtue of the monk "or of the religious. For obedience in a sense is just as absolute and obligatory for the layman as for the monk or religious even though ~A. Paoli, "Obedience," Cross Currents, v. 15 (1965), pp. 284-5. ~J. Aumann, "Current Trends," Cross and Crown, v. 17 (1965), pp. 347-8. Obedience " VOLUME 25, '1966 177 4. C. A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 178 there¯ are differences. This absoluteness of obedience even for the layman stems from the universal vocation of all who are baptized to holiness of life.48 Yet for all this we do find differences, in fact differences which serve to establish one in a different way of life within the Church. As Pope Paul mentioned in a recent allocution: It has seemed good to Us to recall here the priceless im-portance and necessary function of religious life; for this state of life which receives its distinctive character from profession of the evangelical counsels is a perfect way of life according to the example and teaching of Jesus Christ, especially since it is a state of life which keeps in view the constant growth of charity leading to final perfection. In other ways of life the specific ends, advantages, and functions, though legitimate in them- ¯ selves, are of a temporal character . Hence it follows that the profession of the evangelical vows is an augmentation of that consecration which is proper to baptism. It is a kind of special consecration which perfects the former one inasmuch as by it the follower of Christ totally commits and dedicates himself to God, thereby making his entire life a service to God alone.'~ When we come to determine these differences more precisely we would find them to be especially three: (1) it extends the practice of obedience; (2) it changes the end or, perhaps better, affects the end for which one obeys; and (3) it places us in a more direct contact with the will of God, than does life outside religion (this has to be understood cautiously). First, religious obedience extends the control of Church authority over the person who freely and voluntarily enters a religious society. For by entering, a woman freely, and let us hope joyfully, gives to the persons of her superiors and their decision-making power even that legitimate freedom of action and movement with regard to time and exterior lif~ which she enjoyed in the world. Consequently, the obligation or the moral imperative of the virtue of obedience is extended also ,s Paul VII Magno gaudio affecti, May 23, 1964; English trans-lation, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, V. 23 (1964), p. 699. But especially see the Constitution on the Church of Vatican Council II, Chapter 5 (English translation, REVIEW FO~ RELIGIOUS, V. 24 [1965], pp. 707-- ~ Paul VI, Magno gaudio affecti, as cited in the preceding foot-note. This difference is also indicated in the Constitution on the Church: "Since it is necessary thfft His followers should always imi-tate and give testimony to this charity and humility of Christ, the Church rejoices that there are to be found within her many men and women who closely follow and clearly show forth the self-emptying of the Savior, doing this by assuming poverty in the spirit of the freedom of the children of God and by renouncing their own wills. For the sake o[ God and with respect to what pertains to per-fection they make themselves subject to a man, going beyond the measure o[ what is commanded in order to be more lully con]ormed to the obedient Christ" (Chapter 5; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. v. 24 [1965], pp. 712-3). to meet these new acts which religious authority can now command according to the norms of the particular society or community involved. For as we mentioned above, a religious vows or promises obedience primarily to God within the framework of a society and its particu-lar or peculiar norm of life rather than to a person, even though the two ~ire in a sense identified whenever the person in authority commands according to the norm. In fact, it is this very extension of obedience which makes religious commitment today the difficult thing that it is for so many young girls. As Pius XII remarked in an address to the International Congress for the States of Perfection in 1950: If the number of candidates wishing to enter the enclosed gardens of the religious life is diminishing, especially among young women, the reason very frequently is that they find it difficult to divest themselves of their own judgment and sur-render their [reedom o[ action, as the very nature of the vow of obedience demands. Indeed some praise as the real peak of moral perfection, not the surrender of liberty for the sake of the love of Christ, but the curbing of such surrender. The norm to be preferred in the formation of a just and holy person would seem to be this: restrict liberty only where necessary; otherwise, give liberty free rein as far as possible. We by-pass the question whether this new foundation on which some are trying to build the edifice of sanctity will be as effective and as solid in supporting and augmenting the apostolic work of the Church as was the one which through fifteen hundred years has been provided by that ancient rule of obedience undertaken for the love of Christ. What is now of supreme importance is to examine this proposal thoroughly to disclose what lies concealed beneath the surface. This opinion, if care-fully considered not only fails to appreciate the nature of the evangelical counsel but it somehow twists it to a meaning in accord with its theory. No one is obliged to choose for himself the counsel of perfect obedience, which essentially is a rule of life whereby one surrenders the control of his own will. No one, we repeat, be it an individual or a group. They can if they wish conform to this new rule. But words must be under-stood and accepted according to .their obvious meaning, and if this norm is compared with the vow of obedience it surely does not possess the same supreme value, nor is it an adequate expression of the wonderful example recorded in Holy Scrip-ture: "He humbled Himself becoming obedient unto death." ~0 He therefore is himself deceived and deceives others who forgetting the propensities of the soul and the inspiration of divine grace, offers as a guide to one seeking advice about en-tering the religious state only that new norm. Hence if it is clear that the voice of God is calling someone to the heights of evangelical perfection without any hesitation he should be invited for the attainment of this lofty purpose to offer freely the sacrifice of his liberty as the vow of obedience demands, that vow, We proclaim, which the Church has through so many centuries weighed, has put to the test, has properly delineated and has approved. Let no one against his will be compelled to Phil 2:8. ÷ ÷ ÷ ObedienCe VOLUME 25, 1966 1'/9 ÷ ÷ C. A. $chleck, C.$.C. REVIEW,FOR REL]G|OU$ 180 this self-consecration; but if he does will it, let no one counsel him against it; above all let no one hold him bacL= Moreover, the end to Which the superiors of a re-ligious community are to lead the one presenting her-self to it is not merely a natural end, such as is true at least proximately of a natural society. The first or pri-mary role and duty of religious superiors is to lead their members or subordinates to intimate communion and union wiih God through the perfection of love or charity by way o~ personal assimilation and expression. No human society has this as its direct and primary end, whereas a religious society does not exist and can-not exist except ~or this purpose.~2 Thus the primary end of religious communities is to lead their members to "seek God solely and before anything else," 53 and this by the profession of the vows, especially that of obedience which is the most important and which in a sense in-cludes the others since we vow obedience to the consti-tutions which include the practice of the other two vows. And finally, religious obedience puts a subject into more direct and immediate contact with the will of God than any other framework of life. This was certainly the thought of Benedictine monasticism which regarded the abbot as the one who took the place of God ~or the monk so long as the abbot commanded according to the norms of the monastic community. And it also seems to be the normally accepted thinking of the magister-ium. In speaking to major superiors in 1958, Plus XII pointed out the place which religious superiors have in regard to the government of the Church: Beloved sons who by the suave designs of God's providence have been placed in .command of your members engaged in the quest of perfection, gathered as you are in Our presence, it is with uncommon joy that We salute you in the name of the Lord, as men chosen to be associated with Us--and in no mean capacity--in Our apostolic office. For as We said a few years ago in speaking to your members at the first General Congress of the States of Perfection, the religious state "has its existence and strength from its intimate connection with the end of the Church herself, which is to lead men to the attainment of holiness." And the Church, the Spouse of Christ, would not fully correspond to His will, nor would the eyes of men be raised to her in hope as to a "standard set up unto the nations" if there were not found in her some who, more by example than by word, are especially resplendent with the beauty of the Gospel. In this department of Our work, therefore, beloved Sons, We have taken you as associates of Our supreme o~ce, either directly by delegating to you through the Code of Canon ~ Canon Law Digest for Religious, v. 1 (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1964), pp. 91-2. ~ See footnote 49. The specific end of marriage is not.perfection or charity, at least so it would seem from this statement. ~ See Vatican Council II, Decree on Adaptation and Renewal of the Religious Lile, nos. 5--6; NCWC Documentary Service. Law some share of Our supreme jurisdiction, or by laying the foundations of your so-called "dominative power" by Our ap-proval of your rules and Constitutions. And so We have it very much at heart that you should exercise this authority of yours according to Our mind and that of the Church. It is with clear vision and turning neither to right nor to the left that Superiors should lead their subjects securely to eternal life by the safe way of truth, with firm leadership and if necessary with a strong hand. To quote the patriarch of those who, in the Western world, str~ve for evangehcal perfectmn: The A hot should neither teach nor establish nor command anything that is outside the teaching of the Lord.''~ It is because religious superiors in some way share in ecclesiastical authority that when they command in keeping with the norms of this authority they place us in contact with the will of God. This is why Pius had also a year previously rejected the argument against re-ligious obedience drawn from the alleged fact that the dependence of a religious upon his superior was con-trary to the supreme and direct dominion of God over conscience: To insist that a man depend on another even as to his personal life and activity--is not this to confer on the superior prerogatives which belong onl)~ to God? The Church has never defended nor approved such a contention. She regards obedi-ence as a means of leading man to God. Since the motive which inspires it is union with God and since the final aim of obedi-ence is growth in charity, the superior is by no means an obstacle standing between God and the subject and arrogating to himself the homage which is directed only to God. The superior can command only in the name of God and in virtue of the powers entrusted to him, and the subject is bound to obey only for the love of Christ, not for any motives of human advantage or convenience--and much less by mere constraint. Thus he will preserve even in the most complete submission the eager joy of renewing each day concretely his total consecration to the one supreme Master . Let us first recall the words of our Savior: "Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you . Learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls." ~ If our Lord thus invites men to take up His yoke, it is to teach them that beyond mere legal observance, which easily be-comes burdensome and hard to bear, they are to discover the meaning of true submission and Christian humility. Far [rom offending the dignity of one who submits, this will give him in-terior liberty and show him how to accept his state of subjec-tion, not as a constraint from without, but as a surrender of himself into the hands of God, whose will is expressed through the visible authority of those whose mission it is to command. The Superior for his part will use his powers in the same evangelical spirit: "He that is the greater among you, let him become the younger; and he that is leader as he that serves." ~ From this it should be clear that the superior has as ~ Allocution to Major Superiors, February 11, 1958; Canon Law Digest ]or Religious, v. 1, pp. 194-5. ~ Mt 11:28-9. ~Lk 22:26. See also the Address to the States o] Per]ection, December 9, 1957; Canon Law Digest for Religious, v. 1, pp. 132, 130. 4" 4" 4" Obedience VOLUME 25, 1"966' ' 181 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS her function the apostolic duty of mediating God's will to human minds. It is because she is the instrument whom God uses to make known His will to the sub-ject that she has the duty to listen to God herself, to seek the will of God and the directives of the Spirit in regard to the subject, even using the subject's communi-cation to her in seeking this out. If the subject is ex-pected to see Christ in her superior, then the superior also is expected to see Christ in the subject, for she is a member of the Body of Christ. As Christians they are equal, and it is possible for the subject to receive cer-tain lights and directives from the Holy Spirit.5~ Yet even these are subject to the final decision of those in authority when authority acts within its powers. Con-sequently, it is the duty of the subject to accept the fact that when authority has issued a command, it has also been listening to God's word and is not merely issuing a command for the exercise of power. With all this in mind it should be quite easy to grasp the statement that in a way the problem of obedience is simpler for the subject than for the superior. As far as the subject is concerned, obedience enjoys a kind of infallibility, such that the subject is never wrong in obeying when the superior operates within the limits of her powers. This, of course, has to be understood cor-rectly. A distinction must be made between the proxi-mate end and the remote end of a law. It is quite possible that in reference to the proximate end, the de-cision of the superior is not always the best. Yet with regard to the remote or ultimate end, this decision trans-mits infalliblY the will of God and the subject cannot make any mistake in obeying it. In giving a command or making a decision it is the general policy of superiors to be pursuing a proximate end or an immediate and definite purpose. A superior for example may give a, sub-ject a directive aimed at helping the subject improve in some area of her teaching or nursing. In such matters it is quite possible for the superior to make a mistake. ¯ She can tell the subject to take a certain kind of exercise and the subject incapacitates herself from doing ttiis. In regard to this, then, the immediate or proximate end, the superior can be quite fallible. But we can also con-sider the superior's decision in relation to its remote li:'l; end: to reveal to the subject the will of God in her re-gard, And this particular will of God is merely a part o[ the total plan of divine providence and government of mankind. ~We have a rather darkened and limited intellect and our range of vision is quite small. Thus we could very mVatican Council II, Constitution on the Church, Chapter 2, n. 12; R~vmw FOR RELmIOUS, V. 24 (1965), pp. 677-8. easily be mistaken when we pass judgment on some event or other. We can look at it as a failure when in reality it has many further nuances. We must remember that the total plan of God is a supremely harmonious one in which every detail is wisely provided for, willed or permitted by God. We see only a part of the overall plan and may easily think that talents and so on are quite wasted. Yet from God's viewpoint everything is quite clear and well ordered, and every detail is ac-cording to His plan. Thus an action decided on by a superior may very well result in failure on the human plane. In relation to its ultimate end, however,, it is willed or permitted, by God. Thus what seems a failure to our human shortsightedness is really a part of the great harmonious plan of God. And in this long-range view the apparent failure which contributes to the har-mony of the overall design is really a success. Thus the subject, failing according to our human approach and view through her obedience, is always fulfilling the authentic will of God. She contributes to the realization of the total divine plan and therefore cannot make a mistake. Her union with the divine will is infallible, in this sense. This does not mean that the superior cannot make a mistake in commanding or deciding. Far from it. It is possible in commanding or deciding that the stiperior gives evidence of incompetence, or ignorance, or pre-cipitation, or anger, even of malice. And we cannot pos-sibly consider any of these virtuous actions. It can be from the superior's point of view a mistake and even a sin, even a grave sin. But unless the superior commands a sinful action, the duty of the subject is to obey.as Thus the principle that we have been attempting to show still holds. The subject enjoys a kind of infallibility in the practice of obedience, which the superior does not necessarily enjoy. It is the great St. Teresa who was so convinced of this that she wrote: "Suppose the confes-sor makes a mistake, the safest way for a religious is to follow his direction exactly, even .though an angel of the Lord may have spoken to her (indicating a different direction). For our Lord will either enlighten his min, ister or arrange matters in such a way that this soul will not fail in obeying." 59 It is precisely the role of the vow of obedience to permit us to conform our will to God's in our least actions and at every moment of our ~sI shall clarify this at greater length when speaking .of the qualities of obedience. ~ Book o] Foundations in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Avila, ed. E. Allison: Peers, vo 3 (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951), p. 42. For a more complete treatment of this note of infallibility in obedience, see R. Morency, S.J., "The Ex~rcise of Authority in the Light of Present-Day Problems," "Donum Dei" 3, pp. 172-4. ÷ + ÷ VOLUME 25,. 1956 ]83 4. 4. + REV[EW FOR REL]G]OU5 life. In obeying, in fulfilling what is demanded by rule and constitutions and by superiors, the religious has the certainty (in faith, of course, as we shall see) of dbing exactly what God wants her to do at each moment of her life. By obedience she conforms her will to God's. What we have been discussing is based on the fol-lowing considerations. Christian thought has always recognized in ecclesiastical leaders the representatives of Christ. Yet we are not to .feel that the decisions of those in authority on any particular point are identical with the direct revelation of God's designs. Nor are we to conclude that the dedisions of those in authority are identical with those which Christ Himself. would make in simil~tr circumstances. (This would be to push the "mystique" of obedience beyond its limits.) The mem-bers of communities who are in authority are secondary causes and remain so.'Zhey act with such intelligence and competence and skill as God has given them or as they may have acquired with His talents and grace. He does not transform their imperfections and weaknesses into ggod qualities. It is true of course that He does compensate~ for them, but this is different. Yet it is in spite of these insufficiencies whether hidden or obvious that Christ continues to govern His Church through such agents. It is through them that He works out His plan of redemption. The true concept of obedience does not consist in believing that every decision imposed by those in au-thority is the only possible one in the circumstances, or the best in the absolute sense. The Church's infallibility is involved only in the order of the magisterium and not at all in the purely jurisdictional order. No doubt, of course, the Holy Spirit assists those in authority to pre-ser~, e them from making blunders in the exercise of their power. But the Holy Spirit has never promised to guaran-tee them against every blunder in the sphere of govern-ment. The possibility of erroneous decisions will always be with the Church (like certain of its other marksl). But one thing remains certain; nothing can shake it, not even the possibility of error: God wants us to obey His delegates when they give legitimate orders. The Son of God made the Church His Body; and He decreed that the obedience which began in the Head should con-tinue in the Body, such that obedience is integrated with the Church's very existence. It is a vital law in the Body of Christ. Yet for all-this our Lord did not prom-ise His ministers, governing or teaching, all the human talents that might be necessary for a task which is ut-terly beyond, them. He sought the leaders and' teachers of His early Church on the Lake of Gennesaret not in the schools or in the council chambers of kings. And the same is true today. Not all the popes are the most wise and clever or learned, or even saints. Thus the real is-sue in religious obedience will always be in the spiritual order. The point at issue is simply this, that we must re-member in our own lives the words of the Lord: He who hears you hears me. And when He uttered these words, He knew what sort of men His own disciples were; he knew the level of their training and of their intelligence; even the limits of their generosity. Yet He still said:~ "He who hears you hears me and Him who sent me,. my Father," s0 From all this it follows that until the subject comes to.see in her superior the authority of the Master, there can be no real living religious obedience that is truly supernatural. 'For the subject is asked to see the presence of Christ and His directive providence whenever the su-perior commands her to fulfill the constitutions or rules or the laws which she has voluntarily and freely taken upon herself. We can go so far as to say that if Christ Himself. were to appear at the moment a. religious su-perior is giving us a command, He Himself would either give this same command or permit it to be given for some greater good He has in mind. By entering a reli-gious community one voluntarily enters upon a training program by which she is enabled to tend to the perfec-tion of cha~:ity. She enters what Benedict called the school of the Lord's service. And like a,ny0ne in any school, she has to be taught and instructed and exer-cised to attain the end for which she entered. And that demands being placed under a master or leader, at le'ast as far as those things which pertain to the religious life. are concerned. And while this process of learning may one day be terminated, such fhat the le~ider can no longer teach the religious who may be older and moie experienced than she in religion, still the exercising of one in obedience will always be necessary so that the habitual inclination to obey will not become rusty for want of practice and exercise. The ,dims of "Religious Obedience Proceeding to the aims of religious obedience we find them to be four: (1) it cuts away solicitude; (2) it di-rects us to the fullness of charity; (3) it enables us" to ful~ fill a sacramental mission in the Church; and (4) it effects a community of service for the Body of Christ. The first aim of religious obedience is somewhat .nega-tive in tone. You are all familiar with it. It attempts to cut away the constant solicitude as to .what we should do, where we should live, and how we should direct our ® See A. de Bovis, S.J., The Church:" Christ's Mystery and Sa~ra. rnent (New York: Hawthorn, 1961), pp. 123-4. Obed~,nce VOLUME 25, 1966 + + + C. A. SchCle.Sc.kC,. REVIEW:FOR RELIGIOUS 186 lives. This we do by placing our lives in the hands of another or others who represent for us God. The ab-negation of self which is involved in 0bedi~nce is quite well defined in such a practice. As the recent decree on adaptation and renewal in the religious life has it: In professing obedience religious offer the full surrender of their own will as a sacrifice of themselves to God and so are united permanently and securely to God's salvific will. After the example of Jesus Cliristwho came to do the will of the Father, an d "assumi-ng the nature of a slave" learned obedience in the school of suffering, religious under the motion of the Holy Spirit subject themselves in faith to their superiors who hold the place of God.°1 While abnegation is involved in all obedience, in reli-gious obedience it becomes a constant and permanent dynamic and not something that is exercised only from time to time.Indeed, from a negative viewpoint, it is this constant and complete renunciation of our own will in preference to that of another wherein we find. our sanctity and wherein we find a holocaustal offering of our wills to God rather than a mere sacrificial offering of them to Him. That is why Christ in laying down the injunction for tile highest sanctity and perfection very frankly and openly said "He who would be my disciple must deny himself." 62 Without this personal abnega-tion there can be no sanctity which patterns itself after that of our Lord, that is, there is no sanctity which can call itself fully Christian. If we are to derive from reli- . gious obedience all of its fruit in the way of renuncia-tion of our own .wills, then we must subject them to the concrete will or wills of those superiors who are placed over us to mediate to us the will of God in our regard. From this it should be clear that religious obedience is established on the obedience of Christ, the following of Christ, which attained its full measure in the sacrifice of the Cross. If the religious consecration is derived from the consecration of Christ to the work of redemption, the vow of obedience has its source in the redemptive obedience of Christ. Therefore it is entirely insufficient to justify the vow of obedience by making exclusive ap-peal to the need for one authority for the organization of a life in community or for the carrying out of an ~postolate. This would be to make the mistake of con-side. ring religious obedience as merely a vehicle for apostolic activity. This notion of obedience as ordering us for community action is indeed a necessary part of religious obedience, especially in an active community, but the vow does not have for its exclusive object or Vatican II, Decree on Adaptation. Lk 9:23. end the development of obedience under the title of a purely social virtue such as is true of Marxist com-munism. It has for one of its properly religious values the task and aim of assimilating the life of the religious to that of Christ, to make pass into the person the fundamental attitude of the Redeemer. And as such it is meant to lead to the personal sanctification of the one who enters upon this way of life.°8 A second aim of religious obedience and one much more positive than the preceding is its close connection with the religious' growth in charity. We mentioned above that the practice of religious obedience differs from that of obedience practiced in a civil or natural society in that it puts us into more immediate contact with the will of God than does the latter. It is meant to bring about the perfect "unum velle" and the perfect "unum nolle" of our wills with that of Christ. For to love God is not merely to surrender or give up some-thing of our own will. It is to adhere positively and firmly to the will of the one we love~ It is to transform the willing of ourselves into that of the person we love. The more constant and actual this union of wills be-comes~: the more actual and constant does our love for this person become. And to love God means to do what He desires; it is to obey. The gospel makes this quite clear.64 That is why obedience in a religious commu-nity, which reaches to every action of a person's life, contributes so efficaciously to bring about the perfect union of wills which is the goal of the Christian life and in which Christian perfection consists. This is, as we know, Christian perfection, a union of Jove or charity or agapd, or a union in love, charity, and agapd. It is quite important that your religious understand this connection. As we have seen above, often in the order transmitted to us by superiors there'is an apparent lack of logic which at times might even seem to contradict a profound personal obedience (it goes against my con-science!). This difficulty can only be solved with love, a love that transmits and a love that accepts. The problem of obedience cannot ever be resolved in exact terms; it is more an intuition than the result of a logical proc-ess. We must frequently offer ourselves without seeing the result of our actions. This we can do only if we discover the relationship of love in obedience. It is love which provides the special intuition which makes it pos-sible [or both the one who obeys and the one who com-mands to arrive at the conclusion: I know that I can ~ See J. Galot, S.J., "R~demption et vie religieuse," in La vie re-ligieuse dans l'Eglise du Christ, p. 109. ~ Paoli, "Obedience," p. 278; Mt 22:37--40; Rom 13:I0; Gal 5:14; Jn 14:21; 15:10; 1 Jn 2:5; 3:24; 5:3. + + + Obedience VOLUME'25, 1~66 187 ÷ ÷ C. A. SchCle.Sc.kC,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 188 trust myself to her or, more exactly, to Him, We will abandon ourselves entirely to a person and to his will once we feel that his will needs no justification because we love the person. We do what he wishes because it pleases him, and all that pleases him gives us joy because we love him.65 If this is ever true, it is certainly true when the other person involved is God. Obedience when understood in this light is the supreme instrument o[ charity; and once this is truly accepted by a religious, then her obedience is not going to be merely something that pertains to one of the virtues connected with jus-tice, or'a rendering of what she owes to someone or to a community because of her having surrendered herself to it. No, her obedience will go and was meant to go beyond this. It was intended to allow her to submit her-self to the direction of another, God, not merely because she considers Him to be the commander of her life but because He is one whom she has chosen as her Spouse,. because He is one whom she loves, because He is one With whom she has entered into a marital relationship of the spirit. Thus obedience, especially in the case of the religious sister should become an occasion for her pure love for Christ her Spouse and, as such, should realize the most perfect submission possible to another, one that ends in the ecstasy of one will in that of an-other, or of the person loving in the person of the be-loved." It is only when and where a religious sister has made this her idea and ideal of obedience that it be-comes not just a means of arriving at the perfection of charity but also a concrete way in which she can show or express, sacramentalize the love of charity or agapd which, she has toward Christ. Obedience becomes a sign of charity, an act by which she adheres to the will of one whom she loves, as a bride adheres to the will and the desires and good pleasure of her husband. Unless this love enters into her practice of obediehce it can easily remain sterile or, if having sprung up, die or wither. And the grain of wheat which fell into the ground at the time of profession never really does die, as Christ uses this figure. Rather, it remains alone and never does produce the fruit which it should and which it was meant to produce by the sower who placed the seed of vocation in her heart rather than in that of someone else. Still a third aim of religious obedience is that it be sacramental, that is, that it propose to us in visible form some extremely important truth of salvation. This was true in the case of Christ who is the sacrament of God's encounter with man and man's encounter with Paoli, "Obedience," pp. 287-8. k God. In Christ not only were God and His love for man revealed, but God also showed us in Him what it is for man to commit himself unconditionally to God the invisible Father. It was only upon His rising from the dead, because of the love and obedience of His life, that the Father established Him in power, or absolutely as Christ, the sender of the Spirit. In the Church also, the extension of Christ on earth, or the earthly body of Christ, it is in the word of obedience that God's will becomes manifest to us. This is why to a certain extent in the case of religious obedience, the word of.obedience is sacramental. It is not so much a word about some-thing as rather the sign under which God's saving will in Christ makes itself present for us here and now within our history. It is in and through obedience, through the word of authority that God's saving reality can address itself to spiritual persons, calling on them for the free obedience of faith and trusting surrender of love. Sal-vation becomes present to religious in the word of obedi-ence, a word which calls for a free personal assent. 'Christ's going out from the Father into the world, a world at enmity with God because of its sins, receives a commission to bear witness to mankind's dependence and need for even more dependence upon God. Only when He had lived His Sonship through to the very end in total obedience to the Father even to the death of the Cross was His divine Sonship fully revealed. Thus it was through His human life that the abiding expression of the Son's obedience to the Father became visibly ex-pressed, and it was His death itself that was the supreme expression or epiphany of His religious surrender to the Father. This self-giving in the way of obedience through self-dispossession is the very essence of the religious com-mitment in the service of God.6~ Thus the practice of obedience as a community affair and as a personal affair is intended to be a constant and visible reminder to all who see religious that all men, all creatures will have true joy only by remaining in a continuous and permanent state of complete and entire dependence on God, a state in which the love of a creature is constantly responding to the love of the Creator, or in the case of religious women a state of de-pendence in which the love of a bride is constantly re-sponding to the love and entreaties of her husband. Man has need of this image since the relationship of man-kind with God is feminine as Scripture so often points out. This sacramentalism of obedience has been very clearly shown by St. Paul in referring to Christian mar-riage: "You married women must subordinate your- ~ Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, pp. 18--9, 28. ÷ ÷ ÷ Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 189 4. 4. C,. A. $chleck, ~.$.C. REVIEW,'FOR RELIGIOUS 190 selves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife just as Christ is the head of :the Church which :is his Body and is saved by Him. Just as the Church is in subjection to Christ, so married women must be in everything subject to their hus-bands." a~ As we mentioned when speaking of virginity, the marriage of the virgin.with Christ is the prototype or the model or exemplar of that existing between husband and wife. Thus the submission and obedience of the virgin of Christ to her Lord is to be the model or sacra-ment for all Christian men and women and also for the whole body of redeemed and unredeemed mankind, since this is called to relationship with Christ as His body-person, as His immaculate spouse, wedded to Him 'forever in undying love and submission or surrender, as He is to His Father, Thus there is a sacramental reality attached to the religious obedience of the woman that is not present in the case of the man. And it is this very ¯ modification which can make the practice of obedience something powerful and attractive. And it is this sacra-mental purpose of obedience that meets the need of the Church today. For it is more important than ever to show that obedience is universal in character ~and be-longs to the very, life of the Church. Religious life is not just an "extra, with regard to the Christian life; it is its mOSt~ striking .visible manifestation. Obedience brings to it the completion of our baptismal faith or perfects the consecration proper-to baptism,as If religious life and particularly obedience are to be truly a manifestation of the Christian. life in its perfection, then they must be truly radiant, .truly perfect. Only then~ will they serve their purpose for .existence in the Church; only then wil! they be 'truly alive and dynamic in the Church.a9 It is because of this sacramental aspect of obedience in ~ Eph 5:22 ft. ~ "Thus the profession of the evangelical counsels is a super-addition to that consecration which is proper to baptism. It is in-deed a special consecration which perfects the former oue,.iuasmuch as by it the follower ~f Christ totally commits himself and dedi-cates himself to God; thereby making his entire life a service to God alone" (Paul VI, Magno gaudio a~ecti; REVIEW VOR RI~LXGIOUS, V. 25 [1964], pp. 699-700). See also the Constitution on the Church, Chap-ter 6, n. 44; REVIEW VOR R~LIclous, v. 24 (1965), pp. 714-5; and J. Laplace, ':Education to Obedience," pp. 68-9. ~.This note of "sacramentality" should be seriously considered in all changes and adaptations. It is said that regularity weighs much less on young religious today than ever before. Remarks about re-ligious exercises are rather disparaging. They are considered quite out-of-date or naive~most probably because the values of these things have not been clearly presented. As one author remarks: "It is quite evident that we are suffering from a very evident lack of clear principles presenting valueJ behind certain religious exercises and regularity." We know that when values are not seen neither are the exercises. See M. Belanger, O.M.L, "Donum Dei" 3, pp: 106-7. religion that those who obey should obey as though they were obeying Christ or as the New Testament has it, "as to the Lord." 70 Those who are obeyed shot~ld find the pattern of their conduct in the love and care of Christ, and they must also remember that they in tLirn owe obedience to Christ also. It is in this way that subordination will be met by love and concern. To un-derstand the aims of obedience thus far discussed in this light would seem tocorrectly place obedience in our striving after the perfection of charity. It would give to both superiors and to subjects their respective roles and attitudes and mentalities towards this practice: It points out that the first and chief concern of all superiors, es-pecially major, is the. leading of their subjects to inti-mate union with God. Their primary duty is not the un-raveling of the material and °temporal and financial difficulties of their office nor the successful carrying out of the external apostolates and activities entrusted to the congregation or order. It is to "lead their subjects to God. It is only to the extent that they fulfill this duty that they are making their greatest contribution and gift to God, to the Church, and to their own religious family. To destroy or forget this role of the superior in a religious community is to destroy the [amily atmos-phere that God intended to characterize every religious society. For a superior can too easily become a purely juridical figure or image, one who gives out permis-sions of one kind or another or one who is merely an ad-ministrator, one who organizes the community's work and policies. And then she very quickly loses her primary role, that of being a mother to those of her daughters whom God's providence has placed under her direction so that they might be helped to the perfection of char-ity by reason of her having been in labor until Ghrist was formed in them. It is only when authority is sus-tained by love that it becomes authority in the real and true sense of the word. For only then can it look to God and to the love of God as its real foundation. For His authority is always ultimately a loving authority,~ even when it punishes or corrects.71 It is true that you can say that your religious when taking vows knew that a great sacrifice would be expected of them, the re-nunciation of their wills, their families, the happiness of marriage, and the intimacy of a family and horiae. But all this is a sacrifice, and your own religious because they are usually among the most high-souled and gen-erous women in the Church feel it most keenly. It is most impo.rtant that this element of love be inserted into Eph 5:22. The States o] Per[ection, p. 324. + + + Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 ]91 th~ exercise of authority in your-case; for as Pius XII re-marked once in speaking to superiors of religious com-munities of~women: It is no doubt true as psychology affirms that the woman in-vested with authority does not succeed as easily as a man in finding the exact formula for combining strictness with kindness and establishing the balance between them. That is an added reason for cultivating your .motherly sentiments.7' Where this spirit is present, you can be assured that the overall characteristic note of religious discipline and" obedience will be found both in the individual houses as well as in the community at large filial confidence and family warmth. It is this :spirit which includes com-plete embracing of rules and customs that lessens your own burdens and is so, conducive both to your own most ardent desires as well as those of your ~eligious the personal and corporate sanctification of all the members. You will always find that where there is mu-tu~ il conviction of'good will, a true family spirit in which.the authority of those in charge is respected and the needs and the different temperaments of those working with those in charge are taken into considera-tion is always present. And it is only this presence that can make of an individual house or an entire com-munity what it was meant to be in the sight of the en-tire Church and world: a training ground and a proving C. A. Schleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ra Address to Mothers General, 1952; The States of Perfection, p. 217. When I speak of a mother-daughter relationship, I am not advocating a type of relationship that begets or retains an emo-tional infantilism. This has been defined as "a persistence of re-sponses in an adult that indicates a manner of coping with needs and reacting in a way that corresponds to the psychological attitude or modality of childhood" (M. Oraison, Illusion and Anxiety [New York: Macmillan, 1963], p. 133). There is an exaggerated dependence with fear of responsibility and an unreasonable need of affection and approval. It is often this last need for affection and approval ~hat has given rise to much criticism from subjects who feel mature and yet are the most insecure members of the communityl This in-fantilism comes most often from inadequate home training. And how is religion to cope. with this? It can be done, but it is not easy. God did not allow religious institutes to come into being for the specific purpose of training emotional infants. The family is th~ unit established for thisI As Pius says: "A religious house differs ~rom the family home; it is not the same and does not try to be, because within its walls zeal for dedication and self-denial for the love ~of Christ, and the austere penitential practices [I think he would say possible todayl] involve some measure of discomfort and pain, N~vertheless, as far as possible the religious house shall en-deavor to become a loved family home for each one of the com-munity. And undoubtedly this will be' achieved more easily if all alike respect the foundation structure of the natural virtues which ~requently are the proof of abundant supernatural vigor and splendor" (Address to Discalced Carmelites, 1951; The States oI Perfection, p. 204). ground for sanctity, a kind of an ante-chamber to the beatific vision. Still a fourth aim of religious obedience is the effec-tive building of a community of service for the needs of the Body of Christ. While we cannot and must not make the efficiency of the external .apostolate or the creation of a well-ordered community the exclusive end of the prac-tice of religious obedience, it is nonetheless an end and an important one. This results from what we saw above of the very nature and purpose of authority-itself---the creation of the common good or the good of the com-munity. The Church exists as a mystery of communion, of the many in the one Body of Christ. In the building up of Christ's Body the different members have different functions to fulfill, functions which are meant to build up and unify the whole human race which is called to be part of the catholic unity of the People of God. It is especially through the practice of obedience that reli-gious are brought into community both to be a sigh'of the perfect community of love, the community of the earthly Church and that of the pa.rousia, and also to be at the service of the Church. All the energies and tal-ents and training of the various members are ordered and dovetailed tO be put at the service of Christ and His Church. In fact it is quite true to say that the theol-ogy of obedience and authority is in a special way a theology of unity~and communion. Such a spirit is so welcome in an age when we.are trying to correct some of the deviations which may have unintentionally crept into religious obedience b~ a heavy concentration on its legal aspects. While it is and will always remain very necessary for both superiors and subjects to know exactly and precisely what is involved in the canonical prescriptions of obedience or that amount of obedience without which the community or society could not possibly hope to achieve its objectives, it still remains the function of superiors to urge and of subjects to strive to attain the perIection of obedience or the spirit of obedience. Whereas canonical obedience prescribes and .correcdy sets very ~definite limits to the minimum practice required of the members of a reli-gious society, perfect obedience ,inclines one to look upon everything contained in the religious life as an op-portunity by means of which the members can bring their 'wills and their persons, their whole persons, into perfect accord with the will and the heart of Christ and His Church. It will tend to make them attain the ulti-mate end for which they enter religion--to suppress all selfishness of their special points of view and rejoice to be hsed for the one great work of the redemption of the human race. While it is true that in the last analysis + 4. + Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 + + ÷ C. A. SchCle.Sc.kC,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 194 it is the individual religious who will ultimately choose which of the two extensions of obedience she 4s going to take as her rule or norm--minimal obedience or per-fect-- authority does have much to do in shaping or forming a religious to one or other point of view. If authority continues to build up during the years of formation and also afterwards a greater awareness of the aims which we have just presented, it is much more likely that each religious would realize more and more as the years of her life pass by the promise of our Lord Himself to those who consent to follow Him closely: "My ~oke is sweet and my burden is ligh_ t." 7s How simply has all this been stated in the decrees of the Vatican Council: ¯. in order that he might derive greater fruit from his bap-tismal grace, he decides to free himself by his profession in the Church of the evangelical counsels from the impediments which might keep him from the fervor of charity and from giving God a perfect worship . Since the evangelical counsels by reason of the charity to which they lead, unite those who take them to the Church and her mystery in a special way, the spiritual life of those taking them should be consecrated also to the good of the entire Church. in accord with their capacities and the nature of their vocation . " In professing obedience, religious offer the full surrender of their own will as a sacrifice of themselves to God and so are united permanently and securely to God's salvific will. After the example of Jesus Christ who came to do the will of the Father and "assuming the nature of a slave" learned obedience in the school of suffering, religious under the motion of the Holy Spirit, subject themselve~in faith to their superiors who hold the place of God. Under their guidance, they are led to serve all their brothers in Christ, just as Christ Himself in obedience to the Father served His brethren and laid down His life as a ransom for many. So they are closely bound to the service of the Church and strive to attain the measure of the full manhood of Christ. Religious, therefore, in the spirit of faith and love for the divine will should humbly obey their superiors according to their rules and constitutions. Realizing that they are con-tributing to building up the Body of Christ according to God's plan, they should use both the forces of their intellect and will and the gifts of nature and grace to execute the commands and fulfill the duties entrusted to them. In this way religious obedi-ence, far from lessening the dignity of the human person, by ex-tending the freedom of the sons of God leads it to maturity. Superiors, as those who are to givaen ~ account of the souls entrusted to them, should fulfill their office in a way responsive to God's will. They should exercise their authority out of a spirit of service to the brethren, expressing in this way the love with which God loves their subjects. They should govern these as sons of God, respecting their human dignity. In this way they make it easier for them to subordinate their wills,~ r~Mt 11:30. Vatican II, Constitution on the Church, Chapter 6, n. 44; R~- wrw roa Rr_meious, v. 24 (1965), p. 714. Vatican II, Decree on Adaptation. The Qualities oI Religious Obedience Under this partic~ular heading many various consider-ations could be taken up. It seems best, however, to limit ourselves to a few by reason of their special con-temporaneity or timeliness: supernaturalness, interior-ness, and activeness. The Supernatural Quality o[ Obedience Perhaps no other quality of religious obedience seems to be suffering more today than that of its supernatural-hess. So many questions about and so many defections from the religious life, especially among older reli-gious, would seem to hinge on the motive because of which they live the religious life. This must be, funda-mentally at least, supernatural. And if religious obedi-ence is to be supernatural, then subjects must learn to obey, to carry out the tasks to which they are assigned and the rules and constitutions because these things represent for them the will of God, at least permissive, here and now. The pleasure or 'lack of pleasure that such an action gives or might give should not be the con-trolling motive; nor should the agreeableness or disagree-ableness of the person giving the command or making the decision; nor should the hope of some reward or advancement or fear of reprisal or anything such. The controlling motive in religious obedience should be: God has asked me to do this. The decisive reason for which we owe obedience to religious superiors is the authority invested in them by God. This authority is a supernatural qual!ty and is distinct from all qualities that may adorn a superior in the natural order. In.a sense it belongs t6 the order of charisms and is conferred by God through proper channels for the good of the religious commu-nity. It belongs to the order of faith both for the superior who needs more than the light of reason to recognize it and for the subject who comes to see God in the supe-rior by calling on his faith and who can come to tr6at the superior as God's representative only with the help of filial piety that is entirely supernatural.TM It belongs also to the order of love. For religious are urged to constantly strive to look beyond their superiors, direct-ing their obedience to the source of all authority, God, and to do so out of love and for love. As we have seen, the purpose or aim of obedience is to promote the growth of love; and love, in turn, is intended to enliven obedience and make it more fruitful. As our love grows deeper, so will our obedience to the great benefit of our own interior lives and to the incalculable profit of those who come under our personal influence. The true liberty ~6 Belanger, "Donum Dei" $, pp. 122-3. ÷ ÷ ÷ Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 195~ 4. 4. 4. C. .4. $chleck, C.S,C. REV1EWFOR RELIGIOUS 196 of a religious consists not in initiative and responsibil-ity nor in terms of independence, at least primarily; it consists in perfect dependence on God, a dependence that is voluntary and cultivated as actively as possi-ble. For who is less a slave than a will that is truly mas-ter of the lower appetites and that has once and for all given itself entirely to the supreme good. It is Charles de Foucauld who once remarked that Christ took the lowest place in such a way that no one can ever take it from Him. This desire to be forgotten and unknown in loving imitation of the rejected Christ still represents the highest reach of Christian asceticism. There is no question, of course, of shrinking from great apostolic works or wasting one's talents. We are speaking of an attitude, a willingness to be content with the task as-signed, and of preference for the lower or less esteemed, when God's glory would permit such a choice.77 This is the ideal motivation to be looked for in regard to religious obedience. Yet if we are to believe reports and experience, it is much more difficult to achieve today than before.7s We seem to be faced with an acceptance of submission that is based on or conceived of in terms of sensitive interpersonal relationships, of liberties and rights to be safeguarded, of discussions with superiors, of private initiatives to be exercised, and, in the, case of some at least, of necessary resistance" to legitimately ex-ercised authority--a kind of religious sit-in. Again we find that there is a good deal of insecurity in the present generation of young people coming to us, even though this may be masked by an apparent confidence and poise, even forwardness. This insecurity, plus the brain-washing they receive through the various media of com-munication, tends to impel them to seek status. This is not always, perhaps not even usually, merely a selfish want. It is a genuine need for a position of security that will assure them of the esteem and support 0f others. Young religious, especially in communities in which counseling or nursing or teaching or other professional work is generally done, manifest considerable anxiety about possible prospects of being assigned to advanced study and also notable frustration and depression if they are passed over. Despite the democratic myth, status positions are a very prominent feature of our society. The only difference between now and before was that yesterday status was rigid; it was that into which you were born; today it is mobile, it is what you make it. Yet it is there as a frenetic push up and down some ladder reflecting insecurity and acting as a feedback to increase 7~ L. Bondy, C.S.B., "Donum Dei" 3, p. 153. ~ G. George, S.J., "Donum Dei" 3, pp. 82 ft. it.TM In the novitiate it may be piety--provided it is not too eccentric--whereas in the juniorate and later on it may be professional excellence even to the point of this becoming a kind of neurotic ambition. The real author-ity figures are the professors or teachers who replace the novice mistress or even juniorate mistress. And the area of competition and prestige shifts from spiritual competence and excellence to excellence in studies,s0 Again, we also find that after some years of profes-sional service in one or other of the apostolates of the community, the supernatural motivation has either not grown at all or has even notably regressed. And then obedience has become for such members only a trial, only a series of fetters and frustrations, so that psy-chologically they become convinced that the community and the religious life is more of a hindrance than a help not only professionally, but also spiritually, that is, in their striving after the perfection of love of God and neighbor. And we all know that there is nothing more painful than to see certain religious lose even the pri-mordial meaning and motivation of their vocation and forget the why of their presence in religious life and fall more and more into a state of regret for having entered and of irritation,sl In fact we can say that the really crucial moment of religious life comes some ten or fif-teen years after entrance, and it usually revolves on the question of obedience. The dream of perfect surrender if it was present earlier appears for what it really is, a daily cross even for the most holy. A less painful solu-tion than sanctity or defection is always at hand---the path of comfortable mediocrity. The problem is solved by simply lowering the ideal, often seeing it primarily or exclusively in terms of sociological and psychological terms and structures and solutions. The motives learned in the early years of formation lose their cogency, and they become an encumbrance rather than a help.s2 As a result of these problems brought about by the societal structure of today there is a growing tendency to feel that reasons must always be given a subject every-time she is asked to do something or given an assign-ment. And this is supported by the argument that only ~See V. Packard, The Status Seekers (New York: McKay, 1959), p. 253. so If this is not handled carefully by those in charge through constant education, formal and informal, intense inner conflict and confusion can result. The tensions in some community juniorates and scholasticates would bear out this idea of "value conflict." s~ Much of this is brought on by changes in outlook and by cer-tain crises considered in our treatment of virginity and to be men-tioned further on in this article. s~ Later on in the part on practical suggestions we shall see what can be done to forestall this occurrence. Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 197 4. c. ~. S~hled~, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS that authority is really strong which obtains consent and participation rather than mere compliance. To give orders is easy but to obtain commitment and intellec-tual and intelligent participation is a major challenge. It is an inescapable responsibility of authority and one which can easily be overlooked. If this principle is used within limits (and I think that it has been oftenS3), it is true and can be followed with-out harming the supernatural motivation of religious obedience. But to make this principle apply at all times and in all circumstances, and especially within the con-text of strict parliamentary procedure and democracy, would exceed its applicability and would indeed destroy the very nature of religious obedience. Every attempt to reduce the relationship between superior and subject to one of mere dialogue between the two, a dialogue in which the subject would not be really obliged to follow the decision, or one in which the subject would be always allowed--by the v.ery nature of the contract--to make his own choice, would destroy the whole notion of obedience and render the relationship between superior and subject within a religious context meaningless. As Plus XII mentioned in an address to a general congre-gation of the Society of Jesus in 1957: And those persons are straying far from the truth who consider that the teaching of the Letter (St. Ignatius' Letter on Obedience) is to be abandoned, and that in place of hierarchical and religious obedience there should be substituted a certain "democratic" equality which would permit the subject to discuss with his superior until agreement between them is reached.~' It is true that where one carries out a command or obeys a constitution or rule which he thoroughly under-stands and with which he is heartily in agreement, there is no question of disobedience. But neither is there necessarily an act of the virtue of obedience. It is quite possible that the subject does what she is given to do from motives that are simply natural or human. And this particularly if training along the lines~.of supernat-ural obedience has never been insisted on. The habit of always giving the reasons for obedience or of point-ing out the reasonableness of the command or assignment given could easily cause a psychological stance that would make the reasonableness of the command and the fact that we both agree on this a condition for obey-ing. Then the virtue has been dethroned, and the per-son could be placed in a precarious vocational situation ~This is used well by A. Greeley, "Fraternal Authority," pp. 562-5. ~ The States of Per]ection, p. 295. This is "selective obedience" at its worst. See C. Davis, "A Catholic Obedience," America, Novem-ber 7, 1964. as far as perseverance is concerned. For there are and there will always undoubtedly be situations in religion when a person will come under a superior who does not wish to or who cannot always give reasons or point out the reasonableness of something which has to be done. For sometimes, to point out the reasons would mean the violation of a secret (the reputation of another member of the community) entrusted to a superior only in virtue of her office, and perhaps after much prayer and reflec-tion, on the part of a subject. I am not saying that reasons should not be given and even frequently, perhaps. For supernatural obedience to really take effect, the formation of the natural on all levels (and not just will-power formation) must also be present. Candidates of 17-18-19-20 are in full adoles-cent development. They are products of today and the societal structures of today; and there is nothing to be gained by closing our eyes to what they are or what they come from, all that I have-mentioned above, demo-cratic environment, a milieu of status-striving, an at-mosphere of constant questioning, and striving for inde-pendence. In fact, we can even ask ourselves seriously whether or not the cultural determinants in the United States today do not make it much more difficult for the majority of young religious to ever arrive at real ex-cellence in the supernatural practice of obedience. At least it is more difficult to arrive there. And superiors and those in training programs must accept this fact.s5 Thus it is very useful and necessary to give specific rea-sons for which things are done to facilitate obedience in the subject (to enlighten their minds before they act), to increase maturity, and even to prevent criticism. Thus the natural good and the spiritual good of the subjects dspecially in the very early training years would dictate that such a policy could and should be followed. But as the theology and meaning of religious obedience is ex-plained to them, occasions, not artificial or contrived but natural and arising out of circumstances, should be given to subjects when they will not be given the rea-sons why they are asked to do this or that. These of course should be given according to the capacity of each subject. This grad~4al training will most likely be much slower today. What we regard as alarming and perhaps a symptom of decline in regard to religious motivation and the nature of the young girl is a retarded appearance of a rather normal adolescence crisis centering around the struggle for independence from authority. Likewise in the case of older religious passing through an obedience crisis (usually around the mid-thirties), you s~ G. George, S.J., "Donum Dei" 3, pp. 82-$; L. Bondy, ibid., pp. 151-2. 4- 4- 4- Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 ]99 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS will find pressures making it extremely difficult for them to'respond in an ideal way. She must be helped through this to a deeper and more mature self-gift in and through obedience without sacrificing the essentials of the super-natural quality of obedience merely to keep peace in the family or keep a restless section of the community pacified. Thus the real danger in regard to the supernatural quality of obedience today lies not in the acceptance of the subjects as they are at various stages of personal and cultural development (for this is necessary), but in superiors not willing or a[raid to make the effort to lead them higher and [urther, to a more per[ect supernat-ural obedience as described above. Religious obedience like everything else that pertains to the order of grace is very ofte6 mysterious and demands a deep spirit of faith. Faith, however, is of things that are not seen, of things that lie beyond the grasp and comprehension of mere human reason. They pertaiia to another order of things, the supernatural order, the order of eternity or God in time, and consequently must remain mysterious. Not to train a religious gradually and in keeping with her capac.ity to live in this order would be to destroy the supernatural spi.rit that must lie at the very root of reli-gious obedience.8~ The In~erior Quality o[ Obedience A second quality that must characterize religious obedience and that stands in need of clarification today is its inter.iorness, For obedience to be truly interior, one that touches the very heart of man and not merely a mechanical exterior compliance with directives, it must touch both the will and the intellect. In fact, exterior obedience should be the crowning action of religious obedience embodying and giving visibility to the interior obedience of the will and the intellect. So often obedience of the will is badly misunderstood. It is taken as dying to self-will or as annihilating one's will. This is true if we speak of the specifically selfish in the will, its ill-regulated aspect, But in another and perhaps far more accurate sense obedience per[ects the will instead of suppressing it. It is not a passive virtue consisting in not-wanting. It is positive and active and is meant to consist in wanting as intensely as possible ~The greatest thinkers, often those who have personally suf-fered much from authority, have generally been its staunchest de-fenders and the most supernaturally obedient of men. Teilhard de Chardin i:ould write: "In spite of Rome's having its own r~asons for judging that in the present form my concept of Christianity may be premature or incomplete, I am resolved to remain a child of obedience." what God wants. And in this it finds its highest perfec-tion ~nd fulfillment. The will attains its perfection when it is in possession Of its object, which is the good; and the greater the good, the more is the will perfected. Since the divine will is the object of the human will in religious obedience, the human will is perfected in a supreme degree. In a sense, then, obedience of the will is meant to touch and fashion the whole heart so that a religious ever more fully obeys as life progresses, not through constraint but rather through a connatural in-clination or through that inclination which comes through the gradual growth of the virtue. Just as the eyes are instinctively attracted by beauty of sight and the ears by beauty or harmony of sound, so too the will of a re-ligious should as the years pass by become more and more connaturally attracted by the good which it finds in obedience to God. A religious obeys or should obey because she recognizes the right of another to'command her and because she wishes this other person to have this right and because she loves the order that has been given. Only the supernatural virtue of obedience can bring about this love of authority and command in the life of a religious, and this is not an easy task. It is a constant struggle, but it is something that she should be aiming at from the moment that she embraces this life. And it will certainly grow in the religious who co-operates with all the graces given her in this regard. Obedience so understood does not consist in con-straint, It is rather a free act which alone has full value before God. And it is a kind of sacramental embodiment of the stance of our Lord: ,I lay down my life; no one can rob me of it; for I lay it down of my own accord." 87 In fact we might note that it is to facilitate this obedi-ence in freedom that in nearly all communities the rules and constitutions do not of themselves oblige under pain of sin. It is with this object in view, to draw' out,of subjects a free and voluntary obedience, that most supe-riors today prefer to request rather than to issue strict commands.88 When we come to the other side of interior obedience, obedience o[ the intellect, we touch on a problem that can easily present extreme difficulties both for subjects and for superiors. We have often heard it said that for obedience to be perfect it demands the submission of one's judgment as well as of one's will. This has to be understood carefully, however, Often it is understood to mean that the religious is forced to abdicate her judg-ment and the normal exercise of her intellect. Yet when + + 4- Obedience 8*Jn 10:17-8. ss R. Morency, S.J., "Donum Dei" 3, pp. 16~-5. VOLUME 25, 1966 4. C. A. $chleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS correctly understood, religious obedience, just as it re-spects the normal orientation of the will, also respects the normal orientation of the intellect. What religious obedience demands is that we submit to others, the rules and constitutions and legitimate authority, our prac-tical judgment at all times, save where an obviously sinful action is prescribed. It also requires that we sub-mit our speculative judgment when this is possible. I say "when this is possible" because what is sacrificed by religious obedience is our speculative judgment. But if there happens to be an instance in which the judgment to be made is not ours to make but is dictated by norms or laws or principles extrinsic to us (and well-qualified norms), then we cannot sacrifice our judgment nor do we have the right to sacrifice it because the judgment in this case is really not ours to give. Such would be the case in the following rather obvious examples: two plus two equals five, or square pegs are best put into round holes. Our speculative judgment could not pos-sibly make us accept these judgments simply because they are not ours to give. They are dictated by norms extrinsic and objective to ourselves which we cannot change and have no right to change. Thus obedience of the judgment does not consist in our bowing before every decision of superiors without judgment of any kind. Quite the opposite. Obedience of the judgment requires the exercise and the use of one's judgment. Nor does obedience of the judgment de-mand that we think the same as our superior thinks or that we judge to be most perfect in itself all that the superior commands, speculatively speaking. The supe-rior is not infallible and can make mistakes. She can at times act imprudently and even unjustly,s° This difficulty, while perhaps rarer in the past because often superiors were far better educated than their sub-jects, is one that is frequent in religious life today. Many subjects have as good, if not better, training in their fields of work than their superiors. We may have a superior of a community engaged in hospital work who ¯ has never been trained in the field. It is quite likely that the problems of the religious engaged in that work will not always be understood by her or handled in the wis-est and most prudent manner. Or we have a superior of a house of philosophy or theology who has spent his en-tire priestly life in parish work or in the field of mis-sionary endeavor. It is quite possible for such a person to make decisions which the subjects, let us say the fac-ulty members, know by their own experience of years of teaching not to be the most prudent or wise. To such Ibid., pp. 177, 162. judgments and decisions no subject can yield his or her speculative judgment simply because he or she does not possess the right or the ability to yield or to make this judgment conform to that of the one in charge. Obedience of judgment, then, does not demand that we canonize all the actions of superiors nor obey be-cause and to the extent that the command is reason-able as this is usually understood. It demands that she recognize this principle: "It does not belong to me to make the decision; it belongs to the superior." Thus a religious cannot regulate her own will or what she does by her own judgment but by the judgment of the su-perior since it is this judgment that she has taken as her rule of action in the practical here and.now situation. She sees in it the designs of God Himself directing her to the end which He has set up foi- her from all eternity. By obedience she vows to give up acting on and accord-ing to her own judgment independently of superiors, which is not the same as giving up the right to make a judgment or to form one. To give up this right would destroy the liberty and freedom and the voluntariness which is so essential in making religious obedience the holocaustal offering of one's will to God. For obedience is not simply a mechanical action on the part of a hu-man person. It is a most personal action and therefore should be freely accomplished. It is an action in which the subject [reely adjusts her will to that of the superior. TO obey without having' moral certitude that such an act is licit is immoral simply because a person is respon-sible for all that she accomplishes, even of that which she does out of obedience. Here, of course, we must be cautious. To establish that an order is legitimate does not take long reflection. In fact, if there is long reflec-tion about the legitimacy of a command, it is usually a sign that the person is psychologically disturbed or hy-percritical and is not an appropriate instrument to de-termine if in the concrete an order is or is not legiti-mate. However, wherever there is question of mere opinion, then obedience will incline us to follow the opinion of the superior to the extent that this is possible. Often-times the position of the superior on something or other is somewhat doubtful, some reasons in favor of it, others opposed. In this case obedience of judgment asks that we consider rather the favorable reasons and be not too strongly attached to the possible objections, that is, if we are to assure a more perfect agreement of will and of judgment. This case often happens in regard to the more practical cases of action, assignments, and so forth, where the superior has a much wider acquaintance with all the factors involved in the decision, ,factors which 4- 4- 4- Obedience VOLUME 25, 1966 2O3 ÷ C. A. $chleck, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS subjects cannot see because of their limited vision, fac-tors which affect individuals of the same or different houses or even persons outside the commfinity. Very of-ten a superior is faced with the alternative of the lesser of two evils. We should note that a truly obedient reli-gious wishes that the superior should be right and is always ready to renounce her own will and opinion with ease insofar as it is simply her own. This as we realize demands intense virtue, but it is a goal which every religious should be working to reach. As for "blind" obedience it must not be thought to consist in seeing nothing; rather it consists in submitting one's practical judgment to that of the superior even when the action commanded or the decision indicated to be followed is truly unreasonable from the merely human point of view. For the religious then obeys not becau

Issue 10.4 of the Review for Religious, 1951. ; A. M. D.G. ~o Review for Religious JULY 15, 19 51 Our Aged Religious . Sister Mary Jafie Redemptorls÷ Spiri÷uali÷y. . Joseph I~t. Coller~n Recollectio"n Day Ouestions " ° Winfrld Herbsf Elections and Appointments . Joseph F. Gallen Grow÷h through the Eficharls÷ Anselm Lacomara ins÷ruction on Sponsa Christi , List of Psychometric Tests Communications Book Reviews VOLUME X NUMBER 4 Rfi::::VII::::W FOR Ri:::LIGIOUS VOLUME X JULY, 1951 NUMBER Jr CONTENTS SOME PROBLEMS OF OUR AGED RELIGIOUS-~Sister MaryJane, O.P1.69 COMMUNICATIONS ': 173 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 174 VACATION SCHOOL IN SOCIAL ACTION .1.7.4 REDEMPTORIST. SPIRITUALITY--Joseph M. Colleran, C.SS.R. 175 QUESTIONS FOR MONTHLY RI~CO~LECTION-- Winfri~l.Herbst, S.D.S . 185 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS--Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. 187 GROWTH IN GRACE THROUGH THE EUCHARIST-- Anselm Lacomara, C. P .200 HERESY OF RACE 204 INSTRUCTION ON 8PONSA CHRISTI . 205 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 19. Sister Digna's List of Psychometric Tests . 213 BOOK REVIEWS~ Religious Life and Spirit: Living the Mass; Jesus.Christ; The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius . 217 BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS " 222 FOR YOUR INFORMATION-- Morality and Alcoholism; The Good Confessor; Seventy Years 224 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1951, Vol. X. No. 4. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approba~tion. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka. Kansas, under the act: of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.J., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Editorial Secretary: Jerome Breunig, S. J. Copyright, 1951. by Adam C. Ellis, S.J. Permission is hereby granted for quota-tions of reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Before writ;ncj to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. Some Problems ot: Our Aged Religious Sister Mary Jane, O.P. THE problems of old religious are the problems of each and every one, for none of us is getting any younger. The proverbial old-fashioned rocker on the farmhouse porch where Granny could drowse away her honored last years has vanished, but Granny has not and neither has the aged religious. Never before our generation was the old age problem Sb great because there never were so many old folks. "Statistics tell us that today men and women sixty-five and overc~prise seven per cent of our population. Science has graciously presented another twenty years or more. Religious as well as others must plan what they are going to do. Sixty-Fiue is Young One wonderful and bright fact is that there are numerous reli-gious, both men and women, over sixty-five who are still,:bearing a large share of the burden of the community's w6rk. Dodge and Ford proved that old folks can work; they maintained old-age shops whose able personnel included men in their eighties. Long before either of the above thought of this, religious communities were taking it for granted. Sixty-five in a religious community is usually con-sidered young. Rarely does one find a religious who even considers retiring at that age, or at any age for that matter. How often one finds religious teaching school or doing other types of work at the ripe age of seventy-five and eighty. The author knows a religious who still goes out collecting alms for the community at the age of ninety-two. ~ During the past two wars employers in general were del~ighted with the oldsters' low accident and absenteeism rates,, as well as with their strategy in attacking problems. They were proud o'f the pro-duction power of that proportion of their workers. We, too, have every right to be proud of our aged religious. In the United States most old people subsist on some form ot~ organized "handout.," A few may enjoy adequate pensions from private sources,'frorr/civil service retirement allowances, Veteran allot- 169 SISTER MARY JANE Review [or Religious o merits, or old age relief or insurance. For others, an unfinanced senescence is likely to ,be dreaded: Often, it means ending up in a pub-li~ or private "nursing home." Not so our religious brethren; there is not this-fear for a member of a community. A few religious com-munities have a home for their dear ones, some with a'long waiting list. Waiting, yes, waiting for one or more to be called home for the longed-Ior eternal reward, but. waiting, too, to "occupy the places made vacant. What about the ~ged religious who cannot be admitted to these havens for some reason or other? The Housing Problem Where should these aged religious live? No one would deny them the balmy ease of Orlando, if they could have it. The public institution is out of the question. Some communities have done much but others have mad~ slight provision for their aged members either ih the past or at present. '~In many cases existing conditions and facilities are pitifully inadequate. It is undeniable that unless some corrective measures are set in motion, this already serious prob-lem'will become more acute as the average life expectancy climbs higher. Perhaps many more of the aged religious should be living with their communities, but, where this is not feasible, they ought to have a'special home ~where they may be left alone, but where they can obtain help when they need it. We all agree, that individualization in the care of o~r aged religious is preferable to institutionalization. There is hardly an institutional home for the aged which does not mingle the sick with the near-sick. More often than not, the latter need nothing more than custodial care. It is true that the pressure of modern .urban living makes domestic adaptability between age groups difficult and in many cases well nigh impossible. The aged find it difficult to change their habits so late in life. Nevertheless, many religious can and do get along together, particularly where th~ old religious remember the Golden Rule and the younger ones bear in mind that Our Lord said, "What you have done to these, you have done to Me." Some Symptoms o[ Age Old age is a gradual progression toward deterioration. It often shows symptoms of growing self-interest and lack of impressibility. Important events are no 19nger significant to old people as long as they do not touch directly upon their lives. There is usually a gen- 170 Jul~,1951 OUR AGED RELIGIOUS eral reduction in mental effidency, forgetfulness, arid loss of memory for recent events. Other symptoms include the tendency to reminisce and to fabricate, intolerance of change--routine must be observed and must never be disturbed lest irritability and tension rise--a rest-less desire to be up and about, to travel here and there, "frequently getting lost in transit (whether in or out of the monastery or con-vent) ; insomnia, and a tendency to putter aimlessly about the house and gardens. The t.endency to live in the pasi is very strong in some. Others show a total lack o~ interest in everything about them. Some are unsympathetic and indifferent, and the mood may ,change frequently and even without ~any apparent cause. Some ma~. be cooperativd, orderly, and quiet, and give very little trduble, .While others are untidy, meddlesome, 'and rcstless; Very.'often aged people become resistive when they think they a~.e: being coerced by those who are younger. One may even hear such expressions as "That fresh young thing!" Some Solutions The psychology of persuasion may have t'o called iflt.6.play to meet behavior problems that arise. Various stages of senility can effect disposition changes that necessitate parti.cular ~tre.atnlent and care. A great need is companionship. At its best old age is°a lonely existence, to say the least, and must be brightened by cheerful com-panions and a staff with a sense of humor. Everyone, we are told, comes into this life with three strong fundamental drives or needs: (1) the need of security; (2) the need fcr affection; (3) the need to do things for others or to mean some-thing to others. Frustration of these ftlnda~nental needs, even among religious, causes tension which makes the individual uncomfortable. The persistence of this tendency may be the beginning of a. nervous condition. Disability and chronic illness in the ageing and aged religious are increasing. The burden upon the communities, is already very large. It clearly threatens to increase year by year, unless something effective is done now to better conditions. . Nou) is the Time What can be done now with our young and middle-aged to make them strong, able, and competent to contribute to the general welfare and happiness during their declining years instead of being a burden to their fellow religious and themselves. This is a matter of concern 171 SISTER MARY JANE Reoieu~ [or Religious to each and every one of us. The time has come to speak out. It is not enough for y, ounger members to feel the wave of sentimental pity that sometimes sweeps over them today. It is not enough to provide the physical comforts of shelter, food, and clothing for these aged religious. These dear ones must be understood now by their fellow religious. Now,. too, they must learn to understand them-' SelVeS, The author is not bitter, but sometimes has to count to ten or perhaps whisper an "Ave Maria" to hold back angry words provoked by thoughtless acts, looks, and sometimes even just the tone of voice directed at some aged ~eliglous. If only everyone remembered how little they like. to be singled out as special beings! The attittide.of others is often a great handicap. It may be the lack of belief, the misdirected ~sympathg, sometimes the lack of sympathy, or the failure to regiird the aged one as an individual. Abrasions and fractures may heal, but a broken spirit will not. Often the feeling of younger religious towards the aged of their community combines pity and confusion. The pity may express itself in remarks like: "Isn't that sad?': "Too bad, we ought to be thank-ful." "She's old enough to die." "She served her purpose." Is there perhaps "no room" for the old religious? Again, why do some always make the mistake of thinking that all aged religious are deaf? Needless to say, over-hearing such remarks will hardly boost their morale. If this is what we ageing religious must look forward to as our life-span is extended, we may find ourselves agreeing that there are worse things in life than dying young or dying suddenly. Belonging What the aged religious wants more than anything is to be treated like everyone else, to feel that he belongs to the community, that he is stil! wanted. Belonging is the big thing. The penalties of old age are aggravated with rustication, particularly when undesir-ability, is felt. The aged religious should not be ruled out of any social life in the community nor excluded from recreations. Even when they cannot do the things the younger generation does, they like to watch. It makes, them part of what is going on. An occa-sional movie or a short excursion is sometimes most welcome. Ap-propriate occupations and recreations should be provided. Some religious are more efficient at seventy than others at fifty. Old people --religious are no exception--should be kept as active as possible to I72 ' duly, 1951 COMMUNICATIONS' make rise of their skills and preserve their morale. When they are occupied, they are happy. Properly selected bccupational .therapy exercises arthritic hands and encourages the use of affected extremltle~, preventing complete invalidism. Most activities tend to. stimulate normal functions and to counteract the tendency to apathy, brooding, and introspection. Anything that will preserve the self respect and dignity of old age should be appropriated .for the rise of our elderly religious. They should not be permitted to lose their identity in an atmosphere of depressing gloom and finality. Sickness or dependence of any kind is often a. degrading enough experience in itself. Above all, we must not call attention to their infi~rfiities, if they have any, not even with affectionate attention. Sur.~ly, .it is their right and privilege to have their few remaining years happy and free from worry. The aged are here td stay for longer periods th~n ever. The living and working conditions, then, of our dear aged religious should be a considerate concern of every one. And besides, none of us is getting any younger. Communications Reverend Fathers : In the March issue of the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, I read with consternation ,the letter of,Sister M. Catherine Eileen, S.H.M. Since one might be misled by Sister's optimism (justifiable in her particular case), I think a little more information on the fenestration operatiori is essential.' A.few of Sister's statements also should be clarified. Sister writes: "There is fenestration surgery now to cure the type of deafness known as otosclerosis." However, men who have dis-tinguished themselves in this work say that it is only an amelioration of this disease and a restoration of serviceable hearing in suitable cases and,the~results are not as yet individually predictable. There are some who would disagree with Sister when she sa'ys, "Any otologist can diagnose this most prevalent kind of deafness." They hold that there is no method upon which one can depend with absolute certainty for the diagnosis of otosclerosis and that surgery on one afflicted with pathology wbich simulates but is n6t otoscler-osis will not improve the hearing of the individual. 173 COMMUNICATIONS "Some'time to re~over" may mean a period of years accompanied by a discharging ear. Whether or not the operation is successful, the ear will require care for the remainder of the patient's life, i.e., peri-odic visits to the ear specialist. This perhaps is not too great a price if the hearing is improved but rather a steep one if no improvement has resulted. Sister's" c~se does seem successful and I don't wonder she is so enthusiastic. To those whose hopes might have been raised by Sis-ter's zeal, I should say seek the advice of one who has an enviable reputation in the field of ear surgery. May I quote'one such otol-ogist, "In a suitable case the decision between operation and a hearing aid is a question which should be decided by the individual." Anyone who is further interested may write to the American Hearing Society, Washington 7, D. C., and get a copy of Hearing NewS, March 1948, from which I have taken the information con-tained in this letter. The New York League for the Hard of Hearing did not have any later available data on the subject. --SISTER HELEN LOYOLA, C.S.J. ' OUR CONTRIBUTORS JOSEPH M. COLLERAN, the translator of St. Augustine's Greatness of Soul and The Teacher in the "Ancient Christian Writers" series, is a professor of philosophy at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary, Esopus, New York. SISTER MARY JANE taught both elementary and high school' for twenty-five years before entering the fidld of nursing. She is now an affiliate at the Brooklyn State Hospital for the mentally ill. ANSELM LACOMARA, a missionary and writer, is from Our Mother of Sorrows Monastery, West Sprihgfield, Massachusetts. WINFRID HERBST, au-thor and retreat master, is on the faculty of the Salvatorian Seminary, St. Nazianz, Wisconsin. JOSEPH F. GALLEN is a professor of canon law at Woodstock Col-lege, Woodstock, Maryland. VACATION SC~HOOL IN SOCIAL ACTION St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, is offering a vacation school in social action for priests and seminarians from August 14-25. There will be lecture courses, combining exposition and opportunity for discussion, on the spiritual foundation of social action and on organizing the parish for social action. The director is the Reverend D. MacCormack. 174 Redemptorist: Spirit:ualit:y Joseph M. Colleran, C.SS.R. WHEN St. Alphonsus de Liguori, in 1732, gathered a groupof ¯ priests and brothers to form the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, he intended primarily to 6rganize a band of missionaries to evangelize the neglected country districts of his native Kingdom of Naples, and later, of other parts of the world, and everywhere to preach redemption and repentance to "the most abandoned souls." That its concentration upon this precise .field of apostolic activity constitutes the sole feature disting.uishing the con-" gregation from other religious institutes is the impression given, upon first reading, by the .explanatory constitutions which the saint added in 1764, and which, in this respect, remain the same today. "Every Religious Institute proposes to itself a two-fold end:the first is its own sanctification, the second the salvation of the people and the good of the Church. The former is general, the latter special, and it is by this that the various. Religious Orders differ from one. another . With regard to the second end, by which we ,are dis-tinguished from all other Orders and Religious InstitUtes within the Church, the Rule enjoins that . . . by preaching l~he Word'of God, we should labor to lead the people to a holy life~, especially those who, being scattered in villages and hamlets, are ,most deprived of spiritual help--and this is our specific end" (Constitutions 1 and 5). From the very beginning, howeverl Alphonsus himself practiced, and inculcated upon his spiritual family, a type'of spirituality that would best fit in with this apostolic purpose and would be a distinc-tive mark of his little congregation. This pattern of ascetical formation became more clear and systematic as time went on, and its principles were more exactly formularized as the saint undertook to publish for his followers and for the universal Church, his popular and practical treatises on ascetical and pastoral theology. St. Alphonsus realized deeply that fruitful apostolic activity and personal sanctity were inextricably connected. The sermon that is most effective is the one' that has been lived before it is preached. The asceticism that is most valuable to an apostle is the one that most readily overflows into works of zeal and charity. For that reason he insisted upon an exact proportion between the active labors of the 175 JOSEPH M. COLLERAN Revieud for Religious ministry and the retired contefnplation of.the monastery. He would have his priests be "Carthusians at home and apostles abroad." It was always his ideal that missionaries spend no more than six months of each year in the actual work of the missions, "lest the active life overbalance the contemplative, to their spiritual loss" (Const. 108). He:would have the Coadjutor Brothers, who are engaged in prayer and domestic work, as well as the Sisters of the co.mpanion institu'te, the "Redemptoristines,", not only consecrate themselves to self-sanctification, but also offer their labors and devo~ tions vicariously for the success of the missions. Thus, the saint's pastoral and ascetical directions are inseparable, and together they indicate the spirit of the institute that would continue his labors and copy his way of living with God. The Facets ot: Love Our Lord tells us that the great commandment, for the apostle to preach and for the religious to practice to perfection, is to Iove the Lord thq God u2ith thai whole heart (Mark 12:30),°and St. Paul likewise makes it plain that all Christians must above all things bare cbaritg, which is the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14). While some masters of the spiritual life propose the practice of the various spe-cific virtues as means toward the acquisition of love--so that morti-fication, for example, arises from penance and leads to love--others, like Saints Bernard, Bonaventure, Francis de Sales, propose love as the beginning, th~ seed out of which the other virtues grow. X~v'ithin this second, so-called "seraphic" school, Alphonsus must be num-bered. 1 Love, he recognized, includes and requires both hope and fear. Against Jansenism, whose rigoristic spirit, despite its condemnation, was still deterring sinners from approaching God with confidence and was influencing confessors to demand signs of perfect love before they would grant absolution and permit Communion, the Saint inveighed vigorously. For his more benign practices, he was accused of laxity.At the same time, be fell prey to charges of severity from writers who, holding on to relics of Quietism, were averse to strenu-ou~ ascetical activity, under the pretext of passive indifference. He insisted that his missionaries r~alistically set before the people, to incite them to conversion and fervor, the reality of hell. And out of :tCf. A. Desurmont, C.SS.R., Oeuores Completes, tome 1, L'Art d'Assurer Son Salut. Paris, Libraire de la Sainte Famille, 1906. Introduc~don, p. 23 f. See also C. Keusch, C.SS.R., Die Aszetik des hi. Alfons Maria v6n Liguori. Pader-born, Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1926. P. 236 f. 176 July, 1951 REDEMPTORIST SPI'RITU~ALITY his own missionary experiences,' he formed judgments that other saints and doctors would probably not have expressed so boldly for instance: "If God had not created be!l, wh6 in. the whole world would love Him? If, with hell existing as it really does, the greater part of men choose rather to be damned than to love Almighty God, who, I repeat, would love Him were there no hell? And therefore the Lord threatens those who will not love Him, with an eternal punishment, so that those who will not love Him out of love may at least love Him by force, being constrained to do so through fear of falling into hell.''-~ The keynote of all his exhortations is'salvation, the individual participation in the merits of Christ's Redemption, and salvation is to be. worked out with fear and trembling (Philipp. 2:12). This fear, or more exactly, this love that involves fear, has a function in every grade of the spiritual life. In sinners, Alphonsus aimed to awaken fear by warning them of the eventual limit to the sins that God would forgive, and the limit .to the graces that God would provide. He tirelessly reminds them of the imminence of death, the terrors of hell, the imperative need of conversion. He warns them solemnly" of the fearful dangers of the "occasions of sin." "In regard t9. those striving for perfection', he also has recourse to the motive of fear, although it is prin.c.i.i0Mly the filial fear of losing God and of losing the special graces that are attached to a higher vocation. He voices the warning that although vocation to the religious state is a free gift that does.not imply a strict obligation, yet because special graces are attached i!o this state, it 'is most difficult to attain salvation if one neglects his vocation. Because perseverance is a grace that can be lost by failure to pray, and by lack of correspondence with grace, there is still reason, even in the state of pe.rfeCtion, to fear. (In his own congregation, he added to the three customary vows, a vow and oath of perseverance.) In re~ard to religious, too, he strikds hard at "tepidity," which he identifies as the habit of deliberate venial sin, and which he considers a state to be avoided" with fear. If the saint seems at times encouraging and at times severe, it is only because he is presenting, one at a time and each in its own clarity, the facets of love: confidence and fear. It is, however, con-fidence that predo.minates: "If we have great reason to fear ever-lasting death on account of our offences against God, wfi have, on 2Ditzine Love, II, in The Way of,Salvation and of Perfection, part III. Brookl~n, Redemptorist Fathers, 1926. P. 311 f. 177 JOSEPH M. COLLERAN Review for Religious the other hand, far greater reason to hope for everlasting life through the merits of Jesus Christ, which are infinitely more able to bring tlon.ab°ut" ,,a°ur salvation, than our sins are to bring about our damna- The Practice o[ Love In complete harmony with the long tradition of saints and theo-logians, but with an insistence and clarity peculiarly hi~s own, Alphonsus points out that the measure and the practical test of love of God is conforroit~. , or better, uniformity, of one's will with the Will of God. "Conformity" ~.involves the acceptance of whatever God intend~ for us or permits to happen to us. "Uniformity" sig-nifies our blending our own will as it were, into the Divine Will, so that we .never desire but wh.'a~"[God desires, and there remains only the Will of God, which becomes our own. "The entire perfection of the love of God," the saint writes, "consists in making our own will one with His most holy will . The more united a person is with the Divine Will, the greater will be his love of God . This is the summit of the perfection to which we must be ever aspiring. This has to be the aim of all our work, all our desires, all our meditations and prayers.''4 For Redempto~rists especia.lly, as Alphonsus conceives their voca-tion, uniformity with the Will of God involves two essential require-me, nts. The first is negative: detachment from all created things. The second, more positive means, is imitation of Christ the Redeemer. Detachment While, of course, the conception of detachment is not new with Alphonsus, he gave it such emphasis and priority that he made it a distinctive characteristic of his ascetical doitrine. "Detachment" signifies the exclusion from the heart of everything that is inordinate and alien to perfection; it invplves the denial to self of anything material that does not serve sanctification; it implies the performance of unpleasant rather than of pleasant actions, and greater charity toward the ungrateful than toward the grateful, as signs and means of more ardent love of God; it even requires the sacrifice of certain 3Tbe Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, Introd., III, in The Hol~t Eucharist. Brooklyn, Redemptorist Fathers, 1934. P. 285 f. 4Conformit£l with the Will of God, I, in The Way of Salvation and of Perfection, part-III, pp. 353, 358. 178 duly, 1951 REDEMPTORIST SPIRITUALITY virtuous actions when the higher demands of charity or obedience conflict with them.5 So important did he consider this purification of the heart as a preparation for advancement in perfection that in the little treatise, The True Redemptorist, which he wrote for his first members, he confines himself to this one point, and reduces the special requirements of any applicants to _a four-fold detachment: from the comforts of life, from relatives, from self-esteem, and from self-will. ¯ The practice of poverty he kept as strict and uncompromising as an active apostolate would allow; and the peculium and any other method of private control of material things, he excluded rigorously from the very beginning. The "common life" he. ev.e.r.,g.uarded jeal-ously, and he manifests his legal tr.aining in the deta~i'~'and precision of his enumerations of things allowed and forbiddeti." The things provided for common use, the amount of the portions at table, the size, number, and materials of various furnishings for the rooms be determined with exactitude and uniformity. Under the vow of poverty is incIuded the renunciation of a bishopric or any other ecclesiastical dignity or benefice outside, the congregation, unless the Holy Father commands its acceptance. Knowing from experience, sometimes from the bitter experience of defections from his infant institute, that the people of his time and land were often loath to permit their sons to make sacrifice of themselves in r~llgion, he was adamant about detachment from rela-tives. In answer to a request from a sick. subject who wanted to go home for the freshness of his native air, he replied that "home air is always pestilential to the religious spirit." When one who was ill offered to go to his relatives, to save expense to the community, he quickly answered that the congregation would sell ~ts books to take care of the sick. The strictness of the saint's rules and written'com-ments on detachment from seculars is balanced by his efforts to promote in his communities the hospitality and brotherliness of family life. Insistent as be is that individual desires be restricted to needs, he is even more insistent that .t.he community provide for every need to the extent that is possible. Self-esteem and independence of will he opposed as mortal dis-eases. Not only did be insist on individuals giving up all ambition for preferment and distinction, but he would have the'institute itself 5Detachment from Creatures in The Way of Salvation and of Perfection, part II, XLI; also Divine Love, ibid., pp. 317-19. 179 JOSEPH M. CoLLERAN Review for Religious humbly accounted the least of all in the Church. Although the work for which each must be ready is preaching, he deprecated'anyone's: putting himself forward to preach without waiting for designation by superiors. "He only has the spirit of the institute," he wrote, "who enters it with the desire of practicing obedience, and,of sub-mitting peacefully to be put away in some corner without having any employment, happy that the good is done by others, while he himself will only do that which is.directly imposed upon him by obedience, without having asked for it.''~ "Re-living the Redemption The imitation of Christ that he proposed to his members is not only the general one that is obligatory on all, but a concentration upon the formally redemptive phase of Christ's life, the motto of his congregation being Gopiosa Apud Eum Redemptio. This emphasis affects both the active apostol~te and the ascetical development of Redemptorists. " They are to be employed only in those tasks that have to do directly with the salvation of souls, and indeed, so far.as is ordi-narily possible, only in those that Christ and His ApoStles per-formed. Hence the principal field of labor is the conducting of mis-sions, in ~vhich the essential and fundamental truths are preached, with a view to converting souls from sin to the state of grace, from inconstancy to perseverance in virtue, and from ordinary fidelity to Christian perfection. Occupations that are not in harmony with the work of redemption ifi the strictest sense, such as t~aching secular subjects in schools, parochial work, the conducting of orphanages, and the like, were deliberately excluded by Alphonsus, and have tra-ditionally been accepted only rarely and temporarily, as need arose and higher authority commanded. The apostolate of red.emption extends to all classes of people, but preference is strictly to be given to the poor,,, to those who have been abandoned by others, and to those found far from those centers of population where the means of salvation are more readily within reach. The style of preaching set by the saint is affective, rather than argumentative; simple, rather than ornate; apostolic, rather than academic. It was his aim to set OThe True Rederoptorist. This short work, with slight alterations to .adapt it to all religious, and with preliminary chapters on detecting and preserving vocations, was also published by Alphonsus under the title Counsels Concerning a Religious Vocation. This treatise is available in English, in the volume The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection. Broot').yn. Redemptorist Fathers, 1927. Pp. 381- 417. , The sentence which is here quoted from the Manua[e Presbyterorum C.SS.I~. does not appear in the reprint. 180 Jul~,1951 REDEMPToRIsT SPIRITUALITY up in the garden of the Church, not an exalted fountain that would impressively spray its streams on high, but a rivulet that would seep into the ground to nurture and fructify the lowly and the towering growths alike. Since He who saves is He who sanctifies, the Redeemer is the model of asceticism too. "The end of the Institute of the Most Holy Redeemer is no other than to unite priests to live together, and ear-nestly strive to imitate the virtues and example of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, devoting themselves kpecially to the preaching of the word of God to the poor" (Text of Ruie, Introduction). The Passion is proposed as the customary subject of all evening meditations, and the central act of R~edemption is the.core of all Redemptorist devo-tion. It is likewise the pattern of their personal efforts at self-sacrifice: "the members of our Institute, after the example of the R~deemer, ought to spend their lives in thb endurance of sufferings, and should have a great hatred of a comfortable and luxurious life." (Const. 489). True it is that Alphonsus taught in his writings and inculcated in his religious various devotions in honor of Christ; he was, for example, one of the most ardent proponents of devotion to the Sacred Heart, which, in his time, was "opposed by some writers'and often avoided in practice. But crib and cross and altar are the principal themes of his devotional exhortations, the cross being central, the crib its forerunner, and the altar its keepsake. To devotion toward the Blessed Sacrament he made a tremendous ¯ contribution by his Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, originally in-tended for his own novices but in time spread throughout the world with a popularity that P~re Pourrat compares to that of the Imita-tion of Christ.7 Adoration, thanksgiving, and reparation are the sentiments he would awaken in his followers in regard to the con-tinual presence of the R~deemer among us. He could conceive of no devotion to the Redeemer that did not include devotion to Christ's Persoflal Relic of the redemption. It is true of Alphonsian asceticism, as it is true of practically every modern school, that it is not so liturgically centered as that of St. Benedict. Nevertheless, Alphonsus quite definitely recognized the primacy among devotions that belongs to the Mass. For the laity he wrote The Sacrifice of desus Christ, expounding the doctrine of sacrifice and the meaning of the prayers; for priests he published "a 7Cf. P. Pourrat, La Spiritualit~ Chr~tienne, tora~ 4. Paris, Gabalda, 1947. P. 456. 181 JOSEPH M. COLLERAN Reoiew [or Religious book on The Ceremonies of the Mass, and another, a devotional one, on Preparation and Thanksgiving. The devout and affectionate prayers he composed have as their purpose the extension throughout the. day of the spiritual benefits of the Holy Sacrifice. He also recog-nized the importance of the official prayer of the Church, requiring the Divine Office to be recited in the various communities when the 'missionaries are not engaged in apostolic works. The Mother's Place St. Alphonsus was one of the principal expositors and defenders, in the dogmatic field, of the doctrine of the universal mediation of Mary. As a corollary of this teaching that all graces come through her hands, he taught that some devotion to her is morally necessary for salvation. In asceticism, also, he proclaimed that imitation of the Divine Redeemer involves, a wholehearted and practical devotion to His Mother. In both their personal lives and in their apostolic works, be would have Redemptorists Mary-minded. Preachers are urged to make mention of the intercession of the Blessed Mother in every discourse; every series of sermons or instructions is to include at least one talk devoted to her. From the time of Alphonsus until the definition of the dogma, Redemptorists were required to take an oath that they would defend and teach the truth of the Immaculate Conception; and under this title Mary is the principal patron of the congregation. The saint insists emphatically that Mary is the keeper of vocations; in his congregation the perseverance of every member is committed to the care of the Virgin most faithful. The Practice oF Virtues To facilitate and intensify the practice of virtues, Alphonsus pro-poses the method of concentrating explicitly on one at a time. His original rule was arranged in twelve parts, each of which set forth one virtue. Each "rule" wasit'self rather a short exposition of the relation of the virtue of the R~deemer and an application, rather ex-hortatory and devotional than diregtive and legalistic, to the life of a religious. Each rule is followed.by a "constitution" that gives more detailed and specific directions. In 1749, the Rules and Constitutions were put into a more formal a~d legal structure, but one constitution still directs the special practice of a single virtue each month. In the order of the months of the year these virtues are proposed: faith, l~ope, love of God, charity toward one another, poverty, chastity, obedience, humility, mortification, recollection, prayer, and self- 182 dul~ , 1951 REDEMPTORIST SPIRITUALITY denial with love of the Cross. These virtues, in turn, are to consti-tute the subject-matter of meditations, of particular examens, and of exhortations by superiors during the respective months. Such a division gives ease, simplicity; order, and solidity to the acquisition of virtue, and with all the members of the institute making an effort to concentrate upon one virtue at the same time, each individual is to find in the common activity a strong external support and example. Furthermore, since the different virtues are always considered as phases of the life of the Redeemer and as means of being united with Him, such repeated concentration upon each one serves to impress the mind with the richness of the Divine Model, and to strengthen the will to accept Christ's life as one's own. The Primacy/of Pra{/er The genius for simplicity and practicality that Alpbonsus .pos-sessed shines out pre-eminently in his teachings on prayer. The singular importance he attaches to prayer, he indicates succinctly in the title of one of his most famous works: The Great Means of Sal-vation and of Perfection. Well knovcn is the practical conclusion with which he cut through the learned and endless theological con-troversies on the efficacy of 'grace and predestination: "He .who prays is certainly saved. He who does not pray is certainly lost . Pray, pray, never cease to pray. For if you pray, your salvation will be secure; but if you stop praying, your damnation will be certain.''s No less does he insist that perfection depends upon prayer. He would have religious life a life of prayer, flowering into a continual "con-versation with God," where God speaks to the soul through His vis-ible creations and the impulses of His graces, and the soul responds with acts of love and gratitude. Prayer, for Alphonsus, is nothing less than the breath of super-natural life. Only by praying do we receive efficacious grace to per-form meritorious acts; only by pr~ying do we obtain the help to overcome temptations; only by praying do we acquire the light to know God's Will for us and thestrength to fulfill our vocations; only by praying do we acquire the grace of perseverance; only by praying, indeed, do we acquire the g~ft of praying sufficiently, and of being constant in making our requests. Mental prayer he considers morally necessary as a means to incite the prayer of petition, without which God does not grant the divine 8The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection. Brooklyn, Redemptorist Fathers, 1927. Part I, ch. 1, p. 49 and Part II, ch. 4, p. 240. 183 ,JOSEPH M. COLLERAN helps, the lack of which, in turn, frustrates all attempts to observe either commandments or counsels. For mental prayer manifests one's spiritual n'eeds, the dangers to his progress, and the measures of improvement to be adopted; and all these stimulate him to prayers of petition. So far as the "meditation" itself is concerned, he reviews and recommends the usual methods that had been developed and proposed by the saints, especially by Theresa and Ignatius. His special and distinctive concern, however, is not with the method of meditation, but with the "affections, petitions, and resolutions" which are to follow upon the considerations as the thread follows the needle, for these constitute the real fabric of mental prayer. In the affections, he would have repeated acts of love, humility, gratitude, confidence, and contrition. Petition should be concerned, above all, with for-giveness of past sins, increase of love, and perseverance until death. Resolutions should be practical, specific, and usually limited to the near future. Petition is the most important of all, and this is the meaning of the saint's striking statement: "To pray is better than to meditate"--that is, petition is of much more .value thanconsidera-tion of trflth. This stress upon acts of the will-rather than on acts of the intel-lect, this priority of affections over considerations, the saint himself illustrates in all his writings and, most notably perhaps, in his familiar Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, where there is frequent and easy transition from description and exposition to fervent iorayer. This procedure facilitates progress from the more common discursive type of mental prayer to habitual recollection and the prayer of simple regard, which prepare the soul for infused contemplation. The school of perfection of~ which Alphonsus is master is thus a simple and practical trainings~ool in uniformity with the Will of (Sod, by imitation of the Redeemer on the cross and closeness to the Redeemer in the tabernacle, by0~etachment from creatures, by prayer of petition, and by tender deybtion to the Virgin Co-Redeemer. There is no favor the saint would ask for his institute but the privi-lege of continuing the effects of Calvary's Cross; for he prayed: "Per-fect Thy work, 0 Lord, and fo~ Tby glory make us all Thine own; so that all the members of this Congregation, even to the day of judgment, may continue to please Thee perfectly, and to gain for Thee a countless number of souls." 184 -Quest:ions t or Mon :hly Recoiled:ion Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S. yOU asked for it. You requested a series of questions for your monthly recollection~uestions that will elicit good resolves urging on to greater perfection in religious observance. And I am glad you realize there is no nobler ideal to strive for than perfect religious observance according to your constitutions. "Make an accounting of thy stewardship" (Luke 16:2). Do this in medita-tive self-examination. Take the following series, not exhaustive by ,any means, but sufficient for your purpose. Place yourself in the presence of Almighty God, before whom, at what hour you know not, you will appear for judgment, and in the presence of your guardian angel. Recall to mind the many graces and benefits bestowed upon you, an unworthy sinner, from the first mo-ment of your existence, and also during the past month. Then humbly consider the following points. 1. What is my service of God like? Do I render tribut~e of Mass and my Office devoutly, in a holy manner, in God:s presence, and without haste? Do I act on the principle that thoughtless haste kills all real devotion? 2. Do I do what is to be done before, at the beginning of, and after my daily meditation? 3. Am I able to look death in the eye without fear? How ashamed would I be to meet Jesus my Judge,now? What am I doing to make myself less ashamed, by living in continual recollec-tion and fraternal charity? 4. Do I try to increase in. personal[ love for Jesus by thinking often of His love for me? Can I, too, exclaim: ".In whatsoever, place Thou shalt be, my Lord and King, either in death or. in life, there ~ill Thy servant be"? (2 Kings 15:21.) o. 5. Whose room is the better, Jesus's (Bethlehem's cave) or mine? What can I do to make mine 19.ok more like His in poverty? 6. Do I recall that Jesus's hidden life says to me, "Family (com-munity) life means charity"? 'Am I trying hard to make others and myself happy in community life by adhering zealously to my prac-tice of increasing acts of charity and considerateness? 185 x,VINFRID HERBST 7. Am I giving to God what He so insistently asks of me: uni-versal, beautiful, fraternal charity and gentle helpfulness, especially in community life? Am I giving it all geneiously, despite the fact that. it is hard? 8. And am I giving Him this other thing for which He asks with similar insistence and which is equally hard: numerous ejacu-lations every day combined with the greatest possible recollection? 9. Have I the habitual disposition rather to suffer anything than commit a deliberate venial sin? Do I occasionally aspire to the third degree of humility, desiring to do and actually doing some hard things just because I want to be more like Jesus and out of love for Him, forgetting the reward? 10. Do I look upon all the rules, even the smallest, as the express will of God in my regard and observe them accordingly, realizing that I can save souls in this manner without even leaving the cloister walls? 11. Do I, for love of Jesus crucified, practice little acts of morti-fication daily, in folding the hands, in kneeling, and in a score of other simple ways? Do I restrain myself at table when I would eat too eagerly? 12. Do I recall that the body of Jesus was placed into a tomb "wherein no man had yet been laid," and do I place His living body into a heart that is new every morning in its purity and fervor, into a heart that is prepared for Him? 13. Do I strive to maintain within myself that spirit of joy and holy gladness without which there can be no real progress in the spiritual life? Do I show it exteriorly, as I ought to? 14. Do I value my vocation as my pearl of great price? 15. Do I try to love God because He is the Supreme Good, of whom the goodness of all creatures is but a faint reflection? It seems to me that it is because of such striving after perfection there are so many beautiful souls in this world. These souls make one resolve not to be outdone in goodness even while they almost fill one with despair of keeping pace with them. PLEASE NOTE CAREFULLY The subscription price of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is now: $3.00 per year for Domestic and Canadian subscriptions; $3.35 per year for all foreign subscrip-tions. For further details please see inside back cover. 186 I:lections and Appointments Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. ELECTIONS a.nd appointments to office are not a daily occur- .fence in the religious life but they are of supreme and lasting importance. The observations that follow concern congrega-tions of Sisters and Brothers. The law of the Code of Canon Law and the practice of the Holy See in approving constitutions are almost the same for Brothers as for Sisters., These observations are not a complete canonical commentary but are limited to the more impor- ¯ .rant and, perhaps, more human elements of elections and appoint-ments. It is evident that each institute must follow it~ own consti-tutions, but some of the suggestions given below can be pondered by all congregations. They may not be contained in the constitutions, but they ycill not be contrary to the constitutions. I. The Elective Sgstern Religious chapters in virtue of canon 507, § 1 are obliged to observe the canonical norms for elections prescribed in canons 160- 182. The Code does not determine what religious in an institute are to be the members of a general or provincial chapter, and here we encounter the first difficulty in elections. Several diocesan congrega-tions of Sisters and a few pontifical institutes that retain the govern-mental structure of an independent monastery' of nuns have what is commonly called the direct vote. In other words every Sister of perpetual vows is a member of the elective chapters. The difticulty arises in this matter when the diocesan congregation wishes'to be-come pontifical or when the pontifical institute described above de-cides finally to conform its constitutions, to its actual life by a general revision. The direct vote must be g.iven.up. The Holy See demands the system of delegates for botl4?'the general and the provincial chapters. First of all, this difficulty is q.r should be practical for several congregations in the United States. The new quinquennial report for diocesan congregations is pellucid on the point that it is the will of the Holy See that very many of the diocesan congregations in the United States should become pontifical. The pontifical congregations alluded to above should institute a general revision of their constitu-tions. It does not seem reasonable to maintain that constitutions 187 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious devised for the relatively small community of one house of enclosed nuns are suitable for a congregation of several hundred Sisters, scat-tered in various houses and cities, and laboring in the active life. A protest against giving up the direct vote is really futile and unreasonable. If the Holy See has now for more than half a century constantly demanded the system of delegates, what is the utility of wishing to retain the direct vote? The Holy See corrects the pro-posed constitutions and will insert the system of delegates if it is riot in the constitutions. Is it likely that a protes} against such a pro-longed and.constant practice of the Holy See is reasonable? The Holy See, in 1901, published a plan of constitutions, called the Norrnae, on which the constitutions of lay congregations that wished to be approved by the Holy See had to be based. These Normae are still in effect in so far as they have not been modified by the Code of Canon Law or the later practice of the Holy See. The Norrnae demanded the system of delegates and prescribed that the general chapter was to be composed, of the general officials, of all the superiors of houses of at least twelve religious and one delegate elec.ted by each of these houses, and finally of one superior and one non-superior delegate elected by smaller houses, which were to be united into elective groups of at least twelve religious. The constitutions could also make former superiors general members of the chapter. If the institute was divided into provinces, the provincials and two elected delegates from each province supplanted the superiors and delegates from the houses. The provincial chapter was to be composed of the provincial officials and the superiors and delegates from the houses as described above for the general chapter. Further-more, we have published corrections of constitutions which show that the Holy See was demanding the system of delegates at least as far back as 1887.1 Diocesan congregations also .should have the system of delegates. It is an admitted principle that diocesan constitutions should con-form to those of pontifical congregations except in matters that are proper to the latter institutes. The system of delegates is in no sense proper to pontifical congregations. The mind of the Holy See on this point is sufficiently indicated by the plan of constitutions pub-lished in 1940 by the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of 1Analecta'Ecclesiastica IV (1896), 158, n. 12; VI (1898), 57, n. 1; Battandier, Guide Canonique, 4th edit., 1908, n. 300; Bastien, Directoire Canonique, 1st edit., 1904, n. 431. 188 Jut~, 1951 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS the Faith for diocesan missionary congregations. This plan pre-scribes the system of deleggtes. Reason itself manifests the necessity of the system of delegates. Some of the institutes that have the direct vote can have a chapter of four hundred religious and even more. This is obviously an inefficient number. The vote for the superior general can go to four ballots. Imagine the labor, difficulty, and weariness merely of counting six-teen hundred votes! Each vote must then be opened, examined, and recorded. Then follow six other elections, each capable of going to three ballots. How can a chapter of affairs be efficiently and expedi-tiously conducted when the assembly numbers several hundred? A pontifical congregation of twelve hundred religious divided into four provinces will have a general chapter, exclusive of former superiors general, of nineteen members. As opposed to this practice of the Holy See, a congregation of three hundred religious with the direct vote will have an elective chapter of approximately two hundred 'religious. The opposition of the direct vote to the practice of the Holy See, to reason, and efficiency is so evident that further argumen-tation would only torture the obvious. The principle of the system of delegates is not proportioiaal representation. A province of a thousand will have the same number of delegates as a province of four hundred. Proportional representa-tion is not necessary, since the purpose of a chapter is the good of the congregation as a whole. The capitulars should divest themselves of the narrowness of merely local interests, prejudices, and ambitions and consider only the interests of the entire congregation or prov-ince. It is of no import that the United States, or the East, or the West should get its turn at the office of superior general. Not only the one important principle but the one principle of the election is that the congregation should get the best possible superior general. A greater appreciation of and fidelity.".to this principle would not only effect better elections but would also' assure a more peaceful sequel to some elections. : The system of delegates brings to a chapter a sufficient and effi-cient number of capitulars, who are from all parts of the congrega- ¯ tion and can thus give the information necessary for a knowledge of the congregation as a whole. However, no elective system is an ade-quate substitute for the study, prayer, and purity of intention re-quired for a proper vote. Capitulars can rush into this most impor-tant matter unprepared, grasp at the first prominent name or most 189 " JOSEPH F, GALLEN Review for Religious striking personality, and give a vote that may be firm but not thoughtful. They should previously have studied all religious known to them who are possibly qualified for the consult one another on those qualified, but they are forbidden to electioneer. Prayer is never useless, but in preparation for an election it is especially necessary. Vital prayer brings a peaceful sleep to pre-judice and passion, and t~hese are the natural enemies of a proper election. The illumination and strength of prayer are required to vote for the one God wants rather than the one I like, to vote 'according to the will of God rather than according to the choice of any group. Prayer will bring purity of intention by which the vote will be given to the one most competent and will exclude self-interest, sectionalism, and nationalism. II. Elect Only When Necessary 1. General Officials. The designation of superiors and officials is a matter of internal government and thus appertains to the institute itself. The superio~ general must be elected by the general chapter, since this chapter is the only superior higher than himself in the insti-tute. The general councillors are also elected by the general chapter. This is the reasonable method of designation rather than appoint-ment by the superior general. No superior should choose his own councillors, since ther~ is danger that he would select only those of the same mind as himself or those who would be pliable to his own will. This would be opposed to the canonical concept of canon 105, 3°, which commands a councillor to give his opinion not only respectfully but also truthfully and sincerely. The purpose of a council is to preclude a government that would otherwise be purely individual. At least occasional dissent and opposition of councillors is inherent in the obligation of superiors of seeking the advice and consent of their council. In almost all congregations of Sisters and Brothers the general. chapter also elects the secretary general and the bursar general, but the Sacred Congregation of Religious in approving constitutions also permits that these two general "officials be appointed by the superior general with consent of his council. In my judgment this is the preferable method. The secretary and bursar as such have no part in government. The secretary is merely what his name implies, a secretary and an archivist. The bursar is a treasurer and a bookkeeper. No attribute of these offices demands an election by the general chap-ter. I think we can go further and maintain the following principle 190 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS as practical: an elective chapter is a sufficiently compet.ent judge of the broad human qualities required for government but is not a good judge of specialized abilities. Chapters have elected secretaries who ~ould not type and bursars who knew nothing of keeping books. What has been said of the secretary and bursar is much more true of the director of schools, or studies, the inspector general of hospitals, and, above all, of the novice master who are elected by the general chapter in a few congregations. The procurator general in congregations of Brothers is also an official of specialized abilities. 2. Provincial Ogicials. The Code of Canon Law does not de-termine the method of designation of the provincial superior, the provincial councillors, or the provincial secretary and bursar. In theory at least the constitutions may determine whether the designa-tion of these officials is to be by appointment of the superior general with the con~sent of his council or by election in a provincial chapter. However, many things that are left undetermined in the Code are determined by the practice of the Sacred Congregation of Religious in approving constitutions, although that is not completely, true in the present instance. Nevertheless, it is most worthy of note that the Normae described above mention only the appointment of provincial officials by the superior general. It is also significant that the two outstanding authors on the practice of the Sacred Cdngregation for the constitutions of lay congregations, Bastien2 and Battandier,"~ do not even mention the designation of provincial officials by election. Looking through thirty sets of constitutions of pontifical congrega-tions of Sisters and Brothers, I find that twenty-six appoint and only four elect the provincial officials in a provincial chapter. It thus ¯ appears more than evident that appointment is by far the preponder-ating method of designation in the practice of the Holy See. Reason itself commends the method of appointment. If the term of office of the provincial is three years, a provincial chapter is neces-sary every three years. Experience seems to prove that the election year is also a distracted year. This argument is not so fdrc~ful when the term of the elected provincial isosix years, as is sometimes pre-scribed in constitutions. The usual norm also is that the superi6r general or his delegate presides at a provincial chapter in which pro-vincial officials are elected. The territorial extent of congregation~ divided into provinces is usually very extensive. If the superior gen- 9Directoire Canonique, nn. 239, 3; 381; 387-389. 8Guide Canonique, n. 505. 191 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious eral believes that he should personally preside at these chapters, he is faced with a burden of travel that can interfere with the duties of general government. It is to be remembered that he is already obliged to make a canonical visitation of his entire institute at least once during his term of office. It is also the ordinary norm of constitu-tions that the superior general with the consent of his council must confirm the election of the provincial officials. These cannot validt~t enter on their offices before they are confirmed. For example, if a religious who is elected provincial superior places any act as provin-cial before being confirmed, that act is null and void (canon 176, § 3). Furthermore, the superior general should, at least outside of an urgent case, assemble his council to secure their vote (canon 105, 2°). The members of a council, at least ordinarily, are to give their opinion in an assembly of the council and not by individual and separate replies to the superior. It is certainly somewhat contradic-tory, as also inconvenient and difficult, that the superior general should ordinarily preside over a provincial chapter and yet ordinarily be present with his council to confirm the election. 3. Is a prooincial chapter necessar~l? A provincial chapter always elects the delegates to the general chapter. It is almost universally true that these delegates are two in number. In some institutes the provincial chapter also decides on the, proposals that are to be sub-mitted to the chapter of affairs in the general chapter, and in a few congregations the provincial chapter may make financial and dis-ciplinary enactments for the province, which, however, are not effective until they are confirmed by the general council. A provincial chapter brings together superiors and delegates from the entire prov-ince. It thus entails the suspension of other works by the members for the duration of the chapter and also the expenditure of a sufficient amount of money for travel. The latter consideration is of no small moment in congregations of ~is~ers and Brothers. It is a safe pre-sumption that such institutes are so poor that economy becomes a basic principle of conduct. It must be admitted that in the practice of the Holy See the pro-vincial chapter is almost the universal means of electing the delegates to the general chapter. However, th~ Holy See has also approved the following method. Those of active voice assemble in each house under the presidency of their local superior. Each vocal writes on the one ballot the names of the two Sisters that she elects as delegates to the general chapter. The local superior encloses these in an 192 dulq, 1951 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS envelope with her own vote, seals the en,~elope in the presence of the vocals, and immediately forwards it to the provincial superior or superior general. A meeting of the provincial or general council is held after all the envelopes have been received, and at this meeting the votes are counted, examined, and recorded. The two religious with the highest number of votes are the delegates, the next two are the substitutes. It is difficult to see why this simple method is not preferable when the only business of a provincial chapter is to elect the delegates to the general chapter. The two other matters within the competence of the provincial chapter of some congregations can be taken care of in other ways. The disciplinary and financial enactments, which must be confirmed by the general council, can be procured by the exercise of the right of representation to higher superiors, especially at the time of the provincial and general visita-tion. Nothing also forbids an individual religious from suggesting to the provincial superior or either of the two delegates the matters that he believes should be proposed to; the general chapter. 4. Local o~cials. The election of local superiors, councillors, and bursars is blessedly unknown in congregations of Sisters and Brothers. A universal statement is dangerous in such a matter and does not exclude isolated exceptions. III. Reelections and Reappointments 1. Mother General. The legislation of the Code on the duration of office ot: higher superiors is found in canon 505 : "The higher supe-riors shall be temporary, unless the constitutions determine other-wise." Higher superiors in institutes of women are the mother gen-eral, mother provincial, and the superiors of independent monasteries. The Code does not abrogate a prescription of the constitutions in existence before the Codd which ordains~hat the office of the mother general is to be for life. One or two congregations of Sisters have perpetual mothers general. Outside of the preceding case the Code commands that the office of mother general be temporary, but it does not determine the duration of the temlSorary term nor does it forbid the continued and immediate reeiection o'f the same mother general. These principles of the Code a~e very severely limited both by the directives and the practice of the Sacred Congregation of Religious in approving constitutions. It is undeniable that the Sacred Congre-gation is opposed to the continued immediate reelection of the same mother general. The almost universa'l modern practice of the Holy See is to give the mother general a term of six years but to permit an 193 JOSEPH F~ GALLEN immediate reelection only for a second term. A few pontifical con-gregations prescribF a term of twelve years but do not permit imme-diate reelection. The Sacred Congregation manifested in a letter of March 9, 1920, that it is opposed to a reelection of a mother general c~ntrary to such limitations prescribed in constitutions of pontifical congregations and that it is also averse to granting a dispensation. All congregations of Brothers and diocesan congregations of Sisters whose constitutions prescribe the same term of office and contain the same limitations should follow this letter as a directive norm, since it manifests the mind of the Holy See. Some diocesan congregations assign a term of only three years to the mother general. This does not seem to be an efficient norm, at least in large congregations. It takes a mother general a year or more to acqu.ire full mastery of her extensive and detailed office. tions and the distractions of tion. A mother general who gibility. Some constitutions two six-year terms only when The three-year term also makes elec-elections too frequent in a congrega-has been out of office recovers her eli-ordain that she is again eligible after she has been out of office for six years. The matter of the reelection of the mother general has been taken care .of by the Holy See, and the mind of the Holy See at present is that the mother general should have a term of six years but she may be reelected immediately only for a second term. 2. The General Councillors. Ordinarily a congregation of Sis-ters has four general councillors. The first councillor elected is the mother assistant and vicar general. There is nothing in the Code of Canon Law concerning the duration of office or the repeated reelec-tion of the same general councillors. In the practice of the Holy See ¯ their term of office is the same as that of the mother general, but in this same practice it is almost universal that they may be reelected indefinitely. One consequence of this inde.finite elegibility is that in some in-stances and for a long period of time the mother general and the mother assistant have merely rotated in these two offices. Undoubt-edly the reason for this in many cases is that the two were the most competent religious in the congregation for these offices. It is diffi-cult to adcept this as a universal explanation of the fact. Rather fre-quently the impression can be gained that the capitulars did not carefully and thoroughly[ study the possible qualifications of other members of the congregation, and thus chose the effortless path of voting for those whose names were extrinsically prominent. To aid 194 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS such a study by the capitulars many constitutions prescribe that a list of all religious eligible as general officials is to be posted in a place accessible to the capitulars. This is done in many very large con-gregations. The two in question can be the most competent religious for the office, but we do not have to fall back on conjecture or imagina-tion to see a very talented, competent, and energetic mother general who would-not fit comfortably into the subordinate position of mother assistant. We can readily find a somewhat subdued person-ality who would be a success as mother assistant but who would not necessarily possess the vigor and firmness of will that all supe-riors general must at times exercise. A prolonged period of general government by the same two religious can also deprive a congrega-tion of the quickening influence of new ideas, a new approach, and a new enthusiasm that it may need. The difficulty in this matter could be solved by a more thoughtful, prayerful, and, perhaps, dis-interested choice by the capitulars of the religious most competent for the office. A law to preclude the rotation should be resorted to only if necessary, as can happen in a congregation in which the rota-tion has become ingrained to the detriment of the institute~ Some pontifical and diocesan congregations have enacted laws in this matter by directly forbidding that a retiring mother general be immediately elected mother assistant, and one congregation forbids even postula-tion in this case. The election of a retiring mother genera! as one of the other three general councillors can also create a problem. It is not difficult to imagine that the presence of her predecessor on the council would prevent a mother general from initiating or proposing to her council. a course of action at variance with that of her predecessor. Thus one congregation forbids a mother general to be elected general councillor before a lapse of six years. The continued immediate relection of the same four general councillors is justifiable and commendable when they are the reli-gious most highly qualified for these offices. However, the. repetition here also can be due rather to thoughtlessness than to a studied and prayerful choice. The study of tbe qualification~ for any elective office should go deeper than mere externals. General competence and not mere personality is the rational basis of selection. _An attractive personality is not always.the sign of a competent person. A careful study will also exclude a choice based on first impressions. The price 195 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Re~iew /:or Religious we pay for actions based 6n first impressions is usually delayed, but it is often exorbitant. It is a fact of experience that many people never free their judgment of the influence of externals and first im-pressions. Several congregations bare believed it necessary to place limitations on the repeated immediate reelection of the same four general councillors and thus include the mother assistant. These limitations take various forms: a)an immediate reelection for a second term only: b) reelection for a third term only after the lapse of six years out of office: c) at least at every ordinary general chap-ter two new councillors must be elected; d) a second immediate term only if they receive two-thirds of the votes, but not for a third term before the lapse of six years out of offce. These limitations are practically always applied also to the secretary and bursar general. Since these two officials as such have no part in governme~nt, it is most difficult to see any reason for limiting their tenure of office. 3. The Mother Prooincial. The law of the Code on the dura-tion of the offce of the mother provincial is the-same as that given above for the mother general. As far as is commonly known there are no perpetual provincials. The ordinary practice of the Holy See assigns a three-year term to the provincial and permits reappoint-ment or reelection for an immediate second and, in some instances, even for an immediate third term in the same province. Thus the Holy See has settled any question concerning the repeated reappoint-merit or reelection of the mother provincial. 4. The Provincial Councillors. The provincial councillors are ordinarily either two or four. The Code of Canon Law does not legislate on the term of office of the provincial councillors, and the practice of the Holy See permits their indefinite reappointment or re-election. However, we have here also the possibility of the same diffculties in the mere interchange of the offices of provincial and assistant provincial, in the presence of the former provincial on the provincial council, and in the protracted tenure of office by the same councillors. 5. Local Superiors. Canon. 505 legislates on the duration of office of minor local superiors. The adjective, "minor," is Used to distinguish local superiors from the superiors of independent monas-teries, who are higher superiors according to the Code, for example, the superior of a Visitandine monastery. The Code forbids a minor local superior to be designated for a term of more than three years. At the expiration of this time she may be designated, if the consti- 196 July, 1951 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS tutions permit, for a second, but not for an immedifite third term in the same house. In brief, the Code permits a local superior only two successive three-year terms in the same house. No furthe~ limitations are added in the general practice of the Holy.See in approving con-stinttions. If the Sister is local superior and also holds an office such as presi-dent of a college or supervisor of a hospital, she must be taken out of the post of local superior at the end of the second term. The six-year tenure can certainly create a difficulty in such a situation. The Code applies the law of canon 505 equally to active and contem-plative institutes. It is therefore reasonable to assert that the Code favors this temporary tenure primarily, if not exclusively, as regards the government of subjects in their religious life. The Code does not deny the principle that greater permanency in the direction of some. external works of religious institutes is desirable. The automatic six-year change of presidents of colleges and supervisors of hospitals can cause wonderment and lessened efficiency. It will not be easy for any institute and very difficult for a great number to find many able presidents and supervisors. The law permits only two remedies. A petition may be made to the Holy See to prolong the tenure as local superior. The difficulty of this solution is the prolongation of the six-year tenure in the government of the religious life of the com-munity, but experience seems to confirm the wisdom of the six-year tenure in this respect. The other solution is to separate the two offices and to have a superior of the community, who alone is bound by the six-year tenure, and a president or supervisor. The usual objection against this solution is that it creates a dualism of authority. The objection may really be founded on the fact that the system is some-thing new, but we cannot hold that change is of its nature evil and that the only good is the good old way. The greater extent and complexity in modern times of some external activity of an institute may demand a departure from the former method of direction. It is certainly nothing unusual in secular.life and in business for a .person to be subject to two authorities. Docility on the part of subjects and a reasonable working Out of the distinction of the two fields of authority by the superior and the president or supervisor can bring success to this system. A serious reason may exist for retaining a particular local supe-rior in office beyond the six-year tenure, for example, the completion of a buildi'ng whose erection was begun under this superior. The 197 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review/or Religious Holy See will grant the dispensation for a serious reason. It is not in accord with at least the spirit and purpose of the law to make the asking for dispensations a general practice in the congregation. The constitutions of a few congregations emphasize this doctrine by pre-scribing: "Without a real necessity the mother general shall not" ask for a dispensation from a law so salutary for the religious them-selves and for the whole congregation." The limitation of the Code affects the reappointment of a local superior only in the same house. The Code permits indefinite reap-pointment to other houses, and constitutions approved by the Holy See rarely place any limitation on such reappointment. Subjects, however, have been known to grumble at the principle: "Once a superior, always a superior." It is also true that the volume of a grumble quite frequently exceeds that of the idea producing it. Higher superiors and their councils are obliged to secrecy, but evi-dently their justification for the repeated reappointment of the same religious is the dearth of others qualified for the office. This justi-fication must frequently be admitted. However, it is not true in a11 cases of protracted reappointment. We can at times suspect that general and provincial councils have not been at all thorough or per-severing in compiling a list of those qualified for government. Reap-pointment should also not be allowed to become so constant that the reappointment of every superior is expected and its absence is con-sidered a blot on her reputation. On the other hand, religious should remove even from the field of the sub-conscious the principle that a delayed or excluded superiorship bears the same stigma as a delayed or excluded profession, that every priest must have his parish and every Sister her house, that the one source of peace of soul of mature religious life is to be or to have been a superior, and that never to have been a superior is never to have been approved. These are in-sidious thoughts. They can and, perhaps, do cause great loss of peace of soul. It is a very evident but in no way dishonorable fact that all religious are not qualified for government. Few of us are in danger of psychic disorders because we cannot teach Hebrew, but it is most doubtful that the chair of Hebrew exacts the price of pa-tience, humility, charity, self-sacrifice, misunderstanding, and com-pletely unwarranted criticism that must be paid by the one who has the first chair in chapel "and refectory. General and provincial councils should not only prayerfully and perseveringly search for those best/qualified, but in this matter we 198 ! July, 1951 ELECTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS believe it is a prudent and efficient principle that they should gen-erally incline to a new appointment rather than an immediate reap-pointment to another house of a. religious who has completed a six-year tenure as a local superior. A few congregations have legislated in their constitutions on the reappointment of local superiors to other houses. One form of such legislation is: "After bearing the burden and responsibility of supe-rior for six years, it is necessary (essential, very helpful) that the Sister enjoy for at least three (six, one) years the liberty of subjects and the merit of obedience and submission." It can be doubted that a six-year interval is either necessary or expedient. An interval of from one to three years would be sufficient. A second form of the same legislation is: "A third (and fourth) immediate term may be permitted in another house, but at the expiration of three (four) consecutive and full terms of office, a Sister cannot again be appointed local superior before the lapse of at least a.year (three years)." This law inclines against a third or fourth term, since it merely permits such a term. The limitation of this law of four terms with an interval thereafter of at least a year is a generally practical and pru-dent norm. It could well be followed by all congregations as a direc-tive norm. 6. Local Councillors. The Code of Canon Law does not legis- /ate on the tenure of office of local councillors, and the practice of the Holy See permits their indefinite reappointment. In congregations the influence of local councillors is not very great and thus a pro-tracted tenure of office by the same religious is not apt to cause any serious difficulty. However, a change could at times be helpful to give new life to the house, to avoid the monotony of the same old things in the same old way, to soften rigor, to broaden under-standing, to add stability, and even to quicken to activity a govern-ment that has confounded patience with passivity and tolerance with lack of courage. Conclusion The moral of our story has been frequently expressed above. Careful study, sincere prayer, and absolute purity of intenti6n will assure worthy elections and appointments. This extends to the in-dividual religious, who can more readily transgress these norms in the election of the delegates. The legislation that has been enacted in several congregations to secure better elections and appointments manifests that at least these congregations thought there had been 199 "ANSELM LACOMARA Reoieu~ [or Religiou~ a neglect of these norms. Law is a necessity and is born of an abuse. Law also can never be an adequate substitute for human knowledge andintegrity of will. Some things are highly capable of arousing unworthy emotions, and one of these is elections. The best advice to any elector whether of a delegate or of the superior general is first pray, then study, examine the purity of your intention before God, and then vote. Growt:h in Grace Through t:he ,l::ucharls : Anselm Lacomara, C.P. THE life of grace may be compared to a steep hill which has a great treasure await.ing the climber when he reaches the top. Like every such climb, progress in grace meets difficult portions which are apt to slow us down and give us a.little hardship before we finally continue up. At times like this we need a helping hand and an inward drive to propel us forward. In His divine foresight and infinite mercy, Christ has provided us with a help which enables us to take care of every difficulty and overcome every obstaclee. The divine help is none other than Him-self in the Holy Eucharist. He is the help and the helper. We are never alone in walking the road that leads to the heights. Christ's strength and companionship are ours whenever we need them. His company is ever at our disposal when we need a helping hand over the rough spots, ggception of the Blessed Sacrament brings divine help into our lives. Fervent reception of Holy Communion increases our spiritual vitality, for it unites us to the source of all grace. The fruits of this union with Christ are mutual charity and peace. The Holy Eucharist enables us to keep faith with Christ, and with Christ's brothers and sisters through charity. Christ's grace flows through us as the life of the vine flows through the branches out to the tiniest leaf. That it should be thus is clear from the cir- 20O GROWTH THROUGH THE EUCHARIST cumstances in which Christ instituted the Blessed Sacrament and from His prayer on the first Holy T-hursday. Revelation of Love As Christ reclined with the Apostles for His final Passover Feast, the time of prophetic fulfillment had arrived. The sacre~t Jewish ritual was about to be celebrated by its Author and Object. Jesus was at the head of the table. Nearby was John who would not for-get this holy night as long as he lived. Exactly as the Law prescribed, the Master passed the ritual cup, partook of the lamb, consumed the bitter herbs, chanted the Psalms. Suddenly an unexpected hush fell on the group. The Master paused, looked upon His own and silently took bread into His holy and venerable hands. His voice alone broke the reverent silence: "This is my body which is being given for you;',do this in remem-brance of me." In awe and profound humil!ty the rough men received their First Holy Communion. The Master then took the cup, saying: "This is the cup of the New Covenant in my Blood, which shall be shed for you." The Apostles, each with deep emo-tion, partook of Christ's Precious Blood. While He was yet in them by His sacramental presence, Christ revealed the infinite riches of love stored in His Sacred Heart. Hear His words: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or be afraid . . . I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he will take away; and every branch that bears fruit he will cleanse that it may bear more fruit. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remain on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. If you abide in me, 'and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wil1,'and it shall be done to you . . . As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love . . . This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. These things I command you, that you may love one another." Thus did Christ reveal Himself as our friend and our food, the help and the helper in the life of grace. He has willed to remain with us all days so that we are never alone, so that we never have to 201 ANSELM LACOMARA Review for Religious face life and its burdens by ourselves. He. is with us always to bear us up and to give us strength. The Bread of Life St. Augustine, in one of his sermons on the Passion, put these words in0Christ's mouth: "I am the food of the strong. Have faith and eat me. But thou wilt not change me into thyself; it is thou who wilt be changed into me." And St. Thomas develops the same thought in his commentary on Lombard: "The matter of the Eucharist is a food; the proper effect, then, must be analogous to that of food. He who assimilates corporal food transforms it into him-self; this change repairs the losses of the organism and gives it the necessary increase. But the Eucharistic food, .instead of being trans-formed into the one who takes it, transforms him into itself. It follows that the proper effect of the Sacrament is to transform us so much into Christ that we may say, 'I live, now, not I, but Christ liveth in me.' " Christ is truly the food of the soul in the Blessed Sacrament. Holy Communion is the "Sacred Banquet in which Christ is re-ceived." The source of all life and grace comes to share that same life and grace. In His sermon promising the bread of heaven, Christ said: "I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall not hunger. I am the living bread which came down frdm heaven . the bread which I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world . . . Unless you eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you . . . My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him." It is evident that Our Blessed Lord never intended that the Holy Eucharist to be a reward for goodness of life. It is a food without which we cannot live any kind of a spiritual life. Christ certainly indicated His mind on the matter when He stated with so much force: "Unless you eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you shall not have life in you." ;Faken simply as spoken, this can mean only one thing: just as physical life cannot continue with-out physical food, so also our spiritual life is unable to continue without the spiritual food of Christ's Sacred Body and Blood. Christ wants us to receive Him frequently and fervently that the life of grace within us may flourish and come to full flower. He has left Himself as the food of our souls'that we may abide in Him, and He in us, and all in the Father. Christ comes to us with His divin- 202 dul~,1951 GROWTH THROUGH THE EUCHARIST ity, His merits, and His infinite riches that He may become for the soul its light and its way, it wisdom and its truth, its justice and its strength. In short, He. who is life itself, comes to fill the soul with divine life that we may see things as He sees them and do things as He wants them done. Union with One Another in Christ The effect of sacramental union will make itself felt not only in the life of the individual religious but in the life of the whole reli-gious family. Christ said: "Love one another as I have loved you." When He gave that command, He and His own were united in a bond of love as they had never been united before. They had come together to worship the same God according to the same ritual. They had partaken of the same food, broken the same bread. Above all, they were united to Christ and to one another in Him because all had shared in Christ's Body and Blood. The supernatural vitality of the Eucharist made their souls throb (vith God's own life shared through divine grace. He in them and they in Him and all in the Father--a unity ineffable. This unity among the Apostles and the Master accomplished in the reception of Communion is a sign of the wondrous unity which exists in Christ's Mystical Body. St. Paul (I. Cot., 10:17) wrote: "XVe, being one, all partake of the same bread." Christ is still in the place of honor. The Pope and bishops are in their allotted place; priests, religious, and laity in theirs. All receive the same Lord; all are nourished by the same divine food. The life of Christ flows in a constant stream to all His members. He is still the vine, we the branches. The words of the Last Discourse still hold true: "the glory that Thou hast given Me, I have given to them that they may be one; I in them and Thou in Me; that they may be perfected in unity." ' Solidarity in Christ! This idea so permeated the early Chris-tians that their charity became their mark of identification. "Behold these Christians: how they love one another." They loved one another in Christ. They shared the same bread of life in conscious imitation of the scene which took place in the Cenacle. Their breaking of bread was a liturgical and ritualistic banquet at wlqich each received Communion. They were acutely conscious that the Master had promised peace and love to all who did in like manner. The secret of the intense love, that led them to sell what they had and give to the poor, was their mutua! love for Christ, their mutual 203 ANSELM LACOMARA life and sanctification in Him. Their reception of Communion was the strong bond which held them to one another in charity. Our first brethren knew that Communion was a vivid continuation of the Last Supper. Holy Communion is also our way of being ~nited with Christ as the Apostles and early Christians were. We partake of the same chalice, break the same bread. This cannot fail to produce the effect desired by Our Lord, our growth in grace and charity. When Jesus comes to us in Holy Communion, let us allow Him to work in us so that we may be truly one with Him. If we are one with Him, we will surely be one with our fellow religious,, for our hearts will be attuned to His words: "Love one another as I have loved you." If we are one with Him, His influence will make itself felt in our daily lives. The curt word will die in its utterance. The sharp reply will be softened on our lips. Our judgments will be kind. We will listen to and respect the opinions of others. Our outlook will be that of Christ, who "loving His own, loved them to the end." Christ wants ~to work wonders in our souls. He loves us more than words can say. His Body and Blood are given to us daily. He desires us to join Him in this Sacred Banquet that His spirit and His peace may fill our souls. If we receive Him in the same spirit of fer-vent generosity with which He comes to us, His priestly prayer, "Holy Father, keep in thy name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are," will have its glorious fulfill-ment in our souls. HERESY OF RACE One can scarcely mention any of the various ways in which Negroes are unjustly treated when he is confronted with the old objections: the-value-of-property-goes- . down-when-the-Negro-moves-in : the-parish-runs-down-if-Negroes-are-not-kept-out ; would-you-want-your-sister-to-marry-a-Negro? : the-black-baby-in-the-seventh-gen-eration; white-students-would-leave-the-school-if-Negroes-were-accepted; hospitals-would- go-bankrupt-if-Negro-patients-were-admitted ; white-patrons-would-boycott-the- hotels-if-Negroes-were-served; and so forth. "All these woulds and ifs," writes Sister Mary Ellen O'Hanlon, O.P., in The Heresy of Race, "and many more, so repeatedly rolled off loose tongues, are false conjectures for which no real or honeit experiences have ever given any proof/' The Heresy of Race. which deals with these old objections and other points regarding the true Christian attitude towards race relations, can be obtained from: Rosary College Book Store, Rosary College, River Forest, Illinois. Single copies, 50 cents. Reduced rates for quantity orders. 204 Ins :rucfion on Sponsa Christi [EDITORS' NOTE: We present here the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Religious on the practical application of the Apostolic Constitution, Sponsa Christi. This document was given at Rome under date of November 23, 1950, and pub-lished in Acta Apostolicae Seclis, under date of 3anuary 10, 1951, pp. 37-44.] I. Among the remarkable documents by which our Holy Father, Plus XII, by Divine Providence, Pope, has willed to adorn and crown the Holy Year as with so many precious jewels, assuredly not the least is the Apostolic Constitution, $loor~sa Christi, which deals with the renewal and advancement within God's Church of the holy and venerable institution of nuns. This Sacred Congregation; which as its appointed task, promptly and faithfully assists th~ Holy Father in all things pertaining to the state of perfection, has reverently and joyfully received from him the commission of putting into execu-tion this Constitution, truly remarkable from so. many points of view, and of making its application assured and ea.sy. II. To fulfill this honorable duty, the Sacred Congregation has assembled in this Intruction some practical norms for those points which offer greater difficulty. III. Now, the points in the Apostolic Constitution which offer difficulty and hence require special clarification are:. (I) those which refer to the major or minor cloister of nuns; (2) those which deal with the establishment of federations and the limitation of auton-omy; (3) finally those which have to do with obtaining and co-ordinating productive labor for the monasteries. I. MAJOR AND MINOR CLOISTER FOR NUNS IV. The Apostolic Constitution, Sponsa ~hristi (art. IV), pre-scribes a special cloister for monasteries of all nuns which differs from the episcopal cloister of congregations (c. 604), and which, according to the general ngrm of the law, is papal, as is the cloister of orders of men (c. 597, § 1). In fact, regarding a number of prescriptions dealing with both the entrance of externs into the limits of the cloister and the going out of the nuns from the same, the regu-lations are stricter than those which control the papal cloister of men. V. Hereafter there will be two types of papal cloister for nuns: the one major, which is reserved for monasteries in which solemn vows are taken and a purely contemplative life is led, even though the number of the nuns may have decreased; the other mirror, which 205 INSTRUCTION Reoieu3 for Religious as a rule, is applied to monasteries in which a life is led which is not exclusively contemi~lative, or the nuns take simple vows only. A. Major Papal Cloister VI. Major papa/ cloister is that which is described in the Code (cc. 600, 602) and accurately defined by the Sacred Congregation in its Instruction, Nuper edito, approved by the late Pop~ Pius XI on February 6, 1924. This cloister is fully confirmed in the Constitu-tion, Sponsa Christi, safeguarding the following declarations which the Constitution empowers the Sacred Congregation to make (art. IV, § 2, 1°) 'so that its observance may be prudently adapted to the needs of the times and to local circumstances. VII. Nuns bound by major papal cloister, after their profession, by reason of the profession itself and by the prescription of ecclesi-astical law, contract a grave obligation: 1° of remaining always within the precincts of the monastery which have been put within the definite limits of the cloister, so that they may not leave the cloister ~ven for a moment under any pretext or condition without a special indult of the Holy See, except in those cases only which are provided for in the canons and instructions of the Holy See, or which are envisioned in the constitutions or statutes approved by the Holy See itself. 2° of not admitting to the parts of the monastery subject to the law of cloister any. person whatsoever no matter of what class, con-dition, sex, or age, even for a moment, without a special indult of the Holy See. Certain exceptions, however, of persons and cases are expressly made in the canons and in instructions of the Holy" See, as well as in the constitutions or statutes approved by it. VIII. 1° Indults and dispensations to leave the major cloister after profession (VII, 1°) or to enter it or to admit others (VII, 2°) are reserved exclusively to the Holy See, and can be granted by it alone or in its name and by its delegation. 2° Reasons for obtaining dispensations should be proportionately grave, due consideration being given to the circumstances of cases, times, and places, keeping in mind the practice and style of the Roman Curia. IX. 1° The faculty to dispense may be given ab bomine, either for a definite period of time for all cases occurring during it, or for a certain number of cases. There is nothing; however, to hinder the granting of certain permissions habitually in particular law having 206 duly, 1951 SPONSA CHRISTI legitimate approval, for instance, in the constitutions, in the statutes of federations, and in similar documents.' 2° Whether granted ab homine or by general or particular law, indults and dispensations must determine, according to the instruc-tions of the Holy See affd the practice and style of the Roman Curia. the conditions and precautions .to which the dispensation is subject. X. The penalties against those who violate the laws of cloister remain as stated in toe Code (c. 2342, nn. 1, 3). B. Minor Papal Cloister ~ XI. Minor papal cloister: 1° retains intact the fundamental rules of the cloister of nuns, inasmuch as it differs greatly from the cloister of congregations (c. 604) as well as from that of orders of men (cc. 598-599) ; 2° must safeguard and facilitate for all the observance and care of solemn chastity; 3° it must protect and efficaciously rosier the contemplative life of the monastery; 4° The employments which the Church hag designedly entrusted to these monasteries must be so harmonized with the contemplative life within the confines of the minor papal enclosure that the latter may by all means be preserved while these works are properly and advantageously performed. 5° In monasteries which engage in approyed works, the pre-scription of canon 599, § 1 for the cloister of or'ders of men, which is likewise applied by canon 604, § 2 to the cloister of congregations, is to l~e strictly and faithfully observed, in such a way that a clear and complete separation be ever maintained between buildings or sec-tions thereof set apart for the living quarters of the nuns and for the exercises of the monastic life, and those parts made over to necessary works. XII: Minor papal cloister includes: 1° a grave prohibition against admitting into the parts of the house set aside for the community of nuni and subject to the law of cloister (c. 597) any persons whatsoever who are not members of the community, regardless of class, condition, sex, or age, according to canon 600; 2° another grave prohibition forbidding the nuns after profes-sion to leave the precincts of the monastery, in the same way as nuns subject to major cloister (n. VII-IX). XIII. 1 ° The passage of the nuns from the parts reserved to the 207 INSTRUCTION Revieu~ for Religious community to the other places within the precincts of the monast~ery destined for the works of the apostolate is allowed for this purpose alone, with the permission of the superior, and under proper safe-guards, to those who, according to the norms of the constitutions and the prescriptions of the Holy See, are destined for the exercise, of the apostolate in any way. 2° If by reason of the apostolate, dispensations from the pre-scriptions of n. XII, 2° become necessary, they may be given only to nuns and other religious who are lawfully assigned to the employ-ments, under grave obligation in conscience for superioresses, for or-dinaries, and for superiors regular, to whom the custody of the cloister is entrusted (c. 603). XIV. Admittance of externs to the parts of the monastery de-voted to employments of whatever kind is governed by these norms: 1 o Habitual admittance is allowed to, pupils, boys or girls, ot to other persons in whose favor ministries are performed, and to such women only with whom necessary contact is demanded by reason and on the occasion of such ministries. ' 2° The local ordinary should, by a general or habitual declara-tion, define as such those exceptions which must be made of necessity, for instance, those,ordinarily required by the civil law for the pur-pose of inspections, examinations, or for other reasons. 3° Other exceptions, should such at times seem truly necessary in individual cases, are reserved to the express grant of the ordinary, who is in conscience bound to impose prude.nt precautions. XV. 1° Nuns who unlawfully leave the precincts of the mon-astery fpso facto incur excommunication reserved simply to the Holy See according to canon 2342, 3°, or, by express grant reserved to the local ordinary. 2° Nuns who illicitly leave the parts of the monastery reserved to the community and go to other places within the precincts of the monastery, are to be punished by the superior or by the local ordi-nary, according to the gravity of their fault. 3° Those who illicitl.y enter the parts of the monastery reserved to the community and those who bring them in or allow them to enter, incur excommunication reserved simply to the Holy See. 4° Those who illegitimately enter the parts of the monastery not reserved to the community, as well as those who bring them in or permit fhem to enter, are to be severely punished according to the gravity of their fault by the ordinary of the place in which the mon-astery is located. 208 duly, 1951 SPONSA (~HRISTI XVI. Dispensations from minor papal cloister, except those ad-mitted by law, are, as a rule, reser~red to the Holy See. Faculties more or less broad, as circumstances seem to require, can be granted to ordinaries either ab homine or in the constitutions and statutes. II. FEDERATIONS OF MONASTERIES OF NUNS XVIL Federations of monasteries of nuns, according to the norm of the Constitution, Sponsa Christj" (art. VII, § 2, 2°), are earnestly recomrriended, both to avoid the harmful effects which both more grievously and more readily befall entirely independent monasteries, and which by union can to a great extent be avoided more effectively, as well as to foster both their spiritual and temporal interests. Although, as a rule, federations of monasteries are not imposed (art. VIII, § 2, 2°), nevertheless, the reasons which would recom-mend them in general, could, in particular cases be so strong that, everything considered, they would be deemed necessary by the Sacred Congregation. ~' : XVIII. Federations of mona~'teries are holt to be impeded by the fact that the individual monasteries which intend to form them are subject to superiors regular. Provision will have to be made for this common subjection in the Statutes of the Federati(~n. XIX. When, because of the intention of the .fou~de~ or for any other reason that may occur, there already exists some.kind of begin-ning of a union or federation of monasteries of the same order or institute, anything already done or outlined must be taken into ac-count in the development of the federation itself. XX. A federation of monasteries in no way directly affects the relation, already in existence according to the common or to the par.- ticular law, of the individual monasteries to the local ordinaries or to the superiors regular. Hence, unless an.express and lawful deroga-tion is made to this rule, the powers of ordinaries and superiors is neither increased nor diminished nor changed in any way. XXI. The statutes of a federation may grant certain rights over the federation to ordinaries and to superiors which as a rule do not beloiag to them, leaving intact generally the right over each individual monastery as such. xxII. The general and principal purposes and advantages of unions and federations are the following: 1° the legally recognized facuIty and the canonically sanctioned duty of a mutual fraternal assistance, both in the conservation, de- 209 INSTRUCTION Reoieu~ [or Religious lense, and increase of regular observance, and of domestic economy, as well as in all other th~ngs; 2° the establishment of novitiates common to all or to a group of monasteries for cases in which, either because of a lack of person-nel necessary for the directive offices, or because of other circum-stances moral, economic, local, and the like, a solid and practical spir-itual, disciplinary, technical, and cultural training cannot be given in the individual monasteries; 3° the faculty and the moral obligation, defined by certain norms and accepted by federated monasteries, of asking for and of mutually interchanging nuns who may be necessary for government and training; 4° the possibility of and freedom for a mutual temporary ex-change or ceding of subjects, and also of a permanent assignment, because of health or other moral or material need. XXIII. The characteristic notes of federations which are to be considered essential when taken together are enumerated as follows: 1 o From the source from which they spring and [rom the author-ity from which as such they d.epend and which governs them directly, federations of nuns are of pont[lical right according to the Code (c. 488, 3°). Hence not only their establishment, but also the approval of their statutes, and the enrollment of monasteries in, or their separation from, a federation, belongs to the Holy See exclusively. Provided all the rights over individual monasteries granted by the Code to ordinaries are safeguarded, federations are subject to the Holy See in all those matters in which pontifical institutes of women are directly subject to it, unless a lawful exception has been expressly provided for. The Holy See may commit certain items of its pre-rogatives, either habitually or in single instances, to its immediate assistants or delegates for federations. 2° B~t reason of territory or of extension, federations of monas-teries are to be established preferably along regional lines, for easier government, unless the small number of monasteries or other just or proportionate causes demand otherwise. 3° By reason of the moral persons which constitute them, inas-much as they are collegiate persons (c. i00, § 2), federations are composed of monasteries of the same order and of the same internal observance, though they need not necessarily depend on the same local ordinary or superior regular, nor have the same kind of vows or form of cloister. 210 dulq, 1951 SPONSA CHRISTI 4° Confederations of regional federations can be allowed if need, or great advantage, or the traditions of the order recommend them. 5° From the standpoint ~f the independence of the monasteries, the bond which holds the federated monasteries together should be such that it does not interfere with their autonomy, at least in essen-tials (c. 488, 2°, 8°). Although derogations from autonomy are not to be presumed, they can be granted with the previous consent of each monastery, provided that grave reasons seem to recommend or demand them. XXIV. All ~ederations of monasteries of nuns must have their own statutes subject to the approval of the Holy See before they can be established. The statutes must accurately determine the following: l° the aims which each federation proposes to itself; 2° the manner in which the government of the federation is to be regulated, either with regard to constitutive elements, as for ex-ample, president, visitators, council, and the like; or as to the manner of appointment to these offices; or, finally, the power of this govern-ment and the manner of conducting it; 3° the means which the federation should use that it may be able to carry out its aims pleasantly and vigorousl~; 4° the conditions and means to be used in putting into execu-tion the prescriptions regarding the mutual interchange of persons laid down in art. VII, § 3, 2° of the Constitution, Sponsa Christi: 5° the juridical standing of nuns transferred to another mon-astery, whether in the monastery from which the transfer takes place, or in that to which it is made; 6° The economic help (o be given by each monastery for the common enterprises of the entire federation; 7° The administration of the common novitiate or of other works common to the federation, if there be such. XXV. 1° In order that the Holy See may be able to exercise a direct and efficacious vigilance and authority over federations, each federation can be given a religious assistant, as need or usefulness may suggest. 2° The religious assistant will be appointed by the Sacred Con-gregation according to the statutes, after all interested parties have been heard. 3° In each case his duties will be accurately defined in the decree of appointment. The principal ones are as follows: to take care that the genuine spirit of a profoundly contemplative life as well as the 211 INSTRUCTION spirit proper to the order and institute be securely preserved and in-creased; likewise, to see that a prudent and exact government be established and preserved in 'the federation; to have regard for the solid religious training of the novices and of the religious themselves; to help the council in temporal matters of greater moment. 4° The Holy See will delegate or commit to the assistant such powers as may seem opportune in individual cases. III. MONASTIC LABOR XXVI. 1° Since, by the disposition of Divir~e Providence, the temporal necessities of life are at times so pressing that nuns seem morally compelled to seek and accept labors beyond their accustomed ones, and even perhaps to extend the time given to labor, all should as true religious submit themselves promptly and humbly to the dis-positions of Divine Providence, as the Christian faithful do in like circumstances. 2° They should do this, however, not anxiously or capriciously or arbitrarily, but prudently as far as may seem truly necessary or .suitable, seeking with simple hearts a balance between their under-standing of fidelity to the letter and to tradition, and a filial subjec-tion to the permissive and positive dispositions of Divine Providence. 3° Keeping these directives in mind, let them submit to ecclesias-tical or to religious superiors, as the case may require, whatever ar-rangements seem advisable. XXVII. Ec~iesiastical and religious superiors must: 1° by all means seek and obtain profitable labor for the nuns who need it, and, should the case require it, also employ committees of pious men or women, and, with due caution and prudence, even secular agencies established for such purposes; 2° maintain a careful supervision of the quality and orderly ar-rangement of the work, and require a just price for it; 3° to superintend diligently the coordination of the activities and the labor of individual monasteries so that they may help, sup-ply, and complement one another, and see to it that every vestige of competition is entirely avoided. PLEASE NOTE CAREFULLY The subscription price of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~s now: $3.00 per year for Domestic and Canadian subscriptions; $3.35 per year for all foreign subscrip-tions. For further details please see inside back cover. 212 uesUons and Answers In the March issue of the Review Sister Digna wrote about men÷al and other.tests for candidates aspiring to the religious life. Would you kindly 9ire "Fhe name and address of the publishers of these tests? Sister Digna prepared the detailed description of the following tests which she suggests as helps to'Ocarry out the program outlined in her article. Since we received these lists some tiptoe ago, a number of the prices may have been changed. ~; 1. American Council on Education Psychological Examination for ttigh School Students. This is a time-limit test. Time: 54 min- o" utes. Norms: Comprehensive norms for e~ich annual edition are pub-lished in series V of the American Council on Education Studies for. April of'the school year in which the test is current. Authors: Louis L. Thurstone and Thelma Gwinn,Thurstone, University of Chicago. Publishers: The American Council on Education, 744 ,IacksowPlace, Washington, D.C.; distributed by Science Research Associates, 1700 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Cost: $.07 per test, including test booklet and answer sheet. Additional answer sheets, $.02 each. Manual, scoring keys, and norms, $.25. ~ ,, 2. The Otis Self-Administering Tests of Mental.Abilit.~. These are time-limit tests, consisting of a Higher E~amination designed for grades 9-12 and for college students; and an Inter~edlate t~xamina-tion designed for grades 4-9. Norms: Age and grade norms fur-nished in the manual, as well as charts for .translating raw score to percentile rank, or to Binet Mental Age and I.Q. Author: A. S. Otis. Publisher: World Book Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York. Cost: $1.25 per package of 25 tests, including manual, scoring key, and norms; specimen set, $0.35. Four alternate forms of each test are available. 3. Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale by David Wechsler. An individual examination including eleven tests for use at all ages from adolescence (age 10) up to 70 years. Five tests are verbal: Similari-ties, Comprehension, Information, Arithmetic, and Memory for Numbers. Five are nonverbal performance tests: Object Assembly (profile, Manikin, and Hand in Form I; face, horse, and auto in Form II), Block Design, Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement, and Digit-Symbol Substitution. An alternate test of Vocabulary is QUESTIONS AND .,~NSWERS Re~ieu~ for Religious provided. A feature of the test is that the IQ can be obtained from as few as eight tests without serious loss in reliability. Scores on each test are converted into star~dard scores. The total of these scores is converted into IQ equivalents by means of a table which takes into account the age of adults. The materials appeal to testees at all ages and levels of ability and are well-suited for classification of .both normal and abnormal individuals. Text, "The Measurement of Adult Intelligence," $2.60. Form I. Test Materials, including 25 Record Blanks, $14.00. The text contains the administrative man-ual for Form I, and must be ordered separately. Form II. Test Ma-terials, including 25 Record Blanks and the manual required for ad-ministering this form, $15.50. Manual alone, $2.00. Specify Form I or Form II. Record Blanks, sold only in packages of 25 and 100 copies. Packages of 25--$1.25 each. Personality Tests . 4. The Adjustment Int~entorg by Hugh M. Bell. A diagnostic tool to .aid the counselor and guidance worker in discovering the sources of personal and social maladjustment in students and adults. The separation of adjustment into four types (home, health, social, and emotional) aids in the location of specific adjustment'difficulties. Scoring requires about three minutes. Tentative norms are given for high school students, college students, and adults of both sexes. Adult form also has scoring fbr occupational adjustment. Untimed. Forms: Student and Adult. Specify form desired. Sold only in packages of 25, $1.85, and. packages of 100, $5.75. Manual and keys included. Specimen Set,'~cluding both forms, 35 cents. Regular IBM answer sheets--for use with regular booklet of questions. Same answer sheet used for both Student and Adult forms. Sold only in packages of 50, $1.10, and packages of 500, $7.75. Stencils for both hand~ and machine-scoring; Student form, $1.10 per set, Adult form, $1.30 per set--specify form de-sired. Nontimed. Author: H. M. Bell, Chico, California, State Col-lege. Publisher: Stanford University Press, Stanford University, California. Cost: $1.85 per 25; $1.75 per 100 machine-scorable answer sheets; specimen set, $0.15. 5. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality InuentoW by Starke R. Hathaway and J. Charnley McKinley. A diagnostic test con-structed entirely on the basis of clinical criteria. At present the au-thors have made available nine scales: Hypochondriasis, Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Masculinity and Feminity, Paranoia, 214 dul~,1951 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS " Psychasthenia, Schizophrenia, and Hypomania. Four other scores are ascertained: the Question score, the Lie score, the Validity score, and the K score (a suppressor variable refining the discrimination of five of the clinical variables)i Untimed. Individual Form Forms: Individual and Group. Spec.ify form desired. Individual Form ("The Card Set"). Box of 550 item cards with three sorting cards marked True, False, or Cannot Say. Sturdy wooden box. $12.50. Manual, containing description (including complete list of questions), the6ry, administration, and norms, with supplement ex-plaining how to use the K score. $1.00, when ordered separately. 75 ccfits each when ordered in lots of 10 or more for class use. Keys. Eleven transparent guides made of map cloth, one for each of the nine scales, one for the F or Validity score, and one for the K score. $7.50 including manual. Recording Sheet for recording the subject's sorting and the profile of his scores. One sheet needed for each case. Sold only in packages of 50. 1-9 packages--$2.50.each. ¯Group Form Group Form ("The t~ooklet Form"). The Group Form has been prepared for use witb~IBM answer sbegts, thus permitting either hand-scoring or machineT~coring. The,authors recommend that the Group Form be used only with person'S~°who are still in school or who have had recent contact with test materials in group form. For clinical cases or small groups, the Individual Form is considered de-sirable. Booklets for Grghp Form are printed on heavy stock and will stand repeated use. 1-24 booklets, 25 cent~;e0db; packages of 25, $5.50 each. Manual. This is the same as for the Individual Form but has a supplement. $1.00 when ordered separately. 75 cents each when ordered in lots of 10 or ran.re for class use. Key:;. Envelope contains manuaI, supp!ementary manual, and 16 hand-scoring stencils, $4.00. Similar envelope with machine-scoring stencils, $4.00. Specify which i~ desired. Answer Sheets. IBM answer sheets which can be either machine- or hand-scored. One copy needed for each testee. For each answer sheet ordered, one Pro-file and Case Summary form is. included. Answer sheets are sold onIy in packages of 50, $3.00 each, and packages of 5~)0,.$23.00 each. Extra Profile and :Case Summary forms, for duplicate reports, $1.60 per package of 50. 6, Minnesota Personality Scale by 3ohn G. Dadey and Walter 3. blanks, $:50 per 25;-scoring keys, $1.10 for one key, $.80 for 2 to 215 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS McNamara. ' Five aspects of personality are measured: Morale, Social Adjustment, Family Relations, Emotionality, Economic Conserva-tism. These are based on a factor analysis of several pers6nality tests. Each item is scored for only one scale and each scale is highly reliable. Norms are based on almost 2000 university students. The questions are in reusable booklets. The answers are marked on IBM answer'sheets which can be either hand- or machine-scored. Grades 11 through college. Time, no li,mit, about 45 min. Forms: Men and Women. Order booklets, answer sheets and scoring stencils separately. Specify form (Men's or Women's) and quantity of each. Booklets. Sold in packages of 25. 1-9 packages--S2.50 each. 10 or more packages--S2.25 ',each. Answer sheets. Sold only in packages of 50, $1.80 each, ~tnd packages of 500, $15.00 each. Same sheet is used for either Men or Women. Manual and hand-scoring stencils must be ordered separately, 50 cents. Specify form desired. Manual and IBM machine-scoring stencils, $1.25 a set. Specify form. desired. Specimen Set, either form, 60 cents. Specify form desired. Men's or Women's. 7. The Perso, nality Inuentor~ by Robert G. Bernreuter. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. Designed to measure six as-pects of personality at~one administration: Neurotic Tendency, Self-sufficiency, Introversion-Extroversion, Dominance-Submission, So-ciability, Confidence. Norms for both men and women have been established for h.igh school, college, and adult ages. Untimed. Sold 'only in packages of 2.5, $1.85, and packages of 100, $5.75, with manual, norms and set of keys. Individual Report Sheets, sold only in packages of 25, 35 cents. Specimen Set, 35 cents. IBM answer sheets available. Sold only in packages of 50, $1.10 each, and packages of~500, $7.75 each. Machine-scoring keys, $2.60 per set; cannot be used for hand-scoring. 8. Stronfl Vocational Interest Blank, (for Men and Women) Author: E. K. Strong, Jr. Publisher: Stanford University Press, Stanford University, California. Cost: Tests, $2.10 per 25; .report 9 keys, $:72 each for 10 or more keys; machine-scorable answer sheets, $2.72 per 100. The Psychological Corporation, 522 Fifth .Avenue, Neb¢ York, N. Y. 9. Kuder Preference Record. Form A and Form BB. Publisher: Science Research Associates, 1700 Prairie Avenue, Chicago. Cost: Form BB-test booklets which can be used many times, $.48 each; answer pads, $.08 each; profile sheets, $.02 each. '216 RELIGIOUS LIFE AND SPIRIT. ByRev. Ignaz Waffero÷,O.M.I. T~rans-lated by Rev. A. S{mon, O.M.I. Pp. vff~ ~- 408. B.Herder Book Co., S~'. Lou~s, Mo. $6.00. Community exhortations and conferences are an important means to spiritual perfection. Just as by the will of Christ the trde Faith was to be preached and propagated mainly by the living w,ord, so also Christian perfection. Christ¯ Himself set the exa'mple¯ in the Ser-mon on the Mount; the apostles and first bishops taught the more perfect way by word of mouth; virgins, ascetics, andoreligious from ¯ the earliest days were instructed and encouraged to ever greater perfec-tion by exhortations; witness, fc~r example, the monks of the desert. Spiritual conferences soon became traditional ~ in the Church; they went down the centuries, from Cassian to Bernard, to Teresa, to Francis de Sales, to Faber, Marmion, and Leen. ¯ Today canon law prescribes them as a regular spiri'tual exercise for religious and semi-narians (cf. canons 509"and 1367), and the rules of almost all reli-gious communities make provision for them. H~nce, they are not something boring, to be minimized and neglec'ted, .but rather a spir-itual element, to be valued and put to good .use. Their purpose: to enlighten the mind b~'instruction and to sup-ply motives and warmth to the will, leading to virthous action. ' For this spiritual energizing the living word is far more effective than the printed page. Of-course, the. person giving the exhortation should posse.ss certain qualities: he must be a man of prayer, self-abnegation, virtuous life, and prudence: .he must have the requisite knowledge derived from study, prayer and experience; he must make careful preparation and adapt his .conference skillfully t.o his audi-ence~ Orat?ry and rhetoric are of sec6ndary importance; simplicity and sincerity are more efficacious for this work. The listener, too, must come to the conference prepar.ed; hi must have a good intention, a desire to profit spiritually from v~hat he hears; he must not be criti-cal, but humble and receptive, diligently making practical applica-tions, not to his neighbor, or tothe speaker, but to himself. Such in brief is the doctrine of the spiritual masters on the exhortation with which religious are so familiar. 3udged in the light of the above doctrine the present collection of conferences for religious stands up quite well, though 'it is by no 217 BOOK REVIEWS Reoiew for Religious means perfect. The author, Fathe~ Ignaz Watterot, O.M.I., was competent to give these cbnferences to nuns, having been for many years a successful superior and counsellor of religious. He knows the religious life, both theoretically and practically; he has put his mes-sage in a concrete way, well-suited to his hearers. Hence, it is not su_rprising to learn that the book has been often reprinted in the original and can be found in almost every German convent. It merits the enthusiastic reception given it by the reviewers when it first appeared. There are forty conferenc~es on forty different topics, averaging ten to twelve pages in length, each one neatly and logically divided by means of sub-headin'gs. The subject-matter covers the excellence and dignity of the religious state, the duties, difficulties, and means to perfection in the religious state, its weakness and defects, its joys and consolations. Almost every important point of the ordinary life of religious receives due consideration. However, there is a surprising and inexplicabl~ dmission, daily~Holy Mass. The conferences are doctrinal and psychological. Holy Scripture, both Old and New Thstament, is cited profusely. Canon law and selected instructions of the Holy See are utilized. The principal ascetical sources are the works of Augustine, Chrysostom, Bernard," Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola, Alphonsus Liguori, and above all thos.e of St. Francis de Sales and. St. Jeanne de Chantal. Among the more recent" writers we find Alban Stolz, Albert W.eiss, and Clara Fey, foundress of the Sisters of the Poor Child J~sus, whose cause, for canonization has been intro-duced. The author is also well acquainted, with feminine psychol-ogy, and his conferences abound with practical, even homely, ex-amples and illustrations. The chief drawbacks of this American edition are two. First, the book has not been brought up to date. It was first published some forty years ago. Pertinent official documents of the Holy

Issue 61.4 of the Review for Religious, 2002. ; Identities Spirituality Community Living \ Profiling JULY AUGUST 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 4 Review for Rellgious hdp people respond aria bkfa thful ~ ° ~ to God's ~niversal call to holiness ~ by making available to t~em the ~piH~l legades that flow~om the'charisms of CathoUdeOnsecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone:314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ \Veh site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mount St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See iuside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2002 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to COl)}, any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distrihu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Adv#ory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp James and Joan Felling Adrian Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ JULY AUGUST 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 4 contents 342 feature Reciprocal Identities: Apostolic Life and Consecrated Life Patricia Wittberg sc oudines the role apostolic institutions had in shaping the identity of religious congregations in the past and describes the role of a person who would be responsible for catalyzing a congregation's reformulation of its apostolic identity in the absence of these institutions today. 352 364 spirituality Diocesan Priesthood: Discerning the Fire in Our Midst George Aschenbrenner SJ describes four steps that are part of a discerning life and three dimensions of the human stage on which the drama of a personal love-relationship with God is played. Desert Spirituality Ernest E. Larkin OCarm examines the ancient traditions of desert spirituality and contemplative prayer and proposes ways to adapt them to our times. for l~eligious 375 community living Three Forms of Community Living: A Survey Report Barbara Zajac makes a sociological survey of sisters in one religious community to explore how they define and create "community." 395 Expert Practitioners of Union: Forming, Living, and Sustaining Community Joel Giallanza CSC reviews the complexities involved in defining or describing religious community and suggests strategies to form and live and sustain community. 407 profiling Merton and the Enneagram: The Ritual Enactment of His Myth Suzanne Zuercher OSB examines Thomas Merton from his journals, considering him as an enneagram 4, his true self more acknowledged over the years, then anguished over, and ultimately embraced. 419 Liberal or Conservative: Temperaments and Faith Edward Krasevac OP proposes that awareness of temperamental affinities for liberal/conservative positions can give us a greater and sometimes much-needed sensitivity to what others are saying and give us at least a partial understanding of why we b~lieve what we believe. departments 340 Prisms 430 Canonical Counsel: Involuntary Departure 435 Book Reviews j~uly-Aug~tst 2002 prisms ~hen we say "We had an extraordinary time," for example, at a family reunion or at a church conference, we imply that the event was better than usual. The ordinary, by contrast, seems to be of negligible value. Ordinary means normal, hav-ing the implications of the usual routine. Often when we say that our time has been ordinary we signify that it has been just "more of the same." When the church makes use of the phrase ordi-nary time to describe a part of the liturgical year, we tend to .bring our everyday meaning to the phrase. We think of the routine of following one of the synoptic Gospel readings in weekday and in Sunday Eucharists. Church ordinary time seems not to emphasize cele-bration, just "more of the same." The church, how-ever, intends only to identify this part of the liturgical year as those weeks of the year proceeding in a long, numerical order (deriving from the Latin ordo) that are distinct from the holyday or holiday weeks iden-tified as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. And so there are some thirty weeks, liturgically, of "ordinary time" in every church year. But beyond the fact that ordinary time provides us with weeks in a numbered order, I believe that the church in her liturgy plants the seed that ordinary time is meant to be a time of wisdom. Wisdom might be described as "putting it all together," living an integrated life. For us Christians, wisdom means that we put our life together in the light of our being followers of Christ. The scrip-ture readings that flow through the Sunday and weekday read-ings for Mass and for the Liturgy of the Hours are both an inspiration for and a measurement of our living and acting as children of God. Jesus, as we see him living everyday life in the Gospels of ordinary time, remains the paradigm of what it means to be a human being, one created in the image and likeness of God. Being true God and true man, Jesus shares with us, through the Spirit, how to live our lives wisely in our own every-dayness as sons and daughters of God. We are baptized in Jesus' name; we are fed with his Body and Blood. The Son of God, Jesus, incarnate God--infinitely beyond Adam and Eve's mere creation in the image and like-ness of God--is our Brother. With him, we Christians experi-ence the new creation in his life, death, and resurrection. What our Scriptures in the church's ordinary time impress upon us is that we do not turn to the Gospels just for the high points of suffering or triumph or just for some code of rules. The Gospels are written to enter us into Jesus' wisdom way of living. Like St. Paul, we spend our lives trying to make it ever more true that "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me." The church presents us ordinary Christians with a chal-lenging paradox. Ordinary time is wisdom time. Because we are being formed daily by the word of God and nourished by daily bread, we dare to say with Jesus: "Our Father." David L. Fleming SJ July-August 2002 feature PATRICIA WITTBERG Reciprocal Identities: Apostolic Life and Consecrated Life This year my congregation is celebrating its 150th anniversary. In special symposia and lectures, in liturgies and panel presentations, we have been encouraged to reflect about who ,we are as a community, who we have been--and who we will be. Since I have been researching relationship between religious congregations and their sponsored ministries, these events have spurred me to reflect on what it has meant--and what it will mean--that we are an apostolic congregation. I have, however, found it unexpectedly difficult to do this. How does our charism differ from that of an active monastic or evangelical order? In what way do our apostolates define who we are as a community, especially since very few of us still minister in the schools and hospitals we traditionally staffed? These are important questions to ask--and to continue asking--as we rearticulate our apostolic identity for the coming century. But I ,have come to believe that we lack an importfint kind of resource person who could facilitate our reflections. To the best Patricia Wittberg SC last wrote for us in September-October 2000. Her address is 2141 Dugan Drive; Indianapolis, Indiana 46260. Review for Religious of my knowledge, no religious congregation makes provision for such a person in its reflection processes. There is not even a name for her, so I will call her--however awkwardly--an Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer, or AIC for short2 In this paper I will first attempt to oudine the role apostolic institutions had in shaping the identity of religious congregations in the past. Next I will describe the kinds of activities an AIC might undertake to catalyze a congregation's reformulation of its apostolic identity in the absence of these institutions. Who We Were: Shaping a Reciprocal Identity Throughout their history, apostolic religious congregations have developed in an intimate dialectic with the institutions they created, staffed, and administered. On the one hand, Catholic hospitals, schools, and social-work agencies derived their religious identity primarily from the presence of religious congregations. Religious nurses, teachers, and social workers, all fully habited, served as living icons of the spiritual character of these institutions. As owners they also made the key decisions and policies. Their presence on the staff and in the administration meant that the culture of the congregation infused the entire institution. Without pointing to the congregation's presence, it would have been hard for a school or hospital to articulate what made it Catholic. Until the mid 1960s, however, the two were so intertwined that the question never even arose. In a similar manner, religious congregations derived their apostolic identity from the institutions they staffed. As Margaret Susan Thompson has pointed out in a previous issue of this journal,2 most U.S. women's apostolic congregations did not have a distinctive initial charism: rather, they have a "deep story" developed through years of lived experience. The distinctive identity of my own congregation was forged as sisters worked and lived together in our hospitals in Dayton and Albuquerque, Religious congregations derived their apostolic identity from the institutions they staffed. Wittber~ ¯ Reci~n'ocal Identities as they made bulletin boards together for our elementary schools in Detroit and Chicago, and as they cared for children in inner-city settlement houses and orphanages in Denver and Cincinnati. Young women got to know us through our ministries, and those attracted by our witness in these apostolates joined us. The congregation filled with new entrants who came expecting to perform institutional service, which further tied our apostolic identity to these works. Without citing the particular places where we served, it would have been difficult for many of us to articulate exactly what being an "apostolic" community meant. A Parallel: Mission-Effectiveness Offices in Catholic Institutions Most religious communities today have loosened, and some have completely severed, their ties with their institutions. Within their hospitals, colleges, and other agencies, this has led to some serious institutional soul-searching. Bereft of the iconic presence of the religious order, these institutions were in danger of losing their distinctive religious character. "Isomorphic" pressures from government regulations, professional associations, and economic competitors threatened to make them indistinguishable from other private schools or hospitals) The leaders of these organizations realized that retaining a distinct religious identity in the face of such pressures would require a deliberate effort. An institutional religious identity could not simply depend on the private spirituality the individual workers might bring to their jobs. Such spirituality was likely to remain private to each individual, since there are strong American cultural norms against sharing one's spirituality in the workplace. A school's, a hospital's, or a social agency's institutional religious identity had to be developed and shared in a way that would be transformative: grounding the daily operations of each department, underlying the administrative decisions, and spurring an ongoing, institution-wide search for new and creative ways to be a Catholic (or Jesuit or Vincentian) organization. Many religious hospitals, colleges, and other institutions, therefore, created special mission-effectiveness positions to address these goals. The person filling this role--often the last remaining member of the sponsoring congregation still in full- Review for Religious time ministry there--has typically been responsible for activities such as the following: ¯ orienting new staff and administrators to the charism or ethos of the sponsoring religious community (Jesuit scholarship, Vincentian caring, the spirit of Mercy); ¯ organizing periodic retreats and seminars for long-standing staff and administrators, in order to keep the spirit of the founding congregation fresh and alive; ¯ conducting various spiritual "leaven" activities: leading daily prayers over the public address system, organizing liturgies, providing short reflective prayers before meetings, disseminating newsletters or daily bulletins, erecting and maintaining religious iconography, and so forth; ¯ creating psychic and physical spaces where staff and administrators feel encouraged to share their spiritual journeys; ¯ estab-lishing awards for staff and administrators who most typify the founding spirit, and publicizing the winners of these awards; ¯ writing, updating, and promulgating the mission statement; ¯ raising ~ssues of mission and ethics at meetings of the board of trustees and other instances when key decisions are made; ¯ acting .as liaison with the sponsoring congregation, to help define what the implications of congregational sponsorship are for the institunon; ¯ serving as the religious-identity spokesperson to the media, overseeing public relations activities connected to the institution's religious identity. This is the ideal, of course. Many mission-effectiveness directors are marginalized, lacking any real input into the organization's decision making. A recent study found that "even in colleges that maintain the vice-presidential rank for the mission-effectiveness officer, there is no guarantee that the position will enjoy institutional prominence . Frequently the position operates on the .periphery of the college, resulting in compartmentalization rather than integration of mission concerns into daily senior-level academic or administrative decision making.''4 Mission statements may be mere words, Many mission-effectiveness directors are marginalized, lacking any real input into the organization's decision making. July-August 2002 PVi~tberg * Reciprocal Identities uncoupled from and alongside the day-to-day running of the institution. But at least the concept of mission effectiveness exists in our institutions, and we can readily articulate the kinds of activities such a position would involve. Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer: An Unknown (but Necessary) Role The same is not true for the position which I have termed the Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer. In fact, the apostolic congregations I know of do not have such a person. But, if mission-effectiveness offices are important for maintaining the religious identity of a school or hospital in the absence of its founding religious congregation, an apostolic-identity office should be equally important in helping maintain the apostolic identity of a religious congregation that is uncoupled from its institutions. In this section I will try to explain why I believe this to be so. When apostolic religious congregations withdrew from their institutions, they lost a key component of their former identity. Monastic and evangelical congregations, which had been inappropriately conformed to the apostolic model in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, could--and often did--simply revert to their original identities. But, to the extent that apostolic congregations had drawn their identity from their specific institutional works, they have had to devise a new articulation of who they are as a group and why they exist. "Isomorphic" pressures have also influenced this process. These pressures do not come from government regulations, professional standards, or economic pressures dictating what kind of identity an apostolic congregation should assume. Rather, they come from the ideals or "templates" current in the church and in society, which presume a primarily spiritual basis for the identity of religious groups. These spiritual foci commonly fill the void left by the loss of a congregation's institutional apostolate. Some apostolic communities have thus become more like small Christian communities, faith-sharing groups, or even parishes. The members minister in various locations and professions, pray privately every day, and meet regularly as a group for shared prayer and/or socializing: Other congregations Review for Religious have formed intentional communities that more closely approximate the monastic model: the members live and pray communally, but leave for separate ministries during the day. In either case, the conKregation begins to draw its identity more and more from the common spiritual activities of its members, and less and less from any common apostolic character. New entrants are attracted by the spirituality of the congregation, not by its distinctive common apostolates --which no longer exist. The metamorphosis continues. If apostolic religious life is to retain its distinctive identity, apostolic congregations must take deliberate steps to foster it. As with the religious identity of our former institutions, this will not happen automatically. Nor can we assume that our congregation is apostolic simply because we, as individual religious, give witness to God's love in our individual apostolates. (Surely all Christians are called to do that!) A congregation's apostolic identity must be transformative of the entire congregation, grounding the daily operations within the motherhouse, provincialates, and local houses, und.erlying the decisions of the council or leadership team, and spurring the community on its search for new and creative ways to be an apostolic congregation. This is where an apostolic-identity office would be useful. Since I know of no congregation that provides for such a role, the following list of suggested tasks is deliberately modeled on the activities which mission-effectiveness offices perform in our sponsored institutions. Within a given congregation, therefore, the AIC might be responsible for some or all of the following tasks: ¯ Orienting new members to the apostolic tradition of the congregation, as part of the formation program. This might include workshops or presentations, along with arranging visits to the former institutions and interviews with retired sisters who used to work there. ¯ Organizing periodic retreats and seminars for the professed and associate members of the congregation on the way(s) the congregation currently expresses its apostolic identity. This might include facilitating volunteer opportunities (whether single days throughout the year or six-week summer experiences) at some sites. Or theologians might be invited to community gatherings to discuss the various theologies of the interaction July-Augt*st 2002 Wittberg * Reciprocal Identities between spirituality and the apostolate. Or the clients served may be invited to give input on how they see the apostolic witness of the congregation and how it can be improved. ¯ Conducting various apostolic "leaven" activities within the congregation: circulating specially written prayers for specific apostolates and/or designating specific days of prayer for them; writing feature articles on the apostolates in the congregation's newsletter and/or disseminating a special newsletter on the apostolates; organizing the collection of money and goods; erecting and maintaining displays of apostolic artifacts at the motherhouse and elsewhere; initiating letter-writing campaigns to elected officials on apostolic issues; and so forth. ¯ Creating psychic and physical spaces where members are encouraged to share the insights, joys, and sorrows they have derived from their apostolates. The Daughters of Charity, with whom I currendy live, have a special monthly apostolic reflection wherein each member of the local house shares some incident from her ministry through which God has spoken to her that day. In a local house of another congregation where I once lived, we spent an afternoon and evening visiting each sister's work-place so that we could have a mental picture of the setting in which she spent a good part of her day. ¯ Establishing awards or other forms of recognition for individual members whose apostolic works witness to the character of the congregation, and publicizing these awards in the congregation and in the surrounding neighborhood or town or city. ¯ Leading reflections and other activities on the apostolic aspects of the congregation's mission statement (or facilitating the composition of such a statement if one does not currently exist). ¯ Raising issues of the congregation's apostolic identity at council meetings (which implies that the AIC is a member of the council). ¯ Initiating a congregational reflection to define exactly what the "sponsor" relationship requires of the congregation. As at least one critic has pointed out, the duties and obligations of sponsorship are often specified for the sponsored institution, but rarely are similar duties and obligations spelled out for the sponsoring congregation,s The MC might encourage meetings of both the leadership and the membership to outline the responsibilities the congregation has toward its institutions. Once these are determined, the AIC might be the one to see that they are met. Review for Religious ¯ Serving as a liaison with the various sponsored ministries. If the congregation has a separate board of sponsored ministries, then the AIC should be a member of it (and perhaps chair it). ¯ Serving as the apostolic-identity spokespdrson for the congregation to the media, overseeing public-relations activities connected with the congregation's apostolic identity. Again, this is an idealized picture. As with the mission-effectiveness offices in our former institutions, the activities of the apostolic-identity office may be marginalized in a given religious community. Many religious are so heavily involved in their ministries that they may resist invitations to set aside time to do this kind of communal apostolic sharing. Others may wish to forget about their jobs--especially if they find them draining and exhausting--and focus on more spiritual and recreational matters during the congregation's brief time together. Still others, formed in the days of common ministry within large institutions, may not - feel the need to discuss how apostolate is related to religious life today. And, since an apostolic-identity office is such a novel concept, many may not see why one is needed at all. Surely our congregation is already top-heavy with leadership? Why do we need to release another member from active ministry to do this? Perhaps the demise of the apostolic form of religious life is inevitable. Large hospitals, colleges, and other institutions may have become so bureaucratized and professionalized that they can no longer credibly represent a corporate Catholic vision of education, healthcare, or social service (although, of course, individual teachers or nurses--lay and religious--may still bring their private spiritualities to their jobs in these institutions). Fast-paced American culture, steeped in workaholism, may make it difficult to stop and be reflective about the work we do. There Many religious are so heavily involved in their ministries that they may resist invitations to set aside time to do this kind of communal apostolic sharing. Ju~-dugu¢ 2002 Wittberg * Reciprocal Identities may be a greater need for religious life forms focused on community and spirituality than on work--especially work in large institutions. Certainly monastic and contemplative religious communities are showing stronger growth than most apostolic ones.6 Religious life may thrive in monastic, evangelical, or future undreamed-of forms, even if its apostolic version becomes extinct. Perhaps an AIC would be a useless relic of a time already past. Or perhaps not. Perhaps what the world most needs is the witness of a group whose common vision for a transformative spiritual identity permeates the offices, factories, and marketplaces where its members work. Perhaps the reciprocal dialectic of religious community and sponsored ministry, each forming and transforming the other, is a longed-for alternative to the prevailing, "Enronized" corporate culture. Perhaps apostolic religious congregations possess the seed of a new corporate ministerial presence in the world, over and above the scattered individual ministries of their members. If so, then this vision, this dialectic, this presence, must be fostered and nurtured to growth. An AIC would have her job cut out for her. Notes i This is a terribly unattractive name, of course, but I am unable to think of any other. If this article persuades any congregation to establish the office of apostolic-identity catalyzer, they might consider naming it after a founding member who exemplified the apostolic dedication the congregation wishes to foster. 2 Margaret Susan Thompson, "Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Better the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregations," Review for Religious 58, no. 3 (May-June, 1999): 230-250. 3 According to sociologists studying organizations, "isomorphism" refers to the many pressures, both external and internal, which lead them to adopt similar practices. External pressures would include government regulations, professional accreditation standards, and the demands of customers/clients. Internal pressures would include ways of thinking that administrators develop from all of them being trained in the same schools, clinging to established practices in times of uncertainty, and needing to project an image of competence. See Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalfim in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 4 Dennis H. Holtschneider CM and Melanie M. Morey, "Relationship Review for Religious Revisited: Changing Relations between U.S. Catholic Colleges and Universities and Founding Religious Congregations," Occasional Paper No. 47, Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. s Melanie M. Morey, Leadership and Legacy: ls There a Future for the Past? A Study of Eight Colleges Founded by Catholic VVomen's Religious Congregations, dissertation, School of Education, Harvard University, 1995, p. 203. 6 "Monasteries Enjoy Boom, with Some Help from Marketing," Religion Watch 17, no. 6 (April 2002): 2-3. Promissory In early March buds begin to swell on my peach tree. It is too soon. This uncertain month delivers snow and fro~t with its warm, sweet winds. But there they are, small, swelling promises of succulent fruit, nature's resurrective fiat silently shouting down my wintery worry with summer's certainty. Bonnie Thurston July-Aug~tst 2002 GEORGE ASCHENBRENNER Diocesan Priesthood: Discerning the Fire in Our Midst spirituality These are not easy days for the diocesan priesthood. Sexually inappropriate behavior has been making rousing--and saddening--copy in newspapers and magazines. This behavior can be, must be, viewed from a number of different perspectives. I mention just a few: the horrendous injustice and injury done to the victims; the sickness, often, of the perpetrator himself; the lack of honest dealing with sexual urges; the unjust accusation of some priests; the betrayal and undermining of the trust of many members of the church; and the faithful, generous service of many unheralded diocesan priests. I do not deny the seriousness of the present situation, nor am I insensitive to the many serious repercussions of the publicity. We all have much to learn from this difficult time for the diocesan priesthood. Seminary formation programs--indeed each individual priest--must honestly and carefully look at both sexual orientation and the swirling interior cauldron of sexual impulse, fantasy, and urge. Sexuality George Aschenbrenner SJ was cofounder of the Institute for Priestly Fbrmation at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and.is director of the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth; P.O. Box 223; Wernersville, Pennsylvania 19565. Review for Religious is only one aspect, but always an important one, of the discerning presence 6f the diocesan priest in the midst of a local people. This article is not about the sexual aspect of discernment, but implications for that area of human experience will be easily recognized. I focus on a central constituent of diocesan priesthood, namely, the priest's discerning presence in the midst of a local people. (In a recent book I develop this and other charisms that are needed in diocesan priesthood.)! The desires and needs of his people seek, from the diocesan priest, discernment, the art of holiness, but these desires and needs may not be easily detected. Holiness, in itself, does not seem something most people are daily concerned with. But reflection may suggest otherwise. Though often thought of or spoken of in other words and with a deceptive indirectness, the longing of the human heart for more--for something beyond what we have and appreciate, beyond our present knowing--stirs in all of us from time to time, especially in quiet moments. If we sometimes find this longing in ourselves, we must assume it in others as well. And, when the glow has faded from life and still we cannot say or put into words what we are missing, we and others may recognize that this longing for more is really a desire for an ever greater goodness, for holiness, in fact a desire for God. The ordinary people of a parish feel this in many ways, but may seldom try to express it. They desire holiness, a relationship that gets them out of the narrow confines of their own self. They seek greater meaning, more happiness, and greater love in the humdrum of ordinary living. Other people in the parish are more explicit and direct. They want to pray better; they want to know God's love more; they want their faith to be more alive. Though some may have a counselor or friend with whom they speak of these concerns, the principal person to whom people bring such stirrings and longings is their diocesan priest. They look to him for help, for answers, for the solution to their dissatisfaction. But what can the priest do? What answers does he have? He is presumed to have the graced art of daily growth in holiness. This is precisely what we mean by discernment of spirits. It is a very human process, God's subtle inspiration enlightening us to interpret, make sense of, the fire of God's awesome love present in the ordinary daily experience of us all. In various ways the human psyche is always encountering our Ascbenlrrenner * Diocesan Priestbood loving God. And these experiences are indeed profoundly human, and yet so much more. In faith they are experiences of a love promising a joy that alone can satisfy our longings, to some real extent here and now, but fully only on the other side of death. This discerning art of holiness is not a catalogue of answers to be learned and then distributed on request. Rather, it is a life to be lived in the uniquely personal part of our hearts, and yet with extroverting implication for all our human brothers and sisters and for our union with them in the transformation of our whole expanding universe. This article, then, is not a minicourse on discernment, nor is it a review of the answers a priest will need for all the people's questions. Rather, I want to present something of what is involved in a priest's discerning understanding, in his radiating the fire of the Holy Spirit for the people of his parish. I will describe four steps that are part of a discerning life and then three dimensions of the human stage on which the drama of a personal love-relationship with God is played. As a spiritual leader in the midst of the parish, the priest must have a reflective understanding of the art of discernment, seen as the dynamics of any mature faith life. This charism prepares the priest to play two important roles of service among the people: as a guide into the mystery of God's fire of love and as a soul doctor for those being healed and purified in that same fire. Discernment: God's Story of Mature Faith Growth Holiness and growth in union with God always involve the full human person alive in his or her concrete circumstances. A person's spiritual maturity, then, involves good actions, but also much more. It involves feeling and emotion, but also much more. Together with concern for actions and feelings, spiritual maturity must go down into a person's inner core. It is from this core that God's love should radiate into holy action and feeling so that people can readily become aware of God's love in the world. This radiation is an invitation to notice and welcome God's love in every situation. Discernment of spirits means achieving such recognition. Sometimes discernment is mistakenly seen as one of any number of approaches to mature spiritual development. Indeed, Review for Religious some schools of faith growth have their own terminology. Under these different articulations, however, is one fundamental process of growth toward mature faith, a sorting of inner experiences. For this reason, discernment of spirits is the story of personal faith growth, God's story of it. This process has two roots: our human reality within God's creation and God's revelation in Jesus. Discernment of spirits is God's story of us, narrated both in our makeup as human creatures and in God's love for us all in Jesus. If only this love shone clearly, brilliantly, beautifully in every situation! At times it does, of course, but at other times the radiance of this love is stained by smog or hidden by a heavy cloud of evil. If all were goodness, grace, and beauty, how wonderful--and surely no need for any careful sorting in such a good world. Or, if all were evil, darkness, and wickedness, we would live on the brink of despair--but, again, no need for any sorting or sifting. But, when the world of human beings is ambiguous and mixed, and still we are c~lled to find the goodness in it and to display it in ourselves in our daily lives, then a discernment of spirits within ourselves assumes an essential importance. We must learn to distinguish our selfish impulses from the radiant inspirations of the Holy Spirit of God. Most people have not developed the skills for expert discerning of spirits, but, if they do no discerning at all, mature faith eludes them. The priest, then, the spiritual leader and soul doctor in the parochial community, must do the hard work of learning the theory and practice of soul doctoring, of discerning holiness. In the midst of such careful inner sorting, we must never forget this: God desires and is committed to each of us in Jesus more than we can fully realize--and the Holy Spirit is constandy active in our hearts and our world. Christian holiness always has its initiative in the fire of God's loving desires for us. It is never a figment of our imagination or a product of our willpower. It is the mystery of God's precious gift for us all. But each of us must The priest must have a reflective understanding of the art of discernment, seen as the dynamics of any mature faith life. 3~uly-du~lst 2002 Aschenbrenn~ * Diocesan Priesthood learn to recognize, receive, and nurture the gift. And we need a guide to lead us, in some special ways, into the fire, into the radiant glow of that mystery: God's love burning bright in Jesus. The Material of Discernment God wants each of us to imitate.Jesus uniquely. The great challenge and invitation that haunts us all is to discover our true self in Christ. For each of us God intends a unique revelation of Christ. Though the enterprise has very complex aspects, the point is as simple as it is startling: God wants each of us to imitate Jesus uniquely. The very self that God intends each of us to be is a unique, living imitation of Jesus. And that life of ours is meant to shine for all the world. This true self, this unique revelation, this treasure is camouflaged in the spontaneous interiority of our daily consciousness. This pearl of great price, this treasure beyond all value, must be searched for and recognized when stumbled upon. Into the daily spontaneous consciousness of the priest and of his people come many images, feelings, thoughts, impulses, and moods, sometimes quietly, some-times shockingly. This inner world has a variety of seasons, bright hopeful springs and dark threatening winters. We might wish we could glimpse our true self in Christ conveniently and directly, avoiding tentative efforts to interpret these various elements in ourselves like the weather. But we do not even have anything like a satellite picture of our ow~ inner world. God takes the complexity of our human condition seriously, and so Jesus usually comes to us at the place where our own consciousness tangles with today's large or small historical realities. To try to avoid this encounter would be to deprive ourselves--and other people, too--of our unique opportunity to reveal Jesus Christ as God intends, that is, in daily circumstances that without our presence may lack the glow and radiance of fire. Whenever one person avoids these opportunities, the radiance of us all is somehow dimmed. The diocesan priest, doctor of souls that he is called to be, must not fail to uncover the treasure in these moments; others, seeing it, will carry the glow far beyond him. Revie~ for Religiou~ This discerning search for the treasure of our true self can be described in four steps, steps easier to describe than to apply to real circumstances. My intention is to describe the steps so that the priest can learn to recognize them in his own experience and then make them his own. This discerning process can then help the priest, the soul doctor, to guide people in discovering and welcoming the mystery of God's love in their own hearts and lives. Turned toward God This first step is most important and profound: an identity in Jesus Christ. Until this identity has been cultivated enough, serious discernment is not possible. A serious turning to God readies the heart for discernment and so initiates any trustworthy searching for the treasure of God's personal, uniquely specific love. This turning is a real change that grades the ground of our heart to a new incline: away from ourselves and toward God. It is more than a passing fancy or a momentary quirk. The realization that we are conceived, marked, and shaped from the dawn of our existence by a God who always and only loves, this realization takes root and changes the landscape of our daily lives. This realization of a Love greater than the love we have for ourselves stops us in our tracks. It invites an about-face. It gets us out of ourselves. A whole new vista opens up. We have discovered and been turned toward Someone more beloved than we are to ourselves. Is this Love for real? Can this Beloved be trusted? What are we to make of all this, of these subtle perceptions. As we pay closer attention to them, the realization can come that receiving and responding to such Love assumes an importance beyond all else. The ground under our feet shakes and radically shifts. At this juncture, there is a clarity; something has clearly changed. A central question has been posing itself in our heart for a long time: Am I the ultimate meaning of my own life? As we heard that question, the winds of our contemporary culture kept howling their answer: "Yes, of course! Of course I am the ultimate meaning 'of my own life! If not I, who else could be?" But now that yes is radically shaken and splinters into a clear no. The tree of my life is changed. I am no longer the ultimate July-Augwst 2002 Ascbenlrrenner ¯ Diocesan Priesthood meaning of my own life. Now my life's meaning is God's Love-- as promised and present in the risen Jesus. A new sun has risen, and it will never set. Now life becomes, more and more, fascination with this mysterious Beloved and radical openness and readiness for whatever that Love draws me to. Something has deepened and developed. An early seedling of religious intuition has become the fragile sprouting of a realization that by being tested becomes stronger and more deeply rooted. An early surmise and semiconscious intuition becomes a resolute desire of will. No tall grass shivering in the wind, but a tree, deeply rooted and still growing. This resolute desire shapes and casts our lives in love: first, God's ever faithful love in the risen Jesus and then our own love, our carefully discerned response of love. From now on, life is about love, at times tough love, but love nonetheless, and always. Make no mistake about that! In some important way, we are no longer in charge of our own lives. God is! Life is not yes to self, but yes to God, as shown in Jesus ("with him it was always yes," 2 Co 1:19). Facing Our Spontaneous Life Insofar as the countercultural movement to God's love has begun to take serious rooting in our heart, a second step beckons. Only honest facing of our inner spontaneous life makes it possible for us to find, in faith, trustworthy understandings about God. This statement is true, but it prescinds from the ingenuity of human consciousness for dishonest avoidance and selfish projection. We must learn, as best we can, to stand clear of these deceits and deceptions, whether conscious or unconscious, if we are to discern God's loving desire in our hearts. This is no easy matter, and invites the priest to an asceticism leading to truth and love. Sometimes this asceticism, always motivated by a growing desire to live in God's consoling love, will involve unlearning some previous training. An overly rationalistic view of Christian spirituality downplays, even scorns, the role of spontaneity and feeling, while on the other hand a supersensitivity to feeling and sentiment can smuggle into Christian spirituality a presumption that proclaims, sometimes quite unwittingly, that whatever we feel is God's will for us. In both of these instances, a previous Review for Religious learning must be honestly acknowledged, judged as incorrect, and gradually changed. As difficult as this change may seem, especially when the previously learned viewpoint has taken deep root, such a conversion is always possible for two reasons: first and foremost, the mystery of God's steadfast desire to get through to us and, second, our own soul's desire for ever greater radiance. If the priest stays in close touch with these two desires, he will be capable of whatever transformation is necessary because it will really be the work of the radiant Holy Spirit of God beckoning him beyond his own depth and into the realm of greater mystery in faith. A Wisdom of Interpretation in Faith In the process of the discernment I am describing here, for someone clearly turned toward God and honestly sensitive to the flow of inner spontaneity, the issue becomes a matter of meaning: Where is God in all of this? The answer requires a certain wisdom and ability to interpret. But interpretation could spring from any number of different vantage points, for example, from lived common sense, from majority cultural opinion, from professional human development, or from Christian faith. All of these different "wisdoms" might overlap to a small or large extent, but each would produce a different conclusion when used as the central focus of interpretation. In discernment the focus is profoundly one of Christian faith, a faith radiating with the experience of Jesus Christ and revealed in the Holy Spirit. How God is present here, now, offering a love beyond all loves--that is the central concern for a person turned toward and identified in God. As we have seen already, God is always present in all of our present historical world and in all of our spontaneous inner experience, but never simply and completely present to us. That treasure of a love beyond all value, that revelation of our own unique imitation of Jesus, must be sought in the mixture and confusion of our inner lives. An enlightenment of the Holy Spirit springing from our experience of God's faithful love alone--that is the gift needed at this point. Such enlightenment and wisdom differ subtly, though sharply, from enthusiastic generosity and simplistic sincerity. By themselves, without graced wisdom, these two qualities lack a North Star and can be dangerously ~Tuly-Au~st 2002 Aschenbrenner * Diocesan Priesthood misleading. The wisdom referred to here has a profound paschal orientation and is found more and more decisively present and operative in Jesus as he moves into the depths of his Passion all the way to Calvary and into his resurrected glory. This wisdom and enlightenment is hot the result of taking an academic course or reading a book. And it is not some sleight of hand or guesswork either. It is a grace the priest must pray for regularly. It has a firm context, and this helps the priest to be sure about the giftedness of his insight. The insight is tested in relation to the polestar of our identity in God's love. The. presence of the Holy Spirit is revealed in anything that conforms to our resolute desire to keep God's love, not self-love, as our focus. And anything that violates this focus is not an inspiration from God, but a nudge, large or small, toward self-idolatry. A pleasure-pain instinct in all of us tries to tilt us toward self-idolatry. This instinct of liking pleasure and fearing pain is understandable and healthy. But, when we let it assume a priority and centrality, when it becomes the focal light for our interpretation, then we become narcissistic. This pleasure-pain principle, in itself, is never fully identified with the paschal enlightenment of God's love. It was not so identified in the experience of Jesus. The pleasure-pain instinct did not plot his course to his beloved Father. Escaping 'the dominance of this instinct demands an asceticism. We are not to renounce this instinct pure and simple; rather, we renounce it as the polestar of our identity. Developing in faith our interpersonal relationship of love with God in the beauty of Jesus will not completely get rid of this instinct, but will weaken it. God's love ~n Jesus has become the treasure beyond all value, and what a grace it is to know indescribable pain when deprived of that treasure. To learn how to stand with Jesus, sometimes in pleasure and at other times in pain--this is the mature wisdom of a person consciously living in God's love. It is to claim the treasure intended by God before the foundation of the world: a radiant true self uniquely imitating the mystery of Jesus. Tactics for Intimacy with God The final step in this process is decisive tactics in accord with the paschal-faith interpretation of the previous step. For Review for Religious someone whose heart is resolutely set on following the lead of God's love, anything experienced as an incarnation of that love (often called consolation) is to be embraced, claimed, and lived, and anything that deflects us from God's love and toward self-idolatry (usually called desolation) is to be rejected and courageously withstood. In this step the issue is courage and decisive generosity, something possible only when illumined and strengthened by paschal wisdom. The issue is whether we will follow, and how wholeheartedly, the revelation of the Holy Spirit. This is the time for the soul's character to be healed and for faith to be annealed in the fire of the Holy Spirit. This process helps the hidden self grow strong, so that the priest can be a discerning presence in the midst of the people. Discernment, a life of mature spirituality, always acknowledges, distinguishes, and then interrelates three different dimensions of human existence: external behavior, what I call the core of the soul, and inner spontaneity. To develop and live out of the core of our true self is never easy, if possible at all in our post-modern world, but is always crucial for responsible, mature living in faith. Today's culture has great need of doctors of the soul who can facilitate the development of this core sense of true self through the integration of these three dimensions of human existence. Though our external behavior is perceptible and often consumes enormous energy, it is nothing more than a superficial part of our being. The activity on this stage poses a question of meaning, a question that it cannot itself answer even though it may seem to contain adequate answers for others and even ourselves. In our daily activity we touch and influence many people. As the New Testament reminds us, the activity of sincere loving reveals the genuineness of our faith. In the midst of our busy lives, the question often rises in our hearts: Are we simply what we do? Some careful reflection is needed to answer correctly and accurately. The question often rises in our hearts: Are we simply what we do? 2002 .~chenbrenner ¯ Diocesan Prie~thood A Hidden Self Grown Strong The soul's core is the unique and deepest part of every human person. This core plays a crucial role in the discovery of our true self in the beauty of Christ. A deep-hearted personal world, a treasure beyond value, is gradually revealed, acknowledged, and then laid claim to, though this whole process is much more one of receiving than of making. This inner core has a depth and a simplicity that is beyond words. As we grow in our appreciation of this personal center, its presence dawns, alluringly shrouded in mist and mystery. In the shifting mists of this mysterious realm, a noisy world is hushed. God breathes eternal love and life into this core of our soul moment by moment and on into eternity. This same creative love, unique to each of us, is in all of us. Our experience of God and of ourselves becomes ever more profound, personal, and unique. Even as you now read, this profoundly personal inner experience, this quiet steady conversation of love at our deepest core, gives the lie to feelings of suffocating loneliness. It gives the lie to the hateful notion that anybody is rotten to the core. Because of Jesus' love, a buried treasure, a pearl beyond pricing, a hidden self waits to be discovered in each human being, to be embraced, and to grow strong. Spontaneity takes place in the "skin" of our soul, in the rational and affective human experience of us all. As mentioned earlier, this experience of spontaneity conceals the deep treasure of our true self in Christ. These spontaneities of thinking and feeling may skitter across the skin of our souls, but do not touch the core. Spontaneities of impulse, image, and mood can flail and crackle and roar across our lives like an electrical storm. Such skitterings, such storms, coming and going, can bother or frustrate or enrage us. But they do, finally, pass. This level, spontaneous unintended experience, has the unpredictability of shifting sands and is not capable of the rock-like dependability of the core of the soul. This skin of the soul poses its own question: Are we simply and wholly identified by what we spontaneously think or feel? Though "what I feel" is never equal to "who I am," in the midst of a temporary storm we can all too easily judge otherwise. These spontaneities, though, really are on a different level. They are part of a process of integration, of coming to spiritual Review for Religious maturity, but they have their meaning only in relation to the soul's core. The presen.ce of these three dimensions of our persons and the four-step discernment process for integrating them should be familiar to the priest. Such integration is the way to mature faith and to appropriate activity that mature faith leads to. This integration is sometimes easy and obvious, sometimes confusing and excruciating. But doing it in love, doing it in our own unique imitation of Jesus' way of loving us, makes it possible, encouraging and strengthening us. This is the realm of service for a doctor of the soul. If the seminary communicates this and if it continues long after ordination, the result of this integration, this purification, will be like gold, bright and not sadly tarnished. To his service of their souls, the priest will bring a radiance that can illumine and develop the bright potential of their own lives. This radiance will be God's love shining from the face of the risen Jesus, still serving in our midst. Notes I George Aschenbrenner SJ, Quickening the Fire in Our Midst: The Challenge of Diocesan Priestly Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002). 2 See George Aschenbrenner SJ, "A Hidden Self Grown Strong," in Handbook of Spirituality for Ministers, ed. Robert J. Wicks (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995), pp. 228-248. "Hidden Self," pp. 236-240. In the Words of Meister Eckhart The soul loves the body tenderly, even when, like a child on edge, it runs rambunctious through desire collapsing at last and won&ring why. Maryanne Hannan ~Tuly-dugv~st 2002 ERNEST E. LARKIN Desert Spirituality Booth Christian Meditation and centering prayer come out f early monasticism, which itself is a development of desert spirituality? Christian Meditation is the prayer of the heart described by John Cassian, the historian of desert spiri-tuality, who brought the wisdom of the desert fathers and moth-ers of Egypt and the Middle East to the West. Centering prayer comes out of the Cloud of Unknowing, a 14th-century English text that enshrines the contemplative traditions of the desert. It is no accident that both these contemplative prayer forms came to us by way of Benedictine and Trappist monasteries. Desert spirituality was the beginning of Christian monasti-cism and the matrix out of which Western monks developed their lifestyle. Contemplative prayer was at the heart of their life, and desert spirituality was the context. This article proposes to examine those ancient traditions and adapt them to our times. Desert spirituality is a technical term that has biblical and early Christian roots. The desert experience is a staple of both the Old and the New Testaments, for example, in the Exodus story, in the life of Elijah and the prophecy of Hosea, in John the Baptist, the forty-day fast of Jesus, and the three-year novitiate of Paul in Arabia (Ga 1:17). This desert experience was devel-oped into a coherent spirituality by the desert fathers and moth- Ernest E. Larkin OCarm wrote for us twice in 2001. His address remains Kino Institute; 1224 East Northern; Phoenix, Arizona 85020. Review for Religious ers in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Christian era. These fer-vent Christians fled to Egypt and the Middle East to escape the decadence of an effete Roman empire. The wastelands offered a stark and untrammeled setting for a life of penance and prayer. Its rugged emptiness and its silence and solitude invited the flight from the world OCuga mundi). A special appeal to heroic souls was the belief that the demons infested the wastelands and could be met there in open combat. It did not take long for the desert dweller to discover that the demons were within and to be engaged on the battleground of the soul. Life in the desert was simple. Manual labor broke the monotony of the silence and solitude of the cell and provided .its own asceticism as well as sustenance and something for almsgiving. Desert dwellers spent their days in soul searching and the pursuit of the living God. Community life, especially when the solitary life prevailed, and outreach in ministry were clearly sec-ondary and not really part of the inte-rior struggle. Continuous prayer was the focus, and the abbas and the ammas spent their time in lectio div-ina, reading the psalms and the breviary, celebrating liturgy, and cultivating the prayer of the heart. These are the main fea-tures of desert spirituality. In this setting Christian holiness was a kind of white mar-tyrdom, a total giving over of one's life to God, the shedding of all self-indulgence in favor of a single-minded search for God. The desert was a graphic symbol of the emptiness of life and the otherness of God. The emptiness translated into purity of heart, a heart freed from sinful affections and centered on God. Thus the beatitude that best sums up desert spirituality is "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Contemplation is the goal, and letting go of all lesser aims and surrender to the living God the condition. This general principle is abstract and can be lived out in an imaginary as well as a real desert. The desert as symbol universalizes desert spirituality as a possibility for everyone. There is, however, still place for the physical desert in ordinary Christian life. We examine this role The desert as symbol universalizes desert spirituality as a possibility for everyone. ]My-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality in the next two sections of this paper, and we will return to the symbolic desert in the third section. Our first question is this: What can the desert do for me? In other words, why should I go out into the desert? The second question is a prophetic one: What can I do for a desert that is now under attack by the forces of neglect or consumerism? How do my efforts to protect the environment or my failure to participate affect my personal life? After these two reflections we will return to the overall princi-ple of desert spiritfiality, the call to emptiness and encounter with God. What Can the Desert Do for Me? In Scripture the desert is primarily the wasteland, and it leads to the garden of the promised land, the desert come to life, as in Isaiah 35:1-2: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom . The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon." Both the bleak image and the flowering one apply to the physical desert as we use the term today. The desert means the wilderness, the great outdoors. This includes barren wastelands like sand dunes or the scrubby flatlands of Texas or Arizona, but also verdant gardens, scenic forests, majestic moun-tains, and rolling plains. The desert is all the places on this beautiful earth that are still largely untouched by city sprawl and offer themselves as a refuge for weary people. These lands can be gift for our spirits. They refresh us and challenge us. They beckon us to "come aside and rest awhile," away from the noise and congestion of the city with its polluted air and harried traffic. The desert is the place to hike a trail, fish a stream, pic-nic with friends, or just smell the sage and be with one's long thoughts. " Except for some few families that have declared their inde-pendence and homesteaded in the wild and some rare hermits who have also settled there, people today only visit this desert; they do not dwell there. They go out for physical exercise and emotional refreshment, for meditation and for fun. They enter desert places hostile to human habitation very gingerly, armed with water jugs, proper sun gear, and ideally with companions. Some visit these "fierce landscapes" (Belden Lane) for excite-ment, others to deal with a crisis, a limit experience, a sorrow Review for Religious that overwhelms them. Perhaps unconsciously they are looking for an environment that mirrors their troubled soul. A good example of this kind of match between soul and terrain is a retreat for middle-aged men described in a recent publication.2 It was conducted by Richard Rohr and designed to help men from many walks of life through their midlife crisis. The retreat took place at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico in the sum-mer of A.D. 2000. The men were challenged to let down their defenses and face themselves squarely. The retreat turned out to be a harrowing rite of passage. The torrid summer heat and the bleak lonely emptiness of the desert combined with soul-search-ing introspection and dramatic rituals to test the most stout-hearted. More often retreats or "a day in the desert" are spent in more friendly spaces. An attractive pastoral setting calms the soul and provides the quiet that people need for facing the real issues of their life. God seems closer in pristine settings. One popular formula for such outings is the poustinia, a concept pop-ularized by Catherine de Hueck Doherty. Poustinia means her-mitage, and folks become poustiniaks for a day, bringing along only a Bible and a bit of bread and cheese. The poustinia can actually be a back room or the attic of one's home, but there are advantages in going out to the woods or the seashore. Getting out in the country, breathing in the fresh air and fragrances of the meadows, walking around the lake or trudging along paths in hilly terrain, can be healthy physical exercise and spiritual refreshment. These are ways of slowing down, of refus-ing to be a couch potato and insuring the balance of mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body). Grace builds on nature, so a healthy body and soul are a good basis for the life of God in us. A good health regime works directly against anx-ious, workaholic tendencies or the equally bad habit of inertia and laziness. Recreational activities also develop the playful side of our lives. This is our contemplative side. Visitors to the desert know that God is everywhere and that they do not have. to go up to the heavens or across the sea to find the word of God. "No," Deuteronomy says, "the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe" (Dt 30:11-14). But the desert facilitates the search. The wide open spaces, the silence and solitude, reveal God. July-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Silence is the best conta.ct point with God, since God is always present, though beyond speech, images, and concepts. The desert fosters this silence, this emptiness, the letting go of every-thing that is not of God. The desert is built for kenosis, the self-emptying of Jesus, who was perfectly open to God and was therefore exalted with the pleroma, the fullness of the resurrec-tion (Ph 2:5-11). The desert way is the way of emptiness and fullness. These reflections belong to the first step on the spiritual journey, the appreciation of creation. Original blessing pre-ceded original sin, and immersion in creation and appreciation and love for this gift ought to precede the work of redemption. This is the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin, Matthew Fox, Francis Kelly Nemeck, and Marie Theresa Coombs. More recently Dorothee Soelle sees "being amazed" as the first of the three ways or stages of the spiritual life? Instead of the classi-cal ways of purification, illumination, and union, she proposes "being amazed, letting go, and resisting" as the three steps. Amazement and appreciation help us take an objective stance before the earth, and this makes it easier to let go, the second of the three ways for Soelle. This leads us to involvement, to compassion and commitment, regarding the world. She calls this resistance, because it involves working against the threats to the environment and society. That is to say, we resist and work for justice in all areas of life, such as the economic and the eco-logical orders. The unitive way calls to action as well as divine union. What Can I Do for the Desert? The work of saving the earth is a challenge and responsi-bility for people everywhere today. The call resonates among informed spiritual persons. They have listened to the new cos-mology presented by scientists like Brian Swimme and the "geologian" Thomas Berry, and they have heard the plaintive warnings of the environmentalists that the earth is wounded and in danger of collapsing. The universe has become part of today's spiritual journey. The whole universe and its crown, homo sapiens, are seen as one vast living organism in which they depend on each other and rise and fall together. In the past the Revieva for Religious earth was looked upon as an appendage of humanity. Humanity alone counted, and the rest of creation was expendable. Human beings pursued their own desires recklessly, without thought about the effects in the environment. They could trash the earth, abuse it or destroy it, without worry because there were always other virgin territories to exploit in the same way. This was an affront to creation; we see it now as an affront to human life as well, because, in the words of Edward Abbey, "the wilderness is not a luxury but a neces-sity of the human spirit just as vital to our lives as water and good bread.''4 The uni-verse is an integral part of our human life. We are partners, and we participate in growth or decline together. In the abuse or destruction of the universe, we are diminished and dehumanized. The commission in Genesis 1:26 to have "dominion" over the earth did not give humans the right to abuse it. We are only caretakers, not absolute owners; we cannot take the myopic view of looking for an immediate return in pleasure or profit with no thought about the long-term loss to creation and the short-changing of future human beings. One reviewer of Thomas Berry's latest book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, quotes Berry and then adds some strong words of his own: "'What happens to the outer world happens to the inner world,' Berry avers. 'If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished.' Our inner being will die if we continue to transform natural beauty into the soul-deadening, concrete-laden, box-store landscapes of a consumer society." s The obligation to safeguard the environment has three aspects: personal, societal, and spiritual. Each person needs to treat the desert with love and respect. Some of that concern is cosmetic, like cleaning up after using the land and properly dis-posing of the debris, especially nonbiodegradable material. Respect and moderation mean that we do not harm the plant life by careless trampling, that we obey rules about camp fires and camping, that we leave the natural beauty intact without pil-fering plants or otherwise harming the vegetation, that we Each person needs to treat the desert with love and respect. July-Aug;ust 2002 Larkin ¯ Dese~t Spirituality carefully control toxic substances like pesticides or poisonous chemicals. These are cominonsense suggestions. The societal obligation may take the form of joining groups like the Sierra Club that are dedicated to the environment, or of lending one's name to, say, Robert Redford's campaign to save the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Systemic problems can be addressed only by group action that can effect structural changes. We need to support these causes. There is no other way to stop the pollution of our waterways and atmosphere, to keep indugtrial wastes out of our rivers and lakes, to find ade-quate ways of dealing with nuclear waste, to stop the destruction of the ozone layer, to save the rain forests and wetlands, and to halt the woefully unbalanced overconsumption by the few. Elizabeth Johnson writes: "Every year, the twenty percent of Earth's people in the rich nations use seventy-five percent of the world's resources and produce eighty percent of the world's waste." 6 There is a special spiritual component today because of the crisis in saving the earth. Time is running out, and experts say that there are only twenty-five or thirty years left to turn the destructive spiral around. The problems are over-whelming, and the laborers are few. We can organize and we can work, but the odds are against us. At such times we need overt divine help. Specifically the challenge is to pray con-templatively, to face the societal impasse which Constance FitzGerald, in a famous article several years ago, connected with the dark night of St. John of the Cross: The dark night occurs as impasse in all sectors of human life, whether prayer, human relationships, or societal renewal. One response to impasse is trusting acceptance, silence before God, and lov-ing surrender, which bring wisdom and strength and which are qualities of contemplative prayer. We take our insoluble problems to God. We wait with faith and trust, ready to spring into action in changing what we can deal with and accepting what we cannot change. Contemplative prayer is an admission that our problems may be beyond human resources. But our prayer is full of hope, because contem-plation may stretch our imagination and inspire new creative ways of dealing with the problem. Solid prayer will certainly strengthen our resolve to continue the struggle. The popu- Review for Religious larity of contemplative prayer in our time may well be con-nected with the magnitude of the problems of this age. Desert Spirituality in Its Purest Form We return now to the traditional meaning of desert in the spiritual life, namely, desert as physical place and as symbol. The desert of the first abbas and aromas was the real wasteland. Anthony and Pachormus spurned the fleshpots of the Roman cities and went to the bleak deserts of Egypt to be alone with God and to keep careful watch over the movements of their hearts. The purity of heart they sought meant that they tried to choose only the good, to do everything right, in perfect measure, for the right reasons. They prayed and fasted to put to death the old man within themselves, so that the new man could come alive. They underwent this discipline for one reason: They wanted to see God. This goal was not face-to-face vision, as heaven will be (1 Jn 3:1-3); nor was it seeing God as an object, the way I see a person in front of me. Neither was it simply a new understanding, a new image of God, or a new perception. It was a seeing that meant presence, companionship, walking with God. It was contemplative union with God. Contemplation follows purity of heart as night follows day. We have a window into the thinking of the desert fathers and mothers in the first conference of John Cassian.s The imme-diate objective of life in the desert was purity of heart; this he called the skopos (English "scope"). The skopos is oriented to a further good, which he calls the telos, the end or final purpose. An example of these two aspects of human endeavor is the life of the farmer. The farmer prepares the soil, plants the seed, hoes and manures the field. All this is his immediate task, his sko-pos. But he does it all with a view to the harvest, which is the telos, the real purpose of his work. If the skopos of life in the desert is purity of heart, the telos is the fullness of the kingdom of God, the resurrected life. This program of seeking perfect purity of heart in order to find God can be applied to every Christian life. Purity of heart-- as freedom from every actual sin and as right relationships with self, others, the world, and God--is the immediate task of the daily struggle. Purity of heart is more than chastity; it is all the Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Purity of heart is all the virtues in perfect integration. virtues in perfect integration. This marvelous condition is often set in negative terminology. It is called detachment, or indif-ference, or freedom from sinful habits. But it is a very positive condition identified with biblical faith. This faith is the response to the word of God wherever it is recognized. It is the faith of the Virgin Mary in St. Luke's Gospel. At the annunciation, for example, she is perturbed at the angel Gabriel's message. How can she, a committed virgin, be the mother of the Messiah? When the angel assures her that God will provide, she gives her full assent to that word. She lets go of her own project in favor of God's word. A high degree of purity of heart means a heart full of faith. It means a heart full of love. The pure of heart are loving per-sons. They will see God, that is, they will know and love God, as described in the First Letter of John: "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love . No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 Jn 4:7-8, 12). For the desert fathers and mothers and espe-cially for theologians like Evagrius and Gregory of Nyssa, see-ing God meant contemplation. This gift was the reward for the purification, and it consisted in experiencing union with God. This contemplation was not one particular experience, nor an altered state of consciousness. It came out of transformation. By allowing one's life to be brought under the movement of the Holy Spirit, one was born a new person, a "new creation" (2 Co 5:17). This new creature lived in the world of God and expe-rienced God in the whole gamut of his or her worldly occupa-tions. Contemplation was thus a way of life, not a particular experience. The Carmelite Application The evolution of desert spirituality suggested in this paper has special reference to Carmelite history. Carmel came out of Review for Religious the desert, born on Mount Carmel, home to the Old Testament prophet Elijah and to hundreds of hermits at the time of the Crusades. The Carmelites were one group of such hermits; they sought a rule of life from the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Albert of Avogadro, who held the office between 1206 and 1214. The result was the Rule of St. Albert, a contemplative and eremitical document that was simple, practical, and eminently scriptural. The tides of politics and war, however, forced the Carmelites to leave their sacred mountain and go back to Europe as early as 1238. The eremitic style of life underwent change in the direction of community and ministry, eventually making the order a mendicant one like the Dominicans and Franciscans. One of the early general superiors, Nicholas the Frenchman, tried to stem the move to the city. In 1270 he wrote a strong let-ter, called "The Fiery Arrow," calling the men to return to the desert. But the mendicant form of life had struck a chord in their hearts. They continued to foster their contemplative long-ing, but now they carried the desert in their hearts. The desert was a symbol now rather than the physical reality. A second charter of the order, called the Institution of the First Monks, dated 1370 and written by a Catalonian Carmelite, Philip Ribot, presented a symbolic life of Elijah and the example of the Blessed Mother as both a description and a defense of the new lifestyle. The book incorporated the thinking of John Cassian, especially on the structure of the religious life as the search for purity of heart and contemplation. The desert spirituality of Mount Carmel was adapted now to an active apostolic life. Henceforth Carmelite spirituality was at home in communities of active religious and lay people as well as cloistered contem-platives. The reform of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross two centuries later built on this document and renewed and perfected the eremitical-contemplative ideal of Carmel. They did so, not only by promoting desert houses of total contem-plative life, but by organizing a way in which every Carmelite house could be, in the words of a great Carmelite of the next century, John of St. Samson, another Mount Carmel. The desert spirituality of Carmel's beginnings had become democratized and available to all who espouse the ideals of the Carmelite tradition. 3 73- --- July-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Notes t Christian Meditation and centering prayer are two popular forms of contemplative prayer, designed by John Main OSB and the Trappists at Spencer, Massachusetts, respectively, the former promoted by the World Community of Christian Meditation under Laurence Freeman OSB and the latter by Contemplative Outreach, whose leader is Thomas Keating OCSO. 2 Donal O'Leary, "High Noon at Ghost Ranch," Furrow 52 (January 2001): 27-35. 3 Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 88-93. 4 Cited from his Desert Solitaire by Thomas J. McCarthy, "The Ultimate Sanctum," America (9 April 2001): 6. s Stephen Bede Sharper, "A New Heaven and a New Earth," Christian Spirituality Bulletin 8 (Fall-Winter 2000): 15. 6 "God's Beloved Creation," America (16 April 2001): 9. 7 "Dark Night as Impasse," in Living with Apocalypse, ed. Tilden Edwards (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984). s Conferences, of John Cassian, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 37-43. Devotion I am twelve, have read of the child Virgin martyrs, and decide it is High time I practice such virtue. At My next confession, after the usual Childhood sins, I say I want to Vow myself to God like a saint. The Assistant pastor, thinking fast, replies That at present I don't know The vocation God has chosen For me, but I may promise him My chastity until I take that vow, Or those of marriage. Satisfied, I rejoice in God's favor, and Make my promise. Mary Hanson Review for Religious BARBARA ZAJAC Three Forms of Community Living: A Survey Report For much of the 20th century, sisters who performed charitable service works lived in convents near the institutions they served. As missions and roles changed after the Sister Formation Conference (1950s) and Vatican Council II (1960s), so did the living arrange-ments, often necessitated by travel considerations. Congregations such as these had called themselves "communities" when they held common missions and residences, and they continue to use this term today even though--wearing few or no common ~ymbols, ministering in widely diverse occupations, and residing in locales favorable to their mission assign-ments- many are barely identifiable as members of a group of sisters. Puzzled that this topic received little attention in sociological literature aside from Wittberg's analyses (see Bibliography), I found myself raising several research questions about the meaning of "community." Does it mean a location-based entity? A process? A set of relationships? A task force? A par-ticular goal or ideal toward which people strive? As part of a larger study (Zajac, 1999b), I studied Barbara Zajac first contributed to our pages in 1999. Her current address is Department of Sociology; Indiana State University; Terre Haute, Indiana 47809. July-Aug£ust 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living one religious order of apostolic sisters. Though from their founding the group provided chiefly educational and medical services, individual sisters now select their own mission assign-ments, which include traditional teaching and parish pastoral work, professional careers such as psychologist and speech pathologist, and social activism and feeding the homeless and hungry. Throughout California over a two-year period (1995 and 1996), fifty members of this congregation were interviewed indi-vidually and in-depth. Although the sample was volunteer and purposive, it is considered fairly ~:epresentative of the order in general (see Zajac, 1999a). Additional information was obtained from the group's monthly magazinE, religious periodicals, and selected participant observation. The group is given the pseudonym Sisters of Reconciliation of JesusI (SRJ). Similarly, individual names and identifying factors have been disguised or altered. What Community Means It is evident that there is no widespread consensus about the word community. Putting feelings into words was difficult for the sisters, and they responded in words they were comfortable using. Some began with what I would call generalized notions of community, and others described what community involves or how it can be formed and lived. Still others spol~e of mani-festations of community and of how community is maintained. Nearly everyone cited some of the qualities I will describe under manifestations of community. Anything approaching near agreement on most of the gen-eralized notions of community was absent. Some sisters attached the term to a specific location, while others denied the impor-tance of a spatial component. Some described community as an ongoing process that is never completed, or as an ability, agree-ment, or commitment. Others mentioned the people involved and the human connections among them. A number of the sis-ters spoke of community as a bond or tie among people, a togetherness, while others used such phrases as "a living-out of the vows," "a unanimity of vision and purpose," and "the charism [of the Sisters of Reconciliation] lived out." Regarding Review for Religious the often mentioned familial nature of community, there was much disagreement. Some denied that it is a family, some described it as "like" a family, and others claimed that it is "more than" a family. Certain sisters told me they think community involves notions of struggle, being invested in the group or having a sense of ownership about it. Some explained the factors by which they create for themselves a sense of "community," ger-mane to the can-be-done category. While at least one sister cited similar ministry as the key to community, others thought the key is personal characteristics such as being open to others, try-ing to understand them, and being thoughtful, prayerful, and considerate. Many said that much communication is needed, and a great deal of give-and-take, exemplified in being open to others, trying to understand them, and allowing for the flow of communication, with its misunderstandings, disagreements, and concurrences. Others talked of the mechanisms by which community can be sustained, such as living or working together, "making it happen," or constantly articulating the meanings. The latter suggestions are rather nonspecific, but the next item is quite different. Certain sisters told me they think community involves notions of struggle. Manifestations of Community Nearly everyone listed one or two qualities in the category called manifestations ofcommunity. A good many used a small number of emotionally laden terms, heartfelt terms: empathy, interconnectedness, sharing. Others used different words, but their intent seemed similar enough that I could not justify putting their statements elsewhere. Examples of this are "living together, not singly" and "working on things together." In this "manifestations" category many talked of the people they encountered, or of the work as being a continual process; some continued an articulation of "what community means to me." Human behaviors and interactions, with their sentiments July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living and attitudes, make up the heart of community. Empathy is expressed especially through concern and caring, through notic-ing and having interest in others. One person termed this a "feeling for" others, and many called it "support." Such senti-ments are displayed in such particular behaviors and actions as showing respect and appreciation or at least acceptance; if not, the reality of the sentiments is questionable. If empathy is pre-sent and expressed, the members of a group develop and main-tain an interconnectedness, an interdependence, a mutual sense of belonging. They develop a social solidarity. Empathy, empathic behavior, and interdependence work together in what is called sharing, which seems to be central. Nearly all the sisters interviewed mentioned the sharing of something, whether faith or prayer, tasks, worldly goods, help-ful services, or expressions of caring support. Sharing faith and the spiritual life was mentioned most frequently, and, along with it, the emotional support this sharing provided. Things like housework, goods, and ministry are shared differently, depending on the specific living arrangements (to be described shortly). The sharing of spirituality and various works rein-forces caring sentiments and behaviors and the sense of being interdependent. It is through sharing even ordinary things that crucial personal connections are created and sustained. Representative Community Groupings Three types of community living groups will be described: a self-named "intentional" community, what I term a residen-tial community, and a community of one. These are composite portraits. They do not describe every type of living situation, but seem representative of the arrangements of active Sisters of Reconciliation. Intentional Community "House of Peace" is the sign next to the doorbell of a large house in a run-down neighborhood of the central city where poverty is endemic and violence is the norm. The home of five SRJs, this intentional:community was formed with express pur-poses in mind. The sisters deliberately chose its location amid Review for Religious widespread desolation in order to identify with and serve the poorest people of the city. The members were selected for their personal and professional qualities, namely, a desire for an intense spiritual life and an unwavering dedication to the mis-sion of the Sisters of Reconciliation in serving the city's need-iest people. There are five regular residents. Sister Elaine Sherman runs a transitional housing program for homeless families. Sister Mary Anne coordinates the sisters' social-justice efforts. Sister Ruth Patrick, retired from a full career of teaching, daily trav-els twenty miles each way to where she cooks and serves meals to transients. Sister Bertina Marie, who is bilingual, is a com-munity activist and pastoral minister in the Spanish-speaking community. Sister Jane Th~r~se, who has not yet taken her final vows in religious life, teaches religion in a local Catholic high school and hopes to study divinity in the future. The house is also the home base of a sister working in a residential house for adolescents and of sisters visiting temporarily from mission lands or elsewhere. Sister Ruth Patrick, the oldest sister and the one longest in the SRJs, was the driving force for starting this new house. She had been aware of the brewing turbulence in religious life since the 1950s and thought then that the sisters ought to be living more adult lives than was possible while rigidly observing detailed rules and daily schedules in sequestered convents. She wanted to live out her own values explicitly, holding prayer in common, sharing with the poor, living very simply, and being concerned about others and accountable to them. And so she looked for sisters that she felt had a strong sense of the SRJ mis-sion and were dedicating their lives to living it. She looked for sisters who knew themselves well and.knew what would equip them well for their ministries. She looked for sisters who were aware of what would personally empower them and what might drain them of apostolic energy. She looked for sisters who were willing to give support to others and to receive it as well. Such sisters she approached with her proposal. Perhaps most important, these women must be open to new forms of prayer such as sharing of the heart rather than recit-ing formulaic prayers at specified hours. This prayer involves common reading of a passage from the Bible' and then individ- July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living ual reflection and comment on what the reading means to each one, how it applies to her own life. It demands a willingness to be open and vulnerable to other people. This sharing of faith and spirituality is not for everyone. Some older sisters, in par-ticular, have been reluctant to engage in it. Now, when a new member wishes to join the house, she comes and talks with the existing group about her hopes and ex.pectations for common life. She learns that, in addition to sharing faith and emotional support, the group divides up the house chores, such as bookkeeping and paying the bills, shopping for food and preparing meals, cleaning and yard work. She learns that she is to live on the allotted personal budget and to reserve some of that money to support foreign missionaries. She learns that "one person's guest is every person's guest" here. Although a sister may dislike or resent such an interview before being admitted to a new house, she needs to remind herself that the present residents consider it crucial that new residents know and agree to support these values and their explicit expression. Sister Elaine, who came to religious life through her vol-unteer work and not directly from her Catholic schooling, explains more about this group's dynamics~ Although they min-ister in diverse fields with varied schedules, they reserve one night a week as their community night, when all will be present for prayer, eating, and sharing. Her social-work background leads her to describe the difficulty of working with people "who are blocked up" by past traumas or interpersonal issues. This form of life, this "microcosm of society," is a difficult life to live. It must enable sisters to go out and minister to the world. They must learn to be communicative and must get to know each other's histories. Since there are various workable arrangements for getting through days cooperatively and smoothly, the sisters must con-tinually strive to accommodate themselves to the others in the group. Sister Elaine thinks that an all-female group can be "really beautiful and powerful or really terrible," depending on how they handle interpersonal relations. The key thing, in her experience, is to keep talking to each other and "not whine." She admits that she had to learn some of these things herself in community living and that it is still sometimes difficult to keep her own "space." She is one of those who prefer not to talk to Review for Religious anyone for a few minutes after arising in the morning, so she now showers at this time to maintain her internal quietude. Pastoral ministry to the poor and immigrant Spanish-speak-ing community is Sister Bertina Marie's specialty. While her day is occupied with teaching English as a second language and running a community center with various offices and activities (Head Start, legal clinic, medical outreach services, and chil-dren's programs), she is an integral member of the House of Peace. Seeking more ways to live out the SRJ vision, charism, and values, its members extend love and hospitality to sur-rounding neighbors. The sisters offer their house as a site for Neighborhood Watch and other meetings. They make sure that flowers are always growing in their yard to symbolize nonvio-lence in a locale where drugs, gangs, and hostilities abound. Sister Bertina Marie stresses the integration of the house goals with individual ministries: all identify with and serve the poor, value deep prayer life in common, and support others with goods and hospitality. Sister Mary Anne, the government-affairs coordinator for the congregation, spends her.time researching, writing, lobby-ing, and educating people about political issues that affect the poor. Working for such structural change where results come slowly if at all is for many an enervating and thankless task. She talks of recognizing one's own needs as well as those of others, and of balancing community life with ministry. She speaks from experience. At one time she held a position that "totally consumed" her. She thought she was in a vocation crisis and should perhaps leave the community. She was so burned out that she" had nothing to give to anyone and did not even want to "bring Jesus" to the people she worked with. An extended retreat, however, provided her with reflection time to realize it was her ministerial position that needed to be changed, not her SRJ affiliation. Now she highly values living with oth-ers who think as she does, all of them giying and getting real emotional and spiritual support. "Community has been a gift to me," she recalls, mention-ing the friends she has made and how they "move together in growth." She says she was one of the first to propose and pio-neer small-group living and that her experience with eight oth-ers proved its value for her. Being honest with each other and .~tuly-August 2002 Zajac * Three Forms of Community Living "I'm not accepted just because I'm capable. I can be a failure and I'm still loved." sharing their deepest values were what she had been seeking. When all members had the "same thirst for God and the desire to live out a faith life in mission," they found they did not fight over little things, but rather worked them out, a quality that is sometimes missing in residential communities. The youngest member of the House of Peace commun!ty is Sister Jane Th4r~se, thirty-something, planning to take her final vows within a year. She was attracted to this house for sev-eral reasons besides its location near where she teaches religion to inner-city children. She was pleased that there were a vari-ety of ages together there and liked their outreach to the neigh-borhood. As a newer SRJ, she appreciated this group's willingness to work with younger members and pass on wisdom and insight from their experience. Sister Jane Th4r~se cites a sentence to describe the com-munity's value to her, a line from the SRJ constitution: "With the strength that comes from our life together, we turn to serve the world in need." "This was not only memorized," she says, "it was lived." She remarks that the constitution holds that SRJs share "all that we have and are," including personal uncertainties, frailties, and inabilities, all of which she knows firsthand. Before her current ministry she was locked into a miserable sit-uation where she had no power or auth.ority. She says that, although her sisters in this local community were in no position to give her help or even offer constructive criticism, speaking about her difficulties and receiving support in return were cru-cial to her fulfilling that assignment. Such unconditional accep-tance comes from being a member of the community. She says, "I'm not accepted just because I'm capable. I carl be a failure and I'm still loved." The ability to be vulnerable and to share one another's gifts helps her "to find God active in the world." In addition to these regular residents, House of Peace is also the local community for Sister Mary Kimball, a member of the SRJs of the East Coast. In Califoi'nia to gain experience in a new ministry, she runs a home for truant and delinquent high Review for Religious school girls who show academic or other creative potential. Because this ministerial unit requires her live-in presence, she affiliates with the House of Peace local community. Ordinarily she will be there every Monday evening to share dinner, prayer, and occasional social activities. Being a member of this group keeps her from feeling isolated and abandoned and allows her to give and get support within the context of her commitment to the mission of the SRJs. Residential Community The convent of St. Junipero Serra sits amid a pleasant res-idential neighborhood in the west side of the city. Next to the Catholic church and school, it once housed sisters of the con-gregation responsible for running the school. Now no sisters teach there. Not needed for parish activities, the building is rented to the SRJs for a reasonable fee. The residential com-munity is home to seven SRJs engaged in various ministries; the youngest is in her forties, and two are semiretired. This convent is run by group government, explains Sister William Joseph, who teaches math at Sacred Heart College for Women, established by the SRJs. Group government, originally an experimental form of living, applies now to almost all resi-dential groups and means participatory decision making in mat-ters that involve all members. The group collectively determines the extent of common prayer life, shared meals, other domes-tic activities, and group celebrations. "Respect" and "acceptance" are two words frequently heard in this group because, as one explains, "not all things can be shared well." This group has decided to share morning prayers Mondays through Fridays, and to gather one evening a week to share experiences and discuss the business of the larger con-gregation. They support the large community of sisters at events and serve as a "presence" in the parish. The group evening may be for holiday celebrations or indi-vidual birthdays or religious feast days. At the time of Sister William Joseph's interview in early January, there was a tall dec-orated Christmas tree in the common living room where we talked. She told me that this community would be celebrating its Christmas that evening, exchanging gifts. During the previ- July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living ous week, all were out visiting their families, so a common celebration was postponed. Sister William Joseph was one of those who did not want to break up the convent into smaller residential groups in the 1970s. She has always appreciated the exposure to many other sisters and did not wish to lose contact with those she might not encounter in her ministry or in small-group living. She says she has always had to "stretch herself" for others, but adds that this is part of the commitment they make to each other. Similar is her opinion of all the congregational events this house supports; she really does not care for so many meetings and events, but attends as part of the duty she upholds. Sister Adia Marie Buckley, too, is involved in academics. An administrator at the same college, she speaks about reli-gious- life community a little differently. "Although there must be people with whom one lives and with whom one must main-tain friendly relations," she says, "community extends to much more than this." She explains the kinship sense she feels with the broad congregation of other SRJs in the United States and else-where in the world, and with affiliate members, former mem-bers, and sisters in other orders. Sister Catherine Tivnan, who runs an office at the congre-gational headquarters, explains why she chose this house: "They're kind of middle-of-the-roaders, and I thought I'd fit in with them. I thought this was what I was looking for in peo-ple, for not heavy-duty intensive living, but just a nice, com-fortable place where I would fit in and would be accepted." By "not intensive" she explains that in some places there are peo-ple who "dissect everything and practically have a magnifying glass on everything you say and do." She says she does not mind such psychological probing on occasion, but cannot take a steady diet of it. She gives an example. A sister with whom she used to live would read every article in the Sunday newspaper and then want to discuss it with anyone in the room at the time. Eventually Sister Catherine would explicitly refuse to talk with her. She preferred to look at the paper rather quickly and then move on to other activities like walking by the beach or going to a movie. Sister Elizabeth Conan is a registered nurse and medical instructor who teaches away from home two or three evenings Review for Religious a week. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a plaid shirt, she tells me that she does less of the cooking for the house than some oth-ers because of her split work schedule. Her family also occupies her attention for about one day a month because of some difficult illness. She loves spending time with her sisters in com-munity, however, including their times of play. She likes to barbecue in good weather, and she says that at times she will just put out a sign-up sheet shortly beforehand, rather than planning everything well in advance. "Dressed to the teeth" was the impression Sister Margaret de Lorca made when I met her in her office at the parish hall. She explains that, coming from an artistic family, she had always enjoyed the use of color in her surroundings, although she did not wear it during many years of teaching in the traditional habit. Working part-time now, Sister Margaret works in religious edu-cation, organizing prayer groups, directing occasional retreats, and providing individual spiritual direction. She tells me that the sisters have common prayer in the house at 6:10 a.m. Monday through Friday. They initially prayed together in the evenings, but found it too difficult because of their divergent schedules. She contrasts living here in a small group with living in the congregational center, which is home to about a hundred sisters and was her home for two years. Even though residents here have to work to find time to be together, it takes a lot less energy to relate to this group than it would to everyone in the large community. Life was stressful for her there because, in walk-ing down a hallway, she would commonly encounter ten or twelve different people. By the time the tenth person said "How are you, Sister Margaret?" she would be exhausted. She is "not an extrovert," but also "not a strong introvert," so daily relations with six other people are plenty for her. Another member of this group is Sister Margot Monroe, an educational psychologist who does counseling for individ-ual schools and has a private practice for handicapped children. The sisters have common prayer in the house at 6:10 a.m. Monday through Friday. July-dugv~st 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living Though she loved the children she encountered in her teaching career, she became frustrated by the time required for extracur-ricular events like sports and cheerleading. She wonders if the congregation made a mistake leaving teaching en masse, and thinks the sisters should have taken more risks in starting new schools and programs.' She also expressed her frustration about the church, where "the hierarchy has not accepted our SRJ growth" and women religious are "only tolerated in the church and not really accepted." This leaves her in the painful posi-tion of being more removed from general church affairs than she would like to be. She feels similarly frustrated in her residential community, where not all have grown theologically and personally to the extent she has. Some of the sisters are not accustomed or very open to sharing, which she finds particularly "life-giving." "People can fulfill all their responsibilities," she explains, "and still not share who they really are." Although she tries to encourage certain ones to be more open, she does it in a gen-tle manner. Still, she finds this group to be a little shallow: "I feel I have community with the people I live with, but it's rather superficial. We're nice to each other. Our horarium for the day is not problematic at all, but I wish we had a depth of sharing that would bring us all to a different place." She believes, however, that living in this house is a trade-off. These people are not her best friends, of which she hag a num-ber outside this convent. While she gains depth and stimula-tion from her outside friendships, here she has the freedom and flexibility to come and go as she pleases without making com-mitments for large blocks of personal time and energy. The final resident of this group is also semiretired. Sister Patricia Louise, in her nineties, likes to cook and works in the parish food pantry. She says that "the diversity of ministry now militates against close community life," which they had when all worked together. This way is "harder but healthier"; it keeps people in contact with diverse fields and offers stimulating con-versation. She says: "It used to be that, if you all taught in the same elementary school, your conversation was always about families in the school, problem kids, what was going on in the parish. But this way we also know what is going on at the col-lege, at the high school, and at the hospitals." Review for Religious Despite their interdependence in the common life, how-ever, they are independent about their use of free time. She says that everyone is very "embedded" in what she is doing on her own and that not living with one's best friends is really an advantage. She adds that she never wanted a residence that was "like a hotel" and prefers the interdependence she finds here. Even though these women do not have "a lot of involvement with each other, what they do has value." A Community of One Sister Zo~ Warnercalls herself "a community of one" because no other sisters live or work with her and she does not have weekly contact with members of her congregation. Fifteen years ago she went out on her own with the blessing of the com-munity (but no funding) to create St. Martin's Children's Center, a temporary residential and resource center for children in fam-ilies undergoing major upheavals in their lives. Like an available set of grandparents, this center can care for up to fifteen chil-dren for a maximum of thirty days each, although the staff tries to restrict it to fewer children and shorter periods of time. Sister Zo~ lived in this large residence with a dog as her sole com-panion while the structure underwent remodeling and opera-tions eventually got underway, and she still lives there. Her purpose in inhabiting the building before its operation was to become a "presence" in the town and to begin to get a "community focus" on the center. She is referring not to the SRJ community now, but to the neighborhoods, businesses, and voluntary groups which support the center's activities. Her strat-egy evidently worked, because, as people came to know her and her plans, they wanted to participate and give support in vari-ous ways. One measure of that support is financial. Sister Zo~ "lives on faith" to provide the center's operating expenses of almost a half million dollars a year, because it has no regular income. Contributions tend to be sporadic yet somehow ade-quate for their needs. She says: "The Lord provides when we need it. from the little things to the big things . We just watch the mailbox and say our prayers. We have never run out of money or closed our doors due to lack of funds." Although she hopes to obtain the services of a part-time grant writer later July-Auffust 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living "Community is the same as its core. I am a sister from the core of my being." this year, she has done this and all other duties herself, includ-ing caring for the children and teaching life skills to the parents. Although a few Sisters of Reconciliation have come to work with her for brief periods over the years, Sister Zo~ now sees none of them frequently. Yet her connection to the SRJs is strong, and "our sisters., very much know I'm a community member." She explains that her SRJ area superior holds general gatherings three or four times a year and maybe a day of prayer once in a while. By participating in these activities and attend-ing the funerals of older sisters, Sister Zo~ carries the SRJ charism with her and uses it to create a sense of community with whomever she is working: "There's something I have learned., that, no matter where you go, you bring the sisters with you or you bring your experience of community." In addition to SRJ gatherings and ministry associates, Sister Zo~ has a couple of good friends she sees regularly. One of these is a nun from another congregation; the other is a priest friend. This little group frequently celebrates Sunday Mass in the residence of the non-SRJ, and they sometimes follow it with a potluck dinner, occasionally bringing in other friends or neigh-bors. She had to create this new sense of community herself, however, and she attributes this ability to her long-standing experiences with the SRJs: "By coming out here, community wasn't provided for me. I had to create it, and I used the skills, the tools, the experiences that I had had for all those years. to create a life that was community-oriented. But I had to take the reins and take the initiative and have it happen." Would she like more contact with other SRJs? She says that, although she does not require it, she would welcome another sis-ter if one were to want to live and work with her, and perhaps this new person would help care for her when she gets "old." She emphasizes, "Community is not based on the number of times you see people, but on the feelings and interests to see, hear, and share with others." She also takes he~" identity as an SRJ seriously, having followed the advice of her novice mistress never to abbre-viate the word sister, but always to write it out as part of her name Review for Religious and identity. Sister ZoE puts this together with her feelings about community: "Community is the same as its core. I am a sister from the core of my being, and I am a Sister of Reconciliation." "Good" and "Bad" Community Some sisters gave examples of either "good" or "bad" com-munity experiences, which sometimes held more feeling than the brief descriptive words suggest. One sister said that real community spirit was truly shown when her very good friend died suddenly. She received about a hundred sympathy cards, which told her that the loss of this friend was about more than "my private grief." Another sister described spending some time at a residential therapeutic community for religious congrega-tions. The therapy included the sharing of their life stories, a "first" for this particular sister, where the sharing of those "sad and joyful feelings" created a strong bond within the group. Still another told of the difficult period when she lost her job because of organizational restructuring, but still had had the full support of the community: "I was very glad I was a com-munity woman because otherwise I would have had to get a lawyer. In community I just shared what happened, and they journeyed with me through it." Sister MaryJoyce described her experiences in one of the first experimental communities of group government in 1969. In this new group for which everyone had volunteered, there were between ten and fifteen sisters at various times over several years, and they were trying out new approaches to teaching as well as living. This situation was "life-giving": the participants were all "high energy" types and risk takers as well. They all cared for each other and the outside world, and were concerned about where people were with God, faith, and prayer. Sister Kathryn Ann described something similar. When her ministry took her away from others in her own order, she lived in an apartment house that people came to call The Nunnery because in addition to herself there were six sisters from another con-gregation, a priest, and a brother, all in individual apartments. Although they "lived singly" and ministered in different places, they got together frequently for prayer, meals, and Mass, often signaled by a knock on the wall. July-Angvtst 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living 3.90 Sister Mary Magdalene has had her share of feeling less than appreciated by other SRJs, yet had a wonderful experience when she lived in a rural area with three other sisters, all teachers, who endured together the crisis of the school's closing. Although one of them was the principal of the school and also the supe-rior of the convent, they interacted as equals and "were just peo-ple together," frequently cooking and sharing meals on the weekends in an era when most convents still had cooks. Although they were together in the school, they also spent outside time together, but "it wasn't mandated. It was a choice we were mak-ing." This relaxed atmosphere where everyone's talents were recognized was contributed to by a pastor who was supportive and friendly and occasionally took them all out to dinner. Another sister, Sister Peg, described an aspect of her first job as a hospital chaplain. Living in an apartment across the street from the hospital, she provided hospitality for visiting sisters and especially those recuperating from surgery or illness. The informality and spontaneous "ease with which the sisters moved in and out of my life" was an exciting and fulfilling period. These positive experiences of community do not necessar-ily require other sisters or vowed people. Sister Benita Rogers shared one such experience when she was leaving an ethnically mixed parish that she had brought together over a number of years. Addressing a large parish group, Sister Benita, who does not speak Spanish, expressed her desire that perhaps now the diocese would assign a bilingual person as her replacement. A Hispanic man stood and spoke for the group: "It doesn't mat-ter whether or not you can speak Spanish. You have the corazon, the heart. That's how you've communicated. You've read us with your heart." It is the major congregational gatherings, however, that sev-eral sisters cited as the "best expression" of community spirit. One of these celebrations is the Congregational Days, when all sisters from the West come together with former sisters as well as affiliate members to celebrate the SRJs as a whole. The other is the jubilee celebration, held anr~ually on the feast day of their patron. Families and friends are invited to participate in the joyful celebration of the anniversaries of their vows as Sisters of Reconciliation. Among these hundreds of people there is a won- Review for Religious derful "spirit that you can almost touch." Everyone feels a part of this group energy and spirituality. It leads people to say that "the most profound experience of community is to experience us praying together." Although Sister Rafaela says she "has never had a bad com-munity experience," this is not the case for many sisters. Sisters described instances where they felt alienated, isolated, or at least not fully appreci-ated in the community, both in their local group and in the larger group. Often the difficulty stemmed from some-one's personality or behavior. When people are too busy to notice others or care about what they are undergoing, those others can feel "deadened" and not supported, making them withdraw from the group. On the other hand, those who "demand too much" from others in terms of time or resources make community living difficult. These people are usually those who have "not done their home-work" regarding their own interpersonal issues. Sometimes, carrying unresolved emotional traumas from their early life, they attempt to hide with the aid of alcohol, a too busy sched-ule, or emotional distancing of others. When people are "afraid of their own spirituality" or are "not willing to be honest" with each other, communal sharing and support are undermined from the start. Sometimes there is a plain lack of openness to others. Sister Joan Claire Mendoza described such a case. She lives in a large convent with eight or nine other sisters, four of whom work in the attached school, while the rest work in various other min-istries. They are together for morning Mass and one evening dinner per week. Although these sisters are "polite" to Sister Joan Claire, it is clear to her that they really do not want her there. Three of them maintain very close relations and actually "make up their own community." Fortunately, Sister Joan Claire has developed a personal and professional network of friends and colleagues from whom she receives most of her emotional Those who "demand too much" from others in terms of time or resources make community living difficult. -201 --- . J~dy-dugust 2002 Zajac " Three Forms of Community Living sustenance. Another sister described a similar case. She felt so rejected that she was "not even sure she was still an SRJ." Others expressed their isolation when they felt that their talents, gifts, or ministry were not appreciated. If community members remain or act unaware or. uninformed about them and their work, those living in common as well as those minister-ing on their own can be affected. Sometimes the personalities of the people living together are too divergent or their schedules too diverse to allow for harmonious living. Highly divergent worldviews in people can also make daily life uncom-fortable. In other instances a quiet person is misconstrued to be someone quite alien to her real self. One sister said she had been surprised to learn that her housemates had thought she was very self-confident and did not need any help or support. In another convent she had been perceived as a threat to others because she had more education than most of the others. The biggest obstacle to community, however, one sister said, occurs when people do not maintain confidences. This causes a shat-tering of trust and pushes people back to isolation. A few sisters expressed frustration or anger with the com-munity at large. One told of an instance when her mother was dying. Although everyone knew about this, there was little inter-est, caring, or support shown. Another sister said that several years ago she was angry with the general community for giving financial support to a foreign political group that she thought was wrong. Another sister said that sometimes lack of equality really bothered her. Because of her age she had been denied permission to study for an advanced degree, yet in that very year three sisters older than herself were approved and funded for graduate education. When this woman protested this as unjust, she received an apology from the president of the con-gregation, but still no approval for further study. In this article we have examined how sisters in one reli-gious community define and create "community." There is lit-tle general consensus about the term, although some common values are evident. In general, all agree that something must be shared and that there is a feeling of interdependence or inter-connectedness. How and what things are shared, however, varies according to the type of living group that is chosen. Individual Review for Religious sisters' stories were interwoven here into three composite pic-tures of community living: intentional community, residential community, and a community of one. Also, some examples of what creates "good" and "bad" community were given. The various types of community exist in various circum-stances and are experienced in various ways by individual sisters. There seems to be no one right way. There is a considerable diversity of views, activities, roles, and living arrangements. This diversity contrasts strongly with the pre-Vatican II con-vents, with their physical proximity to the apostolic work the sis-ters did, their thorough discipline, and their homogeneity of life conditions. Note ~ I later discovered that this was the original European name of a congregation now in the United States with a different name. Bibliography Beane, Marjorie Noterman. 1993. From framework to freedom: A history of the Sister Formation Conference. New York: University Press of America. Eby, Judy, RSM. 2000. "A little squabble among nuns"? The Sister Formation crisis and the patterns of authority and obedience among American women religious, 1954-1971. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation, Saint Louis University. Emerson, Robert M., ed. 1983. Contemporary field research: A collec-tion of readings. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. Merton, Robert K., Marjorie Fiske, and Patricia L. Kendall. 1990. The focused interview: A manual of problems and procedures. New York: Free Press. Powdermaker, Hortense. 1960. Stranger and friend: The way of an anthropologist. New York: W.W. Norton. Quifionez, Lora Ann, CDP, and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN. 1992. The transformation of American Catholic sisters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Vatican Council H: The conciliar and postconciliar documents and More postconciliar documents. 1975, 1982. Edited by Austin Flannery OP. Northport, New York: Costello Publishing Co. Wittberg, Patricia, SC. 1990. Dyads and triads: The sociological impli-cations of small-group living arrangements. Review for Religious 43, no. 1 (January-February): 43-51. July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Li~ing ¯ 1993. Residence stability and decline in Roman Catholic reli-gious orders of women: A preliminary investigation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32: 76-82. Zajac, Barbara. 1999a. Becoming a nun: A general model of entering religious life. Review for Religious 58 (July-August): 403-423. --. 1999b. Community suicide: Secularization in Catholic nuns with the manipulation of ritual and symbol. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Riverside. Wounded The unseen spider ripped my flesh, and drew blood, nourishment, afresh, and left a black-red crater there: pink, puffy, filled with pus - not fair. A round wound one inch wide oozing fluid down the side. I've been a meal for a foreign beast, stamped with a bump, a spider's feast. This tiny spider sucked sustenance from me, drew life, left a mark, for all to see - how dare he! Am I any different? Don't I do the same? Feed on the Christ, wound him, without shame? Michael J. Lydon Reviev; for Religious JOEL GIALLANZA Expert Practitioners of Union in Community Once upon a time community was uncomplicated, ever a delight in which to witness and work, a constant joy to be and build. Beg your pardon! Are we talking about reality here? Yes, but only by flashback to the language and imagery of a different era. Let me explain. In researching various writings on religious community--most of them published from the 1930s to the early 1960s--I wondered if the lived experience of community during those decades matched the somewhat romantic and idealistic rhetoric about it. I decided that it prob-ably did not; rather, the rhetoric offered encouragement and hope as supports for the lived experience. Religious knew then and continue to experience now the complexity of community life. The word community itself has a complex meaning. It means more than religious living in the same residence. We know that community members may be scattered across cities and even across continents. Another facet includes the personalities and perspectives of the members. Similarity and unanimity are no guarantee that a community is healthy and thriving or even that the members know one another more than superficially. Community encompasses the members' cultures and customs and their ages and attitudes. And so we can ask: How do we recognize one another as members of the Joel Giallanza CSC last wrote for us in May-June 2000. His address is Province Center; 1101 St. Edward's Drive; Austin, Texas 78704. July-August 2002 Giallanza ¯ Expert Practitioners of Union community? Community also encompasses the unique heritage and history of each religious institute and the cast of charac-ters who have lived that heritage and been a part of that history. And there are our own experiences in life and ministry. The complexity of religious community does not diminish its potential for living up to the rhetoric of earlier eras. In truth, it has all the potential with which humanity was invested by God at creation. And yet, when we discuss the many factors currently influencing religious life, the task of formulating an all-encompassing definition or description of community is quite daunting and sometimes discouraging. This perception, this temptation to invest less time and energy in such discus-sions, can have a detrimental effect on the quality of community we hope to build for the future. These present reflections are intended to resist that temptation and to encourage continu-ing efforts to form and live and sustain community. Forming Community In the apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata (hereafter VC), Pope John Paul II writes: "Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion as 'witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design'" (§46). This is a significant challenge; to be "true experts" at almost anything in our world is a considerable achievement. Being expert practitioners in the spirituality of communion calls for more. John Paul's understanding of communion is incarna-tional: communion does not exist apart from those who strive to live it daily. The etymology of the word "expert" provides an important insight. Often the term is used in a static way, indicating an acquired ability needing little if any further development. The root meaning, however, is quite dynamic: an expert is one who tries and who learns by trying. As a person's ability matures, there are always new approaches to try and new things to learn. The words experiment and experience have the same root. One way, then, of becoming experts in communion is through our experiments and experiences in community. We must keep try-ing and keep learning. Community is never finished. Review f

Issue 55.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1996. ; for religi ous Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 199-~ * VOLUME 55 ¯ NUMBER 5 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their ~ersonal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, prhctical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point If view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) i! published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits o,'f the Missouri Province¯ Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St.!Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯Fax~: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU~ZCI.SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. 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Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1996 ¯ VOLUME55 ¯ NUMBER5 contents consecrated life 454 462 Vita Consecrata: A Vocation for the Third Millennium Rose McDermott SSJ summarizes the content of John Paul's apostolic exhortation on consecrated life and highlights a few of its provisions. The Holy Spirit in Church Documents on the Consecrated Life Sally Ann Brickner OSF examines the increasing recognition by church documents of the role of the Holy Spirit in consecrated-life renewal. seeking God 474 Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life 485 Terrance Wayne Klein identifies three areas of concern for vocational recruitment: contact with ministerial mentors, a growing spiritual freedom in those seeking ministry, and a sense of enhancing community life. Reflections of a Fin de SiOcle Novice Michael Tidd FSC reviews his novitiate experience to clarify elements of formation central to apostolic life. --450 Review for Religious 494 5O6 breaking boundaries Racism and Religious Life Clemente Barr6n CP gives gentle and honest witness to an experience of racism that infects good people in the church and in religious life. Movement from Monocultural to Multicultural Congregations Gary Riebe-Estrella SVD suggests that what racially distinct groups offer is the opportunity to incarnate for our church and world the gospel's "Good Samaritan" model of persons letting their physical proximity turn them into neighbors. 521 527 living spiritually Perseverance: Letting the Goodness Out Melannie Svoboda SND explores factors that facilitate our practice of the virtue of perseverance. Friends through Prayer Eugene M. Rooney SJ reemphasizes the importance of prayer as a way of communication and support in a world of e-mail and fax. departments 452 Prisms 533 Canonical Counsel: The Role of Councils in Religious Governance 540 Book Reviews Septe~nber-October 1996 prisms ~ita consecrata, the papal exhortation which completed the work of the synod of bishops deal-ing with consecrated life in the church, has only just begun to be studied. First public reactions to the document seem to have been quite favorable. Of course, there will be critique--inevitable, and abso-lutely necessary if there is to be continuing development and growth. One observation made immediately upon publication was about the daunting length of the docu-ment. Although there are only three chapters, along with an introduction and a conclusion, the text is substantial and typical of the dense style of writing associated with Pope John Paul. Perhaps a saving factor in a long text is that there seems to be "something in it for everyone." Of course, there is likely something to disconcert everyone too. Some have already expressed dissatisfaction with the English translation "objective superiority" (§18 and §32) applied to consecrated life. Some are disappointed with the inconclusiveness of the equal stance of brothers in relation to priests in what is called a "mixed" institute; further work by a study commission is promised for a deci-sion. While new forms of consecrated life are acknowl-edged and praised, a proposed commission to determine criteria of authenticity and of approval suggests a stance of caution. Although there is a strong positive stance towards the specific contribution of women religious, what is referred to as "new possibilities of presence and action on the part of consecrated women" may need more to be Revlew for Religious acknowledged as already a fact in many parts of the church than a future yet to be realized. But important as the resolution of these practical matters will be for the proper development of consecrated lifeforms, I believe that the approach taken by the pope in the first chapter is hugely significant for a theological understanding and a spiritual appre-ciation of consecrated life. The pope does not take up the tools of philosophy, theology, anthropology, sociology, or behaviorial sci-ences for his primary approach to consecrated life. Instead he proposes the gospel passage of Jesus' transfiguration and suggests that we approach it as if it ycere an icon. This transfiguration icon involves a gazing on the face of Jesus both in a "going up the mountain" and a "coming down the mountain." The pope refers to an ancient spiritual tradition which links the contemplative life to the prayer of Jesus on the moun-tain. But then he adds that the active dimension of consecrated life can be included because the transfiguration event serves as prepa-ration to share with Jesus in the "toil of God's plan" and to be with him "courageously on the way of the cross." In using the sacramentality of the icon, we Christians enter sacred time and space. Through a communion with the mystery signified by an icon, tradition holds that the believer is being made-holy. An icon can be studied for the meanings of its sym-bolism, and so there is an intellectual component. Through reflec-tions on various themes stimulated by the gospel passage, John Paul develops a contemporary understanding of consecrated life. But always the focus remains the icon giving us an experience of a divine world. For our understanding and appreciation of conse-crated life, then, Vita consecrata presents us with a gospel text to suggest cognitive content and an iconic vision of the divine: by gazing upon the face of Jesus, we enter into the mystery of con-secrated life in the church and its centering world of holiness. Review for Religious takes pride in making available the text of Vita consecrata, along with a wealth of other contextual arti-cles, in The Church and Consecrated Life. The book costs $18.95 plus postage; it can be ordered from our St. Louis office. See the order form at the end of this issue. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1996 consecrated life ROSE McDERMOTT Vita Consecrata: A Vocation for the Third Millennium When Pope Paul VI inaugurated the Synod of Bishops on 15 September 1965, he desired that it examine a selected topic in the light of church teachings and the experience of the particular churches. The synod, repre-senting the universal church, would provide the pope and world's bishops with effective collaboration and helpful insights in their shared concern for the Christian faithful throughout the world. Under date of 25 March 1996, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, Pope John Paul II promulgated Vita consecrata, the apostolic exhortation for the ninth ordinary session of the Synod of Bishops, held 2 through 29 October 1994. This document marks the completion of the study of the three principal vocations in the church. The priesthood was discussed in the second (1971) and eighth (1990) general sessions and the vocation to the lay state in the seventh (1987) session. Those who have studied the preparatory documents and followed the synod interventions and discussions will find no great surprises in the apostolic exhortation. Rather, it is a fine synthesis of the church's teaching on conse-crated life and its lived reality in the various parts of the world. The document shows the fruits of the consultative process encouraged by the synod's lineamenta document Rose McDermott SSJ, of the Department of Canon Law at Catholic University, last wrote for us in March-April 1995. Her address is Visitation Convent; 1524 35th Street, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20007. Review for Religions and the contributions of the bishops and other participants gath-ered from around the world for the actual synod assembly. The present article reviews the church's teaching on conse-crated life as reflected in the apostolic exhortation and points to potential developments mentioned in the same document. Since PTta consecrata is hortatory and not legislative, the developments indicated in the document will be the subjects of further theo-logical and canonical study and authoritative deliberations. The Church's Teaching on Consecrated Life The introduction to the apostolic exhortation (§§1-13) describes consecrated life in its gospel beginnings, offers gratitude to God for this gift to the church, and expresses the apostolic exhortation's purpose: to put forth the fruits of this synod session, which has studied this vocation and its contribution to the church's mission. Six forms of consecrated life are presented, with a final paragraph noting the new expressions of the vocation present in the vari-ous churches today. Pope John Paul recognizes that the exhorta-tion is far from the final word on consecrated life. He offers the document to encourage those consecrated by the profession of the counsels to meet the challenges of today's world. Chapter I of the exhortation, Confessio Trinitatis (§§14-40), con-templates the vocation to consecrated life within the gospel icon of the Transfiguration. Persons responding to this vocation have caught a glimpse of the glory of God; he becomes the driving force of their life and activity. Configured to Christ chaste, poor, and obedient, they enjoy an intimacy with the community of the Trinity in their willingness to leave all and follow Christ in an ever deeper response to their baptismal commitment. Consecrated persons are beloved of the Father, who sends them forth--as he did Christ and the Spirit--in dedicated service to the world. This vocation cannot be lived without willing entry into the paschal mystery of suffering. The moment of glory on the mount strengthened the faith of the apostles and prepared them for their own suffering and martyrdom. So, too, the consecrated person embraces a life of labor, suffering, and abandonment to the Father's will. Yet Peter's remark is on the lips of those configured to Christ through this vocation: "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Consecrated life cannot be lived apart from the church; it belongs inextricably to its life and holiness. Through the profes- September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Consecrata sion of the counsels, consecrated persons offer a vibrant witness to the life and teachings of Christ. They are nourished through liturgical and personal prayer and traditional ascetic practices in the church. Meeting the spiritual combat in their own lives enables consecrated persons to transform the world in humility, detach-ment, and reliance on God. Chapter 2, Signum Fraternitatis (§§41-71). All forms of con-secrated life manifest communion in imitation of Christ's life within the Trinitarian community and in the company of the Twelve. This communion is particularly lived out in religious institutes and societies of apostolic life where the members live in common, supporting one another in the spiritual life and in the apostolate. Members of secular institutes are joined in community with one another through their charism and their embrace of the community in which they live and labor. The church, a mystery of communion (Ac 2:42-47), depends on consecrated persons to give witness to community in an often fragmented and broken world. Within the ecclesial community the bishop looks after the charisms for the good of all the faith-ful. While institutes of consecrated life enjoy a rightful auton-omy of life and governance, they should cooperate with the respective bishops, sharing their goals and apostolates with them. Lay persons recognize the value of communities of conse-crated persons. They seek to attach themselves to them, sharing their spirituality and assisting in their apostolates. These associ-ates and volunteers should be fostered and formed so that they appreciate their lay vocation more deeply and readily lend them-selves to apostolic endeavor in their particular churches. Likewise, formation programs for candidates should reflect human, com-munal, apostolic, cultural, and professional dimensions adapted to the whole person. Chapter 3, Servitium Caritatis (~'§72-103). The mission of those consecrated by profession of the evangelical counsels is one of communicating God's love to the world. One is consecrated and sent (Jn 10:36). The challenges of today's world demand a strong interior life of consecrated persons, a life deeply in tune with the Spirit of God. Through their charisms, members of institutes of consecrated life witness a particu!al~ aspect of the gospel message to those they serve. The universal character of their institutes permits them to join with other ecclesial ministers in carrying out the church's Review for Religious . mission through evangelization, ecumenical and interreligious dialogues, inculturation, the preferential option for the poor, and the promotion of justice. Through their profession of chastity, poverty, and obedience, consecrated persons offer a prophetic witness to the world and address the challenges of a hedonistic culture, materialism, and a distorted use of freedom. The community dimension of conse-crated life teaches the universal call to holiness regardless of differences and human limitations. This prophetic wit-ness is the fruit of a deep spiritual life and an openness to God's word in litur-gical and personal prayer. The apostolic exhortation's Conclusion. The document ends as it began, in grat-itude to God and to those who "waste" their lives in what seems at times an irrelevant commitment, a life poured out in selfless love and service. This vocation as an essential part ofthe church's life and holiness. Consecrated persons contribute with unbounded generosity to the various aspects of the mission of the church. The pope exhorts consecrated persons to live fully the life they have embraced, a life of The document ends as it began, in gratitude to God and to those who "waste" their lives in what seems at times an irrelevant commitment, a life poured out in selfless love and service. continual conversion and dedication to Christ, challenged by the new millennium, but focused on the world to come. A prayer addressed to the Trinity and an invocation to the Virgin of the Visitation for consecrated women and men bring the document to an end. Potential Developments in Consecrated Life New institutes, new forms, new ecclesial movements (§§12 and 62). The Holy Spirit revitalizes the ecclesial community through a variety of new gifts. These charisms can be seen in the embry-onic beginnings of new institutes of consecrated life that meet the present theological and canonical criteria. Other develop-ments seem to be new forms of consecrated life and must await approval from the Apostolic See. Still other "evangelical lifestyles" September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Gonsecrata that possess some of the characteristics of consecrated life and various other forms of Christian witness would seem to be more accurately categorized as associations of the faithful. Pope John Paul has encouraged these developments in his weekly general audiences during the synod and in the apostolic exhortation. He recognizes them as a true sign of the charismatic nature of the church. This wealth of new gifts is received by the church with grat-itude. These charisms do not substitute fox~ the traditional ones approved by the church throughout its history. Rather, they should complement the older forms and continue in their rich tradition. Bishops have requested more exact criteria in order to discern and distinguish these new developments. A commission has been set up (1) to deal with questions relating to these new forms, (2) to determine criteria to assist church authorities in their dis-cernment and decision making regarding them, and (3) to pre-sent those officially approved as new forms of consecrated life to the faithful. Legislation for cloister (§Yg). The church has always held the contemplative life in highest esteem and has provided norms on cloister to preserve the values inherent in this vocation. While men religious dedicated totally to the contemplative life regulate their cloister (canon 667, §2), women religious totally given to the contemplative life observe cloister in accord with the norms issued by the Apostolic See (c. 667, §3). This difference in the provisions for the cloister of men and women contemplative religious seems contradictory to canon 606, which provides equality in the common law for men and women religious. The cloistral norms seem contrary also to canon 586, which assures all religious institutes a true autonomy to direct their own life and governance in accord with the patrimony of the institute. Women religious institutes dedicated totally to the contemplative life represent a rich variety of monastic and men-dicant traditions. Yet all are obliged to papal cloister without due regard for their varied charisms. Pope John Paul assures us in §59 that careful consideration will be given the concerns addressed by the participants of the synod with regard to this issue. It should be noted that many of the diocesan bishops participating in the synod assembly asked contemplative men and women', to share their prayer life and extend their hospitality to clerics, la~ people, and other religious Review for Religious who seek spiritual renewal. The exhortation assures that more authority will be given major superiors ofsui iuris monasteries to grant dispensations from enclosure for just and sufficient reasons in keeping with conciliar renewal. This provision would be in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity and enable institutes of contemplative life to express their charisms better in their clois-ter regulations. Associates and volunteers joined to institutes of consecrated life (§ Y 6). Before the Second Vatican Council, only religious orders with an apostolic indult were permitted to have third orders secular attached to them. Conciliar teaching placed great emphasis on an ecclesiology of communion that had noteworthy implications for the rela-tionship of the laity With institutes of con-secrated life. Today all religious institutes without distinction can have members of the laity associated with them, sharing their spirituality and joining in their apos-tolic works. This phenomenon was rec-ognized in the preparatory documents of the synod and lauded by the participants in the assembly. Paragraph 56 of the apostolic exhor-tation notes the increasing number of associates and lay volunteers joined to institutes of consecrated life. Vv'hile the exhortation cautions the protection of the identity of these same institutes, it encourages a proper preparation of the lay people joined to them in order that they approach their apostolic com-mitments with supernatural intentions anda strong sense of com-munity. Lay persons in decision-making positions in the apostolates of these institutes should promote the ends of the institute and carry out their labors under its competent superiors. Directives approved by proper authorities need to be provided in such cases. Mixed institutes (§61). Some institutes of men religious, par-ticularly those sharing the Franciscan charism, are neither lay nor clerical from their foundation. In keeping with the intention of their founder, they admit both clerics and laymen to the insti-tute. All are friars or brothers with equal rights and obligations in Today all religious institutes without distinction can have members of the laity associated with them, sharing their spirituality and joining in their apostolic works. September-October 1996 McDermott ¯ Vita Consecrata the institute, prescinding from their lay or clerical status. Conciliar and postconciliar teachings support this fundamental equality of all members and their participation in the life and governance of the institute. The universal law of the church, however, makes no provision for these mixed institutes. It provides only for cler-ical or lay institutes in accord with their foundation, traditions, and end. Likewise, in many of these mixed institutes, some offices require daat the members be ordained. The synod assembly proposed that, when the general chapter of such an institute reque.sted, all offices of governance within these institutes be open to members without distinction. This proposal would be in conformity with the intention of the founders that all members be equal in the life and governance of the institute. Paragraph 61 of the apostolic exhortation recom-mends that such institutes study the original inspiration of their founder. In the meantime a special commission has been estab-lished to examine and resolve the problems concerning this issue. Mutual relations of bishops and consecrated persons (~§48-50). The ecclesiology of communion has led to an intense reflection on the role of consecrated life within the life and apostolate of the particular churches. While institutes of consecrated life are uni-versal by nature, the vocation of their individual members is lived out in a particular church. In 1978 the congregations for bish-ops and for institutes of consecrated life published the document Mutuae relationes, a compilation of directives for effective mutual relations between bishops and religious. These directives exhort bishops and major superiors to collaborate more effectively at the national level through their respective conferences and at the local level through meetings of the diocesan bishops with the major superiors whose members serve the particular church. The synod assembly recommended a revision of this docu-ment which would reflect the developments in this area, particu-larly as reflected in the legislation of the Latin and Eastern churches. In keeping with the synod proposal, the exhortation recommends that delegates from the conferences of bishops par-ticipate in the conferences of major superiors of their nations and that delegates from these latter conferences participate in the meetings of the episcopal conferences. It further proposes that the theology and spirituality of consecrated life be an integral part of the preparation of diocesan priests. Likewise, the study of ecclesiology should be included in the formation program for Review for Religious members of institutes of consecrated life. Pope John Paul con-curs with the members of the synod in hoping that this spirit of communion and cooperation be extended to the entire church. Perhaps a revision and expansion ofMutuae relationes will be pre-sented in the near future. Conclusion As the apostolic exhortation concludes with a reference to Mary, Virgin of the Visitation, it is appropriate that this article end in like manner. Mary, her heart filled with Christ, went forth to serve Elizabeth. Consecrated persons configured to Christ stand ready to meet the needs of people in the third millennium. And with Peter in his ecstasy they cry, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Abba At the shore where sea and sky and land meet and waves pound the rocks with constant rhythm, I find myself caught up by the stout winds, drawn by the salt air and combative gulls. Here is where I face God in his might yet also encounter him in beauty . Sunsets beckon like fringes of heaven while shorebirds encompass the lilt of hope. I am a mere grain of eternity yet I'm always within God's providence and like the back and forth surge of the tide am drawn into the core of a loving heart. Neil C. Fitzgerald September-October 1996 SALLY ANN BRICKNER The Holy Spirit in Church Documents on the Consecrated Life Twhheen Stheceo cnhdu Vrcaht irceafnl eCcoteudn coinl witsa so twhen encactluersei oalnodg imcails msioonm. eInnt convoking the council Pope John XXIII requested that it be pas-toral in tone and call the entire church to renewal so that its mis-sion, which is none other than Christ's mission of establishing the reign of God, be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit. Pope John Paul II, in his recent apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata, says of consecrated life: "Its universal presence and the evangelical nature of its witness are clear evidence., that the consecrated life is not something isolated and marginal, but a reality which affects the whole church. In effect, the consecrated life is at the very heart of the church as a decisive element for her mission since it 'manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling' and the striving of the whole church as bride toward union with her one Spouse" (§3). The appropriate renewal of the con-secrated life, therefore, is essential to renewal in the church.1 Since the close of the council in December 1965, develop-ments in ecclesiology, in the church's thinking about its nature as mystery and as the universal sacrament of salvation, have fre-quently focused on the Holy Spirit. Vita consecrata reflects this: "Like the whole of Christian life, the call to the consecrated life is closely linked to the working of the Holy Spirit" (§ 19). Through Sally Ann Brickner OSF is a faculty member at St. Norbert College. Her address is Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross; 2413 South Webster Avenue; Green Bay, Wisconsin 54301. Review for Religious a study of this and other recent church documents, this essay demonstrates that pneumatology has become important in the ecclesiological understanding of the consecrated life and that this emphasis has implications for its continuing renewal. This study proceeds chronologically through the two concil-iar documents and the eight postconciliar documents that explic-itly treat the consecrated life. A brief explanation of pneumatology provides a backdrop for the analysis. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of this ecclesiological doctrine for the continuing appropriate renewal of the consecrated life. What Is Pneumatology? The Greek word pneuma means breath, air, wind, soul, spirit. Pneumatology, then, is the branch of systematic theology that studies the Person and work of the I-Ioly Spirit.2 The t-Ioly Spirit has been virtually lost from much of Christian consciousness, some theologians claim. The Spirit of God manifests herself through various actions: vivifying, renewing and empowering, gracing. The Holy Spirit is the mutual rela-tionship of love within the community (koinonia) of the Godhead, freely going forth to renew, to liberate.3 It is the Spirit who makes it possible for us to know and experience Christ. Christ's life in us and our life in Christ is ecclesial in the sense that Christ's Spirit is the principle of communication and communion.4 "The church is the body of Christ, because Christ is a pneumatological being, born and exist-ing in the koinonia of the Spirit.''5 Christ is the head of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the heart of the church. Word and Spirit are the two hands of God at work building God's reign.6 The church has come to understand the Holy Spirit also through the Spirit's free gifts, charisms, "to perform distinct and mutually complementary functions in building up the body of Christ." Charisma must be understood in relation to charis, "grace" that God gives for the common good and the renewal of the church in all eras.7 Charisms are not extraordinary, ecstatic gifts reserved to a few persons. Rather, they are the obvious ways "through which the Spirit structures the church by rousing from Christ is the head of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the heart of the church. September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Hol~ Spirit in Church Documents within the services and functions of the community according to the diversity and qualities of each member. In this perspective there is no opposition between charism and institution. A ministry is normally the expression of a charism, and a permanent charism takes the form of a ministry or a service." Charism also refers to the gifts which inspire the choice of a particular state of life such as marriage or celibacy. But in the end neither charism nor insti-tution will exist. Charity alone endures and is the true measure and strength of any charism,s Against this backdrop about pneumatology and its relationship to ecclesiology, we can now examine pneumatology in documents pertaining to the consecrated life. What pneumatology is evi-dent? Does development occur in pneumatology? Conciliar Documents Before examining the two conciliar texts, it will be beneficial to consider briefly whether and how pneumatology was approached by the council fathers. It has been said that the eccle-siology of Vatican Council II is pneumatological as well as Christocentric, and ultimately theocentric.9 Yves Congar, the renowned theologian of this century and peritus of the council, claims that its ecclesiology is pneumatological though not pneu-matocentric. 1° It stresses, first and foremost, that the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, building up the Body of Christ. The documents depict both a visible and a spiritual manifestation of the Spirit who animates the church here and now. The council fathers rec-ognize multiple charisms, the infinite variety of gifts which the -Holy Spirit gives for the common good and the renewal of the church. The council also affirms that the Holy Spirit calls and gathers the people of God into communion, both within partic-ular churches as well as within the universal church.11 Whether these pneumatological perspectives appear in the two council texts specifically dealing with the consecrated life is the issue to which we now turn. Lumen Gentium (1964) In this primordial document, chapters 5, "Call of the Whole Church to Holiness," and 6, "Religious," speak of the Holy Spirit several times. The holiness of the church is unceasingly mani-fested through the fruits of the Holy Spirit in all the faithful. The Review for Relig4ous Holy Spirit also influences the practice of the evangelical coun-sels as a shining witness and model of holiness (§39). Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, church authority has the duty of interpreting the evangelical counsels, regulating their practice, and establishing stable forms of living in accordance with them (§43). The council fathers affirm that the religious state, though not belonging to the hierarchical structure of the church, belongs inseparably to her life and holiness. It manifests the surpassing greatness of Christ the King and the boundless power of the Holy Spirit (§44) in .the church. Perfectae Caritatis (1965) Few direct references to the Holy Spirit appear in Perfectae caritatis.12 Through God's love which is poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit, some Christians are impelled to practice the evangelical counsels in a true family gathered together in the Lord's name. Their "brotherly" unity shows that Christ has come and results in great apostolic effectiveness (§§ 1 and 15). The pro-cesses of appropriate renewal of religious life include (1) a return to the sources of Christian life and to the original inspiration of the founder and (2) adjustment of the community to the changed conditions of the times. These processes are to go forward under the influence of the Holy Spirit and with the guidance of the church (§2). Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the church is enriched with a variety of communities having a diver-sity of apostolic works (§8). Postconciliar Documents Evangelica Testificatio (1971) In this apostolic exhortation "On the Renewal of Religious Life," written six years after the close of the council, Pope Paul VI emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gifts the church with martyrs and with various forms of religious life (§3). Pope Paul speaks of the "charisms of the founders" and the "charism of religious life," which are the fruit of the Holy Spirit always at work within the church (§11). The Spirit guides the church in its interpretation and regulation of the evangelical coun-sels (§7). The Spirit inspires communities of consecrated life not only in their origins but also in their renewal, which requires dis-cernment (§§6 and 51). By placing greater emphasis on the ¯ September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents charismatic nature of the consecrated life, church teaching becomes less iuridic and more pneumatic.13 Mutuae Relationes (1978) This document, based on a consultation of bishops and reli-gious in 1975, portrays vividly the pneumatic ecclesiological insights of Vatican Council II, continues to use the term "charism," and provides criteria for evaluating the authenticity of charisms. Profound reflections on the pneumatic origin and sacramental nature of the church permeate the first chapter. "The soul of the ecclesial body is the Holy Spirit" (§9). Ever since the day of Pentecost there has existed in the world a new people which draws its life from the Holy Spirit and is united in Christ so as to have access to the Father. ¯ . This unique nature of the church is due to the presence of the Holy Spirit himself. He is the life and strength of the people of God, the cohesive power in its communion, the energy for its mission, the source of its various gifts, the bond of its marvelous unity, the light and beauty in its creative power, the fire of its love . The life-giving pres-ence of the Holy Spirit creates an organic cohesion in Christ,. for the Spirit "makes [the church] one in its com-munion and ministry, provides it with various hierarchical and charismatic gifts, directing it through them, and adorns it with his fruits." (§§1 and 2) Both founders of consecrated life and bishops are "enriched with suitable charisms" such as the "special charism of organizing" pastoral ministries and of discerning local cultural values (§§6 and 9). Remaining faithful to the charism of their founders, reli-gious institutes should make use of the charism for inventiveness, for bold and ingenious new ecclesial experiments under the impulse of the Holy Spirit (§§14 and 19). Bishops have the respon-sibility of discerning whether a charism is authentic: it must (1) take its origin from the Spirit as something distinct though not separate from innate or acquired gifts, (2) show a desire to become like Christ in order to witness to some aspect.of his mystery, and (3) show a fruitful love for the church that avoids discord (§51). The document acknowledges tensions between the hierarchic structure and consecrated life, encouraging collaboration between bishops and religious for the good of the church. Religious Life and Human Promotion (1980) Because of its focus on human promotion as the mission of the Review for Religious church and therefore of religious as well, one would think that the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes would emphasize pneumatology. However, only a few references to the work of the Holy Spirit appear. Religious are encouraged to be enterprising in undertakings and initiatives in keeping with the charismatic and prophetic nature of their life (§2 7). Renewal in the consecrated life is important for the church and for ~he world because the works of religious, marked by a diversity of charisms, are one of the most important means by which the church carries out its evangelization (§5). The Holy Spirit constantly inspires new forms of consecrated life and animates existing communi-ties, which are called to remain faithful to the purposes for which they were founded (§§6 and 8). Contemplative Dimension of Religious Life (1981) This document results from a plenary meeting of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in 1980 and stresses the absolute primacy of life in the Holy Spirit (§17). Contemplation is an infused gift of the Holy Spirit by which the believer opens up to the revelation and communication of the liv-ing God. As the highest and fullest activity of the spirit, contem-plation is the real secret of renewal for religious life (§1). Action and contemplation must be fused. Only apostolic and charitable activity which is inspired and motivated by the Holy Spirit is of the very nature of refigious life (§4). The Sacred Congregation urges "renewed attention tolife in the Holy Spirit" through daily meditation on Sacred Scripture (§8), celebration of the Eucharist (§9) and the sacrament of reconciliation (§ 10), spiritual direction (§11), the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours (§12), the prac-tice of asceticism (§14), and devotion to the Virgin May (§13). Redemption# Donum (1983) The few pneumatological references in this apostolic exhor-tation of Pope John Paul (on religious consecration in the light of the mystery of redemption) parallel those of other documents on the consecrated life. Religious profession is described as a fuller expression of baptismal "consecration to God in Jesus Christ" in a covenant of spousal love (§§7 and 8). The Holy Spirit calls peo-ple to follow Christ and recalls to mind all that Christ has said. The entire economy of redemption is realized precisely through the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit, who is the author of all September-October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents holiness (§§6 and 9). The vow of celibacy is a charismatic choice which brings the eschatological kingdom of God close to the life of all people, while the vow of obedience engenders total avail-ability to the Holy.Spirit (§§11 and 13). The particular gift of the founder, from which the apostolate must come, endures as a charism for the whole community (§15). Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life (1983) The document summarizes the church's traditional teachings and norms pertaining to the consecrated life. Its few references to the Holy Spirit offer no new insights. The church has approved and encourages renewal in its numerous religious families, whose distinctiveness derives from the founding charism (§§11, 41, and 42). The witness of religious can be a clear echo of the gospel "to the extent that it manifests publicly the transforming power of Christ in the church and the vitality of the institute's charism to the people of our time" (§§11 and 37). Hence, renewal must focus on fidelity to the founding gift.14 Fraternal Life in Community (1994) In this document the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) lucidly and directly expresses the pneumatic character of the church and of the consecrated life. Like the mystery of the church itself, the consecrated life expresses the great Trinitarian com-munion in which the Father has willed that women and men have part in the Holy Spirit (§§2, 9, and 71). Religious community is an expression of ecclesial communion. "Before being a human construction, religious community is a gift of the Spirit. It is the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, from which religious community takes its origin and is formed as a true fam-ily gathered together in the Lord's name" (§8). The fruit of this communion is the gift of fraternal life. Religious community is not simply a collection of Christians seek-ing personal perfection. Rather, it is to be a living organism of intense fraternal communion animated by the foundational charism (§2). United in the Holy Spirit, religious are to become brothers and sisters in their daily experience of communion of life, prayer and apostolate (§§44, 10, 11). Communion originates precisely in sharing the Spirit's gifts. The more religious share ¯ the things that are central and vital, the more the fraternal bond Review for Religious grows in strength (§32). Thus, religious should live alone only in exceptional cases and should value diversity within the com-munity (§65). "Optional homogeneity, besides weakening apostolic mobility, weakens the Pneumatic strength of a community and robs the spiritual reality which rules the community of its power as witness" (§41). "Just as the Holy Spirit anointed the church in the upper room to send her out to evangelize the world, so every reli-gious community, as an authentic pneumatic community of the Risen One, is also, and according to its own nature, apostolic" (§58). Fraternal communities become missionaries of that love "taught and lived by Christ and communicated to us through his Spirit" (§56). This missionary activ-ity is lived out in a particular church to which the religious community brings the richness of its consecration, its fraternal life, and its charism (§60). Religious must seek a just balance between per-sonal charisms and the community's apostolate without the dis-integrating forms of individualism or the leveling aspects of communitarianism (§39). Fraternal communion is already an apos-tolate, and contributes directly to the work of evangelization (§54). "The effectiveness of religious life depends on the quality of the fraternal life in common," which serves as a sign and stim-ulus for all the baptized (§§54 and 2). Fraternal communion is already an apostolate, and contributes directly to the work of evangelization. Vita Consecrata (1996) While the conciliar documents laid the firm foundation for future developments in pneumatology in church documents on the consecrated life, this apostolic exhortation gives shape to its mag-nificent mansion. Dare it be said that in thid document pneuma-tology moves to the front and center?~s Pneumatology as depicted in the document manifests deeper ecclesiological understandings of the consecrated life in three areas: consecration, communion, and mission. After providing brief citations of pneumatology from the document for each of these areas, we reflect on the Holy Father's repeated emphasis on founding charisms. Considered a deepening of baptismal consecration, religious profession includes a special call and gift of the Holy Spirit to September-October 1996 Brickner * The Holy Spirit in Church Documents live the evangelical councils in religious community (§30). "Consecrated persons, who embrace the evangelical counsels, receive a new and special consecration which, without being sacra-mental, commits them to making their own--in chastity, poverty and obedience--the way of life practiced personally by Jesus and proposed by him to his disciples" (§31). The consecrated life is a way of showing forth the church's holiness, an especially rich man-ifestation of gospel values and a more complete expression of the church's purpose, which is the sanctification of humanity (§32). The consecrated life is also a sign of communion in the church. "The church is essentially a mystery of communion, 'a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'" (§41). "It is the Spirit himself who leads the soul to the experience of communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, a communion which is the source of fraternal life" and of the inte-rior call to share everything in common (§42). "In community life, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in one individual passes at the same time to all" (§42). Filled with joy and the Holy Spirit, consecrated persons are to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion (§~45 and 46). Communion leads to mission and becomes mission. "By their charisms, consecrated persons become signs of the Spirit point-ing to a new future enlightened by faith and by Christian hope. Eschatological expectation becomes mission, so that the kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now" (§27). "If the church is to reveal her true face to today's world, she urgently needs such fraternal communities, which by their very existence contribute to the new evangelization inasmuch as they disclose in a concrete way the fruitfulness of the 'new commandment'" (§45). Through a special gift of the Holy Spirit, some persons in the consecrated life have carried out a genuinely prophetic min-istry, speaking the name of God to all, even to the pastors of the church (§84). Pope John Paul emphasizes pneumatology also through his focus on the charismatic aspect of the consecrated life. "The Spirit, who at different times has inspired numerous forms of consecrated life, does not cease to assist the church, whether by fostering in already existing institutes a commitment to renewed faithfulness to the founding charism or by giving new charisms to men and women of our own day so that they can start institu-tions responding to the challeng&s of our times" (§62). Review for Religqous Appropriate renewal of the consecrated life includes a return to the sources (as noted in Perfectae caritatis), one of which is fidelity to the founding charism. The founding charism orients consecrated persons to a special relationship with the Trinity (§36). The church assists in discernment regarding the founding charisms, which contribute to building up charity in the particu-lar churches and in the universal church (§§62 and 48). Contemporary Pneumatology's Significance for the Consecrated Life Church documents on the consecrated life are generally rich in pneumatological references, as we have seen. This shift from the juridic to the pneumatic enriches and expands the ecclesio-logical understanding of the consecrated life in the areas of con-secration, communion, and mission. What implications does this finding have for the continuous renewal of the consecrated life? At least two suggestions come to mind: (1) coming to know and love the Holy Spirit, who is the source of unity with God and with others, and (2) both individually and communally respond-ing with greater alacrity to the Spirit's impulses. A common human experience is the longing for communion, for unity which respects a plurality of differences, for love freely given. Within the Holy Trinity there exists this mutuality of rela-tionships in a community of equals. Through the Holy Spirit, God's love is poured into our hearts (Rm 5:5). It is the Spirit who teaches those in the consecrated life how to relate, to respect the diversity of God's gifts, to love. The Holy Spirit must no longer be "shadowy," "vague," "half-known," or "forgotten" by the peo-ple of God, including those in the consecrated life.16 Without a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the Holy Spirit, conse-crated women and men will be unable to understand their charisms and respond to the Spirit who renews and revitalizes the consecrated life. Virtually every one of the documents on the consecrated life urges communities to have strong initial and continuing forma-tion programs, especially in theology. Intellectual development, however, though necessary, is not sufficient. Consecrated persons must also become more responsive to the impulses of the Holy Spirit. Their life is a "kind of shock therapy instituted by the Holy Spirit for the church as a whole.''17 They are called to be the Septent her- October 1996 Brickner ¯ The Holy Spirit in Church Documents presence of God's Spirit in the world: prophets, who speak and boldly exemplify the possibility of real communion; truth tellers, who proclaim what is liberating in feminism; empty vessels that willingly receive the richness of diversity through inculturation; and builders of the reign of God through ecumenical activity.18 The Holy Spirit will not allow the church to domesticate its insti-tutes of consecrated life. Salt must retain its savor! Leaven must retain its power! Renewal, not only of consecrated life but also of the church, depends upon it. Notes ' See Perfectae caritatis §1 and Vim consecrata §§13 and 35. On the relationship between renewal in religious congregations and renewal in the church, see Gerald A. Arbuclde, Refounding the Church (New York: Orbis Books, 1993). 2 HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 1995, s.v. "Pneumatology." These brief remarks about pneumatology can only skim the surface of what many authors have eloquently written about the Holy Spirit. See, for example, Yves Congar's three-volume work I Believe in the Holy Spirit. 3 See Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1994), pp. 128-131 and 133-145. In her study of the Holy Trinity, Johnson begins with Spirit-Sophia, to whom feminine characteristics are often attributed. 4 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 37 and 31-32. s John Zizioulas, "The Church as Communion," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1994): 6. 6 Yves Congar, The I, Vord and the Spirit (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1986), pp. 61-62. St. Bonaventure speaks of Christ as the head of the church, and St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Holy Spirit as the heart of the church. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Word; the Word is also of the Spirit. St. Thomas's Christology is pneumatological, accord-ing to Congar. 7 Avery Dulles, A Church to Believe In (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 20; Congar, 1 Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 2, pp. 161-162. 8 Ren~ Laurentin, "Charisms: Terminological Precision," in Cbarisms in the Church, ed. Christian Duquoc and Casiano Floristan (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 10. Thomas O'Meara writes that charism and institution must not be set in false opposition; he speaks--in his Theology of Ministry (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 68--of the relationship between charism and ministry: "Far from charism being opposed to min-istry, ministry is mediated from the Spirit to personality by charism: dia-conal charisms." When Paul VI refers to religious life as a charism, he uses charism as "a particular state of life." Review for Religious 9 Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican H (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), vol. 1, p. 142. Some critics per-ceive pneumatology to be underdeveloped in conciliar texts. See, for example, Jean-Marie Tillard, "A Point of Departure," Review for Religious 26, no. 3 (March-April 1967): 435-437. Catherine Lacugna, speaking at the University of Notre Dame during the recent conference on the "Reception of Vatican II," suggested that pneumatology was lim-ited if not lackingin conciliar texts. In private conversation she com-mented that the Holy Spirit is too often subordinated to the other Persons of the Trinity. ,0 Congar, IBelieve in the Holy Spirit, vol. 1, pp. 167-172. I I Jean-Marie Tillard, Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992). 12 See Vorgrimler, pp. 301-332. The "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life" went through five redactions and required much compromise among the council fathers. It is short (25 articles) and focuses mainly on principles of appropriate renewal. Its brevity neces-sarily restricted the breadth of theological foundations it could provide regarding the consecrated life. 13 Patricia Walter, "Religious Life in Church Documents," Review for Religious 51, no. 4 0uly-August 1992): 555. 14 This document approaches religious life in a juridical manner and had a mixed reception among religious congregations. is In Vita consecrata sixteen of the 112 articles refer to the Trinity in various ways: as source, as model, in prayer. Half of the articles include a reference to the Holy Spirit, often without subordinating the Spirit's action to that of the Creator and the Redeemer. In addition, the charis-matic element of the consecrated life, attributed to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, appears in 44 percent of the articles. Indeed, recalling Congar's reflections about the pneumatology of Vatican II, one might consider the document notably pneumatocentric compared with concil-iar texts. ,6 See Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is, p. 130. ,7 Johannes B. Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 12. 18 Authors who exemplify these perspectives include Joan Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1995); Diarmuid O'Murchu, Religious Life: A Prophetic Vision (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1991); Paul J. Philibert, ed., Living in the Meantime (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994); Gerald A. Arbuckle, Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988). September-October 1996 seeking God TERRANCE WAYNE KLEIN Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis: On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day, Pope John Paul raises an issue I consider essential to vocational recruitment, namely, the formation of can-didates ready to be recruited. Making reference to Andrew bringing his brother Peter to Christ, the Holy Father writes: "He brought him to Jesus." In a way, this is the heart of all the church's pastoral work on behalf of vocations, in which she cares for the birth and growth of vocations, making use of the gifts and responsibilities, of the charisms and ministry she has received from Christ and his Spirit. The church, as a priestly, prophetic, and kingly people, is committed to foster and to serve the birth and maturing of priestly vocations through her prayer and sacramental life, by her proclamation of the word and by education in th~ faith, by her example and witness of ~harity. (PDV§38) I think a significant insight of this text is that finding men and women ready and willing to respond to calls to special ministry in the church should not be left to mer-curial chance: "The church., is committed to foster and serve the birth and maturing of priestly vocations." I also think the text.dispels the theological assertion that this is Terrance Wayne Klein is a former director of vocations and was director of spiritual formation in two seminaries. He is now an associate pastor at St. Brigid of Kildare Church; P.O. Box 1131; Dublin, Ohio 43017. Review for Religious a work of the Holy Spirit alone, and not of human effort. To sup-pose that the Holy Spirit creates the candidates and all the church need do is find them would be to slight the role of human coop-eration in the divine plan of salvation. The church has always realized that religious and priestly vocations are not simply from out of the blue. They arise out of her stock of maturing, committed Christians who, when presented with an actual invitation to a ministry in the church, find them-selves able and willing to respond freely and generously. The cul-tivation of that stock has always been the task of every catechetical and Christian-formation movement in the church's history. Catholic schools, CCD programs, retreat experiences, and youth movements exist to form what can only be called, most basically, disciples of Christ. The cultivation of such a stock has previously not been the task of those charged with vocational recruitment. Yet the flour-ishing of vocations may very well depend upon vocation direc-tors taking up the work of actually forming communities of discipleship. In this article I present three matters that I think need attention if vocational recruitment is to flourish. They are the necessity of bringing youth into contact with ministerial fig-ures; the need of progressive liberation, greater spiritual free-dom, in the lives of those seeking ministry in the church; and a fundamental characteristic desirable in all who work to promote vocations. Letting Sparks Fly According to data presented in the United States Catholic Conference study Research on Men's Vocations to the Priesthood and the Religious Life, most young people decide the basic direction of their lives between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. They do not necessarily choose a career path at this time; given the pro-traction of American adolescence, this would be unlikely. During these years, however, young people choose the values that chart the course their life will take. During these years they decide how important to them are values such as altruism, service, intimacy, material goods, public esteem, and education. That developmental fact belongs with other data presented in the same source (and subsequently confirmed in other stud-ies) and showing that most vocations to special consecration come September-Oaober 1996 Most vocations to special consecration come from direct contact with an inspiring person actually doing ministerial work in the church. from direct contact with an inspiring person actually doing min-isterial work in the church. This statistical evidence is borne out by my own experien, ce in working as a spiritual director to sem-inarians. They all have a story to tell, and it usually involves some ministerial figure who inspired them. Vocations are not cajoled; they are caught by contact. They do not come from media resources; they come out of personal interaction. When I put these two sets of data .together and consider that young people today are no less generous and no less motivated than previous generations, I come to the conclusion that, in the Catholic Church and among Christians in general, there is a sociological gap between youth and the institutional church's ministerial structures. Many young people growing up today have never personally encountered vibrant Christian ministry. Put simply, they do not view the ministry, in any of its forms, as having significance for the world in which they live. It has nei-ther formed nor informed their lives. The Holy Spirit is going to continue to create and nourish souls that are generous, but the church must present its ministe-rial life as an opportunity for that generosity to be expressed. This implies living contact between youth and committed minis-ters of the gospel. To the extent that religious communities and diocesan personnel move away from youth, they move away from the future and sever the lines of support that the institutions are there to provide. It is not enough for a vocation director to enter a high school or a college for the purpose of giving yet another career-day presentation. One must enter a college or high school to stay and to witness. As St. Francis of Assisi once told his fol-lowers, "Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary." I served the Dodge City diocese for two years as director of vocations, a short tenure that corresponds to the national average. There are no Catholic high schools in this very rural diocese. Many young people growing up there have never met a religious sister. Parish communities tend to be solid and wholesome, but pastoring tends to be short in tenure. As in many places in the Review for Religious country, beleaguered pastors are only too happy to turn over youth work to lay volunteers. Is it any surprise that young people choose to remain among the laity when they have been led and inspired by lay leaders? I am in no way indicting the collaboration of the laity in this and other ministerial venues. The question is one of collaboration and presence. Ordained priests and deacons and religious women and men bring with them a symbol-laden presence of Christ. When they disappear from the scene, much more is lost than another set of hands. After almost a year of consultation with the religious con-gregations of women at work in the diocese, we began a project that was seen as preliminary discipleship formation. We brought young men and women together to live for a weekend with priests -and religious. The students prayed with them and received from them basic instruction in prayer techniques and discernment. The key, as we saw it, was simply that they encountered priests and religious. We tried to create opportunities for sparks to fly. I am currently involved in a similar project with the diocese of Columbus. Essential to the success of such a program, however, is the ability to identify those who are already leaders and who dis-play the requisite vocational qualities as well. (I have written about this in "Discerning Vocations," in the 1 May 1993 issue of America.) Liberating Youth There is yet another theol.ogical supposition behind the methodology of these weekend experiences. For anyone to respond to the call of God in vocation, freedom is required. Sin, in all its varieties and ramifications, keeps us from being free and thus impedes our response to God's initiative. The Holy Father again offers a worthy perspective: Freedom. is essential to vocation, a freedom which when it gives a positive response appears as a deep personal adher-ence, as a loving gift or rather as a gift given back to the giver who is God who calls, an oblation: "The call," Paul VI once said, "is as extensive as the response. There cannot be vocations unless they be free, that is, unless they be spon-taneous offerings of oneself, Conscious, generous, total . Oblations, we call them: here lies in practice the heart of the matter . It is the humble and penetrating voice of Christ, who says, today, as yesterday, and even more than Septentber-October 1996 Klein ¯ Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life yesterday: Come. Freedom reaches its supreme foundation: precisely that of oblation, of generosity, of sacrifice." (PDV §36) The methodological presupposition of those working with potential candidates for vocations of special consecration should be that they are not yet free. They are restrained by forces per-sonal, spiritual, sociological, cultural, and even biological. All of these taken together are what St. Paul refers to as the flesh which is at war with the spirit. The categories are worth some explana-. tion, even though space admits of only a few examples. On the level of the personal, candidates may present them-selves for ministry because their poor self-image demands a role in life which creates a seemingly instant image of respect. Or, conversely, potential candidates may be unable even to consider a ministerial vocation because their self-image is entirely too neg-ative. They may want to consider priesthood or religious life, but only after they have put themselves together spiritually. Their idea would be, "When I have overcome sin, I will consider such a life." What is lacking here is the comprehension that a life of apostolic charity may be the very instrument that the Holy Spirit desires to use for the person's redemption. All programs of formation have as their agenda the progres-sive liberation of candidates from all of the forces that would keep their choice for or against vocation from being truly free. I now work part-time in a college seminary, and I would say that our raison d'etre is exactly this, to free young men and make them ready to respond. Hence, the necessity for directors of vocations to create or support structures that teach young people the fun-damentals of Christian life and at least a basic knowledge of how to discern the work of the Holy Spirit in their life. Of course, any adequate Christian anthropology would insist that, ultimately, humanity is freed, or healed, only by the inter-venient action of God. Wholeness was an attribute of God long before it became a goal of the recovery movement. That being true, only prayer, which represents an actual encounter with God, can effect freedom, or healing, or wholeness. Only the intimacy bf prayer creates disciples, and only disciples, even if they be merely nascent ones, can respond to God's call to a lifetime of. consecrated service. So the discipleship programs sponsored by recruiters must have three elements: direct personal contact with hero-mentors, pedagogical formation in the fundamentals of Review for Religious Christian belief and practice, and an opportunity for growth in prayer. My past experience as the director of spiritual formation in a college seminary program reinforces this triad. I am personally convinced that many people move towards and away from voca-tions to the priesthood and religious life without developing even a modicum of spiritual intimacy. I doubt that this phe-nomenon is new. I suspect it has been a continual struggle and task in every house where formation occurs. I am certainly not presenting my own limited experience as the answer to the vocation crisis. What I am arguing is that success in the future willprobably demand that vocation personnel actually do some of the work of initial formation in disci-pleship. I think it would be fair to say that what I am really suggesting is that those charged with the recruitment and guid-ance of ministerial vocations see them-selves as being, after the family, among the first of young people's mentors of forma-tion. A certain amount of formation, or growth in Christian discipleship, is needed before potential candidates are ready for entry into formalized preparatory pro- What I am really suggesting is that those charged with the recruitment and guidance of ministerial vocations see themselves as being, after the family, among the first of young people's mentors of formation. grams. Previously this formation was the work of other Catholic institutions, but the presumption that others have already pre-pared such candidates is no longer tenable, and ignoring the shift that has occurred will leave recruiters wondering what happened to all the vocations. The Formation of the Formers In January 1994 the Roman Congregation for Catholic Education (of Seminaries and Institutes of Study), under the lead-ership of Cardinal Pio Laghi, released Directives Concerning the Preparation of Seminary Educators. The work considers the for-mation of those charged with formation. It notes that a unique combination of talent, charism, experience, and education must Septentber-October 1996 Klein ¯ Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life exist if a person doing formation work is to find the experience productive and personally rewarding: The vocation of the educator.implies, on the one hand, a certain "charism," which is expressed in gifts of nature and of grace, and, on the other, certain capacities and attitudes that must be acquired. In every consideration regarding the personality of the educator, this double aspect must be kept in mind; each of the characteristics desirable in a seminary educator presents elements which are, in a manner of speak-ing, innate, and others which must be progressively devel-oped by means of study and experience. (Directives §25) The formati'on of vocation directors can be considered along these same lines of thought. To begin with, though, readers may be wondering whether any such formation actually exists. It does. To their credit, national organizations have done much to provide neophytes in the field with at least that quintessential American pedagogical experience called the workshop conference. Actually a great deal of formal information is imparted at such gatherings, and the opportunity for informal guidance by those more expe-rienced in the work is incalculable. Also, it seems safe to assume that the formation which voca-tion directors receive for their own religious life or priesthood is itself a real and efficacious, albeit remote, preparation for the specific ministries of vocational recruitment, discernment, and guidance. By means of a broad education, formation programs are supposed to equip their students to enter diverse ministries without particular, prolonged preparation. The liberal arts should prepare us for a future that will always be ambiguous. The Directives do the church a real service in publicly dis-cussing the'criteria for evaluating persons being considered for seminary formation work. Rectors and bishops have, of course, always used some sort of criteria, but the document makes it pos-sible for those unnamed and perhaps unexamined criteria to be discussed and evaluated in an open forum. This is good: open collaboration tends to expose the weaknesses any individual's approach may have. It also reinforces and propagates strengths. I would like to conclude my observations by offering a crite-rion for identifying which candidates, among the many doing ministry in the church, are likely to do best at the ministry of vocational recruitment. The evaluative question I would pose is this: Are they community builders? Review for Relig%us Ecclesia: Community of the Summoned Consider what vocations to the priesthood or religious life really are. They are calls from God the Father to serve Christ by serving the community which is the church. Vocations have their ¯genesis and scope in community life. They are instruments of God in bringing together the "community of the summoned": the ecclesia (in New Testament Greek), the "church." They exist to Order to nourish, to enliven, and to augment the church. "In the church's very name, ecclesia, we find its deep vocational aspect, for the church is a 'convocation,' an assembly of those who have been called" (PDV §34). Referring to priestly vocations, the Holy.Father has noted, "In this context the ecclesi-ology of communion becomes decisive for understanding the identity of the priest, his essential dignity and his voca-tion and mission among the people of. God and in the world" (PDV§12). Certainly the many theological, pas-toral, and liturgical changes that occurred with the Second Vatican Council have had, among their effects, a disturbing of the relative tranquillity that should normally characterize a healthy institution. Most Catholics are willing to admit, however, that the disturbance has been outweighed by the renewal of evan-gelical life that the council has inaugurated in the church. I do not think vocations dropped because of the conciliar reforms (although their implementation may have occasioned a number of new problems). Rather, I believe that communal val-ues and communities themselves are being undermined by con-temporary life. The disintegration of vibrant communities into increasingly isolated individuals and solipsistic agendas is a prob-lem not only for the church, but also for modern technological society as a whole. Consider the changes that have occurred in the latter half of this century. The superhighways that now connect huge metropolises across vast stretches of land have rendered superfluous many small communities that once prospered between those cities. They have The disintegration of vibrant communities into increasingly isolated individuals and solipsistic agendas is a problem not only for the church, but also for modern technological society as a whole. Septe~nber-October 1996 Klein * Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life. also restructured urban life itself. Distinct intra-urban neighbor-hoods once flourished because it took time to move from one side of the city to another. Today mass merchandising has sup-pressed small, community-enhancing workshops and businesses. With the disappearance of the family farm went the collapse Of the small town and the small rural parish. The knowledge explosion made possible by the computer age has created a world of spe-cialization that renders small hospitals, small colleges, and other small institutions seemingly superfluous. Endangered by the collapse of these communities are the communal values upon which cultural life depends. Increasingly undifferentiated national media now serve a country such as the United States, but, instead of promoting communal values, they seem only to be forums where increasingly strident and diverse views make themselves heard. One can now ask at the end of the 20th century: Who are we? Is there any we left among us? The collapse of a communal identity is certainly a formative influence on those presenting themselves as candidates for min-istry. Many of the candidates with whom I have worked came to the seminary out of a faith experience which is highly individu-alistic, often with little or no contact with the institutional church. This can be viewed as a sign of the Holy Spirit raising up leaders even beyond the reaches of contemporary church ministry--it is, after all, how the church received the gift of St. Paul's vocation. But it also raises the challenge of how to link the individual's own experience with that of the larger Christian community. Remember that Paul spent three years undergoing a process of communal immersion before beginning his ministerial life (see Ga 1:18). If the basic presuppositions of New Age spirituality were to be catalogued, certainly a useful project given their pervasive influ-ence, a foundational tenet would undoubtedly be the absolute, almost solipsistic, supremacy of the individual. Spirituality itself is seen not as a relational mystery which envelopes and possesses the human person, but as yet another object to be acquired by an individual whose weltanschauung is essentially that of the con-sumer. Pastores dabo vobis is trenchant in this regard: In the present context there is also a certain tendency to view the bond between human beings and God in an indi-vidualistic and self-centered way, as if God's call reached the individual by a direct route without in any way passing Review for Religious through the community. Its purpose is held to be the ben-efit, or the very salvation, of the individual called and not a total dedication to God in the service of the community. We thus find another very deep and at the same time sub-de threat which makes it impossible to recognize and accept joyfully the ecclesial dimension which naturally marks every Christian vocation, and the priestly vocation in particular: as the council reminds us, priestly ministry acquires its gen-uine meaning and attains to its fullest truth in serving and in fostering the growth of the Christian community and the common priesthood of the faithful. (PDV§37) Community Belonging Vocations are needed for communities, and they come out of communities. Their entire genesis and purpose are involved in communal life. Vocations are on the decline in the church today because communal life is waning. One simply does not offer one-self for ministry to a community if one has never felt oneself to be a part of a community. I suspect that, if Catholicism persists in declining as a communal way of life, vocations will continue to evaporate. Lives are to be offered to other people and to the God whom we encounter in others. If postghetto Catholicism is not a place of meaningful and life-giving encounter with others, if it becomes iust another competing intellectual system or a political agenda, then it will cease being a living organism that inspires men and women to sacrifice their futures for its continuance. One does not bring oneself to Pope Paul VI's notion of personal obla-tion without being able to envision the faces of real men and women for whom. the offering is made. How can anyone expect vocations to be fostered unless it be through community building and sustenance? Other sociological structures once existed to create the communities upon which vocational recruiters could depend. Those structures have either disappeared or found themselves transformed into priestless and sisterless entities. I suspect, however, that community building still will show itself to be the single most important quality that postghetto Catholic education offers the American church. How poignant, then, is this quality of community building which the Directives insist should characterize formational ministry: It can be said that the educator is authentic in his service and responds to the demands of his priestly ideal only in the measure to which he knows how to commit himself and Septe~nber-October 1996 Klein * Vocations and the Crisis of Communal Life sacrifice himself for the unity of the community and when in his thoughts, in his attitudes, and in his prayer he reflects concern for the union and the cohesion of the community entrusted to him. (Directives §29) Who needs to be in vocation work today? Who has the apti-tude? Those who can build communities. People who have shown an ability to unite other people around them. Those who can effectively enunciate the common values and longings of a human-ity destined for Trinitarian communion. If recruiting were the only task facing vocation personnel today, a good-looking face, a fast car, and call-forwarding would suffice. Recruiters today need to examine their venues and identify vibrant Christian communities. This is where they need to be. Sadly enough, in many situations they will need to help create such communities from scratch. I do not think that I am offering merely another theological or pastoral perspective. On the con-trary, I am begging recognition of a sociological certainty that creates both a pastoral imperative and an ecclesial opportunity. JUST PUBLISHED-- The Best of the Review - 5 The Church and Consecrated Life (see insert at back of book for ordering) "At a time when hope for religious life and its future is once again on the rise, the articles in this book offer an exceptional and much needed panorama of the critical issues of renewal faced by contemporary men and women religious. Elizabeth McDonough and David Fleming have done us an enormous favor in bringing together the Best of the Review in this area. I recommend this book enthusiastically; its authors take us another step along the journey to that future for religious life for which we all long." --Se~nSammon FMS Vicar General Marist Brothers, Rome ¯ Review for Religious MICHAEL TIDD Reflections of a Fin de Si cle Novice During their novitiate experiences, all religious, in one way or another, examine the identity and purpose of their respective congregations. In this era of religious life--in the wake of Vatican Council II and at the end of the 20th century--this essay is a personal reflection on the mysterious and profound experience of the novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the United States today. Two questions frame this reflection: How am I being formed? and what am I being formed for? I hope that my responses bring a helpful perspective to pres-ent- day views of American religious life. Five years of community experience have vividly demonstrated that words like formation and novitiate carry many meanings. Often brothers' memories of formation are bittersweet. For readers of this article, the words probably conjure up all sorts of images. Most of these readers are likely to be religious whose formation occurred before or during Vatican Council II. For me Vatican II is as immediate as Trent and even Nicea, for I was not born until 1970. I am wholly a product of the post-Nicene, post-Tridentine, post-Vatican church. My formation is radically different from that of my brothers of the pre-Vatican era, both in theory and external practice. My novitiate time comes after five years of experience in community and the apostolate. Thus, it is less an initiation than a time for analysis and integration of my experiences as a Christian Brother. Michael Tidd FSC lives at Christian Brothers' Novitiate; Roosevelt Hall; One Tallcot Lane; Skaneateles, New York 13152. September-October 1996 Tidd * Reflections of a Fin de Si~cle Novice This integration occurs in the context of prayer and study: of the gospel, the church, the charism of our founder (John Baptist de La Salle), our Rule, our vows, our efforts at renewal since Vatican II, and issues of personal development and self-awareness. Compared with the intense schedule of yore, ours is decep-tively simple. Large blocks of time are discretionary. The indi-vidual is responsible for developing his life of prayer and study without the framework of an all-embracing fixed schedule of reli-gious exercises and study times. Our schedule for common prayer (morning and evening prayer, daily Mass both at home and in the local parish) is scant compared with the novitiate timetable of our former Rule.l Indeed, the Rule itself, revised after thirty years of experi-mentation beginning in 1956, is no longer oriented toward ful-fillment of obligations. It is couched largely in inspirational language, more exhortative than legal. Evaluation of the novice's suitability for the brother's vocation is based less on observance of the Rule's prescriptions than on his total aptitude (spiritual, intel-lectual, emotional, psychosexual) for our way of life. The devel-opment of the individual as a human being is weighed equally with his spiritual and intellectual progress. The crux of the difference between the modern novitiate and the earlier one lies in the time to oneself in the novitiate. This involves both theoretical and practical discontinuities. Formerly, the theoretical aim was to be "formed," shaped according to an abstract model of the ideal Christian Brother. The dual instru-ments of the Rule and the director of novices molded the novice into a brother. The novice was exhorted, and ideally strove, to let himself be recast in this form, leaving his past (and self) behind. The practical discontinuities were many. Life was lived by the schedule, with few if any choices about how time was spent. Influences on one's development were carefully regulated by Rule and director. Exact observance of the Rule was the primary virtue: inasmuch as one did so, one incarnated the community's charism and was making progress in this way of life. In the present novitiate, formation might not be the appro-priate term anymore. Present-day novices "form themselves" rather than "are formed by external agents." They do this by eval-uating prior and present choices in the light of the gospel and of the community's charism and life. Daily I confront issues such as personal prayer, interpersonal relationships, study, participation in Review for Religious the-lectures and conferences, the common labor needed to main-tain the house. I learn about religious life, the community's charism, and human development from religious, secular, lay, and clerical sources. The director of novices still plays a crucial role: he is the agent of accountability, calling me to reconcile my lived choices with the norms of our life. He is the one who helps the novice avoid the trap of self-delusion and evaluates the quality of one's self-formation. The modern novice, then, is like a sculptor who, in his choices of daily living, chips away at his raw material to shape something new: himself. The novice sculpts in the light of guidance from the Holy Spirit, the gospel, the charism and life of De La Salle, and the insti-tute's tradition being lived by his brothers and himself. Without a normal job and in relative separation from one's familiars, one lacks all the usual props. Daily I encounter three basic realities: God, my brothers, and myself. All of this can be harrowing, as questions of identity and ontology emerge. Two options appear: growth, however painful, or escape and denial. Even here it is possible to fill the. day with trivialities, ducking the hard questions. I could "make the novitiate" without any real change, but that would be a colossal waste of time. Ultimately, the choice is in my hands. There will be nothing to hide behind down the line if real conversion does not happen here, a conversion for which I must take responsibili.ty before God. The vows are less the end of the novitiate, then, than a beginning. They are the public beginning of a life already being defined by the consequences of my present choices, choices made in response to the call of God as perceived in the daily events of existence: "For this command which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you . No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths, and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out" (Deuteronomy 30:11 and 14, NAB). In her book The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life, Joan Chittister OSB aptly describes the dilemma of modern religious: "They want to know if there is anything going on now [emphasis mine] to prove that religious life remains worth the sacrifice of their own lives. Is there anything The crux of the difference between the modern novitiate and the earlier one lies in the time to oneself in the novitiate. Septonber-October 1996 Tidd¯ Reflections of a Fin de Si~cle Novice still life-giving here? Is there anything yet valuable enough to go on doing here? New members want to know if there is anything here that merits their coming to do, their coming to be.''2 In the novitiate I have understood her questions thus: For what am I being formed? In 1996 in the United States~ what is the life of the Brother of the Christian Schools for which I am preparing? The question is very specific because I am convinced that this process is not designed to create an abstract "religious," but a member of a specific community guided by a unique charism. Much contemporary literature on religious life leaves me vaguely disappointed. I do not see much written by those who will be around when the future of religious life will have become the present. More fundamentally, the discussion is so future oriented and spec-ulative that it leaves me wondering what we are to do here and now. I am not left rudderless, fortunately. God's command is not far away; it is close at hand. Since I see the novitiate's meaning as preparation for living as a Brother of the Christian Schools in 1996 and in 2006 and 2016 as well, I look to the community's intellectual and spiritual patrimony for a definition of that broth-erhood right now. The inspired work of many brothers has pro-duced two texts that address the threefold challenge of Perfectae caritatis: recommitment to the gospel, recovery of the founder's charism, and adapted renewal in the light of the signs of the times (see §2). These documents are The Brother of the Christian Schools in the World Today: A Declaration and our Rule of 1986. In thefin de si~cle, these texts provide clear, powerful, and dynamic state-ments of our identity and purpose. They are lights amidst the darkness of the waning millennium. The Declaration is a charismatic statement issued by our 39th General Chapter in 1967. It was prompted in part by its response to the question of introducing the priesthood into the community. The chapter rejected that innovation, saying what we are not and then issuing a positive proclamation of what we are. The modern Brother of the Christian Schools is a layman who, in response to a call from God, totally consecrates himself to the glory of the Trinity by public profession of vows. His total consecration of himself has its roots in his baptismal consecration.3 In an entirely lay institute, the brother places himself at the service of others in the context of a community "totally dedicated to the kingdom of God." Consecrated in community, he specifies his life of ser- Review for Religious vice to others in an educational mission "with special preference for the poor." Regardless of the social class of those he immedi-ately deals with, the brother totally orients his work towards the promotion of justice and those "whose poverty hinders their devel-opment as persons or their aptitude to receive the message of sal-vation revealed in Jesus Christ." The brother integrates his proclamation of the gospel with the total human development of his students and sees the school as "the pre-ferred but not the only means" of achieving the institute's mission.4 The Declaration stresses the fundamental aspects of our vocation as Brothers of the Christian Schools (neatly summarized twenty years later in the Rule): "consecration to God as a lay religious, apostolic ministry of edu-cation, especially of the poor, and community life.''5 The Declaration was for us the great clarion call to conversion in the wake of Vatican II. Indeed, in 1967 Brother Charles Henry Buttimer, then superior general, wrote: "It is. in light of the Declaration that we must read and under-stand the other texts of our General Chapter, including the [pro-visional] Rule and Constitutions. It is the basis of the doctrine you will find in each of them.''6 Making the bold ideals of the Declaration reality was the task of the institute in the years fol-lowing 1967, as the great revision of the Rule began. The Declaration's synthetic idea of our vocation is rooted deeply in the charism of John Baptist de La Salle. In response to a double contemplation of the needs of the poor and God's plan of salvation for all, he founded a community of brothers on the following basis. "The spirit of this Institute is a spirit of faith, which should induce those .who compose it not to look upon any-thing but with the eyes of faith, not to ~1o anything but in view of God, and to attribute all to God, [with the result that there is] an ardent zeal for the instruction of children [and] to procure the salvation of the children confided to their care." Internalizing this spirit is "of the utmost importance . The novices [should] apply themselves to acquire it; and those that are already members [should] make it their first care to preserve and increase it in themselves . "Those who failed to do so were to be considered "dead members.''7 These texts of the recent and distant past speak Much contemporary literature on religious life leaves me vaguely disappointed. Septentber-October 1996 Tidd ¯ Reflections o[a Fin de Si~cle Novice to the present as much as to the times which occasioned them. They address the essence of questions of identity and sustaining vision, questions which seem to bedevil many religious commu-nities today. The Rule coexists with the Declaration as a statement of iden-tity and purpose inasmuch as it is the fruit of over thirty years of experimentation and of applying the visionary statements of the Declaration. In addition (moreso than the Declaration) it bene-fits from the recovery of the real person of De La Salle through modern critical scholarship, a man long obscured by a profile more hagiographical than historical. The Rule, then, makes the call of the council real: it renews and adapts our understanding of our vocation as Brothers of the Christian Schools by pointing out a dynamic relationship between the challenges of modernity and our founding charism. As in the first 'rules of the community, pro-duced by De La Salle in collaboration with the brothers them-selves, the Rule is the work of the entire congregation, through successive general chapters and consultation with thousands of brothers around the world. It is a coherent and convincing description of this way of life and its raison d'etre. Both documents elaborate a fundamental principle: The brother's vocation is an all-encompassing way of life in unhesi-tatin~ response to the call of God in the depths of the brother's heart. Seeing in the life of the brother far more than the aposto-late or the vows alone is the key to the coherence and intelligibility of our identity, today and in the future. For several decades the brothers' mission of education has been shared with other religious, priests, and lay people. This reality. has been examined and embraced bysuccessive general chapters as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in its life today. We have much to share with those who seek to define their profession as an apos-tolic mission in the spirit and tradition of John Baptist de La Salle. Such sharing and dialogue is ongoing all over the world.8 This recognition, however, forces the brothers to refine their identity even more sharply. The common apostolate alone simply will no longer suffice as an answer to the question of identity, given the signs of the times. Our identity as Brothers of the Christian Schools must transcend mission and reach to the very depths of our being. The chapter of 1966-67 articulated an initial, charismatic vision of the Brother of the Christian Schools today, and the Rule Review for Religious of 1986 specifies and refines that identity even further, in the light of ongoing renewal and lived experience since 1967. What makes us brothers is not solely our work, but the living integra-tion of the constitutive elements: consecration, community, mis-sion. Each must be related in dynamic harmony to the others. No single element should obscure the others. The importance of consecration as witness, lived in commu-nity and expressed by public vows, is evidenced by the Rule's claim that it is our "first apostolate." This mode of living indicates the transcendent action of God in our world, and points towards the covenant between God and human beings. The common life is essential to our identity for two reasons. First, the brothers need the mutuality and sharing of community life for their spiritual and human develop-ment. Second, our brotherhood in com-munity and our "selfless presence among those [the brothers] serve" is to "witness to the possibility of creating true broth-erhood among nations.''9 Our mission of teaching is rooted in our very foundation as a community. De La Salle brought his first schoolmasters into community and gave them a profound spirituality--the Christian teacher as an ambassador of Jesus Christ--in order to make the mission of Christian education possible and fruitful. We do the same today, for the same reason. "The Brothers, in fidelity to the call of the Spirit and the charism of their Founder, consecrate themselves to God in order to exercise, by association, their apostolic ministry of education" (emphasis mine).~° What does all this mean in terms of the purpose of the novi-tiate? Our statements of identity tell me that it is my consecrated life in community which I bring to the mission and which sus-tain me in it. Since this integrated totality is what makes a brother's life different from that of other persons who share in the apostolate of Christian education, the interiorization of con-secrated life in community and for the mission is what I must be about this year. What must concern me this year and during my entire life as a brother is not simply what I am to do, but how I am to live. I should be about the living of a life of ongoing con- The brother's vocation is an all-encompassing way of life in unhesitating response to the call of God in the depths of the brother's heart. Septentber-October 1996 Tidd¯ R~flections o~a Fin de Si~cle Novice version--to the Jesus of the Gospels and to the poor--the same evangelical journey that inspired John Baptist de La Salle to leave behind his former vocation as a canon of Reims and begin anew.n The very elements that seem so out of proportion here in the novitiate (prayer/consecration and community life) are precisely those habits of the mind and heart I must take with me back into the apostolate. Those realities are the soil from which the brother can hope to draw nourishment for the demands of the aposto-late. If he fails to. attend to the soil, the flower of his apostolic work will soon wither and die. If consecration and community become mere slogans or, even worse, contradictions to my daily life, my life as a brother will be in vain. Insofar as I embody the spirit of faith and zeal and express it in a community life that is lived fully, then my work will be Lasallian and my novitiate and my brotherhood will have meaning, both in the fin de si~cle and beyond. "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 3 0:19). Notes ~ Thirty-seventh General Chapter, Rule of Government of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Rome, 1947), pp. 192-193. This document was abrogated by the 39th General Chapter of 1966-1967;.all subsequent references to the Rule are to the text promulgated in 1987 after the 41st General Chapter of 1986. 2 Joan Chittister OSB, The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1995), p. viii. 3 Thirty-ninth General Chapter, The Brothers of the Christian Schools in the World Today: A Declaration (Winona: St. Mary's College Press, 1968), article 13:1,2, p. 12. The author is indebted and grateful to Brothers Gerard Rummery FSC, Michael McKenery FSC, and Luke Salm FSC, whose novitiate lectures and informally shared insights were invaluable in this essay's preparation. The Declaration's genesis and enduring signifi-cance is well presented in Brother Luke's Religious Institute in Transition: The Story of Three General Chapters (Romeoville, Illinois: Christian Brothers Publications, 1992). 4 Declaration, articles 13:3, 4, 5, and 6. s Forty-first General Chapter, The Rule of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Rome: Tipografia S.G.S., 1987), p. 27. 6 Foreword to the Declaration, p. iv. 7. John Baptist de La Salle. "De l'esprit de cet Institut," ROgles Communes (1718 ed.), in Rule, pp. 15-17; Rule, p. 15. s Rule, articles 17-17d and 146. Review for Religious 9 Rule, articles 24 and 9. lO Rule, art. 2. ~ This concept of De La Salle's life as an evangelical journey is superbly treated in St. John Baptist de La Salle: Announcing the Gospel to the Poor, by Brothers Michel Sauvage FSC and Miguel Campos FSC (Romeoville: Christian Brothers Conference, 1981). Presence Silence and stillness of night. How so? My eyes, my ears cry: False! Clouds scud cross a moon face; branches stretch and bend, flip, whip, and bow; leaves shiver, quiver, quake; whispers, trills, chirps, and whistles perforate the air. Stillness and silence? Not true. Yet there is a sense that knows it is so. But what? A minus of mortal motion ? A vacuum of virile voice? Perhaps, yet, more, I think. The airs of skin tingle and respond to it; an inward ear is pricked; a sacred presence permeates the space; a sacred voicelessness resounds within my soul around my self where I am held all stilled to wait to thirst to hunger a-lone. all one. Doris Bissonnette RJM September-October 1996 breaking boundaries 494 CLEMENTE BARRON Racism and Religious Life I did not learn about racism by taking sociological courses in school. I learned about racism by being born a Mexican- American in Texas in these United States. In the 1940s and 1950s, the decades in which I was born and raised, racism was an acceptable way of life. It was woven into the very fabric of our social and political life, our educa-tional and economic systems, and even into the way we practiced our Catholic faith. I did not have a choice in this matter, nor did my family or any of the other people who made up my world at that time. The existence of racism does not depend upon an indi-vidual's say-so, or even upon many people saying that it does or does not exist. I am sure that many of the public-opinion polls taken during the '50s and '60s were saying that racism existed only in isolated sections of the United States. Yet we now look back at that era of American his-tory and find many examples of racism in every segment of our society. Racism exists because it has been with us from the very beginning of our history. It continues to assert itself everywhere until someone or some movement challenges it. It will not disappear on its own. The gains the United States has made in regard to racism are mea-sured by wars, lives, and the heroic witness of courageous people, regardless of their position in society. Most of the Clemente Barr6n CP has worked with Hispanics during the twenty-five years of his priestly ministry. He lives at Casa Pasionista Guadalupe; 700 Waverly; San Antonio, Texas 78201. Review for Religious time these people had no special awareness of making any sig-nificant contributions to the eradication of racism. They just wanted a more just society for themselves and their children. It is not easy to write about racism. It is especially not easy when one is writing for a readership that shares the same faith or even the same vows and way of life or the same commitment to a social-justice agenda. It becomes still more difficult when all three of these factors are present. Yet it is the same sense of God, the same shared values, and the same commitment to justice that give me confidence to express these experiences and considerations of racism. There are many misunderstandings when it comes to racism. People do not know how to converse about racism as brothers and sisters in an open and free exchange of thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Many other issues get in the way of a good conversation on this subject. People of color tend to get angry and vitriolic and people of the dominant society tend to feel hurt or guilty when they talk about the subject. People of color often assume a victim's stance. People of the dominant society often separate themselves personally from racism: "Why are we making a fuss about this now since we are not racists?" Frequently people of color offer cosmetic solutions to this deeply complex, multilayered issue, while people of the dominant society offer solutions that address their own needs but not those of the people of color. The result is that we talk at each other, preach to each other, and instruct each other, but rarely have a good conversation with each other. Complexities of Racism This whole issue becomes even more complicated when we place this conversation within the context of religion and reli-gious life. Church teaching looks upon racism as evil and has rightly condemned it. In this context, racism is talked about in terms of sin, even as one of the most serious sins of our time. When we enter into a conversation about racism at this level, we highly personalize the issue. No one wants to begin a discussion with the feeling that she or he is being iudged a public sinner. Yet many religious feel that way when ~he discussion is about racism. Such a starting point makes for a poor conversation. On the other hand, many of us may not be aware of our racism just because we do not think of ourselves as racist; in fact, Septentber-October 1996 Barr6n * Racism and Religious Life we can identify many instances that demonstrate to us that we .are not racist. We do not want to be racist, and we believe that we are not, just on the basis of sheer willpower. Yet those of us who have tried to overcome addictive habits by sheer Willpower know that it takes more than goodwill to overpower a deeply ingrained habit or way of life. Defining Racism Racism is not easy to define. People of color tend to have a different definition and understanding of it than those of the dominant culture. People of color usually define racism as insti-tutionalized prejudice; since they do not control our society's insti-tutions, they do not consider themselves racists in the strict sense. People of the dominant culture have a difficulty with this concept because to them it says that people of color cannot be prejudiced--which is not true at all. People of color are just as prejudiced as other people. When it comes to racism, the issue is not prejudice; it is institutionalized prejudice. This is a classic case of one group wanting to focus on what is common (prejudice) and the other wanting to focus on what is not (control of insti-tutions). Progress is made when both sides accept each other's insights. Learning Racism I was not aware that I was living in a racist society when I was growing up in rural Texas. Life in the late '40s and '50s was hard, and in many ways society was pretty well defined. I was aware of the dos and don'ts of such a society. I knew that we lived in a part of town where most of the "mesicans" lived and that another part of town was "nigger town." I knew that our city offi-cials would always be "anglos" and the other leaders of our county and state would be, too. I could not conceive of a pastor or bishop being other than anglo. I knew that mesicans and niggers were not allowed to use the public facilities and fountains that anglos used. I also knew that we could not go into certain stores, like the bar-ber shop. It all seemed so normal. As time went by, other things became clearer. You just knew that you were not to do much socializing with those who were not of your ethnic grouping or race. At school the teachers were Review for Religious always careful to line us up so that we would be paired with our own kind. This was especially true in the lower grades, when we had to hold hands while standing in line. Somewhere along the weeks and years, you began to realize that socially it was not acceptable for you to date, much less think of marrying, anyone outside your ethnic or racial group. There were some exceptions, but the people involved in them were usually not socially acceptable in the first place. That was the way things were, and that was it. I do not remember my parents taking me aside to teach me the socialization rules of rural Texas. The time came when you just knew. You could have casual relationships with persons of another eth-nic or racial group. You could work for them and even beside them, but you just did not socialize with them on an equal basis. You just knew that, if push came to shove, you could not count on them. That is the way life was lived. Moreover, if you were a person of color, you felt you must project a friendly attitude at all times if you were going to be accepted by the dominant society. Someone who did not do that was seen as "not fitting in." Those who dared to demand rights and equality were considered troublemakers. This was brought home to us time and time again. In the early '60s, for example, when the civil-rights movement was begin-ning to peak, some of my friends went off to a Catholic college in San Antonio to continue their education. Home for the summer, a couple of them went to get a haircut at a barbershop owned by a member of the Knights of Columbus. They were refused service. They refused to leave. This caused a big scene. Eventually they left, but the incident produced a lot of ill feelings. These nice "Mexican" youths, accepted byall as hardworking and ambitious young men, had now become troublemakers. After a couple of years that barbershop was integrated, but I am sure that, in the eyes of many, these young men were marked for life as trouble-makers. We do not want to be racist, and we believe that we are not, just on the basis of sheer willpower. New Place, Old Ways I grew up in the era when the high-school seminary was a normal first step toward the priesthood and religious life. When L49 Septentber-Oaober 1996 Barrdn ¯ Racirm and Religious Life I expressed a desire to become a priest and religious, I was not sur-prised at all to be given the chance to attend a seminary prepara-tory high school. The school was in St. Louis, Missouri. Finding out if I had a vocation took me outside Texas for the first time, far away from my family and all familiar surroundings. It was only later on that I realized that the seminary prep school that I attended and the province I entered as a religious were, for me, extensions of the social realities of my youth in rural Texas. For me nothing had changed. The vast major.ity of my schoolmates were still anglos. All my superiors were anglos, too. I continued to see life around me through the same lenses I had used in rural Texas. I continued to use the same social categories and constructs that I had developed for myself in Texas. I was unable to realize that I had in fact been "liberated" from my Texas social environment and that I could really have new kinds of rela-tionships with others. Some experiences from my prep-school days come to mind and illustrate this point for me. In themselves these experiences are insignificant, yet like all experiences they shed light on what our life is about when seen within a wider context. For the first couple of years that I was at the prep school, we did not go home for the Christmas holidays. The big Christmas social event was the carnival. The seniors and college students would fix up the gym so that we could enjoy an evening of fun and games. It was a lot of hard work for them, but a lot of fun for us younger ones. At one of these events, a couple of guys wanted to take my picture and also wanted our picture to be taken together. I ran away from that all night long. I now believe they wanted me as a friend, and not just as a schoolmate, but I remember thinking at that time: "Why do they want a picture of me?" I remember, on another occasion, a classmate starting to play the piano on the spur of the moment in one of the music rooms. I started singing, and we had such a good time. When I was com-plimented on my singing, I remember being embarrassed. I said to myself: "I really do not know how to sing. He is just saying that!" I really did not recognize this as an affirmation and act of friendship until much later in my life. Another experience was a negative one. One day in my junior or senior year, I was put in charge of a work detail that involved getting the dry laundry sorted out into the individual laundry boxes. This was something new for me, being placed in charge of Review for ReliKious a work detail, and I was feeling good. As I made my way to the basement laundry room, I overheard a boy say to another in a normal voice: "I'm going back to the director and ask to work somewhere else. I'm not going to let a Mexican tell me what to do." I do not remember feeling much of anything. For me it was the exception for "Mexicans" to tell anglos what to do, regardless of education, expertise, or experience. That is the way life was then, and I accepted it. Upon reflection these experiences say something to me because I now see them within a social structure that hampered my power as an individual. I am not saying complete powerlessness, but certainly enough that my efforts to make it in life included special inhibitions about making any waves. While I recognize that there are some definite equalities in life and that all persons encounter some unjust situations that they must learn how to deal with boldly, I also know that some specific societal norms and customs made prisoners of me and others sharing my minority status. Racism and the'effects of racism were alive and well within my social environment, even in the prep school. The fact that I was not aware of all that was going on in terms of racism did not prevent my negative experience of racism. Awareness My first assignment after ordination in 1970 was to a retreat center in Houston, Texas. In the previous year a new association of Mexican-American priests had been formed: Padres Asociados para Derecbos Religiosos, Educativos, y Sociales (PADRES). Two rep-resentatives of PADRES came to visit me shortly after my arrival; we had a long talk. They were recruiting me for the organiza-tion. They talked to me about racism and discrimination in the church against Hispanics. I kept telling them that I did not feel discriminated against, and I did not think that our community was racist. While I could accept the fact that we lived in a racist society and that some people we lived with were racist, I had not yet come to an acceptance that my church was racist, much less my province. I thought I had really escaped racism. Only later did I discover that I had not escaped it; I had merely (and conveniendy) denied its existence within mylife experience. One reason why I began to reevaluate my position on this issue was my involvement with Hispanics at all levels of my life. L499-- September-October 1996 Barrdn ¯ Raci.rm and Religious Life We generally do not think about how social constructs such as words and language, policies and directives, and administrative and organizational structures welcome certain peopie or groups of people and exclude others. -- oo I began to listen to the stories of the Hispanic peoples who were becoming part of my ministerial life. I also began to appreciate the life stories of my own family as I heard them being repeated at family celebrations and gatherings. Every time I visited my aunts and uncles, I heard how difficult it was to be Hispanic and work for the church. It would be a mistake to assume that these people, my relatives and those I accompa-nied in ministry, were bitter and dis-illusioned people. There came a point at which I realized that these accounts were testimonies of peo-ple who loved the church even though they had suffered much at its hands. The most common theme woven through these stories was exclusion on the basis of ethnicity. Some were told in anger, some in resignation, and others just as com-mentaries to life. A fe.w of them may illustrate what I mean. When my parents would talk about their wed-ding day in 1935, they would tell us how they had to drive to the "Mexican" Church for their cere-mony. This church was, in reality, a mission of the parish church, a good ten miles away. We did not need much explanation, for we knew that Mexicans were not wel-comed in the main parish church. My mother also talked about how they had to stop for an hour or so in town on their way back home. They were very hun-gry and thirsty by the time they got there, since they had fasted from midnight to receive Holy Communion. They had to eat in the park.like area in front of the courthouse, because no restaurant would be open to them. In 1973 I began working in Los Angeles at a parish that had been forced into having a Sunday Mass in Spanish because the pastor did not think that there were enough Spanish-speaking parishioners within th~ parish boundaries. The parish finally put in a Spanish Mass after being pressured by a few vocal people. This change had taken place a year before I started working there Revie-w for Religious on weekends. By the time I left that parish to move on to another assignment in October 1975, a good deal of growth had taken place. We had standing room only at the Spanish Mass, a choir, eight Movimiento Familiar Cristiano (CFM) reflection groups that met every two weeks, a catechetical program in Spanish for more than 120 children, two Hispanic men who had applied to become (and eventually did become) deacons, and other signs of life and growth. What this said to me was that Hispanics who had been liv-ing in the area for years did not become involved in church life until there were pastoral leaders ready to welcome and support them. In more recent times, in a Los Angeles rectory, about a dozen of us who had gathered for a penance service were engaged in a lot of shoptalk around the dinner table. The talk came around to the different ethnic groups in the archdiocese, particularly the Spanish-speaking. One of the more recently ordained priests-- from a parish that had had a poor turnout for the Lenten penance service--wondered out loud why "these people" needed to have services in Spanish. A couple of nights later, for a penance service in a parish that does its best to serve various language groups, the church was packed. I heard confessions in English and Spanish for more than two hours. Over a dozen priests heard confessions in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. A Deeper Analysis I cite these comparative incidents to illustrate institutional racism, even in the Catholic Church, and also to show that racism is not always intentional, malicious, or premeditated. In fact, I believe that in the majority of cases we are unaware that racism is operative in our lives. I believe that most people of good heart and goodwill have not reflected sufficiently on how social structures affect their ~lay-to-day lives. Our society's mores and laws have to a great extent come to exist, not in order to promote the reign 6f God, but to protect what the more wealthy and powerful incline to hoard for themselves. We generally do not think about how social constructs such as words and language, policies and direc-tives, and administrative and organizational structures welcome certain people or groups of people and exclude others. Racism is much more ingrained than we believe it is. Furthermore, even when there is recognition and formal repu- September-October 1996 Barr6n ¯ Racism and Religious Life diation of institutional racism, it becomes a major struggle to do something about it. It is not easy to change societal constructs, whether they be words, policies, or organizational structures. Along with our sense of guilt, we also experience a sense of help-lessness. We want to do something, we want to make a statement, we want to do the right thing; but, faced with the immense real-ity of it all, we do not know what to do. My Dealing with Racism I am aware of some evolution that has taken place within myself as I have struggled to understand the reality of racism. One of my earliest reactions to racism was the belief that making people alert to racism, aware of it, and acquainted with it would be enough to make them change their ways of thinking and act-ing. My task became one of revealing and unmasking the evil of racism so that racists would convict themselves and change, or feel the guilt of not changing. I really believed that people of good heart and goodwill would change, be converted, once they saw their own racism. So I became involved (and I still am) in programs and projects to raise the people's level of awareness regarding racism. I think that one reason why great numbers of people have been turned off by consciousness-raising is the way many "social-justice types" presented their case. Their rhetoric is often inflam-matory and confrontational. Sometimes these modern-day prophets use questionable data and much hyperbole to get across their points. I could admire their bravado, but I thought that, if they presented their points with calmness and serenity, then peo-ple would listen and would admit their racism. That is how I thought I would go about it. Sometimes this approach worked; more often it did not. I did not understand the power of denial, to use a psych.ological term, or the condition of blindness, to use a scriptural notion. You can say, "twenty million Hispanics," "eighty percent Hispanic," "one of the highest levels of poverty," "the highest dropout rate at school," and still get responses like "So what?" and "Prove it" and "Don't you think that it's their own personal fault they are the way they are?" Where racism is concerned, comprehension, understanding, reason, logic, facts, and all the other things that go into "knowing" can bring one only so far. Then you are going to Review for Religious have to say yes or no to that reality; you either embrace the truth or you walk away from it. I believe that the other approach, emotional and vitriolic, can at times be much more effective because it pulls us out of the ordinary rhythm of life and challenges us to affirm or deny our position with passion. Often it is in that passionate response that we come to know whether we are confronting truth or living a lie. It screams at us, and we cannot be deaf to it any longer. Living with Racism Once I owned up to the realization that it takes more than just awareness and acknowledgment of racism before some posi-tive response can take place, I was faced with a dilemma. What is an appropriate response to racism? If letting people know about racism, telling them facts or even leading them to some insight, is not enough, then what should I be doing? ' To do nothing is not an option. To be involved in educating people about the evil of racism is good, but it has not been very successful. So what is it that I can do? I have had to learn how to live with the reality of racism without allowing it to con-sume me or compromise me. Racism is both strong and insidious. If you are constantly fighting it, it will wear you down. If you never confront it, however, it will corrupt you and you will conform to it. I have had to learn how to live with it and still be sensitive to it. I have had to learn how to live within its grasp and still be able to name its evil. I have had to learn how to live with people who have no desire whatsoever for critical reflection on the subject and still not dis-count them as brothers and sisters. I also have had to learn that I could not fight racism alone and in isolation. I include in this understanding of aloneness or isolation the clique or inner circle that one forms when engaged in this kind of struggle. When you associate only with men and women of like mind and heart in regard to racism, you run the risk of having them become an extension of your own self. You then have two kinds of people, those who are enlightened by the truth and cleansed by the conversion experience (the inner circle) and What is an appropriate response to racism? To do nothing is not an option. September-October 1996 Barrdn * Racism an'd Religious Life those who are the great unwashed (the rest of humanity), who need to be purified before they can truly be a brother or a sister. And those of the inner circle know in their heart of hearts that hardly anyone from the great unwashed will ever make it to their level of purification and commitment. I believe that, in order to fight racism effectively, one needs to be allied with men and women who are at all stages of a~are-ness and commitment. There is no one of us who has always been right in each and every thought, word, deed, or omission. No one has a complete and correct theory of how life is to be lived. So we need to network with others who agree with us and with those who do not. We need to be in relationship with those who share our insights and with those who do not. We need to be a gen-uine brother or a sister to those who are racists and those who are not. Otherwise I do not see how we can bring about structural conversion. Some Strfita of Memory and Hope Looking at my parents today, I see an elderly couple who knew racism and its effects firsthand. They knew what it meant to live in segregated neighborhoods and in housing that was once chicken coops. My parents knew what it meant to be laid off work, to send their children to a broken-down building that served as the school for "Mexican" children, to be in the hospital without any insurance, to be excluded from stores and services, to be "Mexican" Catholics in a predominantly anglo community. I saw people come to our door and ask for advice or a helping hand or to have official letters read to them. We received many a Catholic missionary into our home, to eat with us and sometimes stay with us during the time they were evangelizing and catechizing. One day, as I shared this history with a group of people at a workshop, I found myself understanding the meaning of "being evangelized by the poor." My parents knew only one way to live in a racist society, and that was to love God with all they had and to love everyone else the best they could. Today I see a couple respected in their hometown and throughout the diocese for their perseverance, their faithfulness, their constancy in the faith and in the way they treat people. No matter how evil the structures were and how evil the people who strove to keep those structures in place may have been, my par- Review for Religious ents' faith has allowed them to overcome that evil. I do not see a bitter, broken-down couple blaming others for what they do not have, but a faith-filled couple continuing, by their example, to call others to a better way of life. Yes, society continues to be racist. The church continues to be racist. And, yes, there is racism even within my province. How should we respond, however, to our racism as a society, as a church and as a religious congregation, well, that is a conversation that we still need to have. Jesus Willing He could have multiplied currency as easy as loaves reasoned down other paths. he gave freely to everyone left the poor still poor rich with more than before. could have died another way unnoticed in desert sand lived as paralytic beggar with none coming to succor when angels stirred waters with a great serving spoon. for though he chose manger and tree, Peter and

Issue 68.2 of the Review for Religious, 2009. ; Mission and Ministry Renewing Religious Traditions Reviewing Outward Signs QUARTERLY 68.2 2009 Review for Religious fosters dialogu~e withGod, dialogue with ourselves~: and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according ~ iocharisms of~Catholic religiouslif¢. As Pope Paul Vl said, our way of being Church is todqy the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034o639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Mail: reviewrfr@gmail.com ¯Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2009 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any inaterial (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. ~ gournalof Catholic ~pir~ual~y Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp . Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen HughesRSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 68.2 2009 contents prisms 116 Prisms 118 132 144 mission and ministry ~ ~_ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principle,s: A Missioner's Reflection James H. Kroeger MM shares with us ten "mission principles" valid for Paul of Tarsus and for today's Pauls as well--the result of his own reflections as a missionary and a meditative reading of St. Paul. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion A Franciscan Approach to Ministry Daniel P. Horan OFM ~eflec~s on Francis of Assisi's life and writings and suggests that the five characteristics that emerge provide a helpful parad!grn for all pastoral ministers in the church. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion Discipleship and Walking by Faith Damian C. Ilodigwe, along with Abraham and the apostle Thomas, shows that discipleship needs deep faith daily. Review for Religious 152 168 renewing religious traditions Reparation and the Sacred Heart: A New Intrepretation Virginia M. Herbers ASCJ suggests a new understanding of reparation which speaks to the lived reality of the Body of Christ in a global community as well as to the Christian mission to live a life of service. Being Heard, Being Healed: Learning from the Quaker Tradition James H. Schimelpfening SM shares his refreshing experience of community that came from a series of six seasonal retreats based on the Quaker tradition and the work of Parker Palmer. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion 181 192 reviewing outward signs Religious Habits Reconsidered Doris Gottemoeller RSM looks over changes of habit and other changes and raises some thoughtful questions about what is now past, having been passed with a view to the future. On Wearing a Habit, from My Perspective Patricia McCarthy CND shares her experience of responding to God's grace in giving witness to her religious consecration in order to help us all to question our freedom in responding to God's grace in our own call. departments 204 Scr.ipture Scope: The Gospel of St. Paul 208 Canonical Counsel: Response to the Role of Law in the Church 214 Book Reviews 68.2 2009 prisms 116 T celebration of the Pauline Year has stimulated a large number of books on the person and writings of St. Paul. As a theologian I have been most taken by the importance of the Holy Spirit in Paul's Letters. In dogmatic development, it will take a few centuries before the church can articulate a theology of the Trinitarian God, and so Paul's writings about the working of the Spirit are all the more arresting. One of the titles that we give to the Holy Spirit in our Nicene creed is "Giver of life." That title is one of the best summaries for how Paul describes the Spirit in the life of the individual Christian and of the Christian community. In his Letter to Titus, Paul makes a summary statement about how much the Spirit is truly the Giver of life. "[God] saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior." Through the image of the Spirit being poured out, all the specifics of this new life find their font. Early on in his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul asks "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" He then goes on to say "for the temple of God, which you are, is holy." But Paul becomes more creative and copious in his description of the Spirit's gifts when he employs the image of the human body. That we all are members of the Body R~vie~ for Religious of Christ receives its most detailed description in this Letter of Paul's. We are all baptized into the one Body in the one Spirit. The Spirit is the Giver of the many different kinds of spiritual gifts, and at the same time "to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit" (1 Co 12:7). What we might take for granted, Paul assures us, is the Spirit's gift. Paul's example is "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Co 12:3). Surely our sacramental words, "I absolve you," "this is my Body," "I baptize you," are Spirit-filled and Spirit-given words. But more simply, our expressed desires--"teach me to pray," "Lord, for-give me," "Lord, here I am"--are the continuing daily pouring out of gifts of the Spirit. That the total health of the Body depends on each and every one of us being open to the gifts of the Spirit and so sharing this divine life remains central to Paul's theology of the Spirit's gift-ing both to the individual Christian and to the Christian community. In Paul's Letter to the Romans we receive the rich-est understanding of our prayer as Christians. "The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" (Rm 8:26). Our very effort to pray--sometimes feeling so dry and empty--is always a gift of the Spirit. Perhaps our own sense of futility in praying excites the gifting of the Spirit's groans within us all the more, and within the groanings of the community praying as well. Paul's insight gives us consolation in our daily effort to pray. From these few examples, perhaps we will be stirred to greater gratitude for Paul's own gift of in.sight into the Spirit as the Giver of life as we celebrate.the Pauline Year. David L. Fleming SJ 117 68.2 2009 mission and JAMES H. KROEGER Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles: A Missioner's Reflection ministry The apostle Paul is considered the greatest missionary of all time. He is called the Apostle of the Gentiles since he was mainly responsible for the spread of Christianity into the Gentile world. The church owes much to Paul for its growth; he pioneered its early expansion by his mission labors and his theological reflection. A brief synopsis of Paul's life includes the following approximate chronology: 5-10 (birth at Tarsus), 15-20 (studies in Jerusalem), 36 (conversion), 36-39 (Damascus, Arabia, Jerusalem), 39-43 (Tarsus), 43-44 (Antioch), 44-48 (first missionary journey), 49-50 (Council of Jerusalem; Antioch confrontation with Peter), 49-53 (second missionary journey), James H. Kroeger MM, a missionary in Asia (Philippines and Bangladesh) since 1970, is professor of systematic theology, missiology, and Islamics at the Loyola School of Theology; Ateneo de Manila University; Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights; Quezon City 1108; Philippines. jkroeger@admu.edu.ph 53-58 (third missionary journey), 58-60 (prisoner in Caesarea), 60-63 (voyage to Rome, prisoner in Rome), 64-66 (Spain? Rome? elsewhere?), 66-67 (prisoner in Rome), 67/68 (death in Rome). This brief chronology provides the context from which Paul's dynamic mission principles emerge; they are the result of both mission praxis and deep theological reflection. Paul's letters and the Acts of the Aposdes provide much insight into Paul's missionary thinking and methods. Over the centuries many authors have tried to digest Paul's mission thought and praxis, emphasizing the "central ideas" of this aposde. This effort may be admi-rable, but can result in a certain selectivity. Thus, this author is chary of claiming to capture the "essence" of Paul's insights. One cannot compose a "CliffsNotes" or abbreviated version of Paul's thought. His letters were written over a span of ten years; they were based on a lengthy ministry of preaching the gospel message in an extraordinary variety of circumstances and to diverse groups of people. Readers, consider this pie.ce a long-term ad gentes missionary's :personal reflections based on a medita-tive reading of St. Paul. Through an interaction of this writer's personal experience and the profound thought of Paul, ten "mission principles" took form. Emerging from Paul's life and refracted through the experience of a contemporary missioner, these insights are, I think, valid for the church's missionary activity today, twenty centuries after Paul's birth. Depth Awareness of Vocation. In Paul's mind there was no iota of doubt about his calling, his vocation; for Paul and all missioners, mis-sion originates in the call of God. Several passages in the 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles book of Acts portray this: "The Lord said to [Ananias], 'Go, because this man [Paul] is my chosen instrument to bring my name before Gentiles'" (Ac 9:15). "The God of our ancestors has chosen you . . . because you are to be his witness before all humanity, testifying to what you have seen and heard" (Ac 22:14-15). "I have appeared to you for this reason: to appoint you as my servant and as witness of this vision in which you have seen me" (Ac 26:15). In addition, the majority of Paul's letters begin with a firm assertion of his identity as a chosen instrument of God. "From Paul . . . an apostle who does not owe his authority to men or his appointment to any human being, but who has been appointed by Jesus Christ and by God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead" (Ga 1:1-2). "From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus who has been called to be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News" (Rm 1:1). Several other let-ters begin with almost the same words: "From Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus" (2 Co 1:1); see also 1 Co 1:1, Ep 1:1, Col 1:1, Ph 1:1, and others. Writing to the Corinthians about Christ's resur-rection, Paul categorically states: "I am the least of the apostles; in fact, since I persecuted the church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God's grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless" (1 Co 15:9-10). Radical Commitment to Christ. Paul's experience on the Damascus road was, in fact, only the starting point of a lifelong relationship; mission envisions a totally Christ-centered life. Paul expresses this in various ways: "Life to me, of course, is Christ" (Ph 1:21). "None of us live to ourselves, and none of us die Review for Religious to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rm 14:7-8). "I have been crucified with Christ, and I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Ga 2:19-20). All of Paul's writings speak of his love for Christ, his identification with Christ. So intimate was his rela-tionship that he could even advise the Corinthians: "Imitate me as I imitate Christ" (1 Co 11:1). Paul tells the Thessalonians that they can follow his example: "You observed the sort of life we lived when we were with you, which was for your instruction; you were led to become imitators of us and of the Lord" (1 Th 1:5-6). Paul, writing to the Philippians, makes a moving com-parison of his previous life to his newfound existence in Christ: "I believe nothing can happen that will out-weigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him" (Ph 3:8-9). Voluntary Acceptance of Suffering Not relying on words alone, the apostle Paul preached the gospel by his life and example. In a par-ticular way, vulnerability and acceptance of the cross authen-ticate mission. In imitation of Christ who gave himself up to death even for sinners (Rm 5:8), Paul considers his suffering for the sake of the gospel to be a participa-tion in Christ's sufferings (2 Co 1:5-7). Paul saw him-self as sharing in Christ's kenosis (Ph 2:6-11). Writing to Timothy he says: "Join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling" (2 Tm 1:8-9). 121 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯Paul'$ Dynamic Mission Principles Paul recounts his numerous trials in the service of the gospel; he mentions his imprisonments, beatings, shipwrecks, travels, robberies, hard labor, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst, and nakedness (see 2 Co 11:23-27). Paul also mentions that he had to bear "a thorn in the flesh" (2 Co 12:7). Yet, he notes, "I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Co 12:10). Of course, this vulnerability is intimately linked with the paradox of the cross: "Continually we carry in our bod-ies the.dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed" (2 Co 4:10). Like Paul, all missionaries need to say, "May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ga 6:14). Insightful Mission Methods One can affirm that all Paul's energies were mission-focused, yet one can also point out that he employed dis-tinct methods to achieve his purposes. Mission demands creative, inculturated, ever-renewed approaches to evange-lization. Paul sought various occasions which would facilitate his proclamation; he attempted to connect his preaching with people's daily lives and worldview. Paul's approach at Ephesus (Ac 19) is exemplary; he would preach in a synagogue or a nearby house and attempt to link th~ Jewish faith with Christian revelation (see Ac 13:5 & 14, 14:1, 17:1). Acts 17:22-31 narrates Paul's famous speech in the Areopagus, the central assembly place in Athens, the cultural capital of the Greek islands. Paul mentions their altar to an unknown god; he refers to the philoso-pher- poet Epimenides (vv. 23 & 28). Although many mocked Paul, his intelligent method won some followers Revie~v for Religious for Christ. Paul, the "practical" missioner, moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the unknown to the known. Pope John Paul II has exhorted missionaries to move into new mission frontiers, "the modern equiva-lents of the Areopagus" (Redemptoris missio, §37). Paul's missionary sensitivities are manifested in his conviction that adaptation (inculturation, in today's parlance) is essential when mission meets a new situa-tion (Ac 15). He vigorously opposed the imposition of Jewish legal traditions, cultural observations, or external religious practices on Gentile Christians; these could hinder the spread of the gospel into the Gentile world. Paul even withstood James in Jerusalem (Ac 15) and Peter in Antioch (Ga 2:11-14). Paul articulates his "inculturated" method of becom-ing "all things to everyone" (1 Co 9:19-23). He adapts himself to the Jews, to those outside the law, and to the weak. His vision is crystal clear: "I have made myself the slave of everyone so as to win as many as I could. ¯. I made myself all things to everyone in order to save some at any cost; and I still do this, for the sake of the gospel, to have a share in its blessings." Urgent Gospel Proclamation ~. Paul did not understand "preaching" as giving a spir-itual reflection in a liturgical assembly. Integral procla-mation means heralding an urgent message from God that profoundly affects the destiny of all humankind. Mission has lost none of its urgency in the contem-porary world. Paul's words possess an authentic ring-- even in our ears today: "For, if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Co 9:16). For all Christians, evangelization must be a 123 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles "daily preoccupation" (2 Co 11:28). As Pope Paul VI noted, "the presentation of the gospel message is not an optional contribution for the church. It is a duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus" (Evangelii nuntiandi, §5). This Pauline "mission principle" is actually a call for an examination of conscience on the part of the church. Have many local churches placed too much emphasis on administrative efficiency, pastoral management, eco-nomic accountability, liturgical practice, canonical and catechetical orthodoxy--all to the detriment of dynamic programs of renewed evangelization? Have inward (ad intra) concerns vitiated the church's outward (ad extra) mission commitments? Paul's words contain a challenge to all churches and religious communities: "All the way along, from Jerusalem to Illyricum, I have preached Christ's Good News to the utmost of my capacity" (Rrn 15:19). Paul wrote these encouraging words to Timothy: "Make the preaching of the Good News your life's work, in thoroughgoing service" (2 Tm 4:5). 124 Deep Love of the Church In examining Paul's apostolic methods, it is enlight-ening to probe his view of the church. Paul primarily understands the church as a local community of baptized followers of Jesus Christ; he was not opposed to a uni-versal church, but in his day the local congregation was central to his experience. Mission and love of the people who constitute the church go hand in hand. This principle echoes the thought of an elderly Maryknoll missioner who never tired of repeating: Mission is people. Paul had great love and concern for the ecclesial com-munities he founded with painstaking effort. His writ-ings frequently and spontaneously express his affection: Review for Religious "It is only natural that I should feel like this towards you all, since you have shared the privileges which have been mine: both my chains and my work defending and estab-lishing the gospel. You have a permanent place in my heart, and God knows how much I miss you all, loving you as Christ Jesus loves you" (Ph 1:7-8). When the churches Paul established with patient apostolic ministry were in trouble, he shared their pain; he speaks of his "daily anxiety" for them (2 Co 11:28). He wonders aloud: "I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted" (Ga 4:11). "My children, I must go through the pain of giv-ing birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you" (Ga 4:19). Although the Corinthian community had many internal problems (divi-sions, immorality, idolatry, etc.; see 1 Co 1:10-13, 5:1-5, 10:14- 22), Paul, the affectionate missionary, loved them dearly: "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all" (2 Co 3:2). "Keep a place for us in your hearts . As I have already told' you, you are in our hearts--together we live or together we die. I have the very greatest confidence in you, and I am so proud of you that in all our trouble I am filled with consolation and my joy is overflowing" (2 Co 7:2-4). His writings frequently "and spontaneously express his affection. Close Collaboration with Coworkers The apostle Paul, though a strong personality, was a team worker in the task of evangelization. He under-stood that all apostolic ministry is enhanced through collab-orative efforts. Some few examples show that Paul saw 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles great advantages in working together with other apos-tles. On his first missionary j6urney, Paul was accom-panied by Barnabas and Mark (Ac 13-14). Timothy and Silvanus were his trusted coworkers in Corinth and else-where (2 Co 1:19). Titus was his appointed deputy in dealing with difficulties in the Corinthian community (2 Co 8:23), Among other coworkers and fellow aposdes were Luke, Erastus, Aristarchus, and Tychicus. Paul considered teamwork and collaborative minis-try important for a variety of reasons. Apostles working in partnership presented a visible image of the church as community; it gave the people an example of common witness. A variety of apostles working for a common goal presented a more balanced picture of the church than Paul alone could have given. In addition, the gifts of vai'ious individuals were put at the service of gospel proclamation. Paul frequendy expressed his admiration and appre-ciation of his collaborators; he called Timothy his "coworker" (Rm 16:21) and tenderly describes him as "my dear and faithful son" (1 Co 4:17) whose "worth you know, how like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel" (Ph 2:22). Paul referred to Titus as "my brother" (2 Co 2:13) and "my partner and coworker" (2 Co 8:23). Even if disputes occasionally arose, Paul sought to promote communion in mission. Paul offers contemporary ministers a model of cooperative ministry. Commitment to Social Transformation Paul preached a gospel of freedom and liberation along with his manifest concern and love for the poor and the suffering. The gospel message of human dignity and equality, if embraced, leads to social transformation. Revie~v for Religious Paul firmly believed in the transforming power of the gospel message, and he proposed to his communities the model of Jesus Christ: "Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty" (2 Co 8:9). And, for gospel credibility, Paul himself imitated Christ. Though he possessed citizenship in the Roman Empire, to show his social concern and commitment he chose the lot of ordinary working-class people and labored with his own hands for his livelihood (1 Th 2:9, 1 Co 4:12). Paul challenged many of the social, racial, religious, cultural, and economic barriers of his times. One brief example illustrates Paul's social message. In ancient times, there were three great blessings pronounced in the Jewish synagogue: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, . . . who hast not made me a Gentile, . . . who hast not made me a slave,., who hast not made me a woman!" Paul certainly had these barriers in mind when he expressed the new unity of those baptized in Christ: "There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Ga 3:28). All, without dis-tinction, are to gather around the Eucharistic table, that great center of unity. Numerous additional examples of Paul's social con-sciousness readily come to mind. He struggled to alleviate the suffering of the Christian communities in Jerusalem and Judea during a severe famine (1 Co 16:1-4). Paul laid down ~a clear apostolic principle: "The only thing insisted on was that we should remember to help the poor, as indeed I was anxious to do" (Ga 2:10). Paul converted the runaway slave Onesimus and then demanded that he be accepted "no longer as a slave but something much bet-il, 27 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles ter than a slave, a beloved brother" (Phm 16). In a word, Paul preached authentic liberation: "When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free" (Ga 5:1). 128 Effective, Exemplary Lifestyle The apostle Paul was always careful that .his per-sonal life would encourage and facilitate the spread of the gospel and never become counterproductive. The witness of a Cbristian life is the first and oj~en most effective proclamation of the gospel. When Paul speaks of imitation in his letters (he is not being arrogant), he believes that Christians can encourage one another through their Chrisdike words and deeds. An exemplary lifestyle is a very effective mode of proclamation. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Co 11:1). Paul commends the Thessalonians because "you were led to become imita-tors of us and of the Lord" (1 Th 1:6). Paul, the exem-plary missioner, is seeking to draw people to Christ, not to himself, through his encouragement to imitate model Christians: "I have sent you Timothy. he will remind you of the way that I live in Christ" (1 Co 4:16). Several of the foregoing sections of this presenta-tion refer to key elements that coalesce to form Paul's life-witness as an apostle: Christocentric spirituality, voluntary vulnerability, innovative mission approaches, evangelical urgency, collaborative ministry, social engagement. To these elements one could add additional virtues, as Paul himself does in his lists of spiritual gifts (see 1 Co 12 & 13, Ga 5:22). In a theology of mission today, the holistic approach to mission that Paul's life shows would be termed "inte-gral evangelization." Paul consistendy strove to run the race successfully and fight the battle successfully (see 1 Co 9:24-27). He kept his eyes fixed on Christ; he told Revie~v for Religious the Philippians: "I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me" (Ph 3:12). Total Reliance on God's Providence Paul had full confidence in God's everlasting love and fidelity; the guarantee of God's salvific love is Jesus Christ. Paul asks: "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?" (Rm 8:31-32). Mission always remains "God's project" and evangelizers seek to be God's faith-filled, humble instruments. Paul cooper-ated with God's grace so willingly and generously because he was firmly convinced that he was doing God's work. He asserts that he is only a servant of the gospel: "I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God made things grow. Neither the planter nor the waterer matters: only God, who makes things grow" (1 Co 3:6-7). Paul lived his apostolic life with great confidence and full trust in God, whom we can call "Abba" (Rm 8:15, Ga 4:6-7). His life wasfilled with many sufferings, hardships, and challenges; he even faced Spirit-given "roadblocks" in his missionary journeys (Ac 16:6-10). Fully convinced that his life and mission were dependent totally on God and the Spirit's guidance, Paul labored unceasingly, always ascribing any missionary success to God. "By the grace of God I am what I am . I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the Paul labored unceasingly, always ascribing any missionary success to God. 129 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles grace of God that is with me" (1 .Co 15:10). Paul asserts: "The love of Christ urges us on" (2 Co 5:14), "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Ph 4:13), "The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness" (Rm 8:26). Paul was a man of faith. The dynamic aposde Paul is undoubtedly the great-est missionary of all time. Based on his mission experi-ence and profound theological insights, this presentation has proposed ten "mission principles," valid for Paul of Tarsus and for today's Pauls as well. Paul burned' with the flame of God's love that was enkindled in his heart at his conversion; that flame pervaded his whole existence, even to the final hour of his martyrdom in Rome. It is good for us to notice that, even in the face of all the afflictions and sufferings he endured, Paul was a fulfilled, joyful, Spirit-guided missioner. Paul over-flowed with the Good News, and spread God's saving love everywhere. His awareness of God's transforming grace given to him in abundant measure enabled him to joyfully proclaim Jesus as Lord (see 1 Co 15:10). Paul, exemplifying a genuinely missionary attitude, was filled with deep joy, not because of personal grati-fication or external success, but because he saw many communities accept the person of Jesus. He wrote to the Philippians: "My brothers and dear friends, do not give way but remain faithful in the Lord. I miss you very much, dear friends; you are my joy and my crown" (Ph 4:1). To the Thessalonians Paul wrote: "What do you think is our pride and our joy? You are; and you will be the crown of which we shall be proudest in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes; you are our pride and our joy" (1 Th 2:19-20). The Corinthians received this message from Paul: "I have the very great-est confidence in you, and I~ am so proud of you that in Review for Religious all our trouble I am filled with consolation and my joy is overflowing" (2 Co 7:4). Paul's exhortations need to be heard by the mission-ary church today: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice" (Ph 4:4). "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Th 5:16- 18). "My brothers, rejoice in the Lord" (Ph 3:1). "Shine in the world like bright stars, because you are offering it the word of life" (Ph 2:15-16). Pastors, missionaries, catechists, religious, all ministers of the church, imitate Paul, the joyful evangelizer. Selected Resources Alien, R. Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962. Grassi, J. The Secret of Paul the Apostle. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978. Grassi, J. A World to Win. Maryknoll: Maryknoll Publications, 1965. Matera, E Strategies for Preaching Paul. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001. Murphy-O'Connor, J. Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007. Smyth, B. Pauk Mystic and Missionary. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980. Srampickal, T. "The Secret of Paul's Missionary Success," Third Millennium 10 (2007): 41-66. Witherup, R. I01 Questions and Answers on Paul. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion What principle(s) of Paul, identified by Kroeger, most caught your attention for use in your own mission? If you were to list your own mission principles, how would they compare with Paul's? 131 68.2 2009 DANIEL P. HORAN A Franciscan Approach to Ministry 1321 During his final days St. Francis of Assisi reflected on how he had lived his life and spent God's time. To preserve his recollections of the birth of his new religious order and leave a record of his hopes for the future, he dictated his Testament to some of the fri-ars who were caring for him. In it he recalls his conver-sion to follow Christ and shares what it means to be a Franciscan: to live the gospel. Today Francis continues to inspire people in all parts of the world and every faith tradition. His Testament is the last of a series of writings by Francis that reveals his vision of ministry. Beyond what people often call "Franciscan spirituality" stands his vision of ministry in the church. It is a manner of living in the world, being in relationship with God, and serving our sisters and brothers. The year 2009 marks the eight-hundredth anniver-sary of the order's founding. As we celebrate this mile- Daniel P. Horan OFM has written on Franciscan theology, philosophy, and spirituality. His address is Holy Name College; 1650 St. Camillus Drive; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. horandp@gmail.com Review for Religious stone, it is good to consider Francis's example and reflect on his vision, which serves as inspiration and guidance. In this article I will highlight five themes that emerge from Francis's writings to form a ministerial ethos that is particularly Franciscan. One does not need to be a Franciscan, a Poor Clare, or a secular Franciscan to adopt a Franciscan approach. Any pastoral minister can benefit from the insights of one of the greatest saints and reformers in Christian history. Everything Done in Humble Service When Francis started his work for God, having renounced his worldly possessions and aspirations, he did penance and followed the gospel as he felt led by God.~ Soon others sought to imitate his efforts and fol-low him in what Franciscan scholar Thadd~e Matura calls the "Franciscan project." This project, while ini-tially not the goal of Francis himself, quickly grew to include thousands of friars and hundreds of sisters,z What made them follow in the footsteps of this medi-eval man and renounce property and adhere to a life of obedience and chaste celibacy? One element of the Franciscan project that emerged early was radical adherence to subordinate positions in society. Francis's early followers saw the humility of a man who left behind the life of a wealthy merchant to live among lepers and outcasts. In his Earlier Rule, Francis had instructed them where among the social strata they should strive to live. He says, "Let no one be called 'prior,' but let everyone in general be called a lesser brother. Let one wash the feet of the other." Francis continued by enjoining his brothers to be "lesser ones" always "subject to all.''3 This spirit of humility is the foundation for all the 133 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ ~ Franciscan ~pproach to Ministry characteristics of a Franciscan ministry. Francis was less concerned about what someone did in the world than about how someone did it. Here we see his admiration for Christ's humility as central to his spirituality: to be Francis was less cbncerned about what someonedid in the world than how someone did: a Franciscan is to live the gospel by following in the footprints of Jesus Christ. Michael Blastic summarizes this well: "As Jesus turned toward those around him, so Francis and Clare in contemplation and com-passion incarnate the praxis of Jesus as they follow him in their world by turning to those around them.''4 From his incarnation and birth to his death on the cross, Jesus' life served as Francis's model for humble service. Perhaps the most succinct articulation of Francis's image of humble service is found in Admonition XIX. Here Francis says: Blessed is the servant who does not consider himself any better when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, simple, and looked down upon, for what a person is before God, that he is and no more. Woe to that religious who has been placed in a high position by others and [who] does not want to come down by his own will. Blessed is that servant who is not placed in a high position by his own will and always desires to be under the feet of others,s 134 Humility is a virtue of ministry, being of service to and among people, that Francis often wrote about. Besides being a reoccurring theme in his Admonitions, humility becomes a constitutive characteristic of the Franciscan way of life when it appears three times in his Review for Religious Later Rule. In chapter 3 we read, "I counsel, admonish, and exhort my brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ not to quarrel or argue or judge others when they go about in the world; but let them be rrieek, peaceful, modest, gende, and humble, speaking courteously to everyone, as is becoming." Two chapters later in the same document, Francis exhorts his followers to always work humbly as servants of God and disciples of poverty. Toward the end of the Rule, Francis again reminds his followers that even amid persecution, hardship, and infirmity they are to have humility and patience while loving those who persecute them.6 Francis echoes the theme of humility at every opportunity because in this way Christ served his brothers and sisters and in this way he desired to serve. Thaddte Matura makes a keen observation about the importance of humility in Francis's way of life and in the movement he gave rise to. Matura believes that Francis was.well aware of the temptation, perhaps within him-self, for pastoral ministers to consider themselves better or above those whom they served.7 It is possible that his concern about friars judging others and seeking special privileges was rooted in his own experience as the son of a wealthy merchant, a well-off young man who was disgusted by lepers and people of lower social status. Regardless of Francis's initial motivation, we are the inheritors of a vision that inspires ministers to always put others before themselves.8 In a world that is fraught with self-centeredness and material accumulation, where even devoted ministers are tempted to seek personal reward, a humble approach to ministry remains prophetic. Relationship Takes Priority Francis's way of being-in-the-world followed the example of Jesus Christ. Michael Blastic insightfully 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ A Franciscan Approach to Ministry connects the divine humility that Francis recognized in the incarnation with God's outward movement toward humanity.9 It was in humility that God incarnate, Jesus Christ, entered into relationships with the people around him. All four Gospels tell of Jesus' encounters with many people: the marginalized, outcast, wealthy, powerful, average, violent, peaceful, and so on. Because he lived a perfectly humble existence among his sisters and brothers, Jesus could meet people as they were, rec-ognizing the inherent dignity of each human person. For Francis, this became a major component of his way of life and remains a Franciscan characteristic today. Vv'hile most of the preserved writings of Francis are letters, prayers, and admonitions or guidelines addressed to large numbers, we have one letter that was written to a particular minister. His identity remains anonymous, frustratingly so for many, but the anonymiW allows us to stand in his place and receive personally from Francis his wisdom concerning ministry, a touching wisdom straight from his heart. Francis is concerned about this friar's attitude and disposition, and he says: I wish to know in this way if you love the Lord and me, his servant and yours: that there is not any brother in the world who has sinned--however much he could have sinned--who, after he has looked into your eyes, would ever depart without your mercy, if he is looking for mercy.~° Mercy trumps justice. Relationship remains the pri-mary way for people to understand all their encoun-ters. Vghile this observation may appear obvious, the reason is that we are already familiar--if only subtly and indirecdy--with the Franciscan way of seeing ministry. This was not always the case. The Franciscan historian Joseph Chinnici describes the early Franciscan move- Review for Religious ment as a radically new form of "penitential human-ism." He applies this term to the Franciscan movement's effort to bring people together peacefully amid "social discord and violence." This approach to ministry puts relationship and com-munity above per-sonal journeys of faith and conversion. One's own conversion, if it is a Franciscan one, should lead toward others and away from one's own self.~ It ~ is for precisely this reason that Francis insisted that the friars be mendicants, not monks, and live with the whole world as their cloister, not limiting it to a monastery's four walls. Franciscan ministries are not simply good methods, skillful implementations of model practices. Rather, they are a project that seeks to unite those who are separated by the violence of social, political, and ecclesial dissent.12 To stress relationship as the primary approach to minis-try, Francis often used familial terms. In his Earlier Rule, he says, "Let each one love and care for his brother as a mother loves and cares for her son."13 In Francis's spirituality, such a familial understanding of relation-ship extended even beyon.d human relationships to include all of God's creation. In his most famous work, The Canticle of the Creatures, he addresses all elements as brother or sister. In an age of heightened ecological awareness, our relationship with the earth and the rest of creation can influence our ministry positively. We are called to minister to all with a deepened sense of our One's own conversion, if it is a Franciscan one, should lead toward others and away from one's own self. 137 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ ~l Franciscan ~pproacb to Minisl~ interdependence and relatedness as children of God and brothers and sisters of all God's creation. Avoid Attachment There is great wisdom in a mendicant model of life. In a life of detachment from personal property, pasto-ral ministers become less preoccupied with their status, their control, their "things." If a particular ministry does not "belong" to a particular minister, one becomes a curator, a caretaker, one who takes good care of some-thing of value not one's own. This contrasts with the oligarchic approach, a small group's limited vision often preventing a ministry's expansion or creativity. Francis was quite convinced that appropriation of anything, including one's work as a minister, would lead to other problems. His Earlier Rule is filled with admonitions and warnings about the danger of attachment. In chap-ter 7 he says, "Wherever the brothers may be, either in hermitages or other places, let them be careful not to make any place their own or contend with anyone for it." He goes on to say, "Guard yourselves against the anxieties of this world and the cares of this life," and summarizes by saying: "Let all the brothers strive to follow the humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let them remember that we should have nothing else in the whole world except as the Apostle says: "Having food and clothing, we are content with these" (1 Tm 6:8).14 While today most ministers, including professed Franciscan women and men, would find it difficult to live in this world strictly observing the instruction above, the key to Francis's insight is found in the word "strive." We understand this as a more perfect vision of an imperfect manner of living in this world. It is the Review for Religious model that pastoral ministers should have in their work, striving in humility and poverty to not appropriate the work as their own. Thy Will Be Done Naturally, the divestment of property and ownership of even one's ministry leads to the question: Then to whom does it belong? For Francis the answer is simple: M1 good things come from and belong to God. It is in the perfect prayer of Christians that we find the source and purpose of our ministerial endeavors, "Thy will be done." When our efforts in ministry become more about our will, our ambition, or our desires, then we have left the realm of ministry and entered some level of self-centeredness. Closely linked to Francis's view of attachment is his understanding that all ministry is the work of God for God. This understanding affirms and renews people's vocation to service. It directs the gaze of ministers from themselves back to God as the source of their inspiration to follow their ministerial vocation. Francis often wrote about God's will in connection with his own ministry and that of the Friars Minor. In his Letter to the Entire Order, Francis reminds his broth-ers of their vocation and its connection to God's will. He writes: "Give praise to him because he is good; exalt him by your deeds; for this reason he has sent you into the whole world: that you may bear witness to his voice in word and deed and bring everyone to know that there is no one who is all-powerful except him.'ns Matura highlights this thought of Francis when he says, "Anything good that we have or do, no matter how personal it is, comes to us from God, and we are only administrators of that good, as it were.'n6 In addition to the proper attribution of our gifts and vocation to 139 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ A Franciscan Approach to Ministry God, this thought frees us of the weighty burdens of self-sufficiency and responsibility. Unhampered by the pressure ministers frequendy put on themselves, we are free to be God's instruments, working in partnership with Christ and others. In this way we leave the world of "lone rangers" and enter the community of Christians working toward the kingdom. I'40 Pray without Ceasing A Franciscan approach to ministry must always flow from a life of prayer. Those who adopt this approach are not just people who pray, but people whose words and actions are also prayer. This lived prayer is con-stant openness to conversion, allowing God to enter and transform lives from worldly concern and triviality to authentic gospel living--in Christ's footsteps, as God's instruments of peace today. In a brief letter to St. Anthony of Padua, Francis responded to his request for permission to teach the-ology. This was a new initiative, for up to this time Franciscans had largely avoided academic ministry. Francis was cautious of higher education because of the tendency of the educated to think better of themselves, look down on others, and move away from the charac-teristics of ministry we have examined above. Francis knew of Anthony's gifts, however, and knew that many friars had asked for his instruction in theology. Francis told Anthony, "I am pleased that you teach .sacred the-ology to the brothers providing that, as is contained in the Rule, you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' during study of this kind.''17 Even a ministry as basic as training other friars for pastoral ministry was viewed as secondary to prayer and devotion. Francis writes in his Earlier Rule that those who Review for Religious come after him are to love the Lord God, who has given everyone everything, with their whole heart, soul, mind, strength, understanding, powers, effort, affection, feel-ing, desire, and wish. This is not to be an occasional experience or portion of time apart from the rest of life, but the modus operandi of ministry. Later in the same text Francis writes: Wherever we are, in every place, at every hour, at every time of the day, every day and continually, let all of us truly and humbly believe and hold in our heart and love, honor, adore, serve, praise and bless, glorify and exalt, magnify and give thanks to the Most High and Supreme Eternal God, Trinity and Unity.'s This is another echo of the Franciscan understanding that one's entire life should be given back to God as prayer. Such a life naturally nourishes a vocation to service and ministry. When one's actions are directed back to God with humil-ity, with relationship as the priority, without encumber-ing attachments, and with recognition of everything as God's work, then life is transformed into prayer. Ministry then is not a person's self-motivated effort or effectiveness, but the outpouring of God's gifts received prayerfully and gratefully and sharbd with others. Eight hundred years after the first Franciscan began to do ministry in the small town of Assisi, we find our-selves inspired by Francis's example to continue the mission of God's work in our world. Regardless of our particular manifestation of God's work, all pastoral min-isters can find renewed life and purpose by reflecting A Franciscan approach to ministry must always flow from a 'life of prayer. 141 68.2 2009 Horan * .4 Franciscan AIqn'oacb to Ministry on a Franciscan approach to ministry. Humility keeps us approachable and ready to give loving service. The priority we give to relationship brings us to places where we can best foster loving unity among our sisters and brothers and grateful respect for all of creation. Detachment helps to seek the right things, without being distracted by worldly concerns. Recalling that God is the source of all our gifts and our personal voca-tion puts our work into perspective, while bolstering our purpose to work hand in hand with God. Finally, more than just say prayers, we strive to live lives that are prayers, lives that help bring God's love to our world. Notes i Francis of Assisi, "The Testament," verses 1 and 14, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), pp. 124 & 125. Further citations of this first volume will be noted as FAED followed by page numbers. 2 Thaddde Matura, "Francis of Assisi and His Posterity Today," in Gospel Living: Francis of Assisi Yesterday and Today, ed. Elise Saggau (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1994), pp. 263-267. Matura compares Francis to Jesus while explaining similarities of the Franciscan orders and the church. While Francis is held as the founder and model for the three Franciscan orders (much as Jesus is for the church), he is not credited with intentionally founding a new movement in the proper sense (see p. 264). ~ Francis of Assisi, "The Earlier Rule," 6:3-4 and 7:2, in FAED, p. 68. 4 Michael Blastic, "Contemplation and Compassion: A Franciscan Ministerial Spirituality," in Spirit and Life, vol. 7, ed. Anthony Carrozzo, Vincent Cushing, and Kenneth Himes (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1997), p. 172. s Francis, "Admonition 19: A Humble Servant of God," in FAED, p. 135. 6 Francis, "The Later Rule," 3:10-11 (emphasis added), 5:4, and 10:7-10, in FAED, pp. 102-105. r Thadd~e Matura, Francis of Assisi: The Message in His Writings, Review for Religious trans. Paul Barrett (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1997), p. 167. s St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan saint and doctor of the church, later wrote about the importance of humility in the evangelical life, beginning his treatise Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection with that topic. See Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 13, trans. Thomas Reist and Robert Karris (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2008). 9 Blastic, "Contemplation and Compassion," p. 153. 10Francis, "A Letter to a Minister," verse 9, in FAED, p. 97. 11 Joseph Chinnici, "Penitential Humanism: Rereading the Sources to Develop a Franciscan Urban Spirituality," in Franciscans in Urban Ministry, ed. Roberta McKelvie (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2002), pp. 119-122. ~2 See Chinnici, "Penitential Humanism," p. 123. 13 Francis, "Earlier Rule," 9:1 I, in FAED, p. 71. ~4' Francis, "Earlier Rule," 7:13, 8:2, and 9:1, in F~IED, pp. 69-70. is Francis, "A Letter to the Entire Order," verses 8-9, in FAED, p. 117. 16 Matura, Francis ofAssisi, p. 132. 17 Francis, "A Letter to Brother Anthony of Padua," verse 2, in FAED, p. 107. 18 Francis, "Earlier Rule," 23:8 and 23:11, in FAED, pp. 84 & 85. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion 1. What model or approach do I currently use in my pastoral ministry? 2. In what ways do Francis's insights speak to me today? 3. What characteristics of a Franciscan approach to ministry do I live particularly well? Where could I strive to improve? 68.2 2009 DAMIAN C. ILODIGWE Discipleship and Walking by Faith God never deceives us. When we entrust our life to him and allow him to direct us, he ensures that all goes well. We may not know where he is lead-ing us. We only see the present, and nothing beyond it. Indeed, even the present is sometimes not clear, and in any case it reaches beyond itself into the future. The present invites to us to keep moving despite perplexity. Here our faith is our strength. Faith propels us forward. So long as we know that God is with us, we can afford to take the next step. We need not be apprehensive. We can be certain that we shall reach our destination even if we have to move slowly and sometimes with some frustradon. Without faith we do not see that God is leading us. If we step out into the unknown future at his bidding, it is likely that we will persevere to the end (see Heb 11). Damian C. Ilodigwe last wrote for us in early 2008. He is a priest and lecturer in philosophy at Ss. Peter and Paul Major Seminary; P.M.B. 5171; Secretariat P.O.; Ibadan, Nigeria. dammychuks2000@ yahoo.com Review for Religious We should trust God at each step, even when we do not know what lies ahead. He shows us his plan piecemeal. An aspect of faith is trust. We can think here of chil-dren and mothers. Usually young children are wholly dependent on their mother. She gives instruction, and the child wonders about it. But this wondering does not prevent the child from carrying out the mother's bidding. He may ask questions, of course, but unless he is simply seeking some clarification he will not get very far. He will not be permitted to ignore or resist what his mother asks him to do. Usually children know, for their own good, when they had better obey. Usually they carry out their mother's instruction even when they do not fully understand. What is true of the relation between children and their mother is true of our relationship with God. Like little children, we need to give God our utter trust (Lk 11:5-13; 18:1-8). Because our faith tells us that God acts in our best interest, we can afford to follow his bidding no matter the inconveniences we feel to be associated with it. A childlike simplicity in our relationship with God is an index of vibrant faith and of maturity in this relationship (Lk 12:22-31). The' Case of Abraham In the life of Abraham we find an example of this childlike faith. He is ready to do the Lord's bidding even when this involves a great deal of sacrifice. Many instances in his life illustrate his utter commitment to God. Consider the divine request to leave his country for another land: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name so famous that it will be used as a blessing. I will 68.2 2009 llodig'we ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith In the life of abraham we find an exa ple ff bless those who bless you; I will curse those who slight you; all the tribes on earth shall bless themselves by you" (Gn 12:1-2). How could God ask Abraham to do a thing like this?1 The demand appears extravagant and even ridiculous. Is it reasonable to leave his native place, where all his friends are? He is established here. He has security here. To leave means leaving good memories and property behind and beginning all over again. As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It is foolish to abandon what has proved itself over the years without a good clear reason. That rea-son would be that the change will certainly make things better. But, for Abraham, the future is a clouded certainty. All that is certain is that he should leave and that he will be shown another land. Regarding the particulars of the promised land, he knows nothing. He is told, though, that from him will come a great nation. That promise appears less attractive than it might because of its general vagueness. Yet at another level it provides a certain motivation because it comes from God, from Abraham's faith in God. It is only faith that can quickly overcome the disenchantment pr0~oked by lack of information about this promised land. Abraham is certainly a man of faith. For, in spite of the obvious per-plexities associated with this directive, he. takes the bull by the horns. He understands that it is the Lord speak-ing and that he knows what he is doing. Consequently he sets out as the Lord has told him to do. Scripture tells us that Abraham is seventy-five years old when he Review for Religious leaves Haran. He takes his wife, Sarai, and the people they.have acquired in Haran. Their journey takes them to Canaan (Gn 12:4-5). Abram's age of seventy-five is significant, emphasizing the great inconvenience of this movement. He is not a young man eager to be off on his own. So in a sense it is a blind journey. God guides him. As is always the case, the Lord does not ask us to do something and then leave us to our own design. He does not leave us on our own. He provides for us one step at a time. The entire picture can never be available to us all at once. As Abram journeys, he comes to Shechem's Oak of Moreh, in Canaan. The Lord appears to him and says he will give this land to his descendants. Abram builds an altar there. He proceeds to the hill country east of Bethel and then to the Negeb (Gn 12:7-9). Although Abram has stepped out into the unknown, he is never alone. He knows in faith that the Lord is with him through all the stages of his journey. And so he is our father in faith (Heb 11:8). He is wholly sub-missive to God, and God does not fail him. Abraham becomes the father' of a multitude of nations. The Challenges of Discipleship and Our Contemporary Situation At this juncture we may ask what we can learn from Abraham's experience. We can learn much regarding the challenges of discipleship. Our life, too, is a journey, a journey of faith towards God's kingdom. God calls each of us out of our various backgrounds to pursue a special life journey, a pilgrimage to a distant destination. The fundamental truth about this is that God is with us all the time, even when we do not take cognizance of him. His presence empowers us to be what he wants us to be. '147 68.2 2009 Ilodig~ve ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith Without evidence we are likely to feel discdnnected, His providence sustains us and guides every.aspect of our life. We need to let this truth have an impact on the way we live our life each day. We need to entrust ourselves completely to that providence. "For those who --~ love God, all things work together unto good." We may not understand just how they fit together now or will fit together in the end, but we cannot doubt that they do fit together. God's love, acting as a redemptive principle, inte-grates every aspect of our experience, bringing every-thing into God's ultimate plan for us all. The practical implication of this truth, then, is that we must learn to walk by faith rather than by sight.2 There is a world of difference' between walking by faith and walking by sight. When we walk by mere sight, we are all the time looking for visible, tangible, measur-able evidence of what we should do or should have done. For many purposes and many aspects of reality, there is such evidence, but for other purposes there is none. We may feel that without that kind of evidence there is no reality. If so, we are likely to feel disconnected. We are likely to feel we are living within limited horizons, likely to have a vague feeling that we are missing something. Not enjoying that feeling, we give oursel~es a warrant to deny there is any reality behind our vague feeling. We decide not to let ourselves be affected by what we claim is unreality. We refuse to be open to it. On the other hand, our admittedly limited knowl-edge even of the physical world should persuade us to see and affirm that the fullness of reality is far broader 148] Review for Religious than, say, the empirical data we have of the astrophysi-cal universe or the jungles of Brazil. We may lack the resources to fully penetrate such real worlds, and the world of faith as well, but we do not have reason to deny their reality and the impact they can and should have upon us.3 We need not deny spiritual reality even though we lack tangible and visible data that serve as empirical evi-dence. Spirituality's reality is accessible to faith. Faith transcends the evidence of the empirical sciences. When we walk by faith, we find ourselves in some sense at home in all of reality. The experience of Abram challenges us. Because he walked by faith, he was able to see far beyond the lim-ited reality of his time and place. Ready to journey with the Lord, he stepped out into the unknown that in some way he could actually see. In time he realized much of the promise he had. received. Abram's faith was his sav-ing grace. In our dealing with the Lord, some tension remains between the way of faith and the way of mere sight. . Sometimes we may walk ahead of the Lord or far behind him, and thus miss some of what we would have received from him. When our faith is stronger, we are better able to synchronize our mind and heart with God. We see better what he sees; we dream better the dream that he dreams for us; we see a road even when our ordinary sight sees no road. In short, our world of possibilities becomes larger; we live our lives more abundantly. Thomas's Encounter with the Risen Lord Consider Thomas. He did not believe when the other apostles told him they had seen the Lord. He insisted that unless he touched Jesus' wounds he would 149 68.2 2009 llodigwe ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith 1501 not believe (Jn 20:24-25). His predicament is under-standable. He cannot transcend the inclination to walk by sight. He demands empirical evidence in a matter that requires faith. The reality of the risen Lord is not accessible to, cannot be contained in, the limited world of empirical evidence. This becomes clear to Thomas when the Lord grants his demand for evidence. "Put your finger here, and look at my hands; then stretch out your hand and put it in my side. Stop your doubting and believe." Thomas says, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus says to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!" On 20:26-29). Thomas wants empirical evidence in order to believe, and he is granted the rare privilege of touching and seeing. But the Lord does not fail to make clear that this privilege is not really necessary. Indeed, it is argu-able that it is not the empirical evidence that generates Thomas's confession. Thomas could have touched the Lord and still not believed. There is another factor, the factor of grace. One cannot come into the presence of the risen Lord without being positively affected. That is what seems to have happened in Thomas's case. It is clear that what really matters is faith, not sight: "Happy are those who believe without seeing me." Without empirical evidence they believe, and this is what makes them blessed. The experience of the risen Lord is paradoxically a reward for their faith. It is their faith, not empirical evidence, that opens them to the reality of the risen Lord. Faith is a gift. through and through. God's gift, the presence of God, is received and perceived through faith. If we turn again to the experience of Abraham, we note that he avoids the tension between the way Review for Religious of faith and the way of sight. He does not ask for evi-dence as Thomas does. He is ready to step out into the unknown simply because he believes it is the Lord speaking. Faith sustains him on his travel. Faith brings him to the promised land. But before this ever comes to pass in time, faith has already enabled him to realize the promised land spiritually. The claim of faith is certainly one we cannot afford to ignore in our everyday struggle. We need to keep in mind the distinction between the way of faith and the way of sight. So as to realize our full destiny in the Lord, we must cultivate the habit of walking by faith rather than by sight, bringing faith into every aspect of our existence. It will enrich our vision of life and increase our ability to deal appropriately with all that occurs in our day-to-day living. In carefully fostered faith, the unthinkable becomes thinkable, the impossible becomes possible, and our entire life will be lighted by the glory of God. Notes I Even more extravagant is the later demand that he sacrifice Isaac, the child of promise. Here, too, Abraham's response marks him as a model of faith. See Genesis 22. z See Ralph C. Martin, Called to Holiness (Mumbai: St Pauls, 2001), pp. 101-117. 3 Faith and reason complement each other. Indeed, as Pope John Paul I! famously remarked, "Faith and Reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth" (Fides et ratio, §7). 151 68.2 2009 VIRGINIA M. HERBERS Reparation and the Sacred Heart: A New Interpretation renewing religious traditions The conciliar decree Perfectae caritatis was pro-mulgated in 1965 to guide renewal "in order that the great value of a life consecrated by the profession of the counsels and its necessary mission today may yield greater good to the church" (PC §1). Thirty years later John Paul II affirmed that "the consecrated life has not only proved a help and support for the church in the past, but is also a precious and necessary gift for the present and future of the people of God" (Vita consecrata, §3). In fidelity to the council's call and in response to the pope's call for authentic interpretation of founding charisms, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have in recent years striven to understand Virginia M. Herbers ASCJ is vocation director of the Aposdes of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and director of Queen of Apostles Spirituality Center; 800 Montebello Camp Road; Imperial, Missouri 63052. svhascj@yahoo.com Revie~ for Religious authentically the role and relevance of reparation within the Sacred Heart devotion. This effort has led me to believe that, just as religious consecration still has significance in the world today, so too does reparation. I affirm Karl Rahner's claim in 1966 that devotion to the Sacred Heart is not a dated, old-fashioned piety, but rather is quite relevant today. He later insisted that this devotion is indispensable "since the future of the church was decided by the love of the heart of Jesus in dying and depends on the final decision of Our own hearts."' I think Rahner is correct. I would add that consecrated life itself can be understood as a lived interpretation of Sacred Heart devotion, and that the religious profession of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart demonstrates the proper understanding of repa-ration in the Sacred Heart devotion. This community's charism illuminates a unique aspect of God's love, pro-viding for the entire church a renewed understanding of our baptismal vocation (see PC §1). To appreciate this charism of reparation, a brief look at the religious vows and the Sacred Heart devotion will provide helpful background. Let us take them in turn. The Evangelical Counsels Vita consecrata asserts that religious vows are not an initiative of the individual religious, but a response of the individual to God's call: "The experience of this gracious love of God is so deep and so powerful that the person called senses the need to respond by unconditionally dedi-cating his or her life to God" (VC §17). The profession of poverty, chastity, and obedience is the consecrated person's response of love to the One who loves her infinitely. Hearing the call and responding to God's love is not unique to those in religious life; it is implicit in 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart baptismal consecration. Profession of the evangelical counsels does not set religious apart from the body of the faithful as holier, closer to God, or more perfect. It is not a consecration differing in essence from baptismal consecration. Rather, it is rooted in baptism. It is an intensification of baptismal consecration for mission; it is a specification of the baptismal call.2 As such, it is a sign to all the baptized of what and who we are called to become as followers of Christ and members of his Body. "Religious life 'clearly, strikingly, astonishingly' ¯ . . leads the church to see what the whole church is called to by baptism, to see it clearly and strikingly in a public and communal embodiment that helps people toward realization.''3 Profession of the evangelical counsels is thus a rec-ognition by religious of the fullness of God's love for all, and a response to that love with the gift of their entire lives. Through the vows of chastity, poverty, and obe-dience, religious center their lives on the "God-quest" and proclaim that "I commit my whole self, everything and forever, to the undying love that has claimed me for the transformation of the world." Profession of vows is thus "a unitary and unifying act, a solemn, formal, and public act, by which a person takes her whole life into her hands and freely disposes of it in self-gift to Christ and his Body within the congregation."4 Sacred Heart Devotion Devotion to the Sacred Heart has traditionally been understood as an icon of God's love for humanity, devel-oping direcdy from incarnational theology,s Humanity recognizes God's love in the love of the God-man, Jesus Christ, as shown specifically in his heart. The incarna-tion allows human beings to experience God's love in Review for Religious tangible human ways. The heart of Jesus reveals the heart of God, embodied and enfieshed. This capac-ity has implications for all who follow Christ, for "the only Son of God, in becoming incarnate, takes on a human heart [and] we are called to share in this love and to receive through the Holy Spirit this extraordinary capacity to love.''6 Devotion to the Sacred Heart, then, is not devo-tion to an abstract symbol, but devotion to the per-son of Jesus and his love for each human being. The incarnation gives humanity access to what was formerly inacces-sible, God's very self, during Jesus' earthly life and now in his Mystical Body, the church. In the heart of Jesus, God calls us to "become what we receive"7 and to incarnate God's love ourselves as members of Christ's Mystical Body. What, then, does the heart of Jesus teach us about the incarnate love of God? Devotion to the Sacred Heart encompasses four characteristics of God's love: (1) Christ's heart shows us that the incarnate love of God is a continuing, dynamic reality, not an abstract theory or historical event; the heart of God is enfleshed in the body of Jesus and continues to beat in his Body, the church. (2) Christ's heart is a heart wherein two natures--human and divine-~coexist in perfect harmony. (3) Christ's heart is on fire with love for all humanity, both in general and in particular. (4) Christ's heart is an Devotion to the Sacred Heart has traditionally been understood as an icon of God's love for humanity. 68.2 2009 Herbers ¯ Reparation and the Sacred Heart open, broken heart--opened by the soldier's lance after the sacrifice of his human life, and broken by human sin, weakness, and error. The Religious Vows: Returning Love for Love Given the understanding that religious vows are a response to love and a sign for all the faithful of our common call to share in Christ's mission, and given the understanding that Sacred Heart devotion is (a) an ongoing dynamic expression of God's incarnate love, (b) exemplified in the love of Jesus' heart, which is in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit, (c) con-tinually on fire with love for us, and (d) still wounded by humanity's rejection of divine love even while revealing through the open wound the ultimate gift of his life, we now turn to the modern relevance of the religious vows as a distinct and poignant means of living Sacred Heart devotion. The consecrated religious professes vows as a return of love for Love, as a response from her heart to the outpouring~of God's love upon her. The very act of con-secrated profession can be interpreted as a profound act of Sacred Heart devotion, as attested by John Paul II: "Through the consecration of the religious vows, you desire, through the love of total giving, to fill your souls and your bodies with the spirit of sacrifice . In this way the likeness of that love which in the heart of Christ is both redemptive and spousal is imprinted on the religious profession" (Redemptionis donum, §8). Acknowledging and accepting the love of God and responding "in kind" are not enough, however. The Sacred Heart of God incarnate is not a mere image to be worshiped or just a pious practice to be encouraged. The encyclical on Sacred Heart devotion, Haurietis Review for Religious aquas, quotes Thomas Aquinas on this point: "Religious worship is not paid to images, considered in themselves, as things; but according as they are representations lead-ing to God incarnate. The approach which is made to the image as such does not stop there, but continues towards that which is represented.''8 In a similar way, professing vows in the church as a response to God's love commits religious to loving service of the church and, not stopping there, to loving service of the incar-nate Word of God. Our acceptance of God's love in baptism transforms us; in religious profession this baptismal transformation shapes our likeness to Christ, compelling us to return his love by following his example of ministering self-lessly to all those in need. Pope Benedict XVI expresses this directly: "When we practice this devotion, not only do we recognize God's love with gratitude but we con-tinue to open ourselves to this love so that our lives are ever more closely patterned upon it . The experience of God's love should be lived by men and women as a 'calling' to which they must respond. Fixing our gaze on the Lord. helps us to become more attentive to the suffering and needs of others.''9 Interior devotion is thus manifested in ministerial outreach. The three vows constitute a unique expression of Sacred Heart devotion, corresponding to specific char-acteristics of incarnate love. The heart of Jesus is a heart both human and divine, the heart of a man and the heart of God. Within one heart, two natures coex-ist in a mysterious unity that leaves each distinct yet undivided. Jesus' human heart beats in rhythm with the heart of God; his human will is perfectly synchronized with the will of God. The desire of the man corresponds completely with the desire of God for the man. 157 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and tbe Sacred Heart In this lies the kernel of religious obedience--to have our hearts beat in time with the heart of God. Consecrated persons who vow obedience strive to desire what God desires, to will what God wills, to attune their hearts to the heart of God. "To want the same thing, and to reject the same thing, was recognizeff by antiq-uity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought,m° Genuine obedience is not confor-mity to an external authority nor submission to a will foreign to our own. The vow of obedience "in its deep-est roots is a dedication to freedom, not to subjection or servitude . True freedom is to be found in union with the will of God."1' The vow of chastity expresses devotion to the heart of Christ by expressing his love for all people. Just as the Sacred Heart is "a heart on fire," so by vowing chastity do religious enkindle the fire of love in their own heart. Sandra Schneiders insists'that the vow of chastity "must be based on a deep religious experience of being loved by God in Jesus and an experienced per-sonaL fulfillment in returning that love." She adds that this vow "leads the person toward personal transforma-tion in love and allows the person to participate mean-ingfully in the emergence of a new, whole, and loving world characterized by equality, responsible intimacy, and mutuality."12 Clelia Merloni, the founder of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart, describes the "fire of love" kindled by the apostle's vow of chastity as holy zeal: "You see, daugh-ters, wherever the fire of divine love is, it cannot remain hidden or idle, but at once it manifests itself as the liv-ing flame of a holy zeal . Remember, daughters, that zeal must be active, untiring, gentle, and prudent: zeal Reuiew for Religio~.s does not inflame the heart without manifesting itself in works."13 By vowing lives of consecrated celibacy, reli-gious perpetually submit to the consuming fire Of God's love, which in turn impels them to share that love with everyone she encounters in an inclusive, not exclusive, way. Professing chastity enables religious to fan into flame a love that embraces all, recognizing in each face the face of God. As Benedict xvI wrote in Deus caritas est (§ 15), "The concept of 'neighbor' is now universal-ized, yet it remains concrete. Despite .being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract, and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment in the here and now." The vow of chastity calls us to embrace each while embracing all, to love particularly w~ithout loving restrictively, to love universally and specifically. Pierre Teilhard de Chardifi described the source .and the consequence of this type of loving as fire: "Under the symbol of the Sacred Heart, the divine assumed for me the form, the strength, and the properties of an energy, of a fire . Through its power to become universal, this fire proved able to invade and impregnate with love the whole atmosphere of the world in which I lived.''~4 By professing poverty, religious make yet another return of love for Love, mirroring the woundedness of Christ's heart. John Paul II says that "on Golgotha Jesus' heart was pierced by a lance as a sign of his total self-giving, of that sacrificial and saving love with which he 'loved us to the end'" On 13:1).15 By accepting death at the hands, of humanity, the God-man sacrificed all for love. "From the infinite power proper to God, the heart of Christ did not retain anything except the unarmed power of the love that forgives . In the heart of Christ are encountered divine riches and human poverty."~6 68.2 2009 Herbers ¯ Reparation and the Sacred Heart In the profession of poverty, devotion to the broken heart of Christ is made tangible also through responding to the suffering ofhis heart in the poor of .today's~worl~d. 160 This kenosis, this. self-emptying, is the expression of Love to which the vow of poverty responds. In accept-ing death Christ accepted all and gave all. In professing poverty religious do likewise--accepting all that is given them from the hand of the Father and giving all in a return of love for Love. This is devotion to the open heart of Christ. In the profession of poverty, devotion to the broken heart of Christ is made tangible also through respond-ing to the suffering of his heart in the poor of today's world. For vowed reli-gious, devotion to the Sacred Heart includes recognition that his heart remains broken, suffering as people continue to betray and reject love, to ignore and neglect the hurt-ing, to strike first. The world's physical, emo-tional, psychological, and mental pain con-tinually shows the heart of Jesus suffering in his Body. Clelia Merloni insisted that "The heart of Jesus, disguised as this particular sick person, calls you to a mission of charity, since the sick make up the very body of Jesus.''17 Clelia exhorts her sister apostles to recognize that where there is sickness, pain, or suffering, there is the open, broken heart of Christ. The profession and living of poverty expresses solidarity with all those who are wounded in and by society, and expresses union with Christ's broken heart suffering today. By professing evangelical poverty, con- Review for Religious secrated religious commit themselves "to eliminating structures of oppression and to promoting projects of solidarity for the benefit of the poor" (VC §89). Only as the poor can we hope to alleviate the suffering of the poor.~8 Through their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi-ence, consecrated religious express their love with the entirety of their lives. This threefold consecration uni-fies all religious communities. Their distinctive charisms are demonstrated by their various ways of expressing this consecration. The founder of my congregation, Clelia Merloni, was entrusted with a particular charism within Sacred Heart devotion--a charism to be apostles of the Sacred Heart. Her apostles were to be characterized by zeal and charity, but more importantly by one aspect of Sacred Heart devotion: reparation. She pleads with her apostles to make their lives relevant to the church's mission in the world: "Our congregation needs subjects who are strong and robust in virtue, not pious statues!''19 Sacred Heart devotion, for Clelia and her apostles, always implies responding to the living heart of Christ through lives of reparation. Zeal and charity are insufficient for those professing vows as Apostles of the Sacred Heart. Only when we are motivated by a spirit of reparation can we be seen clearly as apostles of the Sacred Heart devo-tion. What, then, is the nature, meaning, and relevance of the reparation this congregation fosters? A New Interpretation of Reparation Theologically reparation has often been mistakenly equated with atonement and expiation. Atonement is "an act of divine love that effects a new state of things, the peaceful relationship between God and man. Man is reconciled to God. atonement is effected through the 161 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart blood of the cross . man is placed in a new relation to God.''2° Atonement, therefore, is effected once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Christ's death and resurrection made humanity "at-one" with God, reconciling a broken relationship, correcting and reversing the effects, of human sinfulness, thus mak-ing humanity's "atonement" not only unnecessary but impossible. Expiation is closely related to. atonement in that it is appeasement by sacrifice, specifically the sac-rifice of Jesus' death, which appeased God's justice and "remove[d] the cause of the sinner's alienation from God in. order to restore him to holiness and divine favor.''2' Taken to their logical ends, these notions of atone-ment and expiation .seem to perceive "the love of God given us in Christ Jesus" as either correction of a rela-tionship gone awry or Christ's willing acceptance of the penalty of death due us. In this context, the practice of reparation seems to be about "repairing" broken-ness, "atoning for" sinfulness, and "making up" for wrongdoing as we model our life on Jesus Christ. This is the vision of reparation in Pius XI's 1928 encycli-cal Miserentissimus Redemptor (§18): "Whosoever of the faithful have piously pondered on all these things must needs be inflamed with the charity of Christ in his agony and make a more vehement endeavor to expi-ate their own faults and those of others, to repair the honor of Christ, and to promote the eternal salvation of souls." This "atoning" and "expiative" sense speaks of a need for humanity to repent, convert, and wor-ship, but nowhere does it speak of the invitation given to humanity to love in the face of brokenness, that the heart of God may be loved and not rejected. I propose that, in the context of Sacred Heart devotion, reparation speaks direcdy of this invitation: "The focus of God's Review for Religious ¯ forgiveness in Christ is less on a word that is spoken to assuage guilt and more on a transformation of relation-ships-- with God and with other human beings."22 As seen above, religious consecration is a response of love prompted by the recognition and humble accep-tance of the unconditional, sacrificial love of God. Each of the vows has been shown to uniquely manifest, in the light of devotion to the Sacred Heart, a particular aspect of our loving response. Reparation, as a dis-tinctive response of love, is a particular expression of Sacred Heart devotion. It is a response of love to the broken heart of Christ, as when we see someone we love (and also Someone) hurting, broken, bleeding, and in pain, and want to--need to, are impelled t0--respond in manners worthy of love. William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, claimed that the motive for reparation is that we not "go on wounding one who accepts our wounds like that; we are filled with fear, not the old craven fear of punishment, but the fear of wounding the tenderest of all hearts.''23 Reparation does not necessar-ily seek to repair the wrongdoing (for we may not be responsible for it), but seeks to respond to the broken heart of our loved One by offering concrete, tangible acts of love. This authentic healing power of reparation '~"The focus of God's forgiveness in Christ is less on a word that is spoken to assuage guilt .and more on a transformation of relationships-with God andwith othe~r human beings." 163 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart 164 was understood by Aquinas: "When one. is in pain, it is natural that the sympathy of a friend should afford con-solation., because, when a man's friends console him, he sees that he is loved by them, and this affords him pleasure. Consequently, since every pleasure assuages sorrow, it follows that sorrow is mitigated by a sympa-thizing friend" (ST I-II.38.3). To extend this idea to how human acts of love serve as loving reparation to Christ, John Paul II said in another place: "In the heart of Christ the human heart comes., to unite filial love for God with love for the neighbor. In this way--and this is the true meaning of the reparation asked for by the heart of the Savior--on the ruins heaped up by hatred and violence can be built the civilization of love so greatly desired, the kingdom of the heart of Christ.''24 For the Apostles of. the Sacred Heart, it is imperative that they understand rightly their mission in the church and their ministry in the world. Their witness of repara-tive love can show all the faithful what their response to the brokenness of our world must be. Reparation, far from being an obsolete relic, is an essential component of Clelia Merloni's charism, and a unique way for her apostles to live their vows of poverty, chastity, and obe-dience. Experiencing Jesus as God's incarnate love, they are called to respond as incarnate love to his open heart still broken in the woundedness of his loved ones. In respond-ing, they are not merely practicing their own personal spirituality; they are engaging in their ministry. As Pius XII said in Haurietis aquas (§112), "In show-ing devotion to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the external acts of piety have not the first or most impor-tant place; nor is its essence to be found primarily in the benefits to be obtained." Rather, reparation must be a dynamic response of love, reaching out to the broken- Review for Religious ness of humanity--at any given moment, in any given circumstance. "The practical good that emerges in the event [of reparative love] is seen not only in the inward realm of personal and spiritual values, but in the trans-formation of the material order through which the val-ues are expressed.''25 Living her congregation's motto, "Caritas Christi urget nos!" (2 Co 5:14), consumed by the love of God given her in Christ Jesus, an apostle the Sacred Heart "returns love for Love" by the gift of her life of vowed chastity and reaches out to ev.eryone in selfless service. By her vowed obedience she matches her heartbeat to the heart of God. By their vowed poverty she is free to give her all to the broken hearts around her. She accepts humbly the gifts she receives from the incarnate, inflamed, obedient, and open heart of Jesus and returns them as her gift to his Body, the church. The reparative value of these gifts lies in its heal-ing power for the broken heart of Christ in the church and in the world. Reparation from this n~w perspective is most assuredly, then, not merely valuable for those among the faithful who may be attracted to it as a pious practice, but a vital mission entrusted to each mem-ber of the church. Reparative love is the love of God poured out through us, incarnate in the members of Christ's Body, embodied in real hands and real hearts. Reparative love speaks a word of selflessness to a world broken by hatred and individualism. It lives a life of generosity in a world broken by selfishness and fear. It breathes a promise of forgiveness for a world broken by resentment and injustice and gives a hand of compassion to a world broken by suspicion and greed. Reparation is anything but old-fashioned piety entrenched in sen-timentalism or self-derogation. Rightly understood in the brokenness of our contemporary experience, repa- 165 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart 166. ration is the tender answer of hearts on fire, yearning to express themselves boldly, so that brokenness and woundedness may always and only be answered with all-consuming love, centered in God, reaching out to every one of God's beloved people. Notes I Quoted in Annice Callahan, Karl Rahner's Spirituality of the Pierced Heart (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 108, 110-111. 2 See Patricia E Walter, "Religious Life in Church Documents," Review for Religious 51, no. 4 (July-August 1992), and Nadine Foley, "The Nature and Future of Religious Life," Origins 19, no. 13 (1989): 212. 3 Michael Himes, "Returning to Our Ancestral Lands," Review for Religious 59, no. 1 (January-February 2000): 18. 4 Sandra Schneiders, Selling All (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), pp. 108, 114. s It is important to be aware of this rich history as we examine Sacred Heart devotion from a modern perspective. For a more com-prehensive examination of the history of the devotion, see Timothy O'Donnell's Heart of the Redeemer (Manassas, Virginia: Trinity Communications, 1989) and Joseph Stierli's Heart of the Saviour: A Symposium on Devotion to the Sacred Heart (New York: Herder and Herder, 1958). 6john Paul II, "Letter to Bishop Raymond Seguy, Bishop of Autun, Chalon, and Macon, June 22, 1990," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, ed. Carl J. Moell SJ (New York: Crossroad, 2004), p. 210. 7 Augustine, Sermons on the New Testament 7(7). s Thomas Aquinas, ST 1/-1/.81.3 ad 3. See Pius XII, Haurietis aquas (1956), §103. 9 Benedict xvI, letter on the fiftieth anniversary of Haurietis aquas, 15 May 2006. 10 Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est (2005), §17. '~ Sandra Schneiders, New Wineskins (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 109. ,2 Schneiders, New Wineskins, pp. 105, 106. ~3 Clelia Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, ed. Pierpaula de Farias (Rome: privately printed, 1992), pp. 167, t73. Review for Religious ,4 Quoted in Christopher E Mooney, Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1968), pp. 28-29. 15 John Paul II, "Homily during Sacred Heart devotions and beati-fication of Father Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski, at the Aviation Club in Torun, June 7, 1999," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, p. 112. 16 John Paul II, "Homily at the Polyclinic of the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, June 28, 1984," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, p. 47. 17 Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, p. 167. ,s James Alison poignandy elucidates this idea with his concept of the "intelligence of the victim." See Knowing Jesus (London: Ashford Colour Press, 1998). 19 Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, p. 334. 20 Kenneth E Dougherty, "Atonement," in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), vol. 1, p. 837. 21 Lucien Richard, "Expiation (in Theology)," in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 5, p. 565. 22 L. Gregory Jones, "The Craft of Forgiveness," Theology Today 50, no. 3 (October 1993): 356. 23 William Temple, The Faith and Modern Thought, quoted in Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of Atonement (New York: Scribners, 1951), p. 80. 24 See the letter of John Paul II to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach sJ on the Canonization of Blessed Claude la Colombi~re SJ, in UOsservatore Romano, English edition, 27 October 1986, and referred to by Benedict xvI (see note 9 above). 25 G.W.C. Thomas, "Reparation: The Sevenfold Pattern of Redemption," Church Quarterly Review 158, no. 327 (April-June 1957): 165. ,167 68.2 2009 JAMES H. SCHIMELPFENING Being Heard, Being Healed: Learning from the Quaker Tradition We cannot change the world by a new plan, project, or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice, and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, lay side their occupations and preoccupa-tions, and listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center. --Henri Nouwen1 168 Community is a word that is tossed around a lot, but is hard to define. My own religious order and those who share in the Marianist tradition embrace community as a constitutive part of our mission and identity, and thus we engage in countless conversations discerning its meaning, the place it has in our lives, and how it is to be an instrument of mission. After thirty-five years of religious life and after living in communities on four continents, my experience of community is all over the board. Sometimes I am most grateful for it, but other times it has been quite the opposite. James H. Schimelpfening SM lives at Marianist Community; Meyer Hall; 4435 East Patterson Road; Dayton, Ohio 45430. Review for Religious Recently I experienced community in an utterly refreshing and transformative way. I participated in a series of six seasonal retreats based on the Quaker tradition and the work of Parker Palmer. The Center for Courage and Renewal, partially funded by Lilly Endowment, offered these retreats for clergy and con-gregational leaders) The approximately twenty partici-pants represented a variety Of religious denominations, including a young Jewish woman and myself, the only Catholic. That in itself made the retreats interesting and delightful. These retreats, spread over eighteen months, opened up and stretched my idea and sense of community. I want to share with you something of the enriching, grace-filled, contemplative experience that the retreats were for me. Welcoming the True Self One of the principal resources for the retreats was Parker Palmer's A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey toward an Undivided Life. He portrays community as "one that knows how to welcome the soul"--or true self--and how to hear its voice within oneself. He refers to this kind of community as a circle of trust, a revealing name. Such a community, he writes, allows us to reach in towards our wholeness, out towards the world's need, while living at "the intersection of the two.''3 This intersection is sometimes a daunting place to be. One needs to be with others who, in the right sort of way, support and encourage each other in their moving inward and outward. Often, at least in my experience of community, issues and concerns are discussed, debated, and at times argued; then votes are taken, and there are winners and losers. Tensions, often subtle but barely hidden, may 169 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed remain. As a result, people keep trying to fix each other or straighten the others out. Advising and rectifying implies that one knows what is good for others if only they would acknowledge it. Community harmony and peace become elusive, and passive-aggressive behavior comes to the fore. Life in community has taught me that violence has many forms that give pain and raise suspicion and result in protective walls. Often persons are diminished and given less respect in favor of group-think or the institution itself.4 Life in community some-times fails to lead persons to wholeness or holiness, and when such failings occur the mission too falters. Touchstones In the series of retreats that I was part of, there was a quite different style of community and way of being present to one another and ultimately to oneself. I have experienced it also in other religious and church com-munities, but only rarely, and even more rarely as an intentional way of being together. In each retreat of this series, one of the first things we did was review the Circle of Trust Touchstones, the guidelines for all of our time together, not only when we were "sitting in the circle." We would: ¯ presume, extend, and receive welcome. ¯ be present as fully as possible. ¯ offer by invitation, not demand. ¯ speak our truth in ways that respect other people's ¯ not fix, save, advise, or set each other straight. ¯ learn to respond with honest, open questions. ¯ turn to wonder when the going got tough. ¯ attend to our own inner teacher. ¯ trus~t.and learn from and in the silence. ¯ observe deep confidentiality. ¯ know that it is possible to leave the circle with Review for Religious whatever you needed and that the seeds planted could and would keep growing. To live these touchstones intentionally takes work and demands attention, but something good happens and a different environment is created. These touchstones were practical and crucial for our community because we were so diverse. We were men and women, ordained and nonordained, Christian and Jewish, various races and ages, formed in different religious traditions with different doctrines and creeds, coming from all over the country, and having various personali-ties and committed relationships. It was only by living these touchstones that something new and deep could be born, so that we could move beyond differences that would normally keep us separate. Living these touchstones introduced ways of being together that led to deeper respect for persons and enduring bonds of friendship and trust. It is all too easy to focus on what is different and what is perceived to be "wrong," instead of expe-riencing what is right. This environment made it pos-sible to speak and listen in a gender and more attentive manner. It is all too easy tofocus on what is different and what is perceived to be "wrong," instead ,of experiencing what is right. Circles of Trust Parker Palmer calls such a community a circle of trust. The name, in my experience, is descriptive. We would sit in an unbroken circle with no one coming first or being 171 68.2 2009 Schimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed 172j last, no beginning or end.In the center of the circle would be a small table with a candle and flowers that would serenely hold our attention, and hold us together like the hub of a wheel. When speaking we would "speak to the circle," not across the circle as groups may do and thereby tend to debate and break down the sense of the whole, of community. That happened to us once, and the feel of the group changed and became charged with something that we recognized as not helpful, not what we desired. We returned to speaking to the circle, not across it, and the environment healed. "Speaking to the circle" is speaking from one's own inner self to the center of the circle, where all that is said is held attentively and respectfully. There is no speaking from one ego to another, nor is it about try-ing to impress or persuade. It is simply about expressing oneself, a kind of sharing that is less stressful and much more peaceful,s Trust is what constitutes the circle; without trust there is no circle. Trust makes the space safe for sharing one's truth without fear of judgment or criticism. This trust grows deeper over time. As I share these reflections, I realize that a circle of trust can seem like avoidance of conflict, blind acceptance, lack of discernment, or some such idea. It might even seem "new age" and shallow. My experience, however, is just the opposite. A circle of trust and living the touchstones allow for something deep to emerge and grow and bear fruit. Circles of trust allow more truths to come to light and authentic relationships to form. It is interesting and even important to note that Quakers do not avoid diffi-cult situations, but instead are present to them differently. That is why historically Quakers have often been present where thorny social issues like justice, peacemaking, and reconciliation are being pondered and evaluated. Review for Religious A circle of trust forms a community that allows per-sons to be attentive to their inner self, what we often refer to as one's true self. This true self can surface in an enviroriment that is encouraging, one that is respectful, silent, attentive, and caring. As Parker Palmer points out, a circle of trust is focused on an inward journey and invisible yet very real pow-ers. The purpose of the circle is to support each person's inner journey. A circle of trust lives the paradox of "being alone together," of being present to one another as a "community of solitudes."6 Solitude and community, rightly understood, go together; they are not opposed. In truth, everyone needs both the interior intimacy that comes from solitude and the otherness that comes from life in community. The purpose of this community is to allow the true self, the self in God, to present itself. Unfortunately, however, too many "communities" do not provide this environment; instead, they scare the true self away. It withdraws into the shadows because it does not feel safe to come forward. We wear masks and do not share what is most truly our own. Too often we do not even know what is most true within us. A circle of trust community is made of people who know how to sit quietly and wait for the soul, the true self, to show its face. The relationships within it are "not pushy, but patient; not confrontational, but compassionate; they are filled, not with expectations and demands, but with abiding faith in the reality of the inner teacher and in each person's capacity to learn from it." In my experience, it is atypical to find a community that has people who have the capacity for this kind of presence to each other. "The people who help us grow toward true self," Parker Palmer writes, "offer uncondi-tional love. They don't judge or try to change us. They 173 68.2 2009 Schimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed do offer and hold hopeful expectancy, creating the space that safeguards and encourages the inner journey."7 This is an incredible gift to offer one another, and within this form of community we find, I believe, the greatest potential for growth and transformation. What most people desire is to be heard and honored. As one fellow retreatant commented, "To be heard is to be healed!" Too often in community and in conver-sation we do not feel we have been genuinely heard or respected, and this only deepens wounds and pro- ~_ duces greater alienation. In the circle of trust, deep ¯ .~.L listening to one another, as well as to oneself, is paramount and happens rather naturally. Listening deeply is a nonviolent act; it is an amazing gift to offer. Patient listening, and forming circles of trust according to the touchstones, moves against the .grain of our habitual culture--both secular, and religious. Circles of trust are about listen-ing, expectant listening. This kind of listening only goes deeper with time and is all about God. God is the one who makes such listening possible and who gives us the hunger and thirst for it. God beckons, and we soon dis-cover that all that is good comes from the hand of God. Ultimately, God is the goal of our listening, for in so doing we can discern and do the work of God.s The content is simple, and its purpose is to open us to deeper listening and reflection. We would use poetry, stories, songs, or reflection. Metaphor plays an important part in this kind of sharing because images, allegories, allow us to approach from a slant, not head- What most people desire is to be heardand honoredl , Review for Religious on; they bring into play much more than the intellect. Metaphor has a way of surprising, even seducing the heart and soul, while tricking the mind into taking another look and discovering mystery in the process. We all belong to numerous kinds of groups and com-munities, each offering something unique and respond-ing to different needs. Circles of trust, however, generate within me a longing for such a community within the church and in religious life. Such a community, it seems to me, creates an environment that encourages and sup-ports deep growth and leads to holiness. Circles of trust might not seem to be as useful or as practical and func-tional as other groups might be, and so one considers circles of trust idealistic, utopian, unrealistic, even for religious or church communities. I would disagree. If we strove towards such deep trust and respect, many of the functional things we now squabble about would sim-ply disappear, and other practical details of life would take care of themselves. If they had to be dealt with, conversation and decision making about them would be quite different. We too easily forget that even our busi-ness meetings have a spiritual component and, hope-fully, necessitate a listening for truth.9 The experience and outcome would be a lot healthier, and life together would be more amiable, more authentic, and even more reflective of the gospel and Christian living. Circles of trust and community are not about numbers, but about the quality of the space created and shared. As Parker Palmer notes in A Hidden Wholeness, we live divided lives. We live alienated from our true selves, and end up feeling depressed, aimless, anxious, or angry. We feel the pain of being alienated from our own truth. We yearn to be centered,1° and a circle of trust creates the space where centering can happen and foster wholeness. 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed A Spiritual Experience Although not always described this way explicitly, circles of trust are a spiritual experience, and the retreats I participated in were, beyond doubt, retreats. They were days of communing with God, with the Spirit of God very much alive and present within us and among us. The retreats were distinctly reflective and contempla-tive, with time for being alone and time for sharing with another or with the entire circle. The environment of the retreat center itself was ideal,ll The Tibetan chime would draw us into silence and into the circle. I found it easy to recall that, where two or three are gathered in God's name, God is truly present. The entire environ-ment was charged with the holiness of God. It was an experience of the shekinah of God. Clearness Committees Those familiar with the Quaker tradition know that forming Clearness Committees is an important part of their life. Each of our retreats set aside time for the work of Clearness Committees. I found myself refer-ring to them as Quaker discernment, a way of listening for truth, truth that is .not imposed from outside, but arises from within. This was one of the most important experiences of discernment that I have ever engaged in, most especially with a group, and was for me a highlight of our time together. This discernment is not done fir us, as sometimes occurs. Instead, in a circle of trust, in a safe, reflective space, we are engaged in our own dis-cernment, in our own way and time, with the encourag-ing and challenging presence of people who really and truly care for us)2 Clearness Committees help the focus person (who has asked for its help)13 to walk an inner iourney. They do so by their presence, asking open and Review for Religious honest questions, not interpreting or offering advice, not judging or fixing, but treating the person carefully as he or she looks and listens deeply. There is no con-flict of agendas or egos; there is only one focus person with one agenda. Just as the circles of trust offer a new way of conceiv-ing community, so the Clearness Committees offer a new way of helping persons make decisions about the direction of their life. I found here an incredible respect for the person and belief in the action of God. Instead of decisions, especially the more personal decisions, being made by others, a Clearness Committee allows for a form of listening and obedience that holds promise of greater life for the person and also, in the long run, for others and for ministry. Clearness Committees were a primary factor in draw-ing me to the seasonal retreats, for I was doing discern-ment in my own life. A series of circumstances along with much that was moving within my own heart and soul had made me wonder where the Spirit might be leading me. I needed and desired some form of guidance, and I needed to enter more deeply into a process of discernment, but I did not want someone or a group telling me what to do. I was desperately seeking someone or a group willing to walk with me, providing the safe place where I could be open and vulnerable in my discerning reflection. In my own religious community this did not seem possible. My superiors were likely to approach my questions as an administrative concern and decision, but did not seem able to walk with me in the way I needed. The seasonal retreats, however, with the circles of trust and the blessed opportunity to be the focus person of a Clearness Committee drew me like a bee to nectar. I asked for a Clearness Committee to sit with me not 177 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed Such d cision ,making; demands great patienee, and a strongcom i m n once but twice. The experience was powerful because of the safe, caring environment and the confidentiality, the love and faith, that were present. The immediate experi-ence was powerful, but I was surprised and delighted by how it continued to reveal truths in the following days, weeks, and months. Did I receive an immediate answer? No. Were there "aha" moments? More later, than at the time. Was clarity received? Yes, but much more came long after the experience was over. Such decision making demands great patience and a strong commitment to the process: it can take time for the truth to come to light. Quakers are good at waiting and supporting one another in this invest-ment of time and pres-ence, doing so in the belief that a truth can and will come to light and, when it does, can be embraced with one's whole self. One lets the work of God pro-ceed and reveal itself. This "Quaker discernment" takes as long as is needed. It is exceedingly countercul-rural in our quick-fix, fast-food, I-want-it-now culture. If, as religious communities, church, and church min-istries, we could learn to discern in this way, I believe that both community life and ministry would be a good deal richer. Going Home As a high introvert when I first began attending the retreats, I was uncertain about it, but, having read A Hidden Wholeness the year before, I was curious enough Review for Religious to give it a whirl and see what would happen. After the first couple of retreats, I felt completely at home, and, although I never knew what the experience of any particular retreat would be, I soon learned to trust the Spirit, believing that whatever would happen would be grace--and I was never disappointed. It seemed that each retreat was its own "peak" experience that helped me go deeper and deeper into my soul while being sup-portive of others doing the same. Many retreats, even when powerful, are one-shot experiences, but this series of retreats, organized accord-ing to the seasons of the year, allowed for sacred remem-bering of what happened previously and delving into it once again from a slightly different slant, so that further truth could be discovered. On top of everything else, this was a wonderful ecumenical and interfaith setting that opened many wonderful doors. The most difficult part of each retreat was returning home to community and ministry. Although I would return deeply renewed, I saw that my recent experience of community would not be present back home. Every three months, as the next retreat drew near, I would look forward to it with great anticipation. My challenge now is to live the expe-rience and find ways to invite others into these circles of trust so that they too may have the joy and benefit of entering them that I have had. As I noted earlier, there are many different forms of community and many different definitions of commu-nity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Community is not an ideal; it is people."14 1 believe that what the Quaker tradition and Parker Palmer offer is worth exploring and experiencing as a very practical way of forming and being community. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35). r179 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed Notes ' As quoted in Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live An Authentic Life (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005). z Center for Courage and Renewal, www.couragerenewal.org. 3 Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: TbeJourney toward an Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2004), pp. 22, 25.4 The word person is used intentionally; not individual. The distinction is critical. 5 Palmer, Hidden I~oleness, pp. 118-119. 6 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, p. 54. 7 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, pp. 59, 60. 8 Michael Waida, Expectant Listening: Finding God's Thread of Guidance (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill ~ublicationsi 2007), p. 16. 9 Wajda, Expectant Listening, p. 22. ,0 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, pp. 45-46. " Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California. 12 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, p. 27. ~3 The focus person asks for Clearness Committee assistance regard-ing a question or issue that he or she is struggling with and seeking light about. ,4 Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 35. 180] Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion What has been your own occasion of experiencing the kind of "words of trust" that animate community life? Have you or has your community developed your own special ways of deepening the trust and faith-sharing integral to religious community living? How would you describe it and how often is it used? Review for Religious DORIS GOTTEMOELLER Religious Habits Reconsidered Years ago, when we were just beginning to wear secular dress, a sister friend remarked to me that she never noticed what anyone else was wearing. The remark struck me because I thought she was missing an important commu-nication from others. But, upon reflection later, it seemed likely that she meant that everyone deserves our respect, whether clad in rags or riches, in style or out--a conviction that I share. Also, I thought, she ,was probably indi-cating she is less sensate than I. As the years passed, however, with religious habits less and less in ,evidence, I have occa-sionally thought of investigating the topic more deeply. Comments such as these persist: "If you wore a habit, you'd get more vocations" and "Real sisters wear habits." They imply that our Doris Gottemoeller RSM last wrote .for us in 2005. Her address remains Catholic Healthcare Partners; 615 Elsinore Place; Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. 1181 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller * Religious Habits Reconsidered transition in dress is symbolic of an abandonment of val-ues or identity. It is hard at times not to feel defensive. No doubt there is scholarly literature available about the significance of dress through the ages. Dress as an indicator of social class and status, the change from toga and tunic to trousers and dresses, the influence of climate and occupation, and the development of new fabrics and methods of production--all of this has prob-ably been studied. I have not consulted any of it. First, I want simply to recall and describe this period of change. Then I will reflect on the significance of a religious habit for women and of the many decisions to forgo it. I will close with some questions for reflection and dialogue. Some readers may assume that there is noth-ing to be learned from the decisions made so long ago, but I think that some reflection can bear fruit for our present and future. What a Habit Is Not A religious habit is not a costume, a dress that tempo-rarily provides a new identity, either for dramatic effect or for fun. Costumes are worn in stage productions and at Halloween parties. A disguise is another form of temporary identity, one intended to deceive people. A vestment is worn to temporarily designate that one is performing a sacred function. Nor is a religious habit a uniform. Commentators ask, "Vv'hy don't you wear a uniform like airline atten-dants, nurses, and police personnel?" These uniforms signify professional qualification and a certain authority. In given situations their wearers are entided to respect because of their official function. Note, though, that uniforms often admit of variations. The attendants on a plane may be wearing slacks, shorts, or skirts, with or Review for Religious without coordinating jackets or sweaters. They are all in uniform, but they choose different forms of it. Nursing uniforms, too, admit of variation, even within the same department or on the same floor of a hospital. In contrast to any of these options, the religious habit was a permanent and unchanging garb. The cloth-ing ceremony at the beginning of novitiate signified a new identity, which one intended eventually to make lifelong. As we dressed each morning, we said prayers specific to each item of clothing. For the habit itself we prayed, "Clothe my soul, 0 Lord, with the nuptial - - robe of charity that I may carry it pure and undefiled before Thy judgment seat," The prayer for donning the cincture was "0 Lord Jesus Christ, who became obedi-ent unto death, even the death of the cross, grant me the true spirit of religious obedience." In my experience there were no optional choices around color or design or style, very litde adaptation to climate or occupation. Permission to wear a white habit in nursing care and in the tropics is the only possibility I can recall. The clothing ceremony at the beginning of novitiate sig nified a new identity. The Mandate to Change Before the mandate of Vatican Council II to update, our habit was the only dress we wore. In my experi-ence each sister had two habits, a heavy pleated wool serge version for Sundays and feast days and an every-day version in a lighter fabric. Neither was really wash-able. We wore a knee-length black veil, inner and wide outer sleeves, a leather cincture to which was attached a 183 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Habits Reconsidered 841 long rosary, and a starched white cotton coif and guimpe which we changed on Sunday and at midweek. Heavy black stockings and black oxfords completed the ensem-ble. Going out in winter required a shawl or a long black cloak with a heavy black veil pinned over the house veil. This habit was worn 365 days of the year, from rising in the morning to retiring at day's end, in the convent, the classroom, or the hospital, at work or recreation, at home or abroad. The habit was everywhere recognizable and, when clean and pressed, somewhat graceful and attractive. It was also economical: the daily habit lasted several years and the Sunday habit for many years. Thus it was a witness to poverty. The design had remained essentially the same for over 130 years. But, despite its familiarity and attractiveness, the habit was unsanitary, unsafe, and ill-suited to the climate in many places. It was also impractical for many occupations such as housework or recreational sports. Furthermore, all of the parts had to be sewn by hand. Keeping perspi-ration from the starched linens which encircled the face in hot weather was another challenge. Considerations such as these prompted the conciliar directive: "Habits should be simple and modest, at once poor and becoming. They should meet the requirements of health and be suited to the circumstances of time and place as well as to the services required by those who wear them. Habits of men and women which do not correspond to those norms are to be changed" (Perfectae caritatis § 17). This directive prompted the first genera-tion of modified or updated habits. Chapters reviewed designs, and each congregation chose one which seemed to embody the desired improvements. For the Sisters of.Mercy of the Union, this transition occurred in the summer of 1968. The new habit was mid-calf in length Review for Religious and could be purchased from a manufacturer's catalogue in an array of sizes. A veil which came just below the shoulders was attached to a white cap which left some hair exposed in front. The habit was washable, and nothing was starched. From Modified Habit to Secular Dress Why didn't this updated habit, which responded to the conciliar mandate, last? Here the story becomes more complex. As the decades passed, most congrega-tions loosened or eliminated their requirements that everyone wear a habit, even for professional or formal occasions, I would suggest that the following are some of the f~ctors that led to this evolution. First, the change of dress coincided with other changes that brought us into new settings and new cir-cumstances. Permission to travel without a companion and to drive an auto-mobile were two sig-nificant changes. No longer~did we have to depend on employ-ees or volunteer lay-persons to chauffeur us to professional meetings, doctors' appointments, the library or grocery, or a museum, movie, or sporting event. Freedom from the need for a sister companion encouraged individual choices about where to go or what to do with one's discretionary time. Some outings were with only lay friends or relatives. Individuals did not necessarily want to stand out in such settings. The introduction of personal budgets was another change Why .didn't this updated habit, which re.sponded to the conciliar mandate, last? 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Habits Reconsidered that facilitated variation in dress, as individuals could choose where they wished to shop and what they wished to buy. Another limit to the success of updated habits was the matter of style. As long as we were in 18th- or 19th-century garb, there was no relationship to any contem-porary style. But an adaptation to "circumstances of time and place" suggests at least some relationship to what other people are wearing. Hemlines are a case in point. Should they be adjusted upward and downward with changing styles? What about the size and proportions of the individual sister? The traditional habit swathed her in so many yards of fabric that her figure was effectively concealed, but the modified habit was more flattering to some than to others. Does everyone have to wear the same color? Do you wear the same thing for scrubbing the kitchen floor, lecturing before a class, attending a board meeting, and playing tennis on Saturday after-noon? Considerations such as these meant that individ-uals almost immediately began modifying the modified habit and also acquiring supplementary wardrobes for occasions when a habit was deemed inappropriate. The question of a veil comes in for special consid-eration. Questions of comfort, ideology, and style inter-mingled. In the old habit, when no hair was visible, we usually cut it very short for comfort. As soon as some hair was visible, it had to be styled. And not every style looked good peeping out from a veil. Keeping a veil anchored on one's head was sometimes a challenge. More significandy, the veil signified for some a femi-nine subservience to men. (Around that time, women gave up wearing hats and veils in church, and nurses stopped wearing caps with their uniforms.) Some argued that the veil was intended to symbolize virginity. Well, Review for Religious if it did, then shouldn't male religious who take a vow of celibacy also wear them? As we began to experiment with lay dress, some continued to wear the veil for a time, leading to some unfortunate combinations of flowered dresses topped off with veils. (Interestingly, the appearance of Islamic women clad in burqas and veils in Western cities was still too rare to invite a com-parison.) Another circumstance that promoted individual choice of dress was the movement toward individual-ism overall in Western culture. This is a phenomenon that would require books to chronicle and critique both its lights and shadows, but the point here is khat we were not immune from its influence. Religious life is essentially a communitarian commitment, but in many ways--not only choice of dress--it has embraced, or at least permitted, a wider expression of personal choice. While we were experimenting with dress, we were also exploring new ministries, new living arrangements, and new prayer styles. Much of this was a healthy reaction to practices which had encouraged immaturity, but some of it has diminished our corporate identity and witness. Nevertheless, choosing how to present oneself on a particular occasion or in a particular setting can be a revelation of one's personal judgment and self-iden-tification. Looking Back on the Changes in Dress The first thing that can be said is that the changes described here proceeded without a lot of self-reflection. We lacked the critical distance necessary to analyze the consequences of our choices or their interaction with other choices we were making. At times we hesitated to raise the issue in community for fear of seeming

Issue 67.1 of the Review for Religious, 2008. ; Mission Praye~r Consecrated Life Spiritual Supports QUARTERLY 67.'I 2008 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul V! said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih review@slu.edu ¯ \Veb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McD6nough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2008 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distrihution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such perntission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 67.1 2008 contents prisms 4 Prisms 13 23 mission Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission James P. McCloskey CSSP envisions creating an experience of "common ground" among people of goodwill within religious congregations about the many issues that cause division. Personal/Group Reflection Questions An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission James H. Kroeger MM reflects on the "mission motive" mentioned first by the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference: a deep sense of gratitude to God. prayer A Dream, Ash Wednesday, .and the Word Godelieve Theys OCSO shares a dream that has profound implications for finding God's Word alive and powerful, having always new things to say. Pedagogy of Prayer Jghn Carroll Futrell SJ reviews many aspects of our Christian prayer and suggests practical ways of making our lives more prayer-filled. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Pray Passionately Brendan Kneale FSC addresses the need to bring to our prayers a passion of the sort found in the wording of many Psalms. Revie~v for Religious 54 6O 67 consecrated life 0 The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries Clifford Stevens cautions that, as soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary concern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the window. Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons M. Regina van den Berg FSGM argues that the experiences that travel and the media make possible are often escapes from reality, while the limited environment of the enclosure can widen our horizons. Religious Brotherhood Today Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR sets. forth the challenges facing religious brothers' congregations, especially within the South Asian context. 74 85 spiritual supports Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Vincent Genovesi SJ presents a solid theological and pastoral response to the questions raised about the usefulness or necessity of the rite of reconciliation. Personal/Group Reflection Questions Mentors Mentored: Spiritual Companionship with a Saint Lou Ella Hickman IWBS shares her experience of choosing St. Edith Stein to be her mentor as she mentors others on their spiritual journey. departments 89 Scripture Scope: Reading the Sermon on the Mount 94 Canonical Counsel: Personal Records of Community Members 100 Book Reviews 67.1 2008 prisms As we move eight years into the 21st century, we could well take stock of how we are measuring up to the vision and mission set before us by John Paul II's apostolic letter "At the begin-ning of the new millennium." As the pope noted, we are not in the peren-nial process of inventing a new program each year or even each century. The program consists in the plan found in the Gospel and in the liv-ing tradition of the church. "It has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved, and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem." But this Gospel program has to be translated into pastoral initiatives that are adapted to the circumstances of each local church and each local religious com-munity. That is the action call as we begin anew with the favor of another year. Where do we begin? There can be no other beginning than the challenge issued by Vatican II's Lumen gentium, chapter 5: the universal call to holiness. All our pastoral planning, all our religious renewal efforts, all our peace and jus-tice endeavors are measured by the clarity of our focus on holiness. In the way we live and in what we do, the question is most realistic and practical: Do we want to become holy? Is that our desire for others? There can be no growth in holiness without our entering more fully into a learning how to pray. While a widespread interest in spirituali- Review for Religious ties and spiritual practices is a contemporary phenomenon, the foundation remains a personal prayer life. Prayer, even in its most contemplative and cloistered forms, opens our hearts simultaneously to the love of God and to the love of our brothers and sisters. It is our Christian prayer that enables us to be shapers of movements and events in our local situation and sometimes even more widely in the world. It is prayer that roots us in the truth that "without Me, you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). When we pray, we acknowledge the primacy of Christ and, in union with him, the primacy of the interior life and of holiness. Prayer itself needs to be nourished consistendy with a listening to the Word of God. As we continue to steep ourselves in Scripture, we find ourselves warming to the passion of sharing the Good News. This passion leads to a new sense of mission--mission not reserved to specialists or to lands different from our own. Yet witnessing to our faith vision must happen within a context of sensitivity to the differ-ent religious and value paths of our fellow citizens and to the diversity of cultures present within our own country in which the Christian message is expressed. In challenging all of us ordinary Christians, the pope writes: "A new apos-tolic outreach is needed which will be lived as the everyday commitment of Christian communities ahd groups." As Vatican II's Gaudium et spes §34 says, "The Christian message does not inhibit men and women from building up the world or make them disinterested in the welfare ofotheir fellow human beings: On the contrary, it obliges them more fully to do these very things." Review for Religious is privileged to play its part, through its many authors, in sharing insights and encouraging practices for this Christian mission. David L. Fleming SJ 67.1 2008 mission JAMES P. Mc CLOSKEY Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Ensnarled in traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I began to listen to a radio talk pro-gram more intendy than usual. I'was searching for words of consolation on a long and tedious drive. What I found was a fascinating--and stirring--discussion about reconciliation. The topic was abortion, but the focus of the discus-sion was the search for "common ground." The hour-long program was a recapitula-tion of meetings that occurred during the past year. The meetings were organized by women who had opposing positions on the issue of aborti6n. Representatives of both groups described themselves as feminists. The partici-pants in the year-long discussion were women accustomed to the public forum. That is, they were intelligent and articulate spokespersons James P. McCloskey CSSp writes from Congregazione dello Spirito Santo; Clivo di Cinna, 195; Roma 00136; Italy. Review for Religious for "pro-life" and "pro-choice" positions. During the year there had been unsuccessful attempts by some to cancel the series of meetings, angry leaks to the press about the discussions, and genuine fearfulness on both sides. But the meetings took place. And the result was extraordinary. Women who did not accept the position of other women who, in their opinion, allowed the law to regu-late their bodies listened nevertheless with compassion as their colleagues recounted their religious-faith con-victions, their differing understandings of the human person, and ~their simple--and different--biological beliefs. Other women, who could not theretofore abide the notion that females could terminate what they believed to be a human life within them, responded with empathy towards women whose scientific and human-istic principles were simply different from their own. In the end, members of neither group changed their positions. But also, in the end, members of both groups grew in respect and compassion for their "opponents." They achieved a form of "common ground" that will serve as the basis for future relationship and conversa-tion between them. Not for discussion of abortion do I raise this exam-ple, but as a way of envisioning and creating a similar experience of "common ground" among p~ople of good-will within religious congregations that were founded for mission and for service to the poor. The existence of multiple cultures within congregations, mirroring the multiple cultures within the Catholic Church, is evident. These cultures are related to the different languages, tribes, national identities, and ages within the congre-gations, but they are not confined to them. The social scientist Edgar Schein defines culture as "the deeper 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic 'taken-for-granted' fashion an organization's view of itself and its environment."1 In Schein's view the most useful way to think about culture is to imagine it as "the accumulated shared learning of a given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cogni-tive elements of the group members' total psychological functioning.''2 Since the publication of Schein's work, the under-standing and perception that most members of an orga-nization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness that many organizations contain multiple cultures or subcultures. Noting that some orga-nizations may have only fragmented, disjointed cultures, Joanne Martin has asked whether culture needs to be something internally consistent, or whether it can be inconsistent and expressive of difference. Can it incor-porate confusion, ignorance, paradox, and fragmenta-tion? What are the boundaries around culture, and how do cultures change?3 By multiple cultures within a religious congrega-tion, I mean the presence of differing and sometimes opposing worldviews under the umbrella of having been founded for a single purpose and with a single Rule of Life. Similarly, among Catholics in general, some define themselves as God's "pilgrim people," a term that implies moving towards the kingdom of God but not yet achieving it. Others think of the church as the kingdom of God here on earth. These different understandings translate into different understandings of morality, sac-ramental life, liturgy, and hierarchy. They are some-times called differences of "style," but they are more profound than that. Review for Religqous In religious missionary congregations, founded for "the spread of the gospel to those who have not yet heard it," it is no wonder that multiple cultures are the order of the day. On a large scale, those differences are racial, linguistic, ideological, generational, and ecclesi-astical. We make national and tribal attempts at "enculturation" of the life of our congregation and its values within a particular set-ting, translating ideals into prac-tice- often with success but not always. Within our congrega-tion's American subculture, mul-tiple differences of culture, are often experienced just as acutely and intensely as in international subcultures. Even in the "real 'life" of persons in one community, such as the same parish or school, different worldviews emerge that challenge common living. Recently, in a community-room conversation, a priest said, "It is impossible to be both Republican and Spiritan." He said it with the force of true conviction, and the Republican Spiritans in the room grew silent and began to seethe. In one prov-ince there are celebrations of the Tridentine liturgy, and there are those who question whether the celebration of daily Eucharist is ideal--or even spiritually healthy. The understanding and perception that most members of an organization share the same cultural viewpoint has moved toward an awareness ,that, many organizations contain multip!~e cultures or Subcultures. 67.1 2008 McCloskey * Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mis~ion There are liberals, conservatives, social activists, phi-losophers, and papists. A morley--and gracedmcrew! Undercurrents of cultural difference emerge in quiet discussions concerning the role of lay associates in the congregation; concerning the rising influence of the "southern" provinces, where candidates are many and new energy and vitality overshadow the elders of the "north"; and concerning members who choose to live and work in "untraditional" settings, interpreting "mis-sion" in a different way. Undercurrents rise to the sur-face during provincial elections or national assemblies, when stakes are high and the level of well-being is at risk. Sometimes an "elephant in the room" is studiously ignored during discussion of clergy sexual abuse, sexual orientation, financial accountability, or institutional assessments. In congregations with a missionary orientation and an international membership, the formal "cultural" training of members tends to be thorough and highly professional. Degrees in cross-cultural communica-tion, missiology, and anthropology abound. Experts in interreligious dialogue, ecumenism, and international development are fairly commonplace. Candidates in for-marion spend a period of ministry in another cultural context before definitive commitment, and most new members are assigned to countries not .their own. It is usual for members to achieve fluency in a second or even a third language. .Why, then, do we often find it difficult to talk among ourselves? Is it simply the human condition that the "traditionalists" will oppose the "progressives," that tribal alliances will win out over competence in choosing leadership, and that "turf wars" will decide who controls property and finance? We opted for more. Review for Religious And we know that the divisions are sinful reminders of our weakness. And so what is the solution to the dissolution? The solution is a simple one--a commitment to sustained and deliberate conversation for the purpose of achiev-ing "common ground." Following the model employed by the pro-life and pro-choice advo-cates, it is imperative to establish "rules" for dis-cussion. It is urgent to listen with care and real empathy. It is important to proceed with respect and humility. No one We know that the divisions are sinful reminders of . our weakness. person fully embodies the congregation's ideal mem-ber. Together, the members bear worldwide witness to the values espoused by its founders. No one perspective is to be eliminated or misjudged. The effort to engage in this conversation is fearful and intimidating. But it is the only way that differences can be respected--and, ultimately, that the persons expressing those different opinions will be respected and loved. The meaning of "mission" has changed since the foundation of the Spiritan congregafon in the 18th cen-tury. Far from an imposition of a foreign culture upon a people, mission is no less than sustained, purposeful, and respectful dialogue. It is a commitment to remain at the table, conversing honestly until the Spirit speaks. W-hat greater witness to the "mind of Christ" is possible than the example of a community determined to "linger at the table" and fully invest itself in genuine, honest conversation--for mission? 67.1 2008 McCloskey ¯ Conversation: A Brave New Way of Mission Notes t Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), p. 6. 2 Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), p. 10. 3 Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 4. 2o o Personal/Group Reflection Questions Where does my sense 6f mission come from--directly from God, from superiors, from the community in which I live? What give me a continuing sense of confirmation and support for my mission? When do we talk about our mission-~our individual ministries or our corporate ministry together? What makes this conversation helpful? What makes it painful and contentious? Review for Religious JAMES H. KROEGER An "Asian" Meditation on the Gift of Mission ~/~y mission? This perennial, persistent question mits of a variety of valid responses. Asking why is fundamentally a question of "mission motivation." Why evangelize? Why be Jesus' disciple? Why concern yourself?. What ends does mission really serve? The bishops of Asia continually grapple with these questions as they explore the evangelizing mission of the church on this vast continent of four billion people, where less than three percent of the burgeoning masses are Christian. Although these leaders of the church in Asia have elucidated several reasons for engaging in mission, what is striking is the "mission motive" they James H. Kroeger MM has since 1970 served mission in the Philippines and Bangladesh. Currently he is professor of Mission Studies and Islamics at the Loyola School of Theology; Ateneo de Manila University; Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights; Quezon City 1108; Philippines. jkroeger@admu.edu.ph 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission mentioned first during the fifth plenary assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC). Collectively they forcefully asserted: "We evange-lize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God, the Father 'who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing' (Ep 1:3) and sent the Spirit into our hearts so that we may share in God's own life. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts transformed by the grace of God" (FABC V). The Asian bishops vigorously affirm: "That is why it is so important for us Christians to have a deep faith-experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rm 8:39), that love which has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has ,been given to us (Rm 5:5). Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Note some of the words and phrases that the FABC uses to describe this motive for mission: "gratitude to God," "grateful hearts," "spiritual blessing," "given to us," "love received as gift and mercy." Indeed, mission is viewed as a gi~, graciously given, gratefully received, and generously shared. Gratitude is a powerful motive for energetic evangelization. The Image of Gift All cultures and peoples give gifts, particularly on special occasions and at significant life events: birthdays, weddings, holidays, anniversaries. Gifts bond people together, they express gratitude and appreciation. Gifts are chosen personally and carefully, to please each recip-ient. Often gifts-are exchanged at the same moment, further cementing families together, and friends too. Asians have elevated gift-giving into an art. What would Chinese celebrations and the Lunar New Year Review for Religiot~ be without generous gifts offered in red envelopes (ang-pao)? In Korea the ritual celebration of one's sixtieth birthday (hwangap) is an occasion for lavish gifting. No Filipino feels comfortable without bringing some pasa-lubong-- large or small--when returning home. Probably it is the experience of giving and receiving gifts--so deeply human--that prompted Asia's bishops to see gratitude for abundant grace received as a fit-ting image and motive for mission. This gift image expresses Christian thankfulness for God's unique, gra-tuitous, gift--Jesus the Son. Each day in the Eucharist, a Greek word that means thanksgiving (eucha-ristein), we say "we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks." Frequently in the Mass the Prayer over the Gifts refers to the "holy exchange of gifts." To help in grasping the deep meaning in the image of mission as gift, this "Asian" reflection now presents three interrelated moments of what might be termed "gift missiology." Three "R" words capture mission-as-gift: Recognize, Receive, and Reciprocate. Recognize by being profoundly aware of the uniqueness of God's gift. Receive by personally appropriating God's gift. Reciprocate by sharing God's gift with others. :The first moment in hppreciatin g "gift missiology" is ~to become deeply conscious of th~ depths of God's love. Recognizing the Gift The first moment in appreciating "gift missiology" is to become deeply conscious of the depths of God's 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission love, the love of the Trinity. The mission decree of the Second Vatican Council (Ad gentes) noted: "The pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. This decree [divine plan] flows from that 'fountain of love' or charity within God" (AG §2). Mission originates in the centrifugal love of the Trinity; our missionary God shares of his essence which is love. God the Father gifts us with his incar-nate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One can receive no greater gift. Prayer and contemplation facilitate a depth-awareness of this great gift. The New Testament is replete with expressions of God's magnanimous generosity. Paul reminds the Romans: "Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift considerably outweighed the fall . Divine grace, coming through the one man Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. The results of the gift also outweigh the results of one man's sin . Jesus Christ will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve" (Rm 5:15-17). As one con-templates God's profound generosity, gratitude wells up in_the heart, leading one to proclaim "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift" (2 Co 9:15). Recognizing God's gifts also means being pro-foundly aware that we do not earn or merit the gifts; they come from God's generosity, as Paul explains to the Ephesians: "This was to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We Review for Religious are God's work of art" (Ep 2:7-10). Paul encourages the Romans to humbly receive God's gifts: "I want to urge each one among you not to exaggerate his real impor-tance . Our gifts differ according to the grace given us" (Rm 12:3-8). As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he promises them: "I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that Spirit of Truth. ¯ ." (Jn 14:16). Jesus' prom-ise is fulfilled at'. Pentecost: God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ,ethnic, or cultural background. "They were all I ~ filled with the - Holy Spirit .The Spirit gave them the gift of speech [to] proclaim the marvels of God" (Ac 2:1-12). The early Christian community--and our church today--have been assured of God's continuous generos-ity: "You will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed" (1 Co 1:7). Paul notes that all gifts have one source: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit . All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people just as he chooses" (1 Co 12:1-12). God's generous gifts are for all peoples, whatever their religious, ethnic, or cultural background; thus, "the Holy Spirit came down on all the listeners . All were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit should be poured out on the pagans too" (Ac 10:44-45). Peter proclaims God's graciousness in Jaffa, saying: "I realized 67.1 2008 Kroeger * The Gift of Mission then that God was giving them the identical gift be gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and who was I to stand in God's way?" (Ac 11:17). Mission originates in this profound consciousness of what the Father has graciously wrought in Christ Jesus and their Spirit, continually manifested in the church. St. Th~r~se of Lisieux expressed her awareness of God's gift when she concluded: "My vocation is Love! In the heart of the church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus, I shall be everything." Receiving the Gift A transformed consciousness that fully appreciates God's graciousness will receive the gift of faith with a joyful heart. One need only recall how this precious gift has been given and received. One could ask: Why of the four billion people in Asia have I been privileged to receive the gift of Christian faith? Who were God's instruments in transmitting the gift to me? What price did my parents or the missionaries have to pay so that I would have this great treasure? Who are the holy people in my life who have helped me appreciate God's gifts? Reflecting on these questions will facilitate a more per-sonal reception of God's gifts of grace. When Jesus engages the Samaritan woman at the well, he challenges her to have a deeper appreciation of the gift being offered: "If you only knew the giJ~ God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water" (Jn 4:10). Writing to the Corinthians, Paul invites them to a more profound awareness of the gift of being a Christian; he says: "People must~ think of us as Christ's servants, stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. Review for Religious What is expected of stewards is that each one should be found worthy of his trust . What do you have that was not given to you? And if it was given, how can you boast as though it were not?" (1 Co 4:1-2,7). Both the Samaritan woman and the Corinthian community are to appreciate that, since they have been recipients of God's gifts, they themselves are now able to be gifts to others. Precisely because one is loved, has experienced God's love, and has thus become lovable, one can reach out to others with the gift of love. This is the transformed ° - consciousness that God's gifting creates in receptive individuals. One is reminded of what the Asian bishops have said: "Without a personal experience of this love received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flour-ish" (FABC V). A deep reception of God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to minis-try. This was the "conversion" experience of St. Paul; the Lord affirmed: "This man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and ¯ before the people of Israel" (Ac 9:15). Paul personally owns this gift: "I have been made the servant of that gospel by a gi~ of grace from God who gave it to me by his own power" (Ep 3:7). Paul celebrates God's choice, noting that: "God never takes back his gi)~ or revokes his choice" (Rm 11:29). Reception of God's gift is a continuous, ongoing '~ A deep reception of, -God's Trinitarian gifting will result in a further gift: a personal vocation to ministry. 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission process. Paul reminds his beloved Timothy (and us) to keep growing in receptiveness (appreciation, personal-ization, appropriation) of God's gift: "You have in you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you; do not let it lie unused. Think hard about all this, and put it into practice" (1 Tm 4:14-15). Reciprocating God's Gift The New Testament passage that best captures this third moment of gift missiology is: "What you have received as a gift, give as a gift" (Mt 10:8). The logic is simple: if one truly appreciates a gift, one wishes to share it with others. The desire to gift others is the best and clearest manifestation of authentic gratitude. The New Testament letters of James and Peter add further insight: "Make no mistake about this, my dear brothers: every good gift, everything that is perfect, is given us from abtve; it comes down from the Father of all light" (Jm 1:16-17). "Each of you has received a special gift, so like good stewards responsible for all these different graces of God, put yourselves at the service of others . . . so that in everything God may receive the glory." (1 P 4:10-11). Pope John Paul II'S 1999 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (EA) provides several insightful per-spectives on how the church in Asia is to "reciprocate" (return, repay) the gifts it has received. "The church's faith in Jesus is a gift received and a gift to be shared; it is the greatest gift which the church can offer to Asia" (EA § 10b). "Blessed with ~the gift of faith; the church [is to become] a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed . The great Review for Religious question now facing the church in Asia is how to share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (EA §19a & c). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs in Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (EA §3 If). The perspective of "mission as gift" contains sev-eral insights on the approach or manner of mission in Asia, which is necessarily dialogue. Christians treasure the gift of their trinitarian faith, offering it freely, even enthusiastically, to others. The gift is offered with a sincere heart, yet all evangelizers know that people are free to accept or reject the gift. The dialogue partners, such as Muslims and Buddhists, also have gifts to offer: the riches of their faith and their personal "God experi-ence." Thus, a wonderful exchange of gifts can result. All people who ha~e the gift of faith need to collaborate so that through sharing their gifts they can" enrich the poor and needy in their midst. The Asian bishops were indeed most perceptive in their reflection on a renewed motivation for mission, listing gratitude first among several possible motives. Recall what they said: "We evangelize, first of all, from a deep sense of gratitude to God. Mission is above all else an overflow of this life from grateful hearts trans-formed by the grace of God . Without a personal experience of this life received as gift and mercy, no sense of mission can flourish" (FABC V). Paul's well-worded exhortation to his co-evangelizer Timothy provides a fitting conclusion for these reflec-tions on the gift of mission (gift missiology). In Paul's words, Christifins can find a reprise Of their recognition, reception, and reciprocation of the gift Of faith. Paul writes: 67.1 2008 Kroeger ¯ The Gift of Mission "Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you .Never be ashamed of witness-ing to the Lord . Bear hardships for the sake of the Good News . Accept the strength that comes from the grace of Christ Jesus . Proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it . Do all with patience . Make the preaching of the Good News your life's work, in thoroughgoing service" (2 Tm 1:6, 8-9a; 2:1; 4:1,5). Mary Keeping Shabbat There would be nearly nine months ahead Of seventh-day worship in synagogue, Sitting with her sisters and her mother In the women's rows, opposite the minyun Of their men, her secret blossoming within her, Thrusting against the homespun of her gown. She hugged its warm folds, the warm hand Of her mother covering her own. For Jews Seeking signs to believe in, or to disbelieve, The signs were there every Shabbat - seventh- Month, eighth-month - that a daughter of righteous Parents was boldly with child, Her Joseph betrayed! Her betrayer someone here among us! Watch where She turns her eyes. But she only turns her eyes To heaven, while saying her Shabbat prayers, Singing the Shabbat psalms, a bright-haired Mary, keeping Sunday in her womb. Nancy G. Westerfield Review for Religious GODELIEVE THEYS A Dream, Ash Wednesday; and the Word In my fifty years of living in a Catholic mon-astery, an important element of my religious development has been to pay close attention to dreams. My daily life involves prayer, ritual, music, liturgy, silence, study, and work, while my nights, more than sleep, are often filled with religious imagery, prayer, and music as part of dreaming. In the Christian tradition there is a long, often neglected history of dreams pro-viding spiritual insight. John Sanford captures this in his book title: Dreams: God's Forgotten Language. Clearly much of the modern world has forgotten the significance of dreams~ as car-riers of spiritual teachings, and unfortunately, even in religious tradition, we often leave these divine messages of the night unattended. Godelieve Theys OCSO.came from Belgium in 1962 to help found her new Cistercian home at Redwoods Abbey; 18104 Briceland Road; Whitethorn, California 95589. prayer 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word It was in a dream that St. Joseph was warned by an angel to take the holy Child out of Israel for protection from a king who would kill the newborn King. Joseph knew the power of dreams and followed the instruction provided in the night. Where are we in our willingness to listen and follow the dream messengers? Growing older as I am, I recently recalled a dream in which I was told, "You should at least write a book to serve human-ity." This made little sense to me at the time. I did not see myself as an author, and I had no desire or inten-tion to write for others until recently. In the past year I was so deeply moved by a specific dream that I now find myself creating material that seems to want to be shared widely. Though I am not writing a book, I still hope that my experiences may help others realizer that dreams can give'insight into the mysterious reality we call the religious or the spiritual. Religion, while in gen-eral being about dogma and tradition, is also personal, being about the soul's movement towards God. Key to monastic living is to find the divine in all of life's experi-ences. Like St. Joseph, we are called to listen to angelic voices in the night, to listen to dreams as insights into religious living. Last year during Lent I had an indelible dream. For much of this year I have been trying to hear fully the message that it offers. The dream has changed me and continues to do so. The dream was this: It was Ash Wednesday. I was aware that the morning liturgy mate-rial was already typed, but that the evening material was not. I left the church and went for a morning walk outdoors, as I often do. There I saw something alive on the ground. I bent down and touched it. It was the Word for the evening liturgy, alive under my hand. I was moved to tears. It was a numinous experience. I Review for Religious wondered what to do? Should I keep this living Word with me until after lunch, protecting the Word so that it would not be destroyed or die before it was typed for the evening service, or should I return immediately to the community and get it typed right away? I was per-plexed. I awoke singing the refrain of the song "Deep Within." My words were: "Deep within I will plant my law, not on stone, but in your heart. Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." I could not recall making any decision. Besides the music, the thing that jumped out for me in the dream was the breathtaking feeling that in touching the Word I was experiencing the living pres-ence of God. In the dream ~- - - this experience of God . ¯ in the Word comes after I leave the church and take a walk amid some of nature's beauty. For me this confirms the church's i'~ life and traditional struc- ', tures and also my rela- , tion to our monastery's natural environment. Going outdoors, as in my dream image, reminds me of the evolution of consciousness itself. Awareness develops through our contact with the: outside world, through relationship with the world around us. Living in the heart of a forest, I am blessed in knowing the world as divine creation. For years I have walked daily in the beauty of our landscape to be restored. Walking and attending to nature is a way of quieting the mind and refreshing the soul. The wonder of the natural world offers my constant .mental activ-ity the opportunity to be touched by the realm of the In touching the Word I was experiencing the living presence of God. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word senses. In this dream of finding the Word alive, on the ground before me, my senses seem to come fully alive and open me to the deeper experience of this religious moment. Might the Word be more available than we imagine if only we were more attuned to this possibility? Seeing with our eyes, hearing with our ears, touching with our hands---how much of life are we missing and how much spiritual potential lies undiscovered simply'because we are not aware? This dream calls me to greater attention because in it I saw the Word, alive, under my hand. I felt its pulse. It was like a little bird that could' not fly and was waiting perhaps for me to pick it up, hold it gently, quench its thirst, that it could recover its strength and fly again. It was truly an experience of the sacred to feel this life under my hand, to feel the living substance of it. In that moment there was an immediate relationship between God's Word and me. Eros, relatedness, was involved. I was deeply moved; my heart was touched to the point of tears. The Word needs to be seen, to be heard, to be spoken, to be listened to, and to be fol-lowed so that its message can get through and heal the depths of the heart. It is important to me that this Word was found, not only outdoors, but also on the ground, on the earth in front of me--not above, not in the air, not transcendent. Here a divine Word was putting itse!f right in front of me, like something that was lost. There it was, all by itself, needing my help, needing me to keep my eyes open or miss a divine manifestation. Iv am reminded of the story of the rabbi who was asked, "How is it that God doesn't speak to people as he did in the past?" The rabbi answered: "Because no one bows low enough any-more." Bowing low is a gesture of humility that we may Review for Religious lack. As modern people we seek the spiritual above and beyond, outside the world of matter, and perhaps are not humble enough to see what is right before us. But, returning to the dream, what is before me is the Word. Living in a contemplative community, I am regularly in touch with the Word of God in Scripture-- and in the Rule of St. Benedict as well. These are important for my daily life. In this tradition there is nothing more powerful than the teaching in the opening verse of St. John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Before the evangelist, the prophet Isaiah told us: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God will stand firm" (Is 40:58). And Jesus himself said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Mt 5:18). In reflecting upon the Word as it comes in the dream, I am reminded that there are many words--vol-umes upon volumes filled with them--and there is the Word. This dream clearly reflects the power of the Word. As Heidegger said, "language is more than little puffs of breath." Words are wellsprings of energy, giving us the power to communicate with one another, to share our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Words bring us into relationship with the world around us and with our inner world as well. They put us in touch with our past, lead us into the future, and help us realize actual Words bring us into relationship with theWorld around Us and with, our inner world as well. 67.1 2008 Theys ¯ A Dream, Ash Wednesday, and the Word situations and attitudes in the present. They tell us what is in our mind and heart. Words both wound and heal. They are not only expressions of our conscious life, our ego identity, but also of our unconscious, as it comes through in dreams. They often have deeper meanings than what they stand for in ordinary life. They are chan-nels to our deeper and truer identity. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVl, in his book Salt of the Earth reminds us that "the word revealed in history is definitive, but it is inexhaustible, and it unceasingly discloses new depths. In this sense, the Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, speaks with his word to every age and shows it that this word always has something new to say.''1 The Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, who is God's definitive Word, "always has something new to say," but are we prepared to listen? Listening to my dream, I return to Ash Wednesday and sense the meaning of Lent, a meaning that tells me that, through deeper listening and closer attention to both dreams and daily life, we might come to greater awareness of the Word as it reveals itself to us. Nonetheless, I can-not help wondering why the Word, as it comes in this dream, does not address itself direcdy to me. Why does it not communicate what it expects me to do? I do not know what choice I made about taking care of the Word I was holding. It was only when I woke hearing the song "Deep Within" that I came to sense the message of the Word in this dream, the message of "Follow me." Turning.to the Gospels, I think of Jesus saying "Follow me" in several instances. The words of the song in my dream return: "Follow me, I will bring you back; be my own, and I will be your God." The Word will bring us back, will reveal our true selves, if only we are Review for Religious willing to follow the path of Jesus, the path of becom-ing a new being, with the only true name we have: I am. To follow Jesus as the enlightened one coming out of his baptism as the Son of God, the Beloved, involves living in relationship to the Word. We must entrust ourselves to the flow of life and consciously live the seasonal changes from death to new birth. Like the day that flows into night, we are always in transformation. Nothing remains static. Laziness, not striving to be con-stantly awake, locks us into one place and we stagnate and decay. Commitment to following the Word leads into the paschal mystery, the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. We are to let go of our attachments, not only to material possessions, but also to family, profession, social group, community, even to institutional religion. Like the rich young man who asked Jesus what he must do to have life, we must let go of what we have or who we think we are. We are to sell all and follow the path that leads to greater life, and, as Thomas Merton said when he was at Red, woods in 1968, "we have to stand on our own two feet." Along the same line, Elizabeth B. Howes wrote: "To sell all., means to renounce that right to choose the specificity of one's own desire and to let oneself be molded by the Patterning of the moment. Through such conscious choice, we give back to its true owner what we have been given. It is as if our life were on loan. We either take it and run away to shape it as we will, or we turn it back to its Source in a volitional act of choice, which makes us co-creators with the process of God.''2 To follow God's law planted in our heart is to find our true identity and to know the sacredness of the liv- 67.1 2008 ing Word, as in the image of my dream. This journey of which I write is the task of our lifetimes. Notes ~ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 62. 2 E.B. Howes, Jesus' Answer to God (San Francisco: Guild for Psychological Studies Publishing House, 1984), p. 89. Longing for Easter Give us Easter, the brilliant wine of the Kingdem, the days when He might appear at any moment and we in his presence become speechless with joy, shy with wonder. Give us Easter, when we can forget (not from shame) the dark pain that went before, or see it as one sees, from the bright rooms of home, the troubled road by which one traveled back Give us Easter and spring and the words of songs we always hoped to learn Give us always Easter. Kate Martin OSC Review for Religious JOHN CARROLL FUTRELL Pedagogy of Prayer HTan persons grow only through their relation-ips to the realities that enter into their self-awareness. This is a matter of integration, of becoming more and more whole rather than more and more dis-persed. Integrated selfhood is achieved only by free commitment to a life-meaning. People actualize their personal identity by faithfully choosing all their lives to express their identity in an authentic way. ~: The total human development of persons gifted with Christian faith calls them to integrate into their growth their relationships with other persons, with themselves, with things, and especially with God. Graced confessing that Jesus is Lord is recognition that the central rela-tionship of their life is their personal relationship with God. To bring this relationship into self-awareness is to pray. I shall suggest in this article a pedagogy of prayer. I shall offer reflections on what prayer is. Then I shall make some practical remarks on how to pray. Finally John Carroll Futrell SJ has written for this journal about ten times, beginning in 1958. His address is 3601 Lindell Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63108. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer I shall respond affirmatively to the question "Can we pray?" What Is Prayer? When we pray we meet God. Perhaps the best description of prayer is that it is a loving, personal encounter with God. C.S. Lewis remarked: "Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person." Our problem is to verify this encounter. Encounter may take many forms. Close friends can encounter each other by talking or being silent, or even when they are physically far from each other, because they are always in personal commu-nion. It takes two to make an encounter. I can reach out to you, but, unless you receive me and give yourself to me on the personal level, we can have no true encounter. When you reach out to God, God is there to receive you. This loving personal encounter is prayer. God is present, whether we "feel" that presence or not. We know this is true because God has revealed it to us. We know it because we have the gift of faith. The Holy Spirit present in us enables us to confess that Jesus is Lord. We must insist with faith on the fact of God's constant, transcendent, loving presence, even when we feel nothing but dryness. Our own coming to encounter God is the human dimension of prayer. Prayer as a human activity is mak-ing ourselves present to the presence of God within us, so that we can recognize God's presence in everyone and everything around us. Prayer requires of us the labor to get ourselves together, body, feelings, imagination, intelligence, will, desires, place, time, environment--so Review for Religious that we can truly be present to the presence of God in loving, personal encounter. Our essential praying, then, is accomplished by the will to pray even in the midst of distractions or of total dryness. If we have the sincere desire to pray, then, at the bottom of our heart, deep within us, there is a loving encounter with God, even though it is not consciously felt at the top of our head. St. Paul put it perfecdy in his Letter to the Romans: The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For, when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God, who knows everything in our hearts, knows perfectly well what the Spirit means. (Rm 8:26-28) A problem for many people attempting to verify the encounter with God which is prayer is that they begin with their own idea of good prayer, as determined by lack of distractions, no dry-ness, a continuous feeling of consolation. A false notion of prayer makes true prayer unverifiable. The problem here may be that we are seeking God for ourselves rather than for love of God. Instead of welcoming God's personal presence personally, we turn God into an 0/~ect, a thing we can acquire to fill a need. Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. Prayer leads us from self-centered need to other-centered love. This passage from need to love is illuminated by reflection with Freud on human growth toward matu-rity as a movement from need to desire2 As infants we all begin as quivering bundles of needs. We relate to Prayer must be openness, listening, welcome. 67.1 2008 Futrell * PedagoG of Prayer all the realities that come into our awareness--espe-cially our mothers--as objects there to satisfy our needs. Need seeks self-satisfaction, the absorption of the other into myself. Freudian body imagery is revealing. Need means self-affirmation of my own bodily presence only; this annihilates all that is not myself by consuming it bodily. As long as I am operating chiefly from my need, I affirm myself only as an object, a needy body-thing, just as I affirm others only as objects to satisfy my needs. Freud shows that it is in passing from need to desire that we come to human maturity. In his terminology, when I desire another person, I affirm the reality of the other as a subject, as a free mysterious person, with inalien-able rights and always beyond adequate representation in concept or image. In desire we recognize what is not ourselves and affirm its free otherness. It is only in affirming others as persons that we realize ourselves as persons, as free subjects open to personal relationships. VChen we pass from need to desire, we can say, "It is now for the first time that I truly experience myself as a person, for it is only in your presence that I am." The poet e.e. cummings put it perfectly: "i am through you so i." When we apply this Freudian model to prayer, it is dear that in its initial stages prayer would reflect as in a mirror the emptiness of our need for God. From expe-riencing this need we shall pass gradually to the desire for God in God's infinite otherness. Even on the human level, desiring the other as unique and thus infinitely different from me is the greatest love. "I love you" becomes "You exist!" To love others is to will their pres-ence as irreducible to me. In recognizing their unique-ness, I recognize an absence in their very presence, the inalienable freedom of their otherness. Review for Religious Thus, desire--love--is not a static, finished thing. It is an ongoing living thing. Because of this fascinating and wonderful presence-in-absence, even a moment of intense personal union opens upon a new frontier, a beckoning from beyond towards deeper union. Another person remains an unfathomable secret. I cannot know this secret through thought or images or even bodily union. I can know another person only through love. In The Art of Loving (chap. 2), Erich Fromm points out: "In love, I know you, I know myself, I know every-body-- and I 'know' nothing. I know in the only way knowledge of that which is alive is possible for man--by experience of union--not by any knowledge our thought can give." The only way to full knowledge lies in the experience of love. This experience transcends thought; it transcends words. Thus, if I can have no full knowledge of God in thought, if theology is at best negative, then posi-tive knowledge of God can be achieved only in the act of union with God. In prayer we know God by lov-ing God, by welcoming God's gift to us in the loving experience of God's presence-in-absence. Prayer always remains desire, opening ever more widely toward ever fuller union, as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cr6ss powerfully attest. Ren~ Voillaume insists that we will be less satisfied with ourselves in prayer the more closely we approach God. This lack of satisfaction is a part of prayer, a proof of unfulfilled desire, which can only grow with growth of love. Far from satisfying thirst for God, prayer increases it. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: God does not offer himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us he is eternal discovery and eternal growth. 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer The more we think we understand him, the more he reveals himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold him, the further he withdraws, drawing us into the depths of himself. The nearer we approach him through all the efforts of nature and grace, the more he increases, in one and the same movement, his attraction over our powers, and the receptivity of our powers to that divine attraction. (The Divine Milieu, pp. 119-120) As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, "by prayer we render ourselves capable of receiving." St. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that the more we make progress, the more we discover that God infinitely transcends all that we can ever know of God. "To find God is to seek God without end." Thomas Merton noted that "progress in prayer is a continual burning of bridges behind us." Prayer, then, is faith, openness, listening, welcome, surrender. It is not through speculation or through study of theories of prayer and of love that we learn to pray and to love God, but only through the exercise of prayer and of love. We must sweep away all preconcep-tions and simply listen to God. Jesus told us in a parable what our attitude should be when we pray. We should be the good soil that nurtures the seed planted in it by the Divine Sower, accepting the word with faith. Just as we find Christ in the Eucharist under the appear-ances, so we must seek the reality of encounter with God under the words and gestures of our prayer. The soil where the word is sown is the heart, the center of our person. If we do not receive God here, our prayer is marked by boredom and routine and falsehood. We must be present to our own heart, where God is seek-ing us in spirit and in truth. All of our authentic prayer begins in our heart, in the activity of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.2 Review for Religious We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. The great masters of prayer always have seen as true prayer the "interior understanding and relish" that is born of the Holy Spirit's illumination of our spirit. This prayer may be very dry. Our prayer may often be quite simple: just a period of repeating the same thing to God over and over until it becomes part of us. Prayer can be a tor-ment until we are transformed into what we are say-ing. Christians who really pray have always known that "by their fruits you shall know them." The criterion of good prayer is not sensible consolation, but whether we continually live a more loving life by the power we receive even in very arid prayer. When we seem lost in our own confusion, distracted, and hardly present to God except in a prayerful word or two, there still may be in us, through the Holy Spirit's presence, a desire that we eventually experience as power, strength to serve God and our neighbor with our whole being, no matter what the cost. Thomas Merton's teaching on prayer emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is .seeking us in our hearts, where we come to ourselves. It is difficult to enter into the silence of our hearts, the place where no one else can enter, where we must put off our masks and no longer hide.3 This is where God calls us: "Give me your heart, your very self." Here we allow God to judge us, God who invites us to a full life. Here we learn to be at home We have nearly two thousand years of reflection on the experience of Christian praying. 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer with God, beyond our emotions and our intellectual life. We learn to overcome our fear of what is there and our temptation to go back to what is familiar. God is at home where we are truly ourselves. Merton put it, "Prayer does not consist in an effort to get across to God, but in opening our eyes to see that we are already there." The good that we seek through prayer is not the self-satisfaction of a "successful" prayer according to our own idea, but the formation of an attitude of total surrender to God in every detail of our daily life. This good God gives, through the more or less active coop-eration of our effort to pray. This is the pearl of great God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. price always to be sought in prayer. It is this which transforms us in Christ and prepares us always to say yes to the Word of God calling us at every moment of our lives. Brother David wrote, "Only life lived to the full measures up to the task of contemplation" (Gratefulness, p. 64). A life of ongoing prayer will draw us deeper and deeper into the presence of God, until we shall experience it in situations that do not immediately suggest God's presence. Then we are praying always, even though our conscious attention is elsewhere. This is what the masters of prayer mean by finding God in all things. God is always calling us, speaking to us in all the events of our daily lives. God comes to us in every situation we face: in our work, in our play, in the people we meet, in all our duties. All of these serve as invitations to welcome God here and Review for Religious now, to let God challenge us to live our Christian life perfectly. If we understand prayer this way, there are never places where prayer is impossible. Perhaps we need to change our way of understanding prayer. Louis Evely has said, "We're not asked to choose between God and world, but to discover God in the world and reveal God to it." It has been well said that there are no part-time human beings or part-time Christians Or part-time con-templatives. When we confess that Jesus is Lord, no sin-gle moment of our lives is outside this relationship.4 We can live prayer at all times, whether formally praying or not. What are we really seeking at all times during our life? What is our basic operational orienta-tion? What is our heart's treasure? This may be other people, egoism, money, pleasure, popular success, or it may be God. Whatever it is, it pervades all our actions, rules our individual choices and our spontaneous actions and reactions, constructs our world, without our being conscious of it all the time. If my basic existential ori-entation is to God, I am praying always, always having a loving personal encounter with God. Thomas Merton summed it up perfectly: "If I find God I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find God. And the only one who can teach me to find God is God's self. So pray for your own discovery." How to Pray Since prayer is a loving personal encounter with our forever faithful God, our human effort during any period of our life must always be to make ourselves present to God: to enter into our own faith experience of the Spirit of the risen Jesus at the bottom of our heart, where God touches our life. This is the meaning 67.1 2008 Fuvrell ¯ Pedagog~ of Prayer of all human prayer, whatever the method or style. The criterion for judging which method or style to use is simple: "Does it work?" Does this method at this time bring us into God's presence? Is it enabling us to live a life of love for God, other people, and myself?. A particular method of prayer may meet this crite-rion for years. But normally there will be times when a method is no longer right for us. Then we must experi-ment with various methods. We must be open to all pos-sibilities: God can use anything as a way to encounter us. Our part is to discover a way of finding God now. It may be a hope-filled darkness in which we wait willingly for subde energies of faith and love to return. The best prayer for me now may be meditation on the revealed truths of faith. People sometimes reject this method as "talking to myself." Well, why not talk to ourselves if God, who can make use of anything, is there and listening attentively? At times the best prayer may be lectio divina: slow thoughtful reading of Scripture or of other spiritual writings, stopping sometimes where we experience some heartfelt understanding. God works with us incarnationally, and so the method of prayer that works usually fits our temperament and cultural climate. Some older persons may be drawn to slow recitation of the rosary or to reading set prayers reflectively. The method for other persons_ may be singing or playing a guitar or adopting various body positions. The criterion always is "What works?" The great contemporary master of prayer Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB proposes two excellent ques-tions for evaluating our current method of prayer: (1) Is my prayer truly an expression of my prayerfulness, gratefulness, sorrow, compassion, and so forth? and (2) Does my prayer make me more prayerful? Review for Religious Two millennia of Christian experience show that it is fairly normal for people to be led gradually from more active methods of prayer to quieter, more passive methods. The way of praying may become simply enter-ing into a deeply felt attitude and resting in it: being thanks, being open, being praise, being begging when we feel our radical poverty deeply. In this prayer, when we become aware of our mind or imagination running off in various directions, we simply let those distractions fall as we keep coming back to our deep attitude of being. The Psalms fit this form of prayer because they express deeply felt attitudes, often in just a line or half line. Just a few verses of a psalm may help for days or even weeks. For persons who are feeling far from God and overwhelmed with cares and anxieties, the first few lines of Psalm 40 can be of great help: I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Stop at words or phrases. Let them sink in, and let your own thoughts rise. Stay there until you feel that the Holy Spirit is leading you to the next word or phrase. Another important form of. prayer to learn, consider-ing our tendency to rush on, is repetition: coming back to interior movements we experienced during previous periods of prayer and letting the Spirit deepen these movements and draw us closer to God and away from what holds us back. There are times when we should simply "plough the rock until it bear." 41 67.1 2008 Futrell * Pedagogy of Prayer In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of t, he life of Jesus in the Gospels. In Christian prayer there is no method more central than contemplation of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. This contemplation can take many forms and range from fairly discursive reflection to simple presence to Jesus in a scene. The proof that our method of contem-plation of Jesus is right for us right now is the experi-ence of being more and more transformed into him in our daily living with and love of other people. We must be ready to recognize when the prayer to which God calls us now is simply to enter into the void and wait in darkness for God. We realize that for us at present God is nowhere else than in this purifying empti-ness. A Jesuit friend of mine once told me that the only way he had been able to pray for weeks was to stand holding his arms up in supplica-tion. There were no thoughts, no images, not even a deeply felt attitude-- nothing. Yet he knew that this body prayer of emptiness was what God wanted of him then, beyond any thought or feelings. Even in desolation we are called to pray by "remembering consolation." W-hen darkness overcomes us, our prayer must be a faith that remembers what we saw, felt, hoped, and loved when we were filled with light. It can be helpful to think about prayer as a place. Sometimes it is a garden, beautiful, full of flowers, sweet scents, and birds singing and fountains play-ing. Sometimes it is a mountaintop, where we would Review for Religious like to pitch a tent and stay. Sometimes it is a desert. Sometimes it is a "blah" place, where all we can say is "God, here I am in my blahness." Sometimes it is a rock that we cling to with bloodied hands. And sometimes it is an empty tomb. For me, sometimes, it is a boat, when I feel as exhausted as Jesus was when his disciples woke him to calm the storm. Then all I can say, before falling asleep, is "Jesus, I'm with you!" A friend of mine, a sister, returning very blue and worn from a day of apostolic work, composed a beauti-ful prayer out of this feeling of prayer as a place: Dear God, tonight I'm tired and discouraged. I want to just give up and walk away. I'm in the basement and I want to go to the attic. In the basement, I'm lonely. In the attic, I'm alone, all one. In the basement, I crouch in the dark damp coal bin and dig up bones from the past. In the attic, I quiedy open the trunk lid and think about the treasures of the past - some painful, some joyful - but treasures nonetheless. Rain in the basement beats me to the cold hard concrete and I feel suffocated. Rain in the attic has a restful pitter-patter, pitter-patter, as it softly sings, "I love you, I love you, I love you." In the basement, I'm closed off. The windows are darkened and covered with weeds. I cannot see the sun when it does shine forth. In the attic, there is no way to keep out the warm sun of your love as it shines through the leaves on the trees. It makes delightful patterns for my enjoyment. And so, dear God, I ask you to take me from the basement to the attic. I ask for aloneness, I ask for treasures, I ask for soft soothing rain 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer and warm loving sunshine. I ask to feel your love. I do believe., help my lack of belief. Prayer Flows out of Life Situations Whatever method of prayer we use, as body-per-sons in space and time, we must seek to compose our-selves interiorly and, if possible, to choose a place that will help us to be present to the presence of God. We know that our body conditions the state of our con-sciousness. And so it is vital to take the time, perhaps a long time, to compose ourselves before praying: to enter into a deep silence of the body and imagination and feelings. Methods like the Additional Observations in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (§§73-86) or the preparations in the old meditation books or yoga or transcendental meditation or Zen or Sadhana can be helpful. The great 19th-century master of prayer Theophane the Recluse described prayer truly as "stand-ing before God with the mind in.the heart." If we are to pray, we must commit ourselves to make time for it: time to calm ourselves down, time to allow God to rise up in our awareness, to become God for us. We must discern the rhythm of prayer that we need at this time in our lives, and we must be faithful to it even when we do not feel like praying. We know that our most essential duties are not always those that we feel like doing. Nevertheless, we do fulfill them because of the importance they have for us, their priority in our lives. The operational proof of what our priorities are is the quality time that we give to them, not what we may verbally affirm about their importance. Time is the most precious possession of human beings, and what we do Review for Religious with our time is the behavioral proof of what we value in our lives. If we really put a high priority on prayer, we regularly give quality time to it. As in human love, there can and should be steadfastness even when we feel dull and lack spontaneity. And, of course, both love and prayer seek imaginative ways to transform routine and revivify themselves. Can We Pray? If we exercise our faith and our creativity and our common sense, we can pray. We can bring ourselves and take time and wait to encounter God. We can look to see whether our hearts have left space for God to come and meet us. For two thousand years the purpose of Christian asceticism has been to make space in our hearts for God to encounter us there. The difficulty of prayer is that it is the entrance into the bottom of our hearts. It places us before the wall of grace and the invisible. This involves going out of our selfish self, which makes prayer so diffi-cult. It is a true purgatory--a purification. This difficulty is overcome only by the Holy Spirit. To consent to pray is to consent to place ourselves before this wall and to wait with faith and hope for God to lower the wall. The lowering of the wall is the progressive coming of God to our deep self. Here only God can overcome. To believe that we have solved the problem ourselves is to show that we have lost the batde. Here, truly, we gain our life only by losing it. Our prayer should lead us to the still point of our being, the root of our existence, the center of our awareness of our unique individuality, where we are touched by the divine creative act and where, in silence and in darkness, we understand that God is God. At this point of our dependence upon God, we find God 67.1 2008 Futrell ¯ Pedagogy of Prayer in a presence that is absence, in an emptiness that is filled with God, in the knowing that is not knowledge but love. This, I think, is the command of God to the psalmist: "Empty yourself out and see that I am God." Descend to the depths of your own being, to the very point where you spring up out of my creative love, and there you will find me. Here God's presence is felt as breaking in on us, breaking down the wall of selfish self-love that limits our encounter with God. We see that this same wall keeps us from truly loving others as Jesus commands us to do, and that it keeps us from hearing and respond-ing to God's word in all the events of our lives. In this prayer we become filled with the light of the Spirit of the risen Jesus, who will illuminate all our experiences and will bring us at last to find God in all things. Often in this prayer we encounter God in his breaking in on us, and we feel no need or inclination to speak, because everything is understood in love. We simply surrender to God in his transforming action on us. But this is not a prayer of inaction. At no time do we feel more fully alive. For some people this is the habitual form of prayer. For others it happens only rarely. In all our prayer we should be listening to God, ready to welcome him, as God sometimes welcomes us, in a moment of great clarity or great joy.5 Notes i For this insight I am indebted to Jesuit psychoanalyst Dr. Denis Vasse, of Lyons, France. 2 "To cqntemplate means raising our eyes to a higher order that challenges us to measure up . Only the heart is high and deep enough to hold this vision." Brother David Steindl-Rast OSB, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 64. 3 "The heart in biblical culture, and also in a large part of other cul- Review for Religious tures, is that essential center of personality in which the person stands before God, as the totality of body and soul, as T who is thinking, will-ing, and loving, as the center in which the memory of the past opens up to planning of the future . The significance [of] the heart., reaches the sanctuary of personal self-awareness in which is summarized and condensed the concrete essence of the person, the center in which the individual decides upon himself, in face of others, the world, and God himself." John Paul II, Audience at the Gemelli Clinic, 28 June 1984. 4 "Work should not make us stop praying. But when my work becomes my only prayer, it won't be prayer much longer. Its weight will pull me off center. We can hear it quickly when a clothes dryer spins unevenly. Why can't we hear it when our lives do the same? It may be time to stop and reload. It may be time for nothing but prayer, time to disengage ourselves, to find our center, and to re-engage ourselves from the heart. Then our work will truly be prayer, It will be contemplation in action." Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, p. 195. 5 Listen to C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, near the end (p. 307): "He is coming . The air was growing brighter and brighter., as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one . The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming . I cast down my eyes." Personal/Group Reflection Questions 1. Have I had the experience of trying to teach someone to pray? What did I find to be helpful in teaching someone to pray? What obstacles did I experience? 2. What is my favorite way of defining or describing Christian prayer? 3. How do I respond to Brother David Steindl-Rast's question, "Does my prayer make me more prayerful?" 67.1 2008 BRENDAN KNEALE Pray Passionately of we look at Roman liturgical practice as a form f prayer, it does not seem to encourage pray-ing passionately. Of course, there is a good reason for this--the litur~.¢ is a public, not a private, form of prayer. It expects us to bring to its formalities and rituals a preparation of intense personal prayer. Some devout Catholics, perhaps, find rich emotional con-tent in Gregorian chant if they bring to it a suitable background. Also, the Roman Liturgy does include an extensive use of the Psalms, which are full of passion-ate prayers that any of us can find to be deeply mov-ing. Consider such passages as these used in the official Liturgy of the Hours: Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth . . . For you my soul is thirsting--my body pines for you . . . My soul shall be filled as with a banquet., my soul clings to you . . . Brendan Kneale FSC, a retired professor from Saint Mary's College of California, is now on the staff of De La Salle Institute; 4403 Redwood Road; Napa, California 94558. His email address is bkneale@dlsi.org Review for Religious Let the faithful rejoice in their glory, shout for joy., let them praise his name with dancing. Tremble, 0 earth, before the Lord . I bow down before your temple, filled with awe. The Lord's voice flashes flames of fire. He sends fire and brimstone on the wicked. No one can escape his hand. Praise him with full voice . Ring out your joy to the Lord. There are dozens of passages like these. The Liturgy cites, also, some of the strong language of St. Paul, who certainly expressed himself with passion. We have intimations of how emotional and intense Christ's own prayer was, notably in the garden and on the cross, culminating in: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Likewise, when he declared that he came to "cast fire on the earth." He no doubt was reflecting the strong feelings of his previous prayer. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit communicated himself with the symbolic "sound of wind and tongues of fire." This ought to stir our emotion, as when we sometimes refer to "fire in the belly." It did so, surely, for canonized saints, many of them known for the intensity of their prayer life. Here, however, it seems fair to ask, "Where is the passion in the wording of the Our Father, the arche-typal prayer Christ left us?" Answer: It is certainly there for people who have no "daily bread," and for those of us acutely aware of our need for a. ~'supersubstantial bread." Similarly, if we are full of-faith and devout sen-sibilities, we will experience a yearning, in the words of the Our Father, for "forgiveness of sins" and a fear of being "led into temptation," and for a strong desire to be "delivered from evil." The same goes for other seem-ingly bland prayers of our tradition. If we but bring our 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pray Passionately true situation to such prayers, they will become quite passionate. In older terminology, it is with "fervor" that we should pray. Later Traditions Many modern religious orders have a community spirituality which translates into language that seems at best to be sentimental rather than passionate. An example can be found in English translations of 17th-century texts on prayer. When one of its masters, St. John Baptist de la Salle, wrote "The Method of Mental Prayer," his language in translation was made to sound pallid. Thus, in English versions, we find him frequently urging us to pray with "sentiments of faith." It does not seem adequate to translate the French sentiment into a mild, neutral, and comfortable English word like "senti-ment." In fact, bilingual dictionaries would have allowed translators to use much stronger alternatives. The question arises: How does one bring passion to prayer? Soldiers in any kind of combat do not have to ask that question. Neither do we--if we let ourselves realize how abruptly death may come for us, if we really think about the greatness and goodness of God, if we realize our guilt, if we are at all sensitive to our inner longings, if our mortality weighs down on us as it should, if we are sensitive to our capacity for the infinite, if we admit a yearning for communion with the saints, if we feel deeply the needs of those for whom we pray, if we are persons of genuine loyalty, if we are aware of our past ingratitude and our utter vulnerability. In other words, as the masters of prayer have always taught, we must prepare for our prayer by realizing how desperate our condition and situation is, how great and good God is, how important prayer is, how linked we Review for Religious are to our fellow human beings. Many such deep con-victions are acts of faith and stem from insights aris-ing- out- of experience, meditation, and study--and, of course, from grace. "The Holy Spirit prays in us." We become a version of "deep calling on deep." After the effect of "cool" literature on prayer, one suspects that the rise of devotion to the Sacred Heart and other devo-tions helped compensate for prayer's lack of warmth, and even coldness, in this world of ours. It is evident that passion invigorates prayer, but also the converse holds. Prayer can stir spiritual pas-sion, which then often takes the form of zeal for various charitable works and also for personal discipline. Unfortunately, sen-timent and shallow many of us, since genuine emotion depends on deep convictions and full realizations about serious things. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? The source is true faith, real conviction, theological insights, realizations stemming from deep meditation--that is, things deep in the mind. There is always, however, a danger of self-deception and of artifi-cially stirred-up shallow feelings, ephemeral sentiments. St. La Salle, mentioned earlier, was a man of feeling. He lived in times when emotions were intense over serious internal church struggles. And he had his own battles with civil authorities and with incomprehension by his contemporaries, clerical and lay, so that his own prayer was challenged at a deeper level than most of us and thus felt more keenly. Where do deep feeling, passion, and genuine love come from? feelings may have to suffice for 67.1 2008 Kneale ¯ Pra~ Pa~ionatel~ Where, for us, do the occasion and quality for pas-sionate prayer come from? They arise from experi-ences eliciting fear, gratitude, desperation . . . feelings which call forth our faith and convictions. At the start of our interior prayer, we often include an introduc-tory exercise: making our situation "real," recalling viv-idly, stirring our faith and hope, gratitude and humility, awakening ourselves from somnolence. Frequently Repeated Prayers Prayers that are frequently repeated should not be perfunctory, but should be recited "once more with feel-ing." There is a danger that prayers like the rosary could plunge us into mindless rote. That is where the ancient admonitions about study and reading can be applied. Prayers like the ~'osary will be infused with emotion if we bring to them a rich background of gospel meditation and theological study. Thus in the rosary such insights may prepare as many as ten ideas or rousing images to accompany our recitation of the ten beads in each decade. Every one of us can become a "vas insigne devotionis," rich in insights that stir our emotions and direct our will. The rosary, then, can be prayed passionately. Of course, to recite vocal prayers poorly is often an act of faith and so has value. St. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have written somewhere that one differ-ence between rote vocal prayers of petition and atten-tive and involving prayers of petition is not that one is answered and the other is not--rather, if both are prayed with faith and goodwill, one is more consoling than the other. That is one difference. There are oth-ers. A prayer that is passionate is likely to be extended, sincere, satisfying, richer in intention, fortifying of our faith and hope., instead of a routine burden. Review for Religious Dryness There is no such thing in this life as a perpetual emotional high. One experience that the saints have often undergone is spiritual dryness. Sometimes, it seems, such periods are imposed by God as trials, but could it be that sometimes they are self-imposed by our own neglect? If we fail to use the sources of inspiration and energy--such as attention, study, sensitivity, insight, consistency, solitude, detachment--then we can expect aridity. The Language of Prayer Perhaps, looking back at the word "sentiment" and recalling the passionate words of the Psalms, we can say that the language used in prayer is important. Paying attention to the stirring words of the Psalms can bring life back into our prayer. Depending on the occasion, .however, vocalized prayer should vary appropriately: ritualistic or hiero-phantic, informal or personal, intense or calm and reflective, importunate or resigned--adoring, grateful, repetitive, vivid, meditative. We do not want to over-dramatize our lives, but one suspects that prayers of petition, at least, do need heartfelt words--the more passionate the better. In any case we have the promise of St. Paul in Romans 8: "When we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words ¯ . . the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God." 67.1 2008 CLIFFORD STEVENS The Institute of Impracticalities: The Financial Support of Monasteries consecrated life G.K. Chesterton, before he created the Father Brown detective stories, tried his hand at the genre by writing a clever story called "The Club of Queer Trades," a tale of a fraternity of tradesmen who had managed to come up with unusual ways to make a living. In it a man makes his living giving excitement to people who lacked excitement in their lives and adven-ture to those who lacked adventure. He would send them sinister and intriguing messages, or leave strange objects on their doorstep, or send them secret packages, all designed to add some spice to an otherwise humdrum existence. I thought at one time if I had not become a priest I would set up a place called Chesterton Square with a number of odd shops and busi-nesses doing business there: a Bottle Shop, a Kite Unlimited Emporium, and imposingly on Clifford Stevens has written for us at intervals since 1975. His addres~ is Tintern Monastery; EO. Box 910; Kemmerer, Wyoming 83101. Review for Religious one corner of the square an Institute of Impracticalities, which would answer any need that was totally and clearly not practical, such as ordering an elephant for a wedding, or sending a truckload of balloons to a sick child. A monastery is and must be, if it is to be true to its character, a true Institute of Impracticalities. We exist for no "practical" purpose; we are useless, as far as most people are concerned, and there is nothing "practical" that we can mention as our particular achievement. We have to cultivate "unpracticality" almost with genius, or else that particular disease, fatal in some cases, called "practicality" takes over and everything is sacrificed on the altar of "practicality." This has been the bane of monasteries from time immemorial and has been responsible for the eclipse of the monastic life sev-eral times in history. I am thinking particularly of the monastery of Fountains in England, where "practicality" drove peasants off the land, made the monastery some-thing of an economic empire, built sumptuous build-ings, and got the monastery involved in the dynastic and ecclesiastical power struggles of the time. The greatest illusion in the contemplative life is the conviction that the financial support of the monastery is the key problem and the critical concern of community life. This has never been. true. The critical factor in con-templative life is the cultivation of intimacy with God and the fashioning of a pattern of life to enable every single member to do exactly that. As soon as the mere support of the monastery becomes the primary con-cern, "practicality" takes over and Divine Providence goes right out the windows. God blesses the monastery only to the extent that it is an oasis for leisure with God. Then blessings for the support of the life come 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities in abundance, mysteriously, magnanimously, for God takes care of his genuine lovers, and they are never in want--for anything. The basic principle for the financial support of a monastery is this: Will the God for whom we have forsaken the world of business and commerce and the piling up of even legitimate wealth be any less gener-ous with us than the stock market and margin of profit would have been if we had devoted our lives to that? There is one answer: God will not only second our efforts by the action of his prov-idence; he will anticipate our needs. Those who doubt this usually are willing to sacrifice something of solitude, something of silence, something of contemplative tranquillity, and something of intimacy with God for so-called "practical" reasons. God usually gives them what they want, but that is all. The deeper gift for which they have forsaken all is denied them, for the simple reason that they have lost the hunger for it. A strange kind of practicality. The ancient monks made it clear that the treasurer of the monastery was the Providence of God. This does not mean that they did not work or made no provision for the morrow. It just means that they were not depen-dent upon their own efforts: even their own efforts had to be blessed by God. They simply did .not depend on bank accounts or huge commercial enterprises to sup-port their monastic life. God's providence, and their own efforts under that providence, were their only security. This is certainly "impractical" as far as the normal business of human life is concerned, but the monk is not in the normal business of living. He has made God his companion and his passion, and, while he works hard Review for Relig4ous to support his monastic life, he is not dependent upon the "economy." Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their money will come from. It comes, when it is needed, from their own labor or from the action of Providence. As a matter of fact, the monk has become a monk to be free from those kinds of concerns, and, if he wants to get involved in them, God usually lets him have his way, but the intimacy with God that is - the heart of his existence and his chief preoccupation slips from his fingers. His hope and expectation are not really in God, but in the margin of profit, in the interest on stocks and bonds, or in the sale of the next crop. The treasury of Divine Providence never runs out, and God richly supplies his lovers with everything. Those who doubt that have all kinds of arguments to the con-trary, but what they do not have is that closeness to him for which they became monks in the first place. In this day of huge commercial enterprises, financial scandals in religion, and the juggling of stock portfolios and investment opportunities, we have to steer clear of anything that resembles the placing of our security in money. Every monastery needs money, and the financial support of the monastery has to be provided for. But the financial support of a monastery comes from God and his providence and not from the juggling of investments and the margin of profit. When a monastery truly needs money, it comes in bundles, from the most unexpected Monks work hard, but simply are not concerned about where their moneywill come from. 67.1 2008 Stevens ¯ The Institute of lmpracticalities places, and there is no need to buy mailing lists and carry on massive mail solicitations to accomplish this. If there is any choice between depending on a fat bank account and depending on Divine Providence, there is no doubt where the choice would have to be. Certainly not in the bank account, which can fail for all kinds of reasons, but Divine Providence never fails. We have only to look around us to see the disas-ters that occur from an opposite conviction. The clas-sical image is that of the wheeling-and-dealing Father Urban in J.E Powers's Morte d'Urban, who is convinced that hobnobbing with the rich and mighty is the sur-est way to. ensure the prosperity of his congregation. Or the tragic monsignor in John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions who found himself embroiled in scandals and political intrigues unworthy of his office because of his concern about money for the "good of the church." As Paul Evdokimov hasindicated, certain biblical truths get lost in centuries of overgrowth, and from time to time we have to be recalled to the startling dyna-mism of the gospel. It is no visionary enthusiasm that brings religious to their utter dependence upon Divine Providence and reminds them of God's loving care. But they forget that, as redeemed human beings, they are enfolded in his love, and that his benevolence is the very basis of their creation. What they need to recall is a profound metaphysical and theological truth: everything in human life is part of the philanthropy of God, and it is by the exercise of that philanthropy that the inacces-sible God makes himself accessible to our experience. From the generosity of the Godhead comes every gift with which we are endowed and every benefit of our human condition. That includes the margin of profit and whatever benefit we gain from economic prosperity. Review for Religious Even those who do not depend upon Divine Providence are dependent upon it. It is simply human shortsighted-ness that does not see the beneficent God behind the human drama. The wisdom of the saints ends up being the most practical of impracticalities. Some Texts "In building, we need not act as people in the world do. They first get the money and then begin to build, but we must do iust the opposite. We will begin to build and then expect to receive what is necessary. The Lord God will not be outdone in generosity." -- St. Alphonsus Liguori "The more you abandon to God the care of tem-poral things, the more he will take care to provide for all your needs; but if, on the contrary, you try to supply all your own needs, Providence will allow you to con-tinue to do just that, and then it may well hhppen that even the necessities will be lacking, God thus reproving you for want of faith and reliance on him." -- St. John Baptist de La Salle "Now is God not able to send, perhaps tomorrow, sacks of money to my door?" -- St. Camillus de Lellis And see Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1985). 67.1 2008 M. REGINA VAN DEN BERG Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons Tfte practice and rule of enclosure in the convent is en misunderstood, by those who oppose it and those who defend it. It is misunderstood as a way of keeping the world and its evils out, of limiting contact with the world. Enclosure actually succeeds in doing quite the opposite: it enlarges the world. Rather than keeping the world out, it confronts us with it. Rather than keeping evil out, it forces us to face it. Rather than limiting our world, it expands our horizons. It is not only enclosure that expands our horizons: other prac-tices of the religious life do so too. The other practices include common meals, prayers, and recreation, limited use of television, internet, telephone, and email, and also limited travels and visitors as well. The reader may think I am playing with words, for it seems paradoxical at best that all the above-men- M. Regina van den Berg FSGM taught philosophy at Seminary Rolduc in Roermond, the Netherlands. She recently moved to Mater Ecclesiae Convent; 4510 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Review for Religious tioned practices serve to widen our horizons. It is" not my intention, however, to play with words, but rather to point out a common mistaken notion that "experiencing the world" and "widening one's horizons" are incom-patible with enclosure and other such practices. In his essay "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family," in Heretics, G.K. Chesterton makes the essential distinctions upon which I base this article.1 Chesterton uses the distinction to defend the institu-tion of the family; I apply it to the religious life. When people say that they want to "experience the world" or "widen their horizons," they commonly mean that they want to increase their knowledge of the world and the things in it. They want to do this by learning or by experiencing, virtually or firsthand. It is nearly super-fluous to point out that modern technology enables us to learn and experience all manner of things with the greatest ease and speed. We can experience the world in so many ways: by traveling, by looking at internet sites, by watching television, by communicating via the internet with people we have never met face-to-face, by joining clubs. It is obvious that enclosure and the other religious-life practices I mentioned allow at best a limited experience of the world in this sense. These various experiences of the world, however, have some common elements. For one, the knowledge we gain and the experiences we have often do not affect us as persons. They do not make demands on us as per-sons. We, after all, select the experience we want to have: the persons we want to be with, the places we want to go. We choose people who are agreeable to us, and when we travel we want to relax, not be challenged. Perhaps we look on the internet or watch television to learn, but often just to be entertained. However inter- 67.1 2008 van den Berg, * Enclosure and Other Ways to Widen One's Horizons However interesting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may ieave our inner world untouchedl esting the people we meet on journeys or through the internet, they may leave our inner world untouched. They do not make us grow in Christian self-knowl-edge. When people truly want a life-changing event, Chesterton says, they could effect "a much more roman-tic and even melo-dramatic change if [they] jumped over the wall into the neighbor's garden. The con-sequences would be bracing.''2 We go on vacations or browse the inter-net because we Want a "change," because we want to escape from the everyday, but escapes may blind us to the here and now. The internet provides a fine example. How easily we become so immersed in it that we lose all sense of time, of the people around us, of duties awaiting us. Analogies limp, but this experience is like taking a photograph. To get as much as possible in the picture, we not only use a wide-angle lens, but we also back up. We become observers. Everything becomes small, and details disappear. There is a lot in thepicture, but we see very little. We do the same when we try to know and experience endlessly new things. Enclosure and the other religious-life practices zoom in, so to speak, on a select portion of the world. This new focus enables us to look more closely at the objects in the picture. We do not step back as observers to take the picture, but we get a vivid three-dimensional picture of a select part of the world by being a part of it ourselves. In a Review for Religious limited environment we begin to see in a different way. Confronted by the reality of the here and now, we begin to see details. We notice more of what is there to be seen. With enclosure and the other religious practices, we find ourselves in a special environment with companions we did not choose. They become real sisters of mine, and I cannot merely observe or ignore them; I must live with them. They are not all like me, even if we share a common vision. Some are of a different temperament than I am; I am irritated by some of their peculiarities. Enclosure makes me live with them, and in learning to love them I am enlarging my world. Once we are at home in our limited environment, the reality that is present to us, it encourages us to notice many details: the sunshine on my face as I sit here, the spider crawling up the wall, the sister next door coughing. Then we can respond to the details: to be grateful for the sunshine, to marvel at the spider, to see if my coughing sister may need something. The present reveals itself as fascinating once we see it from up close. Enclosure does not keep the evil things of the world out. Quite the contrary: in the wideness of the enclo-sure, evil has plenty of room to raise its head. I suspect I am not the only one who thought that my congrega-tion should be grateful that I was deigning to enter the community. Being so used to the company of people of like character and inclination, I had no idea that I could be anything but kind--until I was confronted with sisters who were quite unlike me. Then I began to become humbly grateful that the congregation accepted even someone like me. Those who think that enclo-sure somehow forms and preserves a comfortable space 67.1 2008 van den Berg ¯ Enclosure and Other Ways to W'uten One's Horizons where like-minded people can indulge their whim for a lifetime of silence have never lived in a religious com-munity. Enclosure is demanding. Enclosure has no intention of satisfying selfish desires for privacy, for a place where we can escape from the world. It is rather the case that we impose enclosure upon ourselves because we know our human weakness. Knowing that we sometimes would like to escape from the demands of the enclosed world, we bind ourselves to it as self-protection for our weak moments. There is a sense, of course, in which enclosure creates a certain "place apart," but not in the sense of privacy. Privacy in the sense of "my space" would not be compatible with the vows and total surrender of religious life. But the silent place apart is intended to widen horizons, to attune us to the reality of God's presence. As an aid to communion with him, enclosure widens our horizons beyond our imagining--into the wideness of his eternal being! If readers have agreed with everything so far, they may still maintain that enclosure, even if it opens the door to the world, still seems a terribly boring enter-prise. Imagine a life without travel, without television, without internet, without a change of companions. Is this not a recipe for boredom? At least, the reader may surmise, the apostolic religious still have the excitement of the apostolate, the possibility of being transferred, but the contemplative nuns must even forgo that. Add to enclosure the regular routine of the religious life, and the recipe for a dull life seems foolproof. But here, too, Chesterton makes an excellent point. People travel far and wide in search of adventure, but when they do so they by definition fail. They fail because "adventure" refers to something that happens to us (peradventure, Review for Religious by chance), not to something that we attain or that we can find. When we plan a vacation, we know what to expect and plan it often to the smallest detail. But in everyday life in enclosure, one never knows what to expect--here is adventure! And, to quote Chesterton once more, "the thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect.''3 Not only are there two divergent ways of experienc-ing the world, but, I maintain, one is better and truer than the other. The first way of widening our horizon often fails to touch and change us as persons. It tends to make us observers of life, not participants; we avoid the challenges that help us grow. It can more accurately be described as an escape from the world. The truer way to experience the world, the way of enclosure, widens our horizons and opens us up to the drama of good and evil, to the graces of the present moment. This reality is demanding and life-changing. Enclosure, the common life, a~d the limited use of media and communication all serve to reveal and enlarge our world--but not by logical necessity. People can enlarge their world through travels and narrow their world in the enclosure, but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Those who run into the enclosure to escape from the world discover all too soon that they have run in the wrong direction. Their escape from the world is to be found elsewhere: in the often world-nar-rowing experiences of the media and in other self-selected experiences that do not demand much from us. It is not surprising that the practice of enclosure is paradoxical, that by limiting physical space and limiting our experiences we in fact enlarge our experience. The 67.1 2008 van den Berg * Enclosure and Otber Ways to V~ulen One's Horizons Christian faith is founded on paradox. Through Jesus' death we receive life. Through the seemingly world-nar-rowing experience of the enclosure and other religious practices, the horizons of our hearts and minds can be expanded to God and to his concerns and to his world. And that, precisely, is the point of enclosure. The Weaver Weave the threads. Brown for the earth, Red for the fire, Blue for the air, Silver for the water. Weave the threads. Brown for humus, Red for passion, Blue for reason, Silver for the spirit. Weave the threads. Brown the Father, Red for His Son, Blue His Mother, Silver the Comforter. Weave the threads. Fibre of God. Fibre of men. Fibre of life. Weave into harmony, One in the Cosmic dance. Sister Margaret Anne OHP Review for Reli~ous ANTHONY MALAVIARATCHI Religious Brotherhood Today I n attempting to say what it means to be a religious rother today, we must be clear about what broth-erhood is. To discover afresh the most effective way of being a religious brother today, we must look at the tradition of brotherhood in the church. The brotherhood of Jesus and his ordinary follow-ers (Mt 23:8) and the brotherhood of Jesus and his spe-cially chosen disciples, the apostles (Mk 3:13-15), are already two strands of brotherhood at the very outset. Both were meant for the proclamation of the kingdom of God. The brotherhood of the first Christian com-munity in Jerusalem was~ meant to give witness to Jesus' resurrection. The brotherhood of religious life started with cenobitical life. The lone hermits became com-munities of brothers receiving spiritual guidance from abbas (fathers, animators). This kind of brotherhood Anthony Malaviaratchi CSSR, a former theology professor and for-mator now doing retreat work, presented this paper at a brothers' convention in Sri Lanka. His address is Santa Maria; George E. Silva Ma~atha; Kandy, Sri Lanka. anthonymalavi@yahoo.com 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi ¯ Religlou~ Brotherhood Today was making a united and concerted effort to live the gospel radically. Brotherhood in History In the period that followed, brotherhood began a new phase. Penitents entered "monasteries" and gradu-ally became members or at least began to live the life of the community. There seems to be no historical connection between th~se "penitent brothers" and-the stream of brothers popularly known as "teaching broth-ers." In the 17th century St. John Baptist de la Salle brought together a group of teachers to educate the badly neglected children of poor working-class families. So did St. Marcellin Champagnat in. the 19th century. Disillusioned by the growing secularism in French soci-ety and its impact on youth, the founder of the Marist brothers established schools for the underprivileged. The Brothers of Charity came together to care for poor workmen, the sick, and the mentally handicapped. Brotherhood: A Prophetic Lifestyle Teaching the poor and marginalized is not an exci~- ing apostolate today. It does not hit the headlines of even Catholic newspapers. That is because so many religious congregations have been doing it for three hundred years. At their origin the education of the underprivileged was simply not being taken care of by anybody. When Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers, began his teaching, the education of Catholics was illegal in Ireland. Religious life as a prophetic move-ment was reincarnated through works of mercy. The brothers, influenced by St. Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity, did what the society of the time failed or refused to do. They brought a strange but nevertheless Review for Religious refreshing message that drew the attention of the world as Mother Teresa did in our times. That was the secret of their success. Congregations of brothers, therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today? What must we do to convey God's message afresh? What is it that society refuses to do today and would convey a prophetic mes-sage if we did it? Today many works of mercy, including teaching, are no longer prophetic. Many others do them now. Governments have undertaken the tasks of teaching, nursing, running orphanages and technical schools, and so forth. ~ Congregations of brothers, But we need to remember that it was the example of religious con-gregations dedi- - cated to serving the earthly well-being of those in need that paved the way for governments and other secular organizations to take up welfare services. therefore, need to ask: How can we be prophetic today ? Institutions and Status Brothers' institutions do excellent work, much appreciated especially by the laity. But the institutions give the impression of material well-being, security, and status, especially in the third world. Brotherhood, of course, has less status than the priesthood, which is one of the reasons why brothers have fewer vocations. Nevertheless, brothers' institutions do have status. To all appearances the vast majority of those who want to join our communities come not because they have 67.1 2008 Malaviaratcbi * Religious Brotherhood Today heard Christ's call to radical discipleship but because they are attracted by the status and security of the insti-tutions. In factl congregations that do not have institu-tions have few vocations. Widespread unemployment and lack of talent for modern cutthroat competition seem to be the underlying reasons for the many "voca-tions" in the third world. Unfortunately, in too many instances the enjoyment of status and security continues to be the lifelong hidden motivation. As their numbers dwindle, the brothers are being for+ed to give up their apostolic commitments one by one. For various reasons such as pressure from bishops and priests, parents, and old boys [alumni] and because of understandable emotional attachments, the most prestigious institutions will be the last to be given up. This will worsen the image of the brothers and con-sequently the quality of the vocations they get. Since many hold on to their status and security, it is most unlikely that radical measures will be taken. And so the faster religious life in its present form dies, the better it is. For then God will be able to raise radical disciples for Christ from the stones of the earth (Mt 3:9). Congregations, Too, Die Part of the crisis of religious life is the probability, if not the certainty, of dying out and entering the annals of history. The reality of death looms over all reality except over the only Real One. Heaven and earth must pass away, the church must pass away (Rv 21:1-2, Heb 12:22). Even the kingdom of Christ must pass away into the kingdom of the Father (1 Co 15:24-28). If all this is true, then our congregations can hardly be eternal. We must pass away when we have adequately served God's eternal designs. If so, our dying as a group, Review for Religious with all its glory and achievements, will also be a ser-vice. Even the thought of it can be a painful, if not traumatic, experience. It is surely a historical moment when God calls us to bring our self-offering to a climax by embracing his plans in the darkness of faith. Like our Divine Master, we too may be called to give life to oth-ers by an unquali-fied submission to God's designs. In the glorious days of the brotherhood in the church, our faith may not have been so much in God as in our numbers, institutions, and achievements. Our group's willing submission to God's unknown ways will bring life to the world in an abundance which our congregational achievements could never even dream of matching. The history of salvation unequiVocally offers all believers a planofaction in time of crisis. The Remnant The history of salvation unequivocally offers all believers a plan ~of action in time of crisis. It may be new to us who have got used to large numbers, but it is a beaten path in salvation history. The faithful were often led by God to negotiate crises by means of the Remnant. The word remnant indicates how great the destruc-tion of God's people will be. "Only a remnant will remain" (Is 10:22). Surely Christ had in mind a remnant when he called his disciples "little flock" (Lk 12:32) and when he said "Many are called but few are chosen." In the Scriptures the remnant is a tiny minority of those 67.1 2008 Malaviaratchi ¯ Religious Brotherhood Today leading religious lives in the eyes of God. These few continue to believe and remain faithful in the midst of widespread infidelity. The concept shows punishment for sin and God's faithfulness, which remains untouched by human infidelity. The faith in the remnant is an essential aspect of hope in the Bible. The Remnant Today If, as religious, brothers are to have hope, they must first realize that it is to run institutions that large num-bers are needed, whereas to give witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ a few are more than enough. These few must turn back to their founders and rediscover that it is exclusively for Christ's gospel that they were brought together in the first place. Second, they need to adopt a prophetic lifestyle and thus become clearly visible signs: Their lifestyle will be visible: ¯ (1) if they have a community lifestyle that is tangibly religious, that is, God-centered with a strong contemplative dimension. ¯ (2) if they live this life not in legal rigidity but in evangelical fidelity. This needs special attention since post-Vatican II freedom has often resulted in Western permissiveness. As a part of this evangelical fidelity, those who fail to live this life should be asked to leave whenever the superior, with the com-munity, comes to that conclusion. ¯ (3) if they embrace a clearly visible life of poverty, that is,can external life of utter simplicity. In every reform movement within reli-gious life, there has been a return to radical simplicity. Our world in the clutches of consumerism is crying for a modern-day Francis of Assisi. ¯ (4) if they engage in a service that others do not do and reach out to people whom society does not care for. In this way, small groups of brothers will create a Review for Religious counterculture which the Union of Superiors General has described as one with "passion for Christ and pas-sion for humanity." They will give prophetic witness to the spiritual dimension of human life in a world of increasing secularism, to brotherly lives and work in a world of increasing individualism, to evangelical sim-plicity in a world of increasing consumerism, to God's preferential love for those that society does not care about in a world of increasing self-centeredness. In a word, religious brotherhood will be prophetic through and through, a transparently radical form of discipleship of Christ. Zen°Poem for Thomas Merton For Brother Anthony Weber OCSO Abbey of the Genesee A white cloud Near a picket fence Close to a white rose, Walked a white-habited Trappist Praying an ivory beaded rosary Ignoring a cawing crow Noticing a disappearing cloud; Flower petals falling, The fence rotting; His scapular, dusty With prayers ascending, Approaching darkness Amid a forested hermitage. William J. Bly 73 67.1 2008 VINCENT GENOVESI Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? spiritual supports We would quickly recognize the mockery made of love were lovers to ask each other only "What must I do to avoid hurting you?" We expect lovers to share a deeper ambition: "What more can I do to show my love for you?''l The same is true of our relationship with God. When our commitment to our spir-itual and moral growth is seen as a response to God's invitation to love, it would be rather insulting to play at love and revel in testing love's limits. As honest and true lovers, we do not spend time anxiously determining how far we can go before our love relationship with God is strained to the breaking point. Instead, our earnest desii'e is to discover how we can foster that relationship. It is in this context that we come to under-stand more fully the meaning of human sinful- V'mcent Genovesi sJ is professor of theology and campus minister at Saint Joseph's University; 261 City Avenue; Merion Station, Pennsylvania 19066. vgenoves@sju.edu Review for Religious ness. Sin is best understood not so much as an isolated act, but rather as a relational reality. It is deliberately breaking our love relationship with God (mortal sin) or knowingly straining that relationship (venial sin). Of course, our love relationship with God is played out largely in our human relationships. St. John reminds us that, if we profess to love God while failing to love our neighbor, we are liars; we cannot love God, whom we have never seen, if we do not love the neighbors whom we see every day (1 Jn 4:20). It is important, too, that we remember the testimony of human experience--that any love relationship can suffer from thoughtless neglect and eventually die without our notice. To grow as faithful Christians, we must ultimately make decisions for ourselves, but it is folly to believe we can or should make all decisions simply on our own, without any help. Yes, we entrust our moral life to the guidance of our conscience, provided, of course, that we have first honestly, carefully, and prayerfully sought to inform our conscience properly. Even when we do this, however, we do not always live as we know we should. We get off track, and it becomes helpful or even neces-sary to seek guidance, encouragement, and exhortation. At times like these the sacrament of reconciliation can offer assistance, especially when we are not in regular dialogue with a spiritual director. Behind Catholicism's centuries-old practice of sacramental confession, there is a wisdom whose depth can be more appreciated in light of Vatican Council II's theological insights and psychology's contribution to a fuller understanding of the human person. Still, many sincere Catholics, even priests and religious, question the usefulness or neces-sity of the rite of reconciliation. Such questioning must be addressed. 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? Doing Wrong versus Sinning As background for our discussion, it helps to recall that Catholics are expected to confess serious or mor-tal sins at least once a year.2 Significantly, the accus-ing is done by ourselves. ("Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.") Sins are committed only by sinners--people who freely decide to live in various ways that they know to be hurtful to their own well-being and/or the well-being of others, and so must judge themselves to be unloving and in the wrong. In acknowledging that entering into sin requires both knowledge and freedom on our part, Catholic tradition teaches that no one sins by accident--just as no one truly loves by accident. Both to love and to sin are choices or decisions. Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas did not think it likely that persons who are honestly trying to live as good Christians would easily or frequently rupture their love relationship with God by choosing to sin seriously: "Although grace is lost by a single act of mortal sin, it is not, however, easily lost. For the person in grace does not find it easy to perform such an act because of a contrary inclination." Aquinas means that it is pre-cisely our love for God and others that will make it difficult for us to sin, or deliberately do anything that would put our love relationship in jeopardy.3 In light of Aquinas's teaching, and in keeping with the true nature of love, we may conclude that, although it is possible to sin mortally in one particular act, it is not always a simple matter to isolate that act. It is not likely, in other words, that we would sin mortally in an act that is totally out of our character, or in an act that we have not predisposed ourselves toward. Rather, our relation-ship of love for God and others will probably change and deteriorate before there is any outright rupturing of Review for Religious the union, which is why we must be all the more atten-tive to the daily responsibilities of love. In essence, all sins of commission are expressions of "the one great sin of omission, failure to love.''4 While this failure offends God, we too suffer as a result of our sinfulness insofar as we come to find ourselves within the narrow confines of self-centeredness. It is a confinement that brings with it a death penalty, for in failing to love we become members of the living dead (1 Jn 3:14-15). Thomas Aquinas acknowledges the human destructiveness of sin when he says that sin is indeed an offense against God, but that "God is offended only by those things that we do against our own true welfare.''5 Although:.some of our actions may be undeniably hurtful and wrong, our tradition reminds us that we are not always or n, ecessarily morally guilty of sinning in doing these things. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that "imputability and responsi-bility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors" (§1735). A similar idea appears later in the Catechism: "Unintentional ignorance can diminisl~ or even remove the imputability of a grave offense . The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pres-sures or pathological disorders" (§ 1860). We do well to All sins of commission are expressions of ",the one great sin of omission, failure to love." 67.1 2008 Genovesi * Room for Sacramental Reconciliation? remember, however, that if because of our insensitivity, lack of awareness, or curtailed freedom we are not guilty of sin when doing something that is in fact hurtful and wrong, we have no cause for self-satisfaction and com-placency. The less sensitive, aware, and free we are, the less we are fully human. Therefore, whatever stands in our lives as an obstacle to our free commitment in love is to be seen as something to overcome in our growth toward maturity as human beings and as Christians. In no way should this obstacle be relished as excusing us from sin, because the sad truth is that even without sin we may regrettably have done something hurtful to our-selves and others and are all too able to do so again. Three Reasons for this Sacrament In light of what it means to be a sinner--knowingly and freely failing or refusing to love God and others--it is clear that it is not the role of the priest-confessor, nor is it within his power, to determine definitively whether the penitent has or has not sinned, or how .serious that sin may be. In fact, no human being can rightly call another human being a sinner because reading another person's mind and heart is the prerogative of God alone. Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, "although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God" (§1861). And so it does us all good to remember that "God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but God looks at the heart" (1 S 16:7). Why, then, encourage the sacrament of rec-onciliation? I offer three reasons: the social nature of life and sin, the incarnational dimension of our Catholic tradition, and the moral growth that comes from hum-bly taking possession of our sinfulfiess. Review for Religious The Social Nature of Life and Sin: We need a deeper sense today of the social implications of our sinfulness. No sin is totally private, because in sinning we produce a change within ourselves that invariably influences our dealings with others. Thus no sin really remains "secret"; its effects will somehow leave a trail. Furthermore, whenever we hurt someone, we also hurt all those, including God, who love and care about that person. This means that an appropriate expres-sion of our sor-row should include seeking forgiveness and admitting publicly that our sinfulness has alienated or distanced us from both God and our neighbors. T.he sacrament of reconciliation serves this purpose, for through our encounter with the priest, who is both God's servant-representative to penitents and the people's minister before God, we testify to our desire to be reintegrated into the community of God's love and the company of his people. It is possible that appredation of the social nature of sin would be enhanced were parishes to pro-vide communal penance services more frequently. Catholicism's Incarnational Dimension: Moreover, pre-cisely as human beings who live as body-spirits, it is tremendously helpful for us to incarnate, "flesh out" or "enact," our sorrow and our need for forgiveness through recourse to sacramental confession. In addi-tion, God wants to "enact" his forgiveness of us through Whenever we hurt someone, we aiso hurt all those, including God, wh~; love and care " about that person. 67.1 2008 Genovesi ¯ Room for Sacramental Recondliation? the priest's guidance and comfort. And so, just as Christ puts flesh on our Father's love for us, so the words of absolution put flesh on Christ's forgiveness and mercy. Fortunately, too, I think, many priests today are deeply sensitive to the essentially social and incarnational dimensions of Christian living. As a result, in assign-ing a sacramental penance, they ask penitents to move beyond simple recitation of formal prayers and to seek reconciliation with God and neighbor through spe

Issue 66.3 of the Review for Religious, 2007. ; Spiritual Legacy Challenges The Feminine Apostolic Direction QUARTERLY 66.3 2007 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2007 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. ~gournalof Catholic Spiri~uali[y eview for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Webmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Clare Boehmer ASC Martin Erspamer OSB Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD Miriam D. Ukeritis csJ QUARTERLY 66.3 2007 contents prisms 228 Prisms legacy spiritual 230 Christian Mindfulness Ernest E. L~lrkin OCarm shares an understanding of Christian m~ndNlness that integrates this spiritual practice with recollection, the practice of the presence of God, and the sacrament of the present moment. This article is published in a slightly different edited form as chapter eight in Larkin's posthumously published book, Come'i~. plative Prayer.for Tod~y: Christian Meditations, Medio Media, 2007. challenges 248 Clericalism ,and the Religious Life Edward L. Krasevac oP discusses how various entidements that are mar,ks of "clericalism" manifest theinselves in seven different styles of living out the ministerial among male religious who are priests, priesthood Questionfs ,o' rR e felc t i o n is/Dcussion 265 Conversati],'ons on Eucharist Patrick Scan~ Moffett CFC suggests some ways of reviewing the role of ~e daily Eucharist in our lives as we face possible days when there is no Eucharistic celebration accessible. Prayer Review for Religious 276 283 the feminine ~ Mary and the Magnificat Damian C. Ilodigwe proposes that Mary's life challenges us to take seriously the responsibilities that accompany the privilege of being a Christian. Margaret, the Woman of Becchi Leo Hereto SDB relates the story of Margaret Bosco, the mother of John Bosco, and her influence on the beginnings of the Salesian mission. 288 apostolic direction Discernment in Common as Cooperative Inquiry David Coghlan SJ introduces cooperative inquiry as a form of action research that is compatible with the kind of faith activity that discernment is and accords with how discernment in common may be conducted. 302 Early Jesuit Strategies John P. Mossi SJ points out that early Jesuit strategies found in the Spiritual Exercises and Jesuit directives regarding discretion and empathic listening can be helpful in fostering reform and unity today. Questions for Reflection/Discussi0n 316 32O departments Scriptur,e Scope: The Great Journey in Luke's Gospel Canonical Counsel: Sharing Information in Confidential Matters 326 Book Renews 227 66.3 2007 prisms 228 P. rayer is a subject that merits consistent attention by writers in every age. In our own time it probably would take quite a long bibliography to list the titles of books written on prayer in any one year. In this issue of our journal, we feature the last article on prayer written by Father Ernest Larldn OCarm shortly before he died (1922- 2006). The article itself has been published as the eighth and final chapter of his book pub-lished posthumously, Contemplative Prayer for Today: Christian Meditation, Medio Media, 2007. Father Larkin's interest in prayer and his shar-ing of insights and personal experience mark his apostolic ministry of teaching, writing, and con-ducting retreats. Larkin served on our advisory board from 2001 to 2005 when because of health reasons he excused himself a year early from finishing his term. As editor I was especially delighted that he had agreed to serve on the advisory board. Surely he brought the gifts of his Carmelite her-itage, his teaching acumen, and his rich pasto-ral experience. But for me Father Ernest Larkin brought much more. He had been my mentor, along with Father Kieran Kavanaugh OCD, and my dissertation director during my doctorate Review for Religious studies at Catholic University of America. Both of these men initiated this Jesuit into the world of spirituality and mysticism, especially viewed from a Carmelite perspec-tive. I am forever grateful. Because of the intensity of dissertation supervision, Ernie Larkin and I spent a good deal of time together. He was always gracious, he was evidendy holy, and he could be gendy demanding--a most wonderful set of qualities to get a doctorate student to finish his dissertation on time. One example. After reading and research for one semester, I met with Ernie Larkin, who announced that he wanted a first chapter written now in two weeks' time. Weakly I protested that I still had more reading to do. He smiled and said I could read and I could also write. Ever thereafter I was kept to a regular schedule, and I finished within the semester. We always remained friends, though seldom interacting until he accepted my invitation to be a board member. Why would Ernie want to be remembered especially for his interest in and contribution to our lives of prayer? He would simply say that our most important relationship is with God. If a relationship is to develop and deepen, it demands time spent together. Conversation is most important as a way of sharing, but sharing takes many forms, often just being together in rest and in activity. We are talking about prayer, sometimes with words, at other times with still presence. Prayer, our relationship with God, was the center of Ernest Larkin's life. As he often said, "pray and God will ¯come." That is what he shared with us, even in his final book. May he be enjoying his eternal presence with God, the God of his life. ¯David L. Fleming SJ [229 66.3 2007 ERNEST E. LARKIN Christian Mindfulness spiritual legacy 230] Several classic disciplines in traditional Christian spirituality cultivate attentiveness and awareness of God and divine things. They are recollection, the practice of the presence of God, and the sac-rament of the present moment, all venerable exer-cises in the Christian life. Recollection, a concept and practice dear to St. Teresa of Avila, means in her words that "the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God.''1 She goes on to say that the soul is "cen-tered there within itself." Recollection allows one to meet God in the depths of one's being. The practice of the presence of God is cultivating alertness to one of the many ways God is pres-ent and relating to that presence by brief acts of recognition and prayer. The sacrament of the present moment sees each activity in life as an opportunity to meet God. Mindfulness is similar Ernest E. Larkin OCarm wrote on aspiratory prayer for us a year ago. He died shortly after writing the present article. Revieva for Religious to these three practices, but with its own emphasis. As a Christian practice it is a newcomer on the block. Its name and its particular approach come from the East, particularly from Buddhism. Christian mindfulness adds to God's presence special attention to the concrete and finite aspects of each action. The present article examines Christian mindfulness for the light it throws both on Christian Meditation itself and on conduct between the times of formal meditation. Mindfulness is precisely what we endeavor to do in the practice of Christian Meditation, in which saying the mantra is the prayer. In the rest of the day, we~ cultivate mindfulness to make it a prominent feature of our ongo-ing consciousness. The older practices highlight awareness of God's pres-ence and will be a diredt line of communication between the person and God. Here lies a possible limitation, which might be called abstractness. It is too easy for the remembrance of God's presence, especially on the run, to be a mere nod of the mind to a theological truth with minimal resonance in one's being. Mindfulness offers the missing piece, namely, a real presence to what one is doing at a given moment. Mindfulness emphasizes the presence of our total selves in the moment. Actually true recollection demands this too, but the full presence is too easily forgotten. Mindfulness will not let us forget this aspect. So the two disciplines, recollection and mindfulness, together and separately, emphasize full commitment of one's whole being to the moment at hand. They demand the aware-ness of one's self, the actidn, and the God who is there. The shorthand for true recollection and Christian mind-fulness is presence to the moment, a phrase we hope to elucidate in this paper. Presence to the moment is concentrated or focused attention; it means being "all there." Often we are only 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness Presence to the moment is concentrated or focused attention; it means being "all there." half there, present in body but miles away in thought. John of the Cross alludes to a well-known scholastic adage when he writes that "the soul lives where she loves more than in the body she animates.''2 The schoolboy is already out on the playing field as he impatiendy looks at the clock and waits for it to strike the end of the school day. In mindfulness we are present in love to what we are actually doing. We are present contemplatively, that is, with our whole person-- body, soul, and spirit--and not just with our mind or half-hearted will. We do not act absentmindedly or on automatic pilot. True presence is steady, nondiscursive attention, which at the same time is relaxed and self-possessed. St. Th4r~se of Lisieux is a perfect example of mind-fulness. According to Ida Friederike Gtrres, she "accom-plished the apparently impossible feat of being, every moment, in a state of sharply focused, intensely controlled alertness, and at the same time completely spontaneous in all that she did.''3 Monica Furlong says that Th4r~se gave up fantasies and impossible dreams in favor of living in the present and making her little acts of love and acceptance. "Her 'Little Way,'" she writes, "was, in some curious way, the reversal of everything she had been taught, the inflated form~of Christianity with its dreams of sanctity and mar-tyrdom. Now she saw that all you were asked to do was follow the will of God, whatever it might be, and to give yourself unreservedly to that life and to no other.''4 Thgr~se, according to her novice mistress, was "mys-tic, comic, everything . She could make you weep with Revi~ for tCetigious devotion and just as easily split your sides with laughter during recreation.''5 That is full presence to each chang-ing moment of the day. Hans Urs von Balthasar concurs with these words about Th~r~se: At each moment, her sole concern is to carry out the will of God as it was revealed to her second to second. ¯. Th~r~se never tries to dominate the course of events. In a very womanly fashion, she simply tries to receive everything, and to receive it lovingly. For her, every moment comes so fresh and immediately from the hand of God . [Th~r~se writes:] "I just keep concentrating on the present moment. I forget the past and preserve myself from worries about the future."6 There are also plenty of examples of the opposite of mindfulness. Here is one example from Tilden Edwards from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.7 Calvin does not like to relate to real experiences, because they are not clear; they are unpredictable and hard to figure out. He prefers to stay on the outside of things, and that is why he likes life filtered through television. That way he doesn't have to think. He can follow the action with "_,lazed eyes and partial attention. Everything is neat ano tidy, but very superficial. Reducing reality in this way is to take the mystery out of life. It is to fail to be fully present to the moment. Mindlessness is lazy thinking or failure to think at all. It allows one to gloss over things. But if we want to live intentionally with commitment to what we are about, we have to gather up ourselves in recollection and be involved in what we are doing. It is a short step to being in touch with the God hidden in the moment. That is what the Christian practice of recollection and mindful-ness attempt to do. Two entries in Thomas Merton's journals illustrate the contrast between mindfulness and mindlessness. They 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness occur at the end of the time he was working through an experience of falling in love with a young woman, the nurse who cared for him in the hospital. He registers in detail the emotional roller coaster he was on over a period of several months. Toward the end of the struggle he made this entry, which is an experience of mindfulness: June 15, 1966 . . . This morning for the first time, really since going to the hospital, I have real inner free-dom and solitude--I love M. but in a different way, peacefully and without disturbances or inner tension. I feel that once again I am all here. I have finally returned to my place and to my work, and am beginning once again to be what I am.8 Contrast this presence to himself with the fragmentation a month later, indicating that the struggle to deal with his emotions was not over: July 14, 1966 . . . Noted general dispersion and dis-tractedness all yesterday, obviously [because of being busy on errands in town], and all night. Only recovered a real awake mindfulness after about 3 hours of reading etc. this morning. The other state was of an anxious, disoriented consciousness, not properly centered, and making erratic and desperate acts calling on God, try-ing to recover orientation, thinking of M., questioning self, fearing consequences of imprudence etc.9 Note how Merton tried to regain mindfulness from his distracted mind by reading, reflection, and no doubt prayer. The need is to enter into one's, self; just being busy is a challenge, but often an excuse for many-mindedness or mindlessness. Mindfulness is one form of pondering events in the way Mary does in the Gospels. It is not enough to be amazed as the shepherds were at Bethlehem. We have to ponder them as Mary did and enter into them, seeking understanding, tuning in to the divine presence mani-fested there. We need to listen with a third ear and sit with mystery. Each moment is a revelation, a unique gift Revie~ for Religiou~ from God. We enter it with wonder and gratefulness and with a receptive heart. This is contemplative living; it is living in God's presence and cultivating the moment. Buddhist Mindfulness Mindfulness has an Eastern flavor and is practiced there in various styles of yoga and meditation and martial arts. In its Eastern practice it has a different philosophi-cal foundation and a different goal from the Christian form. But the Buddhist practice is transferable to a Christian setting by the simple but immensely important addition of the presence of - God. In Buddhist mindful-ness the only object is to be totally present to what one is doing. It does not make any reference to God, because Buddhism is non-theistic and has no personal God. The Absolute, the God of the Buddhists, is outside their purview of reality; God is unavailable and totally unknowable, beyond the grasp of the human mind. So Buddhist mindfulness settles for seeking total presence to the moment without distraction or divided attention. We believe that we can learn to be present from this practice, but also to include God in the presence. In this way we are baptizing it for Christian usage. We call it Christian usage. We call it Christian mindfulness. Our standing Christian tradition teaches us to go to God through creation, through the finite and the con-crete. All experience of God is mediated. The East can tell us something we always knew. It can help us see our tradition in a new light and realize how important the finite and the.concrete are in the spiritual life. We find The more down-to-earth i,we are the less we fly off in flights of fancy. 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness 236 God by going through the human. It is only a manner of speaking for us to say that we get beyond creatures to find God. Our goal is ultimately awareness of the Trinity and participation in life with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We attain this goal best by paying attention to the vehicle that brings us there, that is, our created activity. We are helped by being rooted in the existential moment. We are a sacramental people. The more down-to-earth we are, planting our feet squarely on the ground, the less we fly off in flights of fancy and the closer we are to reality and therefore to God. We are an incarnational people, and we believe we find Christ in every crevice of the human condition. Since the incarnation, and espe-cially since the resurrection, Christ is at the center of the universe and part of every human action. Listen to these words of Karl Rahner, who puts them in the mouth of Christ: "I am the blind alleys of all your paths, for when you no longer know how to go any further, then you have reached me, foolish child, though you are not aware to it."~° We find Christ by going through, not around, creation. This is to follow what is called the "analogical imagination" by writers like David Tracy, or the "Catholic imagination" by William E Lynch SJ or Andrew Greeley. Mindfulness helps us reclaim our birthright. The Buddhist teaching on mindfulness can help us see these truths more clearly. A signature example of the Buddhist mode is wash-ing the dishes when you are washing the dishes. It is the quaint trademark ofthe Vietnamese Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness. He writes: While washing the dishes, you might be thinking about the tea afterwards, and so try to get them out of the way as quickly as possible in order to sit and drink tea. But that means you are incapable of living dur- Review for Religious ing the time you are washing the dishes. When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must the most important thing in your life. Just as when you are drifiking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life.ll The inner meaning of the Buddha's teaching on mind-fulness is found in the Sattipatthanda Sutta, and it is summarized in the following words of a Buddhist com-mentator: Mindfulness deepens mental concentration (samatha) in the direction of meditation insight (vipassana). In mind-fulness the disciple dwells in contemplation of the body, feelings, and thoughts. Through being concentrated and mindful of these factors of our life, and by clearly comprehending through insight their true nature, the hate and greed, of sorrow and grief, is overcome and Nibbana [nirvana] is attained,lz Samatha and vipassana describe two different kinds of Buddhist meditation, the former seeking tranquillity and the latter insight.13 Both goals are the fruit of total pres-ence. Listen to Nhat Hanh's description of washing the dishes: "While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.''~4 The total presence is the heart of meditation in the East. A similar presence, but with the addition of a Trinitarian component, is the goal of Christian Meditation as taught by John Main. When I engage in the practice of Christian Meditation, I do not imagine God or anything else. I simply try to be totally present to my deepest self and to the God who dwells there. To the extent that I am successful, I am giving my full focused attention to my interior being and to the Trinity. I am not thinking about God or about any thing. I am practicing contemplation, that is, I am in communion with the real and the Real. 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness 238] It is important to know that John Main does not equate contemplation with special psychological experience of God. Contemplation for him is an existential act; it is participation or communion with God. In true mindful-ness I am acting at the level of my being's spirit, and I am truly free and loving. I touch both the reality of God and my own deepest reality. Free and loving presence to the present moment is the essence of mindfulness and meditation. You wash the dishes to wash the dishes, intentionally and with as little distraction as possible, not to impress your neighbor or even to provide clean dishes. These motives are extrane-ous and pertain to the future. You want to stay in the now. To accomplish that you need to be present to yourself. Here is a wise story from Mobi Ho, the translator of The Miracle of Mindfulness. She recalls in the preface an inci-dent when she was cooking furiously and had to stop and search for a missing spoon. She was obviously agitated. Thay came into the room and smiled and said, "What is Mobi looking for?" "The spoon," she answered, perhaps a bit petulandy. Thay answered with another smile: "No, Mobi is looking for Mobi.''15 Why Mindfulness Is Important Our distractions come from our divided and disordered selves. Our desires are the product of our many-minded-ness, and this in turn comes from our lack of integration. Our desires need to be integrated with our whole person and with what we are about at the moment. Our thought needs to be one-pointed and simple, an accomplishment that takes practice,, discipline, and grace. Practice in meditation and in mindfulness will develop the virtues needed and give me a handle on my desires. Perfect mindfulness will neutralize the warring factions within me and let me be absorbed by what I am doing. Review for Religious In this latter case I will have achieved what the psycholo-gists call the deautomatization of my desires. This means that I have neutralized the impulses and desires I do not want. Instead I can concentrate on my true wishes. The unwanted desires dry up and atrophy for lack of nurture.16 From a moral or spiritual point of view I have let my faith inform and animate all my behavior. I have attained true freedom and perfect love. I have achieved what John Cassian called purity of heart. Nhat Hahn celebrates the personal freedom in mind-ful activity in these words: The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is wondrous reality. I am being completely myself, following my breath, my presence, and con-scious of my thoughts and actions. There is no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves?7 The Christian adds the further element of the good inten-tion and remembering God's presence. I am present to God and receiving the impact of his presence, which is a fact before and after I am aware of it. I do not consti-tute that presence. I am alive with the presence of God. This aspect is not something extraneous and accidental. It belongs to the nature of things, to the immanence of God in all of creation. God's delight is to be with the children of this world, in our sorrow and in our own delights. This presence is for our sakes and our salvation. Christians emphasize the presence of God in all things, but they may tend to forget the envelope that contains it. Persons, actions, events are the medium through which God comes. The given moment is the only place one can meet God. In God there is no time, only the eternal now. God lives in that now moment on the other side of the veil that separates time from eternity. We enter the ves-tibule of that "now" when we concentrate on the present 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness 240 moment. Our beloved God is there, and it behooves us to be there as well. To enter the now moment is to let anxiety fall off our shoulders and to be renewed in hope by touching the God who loves us. The more that a person possesses herself, the more present she can be. She must be "all there," alert, aware, attentive, in a word, fully present. Intellectualizing or head knowledge is of little value. An abstract recall or thinking about God's presence in the here and now is not enough. The knowledge must be holistic and experiential, beyond mere thinking, beyond mind alone. What we need is heart knowledge. I am more than my thoughts or my mind, and therefore I must not identify with my mind or my ego. In mindfulness we stand before the Lord, "watching and waiting." We do not control the relationship, and we are there to receive a gift. Every moment is a gift from God, and we are aware of that fact. Every moment can be an occasion of contemplation, that is, an opportunity to realize God's love. The contemplative walks in the pres-enceof God in a moment-to-moment experience of God's love. The condition for the gift is to be present there, body, soul, and spirit. Mindfulness fights the enemies of wholeness and culti-vates full presence to God. The enemies of wholeness are what divide us, such as our addictions and compulsions, our unfreedoms and attachments, our sins and imperfec-tions. They undermine our love of God. Mindfulness faces these temptations head on by maintaining attention to the call of faith. We are thoroughly present to the moment because it is God's call for us at that time. Mindfulness recognizes distractions, calls them by name, then lets them pass, all the while gently focusing on the moment. As focused or nondiscursive attention, mindfulness helps us rise above what John Main calls the "monkey chat-ter" of the distracted mind. Mindless persons are unrooted Revie~ for Religio~s and tmcentered, so they tend to flit about from one distrac-tion to another, dissipated in their energies, prisoners of unrecognized consumerism and self-glorification. Mindless persons live outside themselves and engage only the part of themselves that is needed to satisfy the passing whim. They tend to be dilettantes and escapists. They have no depth or solid ground within themselves on which to rest commitments. They are more vulnerable to the winds of change around them and readily given to worry and anxiety simply because they do not realize that "God is near" (Ph 4:5). Excessive "busyness" is lack of mindfulness. Busyness is a cultural demon of our time, an escape or excuse from the hard work of concentration and the duty one is trying to avoid. Busyness is a wolf in sheep's clothing, because it looks like virtue but actu-ally is a whole array of self-interest clustered around pride or self-indulgence. It is an ego trip and the enemy of charity. Look more closely at its manifestations and you will find a driven and com-pulsive spirit that hurts one's health, peace of mind, and awareness of others. Over-busy persons are trying to prove themselves by the sheer quantity of their output. The more they do, the more they feed their self-satisfac-tion, basking in the imagined plaudits of the multitude. There is little charity in this addiction, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. The motivation in busyness is ego-enhancement, the desire to impress, even to show up the neighbor, Busyness is ersatz zeal. The reason why mindfulness is good and its opposite bad is that one is the expression of the true self and the Our unfreedoms and attachments Undermine our loveof God. 66.3 2007 Larkin * Christian Mindfulness 242 other the offspring of the false self. The true self comes from the deeper strata of our being, from our spirit, and it carries body and psyche with it. Thus it incarnates more of ourselves in its choices than does the splintered false self. The true self acts from the heart and not from self-deception or flee-floating emotions. It acts virtuously because it is rooted in God. Sensibility, our superficial self, is the home of our false self, because ego is at home there and ego goes its own way. The false self is self-serving by nature. It comes out of primitive experiences of life that set in place ways of coping with threats to one's security or self-importance. Our sensi-bility has to be redeemed and put at the service of charity by being ordered and integrated into our lives. Then the ego serves rather than seeks to be served. In these cases the true self has taken over. Wholeness has been restored and the Holy Spirit has become the fountain of living water spring-ing up to eternal life (In 4:14 and Jn 7:3 6-3 7). Mindfulness is a sign that the good spirit is in possession. How Do I Get It? One important final question is the practice: how do I become more mindful? The answer is: cultivate a vibrant spiritual life. Mindfulness is a by-product of mature holi-ness. But are there special means for growing in the prac-tice and skill? How can I become more mindful? I want to suggest two special means. One is meditation itself; the other is the basic condition of all prayer, purity of heart. These are the two arms for embracing God, the pincer movements of the spiritual life. They will bring us to mindfulness. First, mindfulness is the outcome of faithfulness to the two periods of Christian Meditation each day, since medi-tation itself is explicit and prolonged mindfulness. Practice makes perfect; obviously meditation will foster the habit Re~ie~ for Religious of mindfulness. Conventional wisdom says: find God in daily prayer and you will find God everywhere. The Sufi came out of his prayer room and said: I went to the mar-ketplace and found God everywhere. The contrary is also true: without prayer life you will not find God. General mindfulness throughout the day is a diffuse presence to God. How could this be maintained, if it is not nourished by a focused or concentrated presence? How be mindful of God in the comings and goings of the day if one never takes time to meet God face-to-face? We need to focus on the Lord, to come aside and find rest for our souls. Otherwise we will not recognize God when he appears in the disguise of other people or works of charity. The two periods of Christian Meditation come from a long tradition. One of the outstanding teachers of recol-lection, the contemporary and early teacher of Teresa of Avila, Francisco de Osuna, recommended two periods of formal meditation a day, each of them an hour's length. Osuna writes: "You are to retire into your heart and leave all created things for the length of two hours, one hour before and the other after noon, at the most quiet time possible."18 During the rest of the day the mind is to be occupied with lectio divina, the author agreeing with St. Bonaventure that "no one can call himself devoted to the sacred passion unless he spends most of [the day] contem-plating it in one manner or another."19 The two hours a day suggested by Osuna may be beyond the possibilities for many people, and periods of twenty to thirty minutes have proved workable for most people today. The second way to cultivate mindfulness is. purity of heart. It is as important as formal prayer, because the measure of one's purity of heart is the measure of one's prayer. Again this is the constant teaching of the Christian tradition.from John Cassian to Teilhard de Chardin. What is purity of heart? It is detachment, and specifically affec- 66.3 2007 Larkin ¯ Christian Mindfulness Affective detachment comes from effective detachment, tive detachment. This is the freedom of the will before choices. This freedom is cultivated especially by effective detachment, which is the actual renunciation of what-ever stands in the way to one's service of God. Affective detachment comes from effective detachment. In the Western traditon, renundation is the way to recol-lection. Writers like Frandsco de Osuna, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross underline the gospel teaching that we must leave all things to follow the Lord. A recent exponent of this age-old tradition is Pope Benedict XVI, who put the teach-ing in fresh language to his interviewer, Peter Seewald, shortly before the death of John Paul 11: "When it comes down to it," Cardinal Ratzinger said, "everyone has to undergo his own Exodus. He not only has to leave the place that nurtured him and become independent, but has to come out of his own reserved self. He must leave himself behind, transcend his own limits; only then will he reach the Promised Land, so to speak,m° Christian teachers generally emphasize the physi-cal renunciation of legitimate goods and pleasures, such as marriage or possessions or worldly honors; they call for the renunciation of all desires. These are refrains in their writing, and modern readers are easily put off by such total demands. But contemporary readers need to be reminded that these classic directives are always in the context of God's will. God's particular will for each person is the controlling factor for renouncing goods. The wholesale rejecton of desires applies to disordered desires. Discernment identfies the immediate will of God, and this is the criterion for choices. 244 Review for Religious The language in this tradition can betray us. Osuna, for example, presents recollection as the way to divine union, and it involves transcending, that is, going beyond all creatures. The person must be "blind, deaf, and dumb to everything that is not God." We need to "guard the heart with all vigilance, unburdening and clearing it of all created things, so that the one who created it may emerge with the life of grace.''2~ The cost of divine union is "not less than everything." The sweeping language might make one think that the whole of creation must be rejected. Not so, these authors tell us. The everything to be by-passed is the all that is in competition or opposed to God. The teaching on recollection attributes the same high efficacy as mindfulness, but also makes the same demands for its functioning. Karl Rahner in an essay on the Holy Eucharist says that recollection demands letting go of all false and harmful things.2z The teaching is founded on the pas-chal mystery, the death and resurrection of the Lord, which is "the innermost law of our lives." Baptism initiates us into this mystery and the Holy Eucharist renews the commit-ment. Eucharistic life, he writes, embraces the total profane life of the Christian, the "everyday" of the followers of Jesus. We die and rise with Jesus Christ, not only at Mass and in Holy Communion, but in our everyday behavior. How can we manage so sublime a calling? Rahner's answer is recol-lection, which he defines as "withdrawing into ourselves" and from there making the right choices at each moment. Withdrawing into ourselves is not copping out or fleeing the scene. It is being our true selves and living intentionally. Get beyond the distractions, turn off the constant radio, stop the "empty talk and gossip," avoid wasting time with worthless reading, and pull back from the "over-busy and all devour-ing fulfillment of one's duty, [from the busyness which is] an excuse for avoiding our real duty."~3 Enter into yourselves, so that you are your true selves. 66.3 2007 Larkin * Christian l~lindfulness 246 Recollection is no flight from life, but "ricing uP to ourselves as we really are, confronting ourselves instead of seeking solace in chatter, conversations, mere external dissipations." Holy Communion commits me to "accept my everyday just as it is. I do not need to have any lofty feelings in my heart to recount . I can lay my everyday before [God] just as it is. in all its pettiness and trivial-ity." z4 Christian recollection is another word for Christan mindfulness, and these two are at the heart of our search for God that comprises the two daily periods of contem-plative prayer that are Christian Meditation. Notes I The Way of Perfection 28.4. 2 Spiritual Canticle B, 5.3. 3 Cited from Ida Friederike G6rres's Hidden Face in John Donohue SJ'S article "Th~r~se of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church," America 177 (13 December 1997): 16. 4 Monica Furlong, Thdr~se of Lisieux (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), p. 96. s Cited in Donohue, "Th~r~se," p. 16. 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Two Sisters in the Spirit: Th~r~se of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity, trans. Donald Nichols and Ann Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius press, 1992) pp. 66-67. 7 "Valuing the Living Moment," Shalem News, cited in Kinospirit (November 1995): 2. s Learning to Love: The~ournals of Thomas Merton 6, ed. Christine M. Bochen (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p. 84. 9 Merton, Learning, p. 95. 10 The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations, ed. Albert Raffelt (New York: Crossroad, 1993), p. 51. 11 Thich Nhat Hahn, Miracle of Mindfulness (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), p. 24. 12 Ven. Dr. Dhammarakkhita, "Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness Meditation," The Gethsemani Encount~ ed. Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman OSB (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 35-41, at 35. 13 William Rehg SJ, "Christian Mindfulness," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 34, no. 3 (May 2002): 1-9. Review for Religious 14 Rehg, "Christian." is Rehg, "Christian." t6 Philip Novak, "The Practice of Attention," Parabola 15 (May 1990): 10-12; Arthur J. Deikman, "Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience," Psychiatry 29 (1966): 324-338. ~7 Thich Nhat Hahn, Miracle, p. 4. ~s Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. Mary E. Giles (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 388. ~90suna, Third, p. 177. 20 Paul Elie, "The Year 0fTwo Popes," Atlantic Monthly 297 (January- February 2006): 71. 2, Osuna, Third, p. 132. 22 Karl Rahner, "The Eucharist and Our Daily Lives," Theological Investigations 7, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), pp. 211-226. 23 Rahner, "Eucharist," p. 221. 24 Rahner, "Eucharist," p. 222. Metronome Fingers nimbly running up down over ebony and ivory Unfolding medleys of joy mourning glory Euphoric allegro highs., soaring Plummeting . soulful adagio lows Soothing largo interludes inviting Carefree scherzo playfulness., dancing With rhythmic rhapsodic blues Tapping to the tempo Of happy-go-lucky whim or deep contemplation A symphonic score of a life grace-fully written Melodically enjoyed harmonically played Ticking to a metronome's beating heart. Walter Bunofsky SVD 66.3 2007 EDWARD KRASEVAC Clericalism and the Religious Life challenges Many descriptions and definitions of clericalism have been suggested since the Second Vatican Council, and a number of them seem to have this characteristic: a sense of entitlement,1 as if the priesthood were something other than a ministry of loving service in imitation of Christ or as if its center of gravity were in something other than such service. Indeed, I understand clericalism largely if not exclusively as a spu-rious entitlement, an entitlement to privileges that do not stem from the following of Christ in his ministry of service, but rather from prosaic aspects of human nature.2 Clericalism has often been understood with reference to secular or diocesan pastors and their relation to the people under their pastoral care, 248 Edward L. Krasevac OP is professor of theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. In 1987 he wrote for us about Eckhart and John of the Cross and in 2002 about the relation of temperaments to lib-eral/ conservative stances. His address is 2301 Vine Street; Berkeley, California 94708. ekrasevac@dspt.edu Review for Religious to their peers and bishop, and to the structures of the diocese and church, rather than with reference to reli-gious priests, who usually live a quite different style of priesthood, one heavily influenced by the structures and charisms of their religious institute. But I surmise that clericalism is alive and well among religious priests also, although it is heavily colored--and often camouflaged-- by the dynamics of religious life) Clericalism is not the only source for the entidements I will describe below, but I think it is often operative in the seven styles of being a religious priest that I will describe. Each of these styles manifests habits that undermine the service character of the priesthood. The types are not exclusive, and some of us bear characteristics of more than one in our lives as priests. In what follows I hope to stir up self-knowledge among religious priests so that our priesthood may not easily become something other than it was meant to be. In reflecting unwarranted entidements, the various types appear "negative," but positive elements appear in them, too. I will take note of these in the hope of showing that at least some of the types are legitimate ways of being a religious priest. The Ambitious Priest The "ambitious priest" loves the possession or exercise of authority, with the accompanying prestige and perqui-sites. Some priests seek the simple possession of author-ity (in the congregation as a superior or in the church as a bishop); other priests seek not only the possession of authority but also its exercise. The religious priests who are ambitious only for the possession of authority often lack the drive and discipline to exercise it effectively; they are content with the prestige and perks of office. Their ambition may stem from a desire not to have to obey others or from their own insecurities. These priests are t249 66.3 2007 Krasevac ¯ Clericalism and the Religious Life Ambitious p iests are usually committed,to values of collaboration, consultation, or collegiality in! the exercise of authori usually not energized by authority itself. It is not author-ity itself that draws them, but rather the accoutrements of authority. Their possession of authority does not make them dangerous--they generally do not hurt others or the common good by their exercise of it--but, negatively, their office is not used for the good of their brethren and those the congregation serves. Other ambitious priests seek authority precisely in order to exercise it, and are often energetic and talented (they may, of course, also be interested in the prestige and perks of office). There are many reasons for this type of ambition: a need to control others, a desire to redress per-ceived injuries done to them by their brethren, the imposition of their own deeply felt values on others (in cases where more collegial methods of persuasion have failed), or sim-ply the exercise of power for its own sake. Ambition in these cases is usually ambition for author-ity as power over others in contrast to authority as service to others. And so ambitious priests, in either of the senses just described, are usually not committed to values of col-laboration, consultation, or collegiality in the exercise of authority,4 but tend to understand it as a personal privi-lege that should be possessed and exercised according to their own best lights and interests. Ambitious priests can have two quite different rela-tionships to ministry. In some cases they are not much involved in ministry at all, at least not very effectively, Review for Religious because they always have their eyes on "what's next," the further rung of the ladder (which requires, among other things, lots of time and energy given to internal politics). Those they serve often feel that they are only half listen-ing or responding, because their heart is elsewhere. In other cases ambitious priests throw themselves into min-istry because they know that a crowded rdsum6 can bring advancement sooner. But this success assumes effective- . ness that can be measured quantitatively, such as financial or building success. Nonetheless, ambitious priests in the second sense are often disciplined and hardworking and can appear outstanding in ministry. The entitlement operative here is for authority as power over others: a priest deserves to exercise authority and receive obedience, even if that authority and obedi-ence are not direcdy exercised in the service of his breth-ren or those whom he serves in ministry.5 Although ambition for authority as power over others is a false entidement of clericalism, ambition for author-ity as service to others may well be warranted, taking the form of actively seeking office or accepting it when prof-fered even against one's desires. Since holding office in the church these days is more often a burden than a blessing, the church needs those with the talent, motivation, and ¯ generosity for service to step forward. But, since ambition for power can be present under the mande of ambition for service, strict personal honesty is crucial. For this, dia-logue with others is essential to discerning Whether I wish to serve others in seeking or accepting a particular office, or rather wish to serve myself. Part of this discernment might be to ask myself whether I am willing to forgo perquisites of office that are not necessary for its effective exercise, or am willing to step aside if a more appropriate candidate emerges. Ambition for authority in the church requires, it seems to me, that people go through such 66.3 2007 Krasevac * Clericalis~n and the Religious Life a searching and often painful purification before being allowed to have authority in our lives. The gentleman priest is usually not bossy, and may be quite humble in his relations with others. The Gendeman Priest or Priest of Leisure As the ambitious priest loves the possession or the exercise of power, the "gendeman priest" loves the good life in at least some of its forms. Fine restaurants, the opera or symphony, the art museum, a rich social life among those who are well educated and well-off are often characteristic of this style of being a priest, as is a penchant for travel to culturally rich destina-tions. It is also impor-tant, when the gentleman priest is at home, that the table be a good one and there be enough employ-ees (or other religious) in the house to serve his needs in a style that might recall servants of old. Ministry is important to such a priest, but usually is carefully controlled so as not to interfere with the gentleman priest's other pursuits. He does not consider the real possibility of "breaking a sweat" in the Lord's vineyard, and the ministry of service is often seen as a distraction from more important callings. Comfort is important to the gentleman priest, and a decent cash flow is obviously required; poverty is not the queen of his vows. As in all forms of clericalism, a strong sense of entitlement is operative in the gentleman priest, an entidement not so much for authority as for a lifestyle that befits his education and tastes and, needless to say, his understanding of the priesthood. ¯ On the plus side, the gentleman priest is usually not very bossy, and may be quite humble in his relations with Review for Religious others.6 He is often a pleasant fellow, gracious and gener-ous to others in spontaneous and endearing ways. He is generally a person whom it is hard to dislike, and can be a delight in community (when he's there). The gende-man priest is, after all, a gendeman, one who is sensitive to other people, thoughtful, polite, well mannered. He treats others well and brings to religious life and ministry the values of culture and respect for others. And because, in the familial atmosphere of religious life just as in the domestic family, the familiar and familial may conceal or seem to excuse insensitivity to others in word and action, the formality that the gentleman priest brings--an infu-sion of genuine courtesy to and respect for others--can be a boon for both our communities and our ministries. The Gossiping Priest We religious talk a lot to each other, and a lot about each other, and about those whom we serve. This is a normal and essential part of the familial in our communal life. We should be interested in what our brothers are doing, in their ups and downs, in the joys and sorrows and accomplishments and failures of their lives. It is only when we have such knowledge that we can respond fra-ternally to them in their needs, and sometimes get some comic relief as we laugh at their foibles. Conversation and the knowledge of each other that flows from it are essential to the common good of our congregation and to the good of the individuals within it. The "gossiping priest" also loves to converse, but for very different reasons, sometimes having to do with "inno-cent curiosity," sometimes from less charitable motives (knowledge can hurt others as well as help them). Even in the case of curiosity, however, much damage can be done both to other individuals and to the common life by such conversation. Information may come to light and 66.3 2007 Kra~e~ac ¯ Clericalism and the Religiou~ Life damage or destroy a brother's good name by the very fact that it does come to light. Violations of privacy can often result from the need to know what everyone else is doing, and why; great amounts of energy can be expended in creating and maintaining elaborate networks of commu-nication, energy that could better be focused elsewhere; such networks can easily lead to an exclusivity in the com-munity that direcdy damages the common life; and the effectiveness of superiors who are trying to deal charitably and jusdy with complex personal problems of the breth-ren can be compromised by such a "need to know." In other words, "innocent curiosity" may have anything but innocent effects, and the gossiping priest (whose life is largely based on knowing and conversing about the lives of others) is too often not honest with himself concerning the reasons for and the effects of his gossip. In addition, the possibility that the confidentiality of privileged con-versations-- say, that of chapters--may be broken in the course of gossiping has a chilling effect on the freedom of a community to deal effectively with its legitimate but sensitive concerns. The entidement here is for knowledge of other peo-ple's doings, usually for the very sake of that knowledge. A priest, after all, is almost by definition one to whom secrets are communicated, one who is supposed to be privy to matters of conscience. The devastation that can be caused by the gossiping priest is in direct relation to those weighty privileges which are abused by the false entitlements of clericalism.7 More positively, in most cases the gossiping priest's life is centered on the concerns of his community, whether at the local or regional level, as on his family--and this is a good thing. In a time when the pressures are great which lead to detachment from the community and to "private life," the gossiping priest witnesses in his own Review for Relig~o~,~ way to the value and importance of our life together in the community, for the community is the major concern of his interests and his conversation. Once purged of its negative effects, the conversations of the formerly gos-siping priest can become genuinely community building and enhancing. The, Romantic Priest This manifestation of clericalism in the religious priest normally applies to those whose experience of the church is postconciliar, because the "romantic priest" is largely driven by nostalgia for the past--for what he did not per-sonally experience, but has read about and longs for. The romantic priest is not usually concerned with matters of doctrine or even authority (and thus is not necessarily a legalist); rather, he is more concerned with matters of dress, style of liturgy, the particular traditions and prac-tices of his congregation, the dignity of his priesthood, aesthetic matters, and certain (traditional and sometimes dying) devotions. He is often genuinely pious, one who is committed to his vows and the way of life that they entail. But the romantic priest loves to play a role which is largely defined by these kinds of things, and above all by the past. The complexities of contemporary life in the church and world hold little interest for him, as do the complexities of most ministries; his world and his inter-ests lie elsewhere. The entidement here is for the power to define the priesthood idiosyncratically, that is, in relation to his per-sonal interests rather than in relation to the following of Christ and the needs and interests of those whom he serves in ministry along with the needs of his brothers and sisters in religious life. The romantic priest is preoccupied with the dignity of his priesthood and tends to impose his romantic view of the church, the priesthood, and the fol- 66.3 2007 I&asevac ¯ Clericalism and the Religious Life lowing of Christ on others, both those whom he serves in ministry and those with whom he lives in community. The romantic priest brings to his community and to the church important values of Catholic culture that many people today miss; he brings a strong sense of tradition and its place in Catholic life. Grounded in something other than the contemporary and the rapidly changing, the romantic priest's rootedness in the genuine values of the past assures that he will not be enamored of every new fad in liturgy or ministry; he sees the present from the perspective of the past, because of his lively sense of the past, and can be an important witness to contemporary Catholic culture, if he does it with balance and without the entidements of clericalism. The Narrowly Focused or Dependent Priest On the face of it, the "narrowly focused priest" is a good priest indeed (much like the romantic priest). He is often quite dedicated, disciplined, prayerful, obedient, and in some (perhaps narrow) senses responsible and chari-table. He does everything that is explicidy asked of him in community and in ministry: he does what he is told, follows the rules, and is thus seen as a responsible priest, even a fine one. One of the roles he does not normally fill is to take the initiative either in ministry or community life. Others-- usually religious superiors (whom he scrupulously obeys) and statutes of his congregation--set the parameters for what is required of him. To deal with the inevitable and complex problems that arise in ministry and in the life of his community is not his calling; this is what supe-riors are for. The problems of community life in par-ticular-- at both the local and provincial levels--are their concern, not his. Further, the narrowly focused priest is often afraid to acknowledge the existence of problems Review for Religious within the ministry or community, because he might then feel the obligation to face them. Hence he may be naive about people in general and naive in choosing those who will bear the authority in his community. Much like the romantic priest, the dependent priest shies away from the complexities of real life, but rather chooses to live in a different world defined by his explicidy spelled-out obli-gations; he is content to bury his head in the sand and let others face the difficult challenges of the ministry and the common life. In both cases there is a kind of escapism to ideal worlds. Although incorporating many of the genuine values of the priesthood and religious life, the dependent priest is a burden on his community precisely insofar as he "leaves it to others," thereby escaping his own responsibility for the common good. Superiors of dependent priests appear "burned out" because they are left to deal with the dif-ficult and often intractable problems of their communities without concrete help or support. Their congregations can be severely damaged by the na'fvet6 that elects incom-petent or otherwise unworthy superiors because depen-dent priests prefer to remain uncritical regarding the real needs of their community and the character and ability of those whom they elect. Entitlement here is for the privilege to define one's obligations as priests and religious in the narrowest of terms, terms which, require litde personal responsibility, litde stress, litde compromise of one's ideals of an essen-tially trouble-free and straightforward ministry and com-munity life. The narrowly focused priest is very close to being a fine priest. He is not normally ambitious, nor a gossip, nor embittered, nor a legalist; rather, he is often humble and obedient, and loath to meddle in the affairs, of others. He generally prizes the "regular life," and lives that life 66.3 2007 Kras~ac ¯ Clericalis~n and the Religious L~fe in a disciplined and balanced way. He is, in a word, com-fortable in his role as a religious priest, largely identifying with it. And he serves both his community and those in his ministry in predictable and necessary ways. Perhaps the key to understanding and overcoming the dependent priest's perceived entidements is in recognizing that "not being of the world" as a priest and religious does not exempt one from having to deal with many of the problems of the world that nevertheless appear in com-munity life and in ministry. These problems cannot be ignored, nor quarantined to be dealt with by others. They are often very real and must be engaged as they arise, even if such engagement cause ruptures in the carefully worked-out and much respected routines of the narrowly focused priest. The Enforcer Priest One of the roles of the ministerial priesthood is to render judgment on people and their acts in the light of the gospel and the church's teaching and with a view to their repentance and salvation. The "enforcer priest" takes this role seriously and is constantly concerned that the misdeeds of others (both the laity and his own brethren) be corrected. Since he rarely if ever takes time off from this mission, his presence is generally felt to be a burden by those around him; he is rarely challenged, however, as his very presence is usually intimidating. Although judgment is a necessary aspect of the priesdy role, the enforcer priest seems preoccupied with it (and often with the punishment that should follow) to the extent that he forgets its end: human salvation. This can happen when judgment is isolated from or allowed to dominate mercy, when the enforcer priest lacks self-knowledge of his own need for mercy, when the ambiguity of all human actions in the external forum is forgotten, when prudence Review for Religious fails to suggest that a particular intervention may be inef-fective or even counterproductive regarding the person's overall good, or when he assumes an almost infallible ability to interpret the law (moral, canonical, liturgical) and its application to a particular situation,s The enforcer priest may be preoccupied with error and judgmentEboth in what people think (orthodoxy) and what they do (orthopraxis) for - a number of rea-sons. He may be threatened by the actions and beliefs of others to the extent that they are perceived to call into question his ° own (perhaps frag-ile) values, beliefs, and lifestyle. He may be emotion-ally unable to live with diversity, ambiguity, and the lack of psychological certitude. He may have fears of ecclesial anarchy if laws are not swiftly and effectively enforced. The entidement here is the ~resumption that a priest may speak for Christ and the church without mercy, with-out prudence, without the nuance that comes from expe-rience and compassion, that he may apply the letter of the law without regard to its purpose, and that (in some cases, at least) he may judge others without first judging himself with rigorous honesty. On a more positive note, fraternal correction is a gos-pel imperative and a crucial need in most religious com-munities (and, of course, in the church at large). We are Alfhough judgment is a necessary a~pect of t~ prestly role, the enforcer priest seems preoccupied with it to the extent that he forgets its end: human salvation. 66.3 2007 260 responsible for one another's well-being in all its aspects. But fraternal correction--if undertaken prudendy, effec-tively, and in a true gospel spirit--is also a particularly difficult task. One who corrects one's brother or sister risks anger, alienation, and the loss of friends. It is much easier to ignore the true needs of one another and to just get along with them peacefully. Real courage is necessary to practice fraternal correction, which sometimes compels us to confront those who need confronting for their good and for the common good. The enforcer priest can show us the way to this responsibility, provided that the cleri-cal entitlements associated with this style of priesthood are held in check. The enforcer priest must learn not to undertake fraternal correction according to his own likes or dislikes, desires, insecurities, preferences, or ideologies, but rather for the sake of the other's true and necessary good, or that of the community, and without intent to embarrass or punish. The Embittered Priest The "embittered priest" has been deeply hurt by cer-tain experiences in ministry or in the life of his religious community (usually the latter) and has tenderly nourished that hurt for a number of years. Perhaps he was slighted by notable others (whether in authority or.not), perhaps never given the responsibility in ministry or community that he thought he deserved, perhaps denied a second term as superior, or perhaps he has just never received the respect from others that he thinks he deserves. As a result, the embittered priest has largely disen-gaged himself from both ministry and community life. He "deserved better" in his many years of priesthood and has now "opted out" of the life that has treated him so poorly. Often older, and sometimes suffering from illness (including alcoholism), the embittered priest is unhappy Review for Religious himself and cannot but make those around him--who are often the ones taking care of him--unhappy also. He sees his clerical entidement as coming from the very fact that he is a priest and religious, rather than from his achievements, character, or talents. He feels this enti-dement so deeply that without it he must withdraw from his basic responsibilities as a priest and religious (although he still feels entided to the rights that his canonical status entails). The life and experiences of the embittered priest point to the reality that we do hurt each other in religious life and that the wounds we inflict can be lasting. We all have different tolerances for being hurt, and we need to be sen-sitive to the harm we can do to others less resilient than ourselves. In addition, the continuing presence of these men in our lives calls us to care for them in their distress even when they neither want nor appreciate our help, but need it. They call us to be Christ in ways that we might not otherwise be. Ideals and Compromises Our following of Christ and our loving ministry in imitation of him in the particular way characterizes the ministerial priesthood is a high ideal, one difficult to achieve and always at risk of compromise. The com-promises we sometimes make may simply stem from our manifold weaknesses and lack of love and then be rec-ognized, repented of, and borne in stride as we take up pursuit of the ideal once again. But our compromises may also stem from our conceptions of the priesthood itself and hence may be more difficult to recognize and repent of. These compromises stem from the ideologies of cleri-calism, 9 ideologies that affect the exercise of the priest-hood of Christ in particularly invidious ways. It is only by recognizing the clerical compromises in the ways we live 66.3 2007 Krasevac * Clericalism and the Religious Life 262] our priesthood in our religious communities that we can begin to address them)° Notes i It is interesting that a sense of entidement is a classic character-istic of all forms of narcissism. 2 How do these entidements arise from clericalism? Perhaps par-tially from an exaggeration and ideologizing of the sacramental differ-ence that holds between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of all the baptized, perhaps because priests who have "given up all" for the sake of the kingdom come to believe that they "deserve" some-thing by way of entidement in return, perhaps because the structure of secular society with its manifold entidements has unduly influenced the life of the church 3 Dynamics such as the manifold forms of governance in religious institutes; those institutes' often rich cultural heritages and particular liturgical, doctrinal, and aesthetic traditions; the familial contexts of most forms of religious life, with many religious living closely with each other for many years; and the educational and cultural possibilities generally available to religious priests, and also their mobility. 4 The roots of the word "authority" have to do with "causing to grow." This has obvious meaning for parents' authority over their chil-dren, but it also adds depth to the idea of authority as service; supe-riors and bishops bear a special responsibility to deepen the faith and the personal development of those over whom they have been given authority. 5 The desire for power that stems from clerical entidement may take a different form in religious priests who do not seek authority for themselves, but for those whom they will be able to control. Generally intelligent and shrewd, they care little for the prestige or perks of office, but seek control of those in office, perhaps because they believe that such power is a right of their intelligence and farsightedness. Often this ambi-tion stems from a fear that their brethren will not "get it right" through the normal democratic processes of deliberation and election, or from a fear that if their enemies were elected they would be vulnerable to their attacks. This ambition can also stem from their unwillingness to accept public accountability for their positions and actions. The dynamics of entitlement, however, are essentially the same in all cases of ambition-- entitlement for power over others rather than in service of others. 6 A variation of the priest of leisure is the "hobbyist priest," who loves, not so much the good life of culture, but other aspects of the good life, such as a fascination with computers or a preoccupation with Revie~v for Religious domestic concerns. Hours, days, even weeks can be spent on equiva-lents, with little attention given to traditional responsibilities of the priesthood. Here the hobby provides not a well-deserved respite from priesdy work, but a substitute for it. The entidement issues are essen-tially the same: the priesthood "deserves" (if not requires) a life of leisure, the time and resources to pursue their interests largely unfet-tered by the ministry. 7 One further negative dynamic often present in the lives of gos-siping priests is that they become friends with others who have similar habits of gossiping. Their friendship is not about something good that can lead to their growth as human beings and as religious and priests, but about something that can compromise their friendship at its core and impede their growth in goodness. 8 Unlike the romantic priest, the enforcer priest usually is a "legal-ist," that is, one who is so preoccupied with the letter of the law that he forgets the end to which the law is ordered (ultimately the realization of the good of human salvation) or sees it to be of secondary importance. A certain .myopia prevents the enforcer priest from understanding the relation of means to end, the relative nature of the former to the latter. The enforcer priest and the romantic priest usually believe that oth-ers should live according to the values they think important (values of right belief and conduct / romantic, values). One difference is that the romantic priest is usually not inclined to impose his values on others and is content to live according to them himself and to persuade others of their merit in more subde ways. 9 Ideologies are "views that serve to rationalize the vested interests of some group." "The ideology both justifies what is done by the group whose vested interest is served and interprets social reality in such a way that the justification is made plausible." Peter Berger, An Invitation to Sodology: A Humanistic Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), pp. 54 and 130. ~0 As mentioned above, a sense of entidement is a classic character-istic of all forms of narcissism (both individual and group), and hence one may expect that narcissistic attitudes will be part and parcel of the phenomenon of clericalism. This is displayed most clearly in those cases where the priesthood is understood as being primarily about the self rather than about Christ and service to others. In these cases the priesthood is seen to be primarily about me and hence is "defined" in terms of my needs and my desires, rather than the needs and desires of those I have been called to serve. In both the gendeman priest and the gossiping priest, there is often a fascination with things "churchy," that is, with the accidentals or outward trappings of church life; this may be true of the romantic 263 66.3 2007 Krusevac * Clericalism and the Religious Life and enforcer priests as well. This concern with "churchiness" may be an enduring aspect of clericalism and is probably bound up with the narcissism that is characteristic of clericalism--focus on the self in its more superficial aspects. Questions for Reflection]Discussion Whether I am a priest or someone exercising ministry in the service of the church, do I find myself described in one or other of the categories proposed by Krasevac? How would I want to add to Or negate some of the qualities? What other major catergories would I want to identify? Do people see a kind of "clericalism" in religious life as lived by both women and men? What forms does this "clericalism" take in religious life? How might we live differently if we religious were to be free of such a designation? 264 Review for Religious PATRICK SEAN MOFFETT Conversations on Eucharist T~Eucharist in its entirety, inclusiveness, and uni-sality is an integral engagement of the worshiping Body of Christ. It constitutes the singular act, par excel-lence, of the believing community. The lay people, priests, and religious of the Roman Catholic Church understand the Eucharist to be the source and summit of the spiritual life (LG §11, Catechism §1324). The Eucharist, and for many centuries the daily Eucharist, has provided aspirants to holiness with sustenance, moral instruction, corporate bonding, and strengthening of belief. No Mass today? On days when there is no Eucharistic celebration accessible, daily communicants might welcome, alone or with others, spiritual engagements that include some of these elements: word and act, thanks and praise, offer-ing and communion. Should such days multiply, daily communicants may need to revisit the grounding of our spirituality. Patrick Scan Moffett CFC wrote for us in 1984 and 2001. He may be addressed at Christian Brothers; 4949 N.E. 2nd Avenue; Miami, Florida 33137. 66.3 2007 ~loffett ¯ on~er~atiom on Eucharist 266, As we extrapolate current trends in priesdy vocations and the growth of the people of God, we perhaps see a time when Eucharist as we know it today will not be readily accessible to much of the church. Some feel called upon to anticipate such an eventuality by reducing the frequency of their own participation in Eucharist. For some formation directors, that decision is extended to those whom they prepare for future service to the church. Others prefer to engage fully in what is currendy avail-able, trustful that either the trends will change or that they will be blessed with the strength to confront such challenges if and when they occur. Age will be a factor in deciding for oneself. Older men and women might see no need to alter a way of life that can safely carry them through their remaining years. Deciding for others calls for serious discernment. No matter which strategy is chosen, we will do well to review the role of daily Eucharist in the spiritualities that have helped to shape .our lives and those of our dis-tant and more recent ancestors. Theologians, canonists, spiritual writers, and spiritual directors have much to contribute to a reexamination of theories and praxes of Eucharistic spiritualities. Conversations on Eucharist, such as those referred to in what follows, could be useful starting points. For purposes of this article and from the perspective of a psychologist, I will offer some preliminary samplings of the interface of Eucharist and the ongoing processes of belonging and self-definition. Varying perspectives will suggest what might need to be considered before defining new paths to holiness. The Eucharist in the lives of daily communicants Recently I have been inviting some daily communi-cants to engage in extended conversation about the place Review for Religious of Eucharist in their lives. The questions I ask and my understanding of responses they evoke are surely con-ditioned by my experience as a religious and as a psy-chologist. What I recognize as themes of agency, identity, relationships, belonging, and development have deeper and richer meaning both for those who are speaking of their insights and for their listeners, who bring their own experiential and intellectual perspectives. The selection of participants is by no means a random sample. Preliminary conversation has indicated that they have been daily commu-nicants for a significant '~ part of their lives and that they are comfortable in sharing their thoughts and feelings. Those who welcome the invitation need little prompting. They readily attest to the ~ centrality of the Eucharist with respect to most of the other engagements of their day. They describe the Mass as bringing together the sacred and the mundane, the joys and the struggles, the fears and the hopes, the hurts and the healing that shape their day. As the initial response concludes, I ask if any moments in the ritual have particular significance for them or bring together what they have just described. Some respond immediately, others pause and then report resistance to singling out any part of the entire experience. One religious, responding to my probing on such aspects of special focus during the Mass, identified the moment of Communion and what he saw as the "all too brief time after Communion." He went on to note that his ordained friends, on the other hand, tend to place the i ask ifany moments " in the ritual have particular significance for them. 267 66.3 2007 Moffett ¯ Conversations on Eucharist 268 emphasis on the Consecration or the Invocation of the Spirit over the gifts. I ask myself and.others: Who are the protagonists in this sacred event? We begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. How is the Trinity experienced? Who is With me at Eucharist? Who else is present :around the altar, in the pews, dispersed about the earth, or in the heavens? Who comes from afar, or from long ago? Who of my sisters and brothers, family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances are especially present to me during the Mass? Whom do I make present with my thoughts, memories, and prayers? I understand that part of my role is to gather guests from the highways and the alleys. All are welcome. The Master seeks a full house for the sharing of the banquet. Levels of belonging Belonging, as an action and as a consequence of group engagement, contributes to the identification of both the individual and the group. Each member has a creative role in the formation of both the "I" and the "we." Eucharist ritualizes and celebrates who we are as a people and who we are becoming. Observers of human development chart stages of growth. Infancy, childhood, pubescence, adolescence, and young adulthood are seen as steps toward full maturity. So too in groups there are successive levels of belong-ing.~ Members move from acceptance to participation, from participation to engagement, and eventually from engagement to proprietorship. Individuals understand themselves increasingly in terms of the group. Eucharist provides a forum for affirming membership. I have been accepted into the people of God. I am a Catholic. I do what Catholics do. I believe. My engagement in the lives Review for Religious of my brothers and sisters in the church expresses the essence of who I am and who we are. We are the Body of Christ. While there might be a sense in which we "make belief," Pope Benedict XVI has urged caution: Here I think it is very important to stress one essential point: no one believes purely on his own. We always believe in and with the church. The creed is always a shared act: it means letting ourselves be incorpo-rated into a communion of progress, life, words, and thought. ¯. We must let ourselves fall, so to speak, into the communion of faith, of the church. Believing is in itself a Catholic act. It is participation in this great certainty, which is present in the church as a living subject. ¯ . . Day after day we must deepen our communion " with the holy church and thus with the Word of God . Only when we are united in the church do we belong to the church, do we become members of the church, do we live by the word of God which is the life-giving force of the church. And those who live by the word of God can only live it because it is alive and vital in the living church) Identity Those schooled in scholastic philosophy might recall the struggles around the principle of individuation. Prime matter, the amorphous "substance" common to all being, affords no differentiation as such. Form (anima) serves to distinguish between levels of being, but is common to all members of the same stratum of being. To arrive at differentiation, attention is directed to the baecceitas, the "thisness" of a particular being. Form is imposed on the universal matter in the here and now (see Th.Aq., De Veritate 2.6-7). The action yields an individual being. What might also be attributed to the seemingly infinite possibilities of constellations of DNA is explained as deriv- 269 66.3 2007 Moffett * Conversations on Eucharist ing its uniqueness from the moment of incarnation. Word is made flesh and dwells among us. At some moment in time and in a particular place I am, we are. A series of events earns me a name, a role, and a his-tory. They bond°me with clusters of other human beings, groups among whom I have an ever more distinct place as both individual and member. I belong to a family, a group of friends, of associates, a community, a country. I am an alumnus, a professional, a supporter of causes, a member of a party, or perhaps one of the group that shuns such memberships. These group-forming events may be circumstantial or intentional. I do not choose my family. My first friends tend to be those in Participation in daily Eucharist confirms an aspect self-definition and en ga ged,me in a process of ego ,extension. the immediate vicin-ity or at my school. Gradually I become more selective. I go away to a university. I choose a profession, opening new possi-bilities of bonding. I marry. I am ordained. I join a religious congregation. Each choice helps to define me and also the others I include when using the first per-son plural. Participation in daily Eucharist confirms an aspect of self-definition and engages me in a process of ego extension. 270 Prayer in the first person plural The Eucharistic ritual may be viewed as an exercise in gathering. Whoever is present joins with the priest and others "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Each successive "Amen" serves to expand and to confirm this bonding among those who Review for Religious seek mercy, offer praise, listen to the word, and proclaim "Thanks be to God." Together we express our belief in all that defines us individually and collectively as people of God. We ask God to hear our prayers. The celebrant invites us to ask that our sacrifice be acceptable. We lift up our hearts to the Lord. From the end of the offertory through the Eucharistic Prayer, the first person singular occurs only in the words of Jesus: This in my body, my blood. Do this in memory of me. We unite in the Memorial Acclamation and begin to acclaim our larger sense of who stands with us in the pres-ence of our God: our ancestors, saints, angels, all who have gone before us, our sisters and brothers, the church throughout the world. Together in the unity of the Holy Spirit we proclaim the great Amen. The Our Father makes repeated use of the first person plural. The first person singular returns with the Communion. I am not worthy, but I will be healed so that I may join with the others in sharing the bread. The ritual concludes in the communal blessing, again in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and with a com-munal Amen. In union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world In the conversations on Eucharist, the daily partici-pants often express the belief that what is happening in their local church or chapel is part of a larger, continu-ous gathering of the church throughout the world and throughout the ages. They refer to the Last Supper as the initiation of an event that is as much a present reality as it is the deposit of the faith of their ancestors. Several reli-gious have noted that, while religious formation helped shape their understanding of Eucharist, they brought the practice from their families. 271 66.3 2007 Moffe~ ¯ Conversations on Eucharis~ They go on to indicate that the time of the Mass itself is not necessarily when they have the most powerful expe-rience of the presence of the Lord. They speak of cen-tering prayer, lectio divina, or moments in ministry or service as the source of a joy that they will later bring to the Eucharist. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament The preservation of the Eucharistic species for pur-poses of cult is minutely regulated by tradition and decree. Today's priesthood, the ordained and the nonordained participation of the laity, has reset the bounds of the sacred. Devotion takes new forms. The liturgy empha-sizes the immolation of the sacrificial Victim and the communal consumption of the divine banquet. Our times are marked by fewer priests, fewer celebrations, multifunctional worship spaces, limited visiting hours--scarcity issues and vagrancy concerns. Ecumenical unease marks practices that others might not distinguish from idolatry or superstition. And yet churches in retirement areas are reporting that the chapels of the Blessed Sacrament are centers of vibrant and steady worship. Youth leaders attest that silent time before the Blessed Sacrament has a unique attraction for many of today's adolescents. They willingly participate in quiet beholding. Behold announces some of the more powerful moments of the Scriptures. Adam and Eve have such a moment, and it evokes fear. Jacob experiences the Lord poised over Youth leaders attest thdt silent time before the Blessed Sacrament,has a= unique attraction for many of today's adolescentd. Review for Religious him and marvels: "Indeed, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know" (Gn 28:17). Mary is shaken by the words of the annunciation and responds, inviting reflection on what she is experiencing. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Generations have waited to behold the Wonder Counselor, the Prince of~ Peace. John the Baptist identifies Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God" (Jn 1:35). And years later a peasant is asked to explain a daily ritual. Coming home from work in the fields, he visits a chapel, slips into a pew, and simply sits for half an hour before the tabernacle. To what end? "I look at Him and He looks at me." Perception The beholder and the beheld enter into a moment of profound access to each other. Each delights in the other, the Creator and the created, the Redeemer and the redeemed, the Spirit and the confirmed. Past and future converge in an experience of the divine Presence, Self-absorption? Me and Jesus? The communicants claim that the Eucharist makes it much more. There under the sign of bread are the lives of those, united in banquet and sacrifice, who do all in memory of the Lord: the priest called from among the people to articulate their hurts and hopes, one with. them in uniting their daily lives to that of Jesus, believers and those helped in their unbelief, those commemorated, the living and the dead, a communion of the faithful. This is the Body of Christ, the people of God, the church. Here I am at once at home and in the world, with those I know and love, with those I do not know but seek to love. We forgive and are forgiven. Agency Conversations afford an insight into the perceived "agency" of the speaker.3 In describing my actions I 66.3 2007 Moffett * Conversations on Eucharist acknowledge aspects of my engagement that come from within. I choose to go, I seek out, I attend, I listen, I pray. I work past dis.tractions, past reservations about the celebrant or my fellow congregants. Yes, I am an agent in the process. Those who accompany me are also agents. We chose to act together. The Lord is, in a similar sense, the principal agent of the Eucharist. Paul teaches that the Lord whose kingdom is among us and whose will is being done on earth and in heaven is transforming us as individuals and as a group. Scriptures reveal a God who is "forming a people particularly his own" (Tt 2:14). We profess that as we engage in Eucharist the Lord is doing great things among us. In the last analysis my agency is simply one of consent-ing to what the Lord is doing to me, to us. Here a psychol-ogist invites others to carry forward the conversation. Choosing to stay the course--the joy of the journey This brief summary of what I am hearing from a very small set of the faithful brings us back to the conclusion of the first recorded conversation on Eucharist. John had Jesus' listeners requesting "Give us always this bread." Jesus indicates that they do not fully understand what they are asking. '¢I'his is the bread that has come down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the manna, and died. He who eats this bread shall live forever" (Jn 6:59). Jesus challenges his listeners. Some depart. Others join Peter, a bit perplexed, but willing to stay the course: "To whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.We have come to believe and to know that you are the Christ, the Son of God" (Jn 6:69-70). Peter does not always get it right. Paul calls him to task on the issue of who is invited to the feast (Ga 2:12). A postresurrection conversation on the way to Emmaus moves two early disciples. They seek out the others and Review for Religious share with burning hearts what happened along the way and in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:33). That conver-sation continues and needs to continue in our day. Notes 1 P.S. Moffett, "Promoting Agency among Children and Adolescents at the Margins" (Invited Address, American Psychological Association), Journal of Pastoral Counseling 30 (1995). 2 Discourse/speech of Pope Benedict XVI with the Clergy of Rome, 2 March 2006. See the Vatican web page. 3 Dan P. McAdams, The Stories We Live By (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993); David Bakan, The Duality of Human Existence: Isolation and Communion in Western Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). Prayer Lord, do you now therefore, speaking through my lips, pro-nounce over this earthly travail your twofold efficacious word: the word without which all that our wisdom and our experi-ence have built up must totter and crumble~the word through which all our most far-reaching speculations and our encounter with the universe are come together into a unity. Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: this is my Blood. Teilhard de Chardin, The Mass on the World from Hym .of the Universe, p. 23. 66.3 2007 the feminine DAMIAN C. ILODIGWE Mary and the Magnificat 276 The church teaches us that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul at the end of her earthly life, to share in the glory of her Son. This is what the solemnity of the Assumption celebrates. It is the victory of Christ over sin and death. Mary was the first beneficiary of this victory, and that is why God preserved her body from decay, not allowing it to undergo corruption. But the victory of Christ is also our victory, as the church affirms in the mystery of faith when we proclaim "Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus, come in glory." Like several other feasts of Mary, the Assumption underlines the place of Mary in Christian life. This derives from her privileged choice as the Mother of the Savior. It is not as if she was chosen for this important assignment Damian C. Ilodigwe'is a priest and a lecturer in philoso-phy at Ss. Peter and Paul Major Seminary; P.M.B. 5171, Secretariat P.O; Ibadan, Nigeria. dammychuks@yahoo. tom Review for Religio~s because of anything she was. The choice was gratuitous, depending wholly on God's grace. It is only fitting and proper that mankind should also honor her after she was so honored by God. From the text of Mary's song of thanksgiving in response to the greeting and commendation of her cousin Elizabeth, it is evident that Mary was not oblivious of the significance of her ~privileged choice. She was aware that it was the work of the Lord. And the reality of her choice filled her with immense gratitude and appreciation, to which she gave expression in the celebrated words .of the Magnificat: My soul proclaims the greamess of the Lord, and my spirit exults in God my savior, because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid. Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name, and his mercy is from age to age for those who fear him. (Lk 1:46-50) Mary, Privilege and Responsibility We share in the sentiments of appreciation that Mary expresses here. We all enjoy one privilege or another, and, when we come to appreciate the value of what we have, it is often with gratitude. Consider, for instance, the joy of motherhood or fatherhoo& It is a unique privilege to be the father of a child just as it is a unique privilege to be the mother of a child. None of us ever chooses our parents. They are one of those things that are given to us. In the case of his only-begotten Son, God. made the choice of his mother and Mary was the woman. But the joy of mother-hood is not in any way diminished. On the contrary, it is elevated to a greater height because Mary's child is not just any child, but the savior of the world, the Son of God. It is one thing to say that .the joy of motherhood is unique. It is another thing to be a good mother. One is a 277 66.3 2007 llodig~e ¯ Nlary and the ~lagn~at privilege and the other is a duty. For every privilege there is a corresponding responsibility. Being a good mother is the responsibility that goes with the privilege of being a mother. In the case of Mary, she not only enjoyed the privilege but was also a good mother. She took seriously the duties that follow from being a mother. And this we can confirm from the various episodes in the life of Jesus right from the moment of his conception to the time he was buried.1 What we notice is an inseparable union between mother and Son, with the mother doing all she could .to care for her Son. She shared in the sufferings of her Son and remained with him when the going became tough and everyone deserted him. Little wonder she is called the mother of sorrows, given that she was fully united with her son in his passion. The two hearts were one in suffering. It is only logical, then, that when Jesus achieved his glory he should make sure that his mother shared in his glory. This is the logic that underpins the mystery of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. We can regard it as an explicit reward for Mary's fidehty,z True, by the privileged choice of God, she became the mother of Jesus, being preserved from original sin. But it was .by her own cooperation with the grace of God that she preserved her virginity and remained sinless all through her life, so that in her we witness the triumph of life over death, a result that awaits all who walk in the footsteps of Christ. 278 The Example of Mary and Our Contemporary Situation We might ask what all this means for us. The truth is that we too ~are privileged to be followers of Jesus. It is a privilege to be a Christian, and by virtue of our being Christians we carry Jesus in,our hearts. Jesus dwelt in the womb of Mary for nine months and through this medium Review for Religio~ was introduced to the world. Mary's womb was the origi-nal .locus of the mystery of the incarnation. The Word took flesh first in the womb of Mary before he was born in Bethlehem. By the power of divine grace, this same action takes place when we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Word made flesh makes our heart his abode and dwells with us and among us, and through us he is intro-duced to the world. So it is always a unique moment when we step forward to receive Jesus . in Holy Communion. This moment is fundamental to the definition of our Christian identity in the sense that it invites us to become what we receive. While it is a privilege to bear Jesus in our hearts, we need to ask ourselves how well we fulfill the duties deriv-ing from this privilege. We need to ask how we are living as Christians. I suppose this is where the life of Mary speaks to us. We should be concerned to know whether we are giving our best to our Christian commitment. There is no question that the challenges of being a Christian are enormous. They call for a great deal of sacrifice, and it is unlikely that we shall measure up unless we are supported by the grace of God. To love God with all our hearts and serve him with a single-minded devotion is not something easy. It will often require us to do what we would rather not do. And sometimes it may mean having to put off our plan and agenda in order to allow God to have his place in our life. It means preferring God to self and to any other human being. This is what it means to love God in all things and above all things. ~ It is a privilege to be ,. . ~ a Christian, and by virtue of our being Christians ¯ we car~Jesus in,our hearts. 279 66.3 2007 Ilodigwe ¯ Mary and the Magnificat Given her status as protodisciple of Jksus, we can confidently turn to her to teach us how to be disciples of her Son. 280] The demand is radical. But we need not be afraid because in Mary we have an example of one who has passed through this challenge. We see, for example, how she strug-gled through the challenge of accepting God's plan and putting aside her original plan of marrying Joseph. It is not as easy as it sounds. We must consider that it was really a painful choice, as it will be in deciding for God in difficult circumstances in our life. With Mary, however, her faith was the secret of her success. We cannot forget easily her celebrated fiat, which should be our own attitude to all that life brings to us, especially when it seems to run contrary to our desires. "Let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38) was her response to the angel's invitation to be the mother of Jesus, despite all the confusion and trouble that the thought of this caused her. It is always best to prefer the will. of God to our own will or the will of any other mortal. We may not see the point immediately, but it always turns out that our peace truly lies in the will of God. There are probably no saints who did not come to realize this basic point at some time in their life. It is the same point that St. Augustine expresses at the summit of his search for God when he says, "Our hearts are made for you, O God, and we remain resdess until we rest in you." This has remained the deepest spiritual truth that all disciples of Jesus must learn if they are to attain the life of blessedness, which is the ultimate reward of discipleship. Mary was the first to teach this lesson and live it out by the manner of her life. Review for Religious Thus she was not only the Mother of Jesus, but also the first disciple of Jesus. She was the first to follow him as he deserves to be followed. And in following him she did not spare herself. She gave everything she could give, so that the bond between mother and Son was no mere physical bond, nor was it a mere biological bond. True, they were bonded physically and biologically. Yet the most crucial bond proved to be the spiritual bond, since mother and Son were one in heart and mind. Because of this deep spiritual bond, the mother was prepared to be spent for her Son and, true to Simeon's prophecy, her heart was pierced with sorrow,6 so that like the man of sorrows she became the mother of sorrows, identifying most fully with her Son's predicament (see Lk 2:21-3 5). On one occasion Jesus had been teaching, and there came a message that his brothers and sisters were waiting to see him. In his characteristic manner, he turned to the crowd and responded by asking, "Who are my brothers and sisters?" He then went on to answer that "my broth-ers and sisters are those who do the will of my Father." We may say the question is startling. But the answer conveys his meaning, that the spiritual bond is more important than the biological bond, so that it is not our physical affiliation with Jesus that matters as much as our spiritual affiliation with him. Of course there is no opposition between the two. Yet to ignore the claim of the latter at the expense of the former easily empties discipleship of its true meaning. We must say that Jesus' emphasis on the spiritual serves to preclude this possibility. No one other than Mary under-stood the demand of both affiliations. Indeed in her we find an excellent integration of both demands. Beyond the fact that she was the mother of Jesus, she sought above all to realize the will of God in her life even at the cost of great pain and sacrifice. 66.3 2007 Ilodig'we ¯ ~/~ary and the ~Vlaffnificat Given her status as protodisciple of Jesus, we can confidendy turn to her to teach us how to be disciples of her Son. We can turn to her to teach us how to love and serve her Son with all our heart. As she was always there for Jesus, she is always there for us, since by the gift of her Son she has also became our mother, and what a good mother she is! She continues her work still on behalf of us her children from her heavenly throne, where she reigns with her Son in the glory of the resurrection. She continues to labor to ensure the fulfillment of her Son's wish that all people be saved. Thus, on a day such as the solemnity of the Assumption, we must ask her for the grace to grow in our knowledge, love, and service of Jesus. We must ask her to obtain for us the grace to be faithful to our Christian commitment, so that at the end of our lives here on earth we shall .have the privilege of entering into the glory of the Lord. Notes ' See Federico Suarez, Joseph of Nazareth (Abingdon, England: Scepter, 1982), chapters 6-7. 2 See Mark Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Devotion and Doctrine (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Company, 1993), chapter 2. Review for Religious LEO HERETO Margaret, the Woman of Becchi Mthargaret Bosco was the mother of John Bosco, e diocesan priest who began the Salesian soci-ety for the education of poor and abandoned youth in Turin, a congregation that soon spread through Italy and around the world. Today it is in 192 countries. Hugh of St. Victor declared in the 12th century that the aim of all human activity is the recovery° of Eden and that Eden's very nature is to be unchangeable. In the garden two persons, a man and a woman, failed. The story is stark as narrated in Genesis 3:1-20. In John Bosco's life a woman played a most important part. It is a hundred and fifty years since this woman, Margaret Occhiena, passed away, but her profound influence remains in the Salesians of St. John Bosco. When we think of vocations to the priesthood and to consecrated life, we must never underestimate the feminine dimension. Vocations seem to spring from the womb of women devoted to God and his divine will. When her father in his patriarchal way decided on marriage for his daughter, Leo Hereto SDB writes from Don Bosco Technical Centre; Postal Box 124; Apia, Samoa. 66.3 2007. Hereto * Margaret, the Woman of Becchi 284 Margaret Occhiena married the widower Francis Bosco, a young farmer twenty-seven years old. He had lost his first wife after six years of marriage and was left with a three-year- old son, Anthony. At her marriage in June 1812, Margaret was twenty-three. This marriage saw the birth of Joseph in 1813 and John on 16 August 1815. Francis was to die in May 1817 after suffering what appears to be some type of pneumonia. Before dying he asked Margaret to "take special care of our baby John, who is just twenty-one months old." At twenty-nine Margaret was left with three children, her stepson and her own two boys, and her mother-in-law, the children's "Nonna." Her catechetical method was not what she learned from books, for she was unable to read, but she empha-sized living in the presence of God. The children were taught the importance of duty, openness to others, and never to say no to anyone in need, whether that person was a beggar or a fugitive from the police. Margaret would spend the night with dying people, holding their hands and consoling them. Her children were three dif-ferent characters. Anthony had lost his mother at three and his father at nine, and these deaths had left a scar on his character that made him hostile and nasty in the family. He was "like a bear with a sore head." When his grandmother ("Nonna") died in 1826, he often became violent. He had a deep dislike for his stepbrother John. When John set a book down on the table, the young man would toss it with a great deal of bravado into the wood stove, stamp his foot, and say, "We are workers, and only workers are accepted in this house." Margaret treated this little "Pharaoh" with great calm and concern, never beating him for his misbehavior and always treating him with great kindness as her husband's son. Anthony would sometimes hurl cutting and hurtful words at Margaret, often using the Italian word for stepmother (matrigna), a Review for Religious word with harsh and insulting overtones. Margaret never made an issue of this, but treated him gently but firmly. The Time of Great Decision. In 1835, as John reflected on his vocation, he felt the appeal of joining the Franciscans who had a center among the hills of Piedmont. Poor peasant that he was, he knew that his mother would find it hard to provide the fees for the seminary at Turin. So,he met the prior of the Franciscans, who made him sit for an examination. He passed it very well and was ready to begin his pos-tulancy that year. When John's parish priest heard about this desire of his to join the Franciscans, he rushed to Mama Margaret and told her in shock of her son's proposal to become a Franciscan. Faithful parishioner, the good lady listened to him and reflected on what he said. Later that day, when John came home, his mother with womanly wisdom said, "I have nothing to say to you regarding your vocation, except that you should do what God inspires you to do! Do not be concerned on my behalf. You owe me nothing. Never forget that I was born in poor circum-stances and have lived in poverty all my life. I am happy to die poor. I tell you this seriously. If you ever become wealthy, I shall never cross your doorstep!" John went to the seminary. After his first Mass at Becchi, Margaret had something to confide to her son. "John, you area priest. You will be , "!Neve~rforget that I was born in poor circumstances and ~ ' havk lived in poverty all my life. , i am happy to die poor." 285 66.3 2007 Hereto ¯ ~largaret, the Woman of Becchi 286] celebrating the Eucharist, and so you will be closer to Christ. Remember, John, that to begin to celebrate Mass is also to begin to suffer. You will not realize this at once, but you will gradually become more and more aware of it." In 1844 John finally finished his postsacerdotal stud-ies and began his apostolate for the benefit of boys and young men. He found that without some type of hostel his work for boys would be in vain, He managed to buy a place, the "Pinardi shed," in the "red light" area of Turin. Close to this shed was the villa Gioiosa, notorious for the characters that fitted into this industry. Don Bosco gradu-ally built up a kind of club consisting of boys who were orphans or were seeking work in the big city or had been driven there from the countryside that had been ravaged by drought in recent years. Spending time with these young men, he would have heard people cry, "What are you doing with these young-sters?" His mother was the answer to this problem. She was fifty-three years old, matron or rather queen in her home at Becchi, surrounded by her children and her chil-dren's children. But, when asked by her son to be a part-ner in his apostolate, she packed a small basket with her few clothes, her folded wedding dress and not much more, and went with him to face the chaIlenges of an apostolate among the rejected of society. With this wise mother of his, he would discuss things. And she did the cooking for two hundred, mending their torn clothes, looking after the sick. She became so involved in this apostolate that to.some it seemed rashness or misdirected faith. When a poor beggar came to the door looking for food, Margaret looked at her wedding ring and gave it to him to help feed his large family. Love is limidess. Her wedding dress sym-bolically became a vestment for the Lord. As the rough and at times uncouth young men streamed into the shed at night, she would offer them a thought for the day. Review for Religious In Salesian tradition this became what is called a "good night" (buonanorte) In November 1856 the little lady of Becchi was fast fading away. With deep faith she received her son's bless-ing and the anointing of sick. On 25 November, at sixty-three years of age, this woman of grace gave her soul back to God. Like Monica she asked John not to fret over her going but to remember her at Mass. In her little room were a few old clothes, patched and repatched. Pope John Paul II said of her, "She was a woman of God." Sonnet for the Fall The story of our ancient discontent, Or myth, or fable, or a rueful guess, Catching the heart's sense of slow, sad descent, From fresh to stale, from much to less and less; The arriving, never quite where we went, Words, never quite sufficient to express Exactly what we mean, or thought we meant, The failure even of seeming success. "You'll learn," we tell our children and they will, As we have learned, whose parents learned it, too - The lesson only living can instill, Teaching us Augustine's prayer anew: Lord, thou hast made us for thyself and we Fall, ever, till we fall to rest in thee. Ian T. White 66.3 2007 DAVID COGHLAN Discernment in Common as Cooperative Inquiry apostolic direction 288 The special issue of The Way Supplement in 1996 reflected on the experience of communal discernment. After what it described as a tidal wave of enthusiasm and unrealistic expecta-tions in the 1970s, it noted that "the process of group discernment now holds real possibilities for effective understanding and action."' It is in this context that I explore discernment in com-mon and introduce cooperative inquiry, a form of action ~esearch which is compatible with the kind of faith activity that discernment is and accords with how discernment in common may be conducted. The word research is associated in most peo-ple's minds with theories. Research is conducted in the world of ideas and their formulation. This model has shaped the social sciences since the 17th century. Research, on this model, examines David Coghlan SJ is a lecturer in organizafon development at Trinity College, Dublin. His address is 129 Morehampton Road; Dublin 4, Ireland. dcoghlan@tcd.ie Review for Religious an "objective" truth which exists outside of the world of the researcher and is disconnected from the action of everyday life. Research techniques are thus concerned with objective impartiality, with forms of knowledge that can be defended propositionally and so are considered to be valid and to apply universally. Social sci-ence no longer works with this model alone. When postmodern-ism began to emerge some thirty years ago, people became more aware of language, and in particular of how our experience is influ-enced as much by the language we use as by any objective reality. Others have come to regard human inquiry as seeking knowledge not simply for its own sake, but also for the enhancement of good practice in everyday life. Now, it is argued, is a time for science in action rather than just about action.2 Action research is such a science in action. Action research is research that aims at both taking action and c~'eating knowledge or ,theory about that action. What Is Action Research? As the name suggests, action research is research that aims at both taking action and creating knowledge or theory about that action. The outcomes are an action and some new knowledge, not knowledge only. In effect, action research is about creating forms of inquiry that people can use in the conduct of their lives and involves changing what we take as knowledge. It reflects a con-cern for an "action turn" to replace the linguistic turn of postmodernism.3 It has origins and roots in diverse fields: the social psychology experiments of Kurt Lewin, 66.3 2007 Coghlan ¯ Discernment in Common the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, the emergent field of organization development, the liberationist work of Paulo Freire, Catholic action, liberation theology, and feminist thought.4 Ignatian spirituality and action research have a lot in common, and action research contributes to spirituality research. There are some striking overlaps between motifs of Ignatian spirituality--a spirituality in which "action" is a central motif---and the features of this new pattern of thinking in the social sciences called "action research.''5 There are striking convergences between the idea of action research and Ignatian teaching about the interplay of prayer and action. The technical concepts developed by action research theory help sharpen the reflection encour-aged by Ignatian spirituality. Though the methods of the social sciences are sometimes reductive, either ignoring the religious or else translating it into other allegedly more accurate terms, the epistemology and processes of action research are quite appropriate to the knowledge born of grace and religious faith. In this vein, it can be proposed that there is an Ignatian approach to social science. It has been apparent to me for many years that Ignatius was very modern in his approach to reflexive inquiry. This article is a development of an earlier one and continues the endeavor to bring Ignatian spirituality and action research together.6 The purpose is twofold. First, I want to introduce a stream within action research prac-tice, balled cooperative inquiry, and show how it can have close links to discernment in common in the Ignatian tra-dition. Second, I wish to advance further the articulation of an Ignatian approach to social science research so that the practice of discernment in common may be given a voice as research. The contribution, therefore, is to those who undertake research in spirituality and may use action research in researching discernment in common. Review for Religiou~ One contribution that action research theory, can make to Ignatian spirituality comes from the idea that an integrative approach to research incorporates three differ-ent practices, which are called "first person," "second per-son," and "third person.''7 Ignatian first-person practice is concerned with how people find God in their own expe-rience. Ignatian sec- ~ ond-person practice focuses on people's relationships in their shared inquiry about their life together as Christians. Ignatian ~, third-person prac-tice moves beyond the direcdy personal ~ and seeks to enrich the life of the church and the world. In this article, I introduce cooperative inquiry as a form of second-person practice to link with Ignatian second-person practice of discernment in common. The knowledge born of faith and prayer (experien-tial knowing) is expressed in presentational form through our images of God, through the language of our prayers, through religious art and music. This experiential and presentational knowing is articulated in propositional form in the statements of our faith, in the creed, in how our beliefs are formulated and understood through theol-ogy. All this is expressed in practical knowing as we apply ourselves to trying to live the Christian faith. Action research, too, works with ways of knowing that go beyond the propositional form that we think of as research.8 With this brief summary of links between Ignatian spirituality and action research, I now introduce cooperative inquiry as a specific stream of expression within action research. Action, rese arch works with ways :of knowing that go beyond the propositional form , that we think Of'as research. 66.3 2007 Cogblan * Discernment in Common 292. Cooperative Inquiry9 John Heron and Peter Reason define cooperative inquiry "as involving two or more people researching a topic through their own experience of it in order to (1) understand their world to make sense of their life and develop new and creative ways of looking at things and (2) learn how to act to change things they might want to change and find out how to do things better.1° As John Heron puts it, "it is a vision of persons in reciprocal relation using the full range of their sensibilities to inquire together into any aspect of the human condi-tion with which the transparent mid-body can engage.''1~ In cooperative inquiry each person is a co-subject in the experience phases by participating in the activities being researched and a co-researcher in the reflection phases by participating in generating ideas, designing and managing the project, and drawing conclusions. Cooperative inquiry goes something like this. 1. A group agree on what they want to explore. The group may be formed specifically for this purpose. The group talk about their interests and concerns, agree on the focus of the inquiry, and develop together a set of questions or proposals the members wish to explore. As an example, Reason mentions a group of obese and post-obese women who met to explore their experience, how they were stereotyped in society, and how it was difficult for them to obtain appropriate attention from doctors. 2. The group bring actions from their everyday situ-ations into the inquiry after initiating some actions and observing and recording the outcomes of their own and each other's behavior. 3. The group members as co-researchers become fully immersed in their experience. They may go deeper into the experience, or they may be led away from the original Review for Religious ideas and proposals into new fields, unpredicted action, and creative insights. 4. After an agreed period engaged in phases two and three, the co-researchers reassemble to consider their original questions in the light of their experience. Cooperative inquiry works on iteration, or cycling through the four steps. Repetitions--perhaps between six and ten cycles on an inquiry topic--can help toward better understanding of an issue, an improved grasp of the whole issue and its parts. An important element of cooperative inquiry is that it works with the different ways of knowing we discussed earlier. In cooperative inquiry, inquiry is deeper and richer if the different ways of knowing work together, "if our knowing is grounded in our experience, expressed through our stories and images, understood through ideas which make sense to us, and expressed in worthwhile action in our lives."12 Cooperative inquiry is a way of doing research that is radically different from the traditional way. It involves people examining their own experiences and action in collaboration with others who share similar interests and concerns. The heart of the learning process is threefold.13 First, learning takes place through iterative cycles of action and reflection. Second, this learning takes place in a cooperative inquiry group of peers who provide mutual support and challenge. Third, through the process partic-ipants develop a quality of self-reflective inquiry whereby they learn to attend to their own experience and learn how to learn from experience. Heron emphasizes that there is no one account of cooperative inquiry and that his comprehensive presentation should not be construed as the account.~4 This is an important point, for it opens up the possibility of exploring discernment in common as cooperative inquiry. 293 66.3 2007 Coghlan * Discernment in Common Having presented a brief outline of action and research and a general introduction to cooperative inquiry, I now explore how cooperative inquiry and the Ignatian tradi-tion of discernment in common may be linked. To do this They held, as principle thatGod l .,. is kind and gift-giving~ndI ~ / that they should earnestly ;~ seek what God wantedoff ~hern~ .,,. ~ I focus on one partic-ular discernment in common, namely, that of the early Jesuits who met in 1539 to discern their future as a group.~s It is not my intention to focus on discernment in common as such, nor to explore its nuances and processes, nor to do a textual analysis or engage in discussions of the Deliberation's place in the development of discernment in common.~6 In this article my aim is first to introduce the Deliberation in summary form and second to see if the elements of cooperative inquiry can be found in the Deliberation. 2,94 The Deliberation of 1539 On 13 August 1534 at Monmartre in Paris, Ignatius and his six companions pronounced vows of poverty and chastity and a vow to go to Jerusalem, and then they dis-persed. In January 1537 the seven, joined by three others, met in Venice. They spent the next two years in Venice and Rome, preaching and working with the poor. This group of priests was held together by the love of Christ, dedication to apostolic work, the authority of the pope, and the leadership of Ignatius. The time came when dis-persal was imminent, for the pope planned to send them in response to requests from bishops all over Europe. The question was whether this would be the end of the group Review for Religious as a~ group or whether it would seek to establish itself more formally as a group. In 1539 the group deliberated on what it wanted to do. There was a diversity of nationalities in the group, French, Spanish, Savoyard, and Portuguese, and there was diversity of feeling and opinion. Accordingly, the first issue they dealt with was process. They held as principle that God is kind and gift-giving and that they should ear-nestly seek what God wanted of them. There were prepa-ration steps and procedure steps. During the day each man would meditate and reflect on the questions and in the evening share his thoughts with the group and in par-ticular share his reasons and judgments. The intention was that "all with one mind would embrace the truer way of thinking, tested and commended by the more powerful reasons and by majority vote" (187). The first question they confronted was whether to bond together so that geography would not separate them or to cut their ties and disperse. "In the end we estab-lished the affirmative side of the question, that., we ought not split apart what God had gathered and united" (192). The reasons were their shared history and the signs they saw of what God was doing in them. The second question was whether, along with their vows of chastity and poverty, it would "be advantageous [to] pronounce a third vow, namely, of obedience to some-one from among us" (194). This opened up the ques-tion of authority in the group and, in effect, whether the group would form a religious order or not. "Then we had persisted in prayer and thought for many days without hitting on any satisfactory resolution of our uncertainty. We. started to cast about for better ways of working out such a resolution" (195). Given the impasse they were in, would it be better for the group to go away to a hermitage and be secluded, 66.3 2007 Cogblan ¯ Discernment in Common 296 Each was to ready himself through prayer, Masses, and meditation to reach the or should they stay in the city and continue their apos-tolic ministry, or should they delegate a few to reach a conclusion on behalf of the group? They opted to stay in the city and continue their apostolic ministry and give half of every day to their deliberation. Each was to ready himself through prayer, Masses, and meditation to reach the right dispo-sitions. Second, none of the companions was to communicate with any-one else about the issue. right dispositions. Third, each was to think ' ~, ' of himself as a stranger ~ to the group and so to be more objective and not caught up in the emotions of a group member. These preparations were to enable each member to make an individual contribution to the whole process, presenting his personal view. When the group convened, it used another proce-dure, also aimed at shifting the impasse. "Each one was to declare all the disadvantages which could be brought against obedience [by vow, to one of our group], all the reasons which presented themselves, and which anyone of us had found in his own private reflections, meditation, and prayer. What he had gathered, each in his turn was to make known" (201). "On the next day we argued for the opposite side of the question, each one putting before the group all the advantages and good consequences of such obedience which he had drawn from prayer and medita-tion. Each took his own turn to present his reflections" (203). Eventually they reached their outcome. "During many days, from this side and that, we worked over a mass of Review for Religious data related to the resolution of our problem, we exam-ined and weighed the more forceful and important rea-sons and took time as usual for prayer, meditation, and reflection. By the Lord's help, we did at last, not [just] with a majority judgment but without a single dissenting voice, come to this conclusion: Obedience to one of us is highly advantageous and highly necessary in order to ful-fill more effectively and exacdy our primary desire of ful-filling God's will in all details of life, in order to preserve the Society more assuredly, and finally in order to pro-vide properly for all the detailed matters of spiritual and temporal business which arise" (205). The Deliberation took almost three months. As Jules Toner comments, the success of the more fully developed method for discern-ment was not only the reformulation of the process from the first question in order to deal with the more complex second question: it was also their establishing a method that they used on many other questions over a longer period of time (208). The Deliberation as Cooperative Inquiry Now I discuss how the Deliberation may be viewed in terms of cooperative inquiry, drawing on the four-point process that I oudined above. The first point is clear. A group had an issue that its members needed to explore together; the group met to seek where God was leading it, whether toward dispersal or formal ties between its mem-bers. While it had an informal leader of great influence in the person of Ignatius, the group met as peers. Second, it did not convene just to make a management decision but to engage in a reflective process that included each

Issue 57.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1998. ; rev lew for religio.us MARCH-APRIL 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 2 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spi~tuality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical; historical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: t~OPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, .\'IN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1998 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to.copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial S.taff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer sJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean R~ad James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living MARCH-APRIL 1998 " VOLUME 57 * NUMBER 2 contents 118 138 146 unique witness: a symposium Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God Edward Vacek SJ shows how there has been a certain eclipse of the love of God which also affects religious life. A Witness of Unique Witnessing Sidney Callahan sketches for us her perceptive laywoman's glimpse of religious life's present and future. Religious Life: Where Does It Fit in Today's Church? Doris Gottemoeller RSM presents an understanding of religious life as a dynamic and tested way within the church to follow Jesus Christ more closely and to serve him more generously. 161 169 spiritual renewal Creative Fidelity: Renewal in the Spirit of St. John of God Stephen de la Rosa OH reflects on the spirituality of the Brothers of St. John of God in the light of God's call to a creative fidelity. Journeying to Common Ground: Ira Progoff and Catholic Spiritual Renewal Francis Dorff OPraem reviews the integrating work of Ira Progoff in terms of its continuing importance for Catholic spiritual renewal. Review for Religious 174 180 meditative reflections The Lamb: A Johannine Meditation Patrick J. Ryan SJ enters us into a prayerful reflection of the beloved disciple advanced in years. What Were They Talking About? A Bethany Reflection Joseph G. Bachand MS offers a fresh interpretative reading of the Lucan passage about Martha and Mary which focuses the challenges of discipleship for all Christians. 186 report U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and Works 1997 Kenneth G. Davis OFMConv, Eduardo C. Fern~indez SJ, and Ver6nica M~ndez RCD present a panoramic of the year's events within the U.S. Hispanic Catholic community. departments 116 Prisms 202 Canonical Counsel: The Evangelical Counsel of Chastity 208 Book Reviews prisms VV~hen Pope John Paul identified 1998 as a year especially focused on the Holy Spirit and his sanc-tifying presence within the community of Christ's disci-ples, he did not make use of thdword paraclete as a special identity-word for the Spirit. Yet this strange-sounding word paraclete holds meanings particularly appropriate for our Christian understanding of God, for our Lenten renewal, and for our premillennium preparation. The word paraclete becomes a kind of prism when it is used as a title for the Holy Spirit. Often in the English-language translations of the Gospel of St. John paraclete is retained as a direct transliteration of the Greek word, lit-erally meaning "one called alongside of." The first mean-ing favored in a reading of the Johannine Gospel is that of a defender, signifying someone like a defense attorney in a lawsuit. At other times the meaning is broadened by the translation of counselor, as in one who carefully listens and gives clarity and advice and support. Still another mean-ing which is frequendy found is captured in the word com-forter. A comforter is one who strengthens and upholds. Paraclete, then, can be viewed differendy, depending upon the plane of reflection, but all the meanings are rich in connotation for us as recipients of this personal paschal gifting of Christ. The church season of Lent provides us with the occa-sion to acknowledge ourselves as sinners in the presence of a just and compassionate God. But the Spirit as para-clete presents us with an image of God as the one who is the "defending lawyer"--the one who is spending his ener-gies defending us, in the face of any accusers we might have. God the Spirit is the one who gives this sense of Review for Relig%us divine presence as defender. As St. Paul would reflect, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rm 8:31). Lent is also a time for us to seek counsel and assess the drives and ambitions, the values and the dreams that fill and motivate our life. Discernment of spirits in the decision making that structures our lives is a gift of the Spirit to all the members of the Christian community. A Vatican II church, trying to live out its agenda described in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, has great need to call upon the discernment gift of the Counselor. We know that, in the sometime darkness of our attempt to live a Christian life in a world of differing values, our refuge is in seeking the counsel of a God so involved with us that his person is experienced as one who enlightens and guides. All too often we act fearfully or rashly, with little reliance on Christ's promise: "In that hour, say what you are inspired to say. It will not be yourselves speaking but the Holy Spirit" (Mk 13:11). Lent uncovers our weakness and fragility in our following of Christ. We, like the first apostles, are too ready to take flight in the face of temptation or opposition. Our actions do speak louder than our words, and to the eyes of secular society we might appear even to deny our faith. God enters into our lives at these times with the support and strength necessary for our Christian witness. We come to recognize our God especially as the one who confirms and con-soles. "By patient endurance you will save your lives" (Lk 21:19). In John's Gospel, Jesus describes the giving of the Spirit in terms of an abiding presence of "another" paraclete with us. In his Last Supper discourse, Jesus first applies the tide to himself by his using the word another, and then through the rest of the discourse he gives Paraclete over to the Holy Spirit as a proper name. The Spirit makes real to our human experience that God's presence is truly that ofparaclete--one who defends, one who counsels, and one who strengthens. Jesus, the pioneer for our faith life, inspires our confidence in such a God. Lent is the traditional time in the church for a renewed effort in our following Christ in the pattern of his paschal mystery. We, like Jesus, can only walk the road to Jerusalem if we are led by the Spirit. As we make our Christian preparations to enter into the 2 lst-century era with a renewed emphasis upon our evangelization efforts, we need to call upon God who is truly Paraclete for us. David L. Fleming SJ March-April 1998 unique witness a symposium EDWARD VACEK Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God What I propose to do is describe the relation of consecrated life to my favorite topic, love for God. The connection is not as easy as it might seem. Is it important to love God direcdy? I suppose most of us would answer, "Of course! This is the most important thing we can do." In view of this I think I should point out, before saying anything else, that lots of people, including Christians with impeccable credentials, do not think we need directly love God. Indeed, some positively discour-age it. After that I will describe at some length several ways we can love God. I will conclude with a few obser-vations how religious life should be a paradigm of Jesus' first great commandment. I hope to encourage those of us in religious life to exercise a much needed public wit-ness to a personal friendship with God. The Problem Since my topic sounds like an all-too-familiar and therefore boring sermon topic, let me put my theme in more provocative language: Religious communities have been and, to some degree, still are in danger of losing Edward Vacek SJ, professor of Christian ethics at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, presented this paper, here somewhat revised, at a symposium on Religious Life's Unique Witness held in October 1997 at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Wernersville, Pennsylvania. His address is 3 Phillips Place; Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Review for Religious their souls. For the past forty years, we have been preoccupied with questions of lifestyle and governance, with examining past traditions and choosing new ministries. We had to do this. But these topics have tended to distract us from what is most central to our vocation. My concern is that we have shifted from being overly God-centered to being overly world-centered. At least we often talk as if that is the case. Our current silence about the possibil-ity of a direct love for God is worrisome because, when no one witnesses to this relationship, it will come to seem unimportant. If a "Jesus and me" spirituality too often forgot the neighbor, a "love your neighbor" spirituality can make us forget that God deserves all our love. The Origin of This Topic Before I go any further, let me relate how I came to this topic. I recently published a book on Christian love titled Love, Human and Divine.' I set out to show the connection between Jesus' first and second great commandments. Strange as it may seem, I found little in theology books on love for God. Sensitized by that dis-covery, I began to listen to how we post-Vatican II Catholics talk. When we use the phrase "love of God," we usually are referring to God's love for us and not our love for God. Classroom experience pushed my concerns further. I began to ask my students, many of whom are in religious life, this question: What do you mean by love for God? These students usually give one of four answers. First, those who are still dealing with legal-ism commonly say that loving God means not breaking any of the ten commandments. Second, other students say that love for God means taking care of the poor or the needy. Third, and most commonly, students say that loving God means being helpful to one's neighbor. Fourth, there are usually a few who have drunk deeply of our era's psychology, and they say that loving God means loving one's best or deepest self. Unfortunately, none of these replies answers my question. The first reply omits love, and all four omit God. Indeed, an atheist could give any of these replies. One of my most personally disturbing examples of this trend is very explicit. A student of mine, a young man about twenty-five years old, was finishing his master's thesis on the writings of a medieval mystic. He was fascinated by her sexual language of pen- March-April 1998 Vacek * Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God etration and indwelling. What h~ found distressing, however, was that this mystic wrote as if there was an inequality between her-self and the God she loved. Needless to say, I was surprised, so I asked him, "Do you really think we are equal to God? . Everyone knows," he replied with utter simplicity, "the word God is simply a symbol for the best in human life." His reduction of God to a symbol of the best in the world is, I suggest, an apt paradigm for the trend I am resisting. He is not alone. In a recent survey by the magazine U.S. Catholic, whose reader~ are mostly int~erested and involved Catholics, approximately fifty percent of people aged 36-55 said that we can be spiritual without any belief in God.2 Similarly, Sandra Schneiders has recently observed that many religious women and men have adopted a personal spirituality in which the central tenets and practices of Christianity have little place.3 For them spirituality means sitting in one's room listefii~ng to music or doing Zen. It means hiking in the fields or skiing in the mountains. It means getting a massage or enjoying a fine glass of wine. Anything that helps one to get calm and keep bal-anced in this crazy world is spirituality. As should be obvious, these "spiritual activities" can be accomplished relatively well without God. Causes for Decline How have we come to bracket off, even if only partially, a spirituality that is centered on love for God? I am sure there are hundreds of contributing factors, and I intend to discuss only some of the more obvious. Rather than focusing on any corrupt-ing influences from "the big bad world," I want to talk about rea-sons internal to the church's life. I will speak about the emphasis; in contemporary spirituality on the poor, the neighbor, and the' self. I will also point to difficulties people have with the church. Care for the Poor One of the great triumphs of our post-Vatican II world has been the renewed emphasis on care for the poor as essential to the practice of our faith. This concern for justice, however, may have been purchased at too great a price. Most people thought Mother Teresa was a saint and had this esteem for her precisely because of her work for the poor. Only in her death did I hear anyone Review for Religious say she had a deep prayer life. Mother Teresa also had a reputa-tion, whether deserved or not, of not even being concerned about the religious lives of those she served. Mother Teresa surely did an essential work of Christianity and did it far better than ninety-nine percent of us. Still, what is there in our contemporary religious mind that allows us to regularly praise care for the poor while practicing in print and in conversation a near total blackout concerning a person's love for God and her desire to help others love God? One reason lies in the theology of the "anonymous Christian" that captivated many of us after Vatican II. The attraction of this theology was that it motivated us to social justice and made it possible for us to be open-minded towards non-Catholics. The darling text of this theology is the familiar story of Matthew 25. W]aen people come before Jesus for their final judgment, he blesses them if they have given a cup of water to needy strangers. In amazement they reply that they did not know they were serving Jesus. Those judged for fail-ing to give the water imply that, if the thirsty person had been Jesus, they would have given the water gladly. Jesus rejects their plea. The conclusion drawn from this story by many theologians is that we should focus our care on needy human beings. They hold that we miss the point when we want to direct our attention explicitly to Christ. Of late, however, the theology of the anonymous Christian looks somewhat shopworn. It obscures why anyone should want to be explicitly a Christian. All the more, it makes baffling why anyone would want to enter religious life. This theology forgets that the meaning of our lives is greatly affected by the explicit personal relationships we have. And chief among these should be our love for God. If we care only for God's world, then our hearts will ultimately be restless. We need regularly to look God in the eye. That is called prayer. People sometimes say, "Love is not looking warmly into the eyes of another; rather, love is looking together out toward the world." But, if a woman I loved asked me why I never looked warmly into her eyes, I would feel justly accused. Similarly with God. How have we come to bracket off, even if only partially, a spirituality that is centered on love for God ? Marcia-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love fbr God Something is wrong with a theology in which Jesus' own prac-tice of prayer turns out to be un-Christian. Helping One's Neighbor For years after Vatican II, whenever I would preach or teach on the importance of loving our neighbor, heads would nod in agreement. Rarely if ever did someone object that I forgot to mention love for God. In recent years I have given several talks urging a direct love for God. Afterwards, almost always, some-one in the audience will ask why I did not talk more about love for our neighbor. In an attempt to be helpful, someone else will usually offer the clarification that the true "meaning" or "sign" or "test" of love for God is our love for our neighbor. And with that the audience will feel at ease again. Such experiences sug-gest to me that with Vatican II we recovered the second of Jesus' two great commandments, but we seem to have lost the primacy of the first. Let me relate an incident that happened several years ago. Late one evening a young Jesuit who had just moved into the community joined me for some apple pie. He was still feeling his way, and so he asked me whether the community was very spiri-tual. Not knowing what he meant by spiritual, I paused. He tried to clarify his question: "You know, is this a group of guys who are just interested in their studies, or are people really spiritual?" Thinking I now knew what he was asking, I replied that we have Mass in the house four days of the week, we join other commu-nities on two other days, and most of us have a ministry on Sunday. I began to name some other prayer and penance things we do, but at this point he interjected: "No, I didn't mean that stuff. I mean do the men care for one another." His practice bore out his concern. He was always one of the first to ask how my day had gone, and he was one of the last to find his way to chapel. This little encounter is an indicator of what I believe is a much wider phenomenon. If we talk only about love for our neighbor, we may be educating a generation of Christians who pay limited attention to an explicit love for God. Quite recently a friend of mine became quite perplexed during a theology course she was taking from a famous Rahner scholar. The teacher was explaining to the class that we love God in loving other people. She asked him whether we might also directly love God apart from loving people. The scholar said that he had never thought Review for P, eligious much about that. How, I asked myself, could this be? This man regularly says Mass, in which he directly addresses God; he also has, I presume, a good prayer life. But something in our present religious culture kept him from quickly recognizing that he directly relates to God all the time. This example is not isolated. I have gotten into several heated arguments with Christian scholars who deny that we can develop an interpersonal rela-tionship with God. Often they describe our Christian life as a sort of triangle: God's love comes down to us. Our love should not be directed back to God, but rather to our neighbor. Then God accepts that love as if for God's self. Daniel Maguire summarizes this position when he writes, "There can be no vertical love between us and God; we can only get to God horizontally through love of people.''4 As a consequence, some suggest that it is posi-tively un-Christian for us to try to love God directly. When formerly the first great commandment was in the ascendancy, we recognized that not a few saints were hard to live with, but we did not deny that they were saints. Not for nothing did the old quip say that a martyr is someone who has to live with a saint. Through much of the church's history, spiritual writers and theologians taught that the goal of Christian life was a deep love for God. Love for our neighbor was a clear second. Indeed, for St. Augustine, loving our neighbor was valuable only if it flowed from and promoted love for God. For him, we should not love our husband or our children if that love does not lead to love for God. Since Trent, however, a gradual turn has made love for this world--especially for our neighbor and now for our own self-- become the primary focus of love in Christianity. Prayer, then, is valuable if it gives us strength to love our neighbor. Or prayer is important if it helps us to find ourselves and develop our virtue. As a consequence, it has become nearly impossible to think that people could' be praying well if they are lacking in love for their neighbor or in some other virtue. Hence, one often hears the maxim that the true test even of mysticism is whether it leads to love for our neighbor. In other areas of life, we would not allow this slippage. In the case of a man marrying a widow, we would not deny his love for her if he could not muster love for her children. We would, of course, hope that he might come to love his stepchildren. But the true test of his love for her is his love for her, not his love for someone else. March-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God Emphasis on the Self The newfound emphasis in religious life on the self has been a third source of decline in talk of love for God. In my experience the tidal wave came in about 1963. Almost everywhere concern arose that the uniqueness and the needs of our individual selves were not being adequately taken care of. I remember well how one of my superiors tried to put a stop to this nonsense. He told the preacher of our annual eight-day retreat to focus on why it was not Christian to be concerned for the self. Needless to say, that retreatmaster did not succeed. The tide walls were crumbling, and the emphasis on the self that had been swelling over the cen-turies finally washed onto the mainland of religious life. A few years later almost all resistance had been washed away. Commonly, now, people come into religious life seeking per-sonal fulfillment. Either they find it, or they leave for greener pastures. Their personal happiness is the final criterion of all else. Such people often are very generous; but, according to their own account, they are generous because this brings them happiness. Our culture has deprived us of a way of saying openly that we help others because they need our help. Rather, we must say that we help others because we get so much out of doing it. Love for self has thus become central in our descriptions of everything we do. We even describe our love for God as important because it brings us the ultimate in happiness. Once upon a time Christian spirituality commonly proposed that self-love was sinful or nearly sinful. The Bible rarely, if ever, explicidy commends love for self. In fact, the Bible contains many passages that suggest we ought to forget or deny ourselves. By contrast, in recent years, love for self has perhaps become the first and last great commandment. We hear endlessly repeated the half-truth that we cannot love others, including God, unless we first love ourselves. We are encouraged to love others, includ-ing God, as a way of.achieving our own happiness. Thus, we talk as if love of self is the origin and the goal of all other loves. When this becomes the prevailing cultural context, love for God likely is treated as a "personal preference." That is, if love for God is interesting and worthwhile for a particular person, then that person may pursue it. But love for God is not thought to be essential or necessary for living a full human life. Few people would deny that someone who killed a neighbor has failed to live humanly, and most would say that a husband who does not love Review for Religious his wife and children is failing them. But not many would say that someone who does not love God fails to live in a fully human way. Love for God has become morally optional, to be pursued only to the degree that it fulfills us. Contemporary Catholicism One last reason for setting aside a direct love for God is the experience that many persons in religious life have of the church and of the God proposed by the church. For many, as Schneiders has recently said, the God of Christianity seems too small, too violent, and too male.s One does not readily want to enter into friendship with this God. Again, when the magisterium claims that its views are God's, those who feel abused by the church find it hard to get close to God. Recently these two alienating vectors came together when the Vatican said that the pope teaches infallibly that women cannot be ordained. With the shortcuts in logic that anger allows, a friend of mine concluded: "The Vatican infallibly teaches that God is unjust. So now you know why it is hard to pray to God." As a consequence of these dual alienations, some members of religious communities have given up on the Christian God. Even when people in religious life are more or less adequately centered in love for God, they seldom speak openly about that love. Oddly enough, religious people can be afraid of seeming, well, too religious. Outside of the classroom or the pulpit, many of us are quite slow to talk about God, and even when we do we seldom speak of our experience of God. Again, in the faith shar-ing that we do in our communities, our relationship to God is often unnamed. In religious life we have become more or less comfortable with talking about ourselves and our intracommu-nity dynamics; but we do not often talk about our own religious experiences of God. And spiritual directors sometimes seem less interested in our relationship with God than in our psychological or interpersonal concerns. In my pre-Vatican II novitiate days, we had silence almost the entire day. We were expected to take all that quiet and develop a habit of talking with God. Even then it seemed strange that, while Not for nothing did the old quip say that a martyr is someone who has to live with a saint. March-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God drinking afternoon coffee, we were not allowed to talk with the people standing next to us. Still, that awkward silence drilled in the point that we should try to talk with God throughout our day. That was then. I had a contrast experience at a retreat I directed for several young men before their ordination. Some of them---not all, by any means---spent their evenings and some of their days in conversation and even partying with one another. Somewhat puzzled, I inquired. I learned that they considered brotherhood far more important than time for prayer alone with God. The conclusion to the first half of these observations of mine is a worry. Ever since the Council of Trent and especially since Vatican II, a trend has been growing. That trend is the collapsing of the first great commandment into the second. Our silence about love for God has begun to be deafening. Love for God and Religious Life In this second half of my remarks, I want to look at a direct love for God. When doing spiritual direction, I am frequently awed by the close re, lationship that many people have with God. On the other hand, I am often both perplexed and distressed by the lack of that kind of relationship in the lives of so many other people, including women and men who have been in religious life for decades. These otherwise good persons may make occa-sional long-distance calls to God, but to them prayer seems like leaving messages on an answering machine in the sky. Intimacy with God is far away, something they no longer hope for and per-haps never did. If asked, they would say, "Oh, yeah, I believe in God." But they assert God's existence with the sort of conviction that one might have in asserting the existence of the planet Mars. It is something they have heard about, something they have no reason not to believe in, but not something that makes much dif-ference in their lives. Central Religious Concepts Every age has its central religious concept. For St. Paul it was faith in God. That concept has lost its teeth today. For Luther the key concept could be thought of as trust. While that still motivates many, it has for Catholics a forensic ring. I suggest that the ques-tion that can genuinely challenge all of us is this: Do you really Review for Religious love God? That question evokes an awareness of the endlessness and inadequacy of our heart's quest as well as the incomprehen-sibility and overwhelming goodness of God. Miguel de Unamuno insisted that our relationship with God must have emotional power. He writes: "Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear him do not in fact believe in him but in those who have taught them that God exists. ¯. Those who believe that they believe in God but without any passion in their heart . . . believe only in the God-idea, not in God.''6 Unamuno's point is that many of us have a ten-dency to believe, not in God, but rather in a God-idea. Take, for example, what Unamuno says about fearing God. Since Vatican II we have so succeeded in putting across the idea that God loves us that the long biblical tradition of fear of God has all but disappeared. If, how-ever, we are really encountering God in our prayer, we will at times experience considerable fear and trembling. This fear is not so much a fear that God will punish us. Rather, it is a trembling before an utterly incomprehensible majesty. The concept of a loving God is something we can get cozy with. God is not. We human beings, of course, need good concepts. But we can substitute knowing the right concepts for knowing that to which they point. During my first stay in New York City, I lived in Queens with a priest who regaled me with all the fun things I could do in Manhattan. This went on for two months. One day, however, through an offhand remark he made, I discovered that he had not been to Manhattan for twenty years. He read several newspapers to find out about all the good things going in Manhattan, but he never went there. I fear that, like him, many Christians have many good ideas about God, but they never pay a visit. There has been something too easy about the way many of us changed our idea of God from a pre-Vatican punishing God to a post-Vatican God who unfailingly loves and forgives. It may be that all we have done is change our ideas, without really meeting the God who is Mystery. In the past those saints who seem gen-uinely to have known God indicated that God is experienced sometimes as warmly near but also at other times as wholly dis-tant, sometimes as compassionately forgiving but also at other Our first response is not to return love to God, but rather to let God's love affect or change us. March-April 1998 Vacek * Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God times as judging severely, sometimes as attractively good but also at other times terrifyingly awe-ful, and usually as a mixture of each. If we love God, we must love, not the idea of God, but this challenging, supportive, and finally incomprehensible Being. Direct Personal Love for God How does a love relationship with God develop? The first step is one that it seems women understand much more quickly than men. That step is to accept God's love for us. In other words, our first response is not to return love to God, but rather to let God's love affect or change us. The experience of being loved has its own transforming power, and we deny God's influence if we rush to return that love or to spread it among our neighbors. The popu-lar maxim can be repeated here: Don't just do something, stand there! Or better, sit there with your eyes closed and your hands open. So doing, we experience the beginning of our salvation. This acceptance of love is not easy. Not only are most of us a bunch of doers; we are also people who find it hard to receive love and let ourselves be touched by it. Many of us as counselors have spent hours encouraging people to overcome their self-hatred and to learn self-love. They have to learn to accept themselves, but they also have to learn how to "take in" acceptance from others since they expect only rejection or indifference. At times they refuse the sacrament of reconciliation because, at bot-tom, they cannot accept that someone would love them enough to forgive them. Preaching about the grace of acceptance, Paul Tillich said, "It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our own lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us . Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.'''7 In such moments we learn that there is some-thing lovable in us. We may not see it, but we accept the love of another whom we want to trust, and in that moment we begin to see the lovableness that God sees in us. After we have allowed God's love to touch us and thereby affirm our own worth and dignity, we want to respond by loving the One who loves us. This love unites us with God. It has both Review for Religious resting and dynamic qualities. That is, our love for God makes us want to be close to God and be at peace when we are close. It will not, though, let us rest for long, but moves us to want to delve ever more into God's goodness. Moreover, that love makes us want to co6perate with God in doing what God wants to do. And that leads us to be involved in redeeming creation. Hence, love for God in one phase moves us into God's infinite incom-prehensibility and in another phase moves us to both cherish the world and want to overcome its ills and injustices. Experience of Love for God One reason for replacing love for God with love for neighbor is that it seems somewhat impossible to love an invisible God. Even when we want to love God, we wonder how we might be sure that we are in fact loving God. These are real questions, but they should not deter us. Similar objections are sometimes raised about our love for fellow human beings. We are tempted to replace love for them with doing good deeds because good deeds are so much more visible than any heart-to-heart connection between spiritual persons. Nevertheless, we know that we do con-nect our invisible core with the core of those 'we love. We may never fully know the inner personhood of our friends, but we know enough to be able to love them. Indeed, our love for them always goes beyond what is visible. Similarly, we are rightly con-fident that we do love people, even if we cannot prove that love. In love, whether of God or of other human beings, or even love of ourselves, there are no sure tests. But within the experience of love we attain confidence that we are loving. What then is it to love God? We might begin by listening to two famous writers who described this love. William James depicted four stages of love for God.8 Our love for God begins with a felt sense, not an intellectual belief, of an Ultimate Power. We feel that we belong to a Sphere of Life that transcends our ordinary day-to-day interests and expands our life. Second, we feel that this Ultimate Power is not distant from us but rather is near to us. We sense that, as Blaise Pascal once observed, the reason we seek God is that God has already found us. Third, we willingly surrender ourselves to this Ultimate. We say yes to God's pres-ence, and we willingly hand ourselves over to God. That is, instead of thinking about God, we fall in love with God. Lastly, our emo- ~Ylarch-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God 130J tional center shifts towards loving and harmonious affections towards the rest of creation. We tend to say yes rather than no to the world about us. With hearts overflowing, we are freed from our usual tendency to judge or criticize others. Rather, we want to affirm the world as God's world. Moses Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, gives a more personal account. He writes that anyone who loves God "is like a lovesick man whose mind is never free from his love for a certain woman and grows in it whether sitting or rising, both when eating and drinking---greater even than this must be the love of God in the heart of his lovers who continually grow more fervent . The whole of the Song of Songs is an allegory on this theme."gMaimonides compares love for.God with the passion that men have for the women they love, only greater. What kind of passion is that? Lovers constantly think of one another, constandy try to please one another. Similarly, those who love God find their minds returning to God whenever there is a lull in their day; they regularly converse with God when they want to talk with some-one; and they periodically dream up ways of doing things that are pleasing to God. Gradually, their attention to God becomes a per-vasive feature of their whole emotional life. Let me put the same point in a slightly different way. If we imagine vividly that some living person we really love has actually died, can we imagine not feeling the loss? Of course not. We might find ourselves, in imagination, being depressed for months and then only gradually .putting our lives back together. Now, imagine that God were to die tonight. If this impossibility could happen, would we desperately miss God? Would we be profoundly sad that God is no longer part of our life? If so, then love for God is central in our lives. When we love God like this, it involves much more than occa-sional prayers tossed towards the heavens. Rather, it becomes deeply rooted in us. It pervades and motivates moments of quiet peace but also moments of furious activity. This love for God becomes the dominant, organizing, emotional center of our whole lives. We meet God in sunsets, in the Bible, in the Eucharist, in friends who call to ask how we are doing, in the homeless man who lies under cardboard begging for a quarter. These encounters with God in the world depend upon other times when our rela-tionship to God is not so mediated. Then we are more like Moses who used to talk with God "face-to-face, as one speaks to a Review for Religio~ts friend" (Ex 33:11). Without this face-to-face talk, we are in dan-ger of becoming like those parents who devote themselves com-pletely to their children, only to realize one day that they no longer love one another as husband and wife. Since Vatican II we in religious life have worked hard to develop a spirituality of finding God in our service of people in the world. (And more needs to be done.) But in the process the explic-itly "God and me" and "God and us" aspects of our spirituality have often been neglected. The phrase "Jesus and I" has become a term of derision. Rather, we need not only Jesus' second great commandment--loving our neighbor as ourselves--but also Jesus' first great commandment: loving God with our whole mind and heart and soul and strength. We need as well the connection between these two. That connection appears chiefly when we sense ourselves to be acting with God, to be God's partners. Friendship con-sciously grows when friends do things chiefly because they are friends. The same is true in our relationship with God. We want to do things with God as a way of being friends of God. Love for God, of course, is not a once-and-for-all sort of affection. There may be periods of rapid and intense growth. Then come periods when we just maintain our relationship. The quiet periods prepare the way for a deeper relationship that we cannot force, but which we can hope for. Gradually this love more and more informs who we are. We begin, so to speak, to check in with God about everything we do. Most of us would criticize a husband who accepted a job in another city without first dis-cussing the move with his wife. But not all of us, when asked to do a new job, would quickly ask ourselves how this new task would affect our relationship with God. Deep lovers of God sponta-neously ask that question. Doubtless, we have to "work" at this relationship with God. We know that loves can be false,/and we know that we can deceive ourselves. Still, the idea of testing love is foreign to the experience of loving. We have no need of "tests" when we find ourselves wanting to spend time with God or still moved .by God's word spoken to us. Then, with the reality of our relationship assured, Those who love God find their minds returning to God whenever there is a lull in their day. L13-I -- March-April 1998 Vacek * Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God all we need examine regularly is its quality. We use our examen of consciousness to become more attentive to God's graciousness to us and to learn how to co.operate better in God's work. Love for God, like any great love, has a certain relativizing quality. We evaluate other things in the light of this great love. On the one hand, worldly goods become more valuable as God's crea-tures and as gifts we recognize as coming from God. On the other hand, these creatures no longer dominate our consciousness. Not only wealth, success, power, but also more personal things like the development of our talents, devotion to our friends, and even our own happiness take a subordinate place. In Ignatian language, we personally value them when they support our relationship with God; and we set them aside when they do not. Finally, anyone who has been in love with another human being knows that there is a quiet satisfaction whenever we make sacrifices for the one we love and a deep pleasure when we make extravagant gestures on behalf of our love. We spend all night in the hospital at the bedside of our beloved, and we want to do so. We sell our precious gold watch to buy a set of combs for our beloved's wonderful hair. Similarly, love for God leads all of us to make sacrifices such as fasting and to engage in extravagant ges-tures such as liturgy, and do all with joy. Kinds of Love Let me now describe three different forms of this love for God, and then I will try to relate them to religious life. I call them agape, eros, and pbilia. Normally we have these three all mixed together, but I want to name them because each at times has a separate claim on us. Agape, as I use the term, means to love something for its own sake. So, with an agapic love for God, we love God for God's own sake and are not concerned for our own benefit. There is an extremely provocative and stark question that illustrates this kind of love: If it would please God just a bit, would you be willing to suffer in hell forever? This question was put to those who wanted to become Calvinist divines. St. Francis de Sales put this question to himself. The question clarifies very quickly whether we love God for our sake or for God's sake. Agape is represented by the cross of Christ. That cross indi-cates that we may have to give up our lives in order to be faith- Review for Religious ful to God. An agapic love for God is essential to religious life. Our vows express a willingness to give up family, wealth, and free-dom as an expression of our agapic devotion to God. Needless to say, none of us ever achieves that complete devotion, but the vows indicate our willingness to do so. Second, eros. Those of us who resist the Calvinist question I just asked will be relieved to know that the Catholic Church con-demns the teaching that we must have only an agapic love for God. Rather, we may also have an eros relationship with God. Some of us will remember the act of contrition we once said when we went to confession. We prayed that we were heartily sorry for our sins because we dreaded the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offended God. Our sorrow about offending God was an expression of agape. Our dread about los-ing God and going to hell was an expression of eros. Eros means loving someone rather much for our own sake. An eros love for God is a genuine love. It is a biblical love, and it is quite Catholic. We love God for the good we gain in being close to God. Since we can never be completely fulfilled by creatures, we will always be inclined to have this sort of love for God. Our religious vows say that we will not seek for completion in family, in wealth, or in independent control of our lives. Doubtless, we may in fact find more completion in our friendships than many married people do in their spouses; doubtless, almost all of us have access to more wealth than most of the world's population; and doubtless, each of us has considerable independence and sta-tus. But, if we are true to our religious commitment, we seek completion in none of these, but chiefly and finally in God. Thus an eros love for God is essential to religious life: we are people who point to an eschatological fulfillment in God. Third, we have a philia love when we love God for the sake of the covenant we share with God. Our Jewish ancestors formed covenants with God, and through baptism we Christians form a new covenant with God. We are God's people, and God is not just the God of creation but also our God. This covenant, when founded on love, can be imaged as a sort of friendship. Through this friendship with God, we share life with God. We are con-cerned about the things of God and God is concerned about our things, and both are concerned for the friendship itself. Because of this friendship we Christians do religious things like sing in church. The difference between ourselves and unbelievers is not ~/larch-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Reli~ous Life and the Ech'pse of Love for God only that we do such specifically religious activities, but also that we want to make all our activities be part of our relationship to God. Thus, we want God to rest with us at the seashore and to ladle soup through us at the local homeless shelter. A philia love for God is central in religious life. We want this friendship to be the first thing that comes to mind in the morn-ing and the last thing at night. Just as married persons want to call home when they are away at a convention, so we want to check in with God throughout the day: Religious life makes little sense without this friendship with God. Indeed, as I shall next suggest, religious life symbolizes this relatively unmediated friendship. Religious Life Could the church survive without religious life? Of course it could. Judaism covenanted with God without religious-life com-munities. So did the very early church, and so do many contem-porary Protestant churches. If all communities of religious were suppressed tomorrow, the church would go on. But in a church such as ours---a sacramental church with such diversity of gifts in its members---religious life in one form or another is almost inevitable. Indeed, a case could be made that religious life should someday be recognized, like marriage, as a sacrament because of what it adds to the church and world. What thin does it add? One answer might be that religious communities provide a place for a lot of kooky people, and that answer would not be too far wrong. The normal pattern for human beings is to marry, gain some security through property, and make significant decisions for themselves. When people are forbidden to marry, are deprived of property, or have their own important decisions made for them by others, we protest the violation of their basic human rights. We assert that these are basic goods needed for human fulfill-ment. Some people, however, although they are as psychologi-cally healthy as other people, have a peculiar passion to devote their lives to developing a relationship with God, a passion that relativizes their need to fulfill themselves through these basic human goods and makes it somewhat easy to set them aside. Such people may not be specially gifted at developing this relationship with God. Still, they are strongly attracted to try to do so through a life set apart to foster this devotion. They are like artists who just have to step out of the mainstream to pursue Review for Religious their passion. Further, they are attracted to other people who share this same passion. They are like the eggheads who gather at universities with others of similar intellectual bent because they feel at home with such heady people. Religious life, then, is a life shared by people who have a sometimes consuming passion for developing a relationship with God and who are willing to struc-ture their lives to ensure that this passion be fostered above all others. The church officially structures this form of life in order to publicly symbolize both to its members and to the world at large this desire for friendship with God. Obviously, few of us religious are dedicated exclusively to God. Indeed, it would be wrong to do so, since we should also be dedicated to the betterment of the world. Perhaps obviously, too, many married and single persons have developed a relationship to God that puts us to shame. But people do not ordinarily get mar-ried or stay single in order to pursue a passion for God. These two life patterns are not publicly structured to foster a passion for God, and such passion is not essential to their meaning. People do, however, enter religious life because of the pull of this very pas-sion. They join other people who, because of a similar passion, have left all to follow Christ. Without this love, their life pattern lacks its basic meaning. Accordingly, just as a married man fails if he does not love his wife, so too communities of religious women and men fail if they do not live explicitly and publicly--not just implicitly and consequentia!ly--from and for this primary relationship to God. Each pattern of life symbolizes different and essential Christian tasks. Marriage symbolizes Jesus' second great commandment, and religious life symbolizes the first. Both are necessary; and so, in the living of those respective vocations, the lines reverse. Married people must come to love God in and through their spouse, and persons in religious life must come to love their neigh-bor in and through God. Jesus was a man with a passion for God. Put a little more ele-gantly, Jesus was filled with God's Spirit. At the beginning of his public life, that Spirit led him out into a desert, away from peo-ple. That Spirit sometimes led him to leave his preaching and healing in order to be alone with God. That Spirit enabled him to go up to Jerusalem, thereby forgoing years.of ministry, in order to remain faithful to his Abba, even unto death on the cross. Ministry was not the center of his life, but only the consequence March-April 1998 Vacek ¯ Religious Life and the Eclipse of Love for God of living out of that center. The center of his life was his rela-tionship with his Abba. I said at the outset that religious life may be in danger of los-ing its soul. Perhaps now, at the end of my remarks, my inflam-matory language can be better understood and properly contextualized. Religious life, as I understand it, is directed essen-tially to an immediate love relationship with God. It is directed to the God who, to be sure, may be found and cherished in all things. But, more primordially, it is directed to the God who has a life and personhood that utterly transcend this world. Religious life points to this transcendent God by being a life that, without this rela-tionship to God, does not make sense. Indeed, as Karl Rahner argued, it would be immoral to choose this way of life without this relationship to God.1° The various works we do, for example, helping the poor or teaching children, in fact make a lot of sense quite apart from a relationship to God. These works may not be particularly attractive, but the sheer fact of human dignity makes them meaningful, even to atheists. Thus, even when we are engaged heart and soul in these works, our life must also offer something more. We must offer the crucially needed public wit-ness that this world is not all there is. Rather, belonging to the God who is beyond all creatures is the final meaning of life. We at times forget this important witness. Sometimes I put a question to men and women religious: Where is the kingdom of God to be found? In recent years they usually answer with the biblical text that the kingdom of God is within or in our midst (Lk 17:20-21). However, when the New Testament answers this ques-tion about the kingdom of God, it usually says that the kingdom of God is in some time and place other than this one.1~ In other words, it is chiefly .eschatological. Sometimes, too, I inquire about the meaning of the religious vows in our day. Contemporary men and women religious tend to praise the vows for giving us greater availability for this-worldly service. It is true that, for most of us most of the time, the vows do just this. But this view is incomplete for at least two reasons. First, there will be times when one or another vow will in fact prevent us from helping those who need love or material goods or our independent commitment. Second, other people without our vows often do greater works than we. Indeed, they sometimes do so because they have a spouse to help them or possessions to give away or the independence to change their commitments. Thus, Review for Religious our vows usually will help our ministry, but they do not always do so and, more importantly, that is not their primary meaning. Our vows have meaning on a different plane. Again, religious life has an eschatological quality. It is this quality that finally makes sense of the ascetic, other-worldly character of our religious vows. These vows point to the God who lives in unapproachable light, and these vows give witness to the Christian possibility of friend-ship with this incomprehensible God. I have suggested that since Vatican II there has occurred what I call an eclipse of love for God, an eclipse that has cast its shadow not only over the secular world, but over religious life as well. I have also urged that we step out of this shadow and live once again in the strong and direct sunlight of a friendship with God. Indeed, if we bask in the light and warmth of this Sun, not only may religious life attract new members, but it will have a soul that is fully alive and thus is the glory of God. Notes t Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1994. 2 U.S. Catholic 62, no. 10 (October 1997): 19. 3 Sandra Schneiders IHM, "Congregational Leadership and Spirituality in the Postmodern Era" (an address to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 23 August 1997), in Review For Religious 57, no. 1 (January-February 1998): 22. 4 Daniel Maguire, The Moral Core of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 221. s Schneiders, "Congregational Leadership," p. 21. 6 Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, trans. J.E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Dover, 1954), p. 193. 7 Paul Tillich, Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Scribner's, 1948), p. 162. 8 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963), pp. 272-300. 9 Moses Maimonides, "Yad, Teshubah" (X, I-3), in The Teachings of Maimonides, ed. Abraham Cohen (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1968), pp. 113-114. t0 Karl Rahner SJ "Reflections on a Theology of Renunciation," Theological Investigations, vol. 3 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 47-57. it E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 176. ~larcb-April 1998 SIDNEY CALLAHAN A Witness of Unique Witnessing Recently I was invited to speak to a conference of male and female religious. My charge was to reflect upon the unique identity of the religious vocation and comment upon the prospects of religious life in a complex, pluralistic society--in particular, will the current intellectual trends toward fragmented postmodo ernist thinking be a devastating challenge for religious vocations? This assignment was a new challenge for me since heretofore I as a laywoman had never focused much attention on the men and women presently pursuing a vocation of voluntary poverty, celibacy, and obedience to a rule. Most of my concerns in the church have heretofore been focused on larger issues of faith and authority as related to women, sexuality, family, and ethics. To fulfill my assignment I had to read furiously in the huge lit-erature devoted to postmodernist thought, and then I had to find out how other observers analyze what is going on within reli-gious orders in the waning of our millennium. After reflecting upon the troubling challenges, I also wanted to give the group my outsider's perspectives on the positive achievements of reli-gious life. First, it must be admitted that postmodernism, however dif-ficult it is to define, is a confusing and widespread intellectual movement of our time. And the least acquaintance with this trend, in whatever field it is encountered, can assure a person that, yes, Sidney Callahan .participated in the October 1997 symposium at Wernersville, Pennsylvania, on Religious Life's Unique Witness. Here she offers an expanded revision of her Commonweal article of 5 December 1997: "Nunsuch? Reviving Religious Communities." She may be addressed at Hudson House, Box 260; Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York 10503. Review for Religqous this wave of skepticism about knowledge or universal truths will make traditional faith and the religious vocation even more dif-ficult to pursue. In its strongest forms postmodernist thought asserts that no universal reality exists or can be known. Older modernist asser-tions in Western thought that rational and scientific methods can produce knowledge are thrown out as inadmissible. Worse still, there is nothing much to be explored besides the various "lan-guage games" that people learn to use in their own specific cultures. In postmod-ernist thought, it is language and culture that construct reality, and so biology and science are discounted. Human beings are trapped in their own time and culture, and so no meaningful universal truth claims can be trusted. Postmodernism pushes its adher-ents, who mostly populate elite academic literature departments, into a moral rela-tivism and suspicion of affirmations of truth, including, of course, religious truth. Unfortunately, the existence of a self, or human nature, is also believed to be con-structed by language and culture, so any and all self-identities must be tentative and temporary. True moral agency, or the pos-sibility of permanent commitments and promise making or promise keeping, disappears. While this modern reincarnation of radical skepticism may puncture claims of antireligious secular orthodoxies, it does believers little good. In the general darkness of uncertainty and ambiguity, there may be some room for silence and mystery, and there may be opportunities for hearing new voices from below, but the overall effect of the new worldview is still a negative one for all believers in a self-disclosing God of truth and love. Happily, the postmodernist movement is, I think, not going to last much longer, much less triumph among our academic intel-lectual elites. Skepticism eventually self-destructs, since it asserts that there can be little point in intellectual inquiry or argument. Recently many scientific and intellectual countermovements can be seen surging back toward a critical realism which affirms that a common human nature exists and that, yes, certain moral truths can be known with at least virtual certainty. Interestingly enough, The overall effect of the new worldview is still a negative one for all believers in a self-disclosing God of truth and love. ~/larcb-April 1998 Callahan ¯ A Witness of Unique Witnessing --!:40J some feminist philosophers have been quick to see that, if noth-ing is morally true beyond a culture's boundaries, then feminists can have no foundation for their efforts toward the liberation of women from oppression. But in the meantime a creeping cultural fog of doubt, skep-ticism, and moral relativism moves down into the popular cul-ture and makes dealing with modern young people difficult. Many teachers report that their students find themselves unable to affirm that even the Nazi genocide was really, truly, morally wrong. Tentativism, skeptical detachment, and seeing life as consisting of senseless fragments take over the popular mind. In such an intellectual climate, any faith, especially the faith needed for a religious vocation, faces a problem of commitment. As it is for the church at large, the end of the millennium is a rather unset-tled ¯ time for vowed religious. Why so? And what can be done about it? Here too there is no shortage of articles on why the numbers of new vocations to religious orders are declining and why so many vowed religious left their orders after the Second Vatican Council. Certainly some perspective on the present can be gained by looking at the changes in religious life over the cen-turies. I received an eye-opening view of the history of religious orders by reading Jo Ann Kay McNamara's Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millennia. Throughout the last two thousand years, the forms of reli-gious life in the church have constantly evolved--along with their being by turns accepted and persecuted by people outside and inside the church. As historical conditions altered and Christianity spread, religious life adapted to various circumstances and cul-tures. New orders were founded and still are being founded, and new ministries were, and are, constantly undertaken. It does not take much acumen to conclude that present developments, how-ever turbulent, may be one more transitional phase. Today the major challenge for vowed religious involves the assimilation of Vatican II's teachings and reforms. If now, for instance, religious life is no longer theologically exalted above other states of life in the church and, in particular, is no longer judged a more perfect way to holiness, a way superior to mar-riage, then why make the sacrifices involved? If, in addition, laypersons can fulfill all the ministries within the church and in the world that vowed religious used to perform, why join a religious community to serve God and neighbor? Review for Religious Some writers analyzing religious life today see what is hap-pening as a necessary purification: the vowed religious life is being purged of temptations to pride and comfort that its revered sta-res as "a vocation" once occasioned. Now there is no more mys-tique, and no more lifelong security complete with an assured slot in some fully staffed religious institution. The professional-ization of many jobs in hospitals, colleges, and social agencies has meant the need for secular credentials. Religious cannot auto-matically count on ministries that give them a sense of fulfillment or on having access to the economic resources needed to support their communities. Parishes love to have a generic "sister" toiling in their vineyard, but appear less willing to pay her a living wage. For theologian Sandra Schneiders, contemporary religious life is being stripped to its essential meaning. Without any of the old privileges, reli-gious must recognize once again the "naked God-quest in the center of their hearts," which makes an "exclusive and total demand upon them in consecrated celibacy, voluntary poverty, community, and corporate mission" (Schneiders, p. 518). Present declines in numbers or disturbances in morale may be a painful transforming process, similar to the suffering of a dark night of the soul; such a dying may be neces-sary for new life to emerge, perhaps in new forms. Yet fidelity to the God-quest must be maintained and can have its own benefi-cial effects for the church. Agreed. As a married layperson I can affirm the witness of the religious vocation for strengthening the rest of the faithful community in a confusing time. Yes, the life of holiness seems to be much the same whatever the path taken toward the goal; either laypersons or religious end up with a family resemblance to Christ. Yet lay and religious vocations are different. I view vowed religious vocations as a condensed, crystallized, intensely focused, institu-tionalized, corporate embodiment of every Christian's call to love God and one's neighbor wholeheartedly. The totality of the life commitment of a religious vocation and the personal sacrifices entailed give testimony to the fact that God's kingdom exists beyond time and space, beyond what we Parishes love to have a generic "sister" toiling in their vineyard, but appear less willing to pay her a living wage. March-April 1998 Callahan * A Witness of Unique VVitnessing can see and touch or recognize as commonsense strivings. Vowed religious directly imitate Christ's life of public ministry, an ascetic life undertaken for the sake of the whole church as a corporate communion. The Roman Catholic Church, in the words of Sebastian Moore, can be acknowledged as the only "world-wide and world-old institution dedicated to changing the world." Religious give their all to a ministry of worship and loving service to the world. Today, in our disordered complicated society, we need good corporate institutions to work toward justice and human flour-ishing. American individualists are rather blind to the importance of struggling for good institutions and social realities. Only orga-nized communities can use their collective synergy to fight against the structural oppressions and powers of "social sin." The the-ologian Walter Wink has interpreted St. Paul's references to fight-ing against "powers and principalities" as the struggle against those larger social structures and forces that unjustly oppress peo-ple. Christians must fight against these powers, against such social structures as unfair economic markets, or racial and sexual prej-udices, or exploitations of the poor, or entrenched ignorance, or rampant consumerism peddled by the all-encompassing media. Social systems harm innocent people and the earth's environment. Such structural entities have enormous power, and they usually operate beyond the control of even good individuals caught up within the system. Religious orders can use their corporate strength arising from their collective commitment to work for the conversion and transformation of the world. Vowed celibacy is crucial to the religious vocation. Erotic energy dedicated to loving God within the community and focused upon the corporate mission can be incredibly potent and fruit-ful. Celibacy does not repudiate sexuality, but rather affirms the values of friendship and the worth of embodied lives beyond sex-ual reproduction orreplication of one's genes. Religious orders do replicate themselves in their spiritual children, who join because they agree with the goals of the religious family. In genetic par-enting and family life, children do not always agree with their parents' commitments. Religious life attests to the good news that in the kingdom gender roles become subservient to personal identity since in Christ there is neither male nor female. This affirmation of per-sonhood, friendship, and work beyond gendered conventions has Review for Religious been particularly important for women's self-esteem and flour-ishing. The history of women's religious orders is replete with instances of women who went against their culture and were able to assume leadership roles that use their talents in original ways. Moreover, if sexual reproduction, sexual fulfillment, and mat-ing no longer are the only human ways to validate bodily exis-tence, then human beings who do not mate and reproduce--babies, the young, the old, the ill, the handicapped--are symbolically affirmed as valuable members of the human family. I see vowed celibacy as an incest tabu adopted in order to count everyone as one's family and kin. A no to one mate and sexual pair-bonding flees persons to love more inclusively. The risks undertaken and the permanent vows that religious make also help to strengthen the permanent vows of married persons. Marriage and family life are definitely schools of love, but to be true to family claims most persons are limited in what they can give to the larger church and civic community. There is only so much time, money, and energy available in one life. There are also limits to the suf-fering and sacrifices that a person can justifiably ask of a spouse or the dependent members of the family. To love is to suffer with others, and this happens in every state of life, but religious can be freer to suffer more. They can spend themselves more daringly for the coming of the kingdom in the larger community. The cor-porate support of their religious brothers and sisters can sustain them in enterprises beyond the capabilities of individuals or of most families. It is no accident that the majority of modern Christian martyrs have been vowed religious serving as mission-aries in dangerous territories. Voluntary poverty in the religious vocation also serves as a wit-ness against the greed and love of money ingrained in our materi-alistic consumer culture. Corporate religious groups can be more free to operate by the rule of just care: from each according to his or her gifts and to each according to individual need. Religious orders can struggle for justice more freely when all of their mem-bers are committed to the same ideals of love and charity--and are willing to pay the price to deploy their forces. Often Christians I see vowed celibacy as an incest tabu adopted in order to count everyone as one's family and kin. March-April 1998 Callaban ¯ A Witness of Unique Witnessing must voluntarily take on morally necessary suffering in order to heal, to do the works of mercy, or to end oppression. Religious who obey community authority for the sake of their vocation witness to the existence of the authority of God's truth as well as to the importance of persevering in an intentional com-munity. Ideals of authority are in ill repute, but are no less nec-essary to common endeavors for all that. Unfortunately, our culture worships individual liberty, autonomy, control, and lives of hyperprivacy. A permanent commitment to communal life beyond mate and family is a startling countercultural witness. Such staunch commitment to social cohesion also helps give civic society backbone, providing corporate groups that can medi-ate or stand between individuals and the state. The new label for the existence of enduring social ties of interdependency is "social capital." Who in a community can count on what ties and what sources of help when needed? A civil society and a civilization depend upon these invisible but powerful connections. Religious orders generate all kinds of social capital for the kingdom along with their dedication to God. The corporate wit-ness of an order with its customs, traditions, and rituals builds up energy and esprit to act effectively against obstacles. So, in the course of religious i'enewal today, we find religious orders reemphasizing their corporate identities, refocusing on their dis-tinct ministries, reinstating collective commitment rituals, and recognizing their need for common worship, common symbols, and a common life. The love and support of one's brothers and sis-ters make the religious vocation possible--and powerful. A group commitment strengthens individuals. Religious faith may be more risky today for everyone. I do not think that the risk arises from conflicts between belief and natural science as was true in the 19th century. But social and psychological disci-plines, and postmodern intellectual currents, can be challenging by making persons doubt their own religious experiences. Collective experiences of worship ~and community experiences of work and love can ground religious experiences as well as give witness to the world. To use a phrase stolen from Paul Ricoeur, I would say that what religious life can produce today is "the intelligibility of hope" for the church. New creative forms may be evolving, but they will come about not by legislated commands from higher church hierarchies, but from faithful listening to the Holy Spirit. God Review for Religious is a God of surprises, so we cannot know how the next millennium will play itself out. But I am quite sure that the church will con-tinue to be blessed with the survival and revival of religious voca-tions, thanks be to God. Selected Sources Albert Borgmann. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Joseph J. Feeney sJ. "Can a Worldview Be Healed? Students and Postmodernism." America 177, no. 15 (15 November 1997): 12-16. Jo Ann Kay McNamara. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Thomas Guarino. "Postmodernity and Five Fundamental Theological Issues." Theological Studies 57, no. 4 (December 1996): 654-689. Sandra M. Schneiders IHM. "Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?" Crosscurrents (Winter 1996-1997): 510-535. Personal Interpretation In sleep-warped nights of dreams and hauntings, L to satisfy my pride, my lust, my greed, had made a god in image of my need. Light dawned, but false, beneath a man-made sky. Then I felt more: some Thing, some One - Benign; not There, but Here - Beside. I came to part unpracticed lips and dry unyielding heart: I brought myself to pray, to ask a sign. Enough to shake my disbelief, there then occurred events beyond all chance that still offend my rationality, my will. Reluctant, though, I start to doubt again. That sign, so clear, at mercy of my wit: how will I choose to now interpret it? Stephen Eric Smyth FMS March-April 1998 DORIS GOTTEMOELLER Religious Life: Where Does It Fit in Today's Church? l/lA " t I say in this article is as much about the church as it ¥ ¥ is about religious life. Stated more fully, my question is: What is the place, the distinctive identity and function, of religious life in the church today? What is unique about this vocation in our post-Vatican II church? What witness and service do religious offer that other members of the church do not offer? Or, more colloquially, what is the point of being a religious sister or brother today?~ To throw some light here is also to illuminate the nature of the church itself in our post-Vatican II understanding. We can approach our question in three parts, dealing with (1) the origin of the question, (2) the significance of the question, and (3) some suggestions for a response. Origin of the Question First of all, where does this question come from? A few dozen years ago, before the Second Vatican Council, the status and role of religious were well known. Their status was characterized as a way of perfection, and their role was to devote themselves to min-istries such as prayer (in contemplative orders, more or less full-time) and teaching, nursing, and caring for orphans and the elderly. Their state of life contrasted with two other available options, the lay and clerical states. Doris Gottemoeller RSM, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, last appeared in our journal in January-February 1996. Her address is 8300 Colesville Road #300; Silver Spring, Maryland 20910. Review for Religious An implicit hierarchy seen in these states had the laity at the bottom and the clergy at the top. It was better to be a religious than to be a layperson, and even better to be a priest. (So if a lit-tle boy confided to his teacher that he was interested in becom-ing a brother, she was apt to say, "Why don't you go all the way and become a priest?") What has changed, so that the question of meaning and purpose has become so urgent? First, the council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, "flattened out" this hierarchy of states by affirming the fundamental equality of all Christians, rooted in baptism. "All the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity," and "all of Christ's followers [are] invited and bound to pursue holiness and the perfect fulfillment of their proper state.''2 Only later did many begin to ask a bothersome question: If it is not better, that is, more perfect, to be a religious than a layper-son, why make the sacrifice inherent in a lifetime commitment to the vows? The council also triggered a proliferation of ministries, as the faithful were called in a new way to be responsible for the mission of the church. The closing exhortation of the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam actuositatem, calls on all the laity to be coworkers with Christ in the various forms and meth-ods of the church's one apostolate. Formerly, the apostolate of the laity was described as a participation in the apostolate of the hierarchy; now the laity were called to the apostolate in their own name, in union with the whole church. The gradual adoption of the word ministry, often used in the plural, spoke to a new sense of a myriad of liturgical, catechetical, and pastoral works in which church members were called to engage, whether on an occasional, part-time, or full-time basis. Amidst this plurality of ministries, the restoration of the lay diaconate introduced a group of persons whose role is still not clearly differentiated from other roles. A recent national study of the permanent diaconate reports: "In their written-in comments more than a few deacons complained that they are too often thought to be either 'incomplete priests' or 'more advanced laity.'''3 Many deacons wonder whether ordination is necessary for what they do, and the majority of lay leaders surveyed indi-cated they do not think that ordination is necessary for the min-istries performed by deacons in their parishes. We could also ~larch-ApH11998 Gottemoeller * Religious Life: Where Does It Fit? point out that the typical deacon's education and spiritual and pi'ofessional preparation for ministry are less than that of the reli-gious with whom he serves on the same parish staff--and yet he is empowered to preach, to serve at the altar during liturgy, and to a~dminister some sacraments. Of all these ministries, it is difficult to identify religious with any specific one. Teachers in parochial schools and in Christian-doctrine (CCD) programs, nurses in hospitals, workers in child-care, eldercare, and special care institutions of all kinds are overwhelmingly lay people. Some religious continue to minister in these settirigs, but others are in a wide variety of other venues: prisons, homeless shelters, social-welfare agencies, housing pro-jects, parishes, dioceses, retreat centers, justice offices, congre-gational headquarters, and so forth. Not all of these settings are affiliated with the individual's congregation or, indeed, with the Catholic Church. The causes of this ministerial diffusion are complex and not all within the control of religious congregations. Among other factors in play is the law of supply and demand. Religious are not needed in some ministries for which others are very well qualified. Religious cannot afford to offer their services gratis, and their seniority makes them too expensive to hire. Institutions that were once the employer of last resort for religious have closed or cannot employ persons without specific creden-tials. The government has assumed greater responsibility for some works for which religious were once responsible. Professional credentialing has put some ministries beyond the reach of some religious. And so forth. There is no end of opportunities for vol-unteers in the typical parish or institution, but volunteer (that is, nonremunerated) serviICe is not really a viable option for many of a congregation's members. One of the common venues for ministry is the parish (not the parish school, but the parish itself), a fact that contributes to the phenomenon known as the parochialization of religious life. As qualified lay teachers became available in years past, they began to replace sisters in the classroom. At the same time, parishes looked to sisters to fill roles for which they were deemed uniquely qualified, especially the religious education of children and adults and a variety of other pastoral services such as outreach to the elderly and homebound, music ministry, and liturgy preparation. Then, as the number of the clergy declined and the number of Review for Religious parishes with a single priest grew, pastors looked to sisters to move into the new roles of pastoral associate and even pastoral administrator (in priestless parishes). An unforeseen effect of this parochial assimilation is that the typical parish has little or no sense of the distinctive charism of each religious congregation, no sense of the congregational mission or spirituality that sup-ports "their" sister. If this development moves to its logical conclusion, women religious might come to be regarded as generic church workers, inter-changeable parish functionaries. Such parochial assimilation also blurs the dis-tinction between clerical and religious identity. Of course, everyone knows that pi'iests can celebrate Mass and religious cannot. But the popular confu-sion about the two vocations is indicated by ques-tions such as the following which I get from tlffie to time: If the pope allows priests to marry, do you think sisters will get married too? Such a questioner has no idea of the distinction between the vocation of a diocesan priest and that of a religious, and no idea that religious life is a way of life in which celibacy is an integral component. Many people assume that we religious observe celibacy as a sort of price for working in the church rather than as the heart of our religious commitment. By way of an aside, we could note that th~ question of priesdy identity and mission in today's church would be a parallel area of investigation. Since the theologies of both the priesthood and religious life are rooted in ecclesiology, there is a relationship between the concepts of both of them. One recent study identi-fied four historically significant theologies of the. priesthood and their corresponding theologies of religious life.4 These theolo-gies differ from one another in their vision of spiritual ideals, of appropriate relationship to a local church, 6f mission focus, and so forth. Clerical religious institutes represent a further permu-tation of the issues. To summarize this first part, we can say that the question of the contemporary meaning and significance of religious life arises on the theoretical side because of the emphasis of Vatican II on the role of the laity in light of the universal call to'holiness, and on the practical side because of the changing ministerial roles of reli- Professional credentialing has put some ministries beyond the reach of some religious. March-April 1998 Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Life: Where Does It Fit? | gious (including their insertion into parochial roles). Finally, the diminishing number of religious reduces their visibility and makes it even more difficult to discover who they are and what they are about. From a congregational perspective, this diminishment makes it more imperative than ever for religious to assert their dis-tinctive identity and to focus their energy and resources in a clear direction--which leads to the issue of significance. Significance of the Question What difference does it make if there is no clear or commonly held answer to what the meaning and purpose of religious life today is. The most obvious answer is that it makes it very difficult, even impossible, to invite, young men and women to consider reli-gious life as a personal option. The Religious Life Futures Project highlighted the problem in its Executive Summary: "The most compelling result of the study indicates that a significant per-centage of religious no longer understand their role and function in the church. This lack of clarity can result in lowered self-con-fidence, a sense of futility, greater propensity to leave religious life, and significant anxiety. The younger religious experience the least clarity, and, among these, women religious experience less clarity than their male counterparts . For both women and men religious, Vatican II substantially reinforced the role of laity in the church, but did not clarify for religious the unique contri-bution of their vocation.''s Other contemporary writers have highlighted the same prob-lem. Sociologist Patricia Wittberg SC speaks of the collapse of the old ideological framework for religious life after the council. By means of a review and analysis of the articles which appeared in Review for Religious over a thirty-year period, she demon-strates how the old definition of religious life as a state of per-fection or privileged way to holiness was discarded and the traditional understanding of the vows and community life eroded or replaced. At the same time a new, internally consistent alter-native definition was proposed by theologians and writers, namely, religious life as prophetic witness. She suggests, however, that structural changes in the daily lifestyle of religious prevented the new definition from being established on a corporate basis. "Nor was the new ideology upheld with the same unanimity as the old had been, for religious communities had deprived themselves of Review for Religious some of the very communal commitment mechanisms that might have reinforced their new beliefs.''6 In other words, we had so reshaped our understandings of obedience, of community, of min-istry, and so forth as to make it impossible to hold one another to any accountability for common practices. Wittberg adds, "Individual religious were defined as those who live their bap-tismal call in the vowed life--but these vows were either inade-quately defined or else defined in such a way as to apply indiscriminately to all Christians. 'The dominant language of reli-gious life . . . shifted from theological constructs to social and psychological paradigms' that were inadequate to explain what was distinct or desirable about the lifestyle.''7 This is quite a sig-nificant observation from a sociologist! As evidence of our lack of a clear sense of our corporate mean-ing and purpose, Wittberg cites some examples of self-defeating patterns of operation: 1. Statements of mission or charism that are vague and gen-eral enough to include all the various interests in a con-gregation. 2. Difficulty in making choices, particularly in the area of long-term planning, because there is no deeply shared vision on which to base these choices. 3. An emphasis on the personal growth and development of the members, as well as a tendency to interpret commu-nity in terms of the needs of the members, work as an indi-vidual project, and spirituality as a private concern. 4. The near impossibility of sustaining corporate commit-ments, s I doubt that there are many religious today who do not recog-nize at least some of this analysis as touching on their own expe-rience. In terms of ministry, the lack of a simple and single answer to the question of what religious do is a cause of confusion and crit-icism among some of the laity. To give one example: the March 1997 issue of Religious Life, a newsletter or journal published by the Institute on Religious Life in Chicago, carried an article tided "Nuns and the Common Good," by Anne Stewart Connell. In it she excoriates "sisters who maintain they are still 'sisters' yet have leaped over convent walls and taken 'administrative' jobs in the church in preference to teaching children" as perpetuating a "gross injustice" in the church. In her words, these sisters are "corrupt-ing" the "bona fide religious who have nowhere to turn but to March-Apt41 1998 Gottemoeller * Religious Life: Where Does It Fit? collude in the corruption simply to survive.''9 It is easy to be dis-mayed by the invective here, but a deeper concern is that the writer has the misconception that some or most religious con-gregations were founded to do a single work, namely, teaching, and that their members have willfully and selfishly betrayed their commitment in order to pursue other occupations. Below the issues of vocational recruitment, congregational morale, and public perception lies the deeper issue of theological coherence. VChere does religious life fit in the theology of our post-Vatican II church? The postsynodal apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata describes consecrated life as a gift to the whole church: Its universal presence and the evangelical nature of its wit-ness are clear evidence--if any were needed--that the con-secrated life is not something isolated and marginal, but a reality which affects the whole church. The bishops at the synod frequently reaffirmed [that] "this is something which concerns us all." In effect, the consecrated life is at the very heart of the church as a decisive element for her mission, since it "manifests the inner nature of the Christian call-ing" and the striving of the whole church as bride towards union with her one Soouse.tAt the Synod it was stated on several occasions tha't the e'~nsecrat'ed life has not only proved a help and support for the church in the past, but is also a precious and necessary gift for the present and future of the people of God, since it is an intimate part of her life, her holiness, and her mission)° Consecrated life, then, is an intimate part of the church's life and a decisive element of her mission. This precious gift is said to be a reality which affects the whole church. How are these affir-mations consonant with our post-Vatican II understanding of the church as a communio, an organic unity of all the faithful, consti-tuted in baptism, nourished by'the sacramental life and authentic teachings, and focused on the one mission? This question of eccle-siology can be the bridge to our third section, in which we focus on the identity and mission of religious life today. Some Suggestions for a Response I would like to attempt to answer our question of meaning and purpose by offering three assertions: (1) Religious life is a permanent state of life ,in the church; (2) religious life has an objective excellence, even a certain superiority, with regard to Review for Religious other states of life; and (3) there is no one ministry for which religious are uniquely qualified, but each congregation should offer a specific witness by its corporate lifestyle and mission. Religious life is a permanent state of life in the church. The impli-cations of this statement are that it is clearly distinguishable from other states of life in the church and that it is rec-ognized as such by the church in an official way. "State of life" is probably a term of art rather than a categorical definition, but I think we would all agree that it suggests a deliberate orientation of one's life, encompassing fundamental and stable choices around the use of one's sexuality, material possessions, personal freedom, relationships, talents, and future options. The choices made by persons in the religious state of life with respect to these dimensions of life are customarily designated celibacy, poverty, obedience, community, ministry, and permanence. The choides have an inner con-gruence, so that each influences how the others are expressed and experienced. Taken together, these choices are more than enough to distinguish a person in the religious state from one in the lay state. This assertion that religious life is a permanent state of life in the church might seem too obvious to need saying, but I feel it needs emphasis in light of the charge sometimes made that reli-gious have become indistinguishable from the laity. The real issue here is the visibility of the way of life, with its interdependent and distinguishing characteristics. If all an onlooker sees is a single woman living alone and going out to a job each day, the evan-gelical witness is compromised and its meaning eroded. Poverty, obedience, community, ministry--these make real-life demands and effectively shape a life that is distinctively different from the general Christian vocation. The church's recognition of this state of life draws on a dis-tinction between the church's structure and its life. According to the first, there are only two states of life, clerical and lay. According to the latter, there are three states: clerical, religious, and lay. The operative quotations from Vatican II's Lumen gentium are: "From the point of view of the divine and hierarchical struc-ture of the church, the religious state of life is not an intermedi-ate one between the clerical and lay states. Rather, the faithful of Where does religious life fit in the theology of our post-Vatican II church? March-April 1998 Gottemoeller ¯ Reli~ous Life: Where Does It Fit? Christ are called by God from both these latter states of life so that they may enjoy this particular gift in the life of the church. ¯ ." (§43) and "although the religious state., does not belong to the hierarchical structure of the church, nevertheless it belongs inseparably to her life and holiness" (§44). At the same time, the document (§31) says that "the term laity is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in a religious state sanctioned by the church." In other words, the division of church members into three states, the religious, the clerical, and the lay, is a division based on the life and holiness of the church, not on its structure. Vita consecrata describes these three vocations as paradigmatic choices, "inasmuch as all particular vocations., are in one way or another derived from them or lead back to them, in accordance with the richness of God's gift.''~1 The diversity represented by these three fundamental options corresponds perfectly with the idea of the church as communio in which the Spirit provides for a variety of vocations, charisms, and ministries. A communion eccle-siology accents ordered relationships and differentiation of roles within the fundamental equality that stems from a common bap-tism. Diversity is also present within the religious state, not just among the three fundamental states of life. For example, conse-crated life is realized in religious and in secular institutes and in societies of apostolic life. Religious institutes may be clerical, non-clerical, or mixed; monastic, mendicant, evangelical, or apostolic; contemplative or active; ancient or modern. New institutes arise and old ones pass away. Whatever the canonical form or historical sit-uation, commitment to the evangelical counsels according to a rule approved by the church is the essential characteristic of this state of life. Given the countercultural nature of the commitment required by the counsel~, religious life will always be the choice of the few rather than of the many. However, it is an enduring way of life which seems to flourish in one epoch or cultural milieu and diminish in another, only to revive again with new vigor. Religious life has an objective excellence, even a certain superiority, with regard to other states of life. This second assertion about the identity and mission of religious life is prompted in part by a phrase which occurs in three places in Vita consecrata, namely, that consecrated life has an "objective superiority" in the church.12 When the apostolic exhortation was first published, commentators (including myself) reacted immediately to the phrase, noting that Review for Religious it seems to contradict the affirmation of Vatican II that all the faithful of Christ are called to the perfection of charity and to the perfect fulfillment of their proper state. Commentators pointed out that the word "superiority" was a translation of the Latin praestantia, which the French and Italian texts translated as "excellence" (and it, is likely that the document was first written in Italian).'3 In other words, we concluded that what the pope was really saying is that consecrated life has an objective excel-lence. We felt comfortable with this because to affirm one voca-tion or state of life as excellent does not imply that another choice is not equally excellent. On further reflection, however, I am willing to suggest that, whatever the pope did or did not intend, the word "superiority" also has a certain legitimacy. Appealing again to a communion ecclesiology, I find a differentiation of roles and a hierarchy of functions to be consonant with an organic model of the church. In the words of 1 Corinthians 12, "As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ," and, further, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?" Applying all this to the church, St. Paul asserts: "Some people God has designated in the church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, [doers of] mighty deeds; then, gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues." Finally, as if to under-score the implicit hierarchy in this list, he says, "Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts." The most obvious application of this principle of differenti-ation is with respect to ordained persons and their specific pub-lic responsibilities within the church. But I would suggest that the principle might also apply to the domain of the life of the church,x4 In the home at Bethany, Jesus says to Martha, "Mary has chosen the better part" (Lk 10:42). Can there be a good and a better part, objectively speaking, within the life of the Christian community? If the answer is yes, and if consecrated life can claim to be the better part, than what, specifically, makes it better? Vita con-secrata attempts to answer this question in paragraphs 29-34 deal-ing with consecrated life in and for the church. The crux of the answer is that persons in consecrated life commit themselves to a "fuller, more explicit and authentic confoi'mity to him [Jesus] t~larch-~lpri1199g Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Life: Where Does It Fit? through the profession of the evangelical counsels" (§30). This commitment is "a special and fruitful deepening of the consecra-tion received in baptism" (§30). This further consecration differs from baptismal consecration, of which it is not a necessary con-sequence. 15 All the baptized are called to holiness and the virtues which contribute to holiness, such as chastity, obedience to God and to the church, and a reasonable detachment from material possessions. But baptism does not include the call to celibacy or virginity, obedience to a superior, or the renunciation of posses-sions, in the form proper to the evangelical counsels. In addition to conforming their lives in an explicit way to the pattern of Jesus' life, those who profess the evangelical counsels also proclaim and in a certain way anticipate the future age when the fullness of the kingdom of heaven, already present in its first fruits and in mystery, will be achieved and when the children of the resurrection will take neither wife nor husband, but will be like the angels of God (VC §32). Thus, consecrated chastity or celibacy is the preeminent expression of, and "door to," the whole conse-crated life. In summary, then, the superiority of the consecrated life is twofold: in its conformity to the life of Jesus and in its being a sign of the life to come, both of which are specifically and uniquely realized in this way of life. Within the church and on behalf of the whole church, consecrated life is a kind of sacrament of presence. Again, in the words of Vita consecrata, "The consecrated life, by its very existence in the church, seeks to serve the consecration of the lives of all the faithful, clergy and laity alike" (§33). The ministry of witness is mutual: "consecrated persons themselves are helped by the witness of the other vocations to live fully and completely their union with the mystery of Christ and the church in its many different dimensions." Of course, we need to emphasize that the excellence or supe-riority of consecrated life adheres in the state of life itself and can-not be automatically attributed to any person choosing this life option. Individual men and women in consecrated life may be gen-erous or selfish, great-spirited or petty, devout or apathetic, bold or indifferent in their service of God and God's people. At times they may waver in their commitment or fail in their obligations. When they do, they acknowledge their failures, seek God's pardon, and persevere. The ideal is still in place, even though human weakness prevents them from realizing it as generously as they would want. Review for Religious As a state of life, consecrated life offers--to men and women who have been captured by so intense a love for God that every dimen-sion of their lives is affected--a more excellent way to express that love~within the context of church. Up until now we have dealt with the identity of religious life. Let me now turn to the question of mission. Other than wit-nessing by our presence, can we concretize what it is that reli-gious do (or should do)? In my view the answer is that there is no one ministry for which religious are uniquely qualified, but each congregation should offer a specific witness by its corporate lifestyle and The excellence mission. The apostolic exhortation Vita con-secrata deals beautifully with the inte-gration of consecration and mission: "By the action of the Holy Spirit who is at the origin of every vocation and charism, consecrated life itself is a mis-sion, as was the whole of Jesus' life" (§72). It follows that, if the life itself is a mission, it must be visible. The evan-gelical counsels and the ideals of love for God, passionate concern for the poor and needy, and commitment to community life need to be translated into specific behaviors that people can see and understand. These behaviors .also help introduce a new member into the meaning of the life and reinforce a sense of belonging among all members. Without such corporate behaviors, there is no visibility; with-out visibility, there is no witness. We could discuss at length what such corporate behaviors (or commitment mechanisms, as th~ sociologists call them) might be, but the principle is clear. In the process of renewal, we discarded a whole set of behaviors that were anachronistic or even harmful to psychological health, but we have not yet adopted new behav-iors appropriate for today's culture and ministerial needs. One of the factors that keep us from identifying or adopting such cor-porate behaviors is our respect for diversity. This value is affirmed in Hta consecrata and is a necessary outcome of the renewal pro-cess enjoined by the Second Vatican Council. If religious institutes successfully "return to the inspiration of their founders" and or superiority of consecrated life adheres in the state of life itself and cannot be automatically attributed to any person choosing this life option. March-April 1998 "adapt to the needs of their contemporary circumstances/min-istries," they are inevitably going to look different. What the council did not anticipate, however, is that diversity grew within each congregation. To some extent this development was a healthy outcome of greater appreciation of individual personalities, psy-chological needs, spiritual gifts, and so forth. However, unques-tioned diversity (that is, diversity of lifestyle, of theology, of spirituality) within a congregation can erode corporate identity and the possibility of corporate witness. It seems clear that viable religious life of the future will manifest less diversity within each congregation and greater diversity among congregations. Another factor that keeps us from adopting common prac-tices and behaviors is a fear of restorationism, a concern that someone will try to reverse the passage of history and return us to the practices we discarded years ago. We can see, if we reflect on the learnings of these intervening years, that such a reversal is not even remotely possible. Our failure, however, is that for the most part we have not identified and reflected on the learnings of these years of renewal. We have not asked ourselves how our cur-rent practices express our love for Jesus Christ and our commit-ment to the church in a credible way,.how they support and enhance our mission, how they promote greater passion for the gospel and for the service of the poor and needy. Our lack of crit-ical reflection on our present reality leaves the task of evaluation to those outside our midst who are often ill-informed and intem-perate in their judgments. Commitment to a corporate mission is an element that needs to be explicitated for each congregation, institute, or society. The articulation needs to be clear and focused if it is to effectively guide the choices of members about their ministries and con-tribute to the public perception of a congregation. On the other hand, the statement of mission usually cannot be reduced to a single ministry unless the congregation is very small or is con-centrated in a small locale. A congregational mission does not exist in isolation; it is an explicitation of some dimension of the church's mission. Therefore it presupposes an understanding of, and commitment to, ecclesial mission. This is an area of challenge for everyone in the church today, including religious. We need to recall that, at its deepest level, the church's mission is about restoring the relationship between God and human persons. It is expressed through good Review for Religious works such as education, social service, healthcare, and public advocacy, but, fundamentally, these are "missionary" only if they have an explicitly religious purpose and meaning. As more and more religious minister in secular or ecumenical and thus non-congregationally sponsored works, it becomes more important than ever to validate the religious dimension of their work. In our first-world milieu, there is probably no social prob-lem or societal need of such aching intensity that only religious with their full-time, lifelong, religious commitment can attend to it. Rather, there is a host of problems or needs---homelessness, ignorance, ill health, violence, social unrest, and so forth--which make legitimate claims on people of the gospel, whatever their state of life. Moreover, these problems exist within a culture tainted by materialism, consumerism, transitoriness, promiscu-ity, loneliness, xenophobia, alienation, and on and on. What reli-gious can do, must do, is offer another way to live within this culture in a personally transformed and transforming way. To that end, our choice of a specific ministry is secondary. What counts is that our ministry flow from and enrich the whole of our con-secrated life. To return to the question with which we began: Where does religious life fit in today's church? I would answer that it is an enduring way of life in which men and women intensify their commitment to Jesus Christ through the evangelical counsels, lived according to a rule. Their rules specify the particulars of their commitment in such a way that its integrity is safeguarded and public witness is enhanced. The mission of each congregation is a participation in the mission of the church, specified in a way that meets contemporary needs and focuses the corporate energies and witness of the congregation. Is this the answer one can give an inquirer, a potential new member, perhaps one's niece or nephew? The answer might seem theoretical or academic. A better answer might be that religious life is an affair of the heart. It offers, within the church, a dynamic yet tested way to follow Jesus Christ more closely and to serve him more generously, and to do this with the support of others who share this same passion. Notes *The Apostolic Exhortation on Consecrated Life, Vita consecrata (§I04), asks this very question: "What is the point of the consecrated life?" March-April 1998 Gottemoeller * Religious Life: Where Doe~ It Fit? 2 Lumen gentium, §§40 and 42. See, too, all of chap. 5, "The Call of the Whole Church to Holiness." 3"NCCB National Study of the Diaconate," Origins 25, no. 30 (1996): 501. Survey respondents included deacons, their wives, their priest super-visors, and parish lay leaders. 4 David N. Power OMI, "Theologies of Religious Life and Priesthood," in A Concert of Charisms: Ordained Ministry in Religious Life, ed. Paul K. Hennessy CFC (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), pp. 80-81. s David J. Nygren CM and Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ, The Future of Religious Orders in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), "Affiliative Decline and Role Clarity," pp. 248-249. Or see "The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary," Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-55, at Conclusion 5, pp. 47-48; or see "The Future of Religious Orders in the United States," Origins 22, no. 15 (24 September 1992): 258-272, at Part IV, no. 5. 6 Patricia Wittberg SC, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 251. 7 Wittberg, Rise, p. 256. In the latter quotation Wittberg is citing Nygren and Ukeritis, "Future," Origins 22, no. 15, p. 268; or see "Religious Life Futures Project," Review for Religious 52, no. 1, p. 37. 8Wittberg, Rise, p. 256, credits these points to Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving Religious Life, p. 73. 9 Religious Life 21, no. 3, pp. 4-5. ~o Vita consecrata, §3 (emphasis in the original). II ~/~ta consecrata, §31. 12 Vita consecrata, §§18, 32, and 105. ~3 See editor's note in Religious Life Review (July 1996), p. 25 I. 14The Final Report from the 1985 extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops, dealing with the implementation and interpretation of Vatican II, says: "The ecclesiology of communion cannot be reduced to purely organizational questions or to problems which si.mply relate to powers." Se~ Origins 15, no. 27 (19 December 1985), p. 448. 15 The following paragraph of Vita consecrata (§31) speaks of"a new and special consecration which, without being sacramental, commits [reli-gious] to making their own--in chastity, poverty, and obedience--the way of life practiced personally by Jesus and proposed by him to his dis-ciples." 1:60 Review for Religious STEPHEN DE LA ROSA Creative Fidelity: Renewal in the Spirit of St. John of God Spirituality is a way of living: life as relationship with God, neighbor, and self. The beliefs, practices, and moral norms of many various spiritualities guide people's inte-rior life. The demands of daily living and the challenges of our time call upon people's various spiritualities for a response. As Brothers of St. John of God, we respond to the needs of the sick, abandoned, poor, and dying,. This response demands an interior disposition of patience, kindness, understanding, fortitude, and physical energy. Often our responses are made in the midst of adversity from limited material and financial resources. A recent book says, "Spirituality is understood to include not merely the techniques of prayer but, more broadly, a conscious relationship with God, in Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Spirit." St. John of God never lost faith, hope, and love. In the midst of great suffering, he always responded to those in need. Since such responses are not easy, every generation of Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God is confronted with a spiritual attitude called hardness of heart. It begins with feelings of staleness or stagnation. The soul feels lifeless. The spirit becomes deadened. To move away from apathy and feel our actions rean-imated, what we need is an interior disposition of wonder Stephen de la Rosa OH was provincial for nine years and is now formation director of his province. His address is Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God; 2035 West Adams Boulevard; Los Angeles, California 90018. spiritua renewal March-April 1998 De La Rosa * Creative Fidelity and awe, a renewal process that leads to a rebirth. This move-ment can be called "creative fidelity," a continuing response under the impulse of the Holy Spirit to the challenges of present moments as they come along. Fidelity of this kind is based on a certain relationship that is felt to be inalterable, an assurance of something that cannot be fleeting. When we say "creative fidelity" in the context of the spirituality of the Brothers of St. John of God, there arises a specific image: because of his interior life, St. John of God, who lived more than four hundred years ago, was able to be endlessly resourceful. St. John of God had many sides to his personality. Leaving home at an early age, he soon joined the army and soon ran into many difficulties. Going to Africa in search of more meaningful experience, he labored for people who were in dire need. He struggled with his own sinfulness and encountered mental ill-ness. Yet he went forward for the sake of the sick and forsaken and experienced his conversion in serving thousands of the sick in Granada. In short, John's life was not an easy one. But it is in this simple yet profound life that we discover the elements of the "creative fidelity" to which his disciples, sharers of his spiritual-ity, are called. St. John of God showed by example how to live in creative fidelity to the Spirit of God. The root of his creative fidelity is summed up in his constant proclamation "I trust solely in Jesus Christ."2 This trust in God was basic to his interior disposition. It is what enabled him to take on the inevitable difficulties of liv-ing in a world of p~in and suffering. Hospitality as a spirituality is a way of being and acting in the midst of suffering. It is a love that leads to caring for, and a caring that leads to love of, those who suffer. St. John of God could see the image of God in the suffering of those he called his brothers and sisters. Such an ability is a form of authentic human development. In his lifetime John of God motivated peo-ple to act hospitably in the midst of difficulties, and today he does so too. He remarks in a letters to a friend, "Remember our Lord Jesus Christ and how he returned good for the evil they did to him.''3 Connected with the notion of creative fidelity are the signs of the times and the challenges arising from them. Creative fidelity, in the spirituality of St. John of God, is the working out of the implications of our beliefs, adapting to the reality we live in, so Review for Religious that our human spirit can "act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with our God" (Mi 6:8-9). ,. John of God is not simply a poetic figure who stands outside the mainstream of his time. He felt the pain and abandonment of the sick and suffering and was enormously sensitive to what the public agencies of the time were not doing for others. His mes-sage, "Do good to yourself by doing good for others,''4 was an amazing message calling for contemplation, conversion, and com-passion and for commitment to alleviating people's suffering. It is this process, a cycle of renewal, which I call cre-ative fidelity to the spirit of St. John of God. Responding to the needs of our times requires a soulful response, requires that we Brothers be contemplative. Contemplative prayer involves seeing and being aware of the truth in a universal manner. It .means being aware of our surroundings. It is about movement and action or the lack thereof. For St. John of God, this awareness meant "Always have charity, for where there is no charity God is not there-- even though God is everywhere.''s The Brother of St. John of God who takes a contemplative stance tbward life, especially the life of suffering, will experience a great depth of happiness, peace, and love. He will also be able to sense their absence. There is an interior joy in seeing and understanding the meaning and reason of human suffering. Seeing the truth of suffering calls us to con-version. To act on what we see requires conversion. Contemplation allows us to see injustice, to confront our own needs, and to be open to a newness of heart. Hospitality to a stranger means wel-coming someone unfamiliar. It means recognizing another's vul-nerability compassionately. The interior elements of this response open us up to our helplessness. John says in a letter: "I am very unhappy when I see so many poor people (who are my brothers and neighbors) suffering and in great need in both body and soul and I cannot help them. Nevertheless, I trust solely in Jesus Christ, who will bring me out of debt, for he knows my heart." 6 The interior awareness of our helplessness is the beginning of creative fidelity. An authentic spiritual response includes a fidelity to Christ and the gospel, a fidelity to our fellow human beings and to our Hospitality as a spirituality is a way of being and acting in the midst of suffering. March-April 1998 De La Rosa * Creative Fidelity times, a fidelity to the charism of St. John of God, and a fidelity to the church and its mission in the world. The spiritual life of a Brother of St. John of God challenges us to present new answers to the new problems of today's world, not so very different from the times of St. John of God, when racism, greed, hatred, fanaticism, and economic inequities--and much indifference to such things, too--caused many human ills. People marginalized people, keeping them out of and alienated from the dominant social order or making them so. We too are faced with the isolation of the sick, the derelict, the aged, and the dying. Today we too place people in categories that dehumanize, that make human relations less than ideal. Through his spirituality St. John of God recognized the vulner-ability of others and recognized his own. Hospitality, for St. John of God, is a spiritual movement toward unity with God and neigh-bor. He goes beyond empathy to actually taking on the suffer-ings of the other. In his own experience of alienation, of being locked up in a mental hospital, St. John of God had an experience of"I am at home" and was liberated to be a brother to the poor and abandoned. Conversion leads to compassion. For the Brother of St. John of God, hospitality is the apostolic expression of love. Hospitality exposes the giver to the forma-tive experience of vulnerability. St. John of God was challenged by the needs of his time. He looked into himself and recognized the need to change. He looked outside of himself and saw the needs of suffering humanity. He surrendered to God and dis-covered a deeper relational integrity among the different dimen-sions of his life. He discovered that within the self there is little or no way of restoring people to their fullness. He turned in his need to total reliance on God. As we trace his spiritual journey, we see that this experience of trust in God allowed him, and allows future generations of his followers, to be formed in the image of the compassionate and merciful Christ, who emptied himself of his divinity and went about doing good, healing every kind .of infirmity. Hastened by the words of the sermon of St. John of Avila which brought about his conversion, St. John of God discovered the merciful love of God the Father and experienced God's com-passion as a remedy for his own sense of alienation. He experi-enced the compassion and merciful love of the Father as God's fidelity to him. New circumstances demand new responses, which Review for Religious in turn demand ongoing renewal and openness to conversion, which allows our response to be one of compassion. Hospitality, thus, means becoming one with the stranger, as the Son of God became a human being, emptying himself of his divinity to free us in mercy and compassion to respond to the Father's love. Fidelity to the charism of hospitality is lived as a spirituality when, in the presence of suffering people, we are emp-tied of our own pride, memories, or hostilities to be present to others not as the remedy or the source of healing, but quite sim-ply as a compassionate companion committed to the liberating power of the Spirit, an encounter of solidarity and communion. The spiritualized Brother of St. John of God is one who knows that God is communicating with him. But this deifying force does not remain closed in on itself; it radiates out of him to others--which means a true and real "horizontal diffusion" of the Spirit.7 In this manner a Brother of St. John of God partici-pates in the self-emptying act of the Son of God. "They don't just participate in him but they also communicate him to others. ¯. They don't just live, but they give life to others, and all of this is not something that pertains to a simple creative force." s At first glance it appears that John of God never asked any questions about what he should do; he just responded to the need at hand. Questions about whom to help and how to help them seem neither to have been noticeable in John's way of acting nor relevant to his cast of mind. He saw a needy person and acted. His fundamental healing project was to revitalize people's sense of integrity by restoring their human dignity. Yet, in his unwavering commitment to those in need, he did listen to his spiritual direc-tor, who warned him: "Do not deceive yourself by saying, 'I want to help them.' Because dangers lurk beneath good intentions when there is a lack of prudence, and God does not want me to bring about good for others at the expense of damage to my own soul.''9 Similarly, our own commitment needs to be tested against our fidelity to St. John of God's charism and to the church. The exterior structures of the church of today are in a state of permanent change. However, the Brother of St. John of God who, having experienced faith as a gift from a loving Father, does not rely just on exterior norms. Instead he looks to create an ever growing experience of a community of hope. The spirituality of St. John of God--and that of his Brothers as well--is an "in the church " spirituality. "In the church " refers to the church as it March-April 1998 De La Rosa * Creative Fidelity defines itself here and now and as it grows from the present into the future. For a Brother of St. John of God, fidelity to this growth is one of searching in the context of suffering for ways that we and others can grow in our human spirit. As Pope John Paul II says in Evangelium vitae, "We are called to express won-der and gratitude for the gift of life and to welcome, savor, and share the gospel of life." (§84). Our commitment is to human life. It is in living this life that we discover the interior life of the soul. Creative fidelity allows us to make a commitment to the spirituality of St. John of God in such a way that we see this truth that Evangelium vitae expresses: "Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves 'the creative action of God,' and it remains forever in a special rela-tionship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end; no one can claim for himself the right to destroy directly an innocent human being" (§53). The service of the Brother of St. John of God to the sick, the suffering, and the abandoned is a spiritual act of dedicated devotion to the person of Christ. Those who wish to be true fol-lowers of St. John of God will grasp his spirit and. nurture it. Like him they will find great consolation in the contemplation of the Passion. Such contemplation is much more than the sentimentally pious 16th-century practice that some might consider it to be. "When you are troubled or distressed, turn to the Passion of Jesus Christ our Lord and to his precious wounds, and you will feel great consolation," he wrote,l° This practice sustained him in his vision of love and assistance for those in need. We have seen how spiritual growth can occur within a spiri-tuality of hospitality. God calls us personally, and our response-- we are calling it "creative fidelity"--is our effort to understand more broadly and deeply the purpose and meaning of St. John of God's spirituality as embodied by our Brothers today. We are looking at a theological pattern that emerges in his spirituality and can help us in our ongoing renewal: contemplation, conver-sion, compassion, and commitment. In our experience of living out the spirituality of St. John of God, we are able to note how bringing the word of God to bear upon a situation raises questions, suggests new insights, and opens new interior responses. In this manner we continue to learn how to be faithful to suffering humanity in its needs in these o

Issue 49.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1990. ; Liberation and thel~iturgical Year How to Read St. John of the Cross Lasting Friends Volume 49 Number 6 November/December 1990 REVIEW I:oa REL~GIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Mis-souri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Blvd., Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United States $15.00 for one year; $28.00 for two years. Other countries: US $20.00 for one year; if airmail, US $35.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGOUS; P,O. BOX 6070: Duluth, MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. ©1990 REVIEW yon RELIGIO~S. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors David J. Hassel, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Advisory Board Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. November/December 1990 Volume 49 Number 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Eliza-beth McDonough, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue; P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW roR RELIGIOUS; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available oft cassette recordings as a service for the visu-ally Impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS. As we come to the end of another calendar year, we also find our-selves bridging the end and beginning of our Christian liturgical year. November is like a summary or review month--a past looking towards a future. It always begins with the two days commemorating all the saints and then all the faithful departed; it closes with a Sunday celebration of the eschatological feast of Christ the King. With Advent and with the Christmas season, we listen and we look--listening anew to the words of biblical prophets and looking upon the Word become flesh. Perhaps we better describe it as a future looking to the present. The divine call of hope coming through the prophets and being enfleshed in Jesus touches the human heart. It rouses the deepest of hu-man desires--to experience oneself as free in a world which is free and to experience peace within oneself and peace without. Most of the arti-cles in this issue involve a looking back and a looking ahead. At the same time, they also touch the present--with our experience of peace in its vari-ous forms, and with our experience of freedom. The articles by Kennington, Rich, van Breemen, and Kerr take up various implications of what has been identified as liberation theology. The origins of liberation theology are found in the so-called Third World countries, particularly in theological writers of South America. More broadly used in the Church, this theology has become a studied way of understanding, articulating, and living out our Christian faith so that we may affect situations and policies which tend to breed injustice and un-freedom. Liberation theology can sometimes seem to condone or even advocate some kind of violence. But no theology can merit the name Christian which is not permeated with a peace which only God can give. Liberation ~theology, especially when viewed in its spirituality, is most of all a theology of the kind of peace sung about by the angels on that first Christmas night. Perhaps one or other of these articles will be a kind of Bethlehem star for us, leading us to a place of greater freedom and peace, either within ourselves or without. Of special interest to a number of our readers are certain upcoming anniversaries. With the feast of St. John of the Cross celebrated in De-cember, there begins the 400th anniversary of the death of this great mys-tic, 1591-1991. Steven Payne, O.C.D., editbr of the Carmelite journal 1101 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Spiritual Life, provides us with some contemporary approaches to John's spiritual doctrine. Thomas Moore, O.C.D.S., tries to provide us with some basic directions to enter more profitably into the rich teaching of John. In celebration of another anniversary, our January/February 1991 is-sue will be unique in its focused selection of Ignatian spirituality arti-cles and book reviews. The year 1991 marks the 50th volume of REVIEW FOR RELiGiOUS, and the first issue of this volume will honor the Ignatian spirituality tradition, which is celebrating the combined anniversaries of 450 years since the founding of the Society of Jesus and 500 years since the birth of St. Ignatius Loyola. As we close out the first half century of this publication with this is-sue, the staff of REVtEW FOR RELmtOUS wishes all of our readers a Christ-mastide full of the blessings of peace and of freedom. David L. Fleming, S.J. Bethlehem Star: Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries Paddy Kennington Paddy Kennington is presently teaching literacy education in shelters for homeless people in Raleigh, North Carolina. With her master's degree in counseling and psy-chology and a graduate certificate in spiritual direction from Washington Theologi-cal Union, she also serves as an area formation director for the Third Order, Society of St. Francis, Episcopal Church. Her address is 2404-1C Bradford Dr.; Wilson, North Carolina 27893. Spiritual direction training and spiritual directors can become part of the praxis of social ministries. If the goals and purposes of social ministries are restricted to serving food, providing shelter, and legislative advo-cacy, worthy as those activities are, then God's wider plan of transform-ing grace and unity may never happen. The learning accumulated in spiri-tual direction training and experience can be part of the organization and spirituality of a social ministryin the Church. A graced life is not a pri-vate life. We are meant to become "breach menders and restorers of ru-ined houses" (Is 58: 12). One way to rethink thb relationship betWeen spiritual direction and social ministry as spirituality in action is to 'draw parallels between the two in the context of the concrete experiences of volunteers and street persons in a soup kitchen. This seems to me to be one method to dem-onstrate the thesis that spiritual direction has a role in social ministry. The Center for Spirituality and Justice in New York City has investigated the necessity to include an awareness of social consciousness as part of the spiritual direction relationship, t The reciprocity between spiritual di-rection skills and principles and social action is equally important in the daily hands-on ministries of shelters, clothing banks, and soup kitchens. 803 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Two stories of volunteers and street people illustrate the need to include spiritual direction with social action. The Soup Kitchen Antonio In early 1983, four of us from the Social Apostolate soup kitchen in Savannah, Georgia, organized an emergency winter night shelter. The next year, we added an evening soup kitchen and health care. Eventu-ally, I became the first director. 1 met many men and women like Anto-nio who appeared one fall evening in our soup line. He was wearing an over-sized woman's coat. Antonio's suitcase had remained on the bus that left him while he was looking for food. What funds Antonio had in his pockets had vanished quickly into slippery street fingers. After visiting the health-care clinic in our building, we discovered Antonio was thoroughly infested with lice. We also realized he had a men-tal disability and with his friendly, innocent manner, was not able to cope with the violence of street life. Antonio arrived in town in time for the opening of our winter shelter. Luckily, we were able to get him off the street each night. After a few days, the local Catholic Worker became Antonio's tem-porary home. He was an outgoing person and tried to fit in with our com-munity at the soup kitchen and with the Catholic Worker family. Anto-nio wanted to work and contribute to his keep. But his attempts at typ-ing for us and for the health-care nurses were disastrous. One of the nurses convinced him to write to his family in New Jersey. We began to get frantic phone calls from them, and were able to persuade his fa-ther not to get on the first plane to rescue Antonio. One winter evening as the volunteers were converting the hall from soup kitchen to night shelter, Antonio and I sat next to the front door while we waited to take the names of that night's guests. He turned to me and with his eyes averted as usual, asked, "Paddy, what's this place really all about?" I thought a moment and then said, "It's like a bus station, Antonio. People get off the bus, out of the streets, for a little while. They stay with us until they get back on the bus and move on." He turned that over in his mind and said, "Yeah, that's right. That's what I did. I'm staying here and then I'll move on, too." Antonio did leave eventually but not before he had struggled with his reasons for suddenly running away from his home in New Jersey. I think he struck out on his own because he wanted to know if he could take care of himself. Antonio's parents were overly protective and his Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / 805 brother pushed him hard to excel beyond his handicap. On the other hand, his disability did not keep Antonio from searching, questioning, and striving for what he believed to be his freedom. His questions and sense of independence may have taken a different expression from yours or mine. But the restless heart of St. Augustine was the same for Anto-nio as it is for all of us. In the spring while the azaleas and dogwoods were blooming, Anto-nio returned to his home and family. In the last letter we received from him, he told us about the computer course he was taking. One afternoon the following fall, a care-package of used jeans and winter shirts from Antonio arrived at the shelter. He had not forgotten those still on the bus. St. Teresa discovered after experiencing the prayer of union, that the Lord had been waiting many years for her "yes" to the Creator's gift of spiritual treasures and blessings.2 In his desire to d~cide the course of his own life, Antonio had said yes and gone out to find the courage to make his dream of freedom and independence come true. Bonnie I am always amazed at the intensity of emotion sometimes shown by volunteers toward the poor and street people. Initially, most soup kitchen volunteers are hesitant and even afraid. Few are prepared for the reality of human degradation, begging, and manipulation one is exposed to as part of the daily routine of providing minimal food to hundreds of hungry men, women, and children. Some turn away in tears or disgust; others are drawn to their fellow human beings through compassion, like moths to a flame. But sooner or later if they don't walk away, the inevi-table questions will arise. How can they live like this? Why doesn't the city do something? Where will they sleep tonight? They are all so sad; doesn't this get to you after awhile? Bonnie was a kind, loving woman from one of the many church groups that volunteer on a regular basis one evening each month. I had noticed Bonnie on her firsf day of volunteering while she was serving sandwiches. During her next few evenings in the serving line, she was withdrawn and reluctant to interact with the guests, as though she would rather be in the kitchen. Bonnie avoided any friendly contact except to plop a sandwich on a waiting plate. I had hoped for an opportunity to speak to Bonnie privately during the cleanup routine. "Well, how was it in the serving line tonight, Bon-nie?" I asked as dishes and pots were being scrubbed. She looked down at her feet and said anxiously, "Seeing all those men eating here really bothers me. My husband and I work hard for what Review for Religious, November-December 1990 we have. Why can't they get a job? Why am I expected to take care of them with my hard-earned tax money?" Clearly, Bonnie was torn emotionally between the teachings of Je-sus on love and charity she had heard all her life, and her present feel-ings of indignation, anger, and disgust. And the ~onflict inside showed on her face. This was not a time for reminders that we are to pray for God's forgiveness and strive for empathy for others. At that moment, what Bonnie needed was understanding and peace. I knew she could not yet be aware that coming to resolution about her feelings and attitude to-ward the soup kitchen guests meant that she herself would become the broken bread offered by Christ on the cross. Bonnie was too full of bit-terness and frustration. "I'd like you to meet one of our guests sometime, Bonnie," I said to her gently. "He's quite a character. And I hope you'll give us and yourself a second chance before you make up your mind about soup kitch-ens and street people." "I don't think I'll be back," Bonnie said. 'I just can't stand seeing all those lazy men ripping us all off, when they could be working and taking care of themselves." Her face was lined with anger and she pushed the broom even harder on the dining hall floor. I shared a few words of comfort but I did not push her to commit to another volunteer shift. Bonnie needed time to sort out her feelings. About two months later, I saw Bonnie walk in the front door with her church group. She still had a look of hostility and reluctance. I was afraid that if she could not get beyond her anger, she might lash out at one of the guests, or cause them to react to her in a negative way. "I'm glad you came back, Bonnie," I said. "Maybe you'd rather work in the kitchen instead of the soup line today." "No," Bonnie replied grimly. "I'm going to try the serving line one more time." "Maybe you'll get to meet Jim later," I suggested. "We'll see," she said. I was busy that suppertime and didn't get back to Bonnie until the end of the serving. I had Jim by the hand when we approached her. "Jim, I want you to meet Bonnie,'" I introduced them. Jim smiled a semi-toothless grin and shoved his hand toward Bonnie for a friendly shake. She shook his hand. I wondered what it took from her to give that little inch. "Jim is a regular here, Bonnie. He's been with us a long time," I explained. "Jim is one of the first guests we were able to help get off Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / il07 the streets. Now he helps out with cleanup and carrying in heavy food boxes." I backed out of the conversation as Jim was bending Bonnie's ear about his latest fishing exploits. Later Bonnie found me in the laundry room. "Jim's a real charac-ter and I realize why you brought him over to me," she said. "I haven't changed my mind about the rest of the men. But I do see that there may be more to the soup kitchen and the guests than I've been willing to admit," Bonnie confided. "I guess I need some time here to figure it all out." "All of us had to begin somewhere, Bonnie," I replied. "Maybe a place to start is thinking of the guests, volunteers, even the food--the whole soup kitchen--as sharing God's love. I would be glad to listen any-time you want to talk through your frustrations," I said encouragingly. We exchanged a hug. Bonnie gave me a big grin when she left with her friends. As a shelter and soup kitchen director, I found I needed to be teacher, counselor, community organizer, and peacemaker. But there was also a greater need than crisis intervention and social work referral for housing and health care. In the context of providing meals and shel-ter in a church social ministry, people were drawn closer together. They were forced to interact, ask questions, and struggle with conflicting emo-tions and injustices. I saw the need for a guide who had been exposed to the tradition and teachings of spiritual directipn. One who has lived enough of his or her own spiritual journey to be able to recognize oth-ers' struggles and to offer spiritual leadership beyond cooking, cleaning, and begging would be a good job description. Spiritual Development and Social Ministry Antonio, Bonnie, and many others in the soup kitchen have shown me that there is a lot more to hands-on church social ministries than giv-ing out sandwiches, collecting clothes, and providing shelter. I had scarcely been at St. Luke's soup kitchen (Atlanta, Georgia) two months before I realized that volunteers' needs were as critical as those of street people. Having worked with a large number of soup kitchen participants in the last eleven years, ! have seen that they often progress through spiri-tual growth stages. These stages generally correspond to the spiritual de-velopment outlined in the writings of such spiritual masters as St.-Ter-esa of Avila, St. Ignatius, St. Augustine, Thomas Greene, and Bernard Lonergan to name a few. 1. Awakening:3 Soup kitchen volunteers and guests are spiritual seek-ers in much the same way as directees are in spiritual direction. The soup Review for Religious, November-December 1990 kitchen director must establish an atmosphere which nurtures the possi-bility that all participants might be seeking spiritual growth along with advocacy, washing dirty dishes, and consuming numerous cups of sugar-filled coffee. Often the food sought and given is as much spiritual as physi-cal. The social ministry as a community needs to encourage the devel-opment of relationships as brothers and sisters rather than helpers and de-pendents. The Holy Spirit prods us all and no less so in the serving line of a soup kitchen. One of the most frequent comments from new soup kitchen volun-teers is one of surprise. They cannot wait to tell me, "I never knew it would be like this." The new volunteers sometime become so enthusi-astic they want to solve all the social ills and problems at one time. In their hurry to do something, they fail to let the totality of the soup kitchen experience filter into their inner depths. The impact of the similarity be-tween their own lives, hopes, and desires and those of the street people may elude them. Street people would seem to come to a soup kitchen because they need to eat, get out of the rain, or read the newspaper for a job. All of these reasons are usually true. But many also come from spiritual and psychological hunger. They need to be affirmed as human beings. They want friendship and to know that someone cares about them in the midst of their loneliness and alienation. And like everyone else, they have dif-ficulty in asking for what they want. Anger, manipulation, begging, pro-crastination, and even lethargy can mask a more basic plea for the love and compassion that cannot be found on the hostile streets. Casting volunteers and guests as mutual seekers of God's love helps to lessen the artificial line between dependent and provider. However, raising the awareness of both that each has gifts to offer the other may carry some risk. Life in'the streets dictates survival at all costs and is a set of learned behaviors. This might mean guests are immersed in the violence of poverty and substance abuse. Emotional problems, poor so-cialization skills, and mental illness are magnified by the stress of not knowing where the next meal or bed for the night will be found. Volunteers may come to a soup kitchen to play out an unhealthy need to dominate. They may see themselves as rescuer or savior. Volunteers can even burden already embtionally drained street people with their own consuming need for acceptance and love masked by acts of charity. These are reasons enough for soup kitchen managers and volunteers to have some training in lay qgunseling and spiritual direction. Meager funds for supplies and staffing and lack of housing, jobs, and Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries services may force participants into a negative emotional drain and the constant crisis of problem-solving. The stereotypes of despair and dis-ease of social distance can be lifted from guests and volunteers. Despite a naive or discouraging beginning, guests and volunteers can progress beyond the initial stage of being locked into a give-and-take, us-versus-them, relationship. The community's life depends on its ability to jug-gle logistical and physical demands with emotional, psychological ones. An awakening to the spiritual life of the soup kitchen for both volunteers and guests is enabled by the continual return to the wellspring of hope, the Holy Spirit. 2. A Hard Look: After the introductory experience, the volunteer usu-ally begins to ask, why? Why are so many people living on the street? Why are the mentally ill and sick not hospitalized? Why am I expected to take care of the lazy? And then, why am I going home to comfort when these people have so little? Why does not somebody do something? This may create conflicted feelings for those who see themselves as car-ing, religious people. The good intentions of even the most dedicated vol-unteer can fade into frustration and resentment. But in spite of these dif-ficulties, questioning becomes the seed of opportunity to widen one's ho-rizons and allow a graced transformation. If questions arise and expectations are challenged for volunteers, they are doubly so for guests. Even the most dejected and apathetic of the poor hold their dignity and self-worth as a jewel more valuable than food or shelter. A bowl of soup or a sandwich firmly thrust back to a surprised volunteer will attest to a guest's rejection of real or imagined insensitivity. While many long-term street residents have given up ques-tioning injustices or reasons for their meager living, just as many will talk for as long as anyone will listen to a recollection of past slights, in-dignities, or woes. We all need to tell our stories. And once in awhile, some thought-provoking wisdom and insights can be the reward of the patiently attentive volunteer. The volunteer's emotional struggle with the realities of soup kitchen and street people can be everything from threatening to enlightening. Con-fronted with painful feelings, the need for empathy with guests, respon-sibility, and sometimes guilt, some soup kitchen volunteers turn away. They seek other ways to express an option for the poor. Others find ex-cuses to reject the homeless. They blame the victim. Barriers may be erected; barriers of power disguised as benevolent decision-making and anger as righteous indignation. Still other volunteers begin to realize the humanity and humility they share with all peopl+ as children of God. The Review for Religious, November-December 1990 same compassion that emerges from questioning and consciousness-raising impels these volunteers to seek a deeper understanding and ex-perience of the wounded Christ-of-the-streets. 3. Judging--the Bottom Line: Volunteers who persevere join the regu-lars in the social ministry community. They adopt a favorite job or rou-tine of doing the various daily tasks. They come to accept the dilemma of soup kitchens and street life as having no comfortable answers nor neat solutions. Success becomes enough soup or sandwiches for a day's meal, finding eyeglasses for a guest who needs them for work, or locat-ing temporary housing for a young family with children. Old hands be-come well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of particular guests. Friend-ships develop. New, bewildered guests are shepherded through the soup kitchen routine which has over time become the bricks-and-mortar of daily operation. Success in social change is also expected. Volunteers point with pride to street people who attain middle-class goals: jobs, apartments, sobriety, and normalcy. Experienced volunteers begin to draw parallels with some of Jesus' teachings and parables: the Good Shepherd, those who are last will be first, and workers paid equally for differing times of service. More enthusiastic volunteers may take on the task of main-taining the organization with fund-raising and building renovation proj-ects. The disparity between the homeless people who remain jobless, clothed in rags, and in need of food and shelter and coworkers and fam-ily who enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle is less a focus than getting the job done. Many of the poor who have lived on and off the streets are way ahead of new volunteers in a spirituality of detachment and interior search-ing. Destitute and lacking the basic necessities of food and shelter, they. are forced to fall back on inner resources. Some street survivors exhibit an inner depth of understanding and resilient wisdom of Jesus as Libera-tor. They reflect an unshakable faith and contemplative spirituality. I sometimes wish I could be as in touch with my dark side as they seem to be. However just as often, incredible stress, fear of violence, and physi-cal and mental deprivation block the development of these means to over-come depression and despair. The rhythm of daily life of the soup kitchen community rises and falls with the extreme heat of summer, winter cold, Friday paydays, and surplus holiday charity. Volunteers and guests come and go. When guests do not meet expectations of a middle-class work-ethic or a period of sobriety or mental stability ends, volunteers may become discouraged Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries and leave to find greener pastures and better shepherds. But the very rest-lessness that seems to hinder an inner, spiritual examination is also an invitation to challenge preconceived ideas of what is success in a social ministry. The soup kitchen and night shelter offer daily opportunities to let go of cultural or popular false standards of guests' worthiness. 4. Light from Darkness: Volunteers who get beyond the questioning stage and embrace the compunction that follows a realization of their so-cial and inner blindness witness to an enlightened conversion. Their pri-orities change. They begin to view themselves, their families and friends, churches and institutions, and most of all, the guests, with changed hearts and minds. Ragged clothes, disagreeable behaviors, and unwashed bodies fade from importance. Guests are no longer bums and derelicts but James, Mary, and Charlie. "I've been given so much more than I could ever give" is the comment most often heard. This social conversion is possible because participants have experi-enced nurturing community with other volunteers and guests. They have shared in the applied collective wisdom of spiritual guides and masters conveyed by effective social ministry managers and leaders. The soup kitchen manager/spiritual director must focus on community building that encourages everyone processing through the four steps of spiritual growth. After facing the disheartening reality of streetlife poverty and violence, volunteers and guests come to realize through the attentive di-rection of experienced ministry leaders that their only meaningful re-sponse must be one of being as well as doing. Social ministry teachers can model a definition of being that elimi-nates the artificial yardsticks that manipulate and shape people's lives in ways our Creator never intended. Being comes to mean accepting the brother or sister, volunteer or guest, who chooses self-defeat or an un-sympathetic and often critical, closed mind. And most of all, being means seeking the Psalmist's humble and contrite heart in the midst of rejection and the temptation to put distance between self and other. A simple illustration is the end piece from a loaf of bread. Uniniti-ated volunteers might toss the heel into the trash without a second thought. Seasoned veterans however, make use of every scrap by turn-ing the heel outward. They remember lean days of not enough bread for the many sandwiches needed. They have seen men, women, and even children go hungry. Not only are they grateful for our daily bread but they appreciate their own helplessness in the face of grinding poverty and suffering. These volunteers have come to see God face-to-face in the eyes of the poor. Every gift of Creation has become precious to them. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 This is only one of many daily lessons the soup kitchen community can teach and the conscientious director can encourage. Success in the soup kitchen is God's gift to define and to give. Bib-lical personhood and scriptural freedom empower a realization of our need to be vulnerable to each other. We bring all we are, past and pres-ent, to the soup kitchen serving line. Through our relationships, our hearts are stirred to question and search our inner selves and to reach out to our neighbors as to God.4 After finally co.ming to understand and em-l~ race Jesus' meaning of Go.spel poverty, the point of conversion for the social ministry activist becomes the same as the contemplative/directee: the unitive experience. Antonio and Bonnie taught me through their searching and struggle that social ministry can be as much a place of spiritual seeking and guid-ance as my experience of spiritual direction. I saw that people in soup kitchens and shelters were asking for what spiritual direction had to of-fer. God's love for us and desire to be with us through the gift of Son and Spirit is the eternal constant. Our task as both spiritual directors and spiritual guides in social ministries is to be willing to struggle for con-tinued openness and vulnerability to that gift brought to us by guests and volunteers. Soup Kitchen Managers and Spiritual Directors The previous illustrations invite practical ways to integrate action and contemplation, the personal and the social, in soup kitchens and spiri-tual direction. The work of both soup kitchen manager and spiritual di-rector is a good example of the interconnection of spirituality and spiri-tual direction with social ministry. Volunteers and street people usually do not ask for spiritual direction from soup kitchen managers. And di-rectees do not often associate social ministry with their prayer life un-less encouraged to do so by their spiritual directors. But hunger of the heart and searching for God's love and guidance pervade both environ- I am suggesting that soup kitchen managers and spiritual directors must examine the opposite side of their area of expertise to lead to a more balanced ministry and to be more open to God's promise for justice and mercy. However, social ministry managers need not become spiritual di-rectors nor directors, soup kitchen managers. The interactions between a soup kitchen manager, volunteers, and street persons are not the same as those in spiritual direction or intervention. The methods of social min-istry organization and management, schools of spirituality (Ignatian, Fran-ciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian), socio-political thought, and even life Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries goals for directees, volunteers, and street people may vary widely. But these two activities have more similar than dissimilar aspects. Identifying the importance of spiritual direction and social action as part of an integrated whole in both ministries is the concern of effective managers and directors. The issue is the recognition of the reciprocal con-nection between the two ministries. The question is not whether the soup kitchen responds first to physical or spiritual needs. Nor is it whether con-templative prayer or an awareness of social consciousness predominate in spiritual direction. There are several points where spiritual direction and social mifiistry coincide: A. Holy Spirit: Our ministries and our lives must flow from Holy Scripture and the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The guidance of the Holy Spirit must always be foremost in our own paths and our involvement in the journeys of others. Discernment of that guidance is discovered in community with others in both individual spiritual direction and in so-cial activities such as soup kitchens. We need to support and nourish each other in our experience of and search for God's gift of love. B. Purpose and Goals: Any spiritual director will admit that before a working relationship can be established with a directee, a determina-tion of what the directee desires from direction must be explored. The goals and purpose of direction must flow from the life, prayer, and ex-periences of the directee. A soup kitchen is no different. On the surface, the purpose may seem to be distribution of food, social work, a sympa-thetic ear, and hopefully, the strength to go on another day. But the mo-tivations of the volunteers, manager, and street people in the soup kitchen community must be considered as important and basic as pro-viding soup, sandwiches, and even friendship. Unconscious messages about worthiness, authority, manipulation, and social statements can creep into the daily life of any hands-on social ministry or spiritual direction relationship. We must be clear in what we are about as helping people and .as concerned, activist communities to-ward those who seek direction or bread. The consequences can be the perpetuation of the suffering and oppression of the poor, a hindrance of the spiritual unfolding and growth of direct.ees, and a floundering for guid-ance by volunteers and workers. The ministry can become part of an on-going or potential problem instead of an instrument of God's peace. Openness to seeing God in my neighbor is fostered by encouraging healthy interaction between guests and volunteers. Joint meetings of both provide insights for planning, alleviate misunderstandings, and build com-munity among participants. Goals clarification and the scriptural basis Review for Religious, November-December 1990 or theme of the soup kitchen needs to be discussed and reiterated through training sessions with volunteers and in meetings with volunteers and guests. Quarterly soup kitchen orientations can offer the opportunity to learn communication and listening skills, positive ways to vent anger and frustration, and sharing feelings of sadness and pain. Attention to detail can encourage the mandates of the Gospel good news, peace and justice for the people of God. Trained volunteers who mingle ';vith guests during mealtimes can facilitate a calm release of the pain, rejection, and dehumanization of street life. Colorful banners do-nated by supporting churches or made in guest/volunteer sessions help to illustrate and affirm the soup kitchen's scriptural themes, such as the Good Shepherd, Matthew 25, and the Bread of Life. Seasonal celebra-tions, monthly birthday recognition, and encouraging on-site social ser-vices help to foster a family-oriented environment. We must live what we believe especially when becoming open to an awareness of the real-ity of the peace and justice of Jesus. C. Street People and Directees: People who live on the streets in ab-ject poverty are God's children in crisis. The wounded, hungry bodies that line up each day for food are also wounded spirits who directly or indirectly seek the fellowship that feeds the heart. All participants in the social ministry community, volunteers, staff, and street people, need to be aware of and be sensitive to the friendship needs as well as physical needs of the other members. The requirement goes both ways amongst volunteers and guests. Soup kitchen managers can no more ignore the Gospel good news of empowerment for the poor than can a spiritual di-rector become heavy-handed with advice and admonitions for the di-rectee. This sensitivity is necessary if everyone is going to move beyond lim-iting their efforts to subsistence needs and toward the mandate of Jesus, friendship, peace, and justice. Tho.ugh the goal of personal and commu-nal empowerment of poor people may seem distant and unobtainable, it is our Bethlehem star. If we do not keep in our awareness and striving the justice promised by God and echoed by Mary in her song, the Mag-nificat, our ministry, faith, and words will become St. Paul's metaphor, the clanging cymbal. The guidance and leadership for discernment to-warc~ this justice most often falls to the manager and spiritual director. Likewise, with directees, the spiritual director has a responsibility to dispel the myth of our tradition that the experience of God and the love of Christ can be a personal, private affair.5 The totality of a graced, trans-formed life is not for the benefit of the directee. St. Teresa of Avila re- Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / ~1"15 minded us that we are meant to be the eyes, hands, and feet of Jesus in the world today. The Center for Spirituality and Justice has demonstrated a social-consciousness aspect to spiritual direction that must be part of the journey of director and directee if there is to be true discernment of .God's will~6 D. Volunteers: Church social ministries can be an extension of Je-sus' example to share ourselves and the fruits of the earth, food, shelter, and resources, with those in need. A deeper responsibility and outgrowth of the working of God's grace in everyone's life is stretching out a physi-cal and spiritual hand in friendship and unity. But for many middle-class volunteers who have never experienced the poverty, degradation, and suffering of those who live on the streets, a first-time exposure can be unnerving and challenging to their comfortable lives. Street people are not the only soup kitchen participants who experi-ence emotional crisis. Seeing firsthand the suffering and dehumanization of street life, many volunteers are distraught when they connect their rela-tively comfortable lives with the misery of homeless people. When food, clothing, an offer to listen, or a smile is refused with unkind words, vol-unteers may feel confused, rejected or angry. A misunderstanding be-tween guest and volunteer can result in "yes" instead of "no" as the answer to an inappropriate query. Just as street people bring their emotional baggage in the front door, volunteers can unload psychological traumas, too. Unresolved sexual needs, psychotic disorders, substance abuse, and authoritarian domi-nance can cause serious problems in the soup kitchen, community. Even though volunteers' emotional issues can't be compared to the sufferings of street people, a soup kitchen manager having some training in lay coun-seling and spiritual direction is helpful for the emotional and spiritual di-lemmas faced by volunteers and guests. For the social ministry manager just as for the spiritual director, their own spiritual direction and a peer group providing support, wisdom, and guidance needs to be part of the organization of the ministry. E. Leadership: Managers and Directors: The relationship between a soup kitchen manager and volunteer or street person is not identical to that of a spiritual director and a directee'. However, the responsibilities of the manager and director in regard to the spiritual foundations of their work with others and their own spiritual journey are so similar that com-parisons can be made. If a soup kitchen 6r.any social ministry is not to become a sterile institution, the guidelines or working plan of operation must be thoughtfully and prayerfully discussed and discerned over time. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 "What is God's will for me" in spiritual direction is parallel to and comparable with "What is God's will for us, volunteers and street peo-ple," in a soup kitchen. The spiritual director and the direction relation-ship provide the backdrop against which the directee wrestles with his or her issues in listening to a loving God. Likewise, the basic rules and logistics of feeding hundreds of people daily must be wrestled with so that dignity and the love we show each other are not compromised using the excuse ofjoblessness, smelly clothes, or efficacy in operation. While including the poor and powerless in decision-making roles can be threat-ening, it is the fulfillment of Jesus' Good News. The soup kitchen manager and the spiritual director are responsible not for the success of the kitchen, the progress of the directee, or even determining what connotes that success or progress. One who seeks to lead must be a follower; a manager or director must create an environ- " ment whereby volunteers, street people, and directees seek their own spiri-tual journey with support and guidance for discernment of God's will for them. The outward emphasis may differ from soup kitchen to spiritual direction but for the director and the manager, the spiritual task is the same. Conclusion There is value in drawing parallels in principle and practicality be-tween contemplative spirituality, spiritual direction and social conscious-ness, and the theological and spiritual organization of social ministries. Flexibility and imagination are necessary to compare the leadership and organizational abilities of a soup kitchen manager with the skills and train-ing of a spiritual director. We can show that the experiences of the vol-unteers and street people can follow a pattern of spiritual development. And directees and their spiritual directors can explore the social as well as personal experience of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In the face of violence, learned dependency, ignorance, and biased prejudices, hearts and minds as yet unawakened are waiting for the power of God's transforming grace: Spiritual direction and social min-istry are not two journeys originating from disparate starting points. Each of these spiritual paths flows from the other and back to nourish those who find themselves to be both contemplative and activist. Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries NOTES i D. Bernsweiger, D. McCarty, and L. Rhodes, Eds. Spirituality, Ministry, and Field Education: Theological Field Education, Key Resources, Vol. V. (San Francisco: Assn. for Theological Field Education, 1986), p. 52. Research by the Center for Spiri-tuality and Justice, Bronx, New York, on spiritual direction and social conscious-ness. "Social consciousness" as based on Peter Henriot's, (S.J.) thesis that the re-ality of the human person must take into account the individual, interpersonal, and public dimensions of human existence (p. 5 I). A person is simultaneously engaged in intense intrapersonal activity and consciousness, ongoing interpersonal relation-ships, and living out her or his life within a set of established and defined structures and institutions in the societal area (p. 52). 2 St. Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa ofAvila: Vol. One, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C. : ICS Pubs., 1976), p. 125. 3 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology. (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 8- 20. The four stages of enlightenment for soup kitchen participants is based on Lon-ergan's transcendental method. '~ Karl Rahner, "Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God." Theological Reflections, Vol. VI. (New York: Seabury Press, 1971), p. 232, p. 239. 5 lbid, pp. 242-244, 246. 6 Bernsweiger, McCarty, and Rhodes, pp. 53-54. Morning Office Here in my house of silence I stand beside you, Zachary. The song you cannot sing Trembles on your lips;. My song Pours in wordless rivers From quiet eyes. We stand together Lonely, waiting to sing Our canticle. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. St. Scholastica Priory 7430 North Ridge Chicago, Illinois 60645 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality Linda Rich, C.D.P. Sister Linda Rich, C. D. P., is a graduate of the Institute of Pastoral Studies at" Loyola University of Chicago. She currently works as part of the administrative team of NET-WORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, D.C. Her address is 806 Rhode Island Avenue, NE; Washington, D.C. 20018. In the past one hundred years, and more vocally in recent years, part of the Christian community is specifically addressing social problems through systemic and structural analysis and applying Christian value prin-ciples to these problems (for example poverty, war). In the North Ameri-can and European culture, theologians, bishops, and the Vatican are do-ing this analysis and reflection by developing social ethics and a large written corpus of Catholic social teaching. In other cultures, Christians are interested in finding ways to make the Gospel real through experiencing liberation from injustice. This in-dicates that the developing social ethics need a lived reality, an experi-enced spirituality if we, as a whole community of the People of Go~l, are to respond to this recovered Gospel of social justice. That void is now being filled in and fleshed out. The writers and think-ers in the fields of spirituality and social justice are beginning to coa-lesce, to meet on mutual ground. Liberation theologians are now writ-ing about the spirituality of liberation: for example, Spirituality of Libera-tion: Toward Political Holiness, Jon Sobrino, Orbis Books, 1988, and The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation, Segundo Galilea, Harper & Row, 1988. North American spirituality writers are now speak-ing of how spirituality is intimately linked with social transformation: for example, Social Re~,elation: Profound Challenge for Christian Spiritu- 818 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality ality, James E. Hug, S.J. and Rose Marie Scherschel, Center of Con-cern, 1987, and Spirituality and Liberation, Robert McAfee Brown, West-minster Press, 1988. Grass-roots movements within the Christian community are also bring-ing spirituality and justice together. The Catholic Worker movement con-cretely lives out social spirituality as envisaged by Dorothy Day and Pe-ter Maurin more than fifty years ago. They feed the hungry and welcome the homeless, while at the same time challenge the social structures that create this reality. As such, they speak against the national budget pri-orities for weapons instead of a priority for food and housing, for exam-ple. They are joined with others in the peace movement, the feminist/ women's movement, and the racial and economic equality movements, which all have collectives of people who are motivated and sustained in this activity by the Christian call to discipleship and by other spiritual values and beliefs. While these manifestations of justice spirituality are all happening within the Christian community, the message of the social justice dimen-sions of spirituality have not yet been carried into the mainstream, how-ever. A new theology and practice of spirituality needs to be unfolded, articulated, and fostered in the Christian community-at-large. A new un-derstanding of how spirituality is, and needs to be, vitally connected with justice will then begin to emerge for the average Catholic in the pew. Donal Dorr comments: "Perhaps the most effective way in which the Church can influence human behavior is by promoting a particular kind of spirituality." ~ Personal and Social Transformation Spirituality and social justice are closely related, both being trans-formative processes. Spirituality, as I am using it here, is our process of personal transformation. Through spiritual practices (meditation, prayer, liturgical ritual) and through the living out of the fruits of these in our lives, we become better persons, more loving, more congruent with the values we profess. We grow and mature as persons and become psychologically and spiritually integrated. Justice is the process of bringing social groups into right relation-ships with each other. It is the transformation of legal or violent enforce-ment of the domination of one group of people over another (men over women, rich over poor, one race over another). Justice transforms domi-nant/ submissive relationships into partnerships.2 Oppressive violence is transformed into peace and freedom when justice is present. Both justice and spirituality are journeys into freedom, moving from 820/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 being bound to a more free state. There is movement from being en-slaved by forces outside our control to having choices about our lives. This movement happens (and power is shifted) by our being able and will-ing to take up the struggle for freedom and undergo the suffering re-quired. "There is no transformation of person or society without suf-fering, and the suffering which brings about such change is truly re-demptive.' ,3 And so, it is very important to discern and determine which particular path leads to greater life through death and which path leads to dead ends, defeat, and a conquered death. Each choice, whether stay-ing with things as they are or choosing for change, has its own risks and consequences. These must be carefully considered. And as in any authen-tic journey, there are risks and perils along the way. Courage, persever-ance, and support from others are required for both the personal and so-cial transformative journeys. We can see some parallels between justice and spirituality. There is also an integrity present that is often missed. Both are needed in con-junction with each other to have true justice and true spirituality. This is so because either of these in isolation from the other is destructive. Historical examples include the way the Church sometimes has pro-moted an escapist spirituality which accepted injustice for other operat-ing benefits by the political powers that be. On the other hand, in socie-ties that have repressed spirituality and religion, great violence has been done in the name of social equality. This also plays itself out within the Christian community where division is created, with splits of "devout" and "activist" factions who distrust each other. Experience shows that spirituality and social justice are a graced dynamic, and split off from each other render both ineffective, irrelevant, and destructive. When these two are integrated, however, the world and the Chris-tian community are graced with life-giving energies. There are many ex-amples in our North American experience. Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization, uses a threefold approach of prayer, study, and action, com-bining the elements of spirituality and activism. They are in the forefront of efforts to promote a vow of nonviolence, a wonderful way of rooting a committed life of peace within a rich spiritual tradition. The commu-nity of Sojourners (Washington, DC), as part of the Christian evangeli-cal tradition, ministers through their monthly publication, neighborhood organizations, justice resources, and organizing national days of prayer and nonviolent resistance. NETWORK is a national Catholic social jus-tice lobby that attempts to influence the formation of public policy in the interest of the poor and powerless. It lobbies members of Congress to Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality enact laws providing access to economic resources, fairness in national funding, and justice in global relationships, Another facet of the relationship of personal and social transforma-tion is that these two are not necessarily simultaneous or synonymous; one does not automatically follow the other. A liberation scholar states it this way: Social change by itself does not create a new person, in the same way that transforming persons do not automatically induce a new social or-der. The creation of a new person and a new social order takes place within a dialectical interaction.4 So we can see that a conscious link needs to be made between our spiri-tual growth as transforming persons and our justice work of transform-ing society, or that link will not be made. Some people who invest time and money in the human potential move-ment for personal psychological and spiritual growth make the social con-nections beyond themselves, and some do not. Those who fail to con-nect their personal growth to a wider social vision will probably become shortsighted, turned in on themselves (stunted), and "whistling in the dark while the world goes to hell in a hand basket." Likewise, some so-cial activists who spend tremendous amounts of personal time and en-ergy organizing campaigns for justice do so from the fruits of their spiri-tual growth, and some do not. Those who fail to connect to a spiritual source will probably fall victim to burnout, cynicism, and self-righteous-ness. It is essential, I think, to recognize the inherent integrity of spiritu-ality and social justice within a "both/and" holistic framework. Too often they have been split apart, to the detriment of both. This dichot-omy needs to be healed and is being healed in the coming age. Conversion and Social Liberations In my experience, the education and consciousness-raising of justice work begins to effect a real transformation process in individuals, and in groups of people. This journey of transformation and liberation is one of conversion, a qualitative change, a living of life in new ways. Con-version (whether religious, intellectual, individual, or social), involves a three-part process of !) dying to the old, 2) an in-between period, and 3) a new orientation. Initially we feel confusion and conflict, we experience a resultant in-ability to continue living as we have been, and we know the need to find ~199 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 new ways of living. Once this process is entered into, things will never be quite the same again. (You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.) We find that we may creep slowly or may suddenly leap into a different frame of reference. We are brought into a whole new level of relating-- with a social consciousness~to God, to ourselves, and to others. Albert Nolan describes our growth into social consciousness in four stages.6 (He addresses this to the specific problem of poverty, though the principles can be applied in regard to other oppressed groups of people as well, it seems to me.) The first stage is characterized by our compas-sion, brought about by exposure through experience or information re-garding the sufferings of the poor. This compassion is generally ex-pressed in two kinds of action: relief work (distributing food and alms-giving), and simplification of lifestyle (voluntary poverty). The second stage is entered when we acknowledge the structural prob-lems as social in.justice. Things are the way they are because social struc-tures are set up to serve the interests of some people over others. Anger and guilt may arise when we become aware that poverty is largely a re-sult of oppression. Now our charity of the first stage is joined by justice in the second; both are necessary. In the third stage, we join humility with service to the poor. We need the poor for our liberation, also, and often we are unaware of the gifts they are and have for us. It is this humility (owning our own poverty) that tempers our "doing for the poor" into befriending them. At the same time, one hazard here is to put the poor/working class on a pedes-tal, to idealize them into something they are not. This can lead to disil-lusionment, disappointment, and burnout when we discover the illusion of our own making. The fourth and last stage is one of.real solidarity. This is the experi-ence of recognizing the faults and weaknesses of the poor as well as of ourselves, and at the same time, knowing that we can be on the same side against oppression. Now we experience the struggle of liberation to-gether. The second major aspect is that social consciousness is an essential part of conversion, not the results of it. Socioeconomic life is not a corollary to our relationship with God. It is not simply the arena in which conversion and love of God flow out into love of neighbor--if God so leads us. Social concern and work for jus-tice are not just the outgrowths of Christian conversion. Prayerful involve-ment in socioeconomic life and reflection on it are prerequisites to know-ing and relating intimately with God, not the results of it.7 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality/ This concept is rife with implications for the i~ntegration of social con-sciousness into our spiritual life. If we discern God's revelation to us ex-clusively in our interior movements (within ourselves), then "we receive only a partial, distorted image of God. We are ignoring part of the reve-lation of God. We run the danger of fostering, . . a selfless, dedicated and energetic service of the status quo with aH its unjust institutions."8 Our spirituality, without the social revelation component, will most likely, though unwittingly, serve the continuance of injustice. A third connection between conversion and the transformative pro-cess of justice is the image of liberation for the spiritual process. Rather than relying exclusively on the traditional image of union and intimacy with God for spiritual growth,9 we may well include "conversion as lib-eration" as a complementary image. For truly all conversion is a liber-ating experience from our false selves and an enlivening and freeing ex-perience of our true selves. As the image of spiritual union speaks to the part in each of us that seeks attachment, belonging, and inclusion, the image of liberation speaks to the part in each of us that seeks freedom and autonomy. For people who are victims of others and/or society, for people who feel enslaved interiorly by addictions or by life circumstances, this lib-eration process imaged and named as such can be a tremendous motiva-tion and empowerment for change in personal and spiritual development and for social activism. Paul proclaims: "The world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rm 8:21). Implications A great challenge lies before us. World crises every day remind us of how fragile and precarious our planet and our common situation is as human beings. We can deny and numb ourselves to this reality. We can let it in and live in despair and be crushed by it. Or we can forge new ways of living, "ministering to the breakthrough" (as named by Pat and Gerald Mische of Global Education Associates) of a surviving and just world. Members of religious congregations can be in the forefront of this breakthrough, on the prophetic cutting edge a's it were. We have a pub-lic role in the Christian community and many congregations are interna-tional. More than one congregation now has Non-Governmental Organ-izational (NGO) status at the United Nations. These and other innovative ways to minister to the breakthrough can be communally explored and implemented. Though each congregation faces the lack of personnel and 8241 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 finances in a different way, we can continue to be supportive of those people and organizations that integrate faith and justice. The integration of spirituality and justice is a key component of min-istering to the breakthrough. It requires a change in thinking as well as in acting, in theory as well as in praxis. Only the combined strength of the theory and practice of spirituality and justice will carry us through into the future. NOTES ~ Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching (Ma-ryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983), p. 59. 2 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 198-203. This shift is elaborated on in depth here. 3 Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J., Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in the Church (Mah-weh, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 83. '~ lsmael Garcia, Justice in Latin American Theology of Liberation (Atlanta, Geor-gia: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 80. 5 See Osiek, Beyond Anger, p. 44-63, for an insightful development of conversion and transformation in a liberation context. 6 Albert Nolan, O.P., "Spiritual Growth and the Option for the Poor," Church (Bal-timore, MD: National Pastoral Life Center, 1985), Spring issue. 7 James E. Hug, S.J., and Rose Marie Scherschel, Social Revelation: Profound Chal-lenge for Christian Spirituality, (Washington, D.C. : Center of Concern, 1987), pp. 22-23. 8 Ibid, p. 23. 9 In Francis Kelly Nemeck, O.M.I. and Maria Theresa Coombs, The Spiritual Jour-ney: Critical Thresholds and Stages of Adult Spiritual Genesis (Wilmington, Dela-ware: Michael Glazier, 1987), union and intimacy image is used throughout. Spirituality of Liberation Peter G. van Breemen, S.J. Father Peter G. van Breemen, S.J., author of well-known books such as As Bread That Is Broken and Called By Name, has most recently been serving as Jesuit tertian director in Berlin. His address is Peter-Faber-Kolleg; Postfach 220018; Am Schwemmborn 3a; D-1000 Berlin (Kladow); West Germany. Much is being said and written nowadays about Theology of Liberation. The deliberate alteration to Spirituality of Liberation suggests a shift to-wards a less controversial and a more meditative approach. Spirituality The word spirituality stems from spirit. In the Old Testament it re-fers to the ruach as the divine source of human life, and in the New Tes-tament to the active presence of the Holy Spirit in our everyday personal and communal life, where it renders our faith concrete in our actions and behavior. The word spirituality also intimates that life has come to a cer-tain harmony and synthesis: what could remain a fairly objective and sometimes even abstract doctrine has become a source of life and inspi-ration; it has become integrated and operative. Spirituality is lived in the community and becomes fruitful within it, since the Spirit 'is given pri-marily to the community, and to the individual only in the community. So much about the first word of our title. Liberation The word liberation has generally more political overtones than the related word redemption. When Gustavo Gutti6rrez coined the expres-sion "Theology of Liberation" and used it as the title of his book (Lima, 1972), and when a number of his Latin American colleagues took over this expression, they wanted to make redemption more down-to-earth 826/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 and more relevant for the struggle for life. There should be no real doubt that the theologians of liberation want to articulate the Christian faith-- drawn from Scripture, received from Jesus Christ, and handed on through the Catholic Church---even though the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "On Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation,' " published in 1984, had a number of criti-cal remarks and even though one of its leading theologians (Leonardo Boff) was silenced for a year. In fact, that very Instruction plus another one of March 22, 1986 basically approve and praise the Theology of Lib-eration. It is not surprising that the rapid development of the Theology of Lib-eration in the last two decades has led to a variety of meanings of the word liberation. What unites, however, all the different schools of lib-eration theology is that--in various ways--they are all inspired by and support a movement, a dynamic, in which the poor and the underprivi-leged draw strength from their faith to fight for their dignity and against unfair exploitation. The heart of the Theology of Liberation is to be found in this movement; it is lived before it is articulated. Undoubtedly this theology (and this movement) began in Latin America, but it is equally certain that they are to be found in other parts of the world as well, like the Philippines, South Africa (Kairos document), India (State-ment of the Indian Theological Association), and other countries. What these countries have in common is obviously their great need for libera-tion, but also that Christianity is fairly recent there. Quite often, with a touch of humor, the Church in these countries is compared with a young woman, hardly twenty years old, in which comparison the Church in Europe is portrayed as an elderly lady. Along with their youth, these Churches also stress their vigor and their hope. It is a little touchy, though not unfair and not disrespectful, when they describe the climate in the European churches as winter and in theirs as spring. Let me just conclude from these remarks that a spirituality of liberation and the di-vine virtue of hc~pe go together. Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) was the first Pope tostress the place of indigenous churches. In 1926 he consecrated in St. Peter's in Rome six Chinese bishops, the first non-white bishops since the early Church. That is less than seventy-five years ago! Whereas all the Fathers of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) were natives of Europe or North America, the Second Vatican Council gave a completely different picture. Thus it is not surprising that Vatican II speaks highly of the variety of local churches with "their own discipline, their own liturgical usage, and their Spirituality of Liberation own theological and spiritual heritage" (Lumen Gentium 23). "The Chair of Peter, it is said, protects legitimate differences, while at the same time it sees that such differences do not hinder unity, but rather con-tribute to it" (LG 13). Though not without friction and pain, this shift of the center of gravity from the Western world towards other continents goes on speedily. The prognostic indicates that in the year 2000 thirty percent of the world's Catholics will live in Europe and North America, and seventy percent in the southern hemisphere (that is, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania). We live on the eve of a new equilibrium of the Church. One sign of this is that non-western schools of theological reflection arise. They form a challenge and offer a chance. They can en-rich the people of God immensely. Covenant In a spirituality of liberation, the covenant plays a vital role-- indeed, the covenant is the very origin of our liberation. This may sound rather paradoxical, since covenant denotes a bond that binds us, which looks like the exact opposite of liberation that sets us free. Yet, Sacred Scripture is basically the long story of human liberation, precisely be-cause it is the history of the Covenant of God with his people--first with the Jewish people in the Old Testament and later in the New Testament with all God's people. From the bond of this covenant true freedom springs. This brings home to us the important truth that freedom in the Bible is not unbound, arbitrary, individualistic or irresponsible. Freedom does not mean that one can do what one likes; on the contrary, truly free per-sons are not governed by likes and dislikes, but act according to their inner convictions and conscience--in short, their true self. Freedom im-plies honesty and courage, transparency and authenticity, maturity and responsibility. Sometimes God is called the deepest Ground of our being. Even though the expression may be rather recent, the idea is not new at all. The classic phrase of St. Augustine "God is closer to me than I am to myself" says basically the same thing. If God is the deepest Ground of our being, then it is only in union with him that we can be our true selves and act freely. God is not constraining, but it is only in and through him that we come to life and freedom. Modern psychology confirms this view. It is only in a basic trust in another person (normally the mother) that the child reaches self-confidence. It is only in the security which the mother gives to the child that the latter finds the courage and even the ability to reach out. The 828/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 greater the confidence in its parents, the more open the child will be. What we can observe very clearly in children reveals a characteristic which remains through the whole of life. A person who is secure in the love of someone else can afford to go out into the ever widening space of life and to respond to the world's ever growing challenges. True freedom is the fruit of true love which one has experienced and/ or is still experiencing. I shall not dwell on the sad and often tragic as-pects of the counterpart of these psychological data, but rather state that for me these psychological insights point to God as the ultimate fulfill-ment of our basic need. Of course, I am aware that I make a jump from the level of psychological experiences to the level of faith. I am not try-ing to prove anything, only to suggest and to hint. It is in the covenant that God gives his chosen people the security we are talking about. "I shall be your God and you shall be my peo-ple" is God's summary of the covenant. God binds himself to his peo-ple; he is their support and guarantee. In doing so, he invites the people to bind themselves to him in faithful obedience. When the people accept this invitation, the bond of the covenant is the basis of their freedom. At an early stage of the Jewish history this mighty care of God as the origin of their freedom is exemplified in the exodus from the slavery in Egypt. In fact, one can say that the Exodus is the beginning of the Jews as a nation; up until that moment they were no more than a gang of slaves, who were exploited in unbearably hard forced labor (Ex 2:23). It is in the miraculous event of their liberation from Egypt and their pas-sage through the Sea of Reeds that they become a people. God reveals himself as their God, their liberator, the origin of their national identity. From generation to generation they keep celebrating the marvel of their liberation as the outstanding evidence of the covenant. It is in the context of this liberation from slavery that God reveals his name: Yahweh. Volumes have been written about the meaning of these four Hebrew letters, yet the scholarly research of centuries remains inconclusive. Is it a sign of God's transcendence or of his sense of hu-mor (or of both) that his name remains mysterious in its being revealed? So much seems certain that the name Yahweh is existentially a boundlessly affirming word and intellectually just as boundlessly com-prehensive (that is, not to be grasped). He is there, absolutely reliable and absolutely incomprehensible. In their exodus the Jewish people have experienced their God, whom they gradually discover to be the God of all nations and of all creation. In their exodus they have learned that God hears the cry of the poor and takes their side. We meet here the begin- Spirituality of Liberation ning of a strand that runs through the whole of Scripture, stressing God's care for the poor and the needy, the orphan and the widow. Eventually this will lead to some sort of identification of God with the weak and the little, for example, Psalm 91:15 and Matthew 25:40, 45. In their exodus it was also brought home to them that Yahweh works through people: God. has no hands but ours; compare Exodus 3:8 with 3: 10. In their history with Yahweh they discover that he is "always greater." That is indeed a very pertinent characteristic of God. No mat-ter how great we think of him, he is always greater. No matter how much we have experienced of him, he remains always greater. That keeps us always on the move in our relation with God. The chief expression for human life in Hebrew means: to wander, to travel, to hike. The early Christians called themselves "the people of the way." Thus the exodus is a basic distinction of true religion, not an exodus once and for all, but ever so often repeated. And so freedom is not only the fruit of our exo-dus, but also its prerequisite, Liberty is both gift and demand. That is to say how much our faith is a religion of liberation. In apostolic reli-gious life unconditional pliability with respect to the will of God which can never be predicted and never be fixed takes shape in a continually adaptable apostolic availability. Paschal Mystery So far the name of Jesus has not been mentioned. It is in him that God became incarnate; it is in him that liberation receives hands and feet, a body and a voice and a face. His name, in Hebrew Yehoshua, means "Yahweh saves." Jesus embodies the saving God. He embodies this sav-ing God in a concrete, historically, sociologically, and politically well-defined situation. The incarnation of the eternal Son of God implies the taking-up of a human life with all the specific conditions of a particular society in a particular time. Perhaps the most striking feature of Jesus' dealing with the people of his time and country is how free he is as a person and how free he renders others (Lk 4:!8). This freedom is not simulated, but has deep roots. He is free, because at the same time he is one with the Father. What we found as the true source of freedom of the Jewish people, namely the covenant with Yahweh, we find infinitely more in Jesus of Nazareth. He was bound with Yahweh in his very person: "one in be-ing with the Father" (see Jn 10:30). Accordingly, he always did what pleased the Father and called the will of the Father the food on which he lived (Jn 4:34). That made him a free man and enabled him to free others. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 The miracles he works are presented by the Evangelists, especially by John, as "signs," which point out who Jesus is and what God stands for. Though accepted gratefully and often enthusiastically by many con-temporaries, the signs are rejected by the political and religious leaders. They decide to kill Jesus. The prospect of his suffering and death meets with a profound inner resistance, which in Gethsemane brought a terri-ble distress over him; yet he is free enough to say yes to his passion and crucifixion (Jn 10: 17). Jesus dies on the cross as a consequence of his mission. But God stood by his Son, in and beyond his death. God raised him to new life, a life over which death has no more power. We call this the paschal mystery, in analogy to the passover-event of the Old Testa-ment. The liberating event of the Old Testament was the exodus from Egypt; in the New Testament it is the death and the resurrection of Je-sus. The paschal liturgy from its earliest origins considered the crossing of the Sea of Reeds as a prefiguration of Jesus' passing through death to the risen life, so much so that among the many Old Testament read-ings of our Easter Vigil Exodus 15 is the only one which is obligatory. Here we touch the heart of the saving and liberating mission of Je-sus. In the various forms of our creeds we confess about Jesus: his in-carnation, and then omitting every other event of his life, his passion, death, and resurrection. No miracle, no sermon, no teaching, no contact with any person, no feature of his personality, not one event of his hid-den or public life is mentioned. In every creed one jumps from the birth of Jesus straight to the paschal mystery, which constitutes the core of our faith in Jesus. The paschal mystery is like a tunnel, that obviously has two ends which are connected and thus make the one tunnel. So death and resur-rection are two sides of one mystery. It is of the essence of the gift of faith that one can see the one side of the mystery in unity with the other: the passion in the light of the resurrection--the risen Lord with the wounds of his crucifixion. It is precisely the unity of these two events, crucifixion and resurrection, that makes us free. Jesus is savior and lib-erator because he is at the same time the suffering servant of Yahweh and the glorified Lord. The tunnel leads into the realm of freedom, like the passage through the Sea of Reeds led the Jewish people into the prom-ised land. The Gospels are written from this certainty. They narrate the events of Jesus' life, but in the light of the resurrection. It is this per-spective that we call inspiration (see Jn 8:28; 12:32). It reveals to us not only the redemptive and liberating thrust of Jesus' life, but it also takes us up into that same dynamic. It is the mystery of the grain of wheat Spir!tuality of Liberation / which yields fruit only by dying in the ground (Jn 12:24). It is the call of Jesus, not to hold on to one's life, but to lose it for the sake of the kingdom (Mk 8:35). Fulfillment These words are not meant to glorify human misery nor are they to be used as a cheap consolation to those who suffer. Rather we ourselves in the first place are to take them to heart, if we want to follow Jesus and to be apostolically fruitful. Every human person strives for fulfill-ment. This is perfectly in line with God's purpose, for example, John 15:8. But there is a way of striving after self-fulfillment and self-unfolding which is not in line with God's intention. As soon as one for-gets or denies that true Christian fulfillment goes through renouncing one-self and taking up one's cross (Mk 8:34) and dying like a grain of wheat, one is moving on the wrong track. Then my own physical well-being, my settling into a comfortable lifestyle, my need to be appreciated by those with whom I live and deal, bonds of friendship, my desire to make the most of my talents, success in my work, and so forth begin to play too great a role and stifle my religious and apostolic life. Since this topic is not only very vital indeed, but also very delicate, let me stress that the values mentioned are positive and good. However, as Christians we believe that we truly obtain these values when we do not hold on to them, but are willing to lose them for the sake of Jesus and the kingdom. This brings about the attitude of freedom, in the evangelical sense of the word. An essential aspect of Jesus' freedom was his readiness to accept suf-fering and to lay down his life (Jn 10:17), even though he agonized when the actual passion began. Similarly, a disciple of Jesus cannot follow his or her master without this freedom to give up precious personal human values (Lk 14:33). The Bible gives us many examples of negative experiences which eventually turn out to be quite positive. It is the lesson which Jesus in a remedial class brought home to the disciples of Emmaus (Lk 24:26). It is the lesson which Moses was taught in Exodus 33:18-23. It is the les-son that the evil is far worse than we admit, but that the good is also much greater than we dare to hope and even can bear. It is the lesson which all of us have learned in life: what at the actual moment was felt like a great loss, often revealed itself in hindsight as a real grace. The biblical message, confirmed by our own life experience, may help us to become more free in regard to our own life and more free in our apos-tolic service. 839 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 It is, of course, a platitude to say that only those who are themselves liberated can help to liberate others. But this platitude is also a little sim-plistic. It seems more nuanced to say that as the Father wants us to be creative with him, likewise the Son wants us to be redemptive with him and wants to continue his work of liberation in and through us (Gaudium et spes 34 and 67). In this way we point out more clearly that our own liberation is a lifelong process and that it is only God who can work true freedom in ourselves and in others. We have to complete th'is statement by saying that God can work this true freedom only through us. So it is our mission to help the people experience the liberating God. In his encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), Pope Paul VI stressed that evangel-ization proclaims and tries to realize liberation. This evangelization and this liberation aim at the whole person, .as the same Pope wrote already in an earlier encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967). Respect I suppose this renders respect a key concept in our service of libera-tion: a great respect and regard for the dignity of each human being, that is to say, of ourselves and of others. Respect is the heart of love, and in many ways the word respect is more meaningful than the word love (which, alas, is sometimes used so vaguely and glibly). Respect means to acknowledge the worth of others as other, that is, to relate to them not as we want them to be, not as we think they should be, not as they fit into our plans, but as they are. It also means to discover in these real people their defects, and to accept them. There is a wise and dense say-ing of C.G. Jung: "One can only change what one, has accepted." What we reject or condemn or repress goes beyond our reach; we cannot do anything with it nor for it anymore. I am convinced that the lack of respect does a tremendous harm in our communities, in our apostolate, in our Church, and in our world. If we could come to a basic attitude of respect for each human being, the world would become a so much better place to live in and the Gospel-message would become so much more real and convincing. This respect should not be an aloof, detached, disembodied attitude. If it is, it contradicts itself. Clodovis Boff expresses the opinion that Euro-pean culture tends to screen itself from the "two-edged sword of the Word" (Heb 4:12) with a highly developed, but spiritualistic, exegeti-cal, and sociological sophistication. "Europeans only?" one might ask. As our respect for each other has to be integral, so has the liberation we work for. We cannot restrict it either to the spiritual or the political realm. Spirituality of Liberation / 833 The Poor The word integral can also be understood as including all men and women, though the word universal might be more appropriate in this case. With that meaning in mind, integral or universal liberation requires a special concern for the poor and the weak. This is certainly in line with a trend that runs through the whole of Scripture. God shows a preferen-tial love for the poor, which leads to a certain identification with the poor-est, as mentioned above. The cry of the poor is heard by God, yes, even the curse of the poor (Si 4:5; Ex 22:22). As for the New Testament, the cry of Jesus on the cross is sometimes said to continue in the cry of the poor. That cry comes from the seventy percent who are underprivileged and undernourished--the majority of whom can hardly survive, let alone live in dignity. The Bible demands our solidarity with them. They are the present-day locus where we meet Christ. It is in them that Jesus is to be found. We may need a conversion of heart and a radical change of our lifestyle in order to live up to this demand of the time. There is a use of the word freedom which is meant to deny just that. Nuclear weapons are claimed to protect freedom, which, in fact, means only "our" freedom, and that, in turn, stands really for our power and affluence. These self-interests, however, are maintained at the expense of other people's lives, and their "protection," therefore, runs counter to the actual demands of the Gospel. Integral or universal liberation requires that the poor are not the only ones liberated, and that liberation is not understood only economically. There may be certain biases sometimes, which do harm to the integrity or wholeness of liberation. It shows the greatness of a theologian like Leonardo Boff, that for example, in his volume Jesus Christ the Libera-tor he writes some pertinent pages precisely to denounce such a bias. Structural Sin Recently another aspect of integral liberation has come to the fore, namely, liberation from "social sin" or "structural evil." Of course, Christians have always known of sins in the social sphere, and also of the social aspect of every sin. It is new, however, to call social struc-tures themselves sinful. It has taken some controversy to clarify that the word "sin" in this expression is used in analogy with the personal sin we had known hitherto. Both good and bad actions can embody and per-petuate themselves in structures, which are accordingly good or bad, and, once established, are the source of further good or evil. So certain structures are called sinful, while they originate from and in turn lead to personal sin. They definitely restrict our freedom and often they ten- Review for Religious, November-December 1990 der us unfree to a considerable extent. The individual is in those cases often both cause and victim. Those who create these structures or main-tain them or profit from them or even in complicity tolerate them are guilty. This social sin is part of the mystery of iniquity that cries for libera-tion towards the Lord of history and brings out the human race's need of redemption. It is by no means easy to admit this sin for oneself, to free oneself from its entanglement, and to work for liberation of others on this level--far more difficult usually than in the sphere of personal sin. One can be certain that attempts towards changing these structures will bring 'with them many personal inconveniences, hardships, threats, loss of friends and relations, in certain countries imprisonment, torture, and even death, as many have found out, especially in the last decades. When I interpreted freedom as a readiness to accept suffering, I had these kinds of situations in mind. A person who is not free to suffer cannot think of working for liberation from structural sin. Vulnerability is a genu-ine assurance that we are in touch with reality, truth, and love, not self-interest. Here, more than anywhere else, it is important to realize that God is the chief agent in overcoming evil, and that we are cooperators with him, instruments in his hand, branches of the vine. Without this con-viction coming from faith, the challenge would overwhelm us. A Church which is too much concerned about itself, its own image, and its own problems cannot tackle this task, just as an individual who is too egocentric cannot engage in it. The Church has to proclaim the Lord Jesus, above all in his paschal mystery of death and resurrection, and not proclaim itself. Liberation in its many aspects requires the over-coming of all self-centeredness, both in the individual and in the Church. The more the Church is focused on the person of Jesus and not on itself, the more the Church will be able to discover what men and women of other religions and other visions are doing for liberation, and to cooper-ate with them. It seems to be a special task of the religious to help the Church to focus on our Lord and Savior and thereby to be open to all people of good will who pledge themselves to liberation. Obviously, we can only help the Church in this by doing it ourselves and by being loyal to our Church. Dangers Much praise has been sung to the spirituality of liberation in this ar-ticle, and rightly so. Some dangers must be mentioned also. Not to cool down our commitment, but to safeguard it. I do not want to elaborate on these dangers, yet it seems unfair to me to pass them by completely. SpiritualiO, of Liberation / ~135 So let me just give the headings as I found them in an article ("Como Fazer Teologia da Libertac~o," published by: Vozes, Petr6polis, Bra-zil 1986) written jointly by Clodovis and Leonardo Boff: - a neglect of the mystical roots - a rampage of the political aspects - a stifling of the faith through too much discussion - a tendency towards exclusiveness and absolutism - an exaggerated emphasis on the discontinuity with the tradition and an underestimating of the continuity - a negligence of a serious dialogue and discussion with other spirituali-ties -a lack of care to make the theology of liberation understandable and pal-atable to the authority in the Church, which delays the conversion of the Church to the poor. After having rushed through these dangers, let me close with a quota-tion from the encyclical of Pope John Paul Redemptoris Mater and with a word of hope. Mary "Drawing from Mary's heart, from the depth of her faith expressed in the words of the Magnificat, the Church renews ever more effectively in herself the awareness that the truth about God who saves, the truth about God who is the source of every girl, cannot be separated from the manifestation of his love of preference for the poor and the humble, that love, which, celebrated in the Magnificat, is later expressed in the words and works of Jesus. The Church is thus aware--and at the present time this awareness is particularly vivid--not only that these two elements of the message contained in the Magnificat cannot be separated, but also that there is a duty to safeguard carefully the importance of 'the poor' and of 'the option in favor of the poor' in the word of the living God. These are matters and questions intimately connected with the Christian meaning of freedom and liberation. 'Mary is totally dependent upon God and completely directed towards him, and, at the side of her Son, she is the most perfect image of freedom and of the liberation of humanity and of the universe. It is to her as Mother and Model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission' " (Nr.37). Hope It is common among the theologians.of liberation to stress the hope Review for Religious, November-December 1990 that is manifest in their movement. To work and to struggle for libera-tion for any length of time is impossible without authentic hope. This hope is not identical with optimism. Optimism emphasizes the positive aspects and draws attention away from the negative, tends to underesti- ¯ mate the latter, and even to repress them. It may be a pleasant attitude, but it is often not quite realistic. Hope, on the contrary, faces the difficulties and the pain, yet does not lose heart. Hope is more than an impulse. Hope makes us faithful and persevering. Hope discloses a great strength, which is beyond us. Hope is able to sail its own course with every wind, even with head wind. Charles P6guy portrays hope as a little girl between her two big sisters who hold her by the hand. It looks as if the two big ones lead the little one, but the opposite is true. It is hope that keeps faith and love alive, young, and vital. The basic communities and the other groups that embody the libera-tion movement are centers of hope. This hope is not an acquired, but an infused virtue--that means beyond us and yet in us as a divine gift, as a fruit of the paschal mystery. "Through him (Christ) you have confi-dence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith is hope in God" (1 P 1:21). Compline Salvation danced In the dark Of Mary's womb, Was paid with blood On a black hill, Then rose for all From death's dead tomb. So I must trust Your grace unseen Till from life's grave I, too, am freed. Kathleen T. Choi 1706Waianuenue Avenue Hilo, Hawaii 96720 Liberation and the Liturgical Year ¯ Susan Anderson Kerr, Ph.D. Susan Anderson Kerr is an Oblate of St. Louis Priory in Petersham, Massachusetts. Her address is 4209 Avenue F; Austin, Texas 78751. When we observe the culture around us and see the emptin~s_.s of living apari ~?o~m ]he liturgical year, we see that the liturgical ~ar is hot some pious preoccupation of people with a taste for the archaic. It is a ques-tion of survival, of urgent importance for an age hungry for liberation, and respectful of those who survive. It is a question of freedom, of vast relevance for our culture which reveres freedom, struggles with addic-tions, and seeks personal liberation from materialism, sexism, racism, and a host of enslaving isms. In an age of decline and disintegration such as ours, many people turn to the inner life to exert the yearning for goodness and truth and beauty which in another era would have had a greater possibility for ex-ternal expression in politics or art or education. The pain of the loss of knowing how to do things--how to accomplish civic reforms, how to com-bat drugs and violence, how to overcome the hedonism and cynicism of our time---can send people on a spiritual quest. So we have an outpour-ing of books on the inner life--Jungian psychology, individual prayer techniques, popularizations of the great works of Catholic spirituality. But if we attend only to our individual spiritual growth while neglect-ing liturgical spirituality, we try to walk to the heavenly Jerusalem on one leg. The Lord does not intend for us to so hobble. Part of the reason we neglect the liturgy is that it effects our healing so circuitously, circling like the rings around the trunk of the tree. We want results now; we are on fire with intentions. Romano Guardini once observed that liturgy is much more like a forest where one wanders than a gymnasium where with fixed purpose one exercises certain muscles. 837 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Another reason we slight the liturgy is that those great masters of the spiri-tual life--St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola--who are such help to us wrote at a time of liturgical decadence when desiccated liturgies were an obstacle to spiritual growth. When we try to walk on both legs, liturgical as well as individual prayer, other saints will help us, saints who wrote when liturgy and spiri-tuality were not at cross purposes, saints in the monastic tradition, like St. Benedict and St. Gertrude. The Vatican documents of the renewal of the liturgy are also useful in correcting our understanding of the value of liturgy. Personal prayer is a logical place to begin as one searches for encoun-ter with God, but to linger there is to remain a spiritual adolescent. To relate the liturgical year to the individual's private life of prayer is to ad-dress a practical question: why pay attention to the liturgical year? If I am learning centering prayer, or the Jesus prayer, or my Enneagram num-ber, or how to relate to my anima or animus, why do I need the liturgi-cal year? Is this not a formal structure which has nothing at all to do with the rich spontaneity and diversity of my inner life? "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free," the Church sings each morning. And so God has. The liturgical year invites us into liberation in three areas: freedom from chronos and cyclical time, freedom from nature, and freedom from the tyranny of our unconscious. First, the liturgical year helps shape our understanding of the mean-ing of time. It removes us from the pagan sense of time as repetition, nature's cycle endlessly repeating itself, and from the atheist's concep-tion of time as pure chronos. It introduces a.God-ward momentum and shaping of time, an upwardly moving spiral. Empty repetition and end-less succession are replaced by repetition at higher levels on the spiral, by kairos punctuating chronos, or chronos building to and being shaped by kairos. Like a lovely shell, the liturgical year has been extruded cen-tury after long century as the Church needed more space in which to dwell. The liturgical year gives us a common memory. This happens on sev-eral levels: on the cosmic level, as Pierre Teiihard de Chardin describes, the Church evolves towards the omega point; on the historic level as the Church organizes time before and after our Lord's death; on the personal level as our individual existence takes its place in this great spiral flow-ing towards God. Intimately linked with our common memory of the liturgical year is Liberation and the Liturgical Year the common authority which establishes it. The Church has to maintain the central focus on the life of Christ, balancing between a proliferation of feast days which would result in a loss of shape to the Church year, and the impulse to celebration which led one desert father to exult "Life is an eternal festival." Second, the liturgical year frees us from romantic identification with nature. But what does the liturgical year express about our relationship to nature? Partly organized around the sun, partly around the moon, the liturgical year demonstrates as Odo Casel remarks, the maxim "Grace builds on nature." The week evolved from divisions of the lunar cycle, for the Hebrew festal calendar, like the first calendar cycles of most primi-tive religions, was lunar. The Jewish lunar months were divided by sab-batical weeks; the Mosaic sabbath is based on 7 as a perfect number, ex-pressing completion and fullness. The Easter celebration evolved from the Jewish liturgical cycle which had gradually replaced nature rituals with festivals commemorating Israel's history of salvation. Unlike the polytheistic peoples around them who made the powers of nature divine, the Jewish people came to see nature as a tool and im-age of the spiritual. The feast of Pesach had nomadic roots, for it is cele-brated at the first full moon after the vernal equinox when a young male lamb is sacrificed, roasted, and eaten. But its central focus is the reen-actment of the deliverance of Israelfrom the hands of Egypt. When Je-sus transformed this feast by identifying himself with the sacrificial lamb, he lifted it from its local origin and universalized it into the feast of the salvation of all human beings of every time. But Easter does not thereby shed its lunar and historical associations. Thus the cyclic observance of the vernal equinox is lifted first into the hope of renewal in human history recalled in the Passover festival, and then universalized in the.final eschatological hope of Easter. We see a similarl appropriation of ~natureir~ the use of the sun in the liturgical year. Jesus, as the light of the world, was identified with the sun. His birth is celebrated at the winter solstice, transforming and uni-versalizing the pagan festival of the sol invictus. His conception is thus celebrated nine months earlier near the vernal equinox, March 25. Since according to Luke 1:26, John the Baptist was conceived six months be-' fore Jesus, his conception is observed at the autumnal equinox, and his birth, by extension, at the summer solstice June 24. Thus the two equi-noxes and the two solstices are brought into the Christian year and trans-formed from cyclic rituals to feasts of the birth of life and light into this world's darkness. ~140 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 John the Baptist's feasts are also associated with the sun's activity; in the fourth century they were seen as cosmic confirmation of John's own words "He must increase; but I must decrease" (Jn 3:30). The prayer of the Divine Office is also organized around the sun; the two most important hours occur when the sun rises and when it sets. Here the beginning and ending of the day are bound up with the life of the Lord: the sun's rising is an image of his rising from the dead; vespers, when the sun sets, the beginning of a new day, is eucharistic in charac-ter, full of thanksgiving for the light that has been. The Church uses nature as the basis for sacred time, but does not re-main encased within natural rhythms. The liturgical year steers the Chris-tian away from romantic identification with nature, from new age senti-mentality about its saving power, as well as from Gnostic fear of the ca-pacity of creation to convey divine purposes. Like an enormous tree nour-ished with roots deep in our personal and collective unconscious, it also teaches respect for natural processes, for slow growth, for rhythms be-yond human control. Finally, the liturgical year unfetters our freedom from the tyranny of our unconscious. When Moses stood before the burning bush aiad saw that this was holy ground, he entered a new place to live. That place is prayer; it is man's response to God's holiness and comes into existence only in communion with God. We can compare this to the common ground that exists between two friends; when I get to know someone, drawn by mutual interests or complementary personalities, a territory of shared experience grows between us. As the holy ground between man and the divine extends in time, so is born the inner liturgical year. "Moses, Moses, take off your shoes, for the place on which you stand is holy ground" (Ex 3:5). Liturgy must be interior as well as exterior for it to be whole. The structures of worship which ancient Israel built in response to Moses' ex-perience of the transcendence of God--first the altar of sacrifice, later a mobile tabernacle, and the Sabbath--were images of inner freedom, of the oblation of self to Yahweh, to Being. The early Church absorbed the Jewish sabbath into a festival of the Lord's day, Sunday, a day to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of the Incarnation which was implicit in the assent to crea-tion celebrated on the sabbath. The Documents of Vatican II remind us "The Lord's Day is the original feast day, and it should be proposed to the faithful and taught to them so that it may become in fact a day of joy and of freedom from work" (Vol. I p. 29). Liberation and the Liturgical Year In Sunday is the seed of all later festivals. We encounter Sunday first in the gospels, for this is the day of the Resurrection, the day the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene. Also in Scripture we find the first repeti-tion of Sunday, for it was one week later after his Resurrection that the Lord appeared to Thomas and the company assembled in the upper room and breathed his peace on them. Thus, in the book of Acts, the early Church observes Sunday as a day to celebrate the Resurrection; not a day of rest, not a continuation of the Jewish sabbath, but a new day, an eighth day, of completion, and a first day of rejoicing in creation. To celebrate Sunday witnesses to our busy and harried society of the freedom and goodness of the Christian vision of life. A reform of Sun-day can only come from within the individual life; the era of puritanical prohibitions has done its job of proposing to us what a day of rest would look like, and now it is up to us to practice an asceticism of time so that shopping, banking, errands, and office work can be laid aside for one day. A day to affirm the goodness of creation means a day for play, for friends, for music, for nature. This is a gift from God. Accepting it wit-nesses to the eternal festival latent behind the celebration of this special day. The Christian who observes Sunday as a day of joy and freedom from work learns the interconnectedness of time, for such a Sunday be-gins the night before. As the Jews began to observe a holy day with the vigil of the preceding night, so the Christian liturgical year interweaves all time around this structure of the week, each festival held in place by the surrounding times. Liturgical memory looks backwards and forwards as it draws strength for the present. Sunday looks back to divine assent to creation, and forward to the heavenly rest we anticipate. Celebrating Sunday nourishes our freedom to set aside work and worry and simply be. Liturgical memory forms the whole memory. People who can set aside their personal agenda and enter into the communal celebration, or who make the communal agenda their personal concern, are the ones who then can place their individual psychological problems in a wide con-text. They are not locked into the present, because they are formed to see it held in a web between past and future, nor are they confined to their own personal viewpoint however fully it might be absorbing them. In other words, the liturgy is a school of detachment, a word which in English sounds cold and lonely. I am told the German equivalent, abgeschiedenheit, would be translated as "serene freedom of the spirit filled with utter trust in God." That is the result of a memory formed 849 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 by the liturgy. But it is accomplished not directly and didactically, but symbolically and by example. Thus the liturgy teaches us that every feast must be preceded by a period of preparation: no Sunday without week-days, no Christmas without Advent, no Easter without Lent, and plenty of ordinary time to allow the mysteries of Christ to be absorbed and di-gested. Here is delayed gratification made visible. But this is more than just training in patience for high points. St. Cath-erine of Siena once said "All the way to heaven is heaven." That is what the liturgy says tool Advent and Lent, ordinary time, all the small roots of morning and evening prayer absorb water for the tree's growth which is celebrated at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. In the liturgical year, the Church has given us not only a survival strat-egy, but a place to grow as well. Aidan Kavanaugh wrote "Liberators accomplish only half their task then they liberate. The other half of their labor is to provide a normal place, a free place, on which the liberated may land." That normal, free place, that place out of the reach of the forces of the enemy, of the trendy, the selfish, the trivial, is the liturgi-cal year. Morning Praise At my window the willow filigrees the gold of dawn and hangs it on my wall; trembling fronds lose themselves in the sudden glow that,starset and sunrise trace upon the morning. I, too, in this hour am lost in grace-gold shower that spills upon the desert of my heart. Sister Elizabeth deSales Dee, S.S.J. St. Joseph Convent 7300 Torresdale Avenue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19136 The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told Patricia McCarthy, C.N.D. Sister Patricia McCarthy, a member of the Congregation of Notre Dame, has worked with the poor in the field of education, particularly with homeless and abused chil-dren, where the ministry of nonviolence is a daily challenge. Her address is Congre-gation of Notre Dame; 41 Cole Street; East Providence, Rhode Island 02914. Among the international travel ads which I faithfully read, I have noticed recently a new type of tour being offered. It is possible to visit northern Europe on a special story-telling trip. Imagine going from thatched roof cottages to desolate moors and dangerous harbors, and all the time lis-tening. The accents would change with the landscapes, and both would change the stories. Just listen and hear the true nature of the countries and its people come out in ways more real than through the products at the duty-free shops in the airports. Then I began to wonder. Will we be able to t~il stories that will en-thrall and inspire? Do we live passionately enough to be sources of hope and interest for future generations? Will others tell and retell with drama and humor the stories of our lives? Thomas Hardy said: "A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every man and woman." I continue to wonder. What stories in our generation will justify their retelling? Could it be that when the story of peace is told, religious men and women will be talked about? When storytellers explain poverty, celi-bacy, and obedience, will they tell the tales of people so in love with God and with their'brothers and sisters that they wrapped this love in freely 843 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 chosen vows? When the listeners ask what gave these religious such passion and why were they so free to love, will the storyteller have to risk entering into mystery? Will the story become one with the story and mystery of Jesus? There is no reasonable explanation for a God who loved so passion-ately that he came and lived among us. He taught us and healed us and blessed us. Finally, he gave himself on the cross for our redemption. Will the story of religious life make sense only within this context of aban-donment? Is not religious life the lived expression of Jesus' surrender to God for love of us? Gandhi said that Jesus Christ's offering of himself on the cross for the redemption of the world was the only perfect act of nonviolence the world has ever seen. Since the very nature of religious life is to be inti-mately united with Jesus, the vows can be considered in light of his su-preme act of peacemaking. The vows can be seen as living realities that transform people into peacemakers for our fragile world. We search high and low for ways of being peace in the midst of hostility and violence. Perhaps if we go deeply into the vows we will see not only the founda-tion of religious life but the foundation of peacemaking as well. Freedom In Poverty We begin in poverty. Scripture has always put God in the midst of the poor. In the Old Testament, Yahweh compassionately watched over the anawim. To the childless, children were given; to the homeless, a chosen land; to the hungry, manna in the desert; to the lost, visions and dreams to follow. When the fullness of time came, a wretched stable was the birthplace of the Son of God. His first experience of life was as a refugee in a foreign land. And his first teaching began, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We choose poverty because Jesus did. Poverty and want are evils when people are denied the necessary elements of survival. It makes no sense to embrace a vow of poverty. The vows do not make sense, they make love. We risk letting go of material security as a source of com-fort and happiness so that Christ can be our only fulfillment. What does this have to do with peace? Everything. If Christ is our wealth, we have nothing on this earth to defend, including our own lives. Lack of desire to defend one's possessions or life would make war improbable and unnecessary. Wars are usually started for economic rea-sons. Either an aggressor is greedy for the acquisition of land or eco-nomic control, or an oppressed people revolt against the denial of their The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told / 845 right to a decent standard of life. The slogans of freedom cover the at-tempts ~to maintain or increase power. During Texas' war for indepen-dence, a young soldier wrote home to his family: "If we win, we'll all be rich. If we lose, we will have died for freedom." Greed-induced vio-lence leaves millions of shattered and broken lives in its wake. Bring into this picture an army of people vowing poverty. It would remind one of the pages from a pre-primer book where the child has to pick out what is wrong with the picture. What does not fit in with every-thing else? A vow of poverty is countercultural when greed is the ear-mark of the culture. Why would someone with nothing to defend go to war for the purpose of defense? Of course, war is merely the outward extreme expression of the daily violence abiding in the human heart. It is, therefore, from the heart that the message of peace must come, not from a treaty or constitution. It is also within the heart that the vow of poverty must be embraced and shaped. If we can say that as individuals we own nothing, then whatever we use or manage is done in the spirit of stewardship. And then if some-one asks for our coat, we do not fight; we give the scarf and hat as well. If people are hungry and we have food, we share what we have with them. A vow of poverty should lead us to the reality that all we possess is gift. Because we know personally the Giver of all gifts, our poverty seeks expression through trust in God and willingness to share with the children of God. Fidelity to the vow is not marked by having nothing, but by desiring nothing and by a willingness to share freely whatever we have. Conscious today that too many of our brothers and sisters are starv-ing, we should be willing to live a poverty more radical than anything that has been seen for decades. The world needs our example and our leadership in order to break the cycle of a few using for themselves alone the natural resources intended for all. Strong statements about sharing the fruits of the earth are necessary in a world so consumed by the ac-quisition of wealth. We distort and falsify Christ's plea to us not to worry about what we are to eat or wear when we stockpile the necessities of life. We can do that and have what we think we need day after day, but we miss out on even knowing how beautifully we would have been dressed and cared for, as the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. It is a small step from stockpiling consumer goods to stockpiling arms. Emptying our hands does not automatically produce a disarmed Review for Religious, November-December 1990 heart, but clutching hands certainly will prevent us from having one. We need the practice of trusting God for our daily bread so that when the time comes to trust in God for our very lives, the surrender and faith will be there. Our times are crying for people with disarmed and trusting hearts. Our times are crying for those of us who have vowed poverty to embrace it radically. Our times are crying for us to live out daily the reality that our only need is God. This is what a life of poverty calls us to. This is the truth of a vow of poverty. Gandhi used to live "experi-ments in truth." It was his way of learning. By this he meant an unin-terrupted progression from insight to action to insight, and so forth. He would get an idea, try it out in practice, refine his first idea because of the action, then go to another action, and so on. Poverty is a lifetime ex-periment in truth. We feel inspired to trust God a little and release our hold on something. This leads to more trust and the release of something else, and so on. It's lifetime because we will never run out of things to let go of! The wonder of our God is that we never miss the small insignificant tokens we have parted with. We are showered with the very life of God and have no needs outside of this. We learn to yearn for God alone, not merely the gifts of God. Even when God seems absent from us, we have no desire to seek consolation from any other source. Perhaps, then, we receive our dearest treasure, a poor heart, totally dependent upon God for everything. Only then, when we have nothing left to defend, will we have been formed into peacemakers after the model of Jesus. In our communion with each other and with those who came before us, we see that the peacemakers who stand out in any century were peo-ple of great poverty. Francis, the poor man of Assisi; Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu ascetic; Thomas Merton, the trappist; Dorothy Day, the bow-ery dweller. They are not remembered because they were deprived, they are remembered because they had so much to give. Passion ,in Celibacy If a generous heart is the sign of vowed poverty, then a passionate heart is the sign of vowed celibacy. The vow of celibacy is at the core of the consecrated life, just as surrender to the passionate love of Christ is at the core of peacemaking. We cannot expect people to give up their arms of defense against other people and to be vulnerable to human ha-tred, unless we have first taught them to let go of their defenses against God and to be vulnerable to infinite love. The vulnerability of passion-ate love embodies an act of complete trust in God, of counting on God The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told to never abandon us or leave us unprotected. Celibacy calls us to this surrender of our very bodies to the love of God. By this vow, we witness in flesh to the power of God to fulfill us and protect us. This same passionate surrender is required of all peace-makers. They need not be celibate, but they do need to enflesh the pri-macy of the power and love of God. It is this primacy of God which is the clear witness of the vow of celibacy. It is the same primacy of the love and power of God to which Christ surrendered. Peace is not within our grasp without the act of redemption of Christ on Calvary. No matter how selfless or sacrificing we might be, the ability to take on and endure violence in order to heal it is the work of God. We share in this work, we are the hands and feet of Christ to-day, but he is the source and fountain of all life, of all power, and of all power to endure violence without retaliation. The clearest and most visible example of this power of God taking flesh is Mary, the virgin Mother of God. Mary trusted so completely in the power of God that she surrendered in faith to bear the Son of God in her womb. Within her body Mary carried Jesus Christ who was con-ceived by the Holy Spirit. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk i:35). "The fact that she conceived without human means is the sign that she conceived by the power of God. And in this she is a sign to us of our own radical de-pendence on God and on our union with him in grace in order to bear fruit or to do anything that is divinely life-giving on earth "(David Knight, Mary in an Adult Church Memphis: His Way Communications, 1988, pp. 22,23). We see in Mary the cost and the fruit of faith-filled trust in God. We see in Mary a woman confident of God"s continual care and boundless love. We see in Mary a woman whose heart was turned into a furnace of love by the Holy Spirit. We can expect the same care and mercy from God, we can expect to receive the same fire of love from the Holy Spirit. Belief in this fact alone should put us in the front lines of peacemaking. If God is the power of our lives, we do not put our trust in other earthly powers. We have vowed celibacy, consecrated our bodies to virginity. This is a visible em-bodiment of receptivity and of openness to God's working with us and through us. It is a physical expression of total surrender to the loved one; it is the abandonment of all defenses and reserves in the presence of the beloved. It is a matter of the heart. Gandhi taught that nonviolence, also, was a matter of the heart, not 848 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 to be arrived at by an appeal to the brain: that it was a matter of passion not of policy. Celibacy is not an intellectual thing but a passionate physi-cal stance. A life vowed to celibacy, within which we surrender in love the essence of our being, forms a heart capable of understanding and em-bracing nonviolence. A heart can be formed in many ways. Some of the ascetical prac-tices that used to accompany a study of the vows can be seen now as fash-ioning hearts for peacemaking. Fasting--one of the oldest practices in religious tradition---can be undertaken as a concrete expression of the pri-macy of God in our life. It is far more an act of worship than an act of discipline, To live the reality that God is the power of our lives, at times we freely abandon or fast from food or other material things. When the needs of our bodies call out, we turn ourselves over to God in whose pres-ence we abide. It is not the abstaining from food which is holy, but the turning of our attention and desires to God. Prayer becomes the love language of the celibate. When we love someone, there is no end to the variety of ways in which we say it. All the different prayer styles and prayer methods are merely different ways of giving and receiving love. Celibacy is about our bodies, and when we use these bodies to kneel in prayer we give expression to the reality of the vow. Just the act of kneeling is in itself a commitment of our body, a sign of intimate surrender to God. Such signs are important to us and to God. We are human and we yearn to give human expression to our desires; and God is pleased to see us using the gift of our bodies in worship. As important as these signs of surrender are, we go beyond them, we move from sign to reality when we participate in the Eucharistic celebration of Calvary. Union with Christ in the Mass is the commitment of our body to receive his Body. We share in Christ's moment of intimate surrender to his God. We offer ourselves with Christ to be transformed more and more into his Body. In this union we find the fulfillment of our celibacy. Out of this union, we are sent in service to our brothers and sisters. And this can be the passionate physical expression of love that physical penances were to some of the saints. Physical forms of penance are not outdated; they have j.ust changed style to adjust to the times. One (~f the saints stood in ice water up to his neck one winter's night, doing pen-ance for a friend who was considering sinful choices. Standing in the cold at the water's edge for hours in protest at a nuclear submarine base can be our modern day version of the same experience. Patiently endur-ing the irascible tempers and dispositions in a shelter for the homeless The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told or a soupline can be the discipline of the senses in this age. The ideal of self-sacrificing love can be applied to living within the noise and dan-ger of inner cities in order to be with today's anawim. Especially for those overcommitted and overworked religious who give beyond their limits, the ascetism most expressive of a loving re-sponse to God might be to fast from work one day a week. Work is any-thing that we think has to be done. Let it all go for a day. Keep holy the Lord's day. If we believe God is our source of power, let our bodies and minds and energies show it by giving the time to being, not doing. It is possible .this practice could be far more productive than ceaseless days of activity. Surely, a day of rest with God is a practical act of trust, one that might lead us to become even more practical and venture into the constant trust required for a vow of obedience. Stewardship of Self in Obedience Having emptied our hands through poverty and surrendered our hearts in celibacy, we receive from God through obedience the assurance that all is done in accord with the divine plan. Every peacemaker must be obedient, but religious have the value of a vow. This vow does not just mean doing what someone else tells you to do. Doing what some-one else tells you is simple; it may not be easy, but it is simple and un-complicated. That is not what the vow of obedience calls us to. Obedience calls us to listen to God's designs for us, to listen to God's desires for us. Obe-dience calls us to stewardship of the gift of God that is ourselves. If we value the goods and fruits of our fragile earth so much that we h01d them in stewardship, how much more should we value ourselves and hold our-selves in stewardship. We are a gift of God, to be treasured and used ac-cording to the plan of God. Obedience encourages us to take seriously this call to stewardship of self. The first step of the obedient peacemaker is to listen to this call. It will be unique to each person. No one else can listen to it for us. Per-haps the most common sin of disobedience today is not the failure to do what is asked by lawful authority, but the failure to do what, over and above this, is asked by God. Probably few of us consciously, explicitly deny God. But do we consistently hear God's requests and calls? When we are consumed by plans and activities of our own, are we willing to change and to let God move us in another direction? If we have vowed celibacy and said that God is the source of power in our lives, are we able to live that out by listening for .the delicate, unobtrusive voice of God day after day and abandoning all our ideas and hopes to the ideas Review for Religious, November-December 1990 and hopes of God? How do we hear God? We open ourselves to being vulnerable and receptive to all the known and unknown ways God speaks: our own in-stincts and desires, needs of others, realities of life over which we have no control, requests from our communities, and decisions by those who minister through authority. It would be easier if we were the only judge of what is the desire of God. We have been created for community with God's people, and in community we hear and discern the will of God. We pray in our rooms and in our churches and in our workplaces. We seek the face of God, alone and with others. Obedience is not a private vow, it is a communal one. In the base communities of Latin America, private prayer and com-munal reflection on the word of God precede any action for justice. Peo-ple do not act on their own instincts alone; plans for action are submit-ted to the reflection and discussion of the community. There is always a person or group to whom every individual is accountable. This is a cru-cial factor in these communities, a factor which is most difficult for groups in North America who have tried to model the base community style. The same principle of responsible accountability was applied by Gandhi in his struggle for freedom in India and by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his struggle for freedom from racism in America. In their actions for nonviolent resistance, both men taught their people to begin with prayer and fasting. Individuals were prepared step-by-step for the action that had been decided upon. Not everyone was permitted to participate if the leaders thought they were not ready. Obedience to the plan was crucial. Today when civil disobedience is done correctly, all those partici-pating should have another person or group to whom they are responsi-ble. If that person or group tells an individual to discontinue the action, that person is expected to obey. If we are serious about the work of jus-tice then we had better be serious about obedience. Civil disobedience for individuals with vows of obedience is a won-derful opportunity to exercise the vow. Civil disobedience must always be an expression of personal commitment, not just of association with a just cause. For a religious to accept the call to steffardship of self so seriously that there may be a time when the law of God takes precedence over the law of society, a process of discernment should be a prerequi-site to the action. Prayer, study, and discussion should operate on three levels: personal, local, and provincial. Discernment on all three levels The Vowed L

Issue 41.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1982. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1982 by REVIEW FOR REI.~G~OOS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR REt,IGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor Jan./ Feb., 1982 Volume 41 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW I"OR RE~.IGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 541h St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints shoul.d be ordered from Rt:v,Ew Vo8 RE~oIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindetl Blvd.; St. L~uis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Review for Religious Volume 41, 1982 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Sep-tember, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1982 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. The Art of Wasting Time: Thoughts on the Expropriation of Leisure James W. Heisig Father Heisig, of the Society of the Divine Word, is a Permanent Fellow of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, General editor of its book series on East-West thought and Associate Professor of Humanities at the Nan:an University. His address: Nan:an Institute for Religion and Culture: 18, Yamazato-cho. Showa-ku: Nagoya, Japan'. In modern industrialized nations, time is thought of as an investment commodity with a fluid market value. The power of time to cure all ills that the ancient Greek proverb celebrated has been drained from it to reduce time to disposable mer-chandise within our control. Some people's time is now worth more than other people's time because they know how to use time .profitably, that is, to achieve maximum production with minimum consumption. The ideal management of time is measured by cost-benefit analysis. As a consumer commodity, time is also unevenly distributed: some people now possess more time than others, which they are free to invest wisely or foolishly. It does not take much reflection to appreciate how the metaphor of "annual income,"the most Oniversal measure of the relative value of time, has crept its way into the modern imagination and laden words once rich in personal meanings with the double entendre of economic connotations. And that is as true in the world of business as it is in the world of religious or humanitarian devotion to an ideal. We hear it said that the fund~.mental shock occasioned by the increased pace of modei'n living is that shorter and shorter periods of time enable us to achieve the same things that former civilizations took much longer to achieve, which in turn produces the need for constant novelty. In fact, we do notachieve the same things at all. By submitting time and human needs to new s.tandards, the quality of life 3 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 itself has been altered and important spiritual values siphoned off as waste. The trip across the Sinai that took the ancient Israelites forty years to complete would hardly take forty minu~tes today from t~ikeoff to landing. But whereas their voyage was a.journey that transformed a band of refugees into a people of God, ours is reduced to a mere change of location that takes place too quickly to effect any but the most superficial of insights. For us, time wasted in travel, in the use of outmoded tools, and in the inefficient use of resources and personnel is money flushed down the drain. On the one hand, time well spent promises the reward of time to spare; but on the other, the time that we have saved is only of value if it, too, is well spent. The result is that leisure has become a luxury item, with less to be found among workers today than there was among the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome. In such circUmstances, it has become easy to market time-measuring devices for popular use that approximate the precision of scientific equipment. A wrist-watch that takes time to wind and has to be reset once a week is an anachronism to the modern mind. The practical advantages of such accuracy are fictitious, but the ideological advantage is very real. We are so firmly locked into the modern myth of time that the thought of unclocking oneself, even for the purposes of relaxation, has become the moral equivalent of undressing in public. The idea of time that has colonized the habits of thought that gird the institu-tions of modem society--school, church, business, entertainment, travel, health care, politics, social action--has wrought a spiritual impoverishment on our native sensibilities. The reverence for free time Freizeit and leave from labor (leisure) has not disappeared, but its motivations have shifted. The important wisdom that time belongs among the "best thing~ of life" that cannot be bought and sold, that belong to all of us as our common human right, and that are their own reward, is in peril. The expropriation of leisure by the consumer ethos is one of the most harmful ideas that pollute modern consciousness and obstruct the construction of an equitable and sustainable global community. Instead of having time for oneself, time for the earth, and time for the human race, we have become content with having time to consume the goods and services manufactured in other sectors of society. We have come to think of time as a nonrenewable resource, and lost the art of wasting it lavishly for our spiritual well-being. Deliverance from this state of affairs begins with learning to make transparent the myth of time that we inhabit unawares. And onestep in that direction, it seems to me, is to have a look at some of the things we no longer seem to have much time for. Time for Oneself The story is told of a certain clergyman who went to see the famous psycholo-gist, C. G. Jung, complaining of an impending nervous breakdown. His story was a familiar one. Working fourteen hours a day to fill up his life of service with meaning, he found only a spiritual tiollowness to his work. The harder he worked, the more tasks he took on, the more his nerves stood on end, threatening at any moment to shatter through the fragile mask of the busy pastor and expose his The Art of Wasting Time hypocrisy. 3ung's advice was simplicity itself; he was to work a mere eight-hour day, go home and spent his evenings quietly in his study alone. Unconvinced of the wisdom of .lung's counsel, but sufficiently agonized to have no other recourse, the man made up his mind to follow the prescription to the letter. He worked his eight hours, returned to the parish house for supper, then retired behind the closed doors of his study for the rest of the evening. Some time later he returned to see .lung, reporting that, alas, the remedy had been a complete failure. Spiritually he was worse off than before, and the parish had fallen into disarray for want of attention. He had done everything just as he had been told, but to no avail. "What did you do in your study?" Jung asked. "Well, let's see, the first night I finished a Herman Hesse novel and listened to some Chopin l~tu~les. After that I read some Thomas Mann and listened to a Mozart sonata. Next I . . ." "But you didn't understand," .lung broke in. "I didn't want you to spend your time reading novels and listening to music. I wanted you to be alone with yourself.""Oh, but 1 couldn't stand it. i make such bad company," the pastor replied. "Aha! Now we see the problem," said .lung. "That very self that you can't stand for even a short period is the same self you have been inflicting on others for fourteen hours a day.~ The pastor's problem and the way he set out trying to cure it both belong to a level of cultural development that can only be called elite. The freedom to opt for a fourteen:l~our work day and drive oneself to psychological tatters, and then to reduce one's time of labor by 40% for the sake of spiritual hygiene; the possibility of consulting a professional therapist and paying for the service; the ability to read classic literature and appreciate classical music--all of these things belong to a style of life unthinkable to the great masses of humanity, who do not work for ends supererogatory to survival that can be dispensed with when body or soul collapses, but work to keep alive, and great numbers of them successfully. I do not mean to imply that the man's problem was not a real one, or that it should be classified, along with cosmetic surgery and Caribbean cruises, as needs bred of boredom or surfeit. I mean only that, like all spiritual problems, its roots reach over into problematic social structures as well, whose repair requires more attention to one's own soul. Of this, more shall be said later. What 'lung showed the pastor about himself, and what many of those who share his general cultural field can readily identify with, is that people will often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to look at themselves without a role to play. The crises of meaninglessness.that had attacked his work spread over into his leisure because of a common fundamental bias that value can only be generated by keeping busy at a socially acceptable task. In each case, he fled what he feared would do him more harm than anything else: his deep dislike of himself. In his work, the pretense of altruism threw up a thick smoke screen, almost as if deliber-ately to cloud the problem; and in his leisure the pretense of polishing up his education protected and reinforced the hollow ideals he could never quite recog-nize as his own. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Before one embraces those words as a commanded task, they need first to be accepted as a statement of fact: like it or not, one cannot love another if one does not first love oneself. And 6 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 there is no way to love oneself if one does everything possible to avoid spending time with oneself. The pastor's abuse of leisure meant that leisure was not a freeing time but an enslaving time. Instead of serving as a re-creational balance to the creativity of his work, it bound him more firmly to the estrangement he felt between his own innermost beliefs and his outward devotedness. The proper use of leisure, on the other hand, demands the capacity to turn solitariness into solitude, not to dread it as a mere isolation from things that have value. If there are human values that daily life and work sterilize conscience against, and if those values are truly the eradicable imprint of the divine on the soul of each individual, then the deliverance of the human from the inhumanity of which it is capable begins with a transforma-tion in perspective metanoia towards oneself. And that takes time, leisure time. To be denied that time to waste on oneself, or to deny it to oneself, is to forsake redemption from the common habits of evil that we all participate in unawares. Time for the Earth A second dimension on which our~modern myth of time has expropriated the functions of leisure is that of our relationship to nature. In order to get to the core of this problem, 1 should like to cite a story from the Inner Chapters bf Chuang- Tzu, the Chinese mystic and Taoist philosopher of the fourth century before the Christian era. It is a story about a certain master carpenter named Stone and his apprentice, and how they happened one day to encounter the truth about worth-less trees. It seems that on one of their voyages the two chanced to pass by a gigantic oak tree standing by a local village shrine. The young apprentice stopped short and stood aghast with awe at the towering majesty of the tree, whose trunk he thought must measure a hundred spans in girth, and whose branches were so immense that at least ten of them he reckoned could surely be carved into boats. But the master Stone just stalked off ahead without so much as giving the tree a second glance. Catching him up, the apprentice inquired of him why a carpenter should pass up such timber, more splendid than any he had seen since taking up his axe. "Stop!" the master rebuked him. "The tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a coffin would soon rot, a tool would split, a door would ooze sap, and a beam would have termites. It is worthless timber and is of no use. That is why it has reached such a ripe old age." That night the oak,tree appeared to the carpenter Stone in a dream and complained of being compared with useful trees that are stripped and pruned and robbed of their fruits or cut down in their prime because they attract the attentions of the common world. "As for me, I have been trying for a long time to be useless. I was almost destroyed several times, Finally I am useless, and this is very useful to me. if I had been useful, could 1 have.ever grown so large? Besides, you and I are both things. How can one thing judge another thing? What does a dying and worthless man like you know about a worthless tree?" The next day, when the °The Art of Wasting Time apprentice heard of the dream, he was puzzled. "If it had so great a desire to be useless, why does it serve as a shrine?" This time the master took up. the cause of the tree. "It is just pretending to be one so that it will not be hurt by those who do not know that it is useless. If it had not been a sacred tree, it would probably have been cut down. It protects itself in a different way from ordinary things. We will miss the point if we judge it in the ordinary way." Let us say the carpenter Stone, with his "ordinary way" of looking at things, is a type of technological men and women whose tools have so eclipsed their direct contact with nature that they can no longer revere the world except as something "useful" for their equipment. As the tree reminds the carpenter in his dream, however, there are values that go beyond the useful, beyond the values that civilizations assign to things when they judge them to be worth our "while." These values reach deep beneath the differences that separate the human from the rest of the earth, to the point of geocentric unity that was broken with the anthropocent-ric revolt against being merely a thing among other things. They reach beyond the divisions of means and ends into which people classify everything about them. Insight into such values begins with learning t9 listen to the earth, something whose importance we are only now rediscovering after a century of industrial progress. Even so, we have the greatest of difficulty in unplugging ourselves from the apparatus we have built to mediate our way to nature. The world is still viewed by and large as raw material for human civilization. We struggle to keep our environment free of pollution because we fear the spread of disease among people and the poisoning of our food. We lobby against the mindless pillage of forests because we fear the effects of soil erosion on our buildings and landscaping. We protect the wilderness because we need somewhere to "get away from it all." These are reasons that make sense to a civilized mind, but do not satisfy it quite yet. We still want more sense than that. Increasing numbers (especially those for whom there is no economic danger involved) are finding it therapeutic to sympathize with the plight of species endangered by hunting or the destruction of natural habitats. Others are relearning to use the tools that scientific advance had thought to render into museum pieces. Something like a spirituality of the earth is coming to birth, but its douleurs d'enfantement are spasmodic and uncomfortable in the extreme. Perhaps the major reason that the developed industrial nations of the world do not yet have time for the earth is that their livelihood depends on a world frag-mented according to its utility for tools, and on a work force of specialists who literally feed off of one or the other fragment. The kit of tools that provides us with our ordinary way of looking at the earth functions not only because it represents a considerable extension of the power of the human body--legs into automobiles, voices into radio waves, eyes into telescopes, arms into cranes, and so forth, in the great caricature that humanity has made of its own image--but also because it succeeds in devaluing any other way of looking at life and work. While this has made impressive leaps in scientific and technical progress possi-ble, it has also taken its toll on the human spirit in the form of a massive addiction I~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 to packaged, processed experiences of the earth. We seek respite from the drudgery of working at our own specialized task only to find ourselves consuming the product of someone else's specialization. The woman who sits from morning to night on an assembly line at a canning factory learns to put up with the boredom and servility of her labor by concentrating on the privileges it will give her through the money she earns. Come vacation time, she happily skips into a great steel can sealed in Los Angeles and opened in Hawaii, clutching her five-nights-six-days-cut- rate-holiday plan around which she has organized her hopesof regaining some of the dignity she had to forfeit in order to afford the trip in the first place. She may well spend her whole life without noticing 'that she is being sold on the earth in entertainment-packages by an industry that depends on people not being able to experience the beauties and pleasures of nature without their help. Such contact with nature, far from helping one to recover the basic human demand for creativity and meaning in work, only reinforces the same feelings of impotence, ignorance, and strangeness in the face of the complex machinery and bureaucracy that has come between people and the earth. From the point of view of those who have forgotten that demand, such time may be considered very well spent, very useful, and very recreational. But it is not the freeing time of leisure because it does not so much as waste a moment on trying to step outside the ordinary way of looking at the earth, to see nature once again from the inside as it were, as something valuable in itself. Time for the Human Race In addition to the estrangement from oneself and estrangement from the earth, there is a third dimension on which our myth of time has expropriated the dower of wasted time, namely estrangement from our own race. We who compose essays on electric typewriters and subscribe to journals on the spiritual life tend to forget that the technology we take for granted is still experienced as an oppression by the vast majority of human beings. Consciously it is felt as the oppression of neglect at the hands of those who dwell in the economic penthouses of the global commun-ity. Unconsciously it is felt as the oppression of envy for the equipment and the life style of affluence and the accompanying disgust with their own primitive enjoy-ments. For all the commonsense wisdom contained in the counsel that money cannot buy happiness, and that more often than not it only multiplies the possibili-ties for unhappiness, both the rich of the earth and the poor are agreed that it is a misery they would prefer risking. The consumer ethos that pervades and sustains a high level of technology at the top of the human pyramid also pervades and sustains the grotesque want under which most of our kind are forced to live. - By far the greatest part of the human community has no opportunity for employing the technological tools that are now transforming the fac~ of the planet, and in many cases do not even know that they exist. Those who use jet transporta-tion are an absolute aristocracy; for every one of them there are several thousands who have never ridden a bicycle. The number of illiterates in the world still far The Art of Wasting 7~me / 9 outnumbers the number of those who even own radios; and the number of people who own television sets is far lower than the number of those whose annual income does not reach the cost of a television. The rest of humanity, for which individuals in the developed world have no time, have fallen into conditions made more difficult to escape by the surfeit that one small portion of the world enjoys. At the base of the human pyramid there are ~hundreds of millions living on the borderlands of vegetation and death, which in turn belongs to a group of nearly one billion people whom we have now come to speak of as the fourth world. Above them is the third world, over half of which lives in a poverty they have no hope of remedying, yet a poverty tortured by the knowledge that some of the race spend their lives struggling to acquire still greater surpluses of luxury, and to glut themselves with still more of the already maldis-tributed fruits of the earth. Those who are born and bred in life at the top of the pyramid have little practical feeling for the current inhumanity that is ravaging most of the race. They find it easier to imagine science-fictional futures than to imagine the present reality, let alone to image their own complicity in the way things are. They may watch documentaries about starvation in Africa or floods in Asia, but fail to make any connection when they book passage the next day for a tour in the Yucatfin. Or perhaps better, they have allowed their.questions to be silenced by the whole tangle of government and economic organizations that constantly complain of how com-plicated everything is. They may know that the budget of New York State, with its twelve million people, exceeds that of India with its six hundred million, and perhaps even permit themselves a sigh of pity; but they entrust the sorting out of injustices to the experts who have been trained to worry about such things. All the privileged of the earth know for sure is. that they have no objection to others sharing in their style of life, provided it does not make any demands on theirown appetities. Clearly, this is not enough. Within a generation we shall have six billion people on the earth, with five billion of them living in poverty. The tactic of indifference, which amounts to a war of the few against the many, kills and dehumanizes more effectively than any weapon we have yet dared to use. But it is running out of time. As the poor arm themselves with the surplus of our .stockpiles, sold off cheaply to make way for more advanced weaponry, we cannot suppose that they will forever remain content with waging war among themselves. The smaller and more concen-trated the centers of wealth become throughout the world, the more vulnerable they become to the masses of those who have been trained to be jealous of what others are free to consume. The urgency of the situation, however, is not of itself enough to guarantee the quality of any and every attempt to alleviate it. Just as time for the self and time for the earth tend to get absorbed without remainder into time for the consumption of luxuries advertised as refreshment from working time, so time for the human race all too readily gets twisted into the donation of services that perpetuate the spirit-ual impoverishment of the technological world by camouflaging it behind an 10 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 idiom of charity. Those who are touched with a sense of pity for the maldistribu-tion of wealth and feel the pressure to help, all too frequefitly lack the requisite insight into their own patterns of thought to realize how their aid can amount to the substitution of one form of dehumanization for another. In providing hospi-tals, schools, factories, and modern transport for the underprivileged (that is, for those denied the right to consume culture as we consume it), the donor organiza-tions narrow their responsibilities down tc~ the unilaterial sharing of goods and values. The possibility that alternate social systems, now' rendered obsolete, unproductive, and unsustainable by the current management of the world's resources, may have something to, teach the human community about liberation from the consumer ethos is pushed to one side in the rush to make amends for gluttony overcome with guilt in the face of deprivation. I1: the price of providing bread for the world is further investment in the current means of producing and distributing bread, then bread for the world there will never be. The economics of this are fairly intricate, but the direct ratio th~it obtains between the number of people who are starving to death and the increased number of organizations and agencies aimed at distributive justice is plain enough to see. A leisure that is freeing for the human race is not simply time given free of cost by the haves to the have-nots, but a time for withdrawal from the ruling myth of time. It must, in the first pla~e, be a waste of tilne altogether free of investments economic or ideological, time wasted on the whole of the race, ourselves included. Of all the forms of leisure, this is the one that has become most radically enslaved to the biases of working time, despite the way in which improved means of communication have enabled an altogether new image of the universal h~]man family. There may be no greater constriction of.the imagination in the history of human thought about world order than that of the present day face-off in devel-oped industrial nations between the philanthropic illusion of the rich nations of the world opening their storehouses to share with the poor on the one hand, and the financial illusion of increasing productivity to the point of being able to sell more goods more cheaply without monetary loss on the other. And this, too, is a mark of grave spiritual immaturity. The Reappropriation of Leisure If I have left a good deal in the previous pages to innuendo and only hints of an explanation of how leisure time has become victimized by the spread of consumer metaphors, it was not only to condense a manifold problem into a few words, but also to prepare for what 1 wish to propose by way of conclusion. Simply put, it comes to this: that only the personal awakening of increasing numbers of individ-uals to the considerable loss sustained by civilization in its forward march into technology can provide the footings for a modern spirituality, and that only the redemption of leisure time from its servility to current structures of thought can provide the conditions for such awakening. The reappropriation of the need for leisure--an unadvertised, unprofitable, and withal revolutionary need--begins with the individual or it does not begin at all. No one can stand l~roxy for another's The Art of Wasting Time spiritual conversion. No expertise can service a society with personal insight, judgment, and decision. For it is not so much concession to the logic of particular conclusions that is the point, but the recovery of the process of working one's own way out of familiar biases. This process hinges on the art of wasting time. In the first place, leisure time should nurture a spirit of resistance to the humors of resignation that poison the bloodstream of industrial society. It should increase one's resistance to the workaday bias that the submission and trust due divine providence, for having cast us into a world with hopes in our hearts too big for our abilities, should be extended into a submission and trust in social provi-dence, for having spun a web of institutions so tightly about us that we are powerless to do much more than lay a hand across our inquisitive mouths and adjust as best we can. From the point of view of the world of time where work gets done, free time that results in raising basic questions about that world is not only wasted time, it is counterproductive. No doubt a life in which leisure means nothing but filling up with comforts and entertainments the hollow gouged out of the soul by resignation to the complexities of modern life is an ideal few, if any, would Openly champion. But the fact is, the bare physical need for periodic reinvigoration always has a spiritual dimension to it as well, and in industrial society that spiritual dimension tends to vacillate between the reinforcement of patterns of passive consumption of relaxation and spare-time thoughts about better pay, shorter hours, or increased benefits. In either case, it remains subser-vient to the structures of work and effectively concedes defeat to their power. It lacks re-creativity. This is the idolatry, of epidemic proportions, that afflicts the spirituality of technological society. Second, in order to offer this sort of recreational resistance to the spirit of resignation, time wasted in leisure should be an abandon to the spirit of playful-ness. I use that word in a broader sense than either the games of children or the athletics of adults to cover not only the labor of alternative activities but also the enjoyments of repose; and in a narrower sense than sleep or intoxication on the one hand, moonlighting or profit-making hobbies on the other. The playfulness of leisure has three facets. The first of these is the imagination of possible futures in which we might be free of the oppressions of the present. If such futures are truly' possible, that is, if they are able to emerge out of the existing world by a rearrange-ment of its priorities, then their entertainment in imagination is capable of being sustained and deepened from one period of leisure to the next. This in contrast to the scattered daydreams of wishful thinking that come and go for all of us without effort or lasting impression. That is, such images can accumulate sufficient form in time to lead to the commitment to some preferable future from among the possi-bilities~ To experience such a reorganization of hope in playfulness is to experience the genesis of an ideal within oneself. Not to experience it is to keep leisure locked up in itself. And finally, there is the transition from the possible and the preferable to the enjoyment of the future in the present. This is where most people are best at wasting time, even though they may not know what they are doing. It consists in the construction of a temporary utopia about oneself where the things one values 12 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 most can be savored. It is a timefor tasting ideals of companionship without strife, pleasure without labor, crafmanship without pressure, play without punishment. The reigning fear among those who wish to protect their leisure time from being absorbed by spiritual or intellectual recollection is that too much reflection inhibits enjoyment. And to be sure, there are those whose twisted sense of asceticism drives them from one cause to the other, volunteering their services and neglecting the wisdom that comes from having a good, wasted time. At the other extreme, enjoyment cut off from reflection about the future altogether quickly shrivels up into a mere pampering of a self exhausted by labor, with the result that it becomes less and less enjoyable and more and more like the pure passivity of sleep. Some-where between the two lies the art of celebrating a world that is not but might be for a while, a world filled up with the spirit of playfulness. Third, leisure should help foster a spirit of survival in the midst of this by no means best of all possible worlds. Just as the struggle for physical survival requires ingenuity in using available resources and at the same time remaining alert to the opportunities for deliverance if and when they present themselves, so too with the struggle for spiritual survival. It requires anger against avoidable evils, sensitivity to appropriate solutions in which one's anger may be expressed, and the capacity to wait without exploding from within or being sapped of one's energies from without. One may have to buy chemically treated food because fresh produce has been priced beyond one's budget; one may have to drive an automobile to work because public transport systems have become an economic deficit to the com-munity; one may have to put up with menial labor because one's skills are not in demand; one may have to swallow large doses of injustice, stupidity, and callous-ness. But one does not have to pretend to like it or allow it to embitter enjoyment. Survival means wedding a resistance to resignation with a love of playfulness so as to forfeit neither the gusts nor the disgusts of life. Fourthly, leisure needs to infuse a spirit of the sacred into the time that we waste. When the ritual, beliefs, and holy writ of a religious tradition become fettered to the myth of consumer time, they forsake their sacredness. When they cease to cut like a. two-edged sword that denounces sinfulness and announces goodness, they dull and profane their capactiy of re-creation. At the same time, when they provide mere divertissement from the trials of working life or serve only as platforms for supporting the flood of causes that wash through the mass media with the regularity of spring and autumn fashions, they betray their meaning. Sacred time is not an investment measured in loss and profit to the current problems of a civilization. It is a necessity--the necessity to hallow the self, the earth, and the human race as a single great gift beyond all desert. It insures that, whatever of practical use may come out of time wasted in leisure, it is the wasting that is holiest. Sacred time unplugs us from our own time and opens up a horizon of all time, against which the greatest sin appears as the desire for absolute control and the greatest goodness as the grace of being absolutely loved. All of us, every soul of us on earth, breathe the myths of our civilization as inevitably as we breathe the air .that surrounds us. They are transparent, taken for The Art of Wasting l~me / 13 granted, but essential for human .life. Leisure time is like a flute that transforms.the silent secrets in the air into music. It shows us the harmonies and the cacophanies, the purity and the pollution of our myths. Without leisure, we have no way to know the air about us, no way to love back the One who made us the,mythmaking animals we are. View From Behind Tapestries look like battlefields from the back. Threads like soldiers in hand to hand combat-- who is most resilient? Arms locked, elbows out, clenched fists of knot scattered like small skirmishes across the expanse. Who is most flexible? Stitches quarrel in overbearing voice, rush to trenches, maintain positions. Colors invade each other's territory, singing violent victories of light. All clamor, all struggle, It faces the wall of faith while the weaver and the watcher . work from the front. St. Anne Higgins, D.C. 123 Franklin St., Petersburg, VA 23803 Celibacy in Africa Matungulu Otene, S.J. Zaire's Father Otene, ordained in 1977, is presently working in St. Peter and Paul parish: B.P. 1125: Lubumbashi: Zaire. This article is excerpted from the booklet. "C~libat Consacr~ pour une Afrique assoiff~: de F~:conditi:," published by Editions Saint-Paul Afrique, P.O. Box 8505; Kinshasa, which was translated into English by Louis C. Plamondon. S.J.: Manresa; Box 47154; Nairobi; Kenya. In English, it is no. 65 of the Spearhead series, "Celibacy and the African Value of Fecundity," published by Gaba Publications: P.O. Box 908: Eldoret: Kenya, which graciously granted permission for our use. ~f the reason for Christian celibacy is unique, that is, for Jesus Christ and his kingdom, every Christian called to this type of life is also called to live out this experience in the context of his own culture and personal history. An African celibate today is not celibate in exactly the same way as an Indian of today, even if both are celibate for the sake of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. There is a whole world of emotions and affectivity which permeates our celibacy very deeply. This is so true that the world we live in affects the objective and subjective content of our celibacy. Both what we hear being said about celibacy and what we experience in our flesh by living out what is said, are rooted emotions. Without this emotive element, there would be no human celibacy in the full sense of the term; conse-quently, there would be no Christian celibacy since the latter is deeply rooted in human nature and since celibacy itself has also to be incarnated. The affective life of a South American--his way of feeling and living celibacy--differs from that of an African from Zaire or Senegal. Among Africans there are a certain number of differences in affectivity. However, even if it must be admitted that within the same people there are different ways of feeling things, this, nevertheless, does not mean that African peoples do not have a greater affinity with one another than with peoples from the West or the East. After all, their cultural heritage is common. This seems evident even if there are shades of meaning or subtle nuances which are hard to express in these few short pages, which do not pretend to be a psycho-so-cial study of human societies. 14 Celibacy in Africa The cultural milieu in which the young African lives has a very great impact on his response to the Lord's call. Celibacy is surely an area in which sensibility is a very important factor, if not the most important. In fact, coming as he does from a family where marriage is viewed in a very special light, the young African will carry in the depths of his being, perhaps through his whole life, the impact of this way of thinking. It will take only a circumstance or an event to awaken in him a whole world of memories accumulated throughout his short life. The fact that his grand-father was polygamous, that his own father had more than one wife, and that his own mother was not the first wife of his father, nor the one preferred, cannot but have significance in his life of celibacy. The mere fact of knowing that in his extended family there is somewhere a cousin with five children, each with a different father, cannot be without significance. Those are his half brothers, but this entails that this good cousin of his.is a husbandless woman with children entirely dependent upon her. To know that his aunt is a prostitute with children, cannot' but have some impact on him. It is no small thing to have a deep sense of all these situations and still, despite all this, to dedicate his life to God in conse-crated celibacy. This world which I have just described briefly cannot be found as such in Europe nor in North or South America, but this is the world that has shaped the young African of whatever black African country he may be. One cannot ignore these realities and pretend that they do not have any influence whatsoever on people. For Africans the child is a reality to be treasured; and each human being does all in his power to leave behind him :some offspring, whether he be married or not married, living the life of a prostitute or of enforced celibacy. All Africans desire to have children, sometimes by any means. The young man who hears the Lord's call is living in this very world and not in any other. His' reflections and ways of thinking are rooted in the environment from which he comes, in the psycho-social milieu which surrounds him. This does not frighten the Lord just as no human milieu frightens him, because it is in such complex situations that he manages to find celibates for his kingdom. Growth in the Life of Celibacy To be sure, other cultures also have their own difficult problems in this area. I am merely showing that our way of experiencing the world has an influence on celibacy and that the cultural traditions are to be taken seriously, but without exaggeration. The young African called to a life of celibacy or religious life will have to integrate progressively within his affective life the realities which surround him without seeking to escape from them. He will do so by looking at them frankly, without panic, in prayer, in his personal relationship with Christ in the Eucharist. God's grace is always there, and this is what gives us confidence in the face of the strong temptations in this life. This young human being will have to understand that since the Incarnation, God gives his grace through weak human beings. Accordingly, to see clearly within his own being, he will have to be open with another person who has the experience of Jesus Christ. The one the Lord will "16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 put in his path will show him the road to follow and will give him courage in the moment of trial when temptations are strongest. Celibacy requires a lot of disci-pline. He will have to learn to exercise great control over his senses and sometimes to give up things which are innocuous, and to focus on the unique reality which is necessary, Jesus Christ. For certain types of people, chastity can be gained only after a hard fight lasting many years; and this can cause a lot of anxiety when it happens to people who are scrupulous by nature, yet desirous of achieving holiness. What I have just written is not rhetoric. It sometimes happens that young people are torn apart inwardly because they want to dedicate themselves entirely to the Lord but yet cannot completely control certain evil habits or certain attitudes which they find difficult to evangelize. I insist that it is a difficult fight--a fight to death--a fight which moulds a man gradually as he learns bit by bit not to depend upon his own strength but on that of the Lord who has set him apart from his mother's womb to preach his Gospel to men of good will There are less sensitive types of people who do not encounter very many types of problems in their development, but irrespective of their sensitivity, all will undergo moments when they are forced to make a decision for the Lord. The chastity that is required by a life of celibacy is not a case of spontaneous generation--it is a garden that must be tended lest weeds grow in it. When one has gone astray, one finds it difficult, sometimes even impossible, to go back; thus, it is not surprising that some young, generous people have gone astray. Vigilance is necessary in these matters, but the kind of vigilance characteristic of those who are sure of victory; for if Christ is with us, who can be against? Sooner or later Christ will defeat this devil of our middle age who likes to attack our flesh, born in the human condition, born incomplete. The young celibate, therefore, will learn not to abuse God's grace. He will be prudent; he will not take chances with his celibacy. He will have the simplicity of a dove but the prudence of a serpent. The married man who is a dedicated Christian will not flirt with other women lest his marriage, be threatened and, accordingly, his real happiness and that of his home. The same holds true for religious. They also cannot take chances with their passions and put themselves in the position of violating the gift they have made of themselves in the simplicity of their heart. Nothing escapes lay people when it comes to observing the behavior of reli-gious. They notice even the smallest detail when they want to criticize their priests or religious men and women. Some even take pleasure in judging them, in scrutin-izing their behavior to find the smallest reprehensible thing. In this way, they purify their religious, even without wanting to. Lay people are surely not gullible, even though they sometimes misinterpret the way African religious live out their celibacy. They can often distinguish between the religious who is loyal and faithful to his consecration to the Lord from the religious who is beginning to compromise and. to give in. Assuredly, their judgments are not gospel truth, and often one would do well to minimize themremembering that even the great saints were often Slandered by malicious tongues. Celibacy in Africa Certain Difficulties or Certain Illusions It is sad to 'note that many young, generous and seemingly solid religious have lost the grace of celibacy because of supposedly spiritual relationships with women religious and with young girls. There is nothing more dangerous than these suspect relationships between men and women religious, nothing more scandalous for African Christians than to see their priests, their men and women religious become involved in expressions of human love under the pretext of love in Christ.Many men and women religious believe rather too easily that they have been made immune to the weakness of their flesh. They are a little too quick to believe that they have attained the required maturity in celibacy. They sincerely think that henceforth sex has no hold over them since they have become spiritual. Yet, it is a very sad and illusory spirituality which makes man believe that he is now immune to sin. A really spiritual person, on the contrary, depends entirely on the grace of God without giving up healthy vigilance. I believe that the closer one gets to the Lord, the more one realizes that what seemed innocent until then now takes on the appearance of something that is not entirely pure. However, far from being threatened or discouraged by this increasing desire for purity, one has more and more confidence in the Lord and greater humility when one thinks 6f how little one is virtuous. In true love there is no fear. This is so, it seems to me, in the case of one who wants to respond wholeheartedly, day after day, to the call of him who has made us pass from darkness to his wonderful light. In my humble opinion, it often takes many years of solitude to be able to experience a true spiritual friendship in Christ with members of the other sex. The danger is to believe too quickly that the right moment has come. That is often when one goes astray. As for any genuinely Christian life, celibacy cannot go without suffering. There is no real celibacy without the mystery of the cross written, as it were, in the flesh of baptized people. A celibacy without renunciation, without a sacrifice that is willingly accepted, a celibacy which refuses to die like the grain of wheat fallen in the soil is a celibacy locked up in solitude and bearing no lasting fruit. There are people who are undoubtedly privileged because of circum-stances and especially because of the Lord, but let us not be too quick to classify ourselves among those people and risk spoiling the splendid grace the Lord has given to us--the grace of living the celibacy of simple people without any special favors from God, I mean without any extraordinary grace. This simple gift, in fact, honors the Lord just as much as the extraordinary gift that some of us humans might receive from God. I don't mean to say that it is absolutely impossible for men or women religious to experience a healthy spiritual friendship with members of the other sex, but I believe that some of us think that we have attained that stage when we really haven't. Often, because of a lack of restraint or a lack of real self-knowledge, one strikes up a friendship which will tomorrrow become sinful, therefore, bad for oneself and for theirs. A friendship to which we are too attached, a friendship which prevents us from fulfilling our duties is a friendship to be "18 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 purified or, better still to be abandoned while there is time; that is, as soon as we become aware off where it is. leading, the relationship must be severed politely and without human respect. This is for the greater good of the person whom we love in Christ; finally, it is for the greater glory of the one who has called us to holiness, Jesus Christ. In the same way, a friendship which would render a member of a religious order incapable of being available to do what his superiors want 9f him is simply not good. It is for the Lord that we have joined religious life, not for the purpose of surrounding ourselves with protective partnerships which go against true charity. In,his infinite goodness, the Lord may put on our path a person of the other sex for a certain period of time. This, person will enrich us through, friendship, and this enrichment can be mutual. But, here again, this gracemust be lived in all simplicity and with the necessary prudence since we are all weak, sinful human beings. Hope for Africa ~ , Certain missionaries have led young Africans to believe that celibacy is more difficult for them than !t is for young people from the West. This opinion is based on ignorance or it is a lie. The fundamental problem, in fact, is the same for all human beings; the conditions that are found in any culture are not qualitatively different. In the final analysis, it is the same fundamental problem for different people in different cultures; there are accidental but no essential differences. I have sometimes been shocked to hear this type of broad statement according to which it would be practically impossible for Africans to live a life of celibacy. For me, celibacy is rooted in faith in the living Christ. It is something which permeates the faith of the one who feels called, and faith is something which is given by the Lord without any distinction of culture or race. There are differences, but they are not so essential that they make a life of celibacy impossible in AfriCa. There are enough African religious to show th~.t this is true. Among these meia and women of Africa, often living in some isolated areas, there are men and women religious who live their cbnsecration to the Lord even in heroic fashion. Their silent example is enough to prove that celibacy is possible for Africans, at least for those who feel themselves called to it and who respond generously. Not too long ago, 1 was telling a group of young Africans the following: either we are Christians or we are not; either we believe in Jesus Christ or we don't believe in him at all. In this area there are no half measures. It's all or nothing. This is why faith in Jesus Christ requries a complete transformation of our life-style and of our outlook. One of the aspects of our outlook on life which must change because it is absolutely against Christianity is this requirement of a fruitfulness that is exclusively biological. A man without children among us in black Africa is one who does not bear fruit, who is useless and even an outcast. If there is an obstacle to the awakening and living out of vocations (and I am talking here about voca-tions to the priesthood or religious life), it is our too limited way of looking at fruitfulness. Many Africans believe that a man cannot be completely fulfilled in or outside of marriage unless he has many children. Among us, celibate people and Celibacy in Africa married couples without children are not seen in a good light because they seem useless to our society. It may be understandable that some non-Christians think this way. But for Christians this is disastrous. Haven't we ever meditated on the life of Christ? Can we ignore that he was himself celibate? Or do we believe that Jesus was not a man like us except for sin? Yet our creed is very clear on this. Jesus was truly God and he was truly man. If such is the case, why wouldn't we allow those among us who wish to live like Christ to doso? If it be true that the face of being celibate did not diminish the God made man, why wouldn't we accept that a certain number among us are not diminished by celibacy for Jesus Christ and his kingdom? Has the world ever known a being as fully developed as Jesus of Nazareth, our Love? Yet, he was celibate. Isn't this Jesus who lived without a wife and children still, even today, a source of all life for us? One doesn't lose anything by responding to his call, by becoming celibate for him and for his kingdom where we shall all have only one Father, his own, and where all of us will truly be brothers and sisters in the Spirit who makes us one. The young African is thus called to live a life of faith in Christ. He must not think that celibacy is more difficult for him than for young people in other continents. This is simply not true. Let us take the example of the West where today may be found pornographic films, sex shops, nightclubs. To live in such a world is not always easy. It requires a certain self-discipline. In order to live a life of celibacy in such an atmosphere, it is necessary to cling to Jesus Christ, to have a deep life of prayer and to receive the Eucharist regularly. The young African man or woman called to religious life will always remember that we live in a world of male and female; consequently, it is clear that we have to live our celibacy in the midst of men and women of our times and of our culture. There is nothing wrong with that; on the contrary, it is a grace that the Lord gives us by inviting us to live out his gospel in the midst of the world and not in some isolated corner. At the crossroads the Lord may put on our path certain persons of the other sex. We will welcome them as brothers and sisters in the Lord. The gospel is full of examples that show us how Jesus respected persons of the other sex. He doesn't send away the sinful woman who comes to the house of Simon, the Pharisee to have her sins forgiven. On this occasion, Jesus could have been afraid of shocking people by receiving such a woman with open arms. But the Lord was not afraid of what people would say or think because in true love there is no fear. Neither does Jesus judge the woman caught in adultery like the Pharisees who bring her to him. On the contrary, he defends her against the "unmarked tombs" who have grown old in sin and yet want to preach to others. Jesus is close friends with Martha and Mary as well as with their brother, Lazarus. Jesus has pity on the widow from Naim who has lost her son. The Lord admires the Canaanite woman's faith, and he is exceedingly affectionate toward his mother Mary, the Immaculate Virgin. In his Gospel, the Lord shows us how his celibacy did not exclude anybody. He Was completely open; he welcomed others. In solitude he prayed and he was a 20 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 source of joy and peace for the people that God, his Father, had placed in his path. If religious life is to flourish in our African continent,it is necessary that there be more and more religious who witness by their life of celibacy. A celibacy based on Jesus Christ cannot but be fruitful. Black Africa, which has such a high regard for fruitfulness, will see a new type of love which outstrips in fruitfulness the love of the children of this world. We, the sons and daughters of Mother Africa, have believed in the word of him who said, "there are some who are eunuchs because they have made themselves so for the kingdom of heaven. Let him who can understand, understand" (Mt 19:!2). If there is a word which has become the life of our life, that is the one. Spiritual Fruitfulness If there is a fruitfulness that is biological, there is another one which is spiritual. Any parent worth his salt knows that it is' not enough to procreate children. In responsible parenthood, it is also necessary to help the child that we have brought to life to grow untilhe has reached a stage where he will truly be an adult. To educate, to instruct are part and parcel of his awakening to human life. It takes only one instant for a couple to initiate the process of procreation. It takes only a little time to call someone into existence, but it requries many years for a child to become an adult. Whether it be as parents, as educators, or in any other capacity, all those who are engaged in human formation are doing a type of work that is spiritually generative. Any man who helps another one grow and become more human is a man who is gpiritually generative. This spiritual generation exists at various levels; yet, the spiritual fruitfulness of a Christian is not that of a non-Christian. From a Christian point of view, any Christian man or woman who awakens another human being to the life of God in Jesus Christ is spiritually fruitful. The object of spiritual fruitfulness for a Christian is Jesus Christ and his message. It is the person of Christ which distinguishes any typically Christian fruitfulness from any other. All Christians are called to be fruitful but in different ways and in accordance with their state in life. The form of life of one who wakens to the life of God in Jesus Christ is not something that is accidental. There are some who believe that the way of life--whether it be of married Christians or of "eunuchs for the king-dom of God"---has no importance in the process of awakening to life. But when one awakens somebody else to life, one does it with all one's being. If our way of life is not something external to us but a part of our being and, therefore, a part of our relationship to God, to others, and to the world, we can readily understand that this life-style is not without importance in matters of spiritual fruitfulness. In his life Jesus preferred celibacy to marriage, and this choice is not something accidental. The Jesus of the gospels presents himself to us as celibate and not otherwise, and this is part of the mystery of incarnation. In the same way Jesus was not at the same time a man and a woman. He was not both married and non-mar-ried. He was a celibate, and tfiis fact has some relevance in the transmission of his Celibacy in Africa message. He wanted to be born of a virgin, Mary, and this also is not something purely accidental or accessory in the mystery of salvation. Thus one who chooses celib~acy for the kingdom of God is fruitful differently from married people. This difference is rooted in the order of being and not of having. It is an ontological reality and, therefore, it is a dimension surrounded with mystery. The spiritual fecundity of those who live in celibacy resembles closely that of Christ. In other words, the way that Christ was spiritually fruitful resembles the way in which a man is fruitful through a celibacy chosen for Christ. Obviously "to resemble" or "to be close to" is not the same thing as "to be identical to." Wherever a true local Church is to be found, there will be found also Christians who are married and Christians who are eunuchs for the kingdom. Each of these forms of life has a great importance in the aspect of fecundity which is essential for the life of the Church. The uniqueness of the spiritual fruitfulness of a celibate for the kingdom of heaven shares something of the mystery of God made man, of God who wanted to be among us without woman or child while being eternally generative. Death Song of a Grain of Wheat Born above the earth, Beloved of the sun, Sky-held. Rain-touched. Wind-taught to dance, I know I sang of joy. Borne beneath the ground, Forsaken by the sun, Sky-denied, Rain-forgot, I feel no more the winds, And know a slower song. Yet reach I for the sun-set fires And C~rr the hidden waters. Stretched, song-heavy with the wait ' Of days too long to measure, I learn to trust the darkness That consumes me: That sends my myriad children to be Born above the earth. Sister Linda Karas. RSM Mercy Consultation Center P.O. Box 370 Dallas, PA 18612 The Sparrow Has Found Its Home At Last: A Personal Account of Transfer Anonymous The author is a sister who transferred from an active to a contemplative community some several years ago. She explains in the article why she prefers to remain anonymous. The sharing which follows comes as the result of a suggestion made to me that I write about my experience of transfer from an active community to a contempla-tive order. My first response was a hasty and hearty "No." Then the possibility of helping any individual or community involved in a similar experience crept into my prayer and thinking. The good which might be achieved seemed to outweigh my natural reticence and my disinclinatio.n to discuss the subject. I have not taken any polls, nor have I statistics. I personally know exactly six solemnly professed nuns and a few people in formation who transferred from active to contemplative life. However, one would'have to have lived on a remote Pacific atoll for the last several years not to know that transfers are on the increase. What follows is not a scholarly analysis of the phenomenon of transfer. It is just my own experience and an endeavor to share what ! have learned. The reason for my choosing anonymity is that I might feel freer in what I write and also guard the identity of my former and present communities. There is another reason: the story is more God's than my own. The transfer, or more correctly, my contempla-tive vocation, is his work, his call, his idea. My part has only been a response to his initiative and to his love. Early History The idea of transfer did not come as a sudden inspiration. My first desire to be a nun came when ! was twelve and I was certain then that I was called to be a contemplative: I even knew to which order and monastery I was attracted. Some-thing, though, interfered with following this vocation: My father adamantly opposed the idea of his daughter being immured in a cloister. The whole topic was 22 A Personal Account of Transfer forbidden, and gradually I forgot the idea. In the meantime, I became acquainted wi~h the sisters working in our parish. I won my father's consent to join this :community which 1 genuinely loved and admired. I received a good fo, rmation and an excellent education. I was very happy and contented. One thing consistenly moved and drew me: prayer. Right from the beginning I had some difficulty with meditation books and their outline of points, colloquies and resolutions. It all seemed too ready-made. Also, the time given to this prayer (one-half hour) never seemed to satisfy my longing for greater intimacy and depth. My difficulty was remedied by the fact that God simply transcended the books and led me along his chosen path for me in prayer. Another remedy came by way of hiding alone in solitary places on the novitiate property. There God had free rein in my heart. The one thing I most wanted was to love him and see him known and loved. Of course I did try to speak of this desire to superiors. They seemed mbre concerned that I live the common life, practice virtue, and eliminate my faults. All this was quite understandable but not terribly encouraging. Matters came to a head when I became a junior sister. My desires for loving God alone and in hiddenness, and for a life which would embrace withdrawal and penance became a steady fire within me. Neither studies nor work could distract me from it. After some months of inner turmoil I finally had the courage to broach the subject of a contemplative vocation to the community confessor, a, retreat maste.r, and my immediate superior. None of these persons told me the whole thing was a temptation against my vocation, but since 1 was happy and well adjusted, they each felt that I had enough opportunity for the things I was seeking within the scope of the religious life as it was then being lived in the congregation. Again, this was essentially what I had been told in the novitiate. My disappoint-ment was as strong as the attraction I had experienced but l was able to set aside my yearning. The work in which I was engaged kept me busy. I enjoyed it and gave myself to it wholeheartedly. A few years later, an unforgettable retreat, coupled with God teaching me to pray with Scripture some months after retreat, gave direction and support to me in my relationship with him. He was so near, and daily he spoke to me in his word. This did not rekindle the desire for contemplative life~ but it did establish me firmly in the way of contemplative prayer. This brief history serves, I think, to underscore a fact in my life and in the lives of those women whose stories of transfer I know well: the vocation was felt very early and not taken too seriously by those in a position to advise and assist. Had they done so, a good deal of the suffering, struggle and turmoil of coming to a decision to transfer,after many years in an apostolic congregation might have been mitigated. . Coming to a Decision In the years following Vatican Council II my community undertook its renew-al and adaptation. I welcomed all the initial changes as healthy and hopeful. As time went on, however, I became unhappy with my own and the community's level 24 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 of secularization. My modest wardrobe and collection of trifling possessions troubled my conscience. I wanted and expected to receive annual assignments, but the new approach of applying for both position and residence, with the full expectation that one's preferences would be honored, contradi6ted my understand-ing of Gospel obedience. T.V., mixed drinks, popular novels, dating, and all the inevitable departures from religious life were matters of grave concern to me. It seemed to me that the true life of the community was ebbing away, that God and the love of God were no longer the focus of life. We still did a first-class job in our work, but there appeared to me~ little difference between ourselves and dedicated lay persons. Without going into more detail, I felt it necessary to include the foregoing inasmuch as it formed some of the background for my transfer. However, I do not feel that discontent and disapproval, even if justified, are good reasons for transfer. They would form a very shaky foundation for any new beginning and would surely raise questions in the community accepting a transfer sister. Flight from trouble could well indicate that the same pattern would be followed in the new community. It could also mean that the heart of the problem might be within the sister herself, and her response to difficult circumstances. Fleeing trouble was never part of my motivation. Had this been the case, I would have done it much sooner because I lived in painful community situations for several years before making a transfer. Furthermore, 1 was always very open and honest in communicating my thinking to my superiors. One cannot simply leave. There must be integrity in the decision and it should be made in peace and, as far as possible, in harmony with one's higher superiors. There should be no bitterness, resentment or anger. The vocation is followed as God's call and is a result of his initiative. This fact, if kept central in the minds of all concerned, makes for peace; and it is in this way that God's presence manifests itself to all involved. God uses all our experiences to our good and brings about his purposes. While not my motivation, discontent and disapproval were part of my personal expe-rience and did serve to keep me from what I saw as wrong, In a more positive vein, they ,kept me praying for God's light, strength and help. Certain tragic events in my own family also form a part of this picture and had their effect. Instead of completely discouraging me or leading me to despair or exodus from religious life altogether, everything brought me to the God of all peace and consolation. He alone became myRock of Refuge and Teacher. The alienation I experienced from my community and its value increased my love for him and my trust in him. Thus it was that my attraction for simply being with God in love grew stronger. A mere "concidence" (in quotation marks because the providence of the God who numbers the hairs of our fieads extends to every circumstance and happen-ing) occasioned my writing to the superior of a monastery. In time we became correspondents. When I first visited her and met her community in the grilled and bare parlor of the monastery I was deeply moved. This surprised me. I had not thought of contemplative life as my vocation for years, yet here 1 was, feeling completely at home with relative strangers and very strongly drawn to their sim- A Personal Account of Transfer / 25 plicity, humility, joy, peace and poverty. In the months that followed 1 was haunted by the experience. I found out more about their life and read of their origin. Could it be? Might 1 become one of them? Or was this merely a desire for escape from present suffering ("the grass is always greener.") or a dream too good to be true? Then, too, there was the possibility to be faced that God was calling me to deeper contemplative prayer rather than actual contemplative life. And might I be doing more good in the world outside a cloister rather than in it? I went through this inner and secret turmoil for several months. All the while 1 begged for light and some discernible, positive direction from God. 1 kept waiting and hoping for some outside confirmation of God's will. God was, in fact, giving me all the "signs" I needed, but I distrusted the most significant of them: the profound attraction the life held for me over the years and especially at that moment, the fact that it fulfilled the most unselfish aspirations of my heart, and the fact that I seemed to have the requisite "talents." How is it we so readily distrust our own intuition and heart? Yet here at the deepest level of our being is where God works. Again, I have heard the same experience related by others who transferred to contemplative life. 1 went through no particular "process" of dis-cernment. There was just myself and, I trust, the Holy Spirit, plenty of tears, prayer, and searing, soul-searching honesty. One thing 1 knew: my life had one purpose and that was to love God with all my heart and soul, mind and being and to tend solely to him. Nothing else mattered. I did not see it then as clearly as I do now, but that, too, was evidence of a contemplative vocation, and had been the most important reality in my whole religious life. In his own time, God spoke, and he completely calmed the storm. I came to a "peace surpassing understanding." All my doubts vanished. My questions came to an end. I knew. In light of that peace I first asked the superior of the monastery (of the same order as that to which I was first attracted at the age of twelve) if there were any possibility of her accepting me. At the time I made my request I know now I was too little aware of the risk a small enclosed community takes in accepting a transfer. 1 next confided in my old and saintly grandmother who gave me her blessing, encouragement and wisdom--along with a warning that there was "still plenty of the world" in me and that I'd have far to go. She was absolutely correct. With my grandmother's prayers to back me, I approached my major superior. She was wonderful and accepting. The depth of my peace and conviction were evident to her. She fully realized and agreed.that this was a genuine vocation and not a result of any differences of values or opinions. We communicated in a real spirit of love. Not knowing much about contemplative life, her concern was that my personality might be stifled or my gifts ignored and unused. 1 had tentatively broached the subject to a priest friend in a letter some weeks before. Visiting him, 1 told him the whole story and said that I really thought it was God's will for me to transfer. He informed me that it came as no surprise to him, that he had seen it coming but had not wanted in any way to interfere with God's guidance of me. Among my family and friends, the least suprised was my mother. Her intuition had led her to realize that a great change was in the offing. 96 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 The responses of all the above mentioned persons further confirmed my expe-rience. I cannot say that my decision was accepted or understood by all my friends and religious family. It caused some painful estrangements and there were those who could only accept it as my "thing" and therefore all right for me. The actual process of transfer was thus initiated after what had felt like an interminable period of waiting and praying. Perhaps God wanted me to realize that it was first necessary that I be utterly surrendered to his desires and that the only way he could achieve this was to let me struggle on "alone" during that time. It was a kind of game of love. He so deeply drew me but never let me fully reach him. Left to myself 1 could not believe in my own heart. It was not until he gave me that unmistakable sign and gift of peace that 1 was sure that what I had been experiencing in my own heart was indeed his will for me, that the two were not two, but one. Legal Process of Transfer Because 1 am rather sure questions about procedure will arise, it may be helpful here to tell what 1 know about getting the document known as a "Rescript of Transfer" from the Sacred Congregation for Religious. In my own case this was done in the last months of my postulancy immediately prior to my receiving the habit and commencing my canonical year. For the validity of novitiate, one must have this document. Ordinarily the Vicar for Religious of the diocese in which the monastery is located handles the paperwork. He directed that three letters be written: the first by the superior of the community ! was leaving expressing her approval and her willingness to receive me back at any time before solemn vows should I leave the monastery; the second by the superior receiving me stating her willingness to receive me and including pertinent data regarding my status in religion (name, age, years professed, community of origin); the third by myself. handwritten and addressed to the Pope, stating my request and my reasons for it. These letters are sent to the Vicar who forwards them to.Rome through his office. In approximately six weeks, upon receipt of the rescript, he sends copies to the superiors. This is, as ! understand it, the general procedure, although I have heard of it being done through the Vicar of the diocese which the transferring sister was leaving. I have also heard of cases handled by a major superior independently of the Vicar for Religious. The superior dealt directly with the Sacred Congregation for Religious. In any case, this rescript is the only permission one needs to begin the canonical year and proceed through formation to vows. New Beginning I entered upon my new life with certain expectations. Some were realistic and some not so realistic. It was realistic to expect some sense of dbjb vu. This was in many ways a return to customs and practices l had lived in my first several years of religious life. With these things I was at home. I had also rightly anticipated a warm community life. Of course 1 allowed for a period of adjustment, but I did not A Personal Account of Transfer expect it to last more than six to eight weeks, in fact, it took much longer than that. The reason was not that I was too old to learn or change or that 1 lacked a willing docility. It was more subtle than this. Without realizing it, I expected to enter upon a period of rest, a sort of honeymoon in a safe harbor after years of struggle and sorrow. This was not to be. For one thing, the monastic community I entered was going through its own renewal pains. And much worse, for me, was that when I came in the front door of the monastery it seemed that God left by the back door. Here 1 was at last, and where was he? The work tired me. The hard bed took some getting used to. Often it was impossible to get back to sleep once it had been broken by the Office or night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Sometimes the closeness of my neighbors irritated me beyond measure. There were no days off from routine. I expected to master everything easily but it turned out that I was the one to be mastered. After many years in religious life it amazed me to learn how deluded I was about myself. Without the distractions of apostolic work and all that goes with it, without useless conversation, reading and entertainment, God's light began to clarify my vision. The very starkness of the life, its purity, makes for this experience. I was face to face with myself, my weakness, my poverty. Anything is possible if God is tangibly supporting us. It is when he is appar-ently nowhere to be found that things get out of hand and we are unable to cope with the simplest and most normal inconveniences and trials of daily life. But ought not a contemplative be able always to find refuge in prayer? Self-made prayer is most unsatisfactory. What a contemplative learns by being unable to pray, by being reduced to utter poverty at every level of existence (and this was my experience) is just to cling in naked faith to Jesus Crucified. Paradoxical as it may sound, there is no greater happiness. Having come to this reality through suffering, both in my life before 1 entered the monastery and in the years 1 have been here, I know something of what it means to say with Paul that I have been crucified with Christ, that my life is not my own and Christ lives in me (Ga 2:19-20). The way to the deepest joy I have ever known is just as the Son of God has taught us and that way is by losing my life and denying my very self. The total experience of knowing myself as nothing, of having nothing, has opened my eyes in faith to the All within me, the Being who in unfathomable love calls non-being into union with himself. My love for God, my hunger for him, unites me at the Heart of Reality with all my brothers and sisters in this world. I do not live for myself, nor suffer for myself, nor weep for myself. My vocati6n embraces every person on earth. In their names 1 pray and work. In their names, I, too, am in misery and pain. I am a whole world calling to God in need, in love, in trust. 1 have entered eternity in time and within me there is infinite scope for love. I came because of love and I have stayed because of love. Surely it is "a narrow gate and a hard road" (Mt 7:13-14), but it "leads to life," life opening more and more into the mystery of God as love. The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction Barbara Armstrong, O.SS.R. This article had its origin in a presentation made to a group of retreat masters by Sister Barbara, a cloistered nun residing in the Redemptoristine Monastery; Liguori. MO 63057. Somewhere in her writings, the great St. Teresa compares the contemplative with the standard-bearer in battle. She says that, because he is the standard-bearer, he is exposed to great danger. He can't defend himself because he carries the standard, of which he must not let go--even if he is to be cut to pieces. "Contemplatives," she says, "have to bear aloft the sign of humility, the Cross. And they must suffer all the blows aimed at them without striking back. Their duty is to suffer as Jesus did." "Let them watch what they are doing," she says again, "for if they let the standard fall, the battle is lost." It isn't the standard-bearer who is important. It is the standard itself which is all important, for it is imprinted with the sign of our salvation: the Cross. Perhaps this is why there are so few contemplatives. Perhaps, too, this is why contempla-tives need all the help they can get just to respond fully to the call of their vocation, to persevere and become fruitful in the Church of today. You Have No Eyes to See The message sent to the Church in Laodicea, in the Book of Revelation, is also a message meant for contemplatives--and for those who guide them. Right after the familiar passage about lukewarmness, we hear the Lord say: "You have no eyes to see that you are wretched, pitiable, poverty-stricken, blind and naked. My advice to you is to buy from me that gold which is purified in the furnace, so that you may be rich, and white garments to wear so that you may hide the shame of your nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes to make you see." That phrase, "You have no eyes to see," is significant for us because ignorance The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction is one of the reasons why relatively few contemplatives ever attain the end for which they were called: union with God. Mystical graces, we are told, are always available. God's goodness and generosity are never lacking. But very few actually arrive at a state of contemplation. Why is this? To answer this question, I would like to tell you a story. Actually, it is a parable which is told in the book of a Carmelite nun, Sister Ruth Burrows. Here is her parable. A Love Story Hidden away in a valley surrounded by high mountains there lived a very primitive tribe. The people of this tribe knew very little of the world outside their valley. Occasionally, they would get a glimpse of a jet streaking across the sky far over their heads, and this, they thought, was one of the gods throwing spears at another. One day a man appeared in the valley, a young anthropologist. He had come to study the tribe at close quarters--if they would have him. But they were a gentle tribe, so they welcomed him. The young man was lodged in the chief's hut and lived there for some years. Eventually he fell in love with the chief's daughter and married her. Hitherto, the girl had thought herself wealthy. Was not her father the most powerful of their people? But the closer she grew to her beloved, the more she saw that her riches--the family cattle, some cooking pots and animal skins--were as nothing compared to the possessions that were her husband's. He had materials, leathers and machines, knives and matches to make fire--riches unimaginable. But the girl saw, too, that her husband's greatest delight was to share his riches with her. Her lack merely aroused his bounty, so she knew her poverty itself primarily as a richness, giving them both pleasure. There came a time when the anthropologist had to leave and, taking his wife with him, he returned to his own civilization. The native girl found this new environment terribly alien. She discovered, to her horror, that her husband's enemies laughed at him behind his back because of his primitive wife. Even his friends pitied him. She didn't know what to do with this bitter knowledge. Some-how she had brought disgrace on her loved one. The girl always knew that her husband loved her. She knew that he longed to share his heart with her, take her completely into his life. But when he tried to speak of so many things closest to him, she would notice his voice falter, for she could not follow even the meaning of his words, let alone the scope of his thoughts and concepts. She was shut off from him by her own limitation and ignorance. That caused her distress almost beyond bearing. The more she realized what her poverty cost her beloved, the more absolute became her will to escape from it for his sake. Equally the more clearly did she see that, of herself, there was no escape. But all was not lost because she also realized that in her husband she had come not only to understand her poverty, but to find an effective and everpresent escape from it. From him she could receive all that his Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 love had prepared for her. So she opened her heart to everything he had to offer her. She found in him the most loving of teachers. Soon she became the echo of his thought. There passed between them intimate glances of complete understanding. She had an intuitive knowledge of how his mind worked, so closely did she grow to him. Yet she bad lost nothing of that natural woman he had first loved. On the contrary, she only now realized her own innate capacity. Her enrichment had brought all that was already there to bloom. But now, more than ever, she knew, too, that this was all his doing. Every perception, every growth, had come from his love and his teaching. Genuine Contemplatives This story, lengthy though it be, brings out so many important points about the contemplative vocation. Years ago, maybe it's different now, one of the phrases we often heard was that "we should strive for perfection." This tended to make us think that we could do it all ourselves. The main idea seemed to be that we were in control of our lives. The success of things depended on our own efforts. And so, many of us thought we could become contemplatives by the things we did. Like the primitive tribe of our story living in their valley, though, our horizons were very limited. We were content with our regulated existence, our own personal riches and the consolations sent us from time to time by a loving God. Much confid~nce was attached to the good things of our little enclosed world. We had no eyes to see beyond our then present peaceful life. But since we are meant to be genuine contemplatives, Jesus began to break through our ignorance and complacency. He asked us to leave our valley of poverty. He invited us to a rich interior world, one we had never dreamed of. These invitations continue to be offered to us in many ways. Perhaps they come in a retreat, in a sermon, in our reading, or through the words of a friend. But the voice is the voice of Jesus, and he invites us over and over again. If the primitive tribe in our story had turned away the young anthropologist when he came among them, he would never have married the chief's daughter. She would never have learned about the larger world; she would have stayed in her ignorance. Think of all the beauty, rich, ness and love of which she would have been deprived. The great St: Teresa was satisfied for a long time with her routine religious exercises, even though in her heart she knew better. We read that she continued to live just over twenty ,years with her heart divided between two extremes: the pleasures, satisfactions and pastimes of her fashionable world, and the spiritual life of a contemplative. How can this happen? How can we contemplatives continue to fool ourselves ---even though we are continually prodded, continually touched by grace? One of the ways we contemplatives have of staying in our valley of poverty is by our attachment to .the Law. We can" fall prey to a sort of fanatical legalism. The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction Most often, it seems, it is the most pious of persons who become rigid and unbending formalists. "Here at last," we say, "is something solid to hang on to." In our own eyes we are in the right. "We are doers of the Law." Any ,doer of the law, however, will also be tempted to live by the law, whereas the true lover of Jesus lives by the spirit. We contemplatives tend to make the Law, and it alone, our security. We never even dream that it is possible to seek a perfection in anything whatever with an intensity of zeal that is in itself imperfect. For instance, often in the past, the cross, austerity, suffering was unthinkingly perverted by us in our zeal. Wehad the idea that, since we were only pleasing God when we were suffering, the more suffering the better. Fearing and hating our bodies, we thought, would make us spiritual people. This, together with the notion that we were redeemed by suffering since Jesus died for us, we pushed .to its logical conclusion, thinking that we could never have too much suffering. It wasn't suffer-ing that redeemed us. It was love.t We contemplatives can develop attachments to just about anything: to prayer and fasting for their own sake; to a pious practice or devotion; to a custom or system of spirituality; to a method of meditation, even to contemplation itself (or to what we think is contemplation.) We can become attached to virtues, to things that, in themselves, are marks of heroism and high sanctity. We religious men and women, called to be saints, can allow ourselves to be blinded by an inordinate love for such things and can remain just as much in darkness and error as those who seem far less perfect than we. Some of us can become gluttons for prayer and for silence and solitude. Silence can become an ultimate. When there is noise we become angry and rebel-lious. If we are required to set aside our solitude for the sake of charity, we fill the air with our complaints. This kind of solitude and silence is false, of course, a refuge for the individualist. Perhaps the deepest attachment of all, the one which keeps us in our valley of poverty the longest, is attachment to ourselves. On this we must keep a fingerhold; we just cannot let go. Self-respect, self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction--we have to look good in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. We worry.about failure because somehow we are not living up to the expectations we have set for our-selves. Only secondly do we consider the expectations of God. In our story the chief's daughter found that her lack aroused her husband's bounty. She knew her poverty primarily as a sweet thing. But covetous as we are, we contemplatives want our hands full. We must have something of our own which we can bestow on God; or at least hold out to him, thinking to win him over with our generosity. When Jesus Touches Us Sooner or later we begin to realize that this way of living does not work; we begin to see that relying on ourselves alone is doomed to failure. When Jesus touches us with his mystical graces, what happens? Our eyes are opened and we are Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 dissatisfied with everything. This overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction could very well be Jesus' most precious gift of all. But it does not seem so to us~ We look within and discover the same faults and vices we have always been burdened with. Prayer has become almost unbearable. Spiritual things in general lose their familiarity and joy. Panic deepens. Life seems turned upside down and inside out. Above all this, the knowl-edge that we have failed the Lord, that we have dropped the standard, that the battle is being lost--this is our deepest sorrow. But although all seems lost, what we experience in reality is the finding of our true life in Jesus. Like our primitivegirl, we, too, begin to realize, at last, that only in Jesus will we find our ever present redemption from our dreaded poverty. Retreat masters, spiritual directors and confessors will do us the greatest favor if they direct their efforts toward instilling in us an abiding trust in the all-loving Providence of God and in the saving life of Jesus. They should help us to mistrust ourselves and to surrender ourselves into His hands. They should teach us to cling to him no matter how dark things seem to be, teach us to have faith in his love and in his forgiveness no matter what we think we have done; no matter how we think we have failed. Signs of Progress What are the signs by which spiritual directors may gauge for certain real progress in contemplatives? Some of the outward manifestations of an inward mystical encounter or of infused contemplation might be the following: We contemplatives might describe to directors an experience of a deep and painful knowledge of ourselves, for we begin to see ourselves as we truly are. We may say that all our illusions are b~ing shattered, especially our illusions of self-importance. We may tell them that all our cherished ambitions are unmasked for the first time, or that we feel our dignity has been overthrown. We will, perhaps, tell them that we are lost; that we are not sure any more if we are leading dedicated lives at all. We exper!ence a growing sense of insecurity. At the same time, strange as it may seem, we experience at~ acceptance of this state. As our native girl found when she op~ned her heart to everything her husband had to offer her, so we contemplatives begin to see everything in a different light. Our lives of austerity, our efforts at mortification will acquire a deeper significance. We understand that as God is our life, we must let nothing take the edge off our need for him. This is a new way of living out our hunger and thirst, our refusing to be satisfied. We are consenting to have no security and no other satisfaction but God; a God who is unseen and unfelt. So near is he and so awesome, that unless we say "Yes" to him all the time, and accept life as he gives it, we must return to our valley of poverty. The temptation to turn back can be overwhelming. But it is also true that we are given a powerful strength at this time, enabling us to persevere. All this, of course, is an effect of Jesus' lox;e for us. We remember, indeed we cannot for a The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction moment forget, that any enrichment in us is all his doing. Still, this is a time of great struggle and temptation. Perhaps the greatest temptation will be to abandon prayer or at least to try to escape, in some way, the grievous suffering of a deep emptiness and poverty within. This empty prayer, however, has tremendous importance. If we consent to wait humbly for the Lord, we will, all unknowingly, find that it is precisely in this arid waste that Jesus is touching us. At this juncture, the contemplative might tell the director of an experience of being literally undone and remade, for there are no half measures any longer. What is really happening is that our faith is being deepened all the time. A sure sign that we contemplatives have not made progress will be precisely the certainty that we have! Alternatively another certain sign of growth might be the gradual disappearance of a tendency to criticize and find fault. There appears instead, a more gentle outlook; a kinder and more compassionate approach, thanks be to God. Love: Human and Divine Love has been our theme all the way through. But now I would like to be a li'ttle more specific about love, I mean the place of both human and divine love in the contemplative life. I think we will all agree that human affection is probably the most sweeping emotion in us. So, from the outset, we need to keep these two loves, the human and the divine, in order, lest the human sweep us off the foundation of the divine. To feel attraction for another, of course, is not wrong. Yet, for some of us, it can and does become a .dangerous thing. We fear to admit our feelings and to accept them, for the very difficulty in doing so can pose a thousand problems for us. At the same time, we know that this is the only healthy approach. It means we are accepting our sexuality and womanliness. I wonder if any of us ever fully grasps what a block to God's transforming action lies in the refusal to face up to and integrate our sexuality, and live it out continently for the glory of God? The Carmelite, Sr. Ruth Burrows states: "Being sexual means basically that 1 am a half and. not a whole. I am incomplete as I am and I tend, unconsciously, always to seek my other half, even though consciously, ! have renounced my right to marry and have children and be made whole by another. But grace does not work fully in a half person, so I struggle to love purely though it be through a great deal of suffering, because Jesus has promised to fill my emptiness with himself and so take away the ache of loneliness. If I am to become whole it will be in him and I must live in the hope of becoming whole in him and in him alone." The greatest danger is that we will try to get rid of the pain. We will even deny that these desires and attractions exist because they do not fit our stereotypic image of "the holy nun for whom God is enough." When we deny these feelings, the temptation will be to seek compensation for what we have given up. Frustrated longing comes to the surface sooner or later. It shows itself in outward behavior 3tl / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 such as domination of others, maternalism (or paternalism), or a passive or child-ish dependence. Who hasn't encountered these types in religious life? There are the old maids or bachelors. They will avoid personal involvements of every kind. In the name of holy recollection, they "keep their hearts for God alone." They are afraid to make friends and so they play it safe. Then there are the frustrated wives and mothers--and we might add, frus-trated fathers. These have never faced up to the truth of their feelings and desires. So they live on compensations instead of on God. They use their friends selfishly, looking for gratification from them. They dominate.and control other lives for their own ends, thinking all the while that this is "holy freedom" and "human fulfillment." To get back to us women: a woman, by nature, is meant to be selfless, receptive, wholly intent on giving and loving, that others 'might become them-selves. But when we see so many religious women leave their institutes these days, giving up their vocation and going back to secular life, we're not judging them when we ask, "Could it be that they did not get the help they needed in this problem of love?" Perhaps they found no one to understand their problem. Was there anyone to whom they could have gone for guidance amid these conflicting feelings, desires and attractions? I think we all need to know that it's alright to feel attraction and affection for others, especially for those of the opposite sex. I think we need to hear again and again that the feeling of attraction is only one side of love; that it may lead to love but that it is not itself real love but only a feeling. And like any feeling, it will not last thus forever. In the meantime, the tension in which we are caught, between our desires for exclusive love and our commitment to universal love, needs some level-headed self-control. We need someone to encourage us tO effort, watchful-ness and patience, humility and trust in divine grace. The struggle will teach us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature. There is no doubt that we will grow from this struggle, which with God's help will become creative. We will learn to grow up, to take total responsibility for our own lives, their choices and decisions. And we will allow no one and nothing to turn us away from the principles by which we wish to live. The ultimate answer is found only when Jesus is re'peatedly placed before us as the object of our whole desire, and when, by repeated redirection, we are gradually transformed into him. Viva Memoria Finally, there comes a time when the interior rending apart, the anxiety, the sense of terrible absence are no more. The mysteries of Jesus, previously seen as the imitation of Christ giving the external principles by'which we were guided, now become our own mysteries, and we live progressively the life of Jesus; we become literally living memories. All that happens to the "personal me" begins to give joyful insight into the knowledge of Jesus himself. ~ Our venerable foundress, Mother Mary Celeste, has something to tell us about The Needs of Contemplatives in Direction this mystical state of contemplation. In her prayer our Lord speaks to her in these words which she passes on to us: "My spouse, abandon your own free will, your willing and your not willing, and leave all to my Divine Providence and my disposal. Make yourself an echo of my Willing. And if I say to you in my good pleasure: 'A cross,' then in your willing, will the cross. And if I say: 'Humiliation and contempt,' then be my echo and say, 'contempt.' And if I say: 'Kiss me with the kiss of sweet union,' then give me the most sweet echo of love and kiss me. It is in this way that you have no other desire or will than the absolute movement of my Will. Thus while you live, I, too, live as if I alone were alive in your very being, a.nd not you yourself." As with the happy couple in our love story, so it is with us: There begins the passing of those intimate glances of complete spiritual understanding. We might say that our whole occupation is love, or that prayer is our life. Either statement would be equally true. Then there is an awareness of deep contentment. That doesn't mean that growth isn't possible. In fact, it has to happen. The surrender becomes deeper and deeper, letting God do everything, totally sure that he will do so. And so ours becomes a life of deeper and deeper trust. We might end this as we began by saying, once again in the words of Sister Ruth Burrows, "Holiness in the contemplative is not a greatness but a total acceptance of human lowliness and total surrender of it to God in trust." Desert--After Fire Twisted; tortured, Bare black This land. Seared, scarred, What remnants remain. Evening whispers, "All is lost." Night mantles dark Deeper than ever touched This fire-scorched earth before. This land will heal. Soft spring rain Will sift tl~rough ashes. Bring new life to seed Concealed beneath the crusted earth. The cross is fire too And bare its wood Which must be aflame Before the Paschal morning dawns To heal and renew. Sister Miriam John, R.G.S. Patterdell 1820 W. Northern Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85021 Indwelling Prayer: Centering in God, Self, Others David J. Hassel, S.J. This article~ is a chapter from a book, Radical Prayer, which Father Hassel hopes soon to publish. An earlier article, "The Feel of Apostolic Contemplation-in-Action," appeared in the issue of May, 198 I. Father continues to reside at Loyola University of Chicago; 6525 North Sheridan Rd.; Chicago, IL 60626. The most radical of all types of prayer may well be indwelling prayer, for its quiet power pulses the movements of all other types of prayer. Indeed, the praying person, carried along by the seeming passivity of indwelling prayer, drifts closer and closer to the inmost self where the~ majestic God waits to welcome him or her warmly. In the attempt to delineate this deepest prayer, the reader's familiarity with various forms of more active prayer will be used as contrasting background for recognizing and appreciating more passive prayer. Some of these more active types of prayer would be: 1) problematic prayer wherein one reviews personal problems with the Lord while expressing various needs arising from them (e.g., peace in a troubled mar-riage, a job sought in the midst of a depressed economy, success in collegiate studies, mental health for a troubled daughter, good weather for the tourist season); 2) insight prayer (meditation): seeing the spiritual meaning of, e.g., a gospel event, a striking sentence in a saint's biography, a friend's casual but penetrating remark, a shocking event witnessed by chance; 3) spaced vocalprayer in which one spaces out the words of a favorite vocal tThe comments of James F. Maguire, S.J., of Edmund Fortman, S.J., and of Mary Ann Hoope, B.V.M., were especially incisive in revising this article for publication. 36 Indwelling Prayer / 37 prayer like the Our Father in order to discover and to reflect upon the fuller meaning of each phrase; 4) gospel contemplative prayer: seeing, hearing, feeling the gospel event as it unfolds in one's imagination; introducing oneself imaginatively into the scene as a friend of the apostles, as a servant girl, as a sick shepherd; 5) petitionary prayer: asking for God's help, e.g., to bring this person back to church, to relieve this person's mental agony, to be able to handle this court case well; 6) liturgicalprayer: the community finding God together in the sacred event of Eucharist, baptism, marriage, anointing of sick, reconciliation of sinners, and so on; 7) affective prayer: wherein feelings of hope, love, fear, anger, and desire (for God, for various virtues for saving situations, for the saints and for friends) operate. These are, of course, not ~all the forms of more active prayer, but they serve to illustrate the meaning of the term more active prayer for our purposes here. Familiarity with these types of more active prayer will later enable one to recognize, by experiential contrast, more passive prayer, and, hence, indwelling ;prayer, the probable source of all types of more passive prayer. Consequently, our first task is not to define abstractly more active prayer against more passive prayer, but instead, to get the "feel" of each by contrasting their diverse types of presence to God, self, and the world. This demands that, in ~/second step, we explore the experience of "presence" and ~ote the paradoxes arising in the presence constitut-ing more passive prayer. Thirdly, we will investigate whether more active and more passive prayer cancel out or nourish each other. In a fourth step, we note how those entering into more passive types of prayer, often undergo the discouraging feeling of prayerlessness, a purifying experience which paradoxically leads into awareness of the indwelling prayer underlying the more passive forms of prayer. At this point, we are finally ready to enter the life-rhythms of indwelling prayer and to search out the ways of doing this trinitarian prayer at the center of our being. Here, too, it should become clear why trinitarian prayer could be the presence underlying all types of prayer. For it reveals death and resurrection at new depths in our being. But for the present let us begin to deal with the diverse presences of more active and more passive prayer. The Diverse Presences of More Active and More Passive Prayer To distinguish more active prayer from more passive prayer is not to abandon one for the other, not to put a premium on one over the other, nor to deny their need of each other. But it is to see how they promote each other and to note how more passive types of prayer are rooted in indwelling prayer. Here definitions can mean nothing if they do not touch our prayer experience, or if they are ambiguous enough to bag together all types of prayer indiscriminately. Therefore we must distinguish these different types of prayer by describing the diverse experiences in which they occur. Let us begin such a process by first trying to discover the root of 311 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 more active prayer. Seven types (among many) of more active prayer were mentioned earlier. Actually all types of more active prayer seem to burgeon out of a single root, a "stretching out to the Lord." What is this stretch? It may well be an attitude towards others which the average good person has. To illustrate this, answer the following questions, and notice what you discover within yourself: i) Why not sleep later than usual today?--Suppose you do inconvenience some people like those in the car pool, like the spouse waiting at the breakfast table, like the other workers in the ,office or at the assembly line, like the students in the classroom? 2) Why pay attention at breakfast to the kids'chatter and the spouse's com-plaints about the leaking roof when the morning paper would be so much more interesting? 3) Why get to work a little bit early in order to get the jump on things so that the day goes better for everyone? 'Why not let others worry about the day? 4) Why help out at this or that emergency when you've got your own job to get done, too? Why not tell them to do the best they can without you since you're busy? 5) Why break off a lively lunch conversation to answer a telephone call or to listen to Henry's usual request for a loan to tide him over the weekend? 6) Why use your midafternoon break for correcting Jenny's letter to the man-ager protesting his failure to put her in charge of the secretary pool? 7) Why correct the kids at the dinner table when it's so much eas'ier to let things go and pretend you didn't see or hear it? 8) When you're dead tired and comfortably waiting for the T.V. news to come on or when you are just starting to relax with a little hi-fi music, why agree to hear the spelling lesson or arbitrate the latest argument betw, een the ten year old and the eleven year oM? 9) Why end and start your day with prayer at the tioes you're most tired? And why go to early Mass on your golf or hairdresser's day and also on Sunday, the only times you can sleep in? In other words, why keep stretching, stretching, stretching through the day unless there is a person waiting at the end of the stretching~ unless there is the Christ or the Father or the Spirit? This refusal to protect yourself from others and from God is a mysterious attitude.'Could it pbssibly be the lure of your vocation, the strength of your friendship with Christ (and therefore with his people, your people)? Could this attitude even be the taproot of 'all the types of more active prayer in your life? Could it even be the basic source of your contentment with life underneath all its irritations, failures, missed opportunities, and dashed hopes? Of course, this "stretch" attitude underlying more active prayer is. buried within one's consciousness and so it can be discovered only through the type of question-ing just completed. Yet is there riot some single directing lure running like'a golden thread through the "stretch" of the day to gi~,e direction and meaning to one's life? Indwelling Prayer And does this thread not lead eventually to the attractive Christ who alone makes fitting sense out of one's life? How can a person stretch out to all the needy unless first God is stretching out to him or her? .Here active prayer is seen as presence to the world and its needs--a presence inspired by Christ's appealing call. It would seem, then, that we may have tapped the root of more active prayer and are now ready to find the source of more passive prayer. More. passive prayer is often defined as a resting in God or a quiet'alertness to God and to others. Thomas Green describes it as "floating freely in th~ sea of God," as allowing God to direct oneself wherever he wills.2 In common with more active prayer, it is a refusal to protect oneself, it is an availability to God and to others. This common element,,hints at a deeper experience underlying both more active and more passive prayer and uniting them. And yet these two types of. prayers are quite different .since more passive prayer is often like a sinking into one's inner depths to find God; while more active prayer is a stretching out to others and to God in others. Even when more passive prayer is awareness of a God-vibrancy in clouds, trees, animals, and people's faces, voices, gestures, it nevertheless is more a stirring in the depths of one's being than a reaching out to touch. Even when one becomes aware of God somehow speaking and acting through the other person, passive prayer is more an alertness within one's own being than the message in the other's'action. Indeed, more passive prayer is, for the most part, careful listening, long waiting, occasionally a soundless crying out to God in his seeming absence. At other times, it is. allowing the Spirit to pray in me to the Father without my having any control; it is letting Jesus invade me totally,in my powerlessness and then .experiencing the resultant clash of fear and gladness within me. , ~ As more passive prayer progresses in the person, it can distill into a simple presenting of the self to the Lord. It is merely a "wanting to be with God" which is often intensified by Eucharistic presence. It is a wordless, thoughtless, imageless facing to .God. It is almost pure presence at the deepest level of experience; while in the upper levels of experience one can be .simultaneously aware of pain in one's posture, of distracting thoughts and images, of feelings of fatigue or elation. But the latter appear negligible compared to the facing of God. Here the praying person is facir~g not only God but also the mystery of presence itself. Perhaps the feeling and meaning of presence hold the key to understanding more passive prayer~ The Experience of Presence: Its Paradoxes in More Passive Prayer What is the "feel" of presence for us? It can be the invigorating experience of knowing that one's father and mother are listening proudly during one's piano 2Thomas H. Green, S.J., When the Well Runs Dr), (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1978), p. 150. Just as this book is ekcellent for its descriptions of more passive prayer, so his Opening to God (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1977) describes well more active prayer and delineates simply and directly the basic principles of beginners' prayer. tll~ / Review for Relig!ous, Jan.-Feb., 1982 recital~ or watching eagerly from the basketball grandstands for one's next basket. It can also be the sense of depletion, of sinking heart, when one sees the "enemy" coming into the room, hostile and even malevolent, to observe one's expected failure. Presence can be a sustaining strength in the hospital room. No need for words or for the busy alleviating of pain, just the steady touch of being there. Presence is an enriching moment when the vast anonymity of the great airport terminal'is shattered by a familiar voice calling one's name. Sometimes "absence" can sharpen one's awareness of what presence is. One observes two people talking to each other but neither listening, each waiting impatiently for his or her turn to speak. Absence can be the "freeze" where two people working side-by-side in a bakery or in an office, condemn each other heartily and render the eight-hour day coldly miserable for each other. The politi-cal handshake can be an insult when the state's leader has shaken three hands while still talking to the first hand. Here absence hardly makes the heart grow fonder. Presence, at times, seems to grow without any effort on one's part. Old friends go to the concert together. As soon as the music begins, they~are rapt and seem-ingly totally oblivious to the other. But neither would consider for a moment going to the concert alone. Underneath the silent raptness, their friendship continues to grow quietly--a conclusion proven by a new depth of sharing as they return home amid slow, mulling conversation. Not rarely three friends hike the mountain trails for six to eight hours with only an occasional word and: an almost silent midday lunch. Yet the enjoyment of each other is intense and, underneath the quiet calm, intimacy grows. It would seem that the beauty of music and nature mysteriously sensitizes each person to the other instead of distracting each from the other. This sense of the other's person deepens over the years; familiarity does not always breed co.ntempt. The tight-knit family may have more than its share of private squabbles, but its members have a true sixth sense when one of them is in jeopardy or in deep joy and they quickly arrive to rescue or to rejoice. Such a family, over the years, develops a secret language of grimace, wink, smile and code-words which sum up a lifetime of shared sorrows and laughs; the person of each is uniquely appreciated. The lover of many years still feels a _leap of heart when the beloved comes into the room or when the lover hears the beloved's laugh from the far side of the party chatter. The lover's heart affirms the beloved's "simply being there"---apart from what he or she is saying or doing;just as the two concert-goers and the three hikers are doing more than enjoying music and nature. They find in the being of music and mountains a new way in which to resonate to each other's being, i.e., to grow in the intimacy of friendship. For what is intimacy if not this acquired ability to live deeply with each other, to resonate in each other's very being, in such a way that friends can, on occasion, say to each other: "It doesn't really matter much where we go or what we do so long as we are together." Such intimacy, expressed through quick knowing glance, light caress, exuberant play, and the clasp of hand, perdures and grows at the being-level in emergency rooms, during sweaty decision-times about job and fam- Indwelling Prayer ily, on the beach, at the "graduation ceremonies" of the retarded child, at the birthday parties, within the many hasty breakfasts and more leisurely suppers. From all this, could one say that "presence" is intimacy or mutual resonance at the level of being? If so, then this could reveal much about the dynamics between more active and more passive types of prayer. If presence would be deep awareness of the other's very being, then "the prayer of simple presence" to God could be the praying person's affirming of God's being and God's affirming of the praying person's being. In more passive prayer of simple presence, one becomes aware of Christ and of his interests because one now allows him to enter oneself and one's work at the level of one's very being or personhood? In more passive prayer, God becomes more real for the praying person because the latter lets God be more real, i.e., lets God be Being Itself. The praying person does this by refusing to box up God within her or his own ideas, theories, and expectations. Rather, this person allows God to act in him or her: by remaining passive, he or she gives God time to become more present to the self. Paradoxically, then, more passive prayer renders a person more fully present to God and to self than does more active prayer. Through more passive prayer, the person becomes literally a being-for-God. Indeed, the divine name, Yahweh, comes to mean not merely "I am who am" but also "I am the One who will be for you." Is it possible that at this juncture we have reached that basic attitude of prayer which underlies all other attitudes of prayer? Is this the most radical of all prayers? For this basic attitude is the very being of a person as a "being-for-God." At this point, a second paradox comes into view. In more passive prayer, because the praying person is more present to self and to God at the level of being, he or she can now meet others at their being-level, not just humans but also animals, plants, and even non-vital things like mountains, rivers, fire, and stars. For with the experience of God's tender regard for oneself as unique and undying comes the ability to appreciate others as having unique worth and destiny. It is no wonder, then, that through more passive prayer, the praying person paradoxically becomes more actively present to the whole wide world. Even distant horizons are expanded by the intimate depth at which beings resonate with each other. For this reason more passive prayer renders the praying person more active in works for the family, the neighborhood, the Church--and also more hopeful because more trusting of the Holy Spirit's activity in the self and in others. More passive prayer, in making the perso.n less trusting of his or her own activity apart from God, has enabled the person to become more bold for the Church by 3Karl Rahner speaks of this passivity when describing the conditions of transcendence. "[Transcen-dence] may not be understood as an active mastering of the knowledge of God by one's own power, and hence also as a mastery of God himself. By its very nature subjectivity is always a transcendence which listens, which does not control, which is overwhelmed by mystery and opened up by mystery . Transcendence exists only by opening itself beyond itself, and, to put it in biblical languag,e, it is in its origin and from the very beginning the experience of being known by God himself" (Foundations of Christian Faith [New York: Seabury, 1978], p. 58). 42 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1982 allowing God to enter the self and to power the latter's actions. This is where personal vanity becomes reduced and the confidence in self-sacrifice gets increased. Evidently, the more passively praying person is more consciously a "being-for- God" and more clearly sees God as "I am the One who will be for you." The Differences Challenge and Nourish Each Other At this point having described more active and more passive prayer for them-selves, we are now in position to etch out their differences and to discover why these two types of prayer are called "more active" and "more passive" rather than simply active and passive prayer. It would appear that more active prayer is more conceptual than its counterpart, that is, more concerned with ideas and insight. It is also more creatively imaginative as it deals with plans of action, options for decisions, visions for the future, ambitions for the present. Again, more active prayer is more consciously integrative around a central idea or insight: "As 1 see it, the one great value in life is . "or "The central theme in my prayer is . " It is more apt to try to control: "We could set up this system of priorities, then get that done immediately; then . " It is more energetic, that is, more work oriented, more prone to gathering achievements. Finally, it is more bodily, because action in the world is incarnated through the body. On the other hand, more passive prayer is more affective than conceptual, more conscious of feelings for the other and in the other; therefore; it is more value oriented than vision enthralled. It is also more receptive than creative in its use of the imagination; thus, art and nature speak out more clearly and enter more movingly into the person praying more passively. It is more integrative by person or spirit than by idea: "This person loves me and so 1 can take the hard knocks ahead," or "1 don't quite understand her plan, but I trust her and will do what she says," Indeed, more 'passive prayer is, strangely, more spontaneous than con-trolled; it is more disturbing, more surprising, more dangerous to a person's careful selfishness. One says more often: "This happening in prayer wa~ a rather unex-pected revelation for me; I'm not sure 1 like this turn of events." Again, in more passive prayer there is more waiting, more expectancy, more sharp listening: "Nothing seems to be happening for days, and then boom ."Finally, it is more soulful in its reflective sinking into the self to find God. It should be clearer now that one must name these two types of prayer more active and more passive lest we split the personality of prayer. For both types are active and both are passive but with different emphases. For example, both use concepts, imagination, and feelings; but more active prayer is more conceptual than affective and the reverse is true of passive prayer. More active prayer deals more often with the creative imagination and more passive prayer works more often with the receptive imagination; but both types of prayer, working' in one and the same imagination, use not only the creative but also the receptive function of the imagination. All this would seem to point to their radical unity, especially since in both types the praying person has the intent not to prote,ct and to comfort the self but rather Indwelling Prayer / 43 to be available to God and to his people. Indeed, it would appear that either type of prayer would go slack and die without the appropriate challenge of the other type: Without the "stretch" of more active prayer, more passive prayer could wallow deep in the self and even forget God, much more his people. Without the "reflective sinking into being" of more passive prayer, more active prayer can end up in such a welter of action that the "stretch" could one day shred into a thousand loose strands of frenetic, superficial activities having no center of being, no rever-ence for others, no undying future. But actually, both types of prayer can challenge and nourish the other. More active prayer is concerned with "putting it all together," with having the world make final sense, so that the world is somehow under control. More active prayer works that the praying person may "have it all together," may be totally integrated as a wholesome person, not fragmented or tormented, so that the praying person may control her or his destiny. On the other hand, more passive prayer forces the praying person to face the fact that he or she is a being totally dependent on God whom he or she must trust in the midst of personal fragmentation and of a world gone awry~ More active prayer wants the resurrection now and the beatific vision now just as they are promised in every love song; in all ~great poetry and drama, and in the apocalyptic literature of the Bible. In contrast, more passive prayer demands that the praying person wait and listen, become excruciatingly aware of shortcomings and sins within one's being or personhood, know his or her absolute powerlessness to do anything worthwhile apart from God, be content for now with much less than immediate resurrection and beatific vision. Neither prayer denies the truth of the other's intent; neither claims to have all the truth, but each challenges the other to greater realism about self, God, and the world. Each depends on the challenge of the other as more active prayer aims at total wholesomeness of self and world in God and as more passive prayer aims at enduring the fragmentation of self and dislocation of world until God heals them both~ There is, however, more than challenge between the two types of prayer. Each nourishesand promotes the other. The more active forms of prayer (e.g., the seven mentioned earlier) lead into the more passive forms of prayer, which in turn.root more deeply the ensuing more active forms of prayer. For example, meditative or mental prayer focuses the praying person's powers on particular objects such asan event of Christ's life, Mary's motherhood of the Church, the mystery of the Eucharist, God's plan for the individual or gr

Issue 40.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1981. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1981 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year; $17.00 for two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscriplion orders or change of address, write: REVIFW I:OU RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Jeremiah L. Alberg, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor May/June, 1981 Volume 40 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW RELtGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVII-:w for RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. The Feel of Apostolic Contemplation-in- Action David J. Hassel, S.J. Father Hassel's earlier article, "The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery," appeared in the November, 1980 issue. The present article is also a chapter from his projected book on prayer. Father's address is: Jesuit Community; Loyola University; 6525 N. Sheridan Rd.; Chicago, IL 60626. To contemplate is to see a thing or an event or a person as a whole. It is to grasp the totality of a situation and then to let wonder rise, deep fears and hopes surface, the fire of ambition be kindled, and the still-point of one's being touched. Thus contemplation not only views wholeness but also begins to instill it in the contemplator, an experience much needed in our fragmenting times. Persons lacking commitment to focus their energies, families lacking the love to heal their wounds, and nations lacking noble purpose to render them united--all need contemplation as much as the thirsty and starving need drink and food.' Now the power of contemplation appears in theaction which it structures and directs. Thus contemplation-in-action not only carries appreciation for the whole of a situation and thus renders the contemplator more wholesome but also enters into the very situation contemplated to make it more wholesome. For this reason, the more active a person is and the more deeply he or she interacts with others, the more important becomes contemplation for this person's every action. Indeed, the more explicitly tThis thirst and hunger for the meaning and wholeness of life is eloquently and poignantly record-ed in Studs Terkel's interviews with people from all walks of life. His contemplative book, Work-ing (Avon, New York, 1975, pp. xiii-xv) discovers "the happy few who find a savor in their daily job," and the many whose discontent is hardly concealed: 321 322 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 aware we become of contemplation-in-action within our experience, the better we can promote it in ourselves and in others for the healing of our wounded world. But, as always, difficulties arise which keep us from recognizing contem-plation- in-action and from living it more deeply within our experience. First of all, one can observe with envy the high intensity of secular contemplation in the action of artist or business person and can then expect this same intensity to occur within one's own religious contemplation-in-action. False expecta-tions always result in discouragement. Secondly, because monastic people do much of the writing about contemplation, one can mistake monastic contemplation for the apostolic type more characteristic of lay people, diocesan clergy, and active religious orders. Again, confusion here can dissipate religious energies. A third problem connected with recognizing contemplation-in-action is that the latter is an awareness permeating all one's activities. Therefore, it cannot be exposed by merely lifting off one or other layer of experience, nor be isolated by tracing its roots in one particular activity. Consequently--and this is the fourth difficulty--contemplation-in-action will express itself in a great variety of modes as it appears at diverse levels of experience and in different activities, even though it may be a single pervasive attitude. As a result, a person may be lamenting his or her failure at contemplation-in-action while unknowingly practicing it with some success. Perhaps the following exploration2 of these four problems may yield some inkling of what contemplation-in-action is and some recognition of how the contemplative-in-action feels. This, in turn, could be the source of new satisfaction in one's life, perhaps even the beginning of a certain settled happiness. Religious Contemplation-in-Action Out of the Secular The first problem facing us is the confusion of secular with religious contemplation-in-action--an understandable mistake since the first naturally leads into the second. Like all forms of contemplation-in-action, the secular variety discovers and promotes remarkable wholeness in the contemplator and in the object contemplated. For example, the portrait-artist, while center-ing her consciousness intensely upon the child to be painted, tends to fall in love with the latter as feeling and insight blend gradually into the beautiful whole of the portrait and of the person portrayed. The craftsman, too, is fascinated as the pitcher, shaping under his hands at the potter's wheel, is lifted out of the clay in a blend of graceful shape with smooth pouring. The 2I am greatly indebted to Vincent Towers, S.J., James Maguire, S.J. and Donald Abel, S.J. for their detailed comments on the rough drafts of this article, to Mrs. Mary Ellen Hayes for advice and technical assistance, to Dr. Julia Lane for expert encouragement, to the Warrenville (!11.) Cenacle community for their helpful.suggestions. Contemplation-in-Action / ~2~ novelist also shares in this disciplined joy of secular contemplation-in-action. Saul Bellow could not have given us Herzog, nor J. D. Salinger presented us with Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, unless each had gone through a period of 'possessed aloofness' while in his imagination he watched and chronicled the full-bodied development of Herzog or Holden out of a vast variety of detailed activities. In the artist or craftsman or novelist, then, one witnesses the power of secular contemplation-in-action for producing that beautiful whole which delights the artist's own heart and the hearts of all beholders. But such contemplation-in-action is not limited to the sphere of the arts. Watch parents playing with their firstborn child and note their total concen-tration on eliciting new responses from it. As the child slowly unfolds before their eyes during its first twenty-four months, they become ever more dedicated to educating it to beautiful soundness of body, mind, and emotions. If this is not contemplation-in-action, what is? In a similar way, the neurosurgeon, carefully and even exultantly applying his previous week's study of X rays, medical research, and techniques to a brain operation, also experiences this contemplation-in-action as he restores wholesome life to his patient. So, too, the lawyer contemplates-in-action when she manages to see her way through the myriad details of a personal injury suit towards those underlying legal principles which will structure for her a forceful, tight case on behalf of her client, Nor is the business person without contemplation-in-action when intense ambition is painting a new vision and directing precise lines of energy to effect this vision. The resultant business organization is a daring orchestration of people and processes brought to total life for the wholesome delight of the business person's mind and heart and for the good of the community. Evidently, then, secular contemplation-in-action operates within any work, artistic or scientific, speculative or practical, to produce wholesomeness in both the contemplator and the action-situation. Explicitly, each of us has, in some way, experienced these types of secular contemplation-in-action and implicitly we compare their qualities with those of our own religious contemplation-in-action--to the depreciation of the lat-ter. Each of us asks in guilt: "Where in my religious contemplation-in-action is the intense centering, the fascinated.vision, the possessed aloofness, the total concentration and dedication, the exultant application to life, the deep satisfaction in wholeness, and the intense ambition of secular contemplatives-in- action?" Why should not the religious contemplative-in-action be \ discouraged--especially if he equates secular and religious contemplation-in-action and does not know that they are meant to nourish each other reciprocally and precisely out of their difference. To understand their respec-tive differences, let us consider how they cooperate. Religious contemplation-in-action completes the secular. For the wholes of self and of object discovered by secular contemplation-in-action take on fuller meaning and larger value witfiinthe more comprehensive wholes of the 324 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 everyday world and of God as these are found by religious contemplation-in-action. A dynamic reciprocity operates here between the two types of contemplation-in-action. As the secular contemplative-in-action (artist, business person, parent, neurosurgeon, or lawyer) enters more deeply into the object to find its wholeness, he becomes more aware of his personal wholeness since the intense concentration on the object demands full awareness of his powers. But such total awareness of object and of self eventually leads into fuller awareness of the everyday world since the secular contemplative must fit himself and the object contemplated into the larger world of, e.g., serving a client, supporting a family, relaxing socially with friends; wondering about the worth of the object produced by the secular contemplation-in-action. Eventually every secular contemplative-in-action has to ask those terrible questions: "How do I and my work fit into the ongoing world? Why should I continue to ply my art, trade, profession, parenthood? Where am I, my family, and my work heading finally?" Such questioning usually leads to the more religious questions: "Is there anything more than this total world? Is there someone or something permeating this world and leading it to a higher destiny, a fuller life? Can I contact this mysterious one or am I already doing so?" When such questions finally lead into the experience of a meaningful world and of a transcendent God, then religious contemplation-in-action has evolved out of the secular and now redounds to the enrichment of the latter. To see how this is possible, note what happens when a family friend at-tempts to heal a family quarrel. He listens intently as the various family members describe the events leading up to the quarrel. The friend tries to piece together (to do a secular contemplation of) this setting and the quarrel. Once he feels that he knows the whole scene, he endeavors to help each family member see this whole so that each can experience some healing-into-wholeness as each admits his or her own faults, the good points of other fami-ly members, the need to forgive each other, and the necessity of planning together for a better family future. This secular contemplation starts to become contemplation-in-action when each family member begins to act out of this vision. Such secular contemplation-in-action begins to move into its religious counterpart when each family member finds a reason to act beyond himself or herself for unified family action, e.g., the preservation of the fami-ly tradition or the hope for future family members. Later, this religious contemplation-in-action attains fullness when individually the family members think of themselves and act as Christians carrying Christ's presence within the family, and when socially this same family as a group does healing actions which image the future Great Community of the Great Tomorrow beyond the grave. But factually, this neat cooperation between secular and religious contemplation-in-action often breaks down. There is a tendency in each human to abort secular contemplation-in-action before it can rise into the religious. St. Augustine describes vividly how this happens when a person at- Contemplation-in-Action / 325 tempts .to control the world, his fellow human beings and himself apart from or in conflict with God's law and providence. In this case the secular con-templative so concentrates on another person or a business project or a grand scheme as to lose sight of the more comprehensive wholes of community-justice and of God's people. Here secular contemplation becomes divorced from religious. The result is that the secular contemplative becomes hypnotiz-ed by the object of contemplation (nothing else is of equal value), then abject-ly slavish to the latter (the object becomes the only hope), then frantically con-servative of this object (e.g., a beloved, a job, an ambition or fond hope, a favorite pastime like gambling or fishing, a power over others). Because all the person's efforts are so fiercely focused on saving his project, he tends to dissipate mind, heart, and imagination. Thus, in an ironic way, the con-templating person literally fragments himself in efforts to mold his private world into a lasting wholesomeness which fits his own self-image and peculiar needs, but which fails to fit the true wholeness of the world and the Transcen-dent One. As a result, even a person's secular contemplation-in-action tends to disintegrate when its religious completion is aborted. To put this positively, religious contemplation-in-action is a contempla-tion whose resultant activities aim to render man more wholesome within the wholing of the world as the latter develops within the dynamic whole of the Transcendent God. The vision of Teilhard de Chardin which sees the universe converging towards the transcendent Omega Point is one illustration of religious contemplation-in-action. The exuberance of such religious contemplation-in-action once achieved can then redound upon its secular counterpart to render the latter passionate for truth and eager for beautiful action within its peculiar sphere of influence. F~'om all this it should be clear that secular and religious contemplation-in- action are distinct and mutually modifying phases in the contemplative person's wholesome life.3 To confuse one with the other is, then, to neglect one for the other and even to risk diminishing both since they are so naturally interdependent. But even within.religious contemplation-in-action, there is a further clarification to be made. Its monastic variety is different from the apostolic, even though, again, both types are needed to stimulate and to enrich the life of God's people. Here, too, confusion of one with the other debilitates life. Within Religious Contemplation-in-Action, the Monastic and the Apostolic Differ Discouragement is just as apt to arise from confusing the apostolic and the 3Karl Rahner shows the intimate connection between secular and religious contemplation when he demonstrates that supernaturally elevated transcendentality (i.e., God's self-communication in grace) is mediated by any and every categorical reality, (i.e., by the world). For the Christian, there is no separate sacral realm where alone God is to be found (Foundations of Christian Faith, translated by William V. Dych, Seabury Press, New. York, 1978, pp. 151-152). 326 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 monastic within religious c0ntemplation-in-action as it is from equating secular and religious contemplation-in-action. For, to seek continually the qualities of one in the other is to be permanently misled and disappointed. Although all forms of secular contemplation seek for wholesomeness in con-templator and in object contemplated, nevertheless as many types of secular contemplation occur as there are types of contemplators, e.g., artist, lawyer, neurosurgeon, philosopher, business person, parent, novelist and so on. It should be no great surprise, then, that the monastic religious contemplation-in- action of the Poor Clare or the Carthusian will be different from its apostolic counterpart in the life of lay person or diocesan priest or apostolic religious. In monastic contemplation the monk or nun searches deeply, within the roots of his or her innermost being, for personal wholeness and for the mysterious wholesomeness of God's life within this being. Now such a demand-ing search becomes possible only if the person withdraws from the more active concerns of life in the everyday world of the apostle. In his Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton makes it clear that the monk must devote himself in a special way to renunciation, repentance, and prayer if he is to sound the depths of his being for God.' In monastic religious contemplation-in-action, the quiet sinking into self to find God requires a strict control of attention as one undergoes the rigors of hard manual labor, very close community living, sometimes deafening silence, and occasionally piercing loneliness. Thus the relief from cultural pressures which enables monastic religious contemplation-in-action to occur is hardly an escape from suffering the harsh demands of love and of the daily labor for survival. But it is a religious contemplation-in-action diverse from that of the apostle in the world of art, business, medicine, education, and family. Unfortunately, much less is writteri about apostolic religious contemplation-in-action than about the monastic varietywespecially from the view of the layperson.~ Because the apostolic contemplative is ordinarily working in a professional position or a ,trade or a skill-job (secretary, housewife, telephone linesman, and so on) and is frequently involved in team-work, he or she must give much attention to the daily concerns of the world--the very concerns from which the monastic contemplative explicitly withdraws. Ttfis apostolic religious contemplation-in-action is more depend-ent on secular contemplation-in-action for its dynamism because apostolic contemplatives are intently pursuing professional jobs, trades, and skills through eight to ten hours per day. As a result, the apostolic contemplative is more concerned with outer wholeness of self and world, whereas the monastic 'Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (Doubleday-Image, Garden City, N.Y., 1971 pp. 19-20). ~Thomas Vernor Moore's Life of Man with God, (Harcourt Brace~ New York, 1956), though quaint, contains case histories of ordinary people enjoying strong contemplation in action. Contemplation-in-Action / 397 contemplative concentrates more on the inner wholeness. Evidently both types of concern are needed by the civic and ecclesial communities since they complement each other. The outer beauty of technological, scientific, and cultural wholeness must be appreciated and promoted if the inner beauty of man's ultimate meaning and destiny is to exist and to be known in depth. On the other hand, the inner beauty of such wholeness makes possible all the outer beauty since the loss of ultimate meaning and destiny in human activities renders technology, science and culture vacuous: if not vicious. Nor is the withdrawal of the mohastic contemplative to be considered unique to this type of contemplation. The apostolic contemplative must prac-tice a somewhat similar asceticism if he or she is to be a first-rank artist, lawyer, neurosurgeon, teacher, sports star, philosopher, business person, or parent. In order to focus intensely upon the contemplated object, such contemplators must withdraw steadily from distractions, occasionally from family life, often from comforts, not rarely from the spotlight of flattering attention. Though the person dedicated to apostolic religious contemplation-in-action may be immersed in the concerns of the world, still he or she must learn to live hidden within the teamwork of the institution and to withdraw from disruptive self-seeking of fame, fortune, and fun. Such withdrawal is essential if the contemplator is to discover better the wholeness of object, self, world, and God. For the aim of every contemplative is to become more whole in order better to see, in all their wholesomeness, other people, the tasks at hand, professional teamwork, family health, national purpose, ecclesial community and God himself. For this reason, the withdrawal should make one more attentive and appreciative of other people, of one's business, of art and music, of wholesome sanctity (a redundant phrase), of professional skill, of science and technology, and of oneself. Such wholesomeness, when appreciated, gives deep intellectual joy and is the fullest reward for disciplined suffering. Consequently, the various types of contemplation-in-action must be carefully distinguished so that each can be pursued with finesse. But since contemplation-in-action has so many ways of expressing itself according to each one's peculiar gifts, situations, aims, and tradition, it is no easy task to discover one's own way of contemplating-in-action. Since each type of con-templation aims at wholeness of object contemplated and of person con-templating, a major error here could fragment the contemplator's personality and induce shoddy activity within his or her specialized secular contemplation-in-action. With this caution in mind, one delves hesitantly within his experience for the feel of apostolic contemplation-in-action, especially since this experience runs so deeply and so uniquely. Towards the Feel of Apostolic Contemplation-in-Action Because apostolic contemplation-in-action is present deep within many actions of the secular contemplative, it can be approached only gradually 328 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 through four steps. The first step consists in answering a series of questions constructed to bring into better focus the secret unity of one's everyday ex-perience. Later, in a second step, reflection on the various levels of this every-day experience helps us to recognize at what level apostolic contemplation-in-action originates. The third step is to work out an explicit definition of such contemplation according to these levels. Here, in a fourth step, one can finally note the feel of contemplation-in-action as it happens within various levels and modes of experience. But let us now take the first of these four steps by leisurely answering for ourselves the following questions: I. Why do I usually get up on time in the morning and not let people wait? 2. Why do I bother to cook breakfast for others and not just for myself? 3. Why do I share my car with others and, on occasional rainy mornings, leave early to get them to work on time? 4. Why, at the job, do I help out on someone else's project when mine is not finished yet? 5. Why should I avoid the second beer at lunch because it makes me loggy at work? Who really cares about my efficiency? 6. Why scrimp and save for others--esp~ecially if they are likely to squander the savings? 7. Why take work and worries home from the~ job? Why bother studying at night to complete degree work or to be more competent in my next day's work? 8. Why keep up correspondence with friends or answer the third telephone call when I'm so tired at night? 9. Why be the one who usually corrects the children and who gets their resentment? 10. Why sometimes spend money meant for entertainment on the needs of others? 11. Why squeeze into the already packed day the Eucharist and another fifteen or more minutes of prayer? In other words, all these why's add up to a single last question: Why do we stretch ourselves out for others hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year? Could the answer be that, amid all our sneaky ways, our clever vanities, our downright sins, and our cute manipulation of others to our own desires, we nevertheless do have a strong practical concern for peo-ple, for their welfare and happiness? Could it even be that, deep within, we each feel God quietly encouraging us to stretch our lives out to others? Could it be that, deep within, we want to delight the heart of God? If so, then this is what is called "the stretch," the almost constant doing.of the more difficult out of respect for others and for God. It is, in other words, the willingness to bleed slowly for loved ones and even, at times, for mere acquaintances. This "stretch," then, turns out to be a dynamic unity running through all the day's events to give them meaning and direction. Could it be that this is our seeking Contemplation-in-Action / 329 for God, our God-hunger? Is this our restlessness with anything less than God--a restlessness which renders us mystified at the self-serving actions of the trifler, the super-ambitious, and the bun vivant? Indeed, is this "stretch" or God-hunger the apostolic contemplation-in-action for which we are searching? It would seem not. For such contemplation lies underneath "the stretch" to make it happen. We must yet distinguish various levels of experience and then move underneath each to find the deepest level from where apostolic contemplation-in-action originates. And we find that there are four levels of experience to distinguish. The first or sur-face level is where minor irritations, like the sound of loud rock-and-roll music or the itch of eczema or the sudden hiccup occurs and where minor joys like a satisfying meal or a long sleep or a relaxed laugh, happen. Underneath this surface level, lies the second or physical level where the pains of ulcers or neuralgia lurk and the joys of exuberant good health or of strong sexual pleasure energize one. Underneath these two levels is the third or psychological level where one trembles with fear of failure in one's work or shrinks at seeing the beloved suffer, and where one also is Warmed with the security of being .loved deeply and faithfully by an admired person, or experiences the deep satisfaction of witnessing one's children growing up well. Underneath these three explicitly conscious levels which we all can recognize lies a more hidden fourth level known only implicitly, i.e., by con-trast with the top three levels. Thus a person can feel great joy and serenity at this fourth level, while at the upper three levels he feels terrible suffering and apparent fragmentation. Or the reverse may be the case. "Everything is going my way in health, job-~atisfaction, family life; I've got everything--except that I feel uneasy and deeply restless underneath all of this." In both in-stances, the person feels almost schizophrenic--so clear is the distinction be-tween the top three levels and the deepest fourth level of experience, so direct-ly reverse is the flow of events between the top-three and the fourth levels. Puzzling as this experience is, it is also a revelation of the fourth level where the root of contemplation-in-action lies and it will eventually lead us to the "feel" of apostolic contemplation-in action.6 Apostolic Contemplation-in-Action Is a Heart-Awareness of God and His People To state matters bluntly, apostolic contemplation-in-action is not "the stretch," the disciplined reaching out to others and to God from the third level of experience. It is not the constant calling to mind of God's presence, nor 61 have given a fuller description of these four levels of experience in "The Fourth Level of Prayer: Mystery," (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, VOI. 39, 1980/6. pp. 808-810, 817-819). Confer also "Phenomenology, Psychiatry, and Ignatian Discernment" (The Way, Supplement #6, May, 1968, pp. 27-34) by Felix Letemendia and George Croft for a similar description of four levels of experience. 330 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 constant explicit aspirations, not the "Jesus prayer," nor one's favorite scrip-tural mantra on the second level of experience. It is not constant conversation with God on the second and first levels.7 Apostolic contemplation-in-action may cause these behaviors, but it is not any one or all of them. Rather, it is more like a heart-awareness of God, an affectionate and deep alertness to God in all events, a strong and warm conviction of God's loving presence at the fourth level underlying and yet permeating all life's experiences and hap-penings. 8 This heart-awareness seems to be always operative, like the buoyancy of a cork under water, always unobtrusive, like quiet background music in office or dining room, always implicit, like a mother's awareness of noisy children in the backyard while she is concentrating on a new cake recipe; always pulsing, like the tennis player's awareness of the beloved watching his match from the grandstands; always underlying, like the companionship between two friends whose attention is riveted on an engrossing motion picture; always growing osmotically, like the friendship between two people sitting in the front seat of a car and silently viewing the. countryside during a long trip. This heart-awareness appears not in the least to interfere with conversation or with algebra-solving or with. business-planning or with party-laughing or with landscape-painting or with surgical operating. Indeed, it can be said that this heart-awareness is actually a person's awareness of God's awareness of him while he works through the events of the day--much as when the lover tennis-star is implicitly aware of his beloved's awareness of him as she sits in the grandstand watching his play.9 This heart-awareness is like the alertness of the saints to God's providence in small happenings. God, like the air, is embracing the saints, enabling them to breathe, acting as the medium for all the surrounding events. In such an at-mosphere, nothing is insignificant. There is a second way in which this heart-awareness of God, called apostolic contemplation-in-action, can be described. It seems to be also a per- 'In reading Henri J. M. Nouwen's books and articles on spirituality, I have rarely felt anything but strong agreement--except for one article: "Unceasing Prayer" (America, Vol. 139/3, July 29--August 5, 1978, pp. 46-51), where Nouwen declares: "We convert our unceasing thinking in-to unceasing prayer when we move from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered di;~logue (p. 48)." Though he characterizes this prayer as contemplation, as attentive looking at God, and as presence to God, still the heavy emphasis on thinking and imagining in the article could lead the reader to a false mentalistic perception of praying always. 8In Love Alone (Herder and Herder, New York, 1969, p. 89), Hans Urs Von Balthasar compares the unceasing prayer of heart-awareness to the "the way a man is always and everywhere influenc-ed by the image of the woman he loves." 9 John S. Dunne (The Reasons of the Heart, Macmillan, New York, 1978, pp. 46-54) gives an acute description of this heart-awareness of God wherein one feels known and loved deeply by God. He puts it in Meister Eckhart's terms: this is a laughing between God and man which images the Trinitarian life of mutual joy between and in the three persons. Contemplation-in-Action / 331 son's awareness of God present within him and working out through him into the lives of others. It would explain somewhat Paul the Apostle's remark: "I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me." In this implicit heart-awareness there is even a sense of acting beyond one's capacities, or of being borne along to meet events for which one feels strangely prepared beforehand. This does not imply that such experience is without suffering. On the contrary, the heart-awareness has the tendency to make one more sensitive to the suffering of others and of one's self and even more ready to assume sorrow. For, remarkably, this heart-awareness opens one up not only to God but also simultaneously to God's people and his world. It would seem to contain a readiness for friendship, and for the obligations consequent upon friendship. It is not a state achieved by spiritual gymnastics, by much reading on the meaning of life, by the use of diaries, by experimental prayer-sessions, by con-stant aspirations, and God-conversation, or by psychological dynamics. Rather, it seems to arise within the disciplined service of others out of love. In other words, "the stretch" seems to set up the conditions in which this heart-awareness, this apostolic contemplation-in-action, occurs. The latter would seem, then, to he a natural development in a healthy life of service to God and his people. It appears to be an availability to others which is adaptive~to their needs, hopes, joys and sorrows and which consequently takes on emotional coloring and religious content by way of this adaptation. For this reason, it would seem that apostolic contemplation-in-action is not an esoteric gift but one which is given to many good people by a God eager to promote such heart-awareness of himself and of his people. After all, such awareness would seem to include a penchant for fulfilling the two Great Com-mandments under a vast array of different circumstances and, therefore, under many diverse modes of action. It is time, then, that we considered some of these modes. In this way we can experientially both test the understanding and get the feel of apostolic contemplation-in-action. Various Modes in Which Apostolic Contemplation-in-Action Is Felt Apostolic religious contemplation-in-action as heart-awareness of God is, then, a deep good will towards God, a warm desire for God, a loving remembering of him in his people and his universe. This single basic convic-tion naturally expresses itself in a thousand different ways according to the thousand diverse activities of the apostolic contemplative. Among these thou-sand ways are the following eleven (if you can recognize them in your ex-perience, then you have, I would ~hink, the "feel" of apostolic contempla-tion- in-action): 1. Hope: a pervading sense of the worthwhileness of one's present life and work for the future; a certain fearlessness in facing radical changes within one's community amid the sudden turnings of history. "Why is everyone so depressed?" 2. Patience: St. Paul's hypornone, the strength to stand underneath and to 339 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 hold everything together when all seems to be coming apart and others are deserting the supposedly sinking enterprise; a kind of dilapidated, yet dedicated, serenity amid much suffering and uncertainty. An ~'old-shoe" type says: "What's the big ~panic about?" 3. Need to be Hidden in teamwork: a wanting to contribute one's best quiet-ly; and yet, in times of stress, a boldness to take on the tough job of leadership. "Tell me what you want done--and if you can't tell me, I'll tell you." 4. Passive Alertness to Others: a willingness to wait, to listen, to hear out a person or a situation; a deep respect for the individuality of others; a refusal to domineer in conversation-work-dispute; no demand for a return on love given--because of trust in the other and in God. "I've got time to listen. Relax." 5. A Senseof Being Companioned through the day (at the fourth level): never being alone because at the centei" of one's heart and of the whole world'is the beloved: a turning to God, and frequently finding him there waiting. "Why worry about anything so long as the Lord is with me?" 6. Sense of an Intimate Providence in one's life, of being cared for with remarkable delicacy: events that at first put everything in jeopardy and turmoil eventually turn out to be fortunate; chancehappenings are later seen to fit together with precision; surprises'are taken as God's special attention to a person rather than as senseless interruptions to his or her life. "Someone loves me and is guiding me to himself over this rough road and dangerous terrain." 7. Sense of Belonging to God, to the Church (his people), to the mother of God, to one's community (parish, family, neighborhood, religious order, charismatic prayer-group): a sense of finally being at home--no matter where I travel; a deep content with God, world, oneself in the midst of contradiction. "Yes, my God owns the world--now what's the problem?" (". the world, life and death, the present and the future, are all your ser-vants; but you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God" I Co 3:22-23.) 8. Firm Conviction of Doing Exactly What God Wants at the Moment and of not wanting to do anything else or to be anywhere else: a sense of rightness (without righteousness) about one's present action; a determined sense of vocation which is nevertheless ready for change; riding hard, yet sitting easy, in the saddle. "For the moment this is where it all is." 9. Constant Hunger to Serve Others: to give them joy, to help them expand their personalities in happiness-knowledge-commitment--even though the servant (e.g., teacher, counselor) will be soon forgotten and very likely will have little'to show for his or her services. "How can I be of help without getting in your way?" 10. A Steady Sense of Gratefulness to God: for the fullness of one's life--for each person, event, knock-at-the-door; a wonder at how much God has entrusted to oneself; gratitude, the mark of maturity and full humaneness. Contemplation-in-Action "How could you be so good to me, Lord?" 11. Finding God in Others: seeing by faith that this person is beloved by God; not projecting some Christ-image on the person so that the latter is not seen for himself and is therefore depreciated, but rather discovering this new value in the person, and therefore serving him more carefully, listening to him more attentively, finding his core-goodness. "He is my brother and Christ's brother.'" 0 These eleven modes (they could be a thousand) have an inner unity amid their diversity." First of all, each is concerned with the wholeness of both the contemplative and the object contemplated. For example, hope sums up the whole past and present to send the totality into the future without a constrict-ing fear; patience serenely holds the present fragmenting situation together; hidden teamwork binds the group together and offers leadership when fragmentation or misdirection threatens; passive alertness to others offers time and support for the healing process; the sense of being companioned at the center of one's being leads into a sense of providence intimately and delicately converging all events towards a full future goodness; the sense of belonging to God-community-worm produces a wholesome contentedness which paradox-ically can issue into fierce efforts to build a better community and world with the firm conviction of doing exactly What God wants at the moment; the con-stant selfless hunger to serve others naturally builds wholesome community; and the steady sence of gratefulness to God means gratefulness to other which, in turn, produces the close unity of friendship.'2 Clearly, then, this heart awareness of God, this apostolic religious contemplation-in-action, fulfills well the definition of contemplation as the perceiving and the building of wholesomeness in the comtemplative and in the object contemplated. There is a second inner unity among these eleven modes of contemplation-in- action. Evidently, each mode is itself an attitude (an habitually lived value) which inspires and molds the.activity flowing out of it. In other words, the mode of contemplation controls the actibn of apostolic religious contemplation-in-action. But each of the eleven attitudes embodies, in its own way, a single attitude common to them all: a total accepting of all reality (God, t°Yves Raguin, S.J. (Paths to Contemplation, translated by Paul Barrett, O.F.M. Cap., Abbey Press, St. Meinrad, Ind., 1974, p. 82), stresses that "the love of God teaches us to love others for themselves., just as they are, with all their defects and with all their hopes." Here he finds common ground between Eastern and Western schools of contemplation, but also great differences (pp. 4-11). "In How to Pray Always without Always Praying (Fides/Claretian, Notre Dame, Ind., 1978) Silvio Fittipaldi, O.S;A., speaks of prayerfulness as a basic life-orientation under!ying all one's activities (p. vii). He then deftly shows how deep questioning of everyday events (pp. 11-27) and a constant wondering-longing about life (pp. 29-40) can be a praying always. These are two more modes to add to the eleven already noted. '21n his Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul, when listing the signs of Christian growth (1:9-12), ap-pears to mention five or six of these modes of contemplation in action. 334 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 world, self, people) and a sense of being, in turn, accepted by all reality.' ~ This attitude is a deep welcoming of all the people and events of life--an attitude symbolized when one's arms are extended wide in service and one's face bears a confident smile of trust." Now among the eleven modes, one may rise in prominence to succeed a second which then recedes to be called upon at a later time for a different situation. Though a person~may temporarily feel, for example, less hope or less sense of intimate providence, nevertheless these attitudes remain even though submerged under the new succeeding mode of, e.g., passive alertness to others. Meanwhile, the single deepest attitude of simple acceptance or welcome is being expressed in one of the eleven (or one thousand) modes. The modes, of course, vary according to the needs of the situation, the type of work being done, or the growth-phase of the contemplative-in-action. But always the single basic attitude of welcoming acceptance knits them together with expectant trust in God and his world. Could it be that this unify-ing attitude is what enables the apostolic contemplative "to pray always"? Could it be, then, that this basic acceptance of God and of his world is the ac-tive embodiment of a man's fundamental option?" The negative side of this acceptance is dramatized in the death-bed rejection of family, God, and world, when the dying person implies: "God, you'v.e cheated me consistently with this harassing world of yours and with this demanding family of mine. Now stay out of my life forever." Such basic cynicism, bubbling corrosively in each of us, can eat away the roots of apostolic religious contemplation-in-action. To face our cynicism may be to see more clearly the radical source of such ~c.ontemplation. Human Cynicism Versus the Divine Indwelling Over our contemporary culture a vast cloud of cynicism rolls, paralyzing the self-sacrificing attitude which empowers apostolic religious contempla- "Hans Urs Von Balthasar, in his article "On Unceasing Prayer" (Theology Digest Vol. 25/1, pp. 35-37), takes this basic attitude to be a readiness to hear God's word at all times in all things, events and persons. "To pray always, therefore, means to make real what is--in turning to God and to the world." For Von Balthasar, such constant prayer is kept alive by articulated or formal prayer in which it is remembered. "The books of George Maloney, S.J., sketch this weldoming attitude in various ways. Inward Stillness (Dimension Books, Denville, N.J., 1976), sees it as a loving surrender in all things to God's loving guidance (pp. 91-92) and as a heart-prayer of constant thankfulness (p. 99). Nesting in the Rock (Dimension Books, 1978, pp. 86 ff.), develops this theme. The Breath of the Mystic (Dimension Books, 1974, pp. 181-183), speaks of contemplation-in-action as a "contuition," a simultaneous awareness of the creature and of the dynamic presence of God within the creature as its ground of being; it is, then, a lov, ing affinity for all with all b~ings. ~qn his How to Pray Today (Abbey Press, St. Meinrad, Ind., 1975, translated by John Beevers, pp. 40-41), Yves Raguin, S.J., finds that the basic disposition for prayer is acceptance of the human condition. Such acceptance first acknowledges that every good act is under the influence of the Holy Spirit and then enjoys this fact amid all the ups and downs of secular activity. Contemplation-in-Action / 335 tion-in-action. In the face of mammoth social problems, contemporary man is oftencounseled: "Always watch out first for Number One, otherwise you'll be suffocated by other people's needs." The human mind and heart then con-cludes: "Apostolic contemplation-in-action is impossible." And the Lord replies within the heart of each person precisely as he responded to Peter's similar complaint in the episode involving the rich young man: "Yes; it is im-possible- without God." This complaint often takes the form of an objection: "How can I who am so aware of my own fragmentation and partialness be expected to help others to wholesomeness? Who am I to attempt apostolic contemplation-in-action?" The very formulation of this objection is a humiliating experience, yet the humiliation happens to be the first step in doing such contemplation-in- action. Tho married couple raising three young children has known from the days of the first birth that the one spouse's partiainess will, paradoxically and often humiliatingly, be the source of the other's wholesomeness. Hus-band and wife need each other's partialness to become whole, just as they need their own growing wholesomeness to lure their children to wholesome living and just as they need their children's needs tO call them to greater wholesomeness of action. Christ, knowing thoroughly the agony of bringing fragmentation to wholeness, is there to help with Cana's sacrament of matrimony. Thus, apostolic contemplation-in-action, through this sacra-ment, can be intimate to the daily routines of married life; while at the same time the seeming impossibility of marital contemplation-in-action reveals to the cynical that the heart-awareness of God and his people is pure gift. Not rarely the most cyn. ical person of all concerning apostolic contemplation-in-action is the priest ministering the sacrament of reconcilia-tion, that efficacious sign of ultimate wholeness. In the confessional, his fragmented, partial self laments: "I should be confessing to this good pe{son, not he to me. His wholesomeness comes through the more deeply he sorrows over his failures to be of help to his wife and children, his friends and co-workers." Yet as the Lord permeates the priest's absolution to heal the peni-tent, he simultaneously heals the priest precisely through the iatter's humilia-tion at his own fragmentation. The gift of reconciliation for the penitent can often contain the gift of apostolic contemplation-in-action for the priest. Somehow, in allowing God to work through him, the priest has acted beyond his own capacities as a human being and has simultaneously increased the wholeness of the penitent and of himself. But this example is not meant to imply that apostolic religious contemplation-in-action is easily acquired and done. For this basic attitude of welcoming acceptance of God and world, this heart-awareness of God and his people, animates and directs "the stretch," that continuous, disciplined action of serving, healing and challenging others beyond one's own capacities. For the gift of heart-awareness of God and his people demands that the apostolic contemplative constantly and painfully grow in generous action for 336 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 others. To operate beyond one's capacities in this way means to take risks con-tinually and to undergo humiliations inevitably. There must, then, be some unique source of illumination and strength within the being of the apostolic contemplative-in-action. Otherwise, he or she would fragment under the pressures and demands of such a life. It would appear that the divine indwelling of the Trinity is this ultimate source for apostolic religious contemplation-in-action. In Christ's prayer for his disciples (Jn 17:18-23), a prayer of "wholing" action, he speaks of "send-ing" the disciples, and all his believers, just as the Father had sent him so that "All may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you; I pray that they may be [one] in us, that the world ma.), believe that you sent me." Apostolic contem-plation- in-action becomes, then, the manifesting of the Son, Jesus Christ, to the world in the apostolic actions of the contemplative. But the very action promoted by Jesus within the contemplative has also contained Jesus' mani-festation of the Father to this contemplative. As a result the contemplative's action in the world reveals both the Father and the Son. In this way, the apostolic contemplative becomes Their living glory expressed for all to see in the contemplative's maturing manhood or womanhood. Such action enables Father and Son to be present incarnately to the world. At the same time, the Spirit, indwelling in the people of God and in the contemplative, inflames the contemplative's actions so that they become more truly and fully acts of love (caritas) which simultaneously cause wholeness in others and in the con-templative. Here apostolic religious contemplation-in-action is seen to go far beyond the human capacities of the contemplative as it heals the world into wholesomeness through "the stretch." At this point, the problem of apostolic contemplation-in-action becomes more evident. Misunderstanding of it makes one feel falsely guilty for not hav-ing mystical graces of extraordinary mental vision and will-strength, for not being able physically to see Christ in the other, for not keeping the morning's solitary prayer in unbroken continuity through the day, for not enjoying fre-quent upsurges of strong consolation during work. But rather, it would seem that apostolic contemplation-in-action is the gradual and painful explicita- ~tion of the divine indwelling operative in all the contemplative's actions. It is the slow bringing-to-consciousness of the Trinity's workings within the con-templative's actions, within "the stretch." Now this gradual awareness is, concretely and basically, the apostolic con-templative's developing attitude of welcoming acceptance towards God, his people, and his world. By operating unobtrusively behind and within all the contemplative's actions in the world, this attitude leaves the contemplative's senses, mind, emotions, decision-power, and imagination free to concentrate on the particular work and the persons at hand. As a result, the contemplative is not less, but more, present to the work and the people; not less, but more, alert to their needs; not less, but more, hopeful of their expanding wholesomeness. Such total dedication, made possible by apostolic religious Contemplation-in-Action / 337 contemplation-in-action, becomes that magnificent self-forgetfulness which Karl Rahner sees as "praying always" and as beautiful surrender to God." Consequently, this deep heart-awareness of God and his people which constitutes apostolic contemplation-in-action can be a gradual expansion of the indwelling Trinity's effective presence within the contemplative's "stretch." This presence rises slowlythrough the contemplatives's whole be-ing so that his arms can go out in self-forgetting welcome to God and his world. Thus, the contemplative's subsequent actions carry ever more passion, strength, intelligence, compassion and wholesome beauty. Such con-templative action can then manifest strong love without crushing the beloved and competent service without condescension to the beneficiary. For it will in-clude the fuller action of the indwelling Trinity seeking to make all humans one as the Father, Son and Spirit are one in their own eternal wholeness of the divine family. ~6Karl Rahner, The Religious Life Today (Seabury, New York, 1976), p. 49. The" Active-Contemplative" Problem in Religious Life by David M. Knight Price: $.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 The White Robed Citadins of Paris M. Grace Swift, O.S.U. Sister Grace teaches at Loyola University of the South. Her mailing address is: Box 192; Loyola University; New Orleans, LA 70118. Ancient bells begin their clamorous count-down of eleven hours. A hooded nun, enshrouded in yards of creamy white wool, rises from her place on the matted rug-covered nave floor of St. Gervais et Protais Church, Paris. She mounts the steps, bows deeply before the icon enshrined on the massive altar, and with her Easter taper, lights the seven-branched menorah standing in back of the Eucharistic table. The Sunday liturgy begins as the celebrant and choir proclaim the central theme: "All you who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ, Alleluia." During the next hour and a half people from all corners of Paris, indeed from all corners of the world, will find themselves involved in a liturgy that is uniquely prayerful, reverent, dramatic, and stunningly beautiful. For this is why this community came to be--to provide for harried urbanites a setting where they could find an oasis of prayer, where a celebration of the sacred mysteries could unfold with the leisurely, spellbinding grandeur of a true monastic milieu. The people of Paris have voted with their feet for the effort. Before the liturgy begins, the monks (roughly about a dozen) enter individually and kneel on the left side of the wide nave, their prayer area en-cased on two sides by choir stalls. An equal number of nuns, wearing the same deep-sleeved white habit enter, with only one apparent difference in their clothing: the nuns wear the capuche on their heads, while the monks allow it to hang down the back. In back of the kneeling monastic communities, the nave is filled with worshippers whokneel, like them (and very close to them), on the reed rug. Others sit on benches or chairs at the sides and in front of the altar area. In France, one may look in vain in many churches for young people at- 338 Citadins of Paris / 339 tending mass, but here, they are conspicuously evident. One willowy lad sits cross legged on the floor, proclaiming by his rigidly straight back and tucked in chin that he has dabbled in Zen. At times, many of the youths uninhihitedly imitate the profound, fetal-positioned bows of the worshipping monks and nuns. Some wear the special metal cross that identifies them as youths who have spent a week at Taiz6. A turbaned black girl peals forth the French lyrics with the sobbing overtones her tribal ancestors once used to summon dark Senegalese spirits. No guitars, no cheap gimmicks draw them there, for this liturgy is designed to meet the tastes of some of the most cultured urbanites of the world. Along with the youths, a solid strata of bourgeois Parisians also compose the congregation. Everywhere one spots nuns of various congrega-tions, as well as many men who by their nondescript blue and gray suits reveal to a trained eye that they are French priests. They, too, need the nourishment of St. Gervais. As mass progresses, a drunk ambles down the side aisle and dazedly turns 360°. With a blank stare at the congregation and a gesture of appeal with his hands he mutters, "Mes fr~res." He provides no lasting distraction, for all attention is riveted on the liturgical drama. Its magnetism lies not only in its splendid integration of prayer and majestic Byzantine-style music, but also in the witness of the monks and nuns themselves. The communities in charge of this liturgy are now called Les Fraternit~s Monastiques de Jerusalem. The monks started life under the leadership of Pierre Marie Delfieux on November 1, 1975, with the invitation and blessing of FranCois Cardinal Marty of Paris. On December 8, 1976 a company of women formed in a neighboring area near the Church of Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux. The Rule specifically states that there never was or would be any intention of having a mixed community; each group has its own separate establishment and administration, though they do celebrate the liturgy together and share the same spirit and aims--to be monks and nuns in the city, or citadins.~ They have no pastoral, sacramental, teaching, or organized charitable commitment. Signs notify the public that for weddings and sick calls, they can contact the neighboring churches. The members of these groups aim chiefly: 1) to be present in the city and 2) to celebrate the liturgy and divine office in company with the townspeople. The liturgy being a prime concern of their existence, they take time to plan and execute it with all the artistry their con-siderable, combined talents can effect. In choosing a style of.music for their services, the leaders concluded that much of the contemporary church music was shallow, both musically and theologically. Wanting a dominant style that would manifest a global unity, 'Two articles in French give some information al~out these communities: Jean Leclerq, O.S.B., "Tendances Monastiques Actuelles," Nouvelle Revue Theologique, 10e Ann6e, No. i (January- February, 1978), pp. 90-102 and "Naissance d'une Fraternit~ Monastique ~t Paris," Carmel (April, 1976), pp. 56-66. 340 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 they chose Byzantine modes to accompany their Roman liturgy. With lyrics based upon psalmic and patristic sources, translated effectively into French, the simple, strong, rolling harmonies are easily mastered. The result is almost total participation by the congregation. St. Gervais boasts one of the oldest and finest organs in Paris. It is used selectively and effectively at the end of the liturgy and during special times of meditative prayer. The sisters, with beautiful, clear voices, take an active role in leading the singing, in reading, and in gathering together the offertory procession, which always includes lay people and children. An abundant use of incense in the liturgy adds even more of an aura of Byzantine mystery to the ceremony. The Fraternit6 includes several priests. For the Sunday liturgy, the con-celebrants sing, in three harmonic parts, the canon of the mass. Some other parts of the mass, sung alone by the chief celebrant, are accompanied by a background of soft, harmonic melody, hummed by the monks and nuns. At communion time, the frdres and soeurs draw together to form a half-circle about the altar, completed sometimes by lay. members of the congregation. The priests chant in harmony: "Receive the body of Christ," to which the congregation responds in the same harmonic parts: "We receive the body of Christ." A huge host, the size of an American dinner plate, is broken and dist~'ibuted to the encircled brothers and sisters. The same sung ritual accom-panies the chalice. The result is a moving evocation of a truly shared banquet. The total impression given by all the reverent and graceful movements of the mass is that this is the most important event in the lives of the celebrating com-munity- which is just as it should be. The Monastic Fraternit6s The vocation of citadin was revealed to the founder of the F.raternit6s after profound searching in prayer. The rules for community life have been developed in stages, after actual experience in communal living. The guidelines (for communal use only) are now contained in two mimeographed volumes: l) Au Coeur des Villes, au Coeur de Dieu (At the Heart of the Cities, At the Heart of God) and 2) Le Livre de Vie(The Book of Life). Abundant scriptural references in the latter remind the reader that Mary lived, Jesus taught, the apostles evangelized, and prophets and priests of old sacrificed, in the city. Christ fought the devil and conquered him in a city; the fire of the Holy Spirit descended in a city. The beloved of the Canticle sought her Lover while running about the city, and one day He will make the city his beautiful spouse. Indeed, Heaven itself is a City. "It is there that we must remain," the Rule affirms, since God himself dwells there, and thousands of his brothers work, love, weep, sweat, sing, search, struggle and pray there. The Church of St. Gervais is surrounded by all the civic bustle entailed in commerce and governmental administration. It is near the Quais du Seine where lovers stroll l and tourists buy postcards. Its metro stop is H6tel de Ville, the seat of many offices of Parisian city government. Walking in another direction, a visitor Citadins of Paris / 341 soon meets Rue Rivoli, a thriving center of cheap stores and sidewalk vendors selling anything from ice cream to wool stockings. The picturesque Tie Saint Louis, an ancient area called the Marais, and le Forum des Halles are also located in its orbit. The Rule does not lightly gloss over the difficulties of trying to live a monastic life amidst the allurements of one of the world's most beguiling cities. But, the Livre de Vie asks, "Being torn in two directions, is this not the cross?" To be able to live in the city without succumbing to its worldliness, rules of life are spelled out in the Le Livre de Vie which provide for the monks and nuns an armor of fraternal charity, interior and exterior silence, and liberating poverty. Concrete community guidelines focus upon five related points: 1) Fraternal Life 2) Prayer 3) Work 4) Silence and 5) Welcome and Sharing. Fraternal Charity The Rule never ceases to demand love, both of humanity in general and, harder still, of each other. "Only a very great love can offer the world a legitimate and fair defiance," the Livre de Vie explains. "Our vocation is to be a theophany of the love of God, a living icon of the Trinity. There is no more beautiful liturgy, no more eloquent witness, than that of fraternal love. We must live in the heart of the city the mystery of that love." Along with such a sublimely beautiful articulation of theory, the rule gives some concrete sug-gestions for achieving it: "Ask each day that God pour into your heart love for your brothers, and also to place love for you in their hearts. God can refuse nothing to a community who prays this way., ask the trinitarian God to reveal to you the secret of his unity in plurality . In order to succeed in loving, become transparent. Let yourself be known and seek to know. Knowledge opens the way necessarily to love . Do not be content to be a brother of all; be also a friend of each . Pray that the monastic fraternity be entirely translucent to the Presence of the Word, as a foyer of Light . " Prayer Designedly, the community life of prayer has both very public and very private features. Compline is said in their own oratories, but for the monks, the other hours are sung in St. Gervais, with public participation. The p~riod of evening pra~;er begins around 5 p.m. At that time, monks, nuns and townspeople begin to gather for meditative prayer, followed by the evening office. The office flows into the liturgy about 6 p.m., which finally finishes about 7:15. On Thursday night, the monks keep a prayer vigil from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. "Pray in the night in the center of the miseries and joys of the city, where ~God has placed you, as a watchman awaits the dawn," the Livre de Vie exhorts. The founders realized that the execution of such a horarium and liturgy each day could be draining; for that reason the communities have a poustinia (desert) time during Sunday afternoon and the full day of Monday, 342 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 which is spent in the country outside Paris. They join Parisians in the national custom of taking a grand vacance during the month of August. Work To support themselves, the members of the Fraternit~s must take jobs in the city. Guidelines demand that their work must be truly useful, prayerful, well executed, and bear witness to their professed poverty. In line with their vow of obedience, their job is chosen in consultation with the prior and council of the community. No job may be taken which could alienate or destroy their religious equilibrium. By a deliberate option to work only part time, they hope not only to free themselves for liturgical participation, but also to manifest to an acquisitive society their own disinterest in amassing wealth. Though they take menial jobs, there is no political aim or thrust to this option. "Ni Marx, ni Keynes, ni Mao. mais Jesus," declares the Livre de Vie. They are to have no role whatsoever in political life, since in that arena, divisions, confronta-tions and compromises are the rule of life. Instead, they are to manifest the Gospel of Peace in the polis by their lives of justice and truth. This alone is their "political" role. However, in an elocution to the community, Cardinal Marty urged them to be "revolutionary"-- but revolutionary in fidelity to their monastic commitment only. Silence To combat the noisy assaults of city streets, with their roaring, swirling masses of buses, autos, motorcycles and scurrying citizens, the monks and nuns are urged by rule to drink deeply of the wellsprings of prayerful silence: "At work, in the street, in your comings and goings, in the public transport, in the midst of the brouhaha of the city, carry interior silence with you. Take, each day, large expanses of silence, and when the evening comes, meditate on your couch in peace and silence. God lives in you; listen to him." Welcome and Sharing One purpose of the Fraternit~s is' to provide an enclave of such silence and peace for other Parisians. Guests are welcomed to full participation at the silent dinner served at their flower-bedecked wooden tables. In contrast to ~normal French custom, no wine, and little meat are to appear at the table. Round loaves of thick crusted, substantial bread form an important part of their diet: Though visitors are welcome, there are definite limits placed upon thepenetration of Paris (and the world in general) into the horarium of the monastic community. Afternoons are for lectio divina. The Livre de Vie tells the entering candidate to leave aside his address book, and to give up once and ~f for all shows and cinemas. Television has no part in their life, but a summary of the day's news is read at breakfast from the newspaper. Citadins of Paris / 343 Life-Style Guidelines for the community actually allow for a diversity of life-styles and a diversity of relationships to the community, within limits. However, only those who agree to follow the Livre de Vie may make final profession. Presently (1980) the Fraternit~s have the status of a pious union. After a postulancy of three months and a novitiate of two years, a candidate makes temporary profession "entre les mains" (between the hands) of the prior. After a period suitably long to discern a true vocation to the life, the bishop of the local church receives the perpetual profession of vows of the candidate in the local church, for the universal church. The coule blanche, the liturgical habit, has many sacred significances. It reminds the wearer of his white bap-tismal garment when he dons it. Its radiant whiteness recalls as well the Transfiguration and the angel on Easter morn, who wore a garment white as snow. The Ancient One in Daniel's vision had snow bright clothing, and a man in dazzling robes appeared to Cornelius in Acts. At home, the monks wear a short, blue hooded smock, topped by a wooden cross suspended from the neck. The latter is also worn with their street clothes. The sisters, like many other groups, have types of non-liturgical dress that vary with their jobs and mode of life. Several wear floor-length blue habits, veils and capes in the streets. Others wear the simple clothing of working women. Spiritual Wellsprings The founder acknowledges his debt to many traditions in developing the spirituality of the Fraternit6s: to Benedict, Dominic, Augustine, Theresa of Avila, the Early Eastern Fathers, Charles de Foucauld, and above all, to the first Christian community described in Acts, as well as the fraternity immediately surrounding Jesus Christ himself. The Livre de Vie and Au Coeur des Villes are liberally enriched with quotes from sources as widespread in time as St. John Cassian and Catherine de Hueck. Believing that communal self-sufficiency in spiritual matters is ossifying, members are urged to nourish themselves on outside resources. The candidate is encouraged to spend a week at a school of prayer at Troussures, France, and make a retreat at a monastery such as St. Benoit sur Loire. Finally, a month-long desert experience at a place like Assekrem, Morocco, is encouraged. Future Plans It is quite evident that this group has tried to proceed every step of the way attuned to the promptings of the Spirit. The Fraternit6s have been invited to bring their type of monasticism to various cities. So far, they have accepted one invitation: under the priorship of Bishop Michel Marie Darmencieo, a member of the Fraternit6, they now are situated at St. Victor's Church at Marseilles, the scene of a monastery established by St. John Cassian. By rule, the community is forbidden to own property or t6 build anything. Wherever they go, they must rent their dwelling place. Into whatever city they do go, ~i44 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 ~they will enter with the purpose expressed in the explanatory sheet distributed in St. Gervais; to "experien.ce the difficulties, alienations, struggles, work, constraints, fatigue, noise, pollution, pains and joys, the sin and the holiness" of the city. Wherever they go, they likewise bear with them the spirit expressed in the Livre de Vie: "Do not forget that the community where you live is the privileged part of the universe where you are to situate yourself. May your monastery be first of all a part of the world where there is life, where love is shared, where joy, work, fervor, praise and peace are to be found. As at home, so also in the world. Reveal and find God in the heart of the world; remember its first beauty and anticipate its happiness to come. In the desert of the urban world may your monastery be an oasis of peace, prayer and joy; an epiphany of Love." On the final page of the Livre de Vie, Psalm 136 is transcribed: . If l forget you Jerusalem, Maymy right hand wither. One does not easily forget a liturgy at St. Gervais in communion with Les Fraternit~s Monastiques de Jerusalem. End of Drought 1 half awoke last night And wondered if I'd heard Soft whisperings outside my window. 1 was about to go back and continue my dream Then 1 stopped--and listened again. Yes, it was true A gentle rain Soft falling on my lawn. The bone cracked earth and croaking grackles Could drink again. It was a stealthy rain Loathe to intrude on the silent sleepers. Then in the morning it blew full blast And blessed the farmers and the flowers. Sr. Mary Margaret O'Grady Holy Ghost Convent 301 Yucca Street San Antonio, Texas 78203 Transfer to a Contemplative Community Marie Beha, O.S.C. Sister Marie's last article in these pages, "The Discernment of the Contemplative Vocation," appeared in the January 1981 issue. Her address remains: 1916 N. Pleasantburg Dr.; Greenville, SC 29609. These very days of your transition are perhaps the time when everything in you is working at him. Rainer Maria Rilke Though the changes in religious life consequent upon Vatican 1I are still too recent for adequate evaluation, they are beginning, at least, to come into the focus of observable patterns. One of these is the phenomenon of transfers from one religious congregation to another. A small but significant number of religious have opted to remain in religious life, but to live out their vowed commitment in another community. Perhaps this .emerging pattern will have something important to say about the future of religious life itself, and about the kinds of communities that have a future. However, any such speculation seems very premature at this point. What is immediate is the process itself, and what it means for individuals and for their communities. A few workshops have been devoted to this process of transferring, and several articles have appeared describing some of its pains and joys. But, for the most part, what has been presented is the movement from one apostolic congregation to another. The present article wishes to focus on transfers from an apostolic community to a contemplative one, a process that relates not only to the transfer phenomenon but also to that growing concern for prayer, and 345 346 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 especially for contemplative prayer, which has been one of the most hearten-ing aspects of the contemporary renewal of religious life. Transferring from one apostolic congregation to another has its own dynamics, quite distinct from what is involved in making the transition into contemplative community life. Failure to appreciate this difference makes it more difficult for communities and for individuals to cooperate with the promise and to evaluate the phenomenon. At the same time there are elements common to any such transferring--questions, for example, of the danger in-herent in the change, the discernment of motivation, as well as the paschal grace of such uprooting and coming into new life. It is the purpose of this paper to present some of these aspects as they are experienced in unique ways by the "contemplative transfer." Dangers and Difficulties To begin with a warning is only appropriate when there is real danger and when the danger may not be immediately evident. Such seems to be the case in regard to transferring. The process of transfer can be dangerous and the danger remain somewhat hidden, since the holiness of the objective may obscure a faulty theology undergirding the process, some confusion about growth in prayer, along with some elements of escapism and/or mixed motivations. The consequences of transfer can be as serious as the loss of religious vocation for the individual and the disruption of peace for both communities involved. Faulty theology may present the contemplative, monastic community as a more "perfect" form of religious life, even downplaying the importance of apostolic involvement as "too worldly." Since any vocational choice can only be evaluated in terms of the person choosing, speaking of an objective "state of perfection" seems to miss the point. Just as religious life itself can be termed a more perfect state (even in the Vatican II terminology ofPerfectae Caritatis) without implying that it would be so for any particular individual, so too, could some such judgment be made about contemplative life. But what is "~ important for the individual to consider is what is better for himself, not what is "more perfect" in the abstract and the general. Moreover, a spiritual theology which rests on the assumption that "one must always do the more perfect" is doomed to run into danger on the rocks of human limitation. Such perfectionism threatens strain and excessive preoccupation with self, neither of which fosters a contemplative spirit. Even for those who are immune from such a false theology, there remains a possible confusion about development in prayer. Sometimes a call to contemplative prayer is translated into a call to monastic life--with conse-quent loss.for the whole Christian community. The transition from a form of prayer that is more active to one that is more passive is a difficult time for anyone. Thomas Dubay has called this the "crack" period in religious development, and it may be compared with the difficulties and crises that are Transfer to a Contemplative Community part of any of the transitions from one life-stage to another. Such critical times do not provide the stability that makes possible good life-choices. Growth into a more contemplative form of prayer is actually part of the development that can be considered "normal" for most persons who are serious about prayer. It says more about the munificence of God's gifts and his desire to be one with us, than about any need to change communities. The latter is a very different kind of call and consequently, one that needs to be discerned separately. Transferring to a contemplative monastery during a crisis time in prayer might mask a reluctance to face the difficulties of persevering in prayer during times of dryness. Individuals may imagine that once they are enclosed, distractions will disappear and consolations will return--in abundance. They will be quickly disabused of such hopes in the everyday of monastic living. Even the prospect of having ample time provided for prayer will prove to hold its own challenge. For "more time" can also mean "more demands": more awareness of distractions, more painful dryness. Add to this all the unsettle-ments that are bound to be part of such a radical adjustment as transferring and prayer may well prove to be even more difficult than before. Similarly, any secret desire to escape the challenges of renewal or to insulate oneself from painful community relationships will be tested in the closeness of contemplative community. Unfortunately, some religious seem to equate monastic religious life with the kind of structured life in community that prevailed before Vatican II. So the desire to transfer can spring from a search for a more compatible expression of apostolic religious life, rather than ~t'~a genuine contemplative vocation. In reality contemplative communities have been just as much affected by Vatican II renewal as have apostolic congrega-tions. Changes, for example, in the living out of enclosure have caused just as many painful tensions as have adaptations in apostolic involvement. Struc-tures have developed in both forms of religious life and will continue to do so. Renewal requires participation, not escape, no matter where one is called to live. Nor does a transfer necessarily ease the tensions of community relation-ships. On the contrary, living in the close, everyday proximity of enclosed community may only heighten such tensions. Spending all one's days with the very same people, in a restricted area and with a limited sphere of activity can never provide escape from the interpersonal. "Contempla(ive community" actually requires a well-developed capacity for sharing life with others, including a delicate balance between intimacy and a respect for solitude which enables one to live with others in a silence that communicates life. In a similar way, an authentic call to transfer is anything but an escape from apostolic involvement. On the contrary, what will be needed is a vibrant desire to be given to and for the sake of others, joined with a faith that is strong enough to translate this call into an everyday service that is not sustained by any immediately tangible results. So if a person is dissatisfied with the :348 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 results of his apostolic work, it would be foolish to try and escape into the even less satisfying life of faith that is the "labor" of the contemplative. And if anyone hopes to find a variety of stimulating options within the everyday tasks of contemplative community, he will be rapidly disillusioned. Even the more plausible motivation of resolving a conflict between prayer and activity can speak more of escapism than of genuine call. Vocation is not discerned negatively, but only through such positive signs as a genuine desire for a life of prayer (not just more time for prayer) and a belief that this self-gift will bear fruit in and for the Church. Such positive criteria for discern-ment will be presented in more detail in the following section of this paper. These, then, are a few of the hidden dangers rising from faulty theology, a confusion about growth in prayer, and tendencies to eseapism, which could prompt an individual to transfer for the wrong reasons. Still to be considered are some of the real dangers involved in the process itself both in terms of the individual and of the communities involved. When a person professes vows, the commitment is made to God, but it is made within the context of a particular community, and this communitarian aspect is not to be changed lightly. Though made by man and so changeable in itself, life in community embodies a call that is divine and eternal. In all its particularity, community gives a specific form to vocation. While not of the essence, still this form may be a very important, even necessary, condition for vocation to grow and flourish. Consequently, changing from one community to another risks undermining the stability of the individual's commitment. If the new community does not provide the hoped-for environment, return to the former one may prove to be impossible and so a vocation may be lost. Other risks inherent in transferring center around the extent of adjustment which will certainly be profound. "Culture shock" is almost inevitable. Even though the "natives" of the adopted community speak "English," still new values, different associations will make it difficult to discover the meaning of words and actions, of response, and of nonverbal communication. The result will be a feeling of lostness and confusion that cannot be met by something as simple as asking questions. For there are no words in which to phrase the ques-tions, no answers that make sense. There may even be an unnerving lack of awareness that something has been "misunderstood" until confusion has deepened into a cloud as indefinite and suffusing as fog: Similarly homesickness for one's community of origin can be even more profound than the feeling that accompanied one's first leaving home for the convent. For the home that is now being left has claimed more of one's adult life and so has called for a freer choice, a more committed response. To leave ~one's family for .the sake of forming new life-bonds is part of the naturalpro-cess of growth and development. But leaving the community of one's first choice for another is not so natural, and the consequences are often profound and disturbing. In the process a certain spirit of criticism can develop. This may even bea necessary part of discernment as one reevaluates call and response, one's own Transfer to a Contemplative Community / ~149 vocation and that of both communities involved. But such critical reflection can become a pattern of thinking that keeps one on the periphery, "watching" and judging way beyond the period when this stance is necessary. This spirit of uninvolved criticism chips away at commitment and makes participation in community impossible. Such are a few of the real dangers involved for individuals who are con-sidering transfer'ring. What are the risks for the communities? Loss of membership in the original community is one obvious area of concern--not just the obvious matter of a person leaving this community to join another. What may be far more painful is the kind of vocational questioning that can arise among other members of the parent community. Such reevaluation may be wholesome, if it leads to renewed discernment of and commitment to one's own vocational choice. But it can also be weakening if it simply adds to diminished morale, feelings of hopelessness and that sense of disillusionment that plagues so many during times of transition. Similarly, the community receiving the transfer can have its peace dis-turbed if the new member, already a formed religious, brings along an incom-patible spirituality together with an undocile mind and heart. Within the closeness of contemplative community, such lack of harmony can be pro-foundly disturbing to all, with consequent loss of service to the whole Church. Such are the dangers in~,olved, both for individuals and for communities. The difficulties are real; the cost is certainly not minimal. The basic question is, then: Is transferring worth theprice? Are the real risks offset by still greater advantages? Are there compensations for the dangers? Yes, if transferring ac-tualizes a more personalized call-response, leading to still deeper commit-ment. When such is the case, not only will the individual find fuller life in the Lord, but both communities involved will also be enriched; such is the unity of all members in the one Body of Christ. The whole question of transferring, then, seems to hinge on the validity of this new call-within-a-call. Theologically such development is possible since the only absolute fidelity in this special covenant relationship is found in a God "whose love is everlasting." The response of any individual can only par-ticipate in this love through an ongoing "creative fidelity" aimed at fashion-ing all life's choices in the light of an original baptismal commitment. The direction for such responsiveness will always be toward greater specificity, a more personal love. Though this ongoing response will be shaped within the context of a particular community, this form, while remaining important, is still only conditional. It may be changed, if this will serve to realize more closely one's first commitment t6 the Lord. Particularly, then, for our present purposes the issue revolves around discernment of an authentic call to transfer from apostolic to contemplative life. Discernment an Authentic Call to Transfer What might be some of the signs that one is being called to deepen one's ~i50 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 baptismal commitment by transferring religious profession from an apostolic congregation to a contemplative community? Here we shall suggest a few of the practical ways in which the traditional vocational criteria of desire, right motivation, and ability to live the life, are evidenced in the case of a proposed ttransfer. \ A long-term desire for contemplative life seems one of the clearest signs that someone should undertake the risks of making a transfer. In many cases, this desire was already present at the time the individual entered religious life but, for a variety of reasons, it was never actualized. Circumstances may simply have made it impossible; ignorance or poor advice may also have con-tributed. So the desire was put aside, perhaps completely forgotten. Profes-sion was made, and that commitment lived out wholeheartedly and with joy. But years later the desire for contemplative life reappears. Sometimes it is recognized as a familiar part of one's past; sometimes it comes as a new and surprising idea with recognition only following later. In either case, such con-tinuity with the past provides a sense of direction in the unfolding of one's per-sonal salvational history. Even when.the desire for contemplative life is not remembered or recogniz-ed as part of one's past, at some point in the present the emergence of this desire becomes so strong that it can no longer be ignored. When first en-countered consciously, the desire is more often a matter of wanting to live out contemplative values rather than a careful comparison/choice of active-i verSus-comtemplative community. A whole life devoted to prayer, supported and challenged by a community of other "pray-ers," by solitude and silence, combined with a very simple, even austere style of life: these are some of the values that become increasingly important. As desire for them grows, so, too, does the longing for a way of living them out more fully and completely. At first this may be met by providing more time for prayer, arranging to live in a prayer-centered local community or one which is experimenting with a simpler way of living. For some, such restructuring of life-style is the answer; for others this is not enough, and the desire continues to grow. A period in a House of Prayer may be another option and, once again, this may provide the right balance of prayer and active apostolate for certain individuals. For others, the quest must continue simply because the desire for a purely con-templative life continues, increases, and must ultimately be met in life. This longing for a way to live out contemplative values may lead one final-ly to a moment of realization and choice. Apostolic religious life can no longer ~provide the support, stimulation, structure for the kind of contemplative life to which the religious feels called. And at this point, transferring becomes a matter of vocational decision. Such recognition is eminently paschal, filled as it is with the painful realization that one must leave behind his "homeland" and "pass over" a desert of unknowns. Yet there is also joy, an anticipation that what lies ahead promises more life, deeper peace. Even the pain of leaving the congregation of one's first profession is somewhat tempered by the realization that unless he Transfer to a Contemplative Community had given of himself there, had truly identified, there would be no loss now. Nor would there be much hope of future success. This experience of having been fully part of one's original congregation, of having found peace and joy in community there, is almost a presupposition of any authentic call to transfer. Someone who has not been happy originally probably will not find any more satisfaction in contemplative life. On the other hand, an individual who has known what it means to give himself to community and in community may come to realize that another successful identification is possible, even though it will be made with some pain. This returns us to the whole complex question of motivation. Why should an individual who has already made profession consider transferring his com-mitment to a contemplative community? In the preceding section we examined a whole series of false motivations, including poorly founded theological prin-ciples, escapism, and an inadequate understanding of contemplative life. These need to be confronted, not in the safety of abstraction, but in the reality of one's own life-experience, and with the realistic help of others who know the individual and both forms of religious life. Of even greater importance is the discerning of positive motivation, since a mere lack of obstacles does not give clear indication that a person ought to go ahead in a certain new life direc-tion. Vocation is positive call, not just an absence of negative criteria. To ask the "why" of one's motivation is important and fruitful but only so long as one keeps in mind that the "answer" cannot be found by adding up worttiy reasons, for, in the last analysis, human motivation remains mystery. It can never be known in its totality, with certainty. The reasons we give are, at best, approximations, and the final answer to the "why" is found only in the living out of the decision. Having recognized that a list of reasons never adds up to certitude, still it can be an indicator that an individual should risk the time and energy of a fur-ther discernment in actual life. Very often the "why" of a transfer can only be phrased in an unsatisfying "because, somehow, I can do nothing else." Such an experience of almost necessity, of inability to do anything else with one's life until this pressing question has been answered, may be an uncomfortable, but true indicator of basic motivation. Such necessity, though, is not a matter of compulsiveness, but rather of a freedom that grows, once the internal logic of choice has been admitted and acted upon. A person may come to discover that his whole movement of life has been in the direction of contemplative vocation, though the surface geography of his activities has been quite different. These very differences may even have been unconscious protest. Such, for example, is the case of an individual who has been a strong advocate of apostolic spirituality, of social involvement, of variety in ministries. All the while, what the person has been seeking on the deepest level, is a way of giving himself completely to the Lord. All the above are real ways; all have been tried. But all still leave something "wanting." "How can I be more giving?" becomes less of a question to be considered. Now it demands an answer that must be made in life. ~52 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 Traditionally, someone entering the monastery is asked, "What do you seek?" If the first answer, not just in liturgy, but in life is "The Lord," then there is good hope that what is being sought will be found. This is not to say that the person considering transfer has not already "found the Lord." But, like the good Christian who considers religious life just because of his previous discovery of the Lord, so too the individual who seriously considers transfer should only be desirous of greater union, a kind of intimacy that, for this par-ticular individual, seems more realizable in contemplative community. Put in still more concrete terms, someone who is already a religious may apply for a transfer because he experiences a desire to give prayer an absolute priority of time, energy, life-focus. In apostolic religious life, consideration of the needs of others, and of one's response to these needs, must always be cen-tral to discernment; this seems to be the meaning of apostolic spirituality. In monastic life, however, the central concern is the totality of life of prayer, and it is this dedication to prayer which becomes one's service to others. Consequently, the desire to give oneself to others through total dedication in prayer is central to any discernment of contemplative vocation, and this becomes even more critical when there is a question of transfer. This is because the person desirous of transfer has already internalized a spirituality of active, direct service, and his transition to a quite different orientation may not come easily or quickly, But unless an individual can come to see silence, solitude, simple manual work, austerity of life-style as contributing to a life of abiding prayer, and further, believe that personal prayer, lectio and liturgy are one's own call to building up the Body of Christ, then contemplative, monastic life will seem empty and fruitless. Moreover, such belief cannot re-main an intellectual assent, nor even an abstract faith-value; it must become personal conviction and motivation for life. Ultimately, then, desire and motivation are just the beginnings of discern-tment for a contemplative vocation. Only by living the life can the presence or absence of God's enabling grace be discovered. So let us conclude by sug-gesting some of the areas which will be particularly relevant in the life-testing of a call to transfer from apostolic to contemplative religious life. Will the potential transfer-person be able to go beyond the initial obstacles of radical adjustment with all its attendant anxiety, of separation from the original community which has provided so much of his identity and emotional support? Put in more positive terms, will the person, first of all, "survive" the transfer? For some, the culture shock, already alluded to, is so severe that there is consequent loss of health or debilitating emotional disturbance. And this, not just in the first crisis of adjustment, where it might well be expected, but increasingly as time goes on. When this happens, life experience leads to a negative discernment. On the contrary, when the Spirit is truly inspiring a person to make the transfer, then, despite the pain, growth will occur. Radical adjustment, separation anxiety, culture shock will all be in the service of conversion. The Transfer to a Contemplative Community / 353 individual will grow and grow in contemplative ways. A new identity will begin to emerge when the more familiar response of teacher, nurse, "member of." are no longer applicable. There will be a new appreciation for one's unique giftedness as person, simply because one is and one exists as a special expression of the Father's creative love. Growth will also occur through positive identification with the new com-munity. Ac.ceptance takes time but gradually new relationships will be formed, an individual will fit in, and his suitability for the life will be confirmed by the response of the community. What begins in strangeness will end in familiarity. For example, enclosure will no longer be a matter of adjustment, perhaps of difficulty, but will evolve into a simple means of ensuring the kind of solitude necessary for prayer. Prayer, in its turn, will grow and deepen. The regular praying of the Liturgy of the Hours in choir will no longer be unfamiliar ritual, nor frequent "interruption," but regular nourishment and opportunity for praise. The simplicity of the life, far from being monotonous, will lead to peace, making possible a "richness" of response that can only be sustained within a somewhat austere life-style. All of this, however, takes time. It requires effort on the part of the one who transfers; it requires also acceptance and assistance on the part of the community. Above all, it requires the empowering grace of God's call. When all of these are present, and when the passing of months and even years has allowed for a new identity to be formed, then the transferred person will final-ly come to recognize himself as a contemplative, a member of his new com-munity. The past will merge into this new present and integration will occur. For example, former skills and talents will find new expressions or will be sacrificed, "counted as nothing," in view of something still more worthwhile. Painful parts of the past will be healed; grateful remembering will allow all that has been to be incorporated into the present and open the way to the future. In short, adjustment will make way for gradual growth, and this growth will be in the direction of incorporation into the new community. When this occurs, the transfer will have been accomplished, and a new identification will have been made. The individual, as well as both communities, will be enriched, because, whenever life is lived more fully, the w.hole Body of Christ is vitalized. Let me conclude with a comparison. Among the old Irish monks, the grace of martyrdom was described in three ways: the "red" martyrdom of shedding one's blood, the "white" martyrdom of desire to give One's life for the sake of the gospel, and finally, the "green" martyrdom of exile, of pilgrimage and ac-cepted separation for the sake of new life in Christ. The transferred person may well find the grace of this unique vocation expressed in the hope-filled "green" of separation from what is familiar, good, loved, for the sake of greater union-- in contemplative community. The Right to Solitude Roman Ginn, O.C.S.O. Father Ginn, a monk of Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky, has been living as a hermit in Latin America for the past fourteen years. His last article, "The Ladder of Prayer," appeared in the January, 1980 issue. Father Ginn's marling address is: Apartado 44; Huajuapan de Leon; Oaxaca, Mexico. The renewed interest in hermitical life during the last three decades should not be viewed with alarm but as a rediscovery of one of the first and most traditional forms of contemplative life. This rediscovery is taking place at a time when men are becoming more aware of their essential needs and rights. Speaking in the Music Council assembled by UNESCO, the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, declared some twenty years ago that silence is one of man's princi-pal needs and concluded: "I hope that the right to silence will be recognized as being as important as the right to pure water and air." But the same claim should be extended to solitude. For if man is a social being who cannot develop as a person in perpetual solitude, in a very true sense he is also an un-social being who experiences the impersonality and artificiality unavoidable in relations with others (excepting perhaps with those who form his intimate cir-cle) as a kind of violence. The person's relation with society is problematic and neither his need for communication nor for solitude can be left unsatisfied without damage. But how can solitude be called aoneed and a right? Neither primitive peoples nor children feel any such need. But this is because they do not see it as a positive value but as isolation. Even the ea,rly Hebrews missed its positive side. They regarded solitude as an evil, a co~nsequence of sin, and promised God's special protection to those .moist exposed to it: the poor, widows, strangers and orphans. The Greeks however attained a positNe view of it. The hero of the Greek tragedies lives in a solitude that is both a condemnation and 354 ~ The Right to Solitude / :355 a privilege. Sophocles, for example, presents Oepidus as passing from a period of painful isolation into a new form of solitude that has something divine about it. But even if the Hebrews never escaped from a negative concept of solitude, they discovered the key to its understanding as a positive reality. For they gradually realized that each must 'learn to separate from the collectivity and face God and his will as an individual as well'as a member of society. They also saw that God could call some individuals to positions of confrontation with society which would force them to live in isolation. But they never managed to transform this isolation into a privileged situation and a means of closer union with God. So, without grasping the value of their discovery, they passed on the secret that man's development as a person is somehow connected with his ability to temporally break his ties to society in order to take possession of himself as a unique reality, an individual and responsible I. They present Jeremiah, for example, living through an isolation he deplores without know-ing how it is slowly transforming him from a timid, village youth into God's iron, ~ The oriental religions appreciated solitude as something positive long before the coming of Christ. Early Buddhist texts are full of its praise as a means of spiritual development. Even though Buddha himself later prescribed communal life for his followers, he never lost his esteem for solitude. In a statement preserved by the Itivattka, for example, he says: "O monks, have your dwelling and delights in solitude. Rejoice in solitude, dedicated to mental calmness in the depths of your selves, without forgetting to meditate, penetrated .with intuition; seek your dwelling in desert spots." The Udana records the story of the monk Bhaddiya who lived in a mango forest. Passersby had often heard him repeating over and over: "What happiness!" When they told Buddha about him, he called the monk and asked for an ex-planation. Bhaddiya replied: ¯ Sir, before, when i was a layman and enjoyed royal power as the father of a family, I had guards distributed both inside and outside my palace . And in spite of the fact that I was protected and safeguarded in such a way, I lived tormented by fear, restless, suspicious, frightened. Now, sir, wherever I find myself in the woods, under a tree or in a solitary spot, even though I am alone, I live without fear, tranquil, trustful, without trepidation, unworried, in peace, with whatever others give me, with my mind as free as a forest animal. This is why I repeat: "What happiness, what happiness." The poetic sections of the Buddhist canon love to use images of forest animals to describe the advantages of the solitary life. "Like a lion that over-comes everything, that wanders victorious as king of the forest, visiting its most distant corners and unfrightened by rumors." The solitary individual is likewise compared to the elephant and rhinoceros. The localities chosen by the first followers of Buddha as most apt for the pursuit of their end are another indication of the positive value they saw in solitude: mountains, forests, caves and cemeteries. 356 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 When Christian monasticism appeared in the mid-third century, it manifested a similar love for solitude, inspired of course by Jesus' example (See Mr. 4). Like their Oriental brothers, the Christian monks regarded it as the mother of the spiritual life. Cassian felt that normally the more solitude a monk had, the greater was his perfection.He put his third conference on the lips of Abbot Paphnutius, who lived in such inaccessible places that even other hermits "only with great difficulty caught a glimpse of him every now and then." Such a man was fittingly surnamed the Buffalo. But the fact that most of the praises of solitude in the early Church originated with monks (or ex-monks like St. John Chrysostom) does not mean it was something that concerned them alone. If they exploited it more than others, it was only because in general they took Christian life more seriously, and experienced the positive role of solitude in its development. Their appraisal has been confirmed by modern philosophers. Kierkegaard among Christian, and Nietzsche among non-Christian thinkers strongly stress the importance of solitude for personal development, If they exaggerate, this is only a perhaps necessary reaction to modern society's fear and devaluation of solitude. Nietzsche makes it the supreme value, one indispensable for the growth of all others. For a Christian it can only be a means, even though one - greatly neglected today. As the Greeks saw and the Hebrews sensed without clearly understanding, solitude reveals man's deepest self to him making it possible for him to become aware of his interior resources and discover meaning in his life. Because of its value in helping the individual pass from the suggestion of the collectivity to the liberty of maturity, it is a basic human right that must be carefully p~eserved. For the Christian it is also the entrance into that most sacred and secret .region of the person--his interiority--where union with God takes place. As St. Augustine loves to repeat, God is in the most intimate part of us. He is more truly within us than we are. Even after one has experienced enough solitude to develop into a mature person, periods of it will continue to be necessary, during which one's self-possession may be renewed. Otherwise a gradual self-alienation can set in that will prevent the individual from entering into deep and lasting communion with others and will allow him or her to sink into the negative solitude of isola-tion. Positive and voluntary solitude is a good way to prevent negative solitude. Such periods of solitude should not be used to sleep or simply rest in, but to feel out one's roots actively and become more one's true self before God. Only by doing this will the individual again become fit for fruitful rela-tions with others. There is al~;ays a danger however that we will turn solitude into an ab-solute, and be tempted to stay there. This would not be right, for God calls very few to follow in Abbot Paphnutius' footsteps. Too many buffalos would upset the Church's spiritual ecology. The ideal in most Christian lives will always be a happy balance betw~ei~ solitude and s6ciety, as Jesus himself lived The Right to Solitude / 357' it. To stay longer in solitude than God wills can lead to spiritual sterility. But after all the danger of overstaying one's time in solitude is not great. For, as many who have attempted hermitical life during the last thirty years have discovered, if the solitude is real, it will become unbearable for someone who does not belong there. As one of the Desert Fathers remarked: "The desert vomits out those whom God has not called into it." Covenanl The Father knocks at my door seeking a home for his son: Rent is cheap, 1 say. I don't want to rent. I want to buy, says God. I'm not sure 1 want to sell, but you might come in to look around. 1 think 1 will, says God. I might let you have a room or two. 1 like it, says God. 1'11 take the two. You might decide to give me more some day. 1 can wait, says God. I'd like to give you more, but it's a bit difficult. I need some space for me. I know, says God, but I'll wait. I like what 1 see. Hm, maybe 1 can let you have another room. 1 really don't need that much. Thanks, says God. 1'11 take it. I like what 1 see. I'd like to give you the whole house but I'm not sure-- Think on it~ says' God. 1 wouldn't put you out. Your house would be mine and my son would live in it. You'd have more space than you'd ever had before. 1 don't understand at all. I know, says God, but 1 can't tell you about that. You'll have to discover it for yourself. That can only happen if you let him have the whole house. A bit risky, 1 say. Yes, says God, but try me. I'm not sure-- 1'11 let you know. I can wait, says God. 1 like what I see. Margaret Halaska, osf On Being a Superior Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Father Meenan resides in the Jesuit community of 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Though it may seem strange, .I would like to begin a treatment of the role of the superior by reflecting for a bit on the phrase we so often use, "Thy will be done." When prayed, as in the Our Father, does it make any sense at all, when you think about it? Is there, for instance, some ,super-God" to whom the prayer is addressed, asking that he take care of God so that he makes sure that God's will gets done? Or maybe God doesn't know what his will is, so we pray, "Hope you find out." Perhaps God is in a struggle, so that our prayer is equivalently, "Hope you win!" In other words, this phrase doesn't make much sense--if you just take it at its face value. But I think that the phrase does begin to make sense when ! begin to realize that, in using those words in prayer, I've taken a stand. Whether I join my will to his in prayer or not, his will is simply going to be done. What I am saying when I use those words is, "I want his will to be done. I 'want in' on the whole process. I want to be involved." And so there is a commitment of myself to the project when I say, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done." Then the prayer begins to make sense because it takes me from the luxury of being a bystander and puts me right in the middle of things. It begins to make me hungry that his will be done. And then, in truth, it becomes the prayer of my heart. Then it becomes a real prayer--and a fruitful starting point for a reflection on the role of being superior. The problem is that the words come too easily. The problem is that I have grown up with the words, and I lose track of them, of what they say. The problem is that I have said them too often. I fiave gotten used to them. And so they lose the force they should have: that there is a great project afoot, and I want to be involved in it. And this, basically, is what this article on the role of 358 On Being a Superior / 359 / the superior is going to be about: God's will for the person who is superior in t the exercise of the office of being superior. For purposes of this article, I don't care about the sociology of leadership. I don't care about the psychological dimensions of community. And I certainly don't care about the canonical details of implementing the office. What I do care about is the~spiritual a___.__~sp.e__~c_t 9 fob_ei_.o.ng s__~up.e~r_ior, of getting a feel for the role of being a superior. I care about the conviction that one has in exercising the office of superior. Conviction is going to involve feeling, precisely because one's whole person is involved in the truth of what he is saying when he speaks or acts from conviction. What I would hope to evoke in the course of this article is a conviction, a felt truth, that locates the person, invests the person, identifies the person in what he knows. To this end, I would invite the person who is superior to share with me, through these pages, in a meditation. I.f we are going to make a meditation together, we ought to have a "com-position of place." For this, I have chosen Peter at the lakeside, after the Resurrection, when, according to John's gospel, Christ said to Peter, "Feed my sheep'." Just before this, he had asked Peter, "Do you love me more than these?" Isn't it a shame how cheap we have made the word "love" today? What does it mean to say, "I love you more than these"? The question is important because what is at issue is the building of a life on the love of God. But how do we know if we do love God? Is our confidence in our love go-ing to come out of our feelings? Well, for most of us, God isn't "real" enough for us to have very strong feelings about--except rarely. And probably in those moments, often enough, the individual is deluded. In point of fact, most of the days of my life, I don't feel love for God. How do I know, then, if I love him enough to be able to build a life on love? t/~ I f I love, I will do the work of love. I f love is there, the fruit of love will be there. If I am concerned about the things of the Lord, about him and his kingdom and his service and his glory, then I know I love. I don't care what I feel. I know I love, because the fruits of love are there. Even here, though, the issue is not all that clear, simply because I can also fake the fruits of love. I can ape them. I can do great and good things, noble and glorious things--without love. I can do them just because I am ambitious, or because I hate to leave things untidy and have a neurotic concern for neatness, or because I want to be noticed, or because I have career preferences, or because I have a developed sense of responsibility, or because the easiest way to be invisible is to be merely and conventionally competent since, if there are no problems in my sector, nobody is going to stick his nose into it--and that is what I want t'o be, invisible. What is done for any of these reasons does, I suppose, represent the "works of love," but these works stem out of my love for myself in one fashion or another, not out of my love for God. 360 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 In determining the presence or absence of the love of God, then, it is clear that the intention is going to be very important--not the expressed intention, but the real intention. And the real intention is in the heart and soul, lying under the words I use to express it. The grace of our meditation will be the grace not to be deaf to God's call, but prompt and diligent to do his most holy will. If being superior is a chore, a task for an individual, then that individual is going to fail. If it is not a work of love, then at best he will be merely a good administrator. At best, he will make the canonists happy. But if being a superior is a response to God's call, if there is an eagerness to be prompt and diligent to do his will, then the person will not be the performer of mere tasks: he will be a superior. 'From what has just been written, it is clear that I am convinced that being ¯ superior is a very definable, concrete, explicit vocation from Almighty God to a particular individual. In terms of this call, God says to those whom he sum-mons in this fashion, "Feed my sheep," which is the core reality of the voca-tion of being a superior. You see, being a superior is a vocation, a call from God. It is much more concrete than one's'~all to enter a congregation. It is more clearly defined than one's professional competence. In the present circumstance of the Church, superiors have a definite term: a beginning, a measurable beginning, middle, and end to this concrete call that they have. Their call includes definite areas of responsibility, rather more clear than in the usual run of job descriptions. The superior has a definite flock to be fed. Being a superior, then, is easily discernible. Is it really a call? We religious have a way of using all sorts of pious vocabulary with a great deal of conviction--so long as we are talking about somebody else. We have all attended at one time or another the circumstances of somebody else's tragedy, when it's easy for us to see that tragedy so clearly in terms of God's providence for them and for the victim. But when it comes to ourselves, somehow we find that our faith is rather more brittle. Too often for us religious, it is very easy to isolate "God's providence" into some abstract awareness of God as "Lord of History" because, for example, of what .he did to Israel, what he's done to the Church, what he's doing in the history of the world at the present time. Is God, though, Lord of your life? If he is Lord of yliofue,r then how can you explain the meaning of being superior, if not in terms of his Lordship? Is God faithful and loving? Because, if he is, how are you going to explain being superior save in terms of his faithful, loving exercise of Lordship in your regard? We can see how it gets to be a bit more difficult to be quite so confident of the "providence of God" when it begins to reach closer to home. It is much easier to see him as Lord of others than as Lord of myself. Does God care for the congregation? If he doesn't care for the congrega-tion, then he couldn't care less who was superior. If he does care for the con-d gregation, then he must care very much about who is superior--though this On Being a Superior does not mean at all that he has chosen the best possible person. It doesn't mean that he has chosen the most competent person. It doesn't even mean that he has chosen an able person. It just means that he has chosen a person. He has exer-cised a definite, deliberate choice in wanting you to be a superior of his com-munity for which he cares very much, in regard to which he says toyou, "Feed my sheep." It is time now to return to the reflection with which we begari regarding our earnestness for God's will. How earnest are we for God's will? Not out there, ~not in the future, but here and now. The,fact is that either God is not God at all, or he has call~ed you to b____~e a superior. If he has called you, he has expressed his will. You can choose to ignore it if you--want, but you cannot intelligently deny this fact without denying that God is God. b\ Being a superior is a vocation to do what? To feed his sheep in all the ways that make sense. His.sheep are workers in his vineyard, and the superior's feeding of his sheep is going to include nurturing their capacity to work in his vineyard--to be apostles. His sheep are your sisters or brothers in Christ. These are not vague groups of girls or boys that walk in the front door of an institution. These are your sisters or brothers in Christ, persons who have a call to the community that you say you love. These are the sheep that he has entrusted to you to be nourished by you. If all of this is true, then the only adequate approach to exercising the i office of superior is going to be as an act of religion. The alternative is to ex-clude God from your individual salvation history, the salvation history of your congregation, and the salvation history of the Church and world today. Therefore it follows that the key which unlocks the whole mystery of being a ~ superior is going to be found in the area of acts of religion--which is the same area that includes the taking of your vows in the first place. This is the same area, too, that envelops your whole prayer life. This is in the same area as your whole living for God. If this is true, then the individual is going to want to be a superior after the mind and thought and heart of Christ. His mode of being a superior is going to be the expression of his r~ligious involvement in God's will--or it is nothing. In seeking to make this act of religion real, the superior will make use of many aids to help him. But it is the act of religion that is going to give life to the whole process. So the superior will make use of whatever he can learn from management theory, from the psychology of the human person, from the sociology of community. He will make use of all these because they are tools given into his hands, tools that make it possible for him the better to enflesh into reality the act of religion that is his response to God's call. But if this religious response is not effectively there, if the soul of the pro-cess isn'~ present, all that's left is'a corpse. And no psychologist is ever going to make a corpse come alive. If all a superior does is to oversee the production of a corpse, then he would be better off seeking a position on a middle- 369 / Review for Religious, Volume 40, 1981/3 management level of some large corporation and make cars for the rest of his life. At least it would be a safer way of wasting his life; and he would only be touching others merely in their jobs. We religious like to talk a great deal about zeal. If you are serious about zeal, then you have to see in this call from God to be a superior a concrete way of enfleshing your zeal. Otherwise, you are going to be lost in a dreamland, phantasying about future generations of yet unborn souls whom you will "save" some time or other, some place or other. If you were serious about zeal, then you would be very much taken with God's will. If you were serious about his will, and thought that he was calling you, then your zeal would be a hunger to respond to his call, and he has called you to be a superior. In saying to you as superior, "Feed my sheep," he wants you to take unto yourself his sheep, those very special ones whom he has called in a very special way, and who, therefore, need a very special kind of nurtur- ~inagn,d he has sayiodu, You feed themsey sthheeapt, swo hat I have sown in their hearts may come alive." What we commonly see today is a great deal of reluctance on the part of } persons who are unwilling to become superiors for a variety of reasons. ~ From the beglnmng of time, but especially ~n the present age, a man would be out of his mind to want to be a superior. In fact, to want to be a superior is usually a guarantee of failure: not necessarily administrative failure, the failur--"~f-s~perficial effectiveness, but the substantive failure of one who, though called to be of and for Christ's kingdom, may live in exterior darkness, all the while doing great things with brick and mortar--and quite possibly destroying souls for the sake of his mere brick and mortar. So there is fear in the face of taking on such an office, and it is common today. Ther_e ar~t least tw_o~.possible_sources.of_this._~fear. One of them is healthy, eminently healthy, and the other is unhealthy. The healthy fear, I think, comes out of vision. The person who has this healthy fear, for instance, would usually have a fairly clear idea of what the founder wanted in starting the congregation. He has a pretty good idea of the value of a soul, and therefore also has a pretty good idea of the preciousness of each of those special souls called by God to religious life, and whom the superior is supposed to nurture in this vocation. In terms of such a vision, the person would have a very clear and distinct notion of the goal--not of the practicalities, but of priorities and purposes. A person with this kind of vision also recognizes that the vision is of God. And a person with that kind of clarity must see himself as unworthy. So he says, "No, not I. I can't do this." Now there are two t~ings that are healthy about that fear. One is that this sense of unworthiness comes out of self-knowledge of a sort that would arise ~when a person looks at himself against the background of such a vision. With this self-knowledge, in looking at the job, at what the call is, he is aware of his very real impotence; he has a sense of his utter helplessness. The other healthy aspect of such a fear flows precisely from this On Being a Superior / 3{}3 awareness: it is that the individual has a clear and distinct sense of one's need for God in responding to such a vocation. He cannot fulfill such a call, and therefore he would need God. Beingaware of his unworthiness, he has a very healthy desire not to be a superior--until it becomes clear that this call is truly from God. Then, retaining his sense of unworthiness, knowing that God chooses weak things of this world to achieve his purpose, the individual ac-cepts God's call and, in his need, turns to God. Such an individual truly has the spirit_of.a_superior's vocation. . Th~nheal~ the, but more common fear that has become particularly fre-quent" "--~---'---"-'-'during our time in religious life stems, for whatever reason, from a loss of vision, or, alas, from the fact that the individual never had a vision in the first place. When such a person is confronted with the job-requirements, he is often faced with something that is, for him, vague, blurred, unmanageable. He often asks, "What does obedience mean now? What do any of the vows mean now? What does the apostolate mean now? What does the vision of the congregation mean now?" And on, and on, and on. His fear is as blurred as is his sense of vocation itself. Without a vision, such a prospect for the office of superior does not look out to God's vineyard, but into the interior of the community. All he sees when he looks around is conflict, antagonism, varieties of resistance, burdens and crosses--and he wants no part of that kind of crucifixion. So, for his own security and comfort, he is afraid to be a superior. And that kind of fear, if the job is thrust upon him regardless, leads to paralysis, a paralysis that can find a variety of ways of expression. He can be .the do-nothing, the absolutely do-nothing type, who keeps his hands totally off everything except the signing of checks once a month--and this only if the treasurer has succeeded in making an appointment. Or he becomes the type who is only an~administrator. He becomes only the outside contact-person working with benefactors. He becomes only the friend of t

Issue 38.5 of the Review for Religious, 1979. ; REVIEW FOR RE~.~(;~OUS (ISSN (~)34-639X). published bi-monthly (every two months), is edited in collaboration with faculty members of the Department of Theology of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis. MO 63108. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute: St. Louis. Missouri. © 1979 By REVIEW FOR RE~.~;~OUS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. Missouri. Single copies: $2.0(I. Subscription U.S.A.: $8.00 a year: $15.00 for two years. Other countries: $9.00 a year. $17.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write REv,~-:w VOR RE~.~;~OtJS: P.O. Box 6070: Duluth. Minnesota 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor September, 1979 Volume 38 Number 5 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manuscripts and books for review should be sent to R~:v~v:w r'on Rv:~Ac,~oos; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. "Out of print" issues ahd articles not re-issued as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 North Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Detachment in the Ascent of( Mount Carmel'. an Appreciation Judson Mather Dr. Mather, father of a large family and active in Catholic life Jn campus, is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities of Michigan State Universitty. His address: 547 Charles St.; East Lansing, M148823. [ Whatever its actual content and overt interest, W.H. Auden said, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe. This is a dictum, worth keeping in mind in approaching St. John of the Cross. For John of the Cross was a contempla-tive, a poet, and a mystical theologian--in that order. His poetry flowed from his lived experience as a man of prayer and was the most immediate ex-pression of that experience. The Ascent of Mo~unt Carmel and the other works of mystical theology which he wrote are all c~ast as commentaries on his poetry. The books, of course, reveal other sides ~f his remarkable gifts: his sharp, systematic mind, for instance, and the exte~nt to which he was steeped in the Scriptures. But behind this always stands tt .~ imaginative awe commu-nicated in the poetry. The whole of the Ascent, adeed' is the exposition of one brief stanza: In the midst of a dark night, Yearnihg, and with love alight -- Ah, sheer fortune's fill! -- 1 went out hidden from all si ;ht, At last my dwelling being still. ¯ Author's translation. Prose passages quoted in the following pages are the E. Allison Pee~ translation: St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1958). 641 649 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 Book One of the Ascent surveys this stanza as a whole; Books Two and Three concentrate in great detail on the "dark night" spoken of in the first line. He expounds the dark night of faith, which entails a. darkening of knowledge; the dark night of hope, which is accompanied byan obscuring 6f the memory; and the dark night of love which brings with it the dark night of the will. The poetic touchstone of the Ascent is important because throughout the book John is using the central metaphore of his poem -- a dark night-- as the symbol of his central theme: detachment. If we lose sight of the imagina-tive link here, we are also apt to miss his central insight that detachment is the gift of grace -- "sheer fortune" -- and not an accomplishment. The problem is not that the theme of detachment is obscured or buried in the text of the book. On the contrary, John seems to go at the dark night of detachment with a thoroughness, a grim relish, that could strike us as being masochistic. We find him, for example, telling us to "strive always to prefer" the most difficult rather than the easiest, the most unpleasant rather than the delectable, the wearisome rather than the restful, the worst of temporal things rather than the best. "Let the soul strive to work in its own despite, and desire all to do so" (Iil 3/6.,9). No one would urge that detachment is an easy matter. But wh~t is missing from passages such as these (and there are quite a few) is the sense of imagi-native awe communicated in the poetry. Where this sense of awe is lacking, there seems to be a suggestion that detachment is some kind of self-improve-ment project. This can hardly be the case. Self-preoccupation certainly was "~/ not something John wanted to instill in his re'~-~-d~:s; least ~-f-~]"would he re(-'. ommend the warped and twisted spiritual pride of masochism. Quite the con-trary, the whole issue he addresses in treating detachment is the issue of how God goes about cracking the hard shell of our egotism, so that the light of Christ can shine within. Much of therproblem I suspect, is the gulf between the culture in which we live and the culture within which -- and for which -- John wrote. John's way of discussing detachment was imbued with the rough-and-tumble individual-ism of six~teenth-century Spain. It was the world of the conquistadores and Don Qui, xote (who may have been mad but was not cowardly). It was what the anthropologists call a "courage culture," where one's very sense of being someone was apt to be tied up with his demonstrated bravery. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, for example, was a soldier in the days before his conversion. His leg was smashed by a cannonball. He had it broken and reset- twice, without anesthetic- so that he could once again cut a good figure in the hose stockings that gentlemen of the day wore. Nor did John of the Cross himself lead a sheltered life. There was a great struggle going on between the Caiced and the Reformed Carmelites; John had left the Calced Carmelites and joined the Reformed. Twice he was kidnapped by the Calceds. The second time he was imprisoned in a six-by-ten-foot windowless Detachment in the Ascent of Mount Carmel / 64:3 room; three times a week he was taken out-and beaten in the refectory for his stubborn refusal to renounce his Reformed vows. Only after a year and a half or so of :this treatment was he able to escape and return to the Reformed order~ Because John was writing in and for this kind of world, it is not surprising that he said tough-minded things in a tough-minded way. But detachment, not."assertiveness training," was his concern. We need not get bogged down in the individualistic, courage-culture way he talked about detachment. There are other traditions of detachment in the Church we can turn to for guidance in these matters. The much older Rule of St. Benedict, for example, treats the root and fruit of discipline as social rather than individual. That is, the touch-stone of detachment is not a matter of preferring the worst or the best or something in between. It is .living in a kindly and generous way with those rub shoulders with all the time. This may be less spectacular than preferringrr the worst, but it's not necessarily less demanding. The "dark night" of which John speaks begins with what we would prob-ably call a "difficulty in mental prayer." The difficulty emerges as a sense of deprivation. Prayer dries up. One loses, as it were, the capacity to think and pray at the same time. With this loss comes a loss of relish for prayer, the loss of a capacity to enjoy it, One seems to be losing hold of what he has most deeply desired. With this, not surprisingly, there also comes a sense of losing the way. One doesn't know where he's going. '.'~Progress" seems to have come up against a brick wail. Beneath all this, there's a loss of the sense of who God is -- and more directly who Godis in relation to one's self. Is faith itself evaporating away? This experience is probably fairly widespread, and can and does lead to giving up the whole business -- faith, prayer and the rest of it -- as a bad job. We can come to think of it all as a delusion -- and indeed there may well be a sense of relief that comes of thinking of it in this way. But the relief is bitter-sweet. Even Sartre, the atheist-existentialist, says that the world without God is a forlorn world, John goes beyond a perception of forlornness. He points out that what makes this darknes~ so paradoxical and so painful is that the dark night d6scends at the same time as one is "yearning, and with love alight." The sense of the loss of God's presence is accompanied by a deep longing for God. If this paradoxical and painful state is endured, John says, something happens. He calls it "sheer fortune." Now sheer fortune isn't something we do. It's something that "happens," unexpectedly. Such a happening, I want to stress, is not what we would normally call an experience. It only becomes an experience in retrospect--where we can look back on it and say, "Yes. That happened." What happens is described by. John in the second half of the stanza. "I went out hidden from all sight / At last my dwelling being still." In the midst 644 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 of obscurity and darkness, paradox and pain, while we were not observing it--indeed precisely because we were not observing it m we were drawn forth from ourselve.s_:__T_~e_.gi~ft of self-forgetfulness was somehow bestowed on the °lS~'~tered ego. ~,n"n'-d--~we ~-~ r--~-o-~, ~-l~rely, that this was indeed "sheer fortune." It was what down deep we really wanted all along anyway, while we were looking elsewhere for some other kind of answer. This, I believe, is the context for John's strong emphasis on detachment in Book One. Rightly used, detachment is a way of coming to grips with reali-ty- of getting our desires into order with reality instead of with illusion. Such an ordering is important to the contemplative prayer John describes be-cause the reality we are facing here is the reality of darkness. What we need is not a change of scene or the return of old feelings. We need the grace of en-durance. And that, of course, is what God is providing. John puts the point in a powerful metaphor: the Israelites, he says, "failed to find in the manna all the sweetness and strength they could wish, not because it was not con-tained in the manna, but because they desired some other thing" 0/5/4). There's a whole commentary of life in this sentence. It's easy to become so preoccupied with what God is not providing that we neglect to notice what he is providing. This is not to say that the grace of endurance will be experienced as some-thing noble and admirable. It's more likely to be a matter of stumbling on, we know not how. We wonder if we really should have meant to offer our-selves to God, and if he isn't asking of us more than we are able to give. This shouldn't be surprising. Our sense of an inability to cope on our own strength is an education in humility -- which is a good part of what we are up to in the first place. Of course, we'd prefer some other sort of education. We'd rather learn humility without humiliation. But that's not usually the way in which reality works. The point here also can be put in a more positive way. Detachment is important to contemplative prayer because contemplative prayer is a being called forth by reality-- the Reality, God himself. It's an adventure with all the danger as well as all the challenge that adventure implies. Because God is the Reality, he is so vast and awesome, so intimate and penetrating, that there is little if anything in our previous experience that corresponds to what has come upon us. So the expectation of the unknown, the surprising, the fright-ening conforms to the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves. Detachment is crucial to dealing with this because in the darkness we must continually be sorting things out. We need to sort the things that matter more from the things that matter less as we go along this unknown way. There are two further points to make about contemplative detachment. First, contemplative detachment is not passivity. It's an active wanting of what God wants in the particular, concrete circumstances in which we stand. It means not sitting back, but responding, to the particular moment, with all its opportunities and all its limitations. Second, contemplative detachment is Detachment in the Ascent of Mount Carmel / 645 not a cold, independent, isolated thing. Rather it's a matter of freely giving up as a part of freely giving. It is a willingness to take the risk of being shat-tered, of abiding in a shattered state--and of abiding with others in their shattered state as well. There is no other contemplative way. The shattered state is where the "sheer fortune of going out hidden from all sight" occurs. As we move from Book One to Book Two, it becomes apparent that de-tachment is central in contemplative prayer, and not just a preparation for it. That is, we don't let go of material things in order to grasp and possess spirit-ual things. The crux of contemplative prayer is a deep spiritual detachment. There is a reason for this. If the term, "spiritual growth" means any-thing, it means a growth "into Christ" m a being called forth into deeper union with him. And here the Christ of the Gospel confronts us with the uni-ty of his teaching and his deeds. When he said, "he who would save his life will lose it, and he who will lose his life for my sake will find it," he was giv-ing a commentary on what he himself was in the midst of doing in relation to his Father. He did not do o]ae thing so that we could do something else. He did one thing so we could do the same thing. He did not say "Take up your cross and go your own way," but "Take up your cross and follow me." The theological pivot of Book Two of the Ascent is Chapter Seven. Here John turns to a central paradox and mystery of the faith: Christ's utter deso-lation at the transformative moment of redemption on the Cro~s. There, out of annihilation, flows fullness of life. This is to say (among other things) that the wellspring of faith in Christ is the faith of Christ: his utter faith in his Father's goodness and triumphant strength. The issue here is not just theory, but practice as well. The story of the Garden oi' Eden--whatever else it means- is a story about the practical doubt of huhaankind in God's complete and trustworthy goodness. The story is universal because this doubt has had practical ramifications throughout history and throughout each one's life. It is universal, but not final. The Good News of Christ addresses the practical doubt of Eden. It proclaims that in Christ doubt is mended by its re~,ersal: Christ's practical trust in his Father's goodness to and beyond the point of death itself. As we are drawn toward union with Christ, we come to the faith that darkens our knowledge and supplants our reason. There grows on us a deep sense of the inadequacy and inoperativeness of our knowledge when it comes face to face with these issues which matter most of all. The theological sense of the~Unity of desolation and fruitfulness in Christ's saving work is no longer just an object of our knowledge. It overshadows us and lays hold of us direct-ly. John describes this transformative darkening in terms of the nearness of God -- it is like, he says, the nearness of fire to a burning log. A more human analogy of nearness may be more to the point for us. Humanly speaking, the full richness of faith is not so much belief in certain facts as a matter of loyal- 6415 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 ty and trust directed toward a person. Now, up to a certain point we can say why we trust a person. But the explanation of that trust is not the substance of it. The substance of it is the trust itself. Indeed, there is a kind of propor-tionality operating here. The more we need reasons, the less there is of trust; the more the trust, the more peripheral and inadequate the reasons seem. As trust grows, we find it bec.oming more mysterious.--going (as John would say) to what we know not by a way we know not. We can~su.spect that com-plete trust would have no need of reasons: it simply is. In prayer, the supplanting of reason and knowledge by the dark night of faith explains why meditation dries up. This is as it should be." Meditation is an exercise of the imagination, and as John says, "although a man imagines palaces of pearls and mountains of gold, because he has seen gold and pearls, all this is in truth less than~ the essence of a little gold or a single pearl" (II/12/4). The greatest imaginary thing is less than the least of the real. And what is being offered in the prayer of the dark night is a touch of the real. To try to hang onto the imaginary under such circumstances is to thwart the working of reality. It is desiring some other thing. This is important, because whfit is experienced in contemplative prayer -- certainly at first and probably for a long time--is more the loss than the gain. John speaks of the "prayer of loving attention." But this does not mean that we're likely to feel loving and attentive. Rather it's a matter of somehow trusting God's love and attentiveness. Much of John's exposition in Book Two is directed toward showing why it's right that this should be so. Here as so often, he goes directly to the root of the matter. He points out that theologically there is a finality about God's word when the Word himself became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ's life and teaching, as remembered and recorded by the faithful community, is full, c6mplete, and adequate. We need nothing more. Thus any qtlest for or reliance upon special signs or revelation or experience in prayer is wrong. Such prayer.-.experience either confirms what is already there -- in which case it is basically superfluous -- or else it is different from what is already there. In that case it is positively misleading. And in either case it reveals a certhin lack of faith -- a doubt that the full glory of God has already been revealed in Christ. Indeed, Jol{n sa3is that even if special experience in prayer were a good thing, it~is less of a good .thing than the pure dark night of faith. For it's only in this night that faith is maintained, noui'ished and increased. So we come upon one of the central paradoxes of contemplative prayer. It can genuinely seem--feel--lower and lesser. It canseem like a waste of timg, nothing at all. This is so because'its substance is simply that of a~tively willing whatever it is that God wants. This is a choice, and a choice that has to be continually remade. But it is not a matter of looking for or asking for something special for our own unique case: it is an intent toward trust. It is wanting to pra} without setting qualifications or conditions on what we ex-pect God to do with our offering of prayer. Detachment in the Ascent of Mount Carmel / 64Z In the Third Book of the Ascent,~ John moves on to discuss the dark nights of hope and love. For it is, John says, not just our knowledge but our memory and will as well that are overshadowed in the dark night of contem-plation. Here again, as in the dark night of faith, John's exposition aims at show-ing why this seeming loss is in fact the onset of a new and deeper freedom. That darkness attends hope is built into the very nature of hope itself. For hope, by definition, is for what we do not possess. The more specific hope is, the narrower its boundaries. The "purer" hope is, the less qualified and structured it is -- the more completely open to God. And the more complete the hope, the greater the darkness and mystery. Memoi'y provides the images by which we structure and limit experience. As we go by a way we know not to a place we know not, memory becomes in-creasingly useless as a guide and judge. For we more clearly recognize memo-ry for what it is: our distorted images and pictures, not the reality we seek. And yet we do not know, in having to let go of the help memory once brought, whether we are letting' go of everything J of our very self, ,It's an emptying even more searching than the dark night of faith. Yet such darkness is the right way. If God is in the process of making all things new- of t'ransforming us- we don't want to set boundaries to his activity. Qur business is to "let go." Of course, this is not to say that we can will such letting go and make it happen. Even if that were possible, it would just be possessiveness operatin~ on a deeper and more subtle level. The gift we await can only arrive on the o~her side of the memories we control and possess: arrive as a happy chance. The dark night of love J and its accompanying night of the will -- is the mo~t searching and awesome darkness of ~ill. It is also the most crucial. For without this final darkness and detachment, all that has gone before goes for fiau~ht. This is so because the° love of God is what the whole human enterprise of living and praying is about in the first place. And the ultimate calling of God's love is to a letting go of all the barriers we have to receiving and giving. It is arriving at a point where w.e have nothing to protect from God's own searching and limitless openness t6 giving and r~ceiving. Tl~e experience of this, however, is far more apt to be like falling com-pletely through the bottom--into complete loss, into nothingness. John links the dark night of the will with {he prayer of Gethsemahe which stands at the heart of the Lord's prayer: "Thy will, not mine, be~done.'' There is no other way. Practically speaking, wanting to love God most of all is a matter of wanting to w~int what God wants most of all, whatever that is. The cost is real. John puts his finger on this when he characterizes the dark night of the will as a le'ttin~g go of joy--joy remembered, joy experi-enced, joy hoped for. Darkness indeed, f6r how can we experience the letting go qfjoy as something other than the letting go of love itself? But it's not the letting go of love; "it's the letting go of control. Falling 648 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 through the bottom can be a fall into an unsuspected world of freedom, a new recognition of a capacity for joy. William Blake epitomized it in "Eternity:" He who bends to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise. We come to recognize that possession is not God's business. We can talk, I suppose, about being "possessed by the devil." But we aren't possessed by God; we're loved by him, with all the freedom and mutuality that love im-plies. Our freedom lies in the recognition that he will enable us to respond in kind. In the dark night of love the need to possess and hang on have somehow been swallowed up. As John says, we can begin to enjoy things and persons and God "according to their truth," and not just according to their meaning and worth for us (III/20/2-3). When the need to control goes, the real joy of freedom arrives. All this may help to indicate why John makes detachment the central focus of the beginning stages of contemplative prayer. It also may indicate that the word "beginning" covers a good deal of ground. As both Dom John Chapman and Thomas Merton remark, in the spiritual life we're lucky if the beginnings last only twenty years or so. Indeed, there's a way in which the contemplative life is always a matter of new beginnings. Such alife (as one of the Zen masters says) is an invitation and quest to discover more fully the gift of a "beginner's mind"--a mind that is open and compassionate, with many possibilities rather than a few. Thus although the Ascent is the introductory work in the body of John's mystical writings, it deals with substantive spirituality, not with approaches or fringes. The Ascent is elementary in the sense of being basic rather than in the sense of being a prologue to be gotten through quickly. Nor is ~he Ascent just a technical handbook on prayer. Starting from the rather narrow base of a "difficulty in mental prayer," John suggests a broad-er panorama. He paints a picture of a way of living, of coping with reality, that is both distinctive and profound. From the standpoint of a biblical theology, his emphasis is like that of the Fourth Gospel rather than like that of St. Paul and the synoptic gospels. That is, he understands the moments of humiliation and glorification as primarily simultaneous, not primarily sequential. The Cross is, to him, the way of life, not just the way to life. This theological point has a practical bearing Qn both one's personal out-look and one's pastoral perspective. How are we to understand the trouble and the darkness that we and others pass through? Is it mainly a punishment or a testing? Or is it basically a calling into deeper union with the whole range Detachment in the Ascent of Mount Carmel /649 of the human condition, and a calling into the whole realm of human and divine caring that the human condition invites? John of the Cross furnishes the theological and spiritual basis for this lat-ter understanding of the burdensomeness of life: for seeing it as an invitation to deeper union, more caring. This is not (it should be said) a popular out-look, for it runs counter to some deep cultural trends in our society--the cult of self-awareness, self-expression, self-fulfillment, and all the other cults of narcissism. Against all such cults John sets the possibility of a better way: a hard but simple happening, rooted in God's generosity and our imaginative awe: In the midst of a dark night, Yearning, and with love alight -- Ah, sheer fortune's fill! -- I went out hidden from all sight, At last my dwelling being still. Now dies the sun under the cross-- I pity, Mary, thy fair face. And thy tears as downward they trace. Now dies the sun under the cross-- I pity, Mary, thy son and thy loss. Denver Sasser Morrill Hall 205 Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK 74074 (A translation-adaptation of an anonymous English lyric of the 13th Century.) Mission and Commitment A ngelo M. Caligiuri Father Caligiuri is Vicar for Religious in the Diocese of Buffalo. His last article in these pages, entitled "Spirituality and Ordinary Human Experience," appeared in the issue of May, 1978. He may be addressed at the Office of the Vicar for Religious; 100 S. Elmwood Ave.; Buffalo, NY 14202. One of the faith-categories which post conciliar writings have opened up for us in an enlivening and challenging way is that of mission. Since the Council, theological and spiritual writings have unpacked more of the mean-ing of this word and have brought us to a deeper level of understanding, an understanding of mission as a defining characteristic of what it means to be Christian. In this radical sense, mission refers to an essential dimension of the way of life of anyone who has heard the good news and in faith responds to the Lord's invitation to share his life and further his kingdom (see, for example, John Paul II, RedemptorHominis, 9, 10, II, 12, 18, 19; Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 6, 13, 59, 60). While mission can be spoken of in rather general and broad terms, any consideration of the full phenomenon of mission will necessarily involve one in a consideration of three persons: the one who sends; the one who is sent; and the one to whom he is sent. To put it in more direct language, we could say that mission means: someone saying. to someone "Go to someone." 650 Mission and Commitment / 65"1 The Mission of Jesus As Jesus was aware of his being sent by the Father to make his message of love known to the world, so does he send his disciples into the world to con-tinue his mission of revealing the Father's love (see, e.g. John 17). Or in more direct language we might say that: as the Father said to Jesus "Go to my people." and tell them of my love for them and of the love that they should have for one another, so does Jesus say io his followers (the church) "Go to my people (the world)." and tell them of my Father's love for them and of'the love they should have for one another. This mission which Jesus received from his Father, he transmitted to the c~ommunity of believers drawn together by his Sp!ri~, i.e. to the Church, We who are the Church, then insofar as we are church, i.e. insofar as God's Spirit leads us to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and as the revelation of the Father's love, share in the very mission of Jesus. himself. For it is to his Church, i.e. to those who believe in him, that hesays, go to the world and tell it of my Father's love and of the love humans should have for one another. Ecclesial Dimension of Mission To speak of mission, there, within tile Christian community, at whatever level, is also necessarily to spea~k of the Father, Son, Spirit, and Church. Hence the authentication of one's particular mission as Christian, that is, as continuous with the mission of the Son, will be rooted within the Church. Or, to say this in other words, there is an essential ecclesial dimension to all Christian mission. Mission as an Interpersohal R~ality In what was perhal~s.the last document signed by ~he late Pope Paul VI, a document entitled "Directives for the Mutual Relations Between Bishops and Religious in the Church,'_' we read the following. The mission of the people of God is one. In a certain sense it constitutes the heart of the entire ecclesial mystery . thus the Church, throughout her history, 'is by her very nature missionary' (LG, no. 17), in Christ and in virtue of the Spirit. All--pastors, -laymen, and religious, each according to his specific vocation--are called to be apostolically committed. This commitment arises from the love of the Father; the Holy Spirit, then nourishes it, "giving life to ecclesiastical structures, being as it were their soul, and inspiring in the hearts of the faithful the same spirit of mission which impelled Christ himself" (lAG 4], n. 15). 652 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 And the very next paragraph continues: Mission, which begins with the Father, requires that those who are sent exercise their awareness of love in the dialogue of prayer. Therefore, in these times of apostolic re-newal, as always in every form of missionary engagement, a privileged place is given to the contemplation of God to meditation on his plan of salvation, and to reflection on the signs of the times in the light of the gospel, so that prayer may be nourished and grow in quality and frequency (n. 16). As is clearly indicated in these passages, there is a radical personal level which the reality of mission reaches, a level which is more fundamental even than its corporate expression. It is to this more fundamental level that I would like to move in these reflections. It is at this level that mission is a faith-value that finds its ultimate ground in a person's presence to God, for it is at this level that mission does or does not become an existential reality, that is, an energizing and enlivening influence in the life of each follower of Christ. It is here that mission becomes part of the motivational structure of each religious. When we move to this level, we encounter mission as an interpersonal reality. For ultimately, mission is grounded in the reality of our relationships, our relationship with .the person who sends us and with the person(s) to whom we are sent. The strength and depth of our sense of mission then will depend upon the strength and depth of our relationship to the one who sends us. In other words, mission is intimately related to commitment. Mission and Commitment At the level of etymology, this interrelationship is clear. Both "mission" and "commitment" are radically from the Latin word, mittere, "to send." But it is at the level of our personal lives, as individuals responding to the Father's invitation to share his life and further his kingdom, that the truly in-timate relationship between mission and commitment becomes clear. The depth of our commitment to mission will depend upon the depth of our com-mitment to the One who sends us. When we speak about commitment, we are speaking about a reality that seems to be, at one and the same time, most personal, yet one which we can speak about rather impersonally. The very word commitment conjures up in our minds a feeling of security, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, a word that seems to "say it all"; and yet it also brings with it an unknown element, that dimen-sion of the cemmitted life that is revealed to us only in the living out of our lives. Commitment as Experienced The reality of commitment is best understood in terms of our personal ex-perience of it, in the context of our living of it. Indeed commitment is, and has been, a real dimension of our religious lives for however long we have been in religion. Mission and Commitment/ 653 If we ask ourselves just how it has been, and is now, a dimension of our lives, our first response might be to refer to that public act that we celebrated before the Church at the time of our final profession, one, ten, fifty years ago. Upon reflection, though I feel sure that we would not want to imply that this public act of commitment totally encompassed for us the full reality behind the words we uttered. That act, made once and renewed formally peri-odically, was, and is, simply an external sign, an outward expression of a deeper reality taking place in our hearts, at the level of our person. Commitment, then, has to do fundamentally with our person, with our presence to ourselves, with our awareness of ourselves. If commitment is to be more than an external act, it must flow from the ability each of us has to give ourselves not only in external acts but at the level of our awareness of who we are and who we are becoming; an awareness that is ours most clearly during those graced moments when we are frighteningly present to ourselves as we are before God, in naked truth and honesty. Commitment, then, has everything to do with ourselves, with our growing understanding of ourselves, a growth that takes place every day of our lives till the day we die, if we let it. Life itself is characterized by growth and change. Although this is quite obviously true with regard to our physical life, it is just as true, although not as immediately evident, in our lives as persons, as spiritual beings. It is in and through our lived experiences, that we grow in our understand-ing and acceptance of ourselves, that we grow as persons, a growth that has to influence the reality of the commitment we have made. It is our very per-son that we commit, that we give, ourperson that is alive and growing. And as we continue to experience life, as we grow in our self-understanding, we cannot help but come to a greater appreciation of what commitment means in our personal lives. The word "commitment," which, to an extent, remains impersonal, likb a skeleton, takes on flesh, begins to become incarnate in our real lives. Commitment and Spiritual Growth Just as our continued growth as persons influences our understanding of our commitment, so also is the opposite true. Where there is no personal 'growth, where an individual 'stagnates in his growth as a person, so also does his commitment become l~ss and less personal and more and more abstract. When this happens, his commitment runs the risk of becoming a cold and static reality, something that he begins to refer to in order to justify his com-placency and indifference towards his growth, as a justification for his lack of response to the ever present challenges of life, and as a justification for isolating himself more and more from his community, from the world. Under the false security of having "once and for all" committed himself, he can retire more and more into his own little world, becoming less and less sen-sitive to the life of the Spirit in the world, in the Church and in his fellow re- 654 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 ligious. Instead of commitment calling him to a greater giving of himself in the real-life situations of todaY,, instead of it calling him to a greater sense of mission, it becomes a needed excuse for seeing things only in terms that he finds personally acceptable, so that he becomes narrow-minded, unable to tolerate others. And because commitment ~ has become depersonalized and divorced from life,, it becomes, for him, something that must be expressed in the same way by all. ~ Commitment then has everything to do with our growth as persons, a growth that results more from.oiar attitudinal stance, than from our chrono-logical age. As a result, commitment can.be a truly influential and motivating force in our lives only to the extent that we are continually open to the life-giving Spirit who breathes where he will, to the Spirit who calls us to. deepen our relationship with Christ in the light of our growing understanding of our-selves. Commitment and Mission: the Person Who Is Sent Mission then is rooted in relationships. And the full reality of mission, which essentially involves the person who is sent, the person who sends and the person to whom he is sent, can well be described in interpersonal', rela-tional terms. First of all there is the relationship of the person~who-is-sent to the person:who-sends. At this personal level mission arid commitment are very intimately related, so ~that the depth and validity of our sense of mission will necessarily be related to the depth of our relationship to the person who sends us. Or, in 6ther words, our sense of mission is intimately related to our sense of commitment, a reality which has everything to do with our continual growth as persons. Ultimately, our personal sense of mission will depend upon the depth of the commitment of our person to the person of Jesus Christ in our lives. Now if our sense of mission is intimately related to our personal commit-ment to the one who sends us, then a fuller understanding of mission must necessarily include a more complete consideration of the commitment rela-tionship itself. And what surfaces in such a consideration is that the commitment rela-tionship is essentially bipolar, that is, one that necessarily includes not~ only we who give ourselves and who are sent, but also the person to whom we give ourselves, the person who sends. Commitment and Mission: the Person Who Sends Most religious and priests, if asked to express just who or what it is that they have committed themselves to, would probably answer in one of the fol-lowing ways: "I committed myself to God.-- to Jesus; I committed myself to serve God's people, to a particular way of life or' to a specific apostolate." Now while all of these responses are meaningful in themselves and are legiti- Mission and Commitment / 655 mate values to which we can commit ourselves, not all of them have the abili-ty to call forth from us a radical level of commitment that proceeds from our very person. Not all warrant a response from us or challenge us at the level of our person. In fact, there are certain things we commit ourselves to that never in themselves require more than a functional response on our part. However, when we think about our religious commitment, we are think-ing about a reality that does reach us at the level of our person. We are con, sidering Something that r.eally influences us not primarily at the level of what we do, but rather at the level of who we are, and of the kind of person we are becoming. The only reality we can commit ourselves to in such a way that it will reach us as persons, is the reality of another person. To be sure, we can and do commit ourselves to do things, to perform certain actions and rituals, and to.provide certain services. But these activities can be out of harmony with our basic personal commitment and instead of being expressions of our basic personal commitment and being a means of incarnating that commit-ment moreand more in our living situations, these activities can become ends in themselves and as a matter of fact, they can introduce into our lives a real dichotomy between what we do and who we really are. When this kind of situation arises, we begin to absolutize our activities. When speaking about commitment, we find ourselves always speaking about commitment to certain apostolates and activities, a type of commitment which is only a second-level commitment, since these activities of themselves do not necessarily reach us at the level of our person. When commitment has become primarily this kind of second-level commitment to functions and ac-tivities, no matter how good they are in themselves, commitment becomes an impersonal and static reality that no longer challenges to growth and to life. Rather, it becomes a reality which is continually threatened by persons who do things differently, or who do different things. Then, in the name of com-mitment, we can find ourselves becoming rather defensiv.e, distrustful and suspicious, becoming ever. more' cl.osed in on ourselves, more isolated, and hence with an ,ever narrowing sense of mission. To be sure, because mission is an e,ssential part of the call to follow Christ, Christian and religious commitment must o~bvigusly lead to doing things and to activity. The point is. that when w~ totally identify our Christian or religious commitment.wi.th ceriain activities or apostolates, then that com-mitment can become a hindrance .to our true personal growth in Christ, it can become an obstacle in.the way of what the Lord's love wants to do in our lives at the level of our hearts. Commitment to the Person Who Sends: Jesus Christ Now, while it is possible that commitment to things or activities can get in the way of our continued personal growth in the Lord's life, a sense of com-mitment is primarily a very positive influence in our spiritual life. However, it is this only to the degree that our commitment is to the person of God as he 656 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 reveais himself to us in his Son Jesus Christ. It is to the extent that it is to Jesus and to his life-giving word that we give ourselves, only to this extent does our commitment become radically personal and continually challenging at the level of the persons we are becoming and can become. When we become more and more personally aware of the fact that our primary commitment as religious is to the person of Jesus Christ who makes his love for us felt in the people and situations of our lives, we also become less hesitant to respond to new situations creatively, then we become less hesi-tant to act upon new insights both in our personal and communal lives. We are able to carry out our mission in an effective and creative way. Since it is to the living Lord that we have given ourselves and who missions us, it is to be expected that he will inspire us and continually lead us to new understandings of ourselves and of our deepening relationship with him, and both of these will of necessity have to find expression in the apostolic activities of our life. If we really believe that it is the Lord who is giving us this new under-standing, then we will have little hesitation oi" fear in allowing that new understanding to lead us to new activities, to new ways of doing things. The mere newness of these ways and activities will in no way cause us to feel that we are being unfaithful to our past or that what we did in the past was wrong or less than our best effort. The Lord normally calls us to grow in his life gradually, and it is only in the context of past experience and action that cer-tain new insights into the Lord's ways become possible. "Only if the seed die, will it bring forth new life." And only if we are free enough to let go of what we are, can we become what the Lord wants us to become. The more personally aware we become of the fact that our primary com-mitment is to the person of Jesus Christ, the less will we identify our religious selves with just activities and functions, the less will our sense of mission be limited to specific activities which must necessarily reflect the historical moment and culture in which they developed. Real life situations will always be changing, whether We like it or not. Unless we want to remove ourselves from life and begin to live in our own lit-tle world, a world that is real only in our own lives, we must as the Council has reminded us so strongly, continually read the signs of the times. However, although the situations in which we carry out our missions are going to be ever new, there is also a constant dimension in them. That con-stant dimension is our personal commitment to the person of Christ. Although we can't do much about most of our life situations, we can do quite a bit about the depth and sincerity of our commitment. And this is the kind of thing we do in prayer and in celebrating our faith life with those who share and experience the same love of God in their lives. As we grow in our awareness of the fact that our religious life is identified with this personal commitment to Christ and not with particular apostolates, practices and activities, then we can begin to allow our commitment to lead us to actions and attitudes that will make our Christian values just a little Mission and Commitment / 657 more incarnate in our changing life situations. Our commitment will give rise to and deepen our sense of mission. As we free ourselves from the slavery of our prejudices and preconceived ideas, we will be able to see more and more clearly what it is that the Lord wants us to do. We will begin to see that he really means it when he says that the heart of his message is love of God and love of neighbor. We will begin to appreciate that he really wants his fol-lowers to become one, to grow in true communion with others, and our sense of mission will become deepened and directed. Commitment, then, grounds our mission, and the depth of our personal commitment to the person of Christ, who sends us to tell all of the Father's love, will determine the depth of our sense of being sent and our willingness to be sent. Commitment and Mission: the Person(s) to Whom We Are Sent Having considered the person who is sent and the person who sends, in order to complete our reflection on the reality of mission, we must now turn to a consideration of the person or persons to whom we are sent. In a rather simplistic way, I would like to say that we are sent by Christ both to ourselves and to others. In saying this, I think that I have said an awful lot -- and have also left a lot unsaid. Sent to Ourselves In saying that we are sent to ourselves, I am not engaging in double-talk, nor stating a reality that is so obvious that it need not be mentioned. Rather what I am trying to describe is the fact that the good news of the Father's love which we are sent to communicate, is good news not only for others but also, and even primarily, for ourselves. Wecannot communicate the good news of the Father's love for all unless we have ourselves heard the good news and ac- .cepted it. As mentioned earlier, we are not sent in an impersonal way, after the fashion of mechanical instruments, but rather we are sent as the unique persons we are and are becoming. It is as persons loved into being by the Father and responding to that love in our own unrepeatable way, that we are sent to bring others the good news of the Father's love. And so before we bring the good news to others, we must hear and accept it ourselves. Through prayer and reflection we must constantly strive to be present to the promptings of God's life-giving Spirit as he tries to lead us ever more profoundly into union with the Father. The good news of the Father's love must continually confront us and challenge us to keep on dying to our old self, so that the new creature that the Lord would have us become might be born and mature. In a more traditional terminology we might say that we must be concerned about saving our own soul. The good news that we are sent to bring to others, then, is also, and first of all, good news for us personally. This is the sense in which we say that we are first of all sent to ourselves. 658 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 Sent to Others However, and perhaps more obviously, we are also sent to others. In Mt 28:18-20 we read: Jesus came forward and addressed them in these words: "Full authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth; go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you and know that I am with you always till the end of the world" (confer also Lk 24:46-48; and Ac 1:8). ~ Clearly then, because it is in and through Christ that we have come to know the Father's love and have accepted the Father's invitation to share his life in faith, we also share in the mission he gave Christ, to witness to his love before all men. Because of our personal commitment to the person of Christ, we also share in his mission to the world. The "How. of Our Mission An obvious and legitimate question can be raised at this point in our re-flections, as to just how we carry out our mission .to others. How do we wit-ness to others of the love of the Father for them, and of the call they have to love each other? Of course this is the question that ultimately each of us must answer for ourselves in the light of our own personal salvation history andin the light of the real time and place in history where we are responding to the promptings of God's Spirit in out lives. , Even as we.acknowledge this radically personal dimension of the answer to this question of "how," we can also make some more general observations about this "how:" ¯ The first is that, if we are going to be true to the mission of Christ and not be sidetracked at some other level, we must, inall the different concrete situa-tions which make up the context of our lives, strive to witness to the reality of God's love among us. I know that this sounds trite, and that we have said it already. But yet we must really allow these familiar words to become opera-tive in our own evaluating of our daily life situations. Success or failur~ in our services or activities must ultimately be judged not so much according to whether or not we succeeded in doing what we set out to do, but rather in whether or not in our attempt to be of service we witnessed to the presence of God's love among us. Secondly, our ability to witness to the Father's love in the situations of our daily life, be they classrooms, hospital rooms, courtrooms, community rooms or wherever, will be dependent upon our own growing acceptance of the Father's love in our lives. No one can give what he doesn't have. And unless we are, in our own personal lives, secure in the Father's love, confident of our life in him and present to ourselves as we continually grow into the person God's Spirit wants us to be, we will not be able to respond creatively Mission and Commitment / 659 to the situations of our daily life in which we are called to witness to the Father's love, and the mission of Christ will be circumscribed by our limited perspectives. I guess what I am trying to say here is that there are two dimensions to our personal liveL One is the dimension of ourselves which we can call the core of our being, the "within," the person that we are and are becoming through our intimate involvement with God's life-giving Spirit. This is our ongoing attempt to ~become ever more present to ourselves, ever more in touch with the profound mystery of God's creative love which sustains each of us in our unique being. But if there is a "within," there is also a "without." There is also a very public dimension to our person. In fact, our very being as persons is "to-be-with." This is one of the mysterious realities of the spiritual life. While at first glance the person who gives himself over to a contemplative life-style seems to be isolating himself from others, in reality the more he becomes present to the real core of his being, the more he encounters the overpowering love of God in himself and the more he is aware of and present to that same love of God in others. As he gets more in touch with the core of his being, he discovers that "to-be" is really "to-be-with." There is,,then, a public dimension to our personal existence, and, as a re-sult, as persons we are necessarily called to give public witness to God's love. But in this sense,, our public witness is not something apart from our personal acceptance of the Father's love. Rather it is a necessary concomitant of it, since as persons, we are necessarily social, we are necessarily with others. Although we usually think of ourselves as witnessing to God's love, as carrying out our mission in terms of others who are not part of our immedi-ate, everyday surroundings, since as persons, we are necessarily "with others," by the sincerity and authenticity of our own personal growth in the Lord, we witness first of all to. those who are closest to us, to our brothers and sisters with whom we live in community, to our family, to those who, all too often, we take for granted because we are so frequently physically present to each other. Besides this. public dimension of our personal witness, there is also a pub-lic witness to the Father's love which comes in a communal way. The Church itself, as the body of Christ in time and space, and all the various structures which in the course of the ages have arisen as a means to help us to grow in the Lord, give a communal witness to the Father's love at work among us. Mission and Religious Congregations It appears that it is precisely this area of public communal witness, the area of corporate witness, that is giving rise today to rather serious and searching reflections in many religious congregations as they consider their institutional apostolates and discern their future commitment to them. As communities have begun to rewrite their constitutions, many are reflecting 660 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 upon their experience with "self-placement," and other attempts to involve individuals in a discerning process regarding their mission to specific aposto-lates. In this process, they have become aware of the need to acknowledge and identify, as clearly as possible, the ecclesial and corporate dimensions of mission as significant factors to be consciously brought into such a discerning. process. Indeed, without such conscious inclusion, the wide variety of activities and apostolates in which a community or an individual may engage, while good and productive in themselves, may be "de-spirited," that is, not enliv-ened by the inspired dynamic at work in the Church's carrying out of its mis-sion from Jesus its Lord, To be sure, in our rapidly changing world, in which religious in a special way have been asked to read and respond to the signs of the times, it is not a simple matter to discern which apostolates are legitimate extensions and ex-pressions of Jesus's mission at a particular time in history. For while the traditional apostolates are still very valid, we also know that new needs are arising that call for creative reponses in order to carry out the mission of Jesus in the world of today and tomorrow. Historically, the Spirit has en-riched the Church with religious communities which have been able to trans-late the mission mandate of Christ into ministries and apostolates that responded to the reality of particular ages, be it by redeeming slaves, by teaching the children of Catholic immigrants in the context of a pluralistic so-ciety, by providing medical care in underdeveloped countries, or by lobbying for issues of social justice. However, precisely because such a discerning process, reflecting as it does one's ecclesiology and understanding of the vows (especially obedience), is necessarily not a simple matter, congregations must resist the temptation to expedite and simplify the process either by not providing clear and challeng-ing ecclesial and congregational input to a person's discerning process, or by not taking a person's discerning process seriously. Persons, on the other hand, must search out this congregational and ecclesial input, and allow it to be a very significant dimension in their own discerning process. The current efforts being made by religious congregations to deal with the implications of their ecclesial reality for their congregational sense of mis-sion, are most encouraging. As congregations continue to address this area with greater intensity, they will find some direction and encouragement from the above mentioned document, "Directives for the Mutual Relations Be-tween Bishops and Religious in the Church," jointly issued by the Sacred Congregation for Keligious and Secular Institutes and the Sacred Congrega-tion for Bishops (see Chapter I I I, 10-12 and especially Chapter IV, 15-23). The entire second part of this document presents some directives and norms that deal with the practical aspects of such mutual relations. To get a sense of how this document could contribute to a congregation's discerning process, it might be helpful to cite a few of the directives. Mission and Commitment / 661 38. Major superiors will take great care not only to have a knowledge of the talents and possibilities of their religious btit also of the apostolic needs of the dioceses where their institute is called to work. Wherefore it is desirable that a concrete and global dialog be carried on between the bishop and the superiors of the various institutes present in the diocese, so that, especially in view of certain precarious situations and the persistent vo-cational crisis, religious personnel can be more evenly and fruitfully distributed. 40 . Bishops, in dialog with religious superiors and with all who work in the pastoral sector of the diocese, should try to discern what the Spirit wills and should study ways to provide new apostolic presences, so as to be able to deal with the difficulties which have arisen within the diocese. The search, however, for this renewal must not in the least lead to a depreciation of the still actually valid forms of apostolate, which are properly traditional, such as that of the.school (see S. Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School March 19, 1977), of the missions, of effective presence in hospitals, social services, etc. All of these traditional forms, moreover, must be, without delay, suitably updated according to the norms and guidelines of the Council and the needs of the times. 41. Apostolic innovations, which are later to be undertaken, should be planned with careful study. On the one hand, it is the duty of the bishops through their office not in-debd to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good (see l Th 5, 12 and 19-21; LG 12), in such a way however, "that the spontaneous zeal of those who engage in this work may be safeguarded and fostered" (.4G 30); religious superiors on their part, should cooperate actively and dialog with the bishops in seeking solutions, in arranging the programming of choices made, in launching experiments, even com-pletely new ones, always acting in view of the most urgent needs of the Church and in , conformity with the norms and directives Of the Magisterium and according to the nature of their institute. Together with such guidelines, congregations must themselves, through their own reflective processes, arrive at clarity and consistency regarding their own understanding and usage of those potentially confusing phrases that often surface when a congregation considers how "mission" finds expression in its corporate life. I am referring here to phrases like, "corporate mission," "corporate witness," "corporate ministry," "institutional commitment," all of which perhaps need to be "unpacked" and reflected upon in the light of the congregation's own understanding of its charism and ecclesial reality. The necessity of institutions for the carrying out of certain, apostolates is obvious. However, given the changes in the society to which we are missioned to proclaim and witness to the Father's love, it might be necessary at least to raise the question as to whether or not institutions as such have become ends in themselves, institutions, that is, whose continued existence is justified more and more from their own intrinsic merits and strengths than from their relationship to the furthering of the mission of Christ. Honest struggling with these questions should help congregations to clari-fy, identify, and own just which dimensions of their institutional apostolates do incarnate their public communal witness to the Father's love and, in doing so, give the congregation some significant input for whatever process they 662 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 engage in, in trying to digcern l~he missioning of the congregation's personnel and the expediture of its financial resources. However even at this level of concern for a congregation's public com-munal witness, I think it is important to remember that since the community consists simply of persons coming together in the Spirit to share with and live out their common faith-vision, the vitality of a congregation,s public com-munal witness will also necessarily reflect the quality of the personal witness of the members of the community. Conclusion The thrust of these reflections has been to surface the essential inter-personal and relational dimensions of the reality of mission. For it is this di-mension which to a great extent grounds the ability of mission to be a truly enlivening reality of our Christian living. Because the phenomenon of mis-sion involves three persons, the person who is sent, the person who sends and person to whom he is sent, one's sense of mission and willingness to be sent will be very much rooted in his relationship to the person who sends. In other words mission is very intimately related to commitment, so that the quality of our Christian mission will be dependent upon the quality of our commitment to the person of Je'stis Christ who shares his mission with us. As a result, when religious, both personally and communally, enter a pro-cess to discern where and how they should carry out the mission that Christ shares with them, their process of discernment must include a very real sensi-tivity to the input of the Church -- especially the local church -- where alone one's mission is actually carried out. And it is this ecclesial input that will help r~ligious avoid the subtle dangers of becoming more concerned with self-perpetuation than with proclaiming and witnessing to the kingdom. And, correspondingly, it is a serious responsibility of the Church -- especially the local church -- to create and foster those structures that will enable it to sur-face and articulate its pastoral needs in a realistic and credible way. But, even more fundamentally, before religio6s, either personally or com-munally, can engage in such a legitimate process of discernment, one that'is aimed at discerning the will of the Father, they must already be in a loving and living prayerful relationship 'with the Lord. They must have already com-mitted their very selves to the person of Jesus. As' followers of Christ, we are necessarily on mission. While for religious this mission does receive some definite specifications in the light of congrega-tional charisms, still, the full reality of their mission must ~lso, necessarily, flow from and reflect its ecclesial, Christic and Trinitarian roots. Which is to say that ultimately for religious, as for 'all Christians, the quality of our sense of mission and our willingness to be sent, are very inti-mately tied up with our personal relationship with and commitment to the person who sends us, the person of Jesus Christ. For, like the Trinity itself, our mission is'rooted ultimately in relationships. Three Questions for the Spiritual Journey Joel Gia//anza, C.S.C. Brother Giallanza has contributed to these pages previously. His article, "The Counsels of John of the Cross Revisted," appeared in our January, 1978 issue~ He continues to reside at Holy Cross Novitiate; Bennington, VT 05201. Asking a question implies searching for an answer; also it implies a desire for the knowledge and valfie inherent in the answer. As expressions of a commitment to the spiritual journey, questions can be effective channels for.discovering ways in which the Lord has been and is operative in each one's life. Most of the great mystics do not use questions as a structural basis for their writings. However; they do seem to be addressing a query that could be formulated thus: "What is your experience of God in your own life?" Within this experiential context, mystical writers offer the reader profound glimpses into their relationships with God. Admittedly this is not the only query that shapes the writings of these authors. Other, more specific, questions emerge as they articulate their understanding of the spiritual life. Questions pertaining to each one's own spiritual journey should be neither accidental nor random. Haphazard questioning can have a significant impact on the direction that one takes; it can result in one's losing sight of the journey's end--union with the Lord. Questions for the journey rather should facilitate choices which have to be made, should be a guide along the road, should offer the support and the challenge necessary to continue faithfully even when the road is dark. Where can such questions be found? The spiritual journey is a move- 663 664 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 ment toward union with the Lord. Our questions, then, should come from the Lord himself. He alone gives the gi'ace to discern choices, to find support along the road, and to bring light to the darkness. This reflection will focus on three questions which come from the Lord and which seem to be of special importance for the spiritual journey. Identifying the Lord The first question is itself posed in the context of a journey: specifically, Jesus and his disciples are entering the district of Caesarea Philippi. First Jesus asks his disciples who others believe him to be; then, after a variety of responses, he asks the disciples themselves: "But who do you say that I am?" (Mr 16:13-15 and parallels). The question is a crucial one, an identi-fying one; the response to it immediately identifies each one's faith in, and relationship with, Jesus of Nazareth. This identification is fundamental to the spiritual life. It specifies the end point toward which the spiritual journey tends. Above all, it is a statement of faith. Faith is a lived reality. Its core is made visible by the whole of one's life, through one's attitudes, decisions, commitments, relationships. Contem-porary Christians, just as the disciples, must also confront this question, in faith, for it is ever-present. "Who do you say that I am?" Clearly, it is present as one prays, either individually or in a worshiping community. It is present in everyday decisions and encounters, as well as in those which have an impact on one's life beyond a single day, week, month, or year. In short, it is present throughout the spiritual journey. All of life responds, in some way, to it. The movement of the text in which this question appears is from general ("who do others say. ?") to particular ("who do you say. ?"). The disciples, doubtless, had been influenced by what others were saying about Jesus; hence, their answers to the generalized question. The challenge of the more particular question, however, is to respond personally on the basis of their own experience. So too, for contemporary Christians, the influence of others has some bearing on the development of personal faith; eventu-ally, however, the question must be addressed on the. basis of one's own faith and experience. The spiritual life, as a personal relationship with God, must contain a response to Jesus on a personal level. Finally, the identification of '~who Jesus is" in and for one's life is inseparable from the Paschal Mystery. "From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Mt 16:21 and parallels). To identify Jesus, in the words of Peter, as "the Christ, the Son of the Living God" is to accept the cross-and-resurrection. The Lordship of Jesus and his accomplishment of the Father's will by dying and rising are one. And so, the spiritual journey begins. One's vision of its end and of the road to be taken is focused sharply in each one's response to the question of Jesus: "But who do you say that I am?" Three Questions for the Spiritual Journey / 665 Acknowledging the Lord The first question, the identifying question, is not asked in a vacuum. It leads to, and is supported by, another question: "Do you know what I have done to you?" (Jn 13:12). The immediate scriptural context of this question" is the Last Supper, after Jesus had washed the disciples' feet. In this simple action, he gives them an example of how they are to serve others. For the spiritual journey, the response to this question is the acknowl-edgment and recognition of what the Lord has done in one's life; it is the recognition of specific graces that are given to each one throughout his life. This acknowledgment and recognition flow from, and support, what has gone before. To acknowledge the graces one has been given implies some identification of the Giver; to recognize those graces strengthens one's faith in Jesus as Lord. The gospel itself affirms this interdependence of the two questions; immediately after asking this second question, Jesus states: "You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am" (Jn 13: 13). Beyond its appearance in the context of the Last Supper, this question can refer to Jesus' entire life. In a sense, he is asking an all-pervasive question: "Do you know what I have done to you?" since you have been with me and I with you~uring all that has happened (will happen) to us since the beginning of my ministry? In this larger context the disciples must reflect on all that has taken place. They must begin to. see Jesus' life and ministry as a single incarnate expression of the Father's love. Jesus is the Exemplar (Jn 13:15), the one to whom.all Christian lives must point. This question, too, must be particularized. The Lord's actions surely have affected all people, but each in a unique way. The acknowledgment of that unique way in which the Lord has been operative in one's life shapes the response to this question. This is to know what the Lord has done. The second question appears very near the end of Jesus' life; thus, it, too, points to the cross-and-resurrection. The graces which one receives throughout life are intrinsically bound to the drama of Salvation History. Indeed, the gifts which the Lord bestows upon his people--individually and collectively~raw their power from his passion, death, and glorification. And so, the spiritual journey continues. Complete dependence on the Lord, by acknowledging his gifts, is highlighted in response to the simple, yet pervasive, question: "Do you I~now what 1 have done to you?" Seeking the Lord Jesus' first two questions are a type of prelude to his third. To identify Jesus in one's life, and to acknowledge his gifts, are the means of respond-ing to a final question: "Whom do you seek?" (Jn 18:4). This is asked by Jesus in the garden just prior to his arrest; his boldness stuns those who seek him, and so Jesus repeats himself. This question must remain a constant traveling companion on the spiri-tual journey. It must be answered again and again, at every fork in the road, as the spiritual life progresses. Its purpose, clearly, is to keep one's sight 666 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 fixed on the Lord alone. Thus, it is the raison d'etre for the entire spiritual ¯ journey. At any point .along the way, regardless of what one is doing, the manner in which his life is lived a.ctually proclaims his response to the 'question: "Whom do you seek?" That night, those who were seeking Jesus (to arrest him) were caught up in their movement as a crowd. It would have been~interesting to go through that crowd and ask each, indiviOually, whom he was seeking. Some may not have really known. Judas did, but he did not search alone. As odd as it may seem, a parallel can be drawn for the spiritual journey. Faith and gifts from the Lord can be. taken for granted, and so one can easily be caught up in merely doing what everyone else is doing. Then Jesus' question really has not been heard. Like the previous questions, this one ~must be particu-larized. To fix one's sight on the Lord alone clarifies the response; the alternatives are confusion and uncertainty. It is not to be inferred that confusion and uncertainty are never to be experienced in the spiritual life. Rather, the point here is that one's basic response is stable. From its context in the Gospel of John, it is obvious that this question leads to the cross-and-resurrection. To seek the Lord is to accept all that the Paschal Mystery e[atails. In a prophetic waY, Sirach emphasized this some two centuries before: My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials" (2: I). To seek the Lord leads to life, but it is a life that is born through death (Jn 12:24-25). And so the spiritual journey continues. At any moment and every moment, the Christian must know the road being traveled; constancy must be the hallmark of each one's response to the questibn: "Whom do you seek?" In Response Every Christian must respond in some way to these three questions of the spiritual journey. The ways in which each identifies, acknowledges, and seeks the Lord will be unique, based on personality, talents, experience, life-situation. Nevertheless, a common thread does run through all re-sponses. In the opening lines of his first letter, St. John makes a statement that addresses effectively all three questions. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life--the life was mb.de manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us--that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you. so that you may have fellowship with us;and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son; Jesus Christ (1:1-3). Consider each question, and then read this text as a response. Jesus is identified as "the word of life"; he is acknowledged as the sour~:e of all that Three Questions for the Spiritual Journey / 667 has been received; and, he is the end toward which the proclamation points. Jesus is the common thread. It is beyond the scope of this brief reflection to explore this text in any depth; but one point in particular is worthy of note. Tactility and sensibility are emphatic elements of this text. The one about whom these things are written is known through experience: "heard," "seen," "looked upon," and "touched." These elements strengthen the testimony that is given. From his own experience, St. John proclaims "'the word of life," and invites others to "fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." Responding to these questions throughout one's own spiritual journey must be the fruit of experience; it cannot be the result of academic gymnas-tics. These questions warrant a commitment, a fidelity to the spiritual journey. Only then does one's life--testimony, proclamation--identify Jesus as Lord, acknowledge his gifts, and seek him alone. Conclusion Three simple questions, Simple, yet interdependent. Simple, yet for the spiritual life they can be viewed as the most significant questions in the New Testament. To identify Jesus in one's life, to acknowledge what he has done and is doing, and to seek him above all else these constitute the spiritual journey. And, as always, the roads along which the journey pro-gresses are paved with the cross,and-resurrection. The spiritual journey requires onlyfidelity. That fidelity is incarnated through the Christian's lived response to the Lord's questions: "But who do you say that I am?" "Do y9u know what I have done to you?W .h.om do you seek?" Write a Gospel John Navone, S.J. Father Navone has written previously for REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. He continues to teach theology atthe Gregorian University; Piazza della Pilotta, 3; 00187 Roma, Italy. The Church employs the gospels as means for communicating and cultivat-ing its foundational experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ and in his Spirit given to us. A gospel is not an end in itself; it is meant to be used for fosteripg that gift of God's love which is the life of the Church. A gospel is written to serve the purpose of the grace and demand of God's transcendent love in Jesus Christ and his Church; it articulates and objectifies the meaning and value and demands of this love for us, both as individuals and as a com-munity. It symbolizes the call of a transcendent love empowering and sum-moning individuals to transcend themselves by accepting its grace and de-mand for life within the Christian community. Similarly, it symbolizes God's transcendent love summoning the Christian community to transcend itself in communicating its foundational experience to the world in iis distinctive ser-vice of the world. In a series of conferences given at the Gregorian University, in December 1978, Carlo Martini, S.J., sustained the working hypothesis that the four Gospels function as four manuals which correspond to the needs of four dis-tinct moments in the formation of the Christian. Adapting this hypothesis to the realm of God's self-investing love which the New Testament witness sym-bolizes, I suggest that Mark serves as the Christian community's manual for introducing the catechumen to the mystery of God's self-investing love in Jesus Christ. Matthew functions as the catechist's manual for helping the newly baptized to live according to the exigences of this self-investing love within the Church. Luke-Acts is the two-volume manual for learning how to bear witness to the meaning and value of this love for the world. John is Write a Gospel / 669 employed as .the manual for the grand synthesis of the mature Christian who has lived out the demands of this self-investing love in following Jesus and his (~hurch in the service of the world and now asks what is at the heart of his Christian experience. The self-investing dynamic of God's love is understood to be the origin and ground and destiny of the Jesus story, the Church story, and the world story. Not to have grasped this is to have missed the point of the dynamic which constitutes their ultimate meaning and value. Commu-nion with God implies a participation in the dynamic of his self-investing love on a level prior to that on which doctrinal systems and organized institutions arise. The Gospels symbolize the realm of God's unrestricted love to which humankind is constitutively oriented by presenting Jesus as God's self-revela-tion, or Word. They summon us to follow Jesus in his fundamental self-others- world-Mystery relationship for the authentic fulfillment of our humanity. The authenticity of our response to Jesus' injunction to love God above all else finds its measure in the deeds by which we follow his way to human authenticity through self-investing love for the neighbor. Writing a gospel is one way of learning to use a gospel for discovering the quality of our relationship to the transcendent love of God in Jesus Christ, in his Church, and in his world. Jesus symbolizes the meaning and value of this love, what it does and what it does not. The way we tell his story implies the way we comprehend the purpose of God's love in ourselves, others, and the world. The storyteller is in his storytelling. The gospel writer tells us about himself in telling us his story of Jesus. At the beginning of a course I teach on the spirituality of the gospels, I have had my students write a gospel in order to come to some experiential un-derstanding of what it means to be the author of a gospel. For an appropriate psychological state, they were to imagine that all the New Testaments throughout the world had been destroyed and that theirs would be the one and only written link with the original four gospels. They were to write their own synoptic gospel, using only the words of the four actual gospels. The ti-tle of the gospel would be "The Gospel According to (Student's Name)." Not more than two thousand words were allowed for telling the Good News. Each gospel was to have an architectonic unity, at least one parable, one mir~acle, one saying of Jesus. Between a fourth and a fifth of the gospel had to treat of the passion and death of Jesus. When the gospels had been written, they were exchanged. Each student wrote a commentary on the gospel that was given to him aimed at discerning (1) the portrait of Jesus and (2) the portrait of the author. What is the mean-ing and value of Jesus for the writer of this gospel? At what levels of con-sciousness does Jesus speak to the author? What does the author expect of Jesus? At ~what level of personal need does Jesus encounter the author? What is the author's particular interest in Jesus? What is his particular feeling toward Jesus? General questions for a critical reading of these gospels -- to help discern 670 / Review for R'eligious, Volume 38, 1979/5 the portrait of Jesus and of the author -- are the following, 1. Make a list of all the verbs which describe the agency of Jesus. What Jesus does in the gospel implies what he does for the author of the gospel. The author implies that Jesus will do this also for the reader of his gospel. 2. What does Jesus say in this gospel? This is what the author h~ears Jesu.s saying and, therefore, implicitly expects his reader to hear the same Jesus ad-dressing him with the same words. 3. Is the Risen Christ active in this .gospel? Does the gospel end with Jesus' resurrection from.the dead? ~ 4.How does the author see Jesus' basic self-others-world-God r~lationships? Is Jesus regarded as more solitary than social? As more receptive than active? As more suffering than joyful? As more among women than among men? As more among friends than among adversaries? As more a speaker than a doer? As more often rebuking than encouraging? As more often criticizing than approving? As more demanding than accepting? As more comprehen-sibly human than mysteriously divine? As more courageously confronting difficult situations than being welcomed by admiring followers? The original evangelists do not exclude one or the other of these elements in creating their balanced portrait of Jesus as both their crucified and risen Lord, illuminating the mystery which defines every human life. On the one hand, Jesus symbolizes the grace of God's love accepting persons wherever they are; on the other hand, he symbolizes the summons of that gracious love to transcend what we are in becoming sons of God. Some students wrote a gospel in which the third person prevails, creating the perspective of a detached spectator. Their avoidance of the second person suggests th~ absence of a personal relationship with the crucified and risen Jesus. It suggests that ~hey do not h~ar him speaking to them today. Luke's gospel, in contrast, underscores the ever-present grace and demand of God's love: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you listen" (4:21); "To-day I must stay at your home" (19:5); "Today salvation has come to this house" (19:9); "Today you shall be with me in Paradise" (23:43). Luke's use of the second person, his use of such words as "today" and "now," implies that the transcendent realm of God's love, symbolized by the entire story of Jesus, is ever-present and summoning us. Its reality and goodness actually touch Luke's existence as an individual within the community of Christian faith, inspiring him to write a gospel about it for others. His gospel thema-tizes the immediacy of an understanding beyond words, his religious cgnver-sion, the love which he has received and accepted as the integrating center of his life. , The exercise of writing a gospel helps the writer to discover those areas of life that are most affected by the meaning and value of God's love in Jesus Christ. The writer should treasure whatever dimension of the Good News that especially moves or interests him. This is its special value for him. This is the particular sector of his consciousness where the mystery of God's love Write a Gospel / 671 finds itsl point of entry into his life; consequently, it must be cultivated with care so as to become frtlitful. Its fruitfulness will vary with the cultivation it receives. The radicalism of the New Testament message is an ideal towards which growth will always be slow and often uncertain. Inasmuch as our ac-tion must always be within the 'limits of possibility, a rigorism that would challenge us beyond our powers is counterproductive. Discouragement is the temptation of temptations. One person'~s effective freedom is limited to such a way that he cannot' achieve what many others find feasible. The focus of the gospel-summons is on the use, rather than measure, of our effective freedom. It challenges us to stretch the limits of our freedom, but not to the breaking-point. It manifests a readiness to meet us wherever we happen.to be and to lead us on from there. As William ~V. Dych notes: "What must I do to gain eternal life," Jesus is asked in the Gospel story. What I must do might be quite different from what somebody else,must do, and I am the one who has to discover it in the particular configuration of concrete circumstances which make up my life and existence. There is no antecedent blueprint~ in a book somewhere simply to be Copied or imitated. In fact, when "living by the book" makes me miss the very concrete realities rigl~t there before my eyes, then "the letter kills," as St. Paul says.' The most severe threats of the Gospel are for those who do not want to be led at all, those committed to the illusion of self-sufficiency: But alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now: Alas for you who have your fill now: you shall go hungry. Alas for you who laugh now: you shall mourn and weep. Alas for you when the world speaks well of you! This was the way their ancestors treated the false prophets (Lk 6:24-26). The gospels are rich in pedagogical resources for cultivating the gift of God's love at the 'many different levels where we had become conscious of its presence and summons. No situation of human life is too extreme to bein-cluded within the scope of its redemptive purpose. It implicitly invites every-one to write his own ,gospel within the effective limits of our freedom for responding to the gift of God's love in our basic :self-others-world-God rela-tionships. It invites us to witness to its reality and goodness. The exercise of writing a gospel, using only the words of the four evange-lists, has the advantage of not taxing the creative resources of individuals. The gospels provide a basic lingua franca which we may employ to describe our relationship to the mystery which defines our lives. The use of this lingua francarespects the privacy of the writer, who might not wish to publicize the events of his interior life; at the same time, it permits the individuality of the writer's perspective to emerge in the selection of material. The writer does not have to invent a religious language, or a set of religious symbols. The number of words is arbitrary; however, the fewer permitted, the more radical the 'William V. Dych, "The Logic of Faith,'" America 140 (March 19, 1979), p. 219. 672 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 selectivity and the clearer the manifestation of the writer's perspective. Students writing a gospel are generally unaware of how self-revealing their gospels are. The experience of becoming a synoptic writer of a gospel creates a context for a meaningful discussion of the process that brought the first four gospels into existence, and of the relation of this process to the reli-gious conversion which occurs in the immediacy of the subject's conscious-ness, in a supraconceptual, existential experience beyond words. Only when religiously transformed subjectivity begins to mediate itself through mean-ing, myth, narrative, stories of God and the like can religious community take rise. This mediation of conversion through the objectification of its meaning provides the context for the Church's use of the New Testament. Writing our own parables is an exercise related to that of becoming con-temporary synoptic gospel writers. In this exercise, however, students were not expected to use the texts of the New Testament. They were to compose a story, based on their own personal experience, to communicate one dimen-sion of their lived understanding of what it means to receive and share the gift of God's love. Creating our own parables is doing what Jesus did; in some respects, it can express a greater fidelity to the Gospel truth than the merely mechanical repetition of Jesus' parables. John Drury relates that the poet Edwin Muir in his autobiography saw his own life as a narrative on the two levels of individual difference and shared mystery, calling them story and fable.~ Story refers to a man's biography where fact is linked to fact: birth and parents, changes of address, marriage and jobs. It marks him off from other people. It is his alone. But the fable is always impinging on it. This is chain of images and archetypes which we do not entirely understand and which only become clear in dreams, visions and myths: the country of innocence, the fall, the journey and transfiguration. Thus story tells us that when the poet was a boy, the Muir family moved from a good farm on the Orkneys to a bad one, and then to Glasgow. But what is happening in the realm of fable is a fall from innocence into experience and alienation. It is in the realm of fable that we have our deepest connections with one another. In biography we are distinct. It must be to the fable that his Wife Willa refers when she says that "he never ceased to believe that his expe-rience resembled the experience of everyone else living on earth.''3 The quality of our experience ultimately determines the shape of our autobiographies, biographies, histories, novels, parables, stories of God, the-ologies. We express in these manifold ways what can be found within our conscious experience on successive, related, but qualitatively different levels: the empirical on which level we sense, perceive, imagine, feel, speak, move; the intellectual level on which we inquire, come to understand, express what we have understood, work out the implications and presuppositions of our 2John Drury, Angels and Dirt (London: Dhrton, Longman & Todd, i972) p. 50. Write a Gospel / 673 expressions; the rational level, on which we reflect, marshal the evidence, judge the truth or falsity, certainty or probability, of a statement; the respon-sible level on which we are concerned with ourselves, our own operations, our goals, and so ddiberate about possible courses of action, evaluate them, de-cide and carry out our decisions.' Our manifold ways of storytelling, of phi-losophizing and of theologizing, are indices of what is going on at the four levels of our consciousness and inten.tionality; they are objectifications of our conscious intending of the true and the real, of the good and the worthwhile, as unique individuals with a unique history. As such, they are objectifications which are not deduced from abstract laws about human nature in general; rather, they derive from the concrete life-stories of individuals in search of true meaning and value. The authenticity of our lives grounds the authentici-ty of the manifold ways in which we objectify our search. 'Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), p. 9. See also T. Patrick Burke, "The Theologian as Storyteller and Philosopher," Horizons 4/2 (1977), p. 207. Response to Psalm 137 How sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land? With muted voice probably, With tear-stained cheek most likely, With" breaking heart no doubt. But the Lord lives. So sing, then! Take your harp from the aspen tree! Sing not for your captors. Sing to the Lord who loves, Sing to the Lord who listens! Brother Franklin Cullen, C.S.C. Moreau High School 27170 Mission Blvd. Hayward, CA 94544 Jesus Christ, the Mediator of Catholic Charismatic Life Frederick J. Deters, S.J. Father Deters is an assistant professor of theology at Loyola University (Chicago). He resides in the Jesuit community there, 6525 North Sheridan Rd.; Chicago, IL 60626. Periodically there have appeared through Church history numerous men and women, individually and in groups, claiming to be filled with the Holy Spirit but all the while separating themselves from the unity of that Spirit as he was working in God's People. Most of us have heard of the Montan-ists, the Albigensians and the Joachimites--to cite only a few. Such knowledge of the past should dispose us to careful discernment when it comes' to accepting the inspirations oF yet others today who also claim to be Spirit-filled. But we must remember that spiritual discernment is not a form of natural cynicism. Those whom the Gospel calls to the shrewdness of serpents, are also summoned to the simplicity of doves and the openness of children. The point I am making here is that we can do without phony enthusiasm or false mysticism, but we cannot do without the Holy Spirit and his ,gifts. Vatican 1I was explicit in reaffirming the giftedness of all God's chil-dren. There, Catholic pastors were encouraged to see that the people were in fact led by the Spirit of God and that the charisms of each Christian be recognized and readily employed for the upbuilding of Christ's Body. Catholic life is charismatic life. In the true meaning of the words, the Catholic Church has been, and will continue to be. charismatic--or it will cease to be the Church of Christ on pilgrimage to the Father. Though in the past the various charisms have. in theologizing within Roman Catholicism, 674 Jesus Christ, the Mediator of Catholic Charismatic Life / 675 been.chiefly linked with both religious orders and ecclesial offices, there has never been lacking individual persons recognized for possessing the gifts of the Spirit. In such individuals, however, the genuineness of the gifts was ever attested by the loyalty and obedience with which they submitted to the guidance and direction of their communities and pastors. Given the: tension that must ever prevail between certain charisms and the exercise of, ecclesial offices, what, if anything, can theology point to as a touchstone for understanding their mutual harmony' and interaction? I am convinced that the answer to this question can be nothing or no one other than Jesus Christ, our One Lord and Mediator. In the following pages I propose a new look at both the Lordship and the mediatorial activity of Jesus Christ. As Jesus acts through the charismatic life of his people, he reveals the true character of his Lordship. At the same time, his authentic sovereignty manifests his mediation of life in charismatic activity. ~ What Does the Lordship o~ Jesus Mean? The emphasis that marks Catholic rehewal today is an ancient acclama-tion of faith: "Jesi~s is Lord!" This confession is chanted, sung and pro-claimed, not only by increasing numbers of men and women in the United States, but, ttiroughout th~ world. From early Christian times, it was the credal formula used in cofijunction with sacramental baptism. This practice was in evidence in the Roman Chur~:h. In his epistle tothe Romans, Paul writes: "For if you confess with y?ur lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your hearts that God raised~ him from the dead, you will be saved.''~ Baptism by im'mersion folloffed this professionl the descent into the water symbolizing death with Christ to a world of sin, the emergence from the pool manifesting a new walk with Christ in risen life. The washing both symbolized and celebrated the actual washing away of sin by the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit. God, the Blessed Trinity, was seen by faith to fill the" new Christian with his presence and life. Christian baptism was the authentic sign of°faith. Even so, the ,newly baptized and the com-munity gathered with him or her in celebration knew that this marked but the start ofc0mmunion with God's life. The ceremony brought with'it, a call tb live as Christ had lived, and, as the gra'ced opportunity was given, to die as he had died; to suffer death, that is, by witnessing to the hope of i:esur-rection. " ~ As the early Church lived and grew, Christians continued to know the power of ihi~ Lord's presence within them. In a true sense, there was no need for'anyone to tell these men'and women to "'know the Lord." They knew him and found a deep and salutary relationship with him in their lives. But they also knew one another through him just as they knew him through ~Ro 10:9. 676 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 one another by reason of his ongoing action in their midst. For Jesus continued to teach, direct, and sanctify through them. Their knowledge that God was interiorly within them as individuals was accompanied likewise by their awareness in faith that they were in Christ and that even the world of physical nature and material reality found its center in him. In fact, Jesus was known as Lord, not only of the visible elements of the Christian community, but of the external universe as well. He was Lord of all things, both visible and invisible. Paul voices this conviction when he speaks of the fullness of God in Christ: He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creatures. In him everything in'heaven and on earth was created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations, principalities or powers; all were created through him, and for him. He is before all else that is. In him everything continues in being. It is he who is head of the body, the Church; he who is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, so that primacy may be his in everything. It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in him and by means of him, to reconcile everything in his person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross.2 For Paul, the Lordship of Jesus is always related to Christ's humble obedience unto death. Just as the whole universe is depicted in the Epistle to the Romans as being in slavery to decadence due to sin, so the universe has, objectively speaking, been freed by Christ's death and is now in a process of renewal under his risen Lordship. But the Lordship of Jesus, whereby creation is renewed, represents a dominion won through Christ's suffering and death. This is also the theme of Philippians, Ch~apter 2, where Jesus' obedience unto death wins for him the title of Lord, the Name above every other name. Commenting on this latter passage, Robert Faricy writes: "In. his death Jesus descends into the heart of the world so that, in his resurrection, he can be the heart of the world, Lord in a true and even ontological sense, not simply appointed or named juridically, but Lord in such a way that to uproot him would be to make the world cease to exist.'''~ From this perspective Jesu~ has won his Lordship. He secured spiritual freedom from the dominion of the world of sin, death and the devil; not in the sense that he was personally held by these things; but, that vicariously he endured the Sufferings due to our sins in his own human nature in order that we might share his Lordship, his fieedom from them. So when the Christian, either of Paul~s time or our days says--"Jesus is Lord"--he professes the spiritual freedom of Christ in which his profession leads him to share. Since Jesus' Lordship is one that proclaims the reconciliatibn of every-thing, the Christian is called to a freedom that knows no base subjection to :Col 1:15-20. aFrank A. Sullivan, S.J., and Robert Faricy, S.J., lgnatian Exercises---Charismatic Renewal (Rome: Centrum lgnatianum Spirituatitatis, 1977). p. 36. Jesus Christ, the Mediator of Catholic Charismatic Life / 677 anything or anyone for their own sakes. The Christian is one who belongs to Christ himself: "All things are yours, but you are Christ's and Christ is God's!''4 So we all await that moment when at last Christ will hand over the kingdom to the Father and God will be all in all) The paradoxical converse of this, however, is that Christ's Lordship calls the Christian to spiritual freedom through the same kind of humble obedience that led Christ to surrender his very life into the Father's hands for our sake. It seems to be in this same spirit that Paul tells the Ephesians: "Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ.''6 And Peter's First Epistle calls upon Christians not only to be subject to church officials but to "every human institution" . . . "because of the Lord" for ~'such obedi-ence is the will of God." 7 Note that in all these cases subjection is rendered ¯ out of deference to Christ, who for the sake of our freedom took the form of a slave. As the Gospel account insists, Christ came not so much to be served, but to serve in the sense of giving his life as a ransom for many. To be authentic, our participation in Christ's Lordship will involve a share in his cross. Our service for each other will entail a daily crossbearing; it will ~ilso involve subjection, out of love for Christ the Lord. Jesus Provides Gifts for Service and Freedom Here we have come to the heart of Jesus' mediatorial activity for the Mystical Body. Insofar as we know the presence of Christ among us com-munally as well as within us individually, we long for the total celebration of that life in communal fellowship. It is for such a life that Christ provided by the distribution of the charisms and charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. What is a charism? It is a gift given foi service of some kind. It is a new and special way of relating to the Lord. At the same time, it is a call to serve with the power of the Holy Spirit given to fulfill that call. The word "charism," from the Greek word meaning gift, appears frequently in the Pauline writings of the New Testament. There are a number of references that we might cite; for our purposes here we will limit ourselves for the present to an examination of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians: Each of us h'as received God's grace in the measure in which Christ bestows it. Thus you find Scripture saying: "When he ascended on high, he took a host of captives and gave gifts to men." He ascended--what does this mean but that he first descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the very one who ascended high above the heavens, that he might fill all men with his gifts. Then Paul continues by telling us what some of Christ's gifts are: 41 CO 3:23. ~1 Co 15:28. 6Ep 5:21. 7See 1P 2:13-15 and 5:5. 678 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 It is [Christ]~who gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in roles of service0for the, faithful to build up the Body of Christ. till we become one in faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, and form that perfect man who is Christ come to full stature,s This passage tells us that Christ mediates God's favor for the Mystical Body through his gifts. Here Paul speaks of apostles, prophets,.evangelists, pastors and teachers; and the writer cites specific roles of service for up-b, uilding the Christian community. The enumeration includes charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit given by Christ for the Mystical ~Body. In the development of the Church ,certain of these functions, would often, though not always, come to be exercised by those who held ecclesial offices. Evidence for this is already provided by Scripture in the Pastoral epistles. Here we are told how Paul, just before his death, entrusted the care of the Church at Ephesus to Timothy and that of Crete to Titus. These two men represent the first scriptural evidence for the appearance of bishops on the Church scene. With an eye to future continuity, they, in turn, are told in these epistles to establish, other bishops and presbyters throughout their respective territories in order to continue the pastoral ministry of the Church begun by the apostles. Paul is even represented here as ordaining Timothy. So we read: "'Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands."%Whatever else these epistles tell us when read together, it seems true that certain of the charismatic roles of service mentioned in the,epistle to the Ephesians were likewise authenticated by visible sacramental celebration within and for the community. Consequently, there was nothing contradictory or in-harmonious between the charismatic gifts and hierarchical ,gifts present in the early Church. Outside of Scripture the ancient document called the Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles contains this injunction: "Choose for yourselves, therefore, bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord . . . for ttiey also exercise among you the ministry of prophets, and doctors." ~0 According to Roman Catholic theology, in fact, it is through the episco-pal office of the bishop of Rome and of those who are in communion with him (hat the charism of infallible teaching authority is assured to the Church. In order that the gates of hell should not prevail against the Church, bishops continue to exercise the pastoral and teaching role once committed to Peter and the original band of Apostles. If the episcopal office in union with the pope is not assured the charism of authentic pastoral and teaching authority, then no one has the gift of teaching, no matter how "See Ep 4:7-13. ~T Tm 1:6. l°Doctrina Doudecim Apostolorum, XV. # I. in Funk. Patres Apostolicae, 1901. Vol. II. pp. 32-34. Jesus Christ, the Mediator of Catholic Charismatic Life / 679 charismatic he or she may seem to be. It was first to Peter and the apostles together with their successors in the episcopate that Christ's promise was made in a special way: "'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."" And to this end also, Christ promises to be with them, and so with us, until the end of the world. Finally, it is to the bishops as authentic pastors of the Church that Catholics endowed with charisms must defer. Speaking of charisms, Vati-can 1I teaches that " . . judgment as to their genuineness and proper use belongs to those who preside, over the church and to whose special com-petence it belongs, not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things, and to hold fast to what is good (see 1 Th 5:12, 19-20).''~z Because Jesus is the One Lord and Mediator of gifts (hat are hierarchical as well as the strictly charismatic ones, he assures a marvelous harmony between them. Because this harmony and. unity is a real gift and an authentic mark of Christ:.s Church, it calls forth an appropriate response from every member of the Body. So Paul exhorts the Ephesians: I plead with you. then, as a prisoner for the Lord. to live a life worthy of the calling ,you have received, with perfect humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another lovingly. Make every effort to preserve the unity which has the Spirit as its origin and peace as its binding force. There is bul one body and one Spirit,just as there is but one hope given all of you by your call. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism: One God and Father of all who is over all, and works through all and is in ,,all.l:~ Disregard for Charism: and Office ~ Still it is today part of our sad inheritance that these words have not always been heeded. Heresies and schisms among Christians manifest the sin of our divisions. And this sin has been admitted and confessed in our time. Many of us are the descendants of Reformation and Counter- Reformation forebearers who themselves bore some responsibility for our presept divisions. So Vatican II officially recognizes that there were sins on both sides. BUt we today are no less .responsible than they. It is our vocation to open up our hearts to the.healing of such divisions that the Mystical Body of Christ on .earth might be made whole, and that the world might come to faith through its corporate and united witness. Some Catholic theologians today interpret the sin-sickness of Christian division as lack of openness to the presence and action of Jesus Christ in one another. From this perspective, the Reformation represents the Protes-tant rejection of the hierarchical gifts which the Catholic believes to be the ~tMt 16:18-19. ~ZDogmatic Constitution on the Church. Ch. II. "The People of God," ~ 12, in Abbot. p. 30. ~aEp 4: I-6, ~ Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 very heart of charismatic life in the Church. For the Catholic, to reject them is to reject Christ who said ".He who hears you hears me." The Catholic, Counter-Reformation era, on the other hand, manifests a certain deafness, or at least a hesitancy on the part of Catholics to attend to the charismatic voices of prophetic protest that should have been heeded sooner. Avery Dulles calls attention to the fact that within the Catholicism of the Middle Ages (the Pre-Reformation period) there was a lively and healthy tension between the prophetic and sacerdotal elements of the one charis-matic Church of Christ. It was the age of Bernard of Clair~,aux, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena. But as time progressed, the institutional features began to assert themselves more and more. Reflecting on these facts Dulles concludes: The history of the Reformation might have been quite different if the church in the sixteenth century had been more open to searching scrutiny in light of the gospel. In post-Reformation times, the history of western Christianity is dominated by the prophetism of the Reformation churches and the sacredotalism of the Catholic tradi-tion. In a separation that ought never to have occurred, churches of the word were arrayed against churches of the sacrament?4 According to the foregoing analysis, the healing of sinful divisions and the restoration of a loving unity among separated Christians will depend on our openness to Jesus Christ, whether he comes to bring us fuller life through charismatic individuals (even those presently outside the visible structures of Roman Catholicism), or through the charismatic offices of the visible church. It seems that our closedness to either aspect of Christ life today is a tragedy that will only continue to bear bitter fruit. In summarizing some of" Karl Rahner's remarks on the charismatic element in the Church, Gerald McCool says very succinctly: The hierarchy has an indispensable role to play in the Church. Her founder has given I~gitimate authority to the pastors of his community. Nevertheless the Church's teaching and sanctifying mission has not been entrusted exclusively to her office holders and the Church must be extremely sensitive to the personal intimations of God's will and to the pastoral inspirations which have been given to charismatic individual Christians. The Church's leaders must not endeavor to manage everything in the Church "from the top down." They must rather encourage apostolic initiative "from the bottom up" on the part of charismatic individuals and charismatic pastors. The Church ideal is the harmonious cooperation of her hierarchical and charismatic elements. It should never be the absorption or the elimination of one element by the other.~5 This summary represents the position of Karl Rahner, a teaching whose basis was first enucleated in the Encyclical letter of Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, and whose substance finds expression in the teaching of Vatican II on cha~'i~m~ ~Avery Dulles. The Survival o.t'Dogma (Doubleday: 1973). p. 133. ~Gerald A. McCool, S.J., editor's introduction to the section entitled "'The Charismatic Element in the Church," in A Rahner Reader (Seabury Press, New York: 1975), p. 293. Jesus Chr&t, the Mediator of Catholic Charismatic Life / 681 The ideal harmony and unity described in this teaching is really the gift of unity St. Paul speaks of in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. It is the unity of the Spirit that can come from none other than the Lord himself. By this very fact, it is not just some obscure or impersonal unity; rather, it is the dynamic and living unity of a Body that lives from moment to moment in a surrender of agapeic love whose very center is Christ and whose goal is the Father's glory. The Vision and Faith of Authentic Charismatics Because this gift of unity speaks of love, it implies sacrifice in the form of death to any self-centeredness that would threaten authentic unity. For the charismatic individual as well as for the ecclesiastical office-holder it demands ". perfect humility, meekness and patience, bearing wil~h one another lovingly." An authentic Catholic charismatic might well be the "man for all seasons" who is willing to suffer martyrdom rather than reject the word of Christ in his legitimate pastor. And the good pastor, like a good shepherd, might be one who fulfills his charismatic office by acknowledging and encouraging Christ's activity in prophetic individuals who can further the life of the flock. An example of this might well be Paul VI, as evidenced in his Apostolic Exhortation On Evangelization in the Modern World. He wrote: It is certain that, side-by-side with the ordained ministries whereby certain people are appointed pastors and consecrate themselves in a special way to the service of the community, the church recognizes the place of non-ordained ministries which are able to offer a particular service to the Church. A glance at the origins of the Church is very illuminating, and gives the benefit of an early experience in the matter of ministries. It was an experience that was all the more valuable in that it enabled the Church to consolidate herself and to grow and spread. Attention to the sources however has to be complemented by attention to the present needs of mankind and of the Church. To drink at these ever inspiring sources without sacrificing anything of their values, and at the same time to know how to adapt oneself to the demands and needs of today-- these are the criteria that will make it possible to seek wisely and to discover the ministries which the Church needs and which many of her members will gladly embrace for the sake of ensuring greater vitality in the ecclesial community. These ministries will have a real pastoral value to the extent that they are established with absolute respect for unity and adhering to th.e directives of the pastors, who are the ones responsible for the Church's unity and the builders thereof.~a With an eye to past history, I think you will agree that this is a hearten-ing statement, one that manifests remarkable openness to the initiatives and inspirations of the Holy Spirit for our times. But the realization of such hopes for a vital, charismatic life whose fruit and goal is Catholic unity may still seem somewhat visionary. If it does, perhaps that is understandable. The authentic unity of the Church, in order to be fully realized, must await ~Paul VI. On Evangelization in the Modern World (Publications Office of the United States Catholic Conference: Washington. D.C.). p. 53. 682 / Review for Religious, Volum.e 38, 1979/5 ,the return of the Lord. Still, the degree of its realization in the time that intervenes mustdepend on our faith and expectation. So we might°conclude our remarks by asking the question that Christ himself once posed: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth'?" Or again we might ask, Is Jesus Christ Lol'd? To which we proclaim: "'Jesus Christ is Lord!" "Come, Lord Jesus!" REPRINTS FROM THE REVIEW "Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Formation" S.C. for Religious . 35 "Prayer of Personal Reminiscence," D. J. Hassel, S.J." . 60 "Profile of the Spirit:,A Theology of Discernment of Spirits," J. R. Sheets, S.J . 50 "Retirement or Vigil," B. Ashley, O.P. " . 30 "The 'Active-Contemplative' Problem," D. M. Knight .75 "The Contemporary Spirituality, of the Monastic Lectio," M. Neuman, O.S.B . 50 "The Four Moments.of Prayer," J. R. Sheets, S.J. . : . 50 "The Healing of Memories," F. Martin . 35 "The Nature and Value of a Directed Retreat," H. F. Smith, S.J . 35 Orders for'the above should be Sent to: Review for Religious Room 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63108 Please include 75¢ postage and handling charge with preopaid orders. The Proposed Canons on the Consecrated Life Explained: III Joseph F. Ga/len, S.J. This is the third article commenting on the p~:oposed new canon law dealing with the consecrated life. Father Gallen's address is: Jesuit Community at St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Chapter V: Temporal Goods and the Consecrated Life Carl. 37, § 1. Norm and Right of Institutes Concerhing Temporal Goods. Norm. The law that her~'regu,!ates institutes of consecrated life is the section of the proposed canons on church possessions, or' ecclesiastical goods, which is the universal'law of the Chhrch on this matter. Institutes are to be guided by a different or co~trfiry norm that is established elsewhere on a particular matter in common law or that l~as otherwise been approved by the Holy See. . § 2. t~ight of Owning Property. a) Temporal Goods or Property. These are goods extrinsic to man that have a value in money, for example, money, real estate, stocks, bonds, furniture, equipment, clothing, books, and so forth. The present canon is concerned only with property owned by. an institute, province, canonically, erected house, or other public juridical person of the institute, not with that owned by individual religious. Goods of the former type are called church or ecclesiastical property, since the'y are owned by a public juridical person in the Church. b) Capacity: Every institute of consecrated life, province, or canonically erected house is~ an ecclesiastical public juridical person and possesses, in vir-tue 6f can. 13, the unlimited right of acquiring, owning, and administering 683 684 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 temporal property. This canon reads: "Any juridical person, whether public or private, is a subject capable of acquiring, retaining and administering temporal goods in accordance with the law." The capacity of an institute, province or house to acquire or own property is given by canon law and is not limited by canon law. The capacity extends to all species of property, for ex-ample, to immovable and movable goods. The former consists of things which are at least considered as being unable to be moved from place to place, for example, lands, a church, chapel, school, hospital, and so forth, and rights on such property. Movable property is that which can be so moved, for example, clothing, furniture, equipment, and so forth. The same capacity extends to all rights of use and/or receiving returns on property, for example, interest, dividends, and rents. c) Exclusion or Limitation of Capacity. The present proposed canon, .as in the past, permits the particular Rule or constitutions to exclude or limit the proprietary capacity described above. Such limitations are practically never found in institutes of brothers or sisters but they are encountered in some older institutes of men and women. Mendicant institutes are either complete-ly or partially incapable of possessing property from which they have the right to certain., and stable returns (Friars Minor of the Observance, Capuchins, Discalced Carmelites, and Jesuits). An institute may prescribe that the property acquired is to be spent for works and needs and that none or only a limited amount may be retained as capital. It may be enacted that the ownership of all property is invested in the institute, not in the provinces or houses or only subordinately in these. Acquisition by inheritance may be ex-cluded absolutely or through all or some of the members. Before adopting any such limitation, an institute should make a searching investigation into its efficacy as a means of poverty and its practicality in relation to the life and work of the institute. A constant emphasis on fundamental spiritual princi-ples and those specific to poverty can very likely be a more effective means than juridical incapacities or limitations. I have encountered practically no more recent institute of simple vows that has followed any of these practices of some more ancient institutes of solemn vows. The axiom that the decline of the consecrated life is caused by a decline in poverty or prayer may in fact be the reverse, that is, poverty or prayer declines because the spiritual life in general has declined. d) Ownership of Property. Can. 14 reads: "Ownership of goods belongs, under the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff, to that legal person which legitimately acquired the same goods." Therefore, unless otherwise prescribed by the particular law, property is owned by the juridical person that acquired it. Houses, provinces, and institutes are distinct canonical per-sons; therefore, the assets and debts of one are not those of another. The Holy See holds the supreme administration of all church property in the sense that it is to be acquired, owned, and administered according to the laws and under the authority of the Church (can. 18). Civil incorporation has been ex, The Proposed Canons on the Consecrated Life: III / 685 plained under can. 9. In the proposed canons: can. 28, § 2, 2°,commands ad-ministrators of ecclesiastical property to observe canon and civil law; can. 42, § 1, commands that civil laws regarding the leasing of property should be observed; can. 44, that the provisions of civil law on contracts are also to be observed by canon law; and can. 45, § 2, that in dispositions to pious causes made by bequest, the solemnities of civil law should be observed whenever possible. e) Manner of Acquisition. A juridical person of the consecrated life may acquire property, temporal goods, in any manner that is lawful to individuals according to the natural law, for example, the fruit of one's labor, donations, purchases, inheritance, legacy, or according to the positive law of the Church or state, for example, by contracts or wills in conformity with such laws. f) Property of Institute and Province. The general funds consist of the payments of novices, the interest on dowries, and the dowry itself at the death of a sister. Donations, legacies, and inheritances, when given to either, also belong to the institute or province, as do the taxes on the houses for the general and provincial expenses. These are used for the expenses of the gener-al or provincial government, of the novitiate, juniorate, education and for-mation of the members, central infirmary, the erection of houses, the assistance of the poorer works and houses and, if possible, the establishment of a reserve fund for extraordinary expenses, and of a capital fund that will serve as a source of regular income for all or some of these purposes. g) General and Provincial Tax. The general and provincial expenses listed above are clearly necessary. They are for the good of the entire institute or province and must, at least in great part, be defrayed by contributions from the provinces and houses. Two species of taxation are found in constitutions: One-third of the Net Surplus of the Past Year. According to the Normae of 1901 (no. 294), each house was obliged to send this sum at the end of each year to the provincial or general treasury, if there were no provinces, and each province had to send the same fraction of its net surplus to the general treasury. This is still the norm of a sufficient number of institutes. The tax should be sufficient to take care of the general, and provinci.al expenses; it should not burden all or some of the provinces and houses excessively nor prevent the establishments of the institute from setting up a reserve fund for proper maintenance and development. An obvious defect of this system is that it is only a contingent payment. It depends on the fact of a surplus. The general and provincial expenses are absolute and constant; the tax should therefore be an absolute element of the house and provincial budgets. It should be condoned or lessened when a province or house simply cannot pay it. o. Determined Sum for Each Member. A more modern and preferable norm found in many constitutions more recently approved by the Holy See is that the determination of the amount of the tax is left to the general chapter, which can then increase or decrease it as the times and circumstances de- 686 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/5 mand. The chapter often determines that each house is to contribute a .fixed sum annually for each member assigned to the house. A fractional part of such a sum may then be assigned to the general funds when the institute is divided into provinces, or each pro

Issue 30.6 of the Review for Religious, 1971. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to I~VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 6:31o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pe.nnsylvania 191o6. + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright ~) 1971 by REVIEW 'VOg RELIGIOUS. Published for Review for Religious at Nit. Ro\'al & Guilford Ave., Baltimore, .Xld. Printed in U.S.A. Set'ond class postage paid at Baltimore, .Maryland and ,at addithmal mailing offices. Single copies: $1.25. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year, $11.00 for two years: other countries: $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to REVIEW POg RELIOIOGS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions should be sent to REviEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P. O. Box l 110; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editorial correspondence, and books for re-view should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 619 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louts, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. NOVEMBER 1971 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 6 JOSEPH F. GALLEN,.S.J. Decree on Confessions of Religious. In a decree dated December 8, 1970, effective immedi-ately, and confirmed by the Pope on November 20, 1970, the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Instb tutes made the following.changes in the canon law on the sacrament of penance for religious, especially religious women, and on exclusion from a religious institute of one in temporary vows because of ill health. These provisions will remain in force until the new Code of Canon Law is effective. Number 4, e), of the Decree states that the pre-scriptions of the present canon law that are contrary to the new provisions, incompatible with them, or which because of them no longer apply, are suspended. Any provision of the Decree that~ affects novices will apply to those in a temporary commitment other than temporary vows. The numbering of the Decree has been retained in the following explanation. 1-2. The Decree exhorts religious to value highly the sacrament of penance as a means of strengthening the fundamental gift of metanoia or conversion to the king-dom of Christ, and to esteem in the same way the fre-quent use of this sacrament, which debpens ~true knowl-edge of self and humility, provides spiritual direction, and increases grace. These and other wonderful effects, according to n. 2, contribute not only to daily growth in virtue but are highly beneficial also to the common good. 3. All religious, men and women, clerical and lay, ex-empt and nonexempt, should strive to receive the sacra-ment of penance frequently, that is, twice a month. Supe-riors are to encourage this frequency and make it possible [or the members to go to confession at least every two weeks and even oftener, if they wish to do so. In the past, canon law did not oblige religious to go to confession at least once a week. The canonical obligation extended onl~ to superiors, who had to make it possible for their subjects to confess at least once a week. How-÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph F. Gallen, s.J., writes from St. Joseph's Church at 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Penn-sylvania 19106. VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 944 ever, the Code of Canon Law presupposed that an obliga-tion of weekly confession, existdd at least from custom, and very universally the constitutions obliged religious to confess at/east once a week. 4, a). "All women religious and novices, in Order that they may have proper liberty, may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. For this no special jurisdiction or designation is henceforth required." The first sentence of this number" gives all women reli-gious and novices, in orders, congregations, or societies of common life, the right always to go to confession validly and licitly to any priest of their choice, whether he is diocesan or religious, who is approved for confessions in the locality of the partic.ular confession. Furthermore, as this number of the Decree also states, the confessor does not have to be designated or appointed, for religious women.' Even in the past there were no canonical norms on the confessions of men or women postulants, who were regulated canonically by the same laws on confession as secular men and women. Religious women and novices are therefore .no longer obliged to go to ordinary or ex-traordinary confessors, eveh when such confessors exist for their houses. The special confessor of a particular reli-gious woman of canon 520, par. 2, no longer exists be-cause a religious woman may go, even habitually or al-ways, to any confessor of her choice. The same reason excludes the supplementary confessors (c. 521, par. 2), the occasional confessor (c. 522), and the confessor of seri-ously sick religious women (c. 523). Number 8, e), of the recent norms on the papal enclosure of nuns permits the following: "A priest [even if he possesses no jurisdiction for confessions] may likewise be admitted to assist those religious suffering from a chronic or greave illness." Mere spiritual direction, unlike absolution, does not require jurisdiction for confessions. Because of the sus.pended canons listed above in this paragraph, canon 2414, the last canon in the Code, is also suspended. This canon reads: If a superioress acts against the prescriptions of canons 521, par. 3, 522, and 523, she shall be admonished by, the local or-dinary; if again delinquent, she shall be punished by removal from office, and the Sacred Congregation of Religious is to be immediately informed of the matter. By reason of the second sentence of this number, spe-cial jurisdiction is no longer required for the valid or licit confessions of professed women religious or novices, whether in orders or congregations, nor for those in the analogons states of societies of women living in common without public vows (c; 675). All of these are now ab-solved in virtue of the same jurisdiction as secular women. Priests ordinarily possess jurisdiction for the con-fessions of the faithful ol~ both sex~esf@hey may therefore, in the locality for which they posses such jurisdiction, valid!y absolve the religious women listed" above any-wherd, in the confessional or outside of it. They may licitly do the latter in a case of sickness or for any other reason of like import (c. 910, par. 1). In the pa.st, to absolve validly and licitly the~ same religious women listed above, special jurisdiction was nec-essary. The jurisdiction was special becfiuse it "~as not contained in the jurisdiction granted for the faithful of both sexes~or for women. It had t3 be given expressly for religious women (c. 876, par. 1). The pres.ent suspension of the necessity of special jurisdiction also implies the suspension of the necessity of the designation of a special spiritual director (c. 520, par. 2) by the local ordinary or the regular superior. The i'eason for the necessity of this designation was that special jurisdiction for confession was granted to such a spiritual director. Lay religious institutes o[ men. According to n. 5 of the Decree, the applicable norms of n. 4 on women appertain~ also to lay institutes of men. Therefore, all religious and novices of such institutes may go to confession to any confessor, as explained above for women (n. 4, a). Be-cause of this right of choice, the special ordinary ~onfes-sor of professed °(c. 528), for whom the permission of the religious superior was° required, no longer exists," as is true also of the supplementary confessors of novices in the same institutes (c. 566, par. 2, n. 3),'and likewise of the occasional confessor of both professed and novices (c. 519). All of canon 566, par. 2, on confessors of novices in lay and clerical institutes of men is also suspended. Clerical institutes o[ men. Nothing is said directly in the Decree on the confessions of members of clerical or-ders' or congregations except that they too Should go to confession twice a month (n. 3). However, the applicable provisions on the confessions of women religious and nomces must also apply to clerical institutes. Otherwise, their members would be in an inferior condition to that of religious women and of the members of lay institutes of men, which has not been their status thus far in the laws of the Church. It is also the sufficiently evident intention of the Sacred Congregation to simplify the law on confes-sion [or religious and to grant greater liberty, and these are also desirable in the laws affecting clerical institutes. Therefore, all religious and novices in clerical institutes may make their confession to any confessor, as explained above [or women (n. 4, a). It would be incredible that clerical religious alone would be excluded from the pre-ceding concession. As above for lay institutes of men, the occasional confessor of both professe.d and novices (c. 519) ÷ ÷ ÷ Conlesslons VOLUME 30, 19TI 945 ~. l~. Gallen, $.~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 946 no longer exists nor the supplementary confessors for novices of canon 566, par. 2, n.3. 4, b). An ordinary confessor must be named for monas-teries of contemplative nuns, for houses of formation of women, and for large houses of women. An extraordinary confessor is to be named at least for the first two types of the preceding houses. The women religious and novices are not obliged to present themselves to either such ordi-nary or extraordinary confessors. The provision for the monasteries of contemplative nuns should in practice be extended to nuns who are doing immediate apostolic work, for example, conducting schools within their monasteries, and also to the houses or monasteries of contemplative congregations of sisters, for example, the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood, who have monasteries in the archdiocese of Portland, Oregon and in the dioceses of ~Brooklyn, Lafayette, Indi-ana, Manchester, Ogdensbu?g, Portland, Maine, and To-ledo Houses of formation of women include novitiates and juniorates, although the small number of novices and juniors and other circumstances can in some cases render the appointment of ordinary and extraordinary confessors impractical. There is no canonical definition of a large religious house. The determination of such houses should be made hy the local ordinary after a considera-tion of all the circumstances and even by consultation of its members. It could happen that the members of a very large house in a city can and prefer to go to any confes-sor. The presence or absence of members who cannot go outside the house for confession is obviously an impor-tant factor. Nor is consideration for the confessor to be forgotten, for example, an ordinary confessor who would come every two weeks and find nothing to do. In some cases a priest such as the one Or" ones who celebrate daily Mass in a larger house may be able to handle readily the few confessions that will occur. The fact that no religious woman or novice is obliged to present herself to any of these ordinay or extraordinary confessors follows from the general principle of the decree in n. 4, a), that all women religious and novices may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. This number of the Decree commands merely [he appointment of an extraordinary confessor, that is, the confessor who frequently, not neces-sarily at least for times during the year, is accessible that the members of the community may have the opportunity of confessing to another than the ordinary confessor. This was the definition of the same wording in canon 528 on the extraordinary confessor for professed religious in lay institutes of men. The Code explicity commanded the extraordinary confessor of professed religious women and novices (c. 521, par. 1)and of novices in institutes qf men' (c. 566, par. 2, n. 4) to be available atleast four times a year, but this provision is suspended by the Decree, In a liouse of ~formati0n, ord_i.nary .and extraordipar.y_, confeS, sors are to be app0intedl only for those in formation unless, with regard to an ordinary confessor, tbe other members of the house are sufficient to constitute a large house. This doctrine is evident from the fact that ordi-nary and ~xtraor,dinary confessors would not be ap-pointed [or these other members if they were in another house. Therefore, for example, in a novitiate house these confessors are appointed for the novices, not [or the mem-bers of the generalate or provincialate staff residing in tbe same house of formation. 4, c). "For other co.mmunities [in additition to the monasterieg of nuns, houses of formation, and large houses of n. 4, b) immediately above] an ordinary confes-sor may be named at the request of the community itself or after consultation with its members if, in the judgment of tlie ordinary, special circumstances justify such an ap-pointment." The "special circumstances" will be at least very com-monly those that prevent the religious women of a house fi'om going to confession twice a month unless an ordi-nary confessor is appointed. This can arise from the pres-ence in the house of religious who cannot go out for confession, from the location of the house that makes access to other confessors difficult, or that allows such access to only one confessor, for example, the sole priest in the one parish in a small town, and so forth. Lay and clerical institutes oJ men. With the exception of that on monasteries of nuns, the provisions of n. 4, b) and c) immediately above apply also to lay institutes of men by reason of n. 5, and to clerical institutes in virtue Of the arguments given under n. 4, a). It would again be incredible that ordinary contessors would continue to have to be appointed for all houses of clerical institutes (c. 518, par. 1) but only for the restricted number of houses of religious women and lay institutes of men ac-cording to n. 4, b) of the present Decree. Houses of for-mation in Clerical institutes include also houses of study (C. 587) and houses for the apostolic year and tertianship (see Sedes Sapientiae, nn. 48, 51). The judgment on the existence of a large house and on the special circumstan-ces tbat justify the appointment of ordinary confessors in houses that are not houses of formation or large apper-tains in clerical orders and congregations to the religious superior who has the right of appointing ordinary confes-sors according to the constitutions 0f the particular insti-tute. 4, d). "The local ordinary should choose confessors 4. 4. 4. ~. F. Gallen, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 948 ~arefully. They should be priests of sufficient maturity and possess the other necessary qualities. The ordinary may determine the number, age and term of office of the confessors and may name them or renew their appoint-ment after consultation with the community concerned." This paragraph of the decree commands the local ordi-nary to choose the ordinary and ektraordinary confessors of women religious and novices of the tw9 preceding sections with care. The suitability of priests for these two duties appertains to the judgment of the local ordinary. For example, it is no longer required that these confessors be 'forty years of age (c. 524, par. 1). The local ordinary also determines the number of such confessors, and it is no longer demanded that per se only one ordinary and extraordinary confessor be appointed for each house (cc. 520, par. 1; 521, par. 1). The local ordinary may but is not obliged to determine the duration of the term of office of these confessors, for example, two year.s, and may reappoint them immediately and indefinitely after con-sultation with the community concerned. He may also, with the same consulation, immediately appoint an ordi-nary coiafessor as extraordinary of the same commun.ity (see c. 524, par. 2). Clerical and lay institutes o[ men. The ordinary and extraordinary confessors in these institutes from the na-ture of the matter are to be priests suitable for the office. The provisions, however, of n. 4~, d) of the Decree imme-diately above apply only to institutes of women both from their wording, which is based on the canons on confessors of religious women, and from the fact that the present canon law prescribes no qualities for the ordinary and extraordinary confessors in institutes of men, whether clerical or lay. It is evidently permitted to follow such a provision as the previous consultation of the com-munity concerned. The following are the canons specifically on confessors of religious that remain in force: Can. 518, par. 1. In . every clerical Institute there shall be deputed. [ordinary] confessors with power, if it be ques~ tion of an exempt Institute, to absolve also from the cases re-served in the Institute. Par. 2. Religious Superiors, having faculties to hear confes' sions, can, in conformity with the law, hear the confessions of their subjects who spontaneously and freely approach them for that purpose, but they may not without grave reason hear them habitually. Par. 3. Superiors must take care not to induce, personally, or through others, by force, by fear, or by importunate persua-sion, or by any other means, any of their subjects to confess his sins to them. Can. 524, par. 3. The confessors, whether ordinary or extra-ordinary, of religious women are not, in any manner, to inter- fere either in the internal or external government of the com-munity. Can. 525. For all houses of religious women immediately subject to the Apostolic See or to the local Ordinary, the latter selects both ordinary an.d extraordinary ,confessor;. ~o~" those subject to a Regular Superior, this Superior presents the con-fessors to the'Ordinary who will grant them the approval to hear the confessions of'the nuns; the Ordinary also shall supply, if necessary, for the negligence of the Regular Superior, Can. 527. According to the terms of canon 880, the local Ordinary can, for a serious~ cause, remove both the ordinary and extraordinary confessor of religious women, even when the monastery is subject to Regulars and the confessor himself a Regular, nor is the Ordinary bound to make known the reason for the removal to anyone except to the Holy See, if it should require the reason from him; he must, however, if the nuns are subject to Regulars, inform the Regular Superior of the removal. Can. 875, par. 2. In an exempt lay Institute, the Superior proposes the confessor, who, however, must receive jurisdiction from the Ordinary of the place in which the religious house is situated. The preceding are taken from the authorized but unof-ficial translation, Canonical Legislation concerning Reli-gious. Canon 891, which also remains in force, is ~not contained in this translation. It reads as follows: Can. 891. The master of novices and his socius, the superior of a seminary or of a college may not hear the sacramental con-fessions of his students residing in the same house with him, unless the students spontaneously request this in particular cases for a grave and urgent reason. The canons therefore specifically on confessors of reli-gious that remain are part of canon 518, par. 1, and all the rest of this canon; all of canons 524, par. 3, 525, 527, 875, par. 2, and 891. "II The final clause of canon 637 is to be understood in the sense that a religious in temporary vows who, because of physical or mental illness even if contracted after pro-fession, is judged by the competent superior with the consent of his council, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, to be incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute, may be refused admission to renewal of vows or to final profession. The decision in such cases is to be taken with charity and equ!ty." According to canon 637 a professed of temporary vows could be excluded from the renewal of temporary vows or from making perpetual profession because of ill health ofily if it was proved with certainty that the ili health had been contracted and fraudulently concealed or dissi-mulated before the first profession of temporary vows. The same principle is true of the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows (c. 647, par. 2, n. 2). These canons are not completely logical. The time of temporary vows is Confessions 949 4. 4. 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 950 one of probation; the canons permit exclusion or dis-missal of such professed for other inculpable causes; and canon 637 otherwise requires only .just and reasona-ble causes for exclusion and canon 647, par. 2, n. 2, only serious reasons for dismissai. These canons also caused serious and, without recourse to the Holy See, even insol-uble problems. This was verified especially with regard to psychological disorders when the subject would not vol-untarily leave the institute. His retention could cause great difficulty to the institute, even intensify his own condition, and cases occurred in which superiors could not in conscience admit such subjects to further profes-sions, particularly to perpetual profession~ It is evident that the decision in these cases of physical or psychologi-cal health is to be made with proper regard and considera-tion for the subject, and, as the Decree states, with char-ity and equity (see REVIEW I~OF RELIGIOUS, 16 [1957], 218-9, 271; 25 [1966], 1104-5). In virtue of the present legislation in II, an exclusion from further temporary or perpetual profession because of physical or psychological illness, even if contracted after the first temporary profession, may be made by the competent superior with the consent of his or her council if they judge, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, that the subject is incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute. The subject should ordinarily at least be first encouraged to leave voluntarily and this as soon as such a condition is sufficiently ascertained. The new legislation is concerned only with an exclu-sion from further profession; it does not extend to the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows in the same case. This can cause a serious difficulty if the case comes to a head when a considerable part of a temporary profes-sion is unexpired, for example, in the early part of the second year of a three-year profession, and the subject will not leave voluntarily. This case, when it occurs, may be proposed to the Sacred Congregation for a solution. Practical summary o[" the Decree. The~ norm'~f fre-quency of confession is every two weeks. All religious may always confess to any confessor in the locality. Spe-cial jurisdiction is not required for religious women. The only confessors proper to religious are ordinary confessors in monasteries Of nuns and in the following houses of men and women: houses of f6rmation, large houses, and other houses in special circumstances, and extraordinary confessors in the same monasteries and houses of forma-tion. Such confessors of women do not have to be forty years of age. A professed of temporary vows may be ex-cluded from further professions because of physical or psychological illness. CHRISTOPHER KIESLING, O.P. Ministry in the Schools of the Church Religious should get out of Catholic schools. Such schools should not exist.The Church should not be in the business of education, but should devote its resources to the social problems of our day. Moreover, Church schools serve the affluent middle and upper classes more than the oppressed minorities. Religious, ther~efore, should go into other ministries in which they can serve the world, especially the underprivileged. Undoubtedly it is good that religious are venturing into nev~ ministries besides ~eaching or administration in schools of the Church. It is good for sisters and brothers because some have temperaments, inclinations, interests, and talents which equip them much better for other min-istries titan that of the church school. It is good for the Chnrch and the world because both have grave needs which can be met only by the service of highly motivated and generous people such as religious. But while some religious should be encouraged to enter into new forms of apostolate, it would be most unfortu-nate if others were not encouraged to enter Or Continue in the apostolate of the schools of the Church. This apos-tolate is extremely important and even assumes, a ni~wness today by virtue of the many changes taking place in both the Church and the w6rld. As is well known, these schools are threatened with extinction today. The demise of the schools of the Church, however, is a most grievous set-back to the emergence of mature Christian laymen in the life and apostolate of the Church and hence in the Church's mission to the world, especially to the world's social problems. Vatican II expres'~d the int.egral mission of the Church with special clarity. It was compelled to do tiffs in its efforts to describe p, ositively the place, digni_ty, and role of the laity in the Church. The Decree on the Apostolate o] the Laity, for instance, says: 4- 4- Christopher Kies-ling, O.P., is a fac-ulty member of Aquinas Institute School of Theology in Dubuque, Iowa 52001. VOLUME 30, 1971 951 + C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW I:OR REI.IGIOUS 952 Christ's redemptive work, while of itself directed toward the salvation of men, involves also the renewal of the whole tem-poral order. Hence the. mission of the Church is not on!y to bring to men tlie message and grace of Christ, but also to pene-trate and perfect the temporal sphere with the spirit of the Gospel (n, 5). Tlie missiofi of the Church, in other words, is not to rescue men from this world for salvation in another world, but to unite men to God in this world and through them permeate human activity, culture, and his-tory with fl~e spirit of Christ, thus cooperating with God in bringing all creation to its divinely intended goal: eternal life and resurrection of the body for men in a new heaven and a new earth. Every member of the Church participates in her mis-sion: For this the ChurCh was founded: that., she might bring all men to share in Christ,s saving redemption; and that through them the whole world might in actual fact be brought into relationship with him. All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, and the Church carries it on in various ways through all her members. For by its very nature the Christian vocation is also a vocation to the apostolate (ibid., n. 2). The Church is the whole body of baptized believers, sent by Christ into the world to bring men his truth and grace and to work for the divinely willed perfection of creation. In order to accomplish this mission, baptized believers nfinister to one a~aother, building up the whole Body of Christ in truth and grace for service to the world for the glory~of tlte Father. Some ministries are purely charismatic, the fruit of the Spirit's quickening believers to particular services to fellow members of Christ's Body for their joint mission to the world. Some ministries are also institutional, that is, in addition to the call of the Spirit, they have a more or less per.manent place and a more or less defined [unction in the structure of the Chnrch as ordained by God in Christ or by the Christian community in the course of history; consequently, these ministries appear in the canon law of the Church. But whether institutional or not, all these ministries are in-cludetl in the Spirit-inspired serf-help which the members of Christ's Body give to one another for the vigorous life of His Body and for its continuing mission and ministry to the world. What is required of the members of Christ's Body if they are to fulfill their apostolic vocation? They need articulate faith, a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, and zeal coupled with skill for building a better world of truth, justice, love, and freedom for every man, woman, and child. By "articulate faith" is meant a faith with some under- standing of the assertions.of faith, .including recognition of the difficulties which these assertions present to human intelligence today, their historical conditioning, and their need for continual reinterpretation and restatement if they are going to remain vali'd'expression~ of'~tuthentic faith in the midst of constantly changing human con-sciousness of reality. More importantly, articulate faith is aware of itself as.an adventure into ineffable mystery and personal communion with the living God, for which faith's assertions are a means not an end: a gateway, not the end of the road. Articulate faith also includes the willingness, ability, and c6nfidence to talk about what one believes. Because faith is a great adventure toward the fulfillment of men's deepest longing, one is willing, even eager, to discuss matters of faith; and one does not shy away from such discussion for fear of being wrong, because one is aware that faith is response to a loving Person who is more interested in drawing men to per-sonal communion with Him than He is in theological niceties. Vatican II expects the members of the Church to have such articulate faith, in accord with their capacity for it. According to the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, "the apostolate of the Church and of all her members is designed primarily to manifest Christ's message by words and deeds and to communicate his grace to the world" (ibid., n. 6). Noteworth~ in this statement is that all mem-bers of the Church are to manifest Christ's message by words, as well as deeds, and to communicate His grace. The ministry of teaching and sanctifying is not restricted to the clergy's ministry of the word and the sacraments. The decree proceeds to note that one of the ways in which the laity exercise their apostolate of "making the Gospel known and men holy" (ibid.) is through the testi-mony of a good life. But it goes on to say that "an aposto-late of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one's way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believ-ers with a view to leading them to faith, or to believers with a view to instructing and strengthening them, and motivating them toward a more fervent life" (ibid.). ¯ In other words, the laity, as well as the clergy and religious, are responsible for building up the Body of Christ in truth and love and [or implementing its teach-ing and sanctifying mission. To fulfill this responsibility, laity, as well as clergy and religious, need articulate faith. A second need which each member of Christ's Body has is for a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures: The Lord wishes to spread his kingdom . In this kingdom, creation itself will be delivered out of its slavery to corruption 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" 4" C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 954 and into the freedom of the sons of God (cf. Rom. 8:21) . The faithful, therefore, must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation~ and how to relate it to the praise of God. They must assist one another to live holier lives even in their daily occupations. In this way the world is permeated by the spirit of Christ and more effectively achieves its purpose in justice, charity, and peace (Constitution on the Church, n. 36). In the light of revelation,, baptized believers must see and appreciate creatures in their original goodness and in their relationship to the Incarnation and the eschaton; They should perceive and treasure creatures as the poet does, with awe and reverence for the uniqueness and beauty of each. They should not view them simply with the detached, calculating eye of the technician. Yet tech-nology too is a creature of God, so that Christians should understand and evaluate rightly its place and products in the scheme of things. Especially must the Christian be aware and appreciative of man and the mysteries of his being: the human body, feeling and emotion, love and sex, work and play, community and celebration, art and science, the aspirations of the human spirit~and the long-ings of the human heart--all bathed in the light of God's gracious love. Thirdly, the members of Christ's Body need zeal cou-pled with skill for building a better world: By their competence in secular fields and by personal activity, elevated fr6m" within by the grace o[ Christ, let them labor vigorously so that by human labor, technical skill, and civic culture created goods may be perfected for the benefit of every last man. Let them work to see that created goods are more fittingly distributed among men and., in their own way lead to general progress in human and Christian liberty (ibid.). Baptized believers should also "by their combined efforts remedy any institutions and conditions of the world which are customarily inducements to sin, so that all such things may be conformed to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it" (ibid.). They need to "imbue culture and human activity with moral values" (ibid.). The question now arises: By what means are the mem-bers of Christ's Body going to develop articulate faith, appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, arid zeal with skill for building a better world? Can weekly liturgies of the word (including homily) and the Eucha-rist accomplish this end? Even supposing the Scriptures are well read, the homilies well prepared and delivered, and the celebration well carried through, weekly liturgies alone hardly seem capable of generating the qualities which Christ's members ought to have to fulfill their apostolic vocation. CCD classes are not going to yield the needed qualities. They are limited in time. They p~vide little sustained interaction between mature Christians and growing ones over a wide spectrum of life. Their very organization fosters the idea of faith as a gegment of life, [,or Which one sets aside a piece of time each week. Finally, they are impeded in effectiveness by the forced and often chaotic conditions under wliich .they operate. Newman Centers too are very limited in what they can do to develop the necessary qualities in the members of Christ's Body beyond a small circle. Courses in "religiqus studies" are far from adequate means. They are by definition uncommitted, objective examination of religion and religions. They are highly intellectual, speculative, whatever existential and subjec-tive use an individual student may make of them. They are also limited in the amount of time given to them and, being a self-cOntained part of a curriculum, they convey the impression that religion also is a self-con-tained part of life, rather than~a dimension of all life. Adult education does not appear to be the solution. The competition for adults' time and attention is ex-tremely intense. Moreover, dae qualities required of a mature Christian should be well developed before he reaches the age at which l~e would enroll in adult educa-tion courses that are more than remedial. The answer is not Catholic newapapers, magazines, and books. People who love and profit from reading are relatively few in our activist culture, and are becoming even fewer in this post-linear age of happenings and tele-vision in the global village. The Church's recourse to happenings and television will not be much more fruitful than literature for achieving the necessary goal. Once people are gathered, happenifigs and television can be extremely effective instructors, but the problem is pre-cisely gathering the people. Unless people are already rather strongly motivated religiously, they are not going to prefer religious happenings and television programs to their secular coi~nterparts. As for parents as the source of the needed Christian maturity, parents are limited in what they Can do for their children. They cannot ,.lead their children to an articulate faith much beyond their own. They will find themselves limited especially when they come to helping their children develop that keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creation which Vatican iI urges for all members of Christ's .Body. Parents may be able to foster such apl~reciation for the simpler things of life, but they may be at a loss in matters of biology, the physical universe, history, poetry, drama, music. Parents' social consciousness and involvement may or may not be very highly developed, and will almost always be limited in 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME .'30, "1971 955 + 4. 4. C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 956 scope because of family responsibilities and finite human energies. Social services of the Church are not ordered, by defini-tion, to the development of mature Christians, but to relieving the pressing needs which men and women have in their personal and social lives, in order that their lives may meet basic standards of health, decency, dignity, and happiness. It is difficult to imagine any project of the Church which offers the opportunities that schools do for p.ro-viding the members of Christ's Body with the develop-ment of faith, .appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal and know-how which they need and to which they have a right. Several points are to be noted about this affirma-tion. First, it does not mean that schools alone do the whole job. There is still need for good liturgies, adult educa-tion, and all the rest. Secondly, the schools referred to are not only elementary schools. High schools and colleges are more important. Thirdly, the assertion speaks of schools for providing the needed qualities of articulate faith, appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal with skill. It does not speak simply of religion courses in schools operated by the Church, though such courses have their rightful place. It is not a matter of the Church going into the education business, so that it can, with ease, slip religion courses into the curriculum. It is, rather, a matter of providing a Christian milieu in which learning to live a full life can Occtlr. Finally, the argument is not based on the actual con-duct or achievements of the Church's schools in the past. Whatever judgment is rendered on the past, the situation has changed so much since Vatican II that the schools of the Church today constitute an entirely new set of oppor-tunities. In recent years new methods of teaching have evolved which make learning boi:h more exciting for students and more in contact with life in society. Lay teachers have become a familiar part of the faculties of the Church's schools. Priests' and religious' styles of life have changed, bringing them into closer contact with ordinary life and with the laity, particularly their students. The ghetto mentality has largely disappeared, so that Church schools are less prone to be instruments of defense and more liable to be openings to the world. The ecumenical spirit enables Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians, as well as Jews and men of other beliefs, to have some place in the education that goes on in the schools of the Church. Administrators, faculties, and students are more aware of the school's obligations to the civic community in which it exists, All these new [actors mean :that the value of the Church's schools today cannot be judged on the basis of their past conduct and achievements. The opportunities which the schools of the: Church offer do not consist only or even mainly in the possibili-ties for religion courses or religious pract~ices. They con-sist in the possibilities for the young to develop articulate faith, a keen appreciation of creatures, and zeal with com-petence for building a better world by close association in learning and doing with mature Christians who them-selves have such faith, appreciation, and zeal. There is a difference, I would maintain, between what a youth derives from a course in English literature taught with competence and enthusiasm by a Christian whose faith permeates his life, and what he derives from such a course taught by someone else. A course in English litera-ture well taught by a Christian tells a young person that Christianity embraces all of life, that it is willing and able to learn from human experience as well as from revela-tion, that it recognizes the Spirit of God working in the world and speaking to men through human events, per-sonal and social. Besides this non-verbal communication, there can be explicit comparisons between the views of life in English literature and the view of the gospel. These comparisons are opportunities to develop articu-late faith without indoctrination. But even without any explicit mention of Christian faith, this course in English literature is a Christian ministry. As Vaticap II affirmed, Christians should have a deep sense of the meaning and value of all creation. The Church, therefore, has a duty to provide for its members to learn about creation through the arts and sciences illumined by the gospel. It is a precious gift which a Christian teacher gives to a student in patiently helping him to appreciate-a poem, even though faith is not explicitly referred to. If this Christian teacher of English literature is also aware of the world's and ldcal community's problems; if he is involved outside the school in trying to build a better world, if he lets this be known to his students and even involves his students in his social concern outside the classroom, his students will be made aware of another dimension of the Christian vocation and will even gain some knowledge of what they can do concretely to build a better world. If the administrators and teachers in a school of the Church are articulate in their faith, if they treasure God's creatures, if they are socially concerned and involved, if they constitute the nucleus of a genuine, open Christian community into which they assimilate their students, that school offers unparalleled opportu.nities for developing in the members of Chris,t's Body the qualities nece~ssary for + ÷ + Schools VOLUME 30, ].971 957 + 4. + C. Kiesling, O,P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 958 their sharing the mission of the Church to mankind and the world. But, it may be objected, should not such a Christian teacher of English literature or physics or sociology or mathematics be in apublic school? Could he not perform a most valuable Christian ministry there Yes, he could; and such Christian teachers--lay, religious, cleric-- should be in public schools. They would be fulfilling the Church's apostolic mission to the world in a most excel-lent way. But could his pupils derive as much benefit from him in the public school as they could in a school of the Church---or of the Churches, as some would propose in this ecumenical age? In a public school, his pupils could only rarely, and then with the greatest circumspection, explicitly view the subject with the teacher in the light of the gospel. Never could they celebrate their Christian awareness of the subject in worship, liturgical or other, unless they met outside the school and school time. This condition raises the complex problem of finding a con-venient opportunity for such celebration; and it intro-duces a division into the public school community, which could Iead to all sorts of unpleasant complications: More-over, students in a public school would not experience their learning within a known Christian milieu and hence would not see it as part of Christian life and Chris-tian life as embracing it. But is this not the age of anonymous Christianity? Is it necessary for students to examine explicitly a subject in the light of the gospel, to celebrate it in worship, and to see it as part of Christian life and Christian life as em-bracing it? Recourse to the concept of anonymous Christianity is a way Christians have adopted to take the sting out of the widespread de-christianization and secularization that has occurred in modern times. But anonymous Christianity, though a good thing in comparison to being altogether outside the influence of God's grace,'is a humanly imper-fect thing. To be human is to have self-awareness. Man is not only conscious as animals are, but reflectively con-scious; he is aware of himself as animals are not. If man's self is actually graced by God, then his self-awareness should include that fact, otherwise he is not fully self-aware, not fulIy human. Hence it is important, not only for Christian education but for the human education of the Christian, that he see what he learns as part of Chris-tian life and Christian life as embracing it. When one reads carefi~lly the documents of Vatican II in regard to its ideal of what Christian laymen should be in the life and mission of the Church, one cannot help asking how they are ever going to achieve that ideal, and how clergy and religious are going to help them in fulfill- ment of their priestly and religious responsibilities to serve their fellow members in the building up of Christ's Body. What i~ called for is not comprehended under the labels of religious instruction or religious practices. Nor is it adequately described as handing on, preserving, or nourishing Christian faith, What is required is education in the fullest sense of the word, education of the whole man for the whole of life, bnt education with a'Christian quality to it. Of all the Church's projects, its schools offer the most opportunities for such education. With such education, Catholic laymen would exercise their role in the mission of the Church, not by contributing money to a Human Development Fund, of which the hierarchy is the banker, but by becoming involved in human development in the neighborhood, city, state, nation, and the world. This latter is the more authentic fulfillment of the Christian apostolate by which the members of Christ's Body partici-pate in its mission to the world. The schools of the Church will very likely be fewer in number in the future. But they remain unique opportun-ities for building up the Body of Christ for its mission. Abandonment of the struggle to maintain them and, still more important, to exploit their new possibilities under the conditions, which have arisen since Vatican II will grievously set back the emergence of the layman and the mission of the Church to the world. It will promote the tendency of the Church to be identified with the clergy and religious rather than the whole People of God, and to become a club for fellowship in subjective re_ligious experience rather than the leaven in the dough ~of his-tory. Religious' involvement in the schools of the Church remains both~an important and challenging ministry. Schools VOLUME $0, '].97~ 959 SISTER MARY JEANNE SALOIS, R.S.M. Opinions of the Laity on Changes in Religious Life Sister Jeanne is director of research services at the Sis-ters of Mercy Gen-eralate at 10000 Kentsdale Drive, Box 34446; Be-thesda, Maryland 20034. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 960 Literature concerning recent developments in the re-ligious life provide little information on the effects of these developments on the laity. Since the prima.ry pur-pose of adaptation and renewal as stated in the docu-ments of Vatican II is to become more effective in promoting the kingdom of God on earth---"That this kind of life and its contemporary role may achieve greater good for the Church, this sacred Synod issues the following decrees" 1--it should be helpful to know how a section of this kingdom feels about the adaptation they are observing. Such knowledge should contribute sub-stantially to an honest evaluation of the changes being made. This article summarizes the thinking of lay people on adaptation in religious life in seven parishes distributed geographically from the New England coast to mid-western United States. A random sampling of 60 families from each of the parishes listed in Table 1 participated in this study. Treatment o[ the Data: The investigator sent an in-strument entitled "Opinionnaire to Obtain the Lay-man's Assessment of Religious Women in the Church Today" to 420 randomly selected persons. Of these, 220 responded, constituting 53.4 percent returns. Distribu-tion of respondents is shown in Table 2. Eighty-three men and 137 women responded to this opinionnaire. Of these only One was black, the others being white. Age of respondents varied as indicated be-low: 1Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents o[ Vatican II, "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life," n. 1. Age of Re~#ondent Number in Category Percent 20-29 16 7 30-39 59 27 40-49 77 35 50-59 42 19 60-69 19 9 70- 7 3 Approximately half of the respondeqts attended a Catholic grade and high school and most of them at-tended college. Most of the respondents indicated they were professional or sell-employed with very few saying they were semi or unskilled workers. TABLE :1 Parishes Participating in Study to Obtain Opinions of Laity on Changes being' Made in Religious Congregations Parish* City and State Our Lady of the Assumption St. Joseph Immaculate Heart of Mary Sacred Heart Immaculate Conception St. James Gate of Heaven Atlanta, Georgia Denver, Colorado Detroit, Michigan Hattiesburg, Mississippi Memphis, Tennessee New Bedford, Massachusetts Dallas, Pennsylvania * Parishes were selected at random from the total list of parishes being served I~y a religious congregation of women. TABLE 2 Distribution of Laymen Who Responded to Opinionnaire New Denver, Bedford, Hatties- Dallas, Colorado burg, Atlanta, Detroit, Memphig, Penn~yl, chusettsMassa" Mississippi Georgia Michigan Tennessee vama No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % ~o. % No.! % 17 58.3 26 43.3 41 68.3 28 46.6 37 62.7 36 Findings from Opinionnaire: Items and comments of respondents will be summarized under the three headings on the instrumefit: (1) The individual's personal contacts with sisters, (2) the religious life, and (3) sisters' aposto-lates. Personal Contacts with Religious Sisters Almost three-fourths (72%) of the respondents at-tributed most of the credit for helping them become religious persons to their parents. Twenty-six percent credited the sisters for having provided them with in-spiration, and 9 per cent mentioned the clergy. When asked how much influence for good religious sisters had exerted on them, participants responded as 4. 4- 4. Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 961 Sister 1eanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 962 follows: A mount of Influence Number Percent Very great influence 58 '26 I~reat influenc'e 54 24 Some influence 63 29 A little influence 29 13 No influence 13 6 Thus, 50 percent of respondents indicated that re-ligious sisters had influenced them greatly for good and 29 percent said sisters had influenced them some. Most of the respondents consider sisters friendly and easy to meet (192 or 88%). Nineteen respondents (13%) consider the sisters unaware of people around them, and four persons said they were unfriendly. When asked if they would go to a sister for help if they had some personal religious problem, 106 (48%) said they would go rarely, 71 (32%) said they would never go, and 38 (17%) said they would usually go to a sister for help. Most respondents feel that sisters show respect for them as persons (all do--61%; some do--36%). Ninety percent of respondents indicated that the sisters they have known spend most of their time in the educa-tion of children. Ninety percent are pleased with this effort, 6 percent are indifferent, and 3 percent are un-happy. Most respondents believe that sisters manifest an in-terest in the welfare of people in general (78%), and 18 percent don't know. Two percent said that sisters do not manifest an interest in the welfare of others. When asked to express their thinking on the age distribution of the sisters serving them, 81 respondents (37%) said age is not important, 74 (34%) s.aid the age distribution was about right, 25 (11%) said they did not have enough younger sisters, and 5 (2%) said they did not have enough older sisters. The Religious Life Two-thirds of the respondents believe there is no difference between the religious life and mariage in so far as thei~ comparable merits are concerned. Seventeen percent believe the religious vocation more pleasing to God, and 25 respondents (11%) said they didn't know. One hundred and twenty-five respondents (57%) said they would respond favorably if they had a daughter who wanted to become a religious, 77 (35%) would be neutral, and 15 (7%)would respond unfavorably. Most of the respondents (93%) said the sisters they have known seem to be happy. Respondents were widely distributed in their thinking on the economic level of religious living. One hundred and nine (50%) of the respondents believe that the sisters are living on the same or better economic level than they are. Sixty-nine (31%) believe they are living more comfortably than~ the sisters, and 41 ~(19%) said they don't know. When asked whether the sisters seem more progressive since Vatican 11, 161 (73%) said they were either out-standing or quite progressive. About 10 percent found them too progressive and approximately the same per-centage considered them not progressive at all. Almost three-fourths (70%) of the respondents pre-ferred to see religious women living in a convent espe-cially designed for them. Fourteen percent prefer to see ~them in a middle-class residence near their employment. Only two persons said they prefer to see sisters in a home in a poor neighborhood, and three persons said in an apartment. Thirty-eight respondents (17%) said they didn't care. Fewer than half (44%) of the persons responding in-dicated that they like to see religious dressed in a habit which includes a veil. About one-third (32%) like to see religious in conservative attire which does not include a veil, and 7 percent like to see them in contemporary clothing with accessories identical to lay women. Four-teen percent don't care what religious wear. Two-thirds of the respondents like to see sisters par-ticipating in all parish activities. Twenty-four percent-wish religious to participate in all parish activities ex-cept those which are purely social, such ,as dances. Seventeen respondent,s (8%) prefer that sisters attend only those activities related to the school, such as home-school meetings. Apostolic Services When asked how they would react if the sisters would decide to withdraw entirely from the school in order to do other works in the parish, 72 percent said they would respond unfavorably. Eighteen percent said they would be neutral, and 9 percent said they would respond fa-vorably to such a decision. Respondents .were asked if they thought the sisters should be 'more active in working with the poor. Re-sponses were evenly distributed with 68 (31%)in the affirmative, 70 (32%) in the negative, and 72 (33%)with no opinion on thismatter. Responses to items which attempted to find out which apostolaies seemed most necessary to the laity left no room for doubt. They strongly endorse the Catholic school concept and wish sisters would continue in this endeavor. In response to an item concerning the services they 4- 4- 4" 4" 4. Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 964 would prefer sisters provided for them if they were .in need of such services, 68 percent said they wished them to teach children. Other services given some priority by respondents were to administer to the sick in institutions (12%), administer to the sick in homes (5%), and teach adults (4%). Only one percent wish sisters to teach poor children only. Respondents were asked which apostolic works, if any, sisters should discontinue in which they are presently engaged. Each respondent could list three works. Results follow. Campus Ministry on Secular Campus 32 Diocesan services 92 Social work 19 College 16 High School I 1 Elementary school 10 Hospital 9 Religious Education 5 Respondents were asked to list in order of priority the works which they believed sisters should be engaged in at the present time and in the future. The following priorities were established by.averaging the ranks of the 220 respondents. 1. Teaching religion in Catholic school 2. Administrator in Catholic school 3. Teaching secular subjects in Catholic school 4. Teaching in Religious Education Program 5. Administrator of Religious Education Program in parish 6. Serving in Parish Ministry working with families 7. Staff position in health institution 8. Administrator in health institution 9. Social worker in inner city 10. Rehabilitation of drug addicts 11. Serving in Campus Minstry on secular campus 12. Administrator or staff position in public institution Comments of Laity on Adaptation and Rerlewal of Sisters In their comments on the adaptation they are observ-ing in religious communities, participants expressed di-verse opinions, presenting a kaleidoscopic view of re-ligious congregations. Many respondents praised the sisters for some of the changes they are making and for their continued dedication. Some, accustomed as they are to uniformity within religious communities, are using similarity of dress and dutifulness to t~aditional occupations as the criteria for evaluating renewal in religious life. Some are using normal standards of ac-ceptable behavior and are surprised and scandalized at the extremes to which some sisters are going in their new freedom. To the laity, these sisters seem immature and insincere, wanting the best of two worlds. Thus, much of the renewal effort is suspect to some of the laity, both that being made by large groups of sisters attempting to renew sincerely in keeping with the changing needs of the world and by the small group of extremist whose actions the layman is questioning. The comments below are typical of those made by many respondents. I don't think the'sisters are'adapting to the needs of the Church. Some sisters are radical; some are conservative: Some are in habits; some are not. Some are worldly; some are not. They seem to be divided among themselves. Some seem to act as immature young women wanting the best of both worlds. They ~vant the respect due to religious and the fun and entertainment of single women. They are mainly interested in satisfying their own desires. Opinions concerning the habit differed with many respondents reluctantly accepting the demise of" the traditional habit in favor of some lesser form of identifica-tion. Many emphasized the, importance of a religious identity and regret the loss of respect which the habit has always commanded. On careful analysis, responses seem to set forth the .primacy of "habit" over "person" in the thinking of some lay persons. I feel the sisters should have uniform attire~ even if it is a simple colored dresg with a large cross. They are married to God and should be proud of their vocation. They would also command more respect and be more useful, as people would be aware of their vocations and ask for help seeing the gar-ment, not the per.son. It was surprising to see how the laity identify religious with the traditioffal professions to the extent of con-sidering new occupations completely incompatible with the vocation itself. Sisters should either be in the religio~as vocation, or if they want to do soc.ial work they should not do it under the guise of a religious. Religious have pushed into social care areas where .they are not qualified. They have given scandal, betrayed their com-munity life and their origina! vocation. Sisters should work where they can influence and strengthen the faith and morals of young Catholics. Let others care for their social and physical needs. The laity continues to look for the dedicated, hard-working sister wh6 spends her time going from her work to her prayers in the convent where her physical, and social needs are met. They are surprised when they see sisters becoming more like other women in their use of leisure and in the external manifestation of their fem-ininity. They feel that the purpose o[ religious women was + + + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 965 ÷ ÷ Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 966 and is to stay in the classroom and teach their children, and that to betray this purpose is to betray their calling as religious. Sisters should do what they have done for many years--see to the education of our future citizens. Most of God's work is just that--hard work--and this is probably the main thing I have always admired about the nuns I have known. They were committed and worked hard with little thanks or praise, and I'm sure they were often discour-aged and unsure of their accomplishments. Some of the laity are interpreting the trend to leave the traditional apostolates as a sign of individualism which prompts one to wish to "do her own thing." I find it disturbing that some sisters, when given the op-portunity to work in the world today, become concerned with their own needs or interests under the guise of making money for their order. Since Vatican II, I feel that many nuns are confused and at odds with their own previous commitment. Teaching sisters now seem to feel social work is their bag, nursing nuns feel that teaching would be more appropriate, etc. Confusion stems, I believe, from a lack of the whole spirit we used to know as dedication to God's work. It is being replaced today in all of society by a personal need to do your own thing. A change very pleasing to the laity where it has taken place is the updating observed in methods of teaching and curriculum. They praise the sisters who are more understanding of child nature than they used to be and who are ready to meet the explosion of knowledge which today's children are experiencing. They complain if these changes are not taking place. Unfortunately, older nuns are not adjusting methods, cur-riculum, and themselves personally to many facts, namely,. that today's children know much more in space and science study than is in textbooks and they often know more than the the teacher herself. The teacher's attitude often becomes bel-ligerent rather than pleased that children are this way. Some personal evaluation seems necessary. The older nuns seem to adapt to the needs of the Church. Younger nuns could learn from them. It is no longer a voca-tion to them, it is ajob. Some middle class lay people feel that religious are now prejudiced against them. They argue .that their needs for the services of religious are as great as those of any other segment of society. We who are just ordinary people--working, living, and .dying--also need the help and example of the religious sister in today's world. We feel that what's the use when our lives and struggles are treated with disdain. We don't want to be applauded, but we feel that by living an honest and decent life and ever-striving to do the works of Christ, that we ought to be considered at least as human as the girls who have il-legitimate babies who you would think had won the grand prize for all the attention they are given. In short, love us too, even though we have never broken a law. I believe ~many sisters aye giving up "their 6wn" to work in the inner cities and for social causes. A poor soul is not .Primarily found in a poor person--the person may be rich, middle 'class or ~poor. We should try to help all equally so all can be saved. Another change taking ~place among religious women which is greatly appreciated by the laity is the attitude of considering all persons as equals. They are happy that sisters have come down from their pedestal and no longer seem to expect deference from the laity. The sisters, I believe, are progressing to include all persons with whom they come in contact as equals. I used to. feel the sisters considered themselves.very special and should be looked up to by all. I think they are more aware of people's needs than previ-ously. They are more sensitive and less untouchable. Some have lost self-respect by playing down to the laity too much. Much of the advice given to religious by respondents argued for the maintenance, of balance in the matter of adaptation and warned against extremes. Don't go overboard! Keep attire and sense of misSio~a in line with Catholic beliefs. If the sisters participate in secular affairs, I feel they should remember they are sisters and uphold the traditions and reputation Catholic sisters have always had. General impressions reported by respondents include the following: I get the feeling they are not of the Church but of the world. Instead of giving up things of the world they are acquiring things of the world. Nuns, in general, appear ito be departing from a way of life which identified them as religious, and as a result of ,this proc-ess, society appears tO have less respect for religious orders. I think sisters are doing a fine job. This is a time for all people to join t.ogether and to remember that God is the father of all, not just the white man, Many so-called Christians have forgotten this. General Statements on Opinions of Laity From the many ideas expressed by the laity responding to this opinionnaire, a few generalizations can be stated: There is little evidence at this time that the changing needs of society, for example, the rapid increase of Catholic students on the secular university campus, have penetrated the thinking of: lay people to any great extent. Criteria used by most of the laity for judging sisters remain the. same today as before Vatican II in spite of the shift toward greater personal freedom and more leisure in society as a whole~ However, a few of .the respondents 4- 4- + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30~ 1971 967 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 968 do seem to comprehend rather accurately the reasons for change in religious congregations. A few religious who, in the eyes of the laity, have seemingly lost sight of the meaning of religious vocation are impeding acceptance of the necessary changes large numbers Of religious women are making. There are certain paradoxes in the thinking of the laity concerning religious sisters at present. The laity are happy that sisters consider them as equals, no longer expecting deference; yet they lament the elimination of' external signs, such as the habit, which commands special respect. The laity give major credit to their parents for being the grea.test influence for holiness in their lives; yet they insist that the sisters are essential to growth of holiness in their children. The laity are happy that sisters have stepped down from their pedestal to walk among them; yet they wish to continue admiring them at a distance when they need help in the solution of their personal religious problems. In summary, respect for religious among the laity in this sample has decreased as a result of the changes made by religious congregations since Vatican II. This loss of respect can be attributed to a failure on the part of laymen to understand the reasons basic to change and their failure to recognize new needs in society for the services of religious women. It is also the result of unwise individual choices which some religious are making in their personal lives. The laity need the assistance of sisters if they are to understand the motives for their new behaviors. Perhaps the greatest need of the laity, as well as of religious, is familiarity with social doctrines of the Church and the emphasis given to these doctrines in the documents of Vatican II. Reflections of the Writer Religious congregations are attempting to implement the new emphases of Vatican II. The laity, familiar with the old structure, fail to understand the inevitable re-suits "of implementing such documents as "Declaration on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II, and Mater et Magistra, the encyclical letter of Pope John XXIII. An example of this implementation is the attention religious congregations are now giving to the dignity of the human person. In Mater et Magistra (215) we read, Whatever the progress in technology and economic life, there can be neither justice nor peace in .the world, so long as men fail to realize how great is their dignity; for they have been created by God and are His children. According to the social teachings of the Church, society is at~the, service of the human person to respect his dignity and allow him to attain his end and his full human development: "Society is made for man and not man for society.''2 Plus XII s~aid: "Man is a personal being, endowed.with intelligent& and free will;" ~a~ being who has the final choice of what he will or will not do," s Enhnciating this principle of the dignity of the human person, the ""Document on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II states: God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth. Hence they are bound ih consdence but they standunder n0: Com-pulsion. God has rbgard for :the dignity of the human person who.m He himseff created; man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom. . In contemplating these teachings concerning the basic freedoms o[ man and applying them to herself, a religious may conclude that she does not relinguish her innate freedom to govern herself when she enters a religious congregation. She believes that she is responsible to God alone for her actions and that she is responsible for keeping these actions in line with the life she has com-mitted herself to live. If this reasoning is correct, obe-dience in religious life needs to find its meaning apart from the responsibility of one person to govern the life of another. If religious growth takes place through responsible choices made freely, each person must be free to choose in matters pertaining to her personal life. In their efforts to implement tile new emphasis on the dignity of the person and_ her freedom of choice, religious congregations are eliminating rules which formerly gov-erned the personal life o[ each member. Remove pro-hibitive rules designed to channel actions according to a certain pattern which all members are exp6cted to observe and they are going to act as do all other members of the human race uniquely and differently. Some per-sons are going to make unwise choices as is true of persons in other walks of life. Freed from rules which prevent extremes, religious women are going to demon-strate their good taste or lack of it in their external appearance, their behavior, their use of leisure, and in their professional activities. But the end of this process is good the coming to being of a religious who is interiorly motivated to govern herself in a manner suited to her commitment as a woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and the service of His kingdom on earth. The new religious will come to r~alize as never before th~it she has been made = Plus XI,'Divini Redemptoris. a Pius xIi, "Allocution to the Sixth International Congress on Criminal Law," October 15, 1954, + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 969 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 970 in God's likeness to imitate His perfection, His goodness, and His love and mercy for men. She will realize that sh~ must 'lift herself up to God freely if she wishes to l~articipate with Christ in life eternal, in the divine life of God and of the Blessed Trinity. This is the destiny of all men, the religious included, and all must freely choose to follow this path, for with Christ there is no coercion, no forcing, no want of freedom. Surely every adult' outside of a religious community reaches the period in her life when she is no longer told what to wear and where to go. The fully committed re-ligious woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and to the service of his kingdom on earth should "be equally capable of" exercising her God-given freedom and of assuming the responsibility for her actions and her destiny. Lay people need to understand that they will be observing some evidence of poor taste as religious use the freedom they now have. Poor judgment is not a monopoly of the laity; it can also be expected of religious. Unless the formation period in the life of young re-ligious provides an understanding of how the gospel message is translated into daily living as a religious, sisters cannot be expected to make decisions in keeping with their form of life. In their uncertainty regarding the preparation which best prepares individual religious to exercise greater freedom, some congregations are ab-dicating their responsibility fbr the formation of young religious. To supose that new members who have not developed an understanding of the religious life will make personal decisions in keeping with it is a rash assumption. If religious congregations are to make wise choices. during this period of renewal and adaptation, they must take time to study the past and realize Gully the import of char~ge on the present and future. Unless changes are in line with the purposes for which the congregation was formed in the first place, the congregation will give way to a new entity or disintegrate completely. In-dividual members of apostolic religious congregations in the past realized their service of Christ in His Church through service of the congregation whose corporate end was this divine service. Today, many religious see them-selves as groups of dedicated individual members with a diversity of tasks. If religious retain the apostolic dimension of their original commitment, the transfer from corporate to individual commitment may be a change of means rather than ends. However, if the apostolic dimension of one's service is lost, the primary purpose of apostolic religious congregations in the Church no longer exists. When no unifying purpose is present, organizational structure becomes meaningless. It has been the purpose of this study to provide some insight on the reaction of the laity to observed change in religious congregations in the year 1971, Hopefully, the opinions expressed in this report will be.helpful to religious congregations as they chart their c0urse'for the future. + 4- 4- Laity Opinion VOLUME ~0, 1971 97! SISTER MARY JOHN MANANZAN, O.S.B. Must I Love You for God's Sake? ÷ ÷ .I. Sister John is a graduate student of the Gregorian Uni-versity and resides at Via dei Bevilac-qua, 60; Rome, Italy (00165). REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 972 Read the title without a pause and with the correct intonation lest you miss the point of this article, it is not an exasperated exclamation like "Must I put up with you, for heaven's sake?" The article concerns itself rather with the question whether we should love others "for the sake of God." This phrase has been so misinterpreted in the past and still also in the present that the word "char-ity" has fallen into disrepute or at least it has acqui~?ed a cold, antiseptic atmosphere. People say "I don't want your charity"--"I will not be an object of charity." In the stu-dent house where I lived while I was studying in Ger-many, the girls were very wary of "nuns" doing things for charity. Once an Idonesian girl living in another house got sick. A German friend of mine announced her inten-tion of driving over. I spontanously exclaimed: "I'11 go with you." She looked at me and cautiously asked: "Are you doing it for charity?" The reason for such wariness is that doing things for charity or for God's sake is taken to mean something like: "Actually you are a nasty fellow and for yourself I wouldn't lift a finger. But I am doing this because I see Christ in you." I don't tbink for a moment that Christ is at all pleased with such pious prattle. And the person concerned rightly feels himself an "object" of charity--a means to some altruistic, humanitarian or still worse to a spiritual ideal. C. S. Lewis in his delightful book Four Loves gives a punchy example of an "unselfish . self-sac-rificing" mother who "just lived for her family." In a remarkable self-deception she literally worked herself to the bone for them but actually what she managed to do was to suffocate each member of her family, because she did not actually see them as persons and did not really consider their real needs; She looked through them to work for her image of being an ideal mother. She used them as means to fulfill her need to be needed. In a similar manner "loving others for God's sake" has some-how taken on the meaning of disregarding the individual person. On this point one can learn a great deal from Kant who has been accused of having never written a word on love. But he actually offers a very solid foundation for what we call "love of neighbor" in his famous (infa-mous?) categorical imperative. This principle has also suffered a very one-sided treatment. The frequently cited formulation is the one that approximates the Golden Rule wearing a grim duty-conscious facial expression. A less quoted formulation however reads: "Act in such a way as to treat humanity whether in yourself or in others never only as a means but always also as an end/' Kant's moral theory is based on the absolute valuation of the person. A person is for him an autonomous subject. He alone possesses the dignity to be happy (Wtirdigkeit, glficklich zu sein). For this reason, a person may never be regarded only as a means but should be willed as a good-in- himself. This absolute valuation of a person manifests itself first and foremost in doing one's duty towards him. Again on this point Kant is frequently misinterpreted. No less than the great German poet Schiller is guilty of this shallow interpretation of Kant when he writes: Gladly I serve my friends but alas I do it with pleasure Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person. This is answered by a similarly poor interpretation of Kant and a worse poetry: Sure your only recourse is to despise them entirely And then with aversion do what your duty enjoins you. Kant did not mean at all that interest and affection would detract from the moral worth of an action. His term "duty" is a limiting term. It simply isolates the factor which accounts in the last analysis for the moral worth of an action. But once this is ascertained, one can embellish one's action with all the affection one is capa-ble of. I think it is important that Kant makes this em-phasis. There are really people who lavish their affection here and there and everywhere but neglect their elemen-tary duty towards these same persons. It is this forgetfhl-ness of Kant which is responsible for the benevolent tyr-anny in many lands suffering from social injustice, where the rich landlords or employers give to their exploited laborers "in charity" what they owe them in justice. The elementary duty of "love of neighbor" is thus to take the person as an'end in himself and never a means for anyone or anything. Truly? Not even for God? No, not even. God needs no means. He is His own End. He ÷ ÷ Love VOLUME 30, 1971 973 doesn't rely on any means to reach it. What then does loving others "for God's sake" mean? If it means anything at all, it means: one must take the other in his totality. Man is essentially a relation. A per-son is most a person in his relation to God. One can give him absolute value because he has already been radically affirmed by an absolute Person, He is worthy to be loved because he has already been radically loved. One can therefore love him for his own sake if one regards him in the totality of his being rooted in God. But the totality of man also means his being an individual distinct person. Therefore "love of neighbor" means taking this concrete person beside me for what he is and loving him with all his quirks. I think it is one of the characters of Peanuts who said: "I love humanity; It is people that I cannot stand." To love another is to see him. It is to love him "interestedly." "Disinterested love" is no love. It is too pretentious. It is being in love with one's perfectly selfless way of loving. This is the reason why I think foreign aid to developing countries miserably fails in arousing the gratitude of the people it helps. It is literally disinter-ested. There is no interest in the people as persons. No wonder they feel insulted and are resentful. They do not feel loved--they feel that they are objects of love. The same is true in individual relationships. One wants to be loved,' becau'se one is lovable. A boy who tells a girl "I love you, because of your pug nose" is not necessarily being superficial. Maybe he grasps the point of love better than if he were to enumerate the noblest .motives in the world. I think the art of loving is to find something very concrete .in someone (be it a pug nose, a crooked smile, a naughty left eyebrow--whatever it is. There is one in every person aching to be discovered!), to discover this recapitulation of his personality and in this burning focal point of his being, to love him intensely. 4- + Sister John REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 974 TENNANT C. WRIGHT, s.J. A Note on Poverty This is simply a report on a mode of poverty lived at one Jesuit house in Mexico City. The report is drawn from a conversation with several members of the commu-nity there, including the Father Minister who was influ-ential in setting up the program and helps with its ad-ministration. The program seems particularly enlightening at this moment when there is such discussion of poverty and how it fits with a religious' psychological need to feel economically productive and responsible. The Mexican community is made up of Jesuits who receive a salary at one of the Universities (non-Jesuit) in Mexico City. The salary i.s paid by the University directly to the individual Jesuit~ It is turned over by the Jesuit to the community. The community treasury, derived from the salaries, is then divided into three parts: First, there is a common fund for the community, out of which comes such general expenseg as house upkeep, and the room and board of the Jesuits living there. Second, there is a monthly personal amount returned to each Jesuit, an equal amount to each, no matter what his salary from the University. Out of the monthly "allowance" the Jesuit is expected to take care of his or-dinary personal items, such as clothes, recreation, the or-dinary personal necessities of his study and work, his ordinary travel. Third, there is a fund retained by the community for emergencies. As I understand it, the emergencies are gen-erally of two types, each handled differently. There is that personal emergency which arises from the unexpected, for example, an accident, a particularly large medical bill. Such personal emergency expenses are met by the community in a direct payment (not a loan) out of this emergency fund. But this third fund also covers those personal but more expensive items needed by some but not all. For instance, if one of the Jesuits in the course of his work needs some particularly expensive equipment or books or a car, then the community lends to this Jesuit the money to buy the T. C. Wright is a faculty member of the University of Santa Clara; Santa Clara, California 95053. VOLUME .30, 1971 975 special item. The loan is made without interest, but it is gradually paid back to the community out of the individo ual's monthly allowance. This question of loans to the individual for special expenses is crucial. The Mexican community is clear that this is not a case of dominion, of true ownership. Rather it is a more sophisticated way of responsible use. The special item is only purchased after consultation with the superior. The ultimate decision remains with the supe-rior. Although the item is used with the responsible dis-cretion of the individual, when and if his need for it is no longer present it is sold and the money returned to the community fund. Although this three-fold scheme of community use of [unds seems simple and clear in presentation, Father Minister and other members of the Mexican Jesuit com-munity emphasized that the implementation of this mode of poverty has more difficulties and is more complex than its simple outline indicates. 4- 4- 4- T. C. Wright REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 976 W. L. L~CROIX,.S.J. The New Property" and the of PovertY In the past ten years there has taken place a consider-able change in the attitudes of many vowed to the reli-gious life with respect to their "having" material goods. At times, this change in attitude has been reflected by attempts to patch the tearsin earlier lived interpretations of the vow of poverty by talk of a "vow of common life," or something of the sort. By these patchwork efforts, peo-ple have tried to bring within a reflective understanding of the vow such new lived interpretations of poverty that permit individuals to have exclusive control over many more material items (from transistor radios to individual vacations) than were ever previously found acceptable. In this brief essay, I would like to suggest that these efforts are of secondary consequence. I submit that there is a much more pressing problem for the practice of vowed poverty in contemporary America. This more pressing problem emerges from the recent, qualitative leap taken in the lived interpreta)ion of property. If the vow of poverty at all concerns some deliberate taking up of a life style that is designated by its extraordi-nary attitude toward property (this does seem to be the "matter" of the vow), then it is of major importance to talk about that which a political economist might call today the "new property." This concept is both simple and subtle, so let me briefly try to present what lines of thought are involved, and then appraige the implications of "new property" for what I will call the positive "thrust" of the vow of poverty. The "'New Property" Property may be described as a socially acknowledged relation that a person has to what is considered, in the broadest sense, an item of value. Now what is considered of value (except for subsistence in food, clothing, shelter) is to a great extent determined by the concrete attitudes W. L. LaCroix, S.J., is a faculty member of Rock-burst College; 5225 Troost Avenue; Kansas City, Mis-souri 64110. VOLUME 3~0, 1971 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 978 within a cultural milieu. And what are the manifold ways in which, ordinarily understood, one may acquire rela-tion to items of value are familiar to us all. And so we have our ordinary image of what we talk about when we use the term "property." But this imagining is so easy only because so few have done serious reflection on some significant socio-economic developments of the last fifty years. Many people today. continue to be undisturbedly at ease with talk about property exclusively under the rubric of the individual's possession, use, and control of "permanent" and fixed (real property) or of manipulable or consumable items of value (personal property). In fact, however, with the growth of a corporate society in America, some are able to argue convincingly that this familiar rubric of prop-erty has become at least partially obsolete, and that the part where it is obsolete is the more important part. One major indication of the need for a new rubric is that, in, our society heavily toned by business relation-ships, political economists and businessmen now are will-ing to say that, for most of the large business corporations, there are capital investors, there are top and middle man-agers, there are employees, customers, unions, the govern-ment, and the society at large that are related to the corporate organization, but there are no owners. That is, there are none except the impersonal (albeit legal) entity of the corporation itself. Certainly one reason here is that the business corporation is no longer an item compassa-ble by any individual who might attempt personally to organize and control it, that is, to "possess" it, to have it as private property. This growth to bigr~ess is one that has moved not only vertically in the size of an individual corporation, but hlso horizontally to interlace organizations of diverse kinds into one corporate society. Qualitative alterations have taken place in how and by whom social relation-ships are determined within the individual private orga-nization, in the relations between the individual private organizat~ions, and between these organizations, govern-mental bodies, and the social community itself. Corpora-tional businesses today act less with attention to the com-petitive market and more with attention to a mutual self-interest of the leading businesses, or even at times with a mixture of this and "public interest." Government does not hesitate to curtail initiative from a "private" firm for the sake of "public interest," or, conversely, to subsi-dize private sector business for the "public interest," or to contract out to business and to educational institutions some "public interest" undertaking. Educational institu-tions concern themselves with good relations with the business community and government for financial assist- ance; and with accreditation agencies for professional prestige. In a society composed of such interlaced organ~izations, the sharp distinctions between the public and the private sectors of activities have faded (I will suggest a test for this further on), and all members of society have been drawn into new and manifold relations to all the organi-zations. This means that those items of value, or wealth, which the individual can have as "private property" have become secondary in social significance. From Locke to World War I in Anglo-American thought these items have been the key to civic freedom, self-identity, and individual capacity to initiate effects in society. Now the socio-economic fi'eedom, identity, and initiative--in one word, the social power---of the private property holder are minimal. As a society we have entered an era where the initiative comes from organizations which act for or-ganizational or for "public" interest. And the "public" interest today means .less and less each individual's inter-ests and more and more only organized interests~ As part of a growing consensus on the relations of persons to new items of value today, A. A. Berle, Jr., has spoken of the divorce from older property of the socio-ec-onomic power to make determinations in society. He terms this the distinction between "individual possessory holdings" and "power systems." What is at stake here :is not merely the separation of ownership from socio-eco-nomic control, but the "increasing elimination of pro-prietary ownership itself and its replacement by, substan-tially, a power system." Charles A. Reich has spoken of the new form of wealth which one obtains in a corporational social structure through the relationships one has to various organiza-tions. These relationships gain for one a place in the interlaced socio-economic system of organizations. The new marriage of wealth and power is a union within the blood line of the power structure itself, for the wealth is itself new power. One has this new wealth of socio-eco-nomic place, or power status, in so far as one has actively functional relations to the power systems. As active within the power systems, one individually has the socio-economic power without the need of property in the tra-ditional sense of individual possessory holdings, One only needs to obtain a place, a status in the power systems. To clarify how this change brings in new dimensions in the question of poverty, let me develop briefly how one acquires this power, what the power is, why it is special today, and whether it is legitimate. ~ (How acquired) One enters a place of power not by ownership, but by the possession of whatever credentials the people presently with an active function in an organi- 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 979 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 980 zation designate as required. They in turn designate what matters are required in response to the organization's demand in view of~ its present strength and future fate in the interlaced system. These admission credentials are supposed to, and often do, signify the possession of some expertise, some "know how" in terms of the functions and goals of the organization. One's relations to active power status in an organiza-tion is always conditional. It is forever a trial marriage and lasts only as long as the person's power decisions make things function well for the organizational system. In turn, one is subject to those interchanges of power which constitute the organization to which he belongs directly, and to those interchanges of power by which his organization is interlaced within the American corporate system. One is tied to his organization's fate, which itself is precarious, by one's personal credentials, which are constantly under test. For brevity~s sake, let us call one's conditional relations to this new wealth of power status the "new property" (even though I have modified Reich's use of the phrase). Some kind of status in a community or in a private orga-nization, of course, is nothing new. But the status now at point is no longer simply a social by-product of possessory holdings, ancestry; or profession. The new status is a place of socio-economic power within active organiza-tional power. (What is power) As Berle has noted, we are still philo-sophically immature in reflections on power. For our pur-poses here, let us be satisfied with a simple concept: power allows the wielder to initiate decisions on the transmission, use, and determinations of socio-economic assets for the lives of persons. One who holds power has a "scope of significant choice" (Carl Kaysen) open to his decisions within a corporational social structure that widely and significantly affect the determinations of how one himself and others experience and express human values. Today we have large social and economic organi-zations which depend upon and which generate power to their members. These organizations are managed by non-owners whose decisions and instructions, by the mecha-nism of the organization, are made causative at distant points of application, both inside and outside the indi-vidual organization. Normally one distinguishes "power to do things" and "power over persons," but this distinction often is only in the relative immediacy of the results of power's exercise. And the exercise of "power over" brings a reduction for those affected in the range of personal alternatives in socio-economic activities, and an increase in dependence on the power's exercise. (Why special) As society's organizations become more complex, they become more interlaced and thereby more counterbalanced in their scope of initiative action. This primordial counterbalance, however, is less in terms o~ conflict and more in terms of agreement. As a result, as organizations grow to need each other, they become less counterbalanced in the consequent effects o~ their actions in the public arena. This is an important point. It any-one subject to a function of organizational power is still ultimately free to disassociate himself from .the power, with some but with no drastic repercussions in his total li~e style, then the "power over" that person may be said to be private. Sucb a freedom of the one subjected to private "power over" presupposes other, significantly dis-tinct sources of "power to do" things which produce real options for the one subject to the power system at hand. But if the disassociation, if possible at all, from one power would at best only bring about the substitution o[ tbe one by another qualitatively the same source of 'power over," then the "power over" may be said to be public. From this test of the distinction of the public and tbe private sector o[ society, one sees that the real c~runch of the "new property" power is that, more and more, its consequent effects can no longer be balanced out by deci-sions made by others with power. It is so far forth public. Power status is thus one's place in the organizationally active determination of the quality of people's lives. As holders of "new property," individuals exercise the resultant social power to determine some relations that others will have to the organization or to its products, and thereby to the corporateI society. With an ethical vocabulary based on the old p, roperty rubrics, many sta-tus power people still speak ofI these determinations they bring about in tbe lives of ot[~ers only in terms of privi-leges or options, and not in terms of rights and basic human values. They thereby presume that to deny a rela-tion to the orgamzat~on or to deny a cr~uc~sm of its products is merely to deny a lprivilege or to deny tbe immediate value of certain options. There is no wonder that umvers~t~es, for example, st~ll ~ns~st that students are there not by right but by privilege. When orgamzauons were private, such talk was movie acceptable ethically. But today, when org~inizations both decide upon and, in their interlaced stance, supply thos~ credentials which deter-mine a person in the roles he b~ts in tbe corporate society, the subject's relation to them i~ now public and nearly or completely in the area~of rigltts. We are less and less a society o~ persons who receive entrance into "private" organizations by privilege or lwho use the products of organizations by option. Simp,ly stated, the "new prop-÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1973. 981 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 982 erty" gives not only "power to do," but, more signifi-cantly for human and Christian values, direct "power over" persons. " (How legitimate) Such "power over" persons requires justification. One must question such power that can "make things happen" in respect to basic values in a society and ask if it is legitimate. The question is raised today for non-owned economic organizations and is espe-cially vital for all organizations which by the interlacing of society have had their power effects take on the "pub-lic" quality noted above. Power is a fact, but the persons concerned can ask for the rights to its possession and to its use. By "legitimate" I signify that there are good answers in terms of human values to the questions "How come such and such has power" and "For what purpose does such and such have power." Such questions ask for standards by which to judge the possession and use of power which are extra-neous to the power itself. In a society of fre6 persons, power can legitimately be obtained and legitimately be used only under the aegis of some expression of "public consensus." Berle has sug-gested two phases in any legitimization. (1) People get control, within an organization's power mechanism by some inner organizational ritual established by the orga-nization and accepted at least passively by the public consensus. (2) Such people use socio-economic power le-gitimately if the organizati6n has a [unction to perform within the values of the full society which is acknowl-edged by consensus, and if their use of the power is appropriate to that function. (Of course, few such func-tions are well-defined, but public consensus has positive though vague ideals here of what is acceptable.) Let us stipulate that, ambiguous as it is, power over persons can be legitimate. And let us for convenience designate anybne with legitimate power over persons in our corporate society as one who has "authority," but let us call such authority in the socio-economic structure "authority (P)." By this authority (P) ~ person rightfully can affect others in societal relationships by making things happen [or them, and thus can determine them in respect to some of the values in their lives. Given that individuals are persons, non-counterbal-anced power to affect their lives will be legitimate ulti-mately only if it positively contributes to their develop-ment as individual and as social persons. In our corporately interlaced society, this legitimacy will imply that those who have power will be accountable to all per-sons whose lives the exercise of the power affects. In summary, then, the argument is that today "new property" is identified with the exercise of "power over" in the socio-economic field, d one's "power over" activ-ities, one's authority (P),g ~"ves one's social identity and one's social initiative.°Keep in]mind that, in a true sense, one need not "own" anything [in order to have this "new property." " [ I do not wish to argue here that the concept of "new property" is accurate. This h~s been done forcefully by the political economists. All I need is this brief and un-doubtedly inadequate overview in order to ask for Some reflection on the relation of ~his advent of "new prop-erty" to the vow of poverty in ~eligious life. / The Vow ol Poverty In every activity within the[ corporate society, ,persons make and express their selves as they transact with other persons. Thus each one in deeds gives answers to those questions which are either exp!icitly or at least implicitly in every personal encounter: "~Who are you?" and "What do you mean for me?" ,, The social power that is theI new property' makes one respond in terms of status and function: "I am one who has tlus place m the social sttqucture and "I determine these values for you." Let me at once contrast withlthese responses what I call the positive thrust of the vow of poverty and suggest that tt ~s that wluch would permit one to respond: I am the human being Ch~'ist has made !me, are you such a human being, too?" On~ thereby expresses the message and the challenge of the Good News by one's very life style itself. Usually in activities we express a functional connection between some parts of ourselves and some parts of the supporting socio-economic system. We are teachers, pro-fessors, administrators at such and such an educational institution; we are experts and on such and such commit-tees; we have such ahd such training, such and such de-grees, such and such publications to our credit; thereby we are in such and such relationships to this organization within the complex of interlaced organizations. That is "who we are." By this part-function'ality we conceptually merge a re-sponse to "Who are you" with the response to "What do you do?" or even more broadly "How do you fit into the socio-economic system?" Thus when .asked "Who are you?" or when we ask of others "Who is that?" we really change the meaning of the question in,our minds and then employ functional categories "to handle" other per-sons in our thoughts and to have identification as we are "handled" in the thoughts of others. (We must be taught to do this: a little girl at the border, when asked if.she was an American, replied, "No, my daddy is an Ameri-can. I'm a girl.") 4- 4- + "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 983 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 984 Generally then, and perhaps more especially in a "new property" milieu, one's functional roles in the corporate society determine one's self identity. And this identity is more and more dependent upon the fate of one's immedi-ate organization within the corporate society, and upon. one's acceptance by functional peers and one's perform-ance among functional inferiors. Thus the primary con-cern of the person with "new property" must be organiza-tional. This is antithetical to the thrust of vowed poverty. A second, equally significant factor from "new prop-erty," the socio-economic power endemic to organiza-tional place also jabs at the thrust of vowed poverty. One with "new property" determines the lives of others Jor them because, as functional within and dependent upon socio-economic power, one exercises "power over" per-sons. Those who consider the vow of poverty as significant for Christian religious life can no longer ignore the con-tradiction that occurs when one points only to one's "min-imal individual possessory holdings" and Overlooks one's "new property" holdings. Since many religious in the United States are in education, let us use an example from this organizational area to put the problem strik-ingly. Let us ask: Can one who has a vow of poverty act consistently if he becomes the president of a uniyersity? Even if he lives a most frugal and Spartan private life, one stripped of all but the immediately necessary mate-rial items, can he in deeds live the thrust of the vow of poverty, since 'he has willy-nilly status wealth in the pub-lic socio-economic system and acts constantly with "power over" persons? Can he express the message and challenge ¯ of the Good News in any continuous form coming from his life style itself if he so connects himself with the interlaced set of organizations whose basis is a power to determine for other persons items basic to their values in life? The same questions can be put to the tenured profes, sor, the high .school principal, and so on. Perhaps a test for an opposition to vowed poverty would be: Do the respect and consideration one has from peers and inferi-ors in societal transactions come primarily from one's "new property" functions or not? Some have argued that poverty does not mean the neg-ative "not using material items of value," but rather the positive "sharing of the effects and experiences resultant from any possession and use with the concrete religious community." These values are one's talents, the experi-ences of one's apostolate, as well as the gifts one receives, one's former individual possessory holdings, and so forth. Thus they might argue that one can also use the "new property" consistently without effect on poverty in reli-gious life. I suspect that such an argument misses the qualitative newness of the "new property.~" It also un~terplays the positive thrust in the rentmciation of the old property, suggested in this section's opening. I will stipulate that some of the inward thrust of pov-erty may be in terms of mutual sharing with the commu-nity. But the vow must be ultimately for the life of the Good News in the mission of the whole Christian com-munity. It cannot have for its final term the limited reli-gious community: And ~he outward thrust (and part of the inward thrust itself) of poverty is precisely so that one can respond to contact with others as a (Christian) human person and challenge the others also to be (Chris-tian) human persons. Poverty has been an attempt to remove those identification handles which passively ob-struct the transmission of the Good News which chal-lenges others to be in, deeds what Christ has made them. Perhaps more importantly in our time and place, poverty seeks to remove that public power which actively ob-structs others from determining for themselves their free response to the challenge of the Good News. This mission of the Good News one legitimately .ob-tains and legitimately exercises by the action of the Trin-ity in human history. Let us for convenience designate anyone with the legitimate mission to challenge others with the Good News as one who has Christian authority, but let us call this challenging authority "authority (C)." By this authority (C), a person in encounter~ can legiti-mately challenge others to be consistent with themselves as individual and social persons, but the challenger has no power to determine the others in respect to their values as human persons, because the thrust of one's Christian mission is to leave the others confronted with the Gospel challenge but free to determine themselves, As there is authority (P) which is legitimate power to challenge others by determining to some extent human values for them, so here there is authority (C) ~hich is the mission to transmit a legitimate challenge but with-out any power to determine for the one c.hallenged. Those who live a vow of poverty would seem to want to specialize in ~some continuity of deeds and life style in this Christian authority (C). Of course, it is not impossible for one tO have status property and to exercise the consequent determining power and still,, in addition, to transmit by authority (C) the challenge of the Good News. Christians who do not vow poverty do it every day. But they do not attempt to specialize in a continuity of deeds .which emphasize au-thority (C). 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 985 ÷ ÷ W, L, LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 986 Some would argue that those with the vow of. poverty also can utilize the "new property" and its logically con-seqt~ ent authority (P) as a means in their life style. They argue that religious do not rest in this "new property" but can have it and remain true to the thrust of the vow because, for example, they use the "new property" to make professional contacts vital to the universalization of the Good News. Let us reflect here not on the strengths of such a defense, and there are some, bnt on its weaknesses. A. Some would say that religious need the status, which is the wealth of the "new property," in order to contact the important people in a society organized around power status on their own level. From the "new prop-erty" gained by administrative, academic, or other cre-dentials, religious can contact the organizational profes-sions of the clay and influence them. But do religious as status members speak to others as trans-status human beings or as co,possessors of power status? Do religious who contact as holders of "new property" contact the whole person and challenge the other with authority (C)? Must religious not necessarily, if they are fellow "new property" holders, speak to others pronouncedly as fun-damental co-members who are equally bound to the power and th'e fate of the structure in dominance in today's corporate society? Remember, unlike the old property, one never "owns" the "new property;" One is always conditionally and precariously subject to the orga-nizations which generate the active power place. One keeps the p.lace only by somehow contibnting actively to a successful exercise of socio-economic "power to do" and "power over." B. Why was not a parallel argument valid for religious to have the "old" property? If it was not valid, what value did Christians place on the vow of poverty in the past that made it so? Was it simply the release from worry over those things which other people must daily worry about? Certainly not. Christians held [or some rea-son that religious vowed to poverty could give a special continuity to the use of authority (C) lrom the very form their life style gave to all their activities. Religious could give this special continuity to the use of authority (C) if they were not the equals of others as holders of individ-ual possessory property, if they encountered the others not in a role of co-wielders of social power from that property, but radically as persons unconnected with a social function category. Can this thrust be realized if religious with a vow of poverty are equal co-holders of social economic public power from the "new property" of today? It is not easy to answer this with a simple "no." Many seem successful in their mission with the Good News to challenge others t(; be "the persons Christ has made them even though these present challengers, vowed religious, or lay Christians, are co-holders with the chall~n~ged of the "new property." X~'hether such success is limited to this period of transi-tion, wherein few are fully .aware of the i.mplicationS of "new property," is a good question. But whether even such success continues to make a religious vow of poverty meaningful is a better one~ ÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 987 ROBERT OCHS, S.J. Experiments for Closing the Experience Gap in Prayer ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs is a faculty member of Bellarmine School of Theology; 5't30 South University Avenue; Chicago, Il-linois fi5615. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 988 "Speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another"- these are the words with which Ignatius Loyola character-izes what he calls "colloquies," conversations with the Father, Christ, or Mary which conclude so many of the exercises which make up his Spiritual Exercises. This prayer of conversation, explicitly evoking a personal part-ner, is not the whole of prayer. To try to make it such, to focus on the divine Thou in all our prayer, is a strain which can cut us off from other avenues of divine contact. Trying to force all prayer irito a conversational mold can even short-circuit what it intends to further, by making us hurry past the "impersonal" world of divine power and energy, fire and spirit, not to mention Silence and nothingness. Yet to turn our back on it would be to lose a vital dimension of religious experience. Prayer as conversation, dialogue, or encounter with God has recently become much harder for increasing numbers of Christians, as they have rediscovered God both as transcendent mystery and as immanent Spirit. But, I submit, neither our new awareness of God's tran-scendence or of his immanence is the real cause of our inability to meet God in a face to face encounter. For some reason we are not bold enough, or realistic and imaginative enough, in our use of dialogal prayer. Prayer of colloquy is not nearly "colloquial" enough. Speaking with God "exactly as one friend to another," as Ignatius flatly states it, has yet to be really explored, partly out of a misplaced fear of anthropomorphism, partly because our personal relationships themselves have become so bland that we have forgotten exactly how intimate friends do speak to one another. (I sometimes feel Dr, George Bach's paperback, The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage, would be a better aid to prayer nowadays than many books directly on prayer,) Underlying our lack of imagination is a peculiar mind set of ours which renders any boldness in encountering God all but impossible. Until we alter this mind set about where and how God is encountered, about the mediurn of any encounter with God, any modeling of our encounter with God on the model of human encounters will look merely like improved make-believe. The Spiritual Exercises speak a great deal about this medium, what Ignatius calls creatures or .simply "all things." Early in the text~ the so-called "Principle and Foundation" insists on "indifference" to things, using them "in as far as" they help find God. And toward the end, the "Contemplation to Attain Love" reminds us that love manifests itself in deeds and consists in a mutual sharing of goods. Between these two exercises, which span the whole Ignatian retreat, the effort is to make things a vehicle of mutual communication instead .of an obstacle, to make them a locus of encounter and matter for shar-ing. As an introductory school of prayer the Exercises teach us to find God in all things, so that things become the means of exchange for dialogue. The whole effort to encounter God involves us therefore in a vast transforma-tion of our view of things. All this sounds terribly obvious. And yet the shift in point of view we are called on to effect in ourselves is enormous, and if we could do it we could pray. The effort involves, for a Christian who supposedly "already believes in God" but does not yet really live in faith, the overcoming of an attitude about God and things which is perhaps the great obsta_cle to encounter with God in our lives, an attitude I Choose to call Deism. Deism sounds at first a harmless enough term, and that is partly why I have chosen it. Giving a harmless name to what one feels is The Great Obstacle has the advantage that it opens us to look for the obstacle to prayer within ourselves and our own pale Christianity. For much that goes by the name of Christianity is no more than Deism, and Deism is as far removed from Christian faith as ag-nosticism or atheism. At any rate, Deism stands along with agnosticism and atheism on the opposite side of the line dividing belief from unbelief. And it is perhaps more dangerous than those two, because it apes Christianity and obscures it own lack of faith. After all, is it not at least theistic, admitting the existence of God? But it ad-mits a God with whom one does not deal, an inaccessibld God with whom one does not argue or wrestle. From the viewpoint of faith the Deist is worse off than the atheist who seeks an accessible God but cannot find him. It is not true that believing in a Deistic God is better than + ÷ ÷o VOLUME 30, 1971 989 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 990 believing in none at all, because to believe in a God who does not enter into intimate relationships with men im-plies giving him certain personal attributes opposed to such relationships, making him aloof, arbitrary, uncon-cerned. While faith says He is our Father. Deism is far from harmless. It is religion without reli-gious experience, religion without encounter and without prayer. It declares God inaccessible. It views the world of things precisely as providing no access to God. It would be profitable to read Ignatius' "Contemplation to Attain Love" as an overcoming of Deism, seeing God dwelling in creatures, "conducting Himself as one who labors" for us in all creatures on the face of the earth. The "Contempla-tion" is the effort to see deeds as potential manifestations of 10ve and all goods as material for mutual sharing. I somewhat regret having to use the term Deism, be-cause it sounds too exclusively associated with the ages of' enlightenment and rationalism. What I mean by it is less a theological position than a state of mind, one which is still very much with us. Deism is a whole sensibility impeding our prayer. One could almost define it as the opposite of finding God in all things, as finding things and supposedly finding God, but not putting these two together except in an awkward juxtaposition. It is what modern thinkers are trying to overcome when they talk of transcendence in immanence and of encountering God in the world. We are Deists when we find God in religion and' not in secular things, and when we admit that reli-gion is more important but more boring than life. We are Deists in our inability to talk about God without using pale language divorced from life, language made more and not less abstract when it becomes pious. We are Deists when we live out our own human growth Odyssey without relation to our spiritual Odyssey. These are old accusations. We are no doubt overfami-liar with these aspects of our Deism. Accordingly, in the following pages I propose taking a look at certain things in which we are not used to finding God. We do not look for God in these things because we think He is already there. We are already aware of the problem of finding God in matter, in the secular, in the ugly. But the things I want to look into with the reader are, briefly, the will of God, our thoughts (especially our religious thoughts), and our images of God and ourselves as we engage God in dialogue. If we looked more for God in these things, .we would be much more able to pray. The best way to take this look is not by direct description, but by watch-ing our spontaneous reactions provoked by certain thought experiments. This way we can uncover the var-ious Deistic mind sets we are caught up in. We should not be surprised by this procedure. The Exercises them- selves proceed often in this same fashion, asking us, for example to imagine three classes of men or to imagine ourselves at tile hour of deatli, or to enter in fantasy into a gospel scene and then ',reflect On myself." The itinerary through the Exercises proceeds as much by uncovering and then healing attitudes of unbelief as by appropriat-ing attitudes of belief. God Present in the Things .That Are His will The second is that love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example the lover give and shares with the be-loved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give: and vice versa, the beloved shares With the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and' 'so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other.--Spiritual Ex-ercises, n. 231. Let us start hy a look at our will-of-God-talk. There is, in fact, a curious anomaly in much recent will-of, God-talk. This anomaly can be expressed in different ways. For example, we seem to be theists in our discei:ning process, and secularists in our carrying out process (and therefore Pelagian Deists all round: Discern as if every-thing depended upon God; act as if everything depended on you). Our talk of discerning God's will sounds more convincing than our talk of God's will once discerned. We do talk rather convincingly (that is, convincedly; with words that at least sound as if we were convinced of the reality we were talking about) about finding God'S will, but our handling of God's will once we have supposedly found it seems to give the lie to such talk. It is not iust that we fail in performance, that we are slow to fulfill what we think we must do, as Christians have always felt themselves to be. It is that the talk that accompanies our efforts to fulfill the wi.l,1 of God sounds as if we were~less than convinced that there was any such thing as a will of God manifested in discernment. In short, our talk gives the impression that we aim at doing more than merely discerning "What the situation calls for," because we in-sist on giving it a theological dimension. And yet once we have discerned "the will of God," we carry on as if this theological dimension were sheer ideology. Various Symptoms point to this, especially Our vacilla-tion and our regrets (and recriminations). Our vacillation during the process of discernment, weighing and search-ing our motives, 'indicates that we take seriously what we are doing. But vacillation after the moment of deciSion indicates rather the opposite. Again, it is not so much vacillation in performance I am talking about, but a kind of vacillation in the belief which governs the perform-ance. (If you are going to believe in a will-of-God uni-verse, an agnostic observer might say, at least take the ÷ ÷ ÷ Prayer VOLUME 30, 1971 991 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 992 advantages as well as the onus of your world view, and taste a bit of the joy and enthusiasm that ought to accom-pany such a belief.) For example, a line of action em-barked upon as a result of discernment will be aban-doned with a lightness incompatible with the discern-ment talk which launched it. The project is not adjusted in the light of new circumstances, discerned anew, as we say, but is changed without recourse to any discernment process at all. A project may be entered upon with some sense of vocation, and then abandoned with neither a sense of infidelity to any call, nor a sense of a new version of the call. If it does not work out, it is simply dropped as a misguided enterprise shot through with human fallibil-ity. After this, curiously enough, the whole discernment process may be started again, with'hopes inexplicably undimmed of finding this time the will-of-God project that will not turn sour. This phenomenon makes one wonder if any genuine discernment was ever done at all, especially when one considers that true discernment does not just provide the knowledge of what to do, but the grace to carry it out, the grace not to forget for long that one is about the Lord's business. Nadal remarks that what struck the early companions about Ignatius was his single-mindedness once he had adopted a course of action through discernment. Ignatius especially deplored the failure of spiritual nerve or what he called courage in difficult enterprises. Another index is regret. We have pursued a course under the aegis of God's will, expended our energies on it, and it does not work out, or works only tolerably well. Hindsight reveals all the deficiencies of our original choice--it looks dated, it is not what we would have chosen if we knew then what we know now. We regret, we recriminate, we think rather quickly .that we have been duped, wasted our efforts, labored under a very human delusion. Even though when we made the deci-sion we claimed to be aware that we had no choice but to choose, further postponement of decision being a worse choice than the one we made, yet we have no sense of accomplishment, no sense of having done God's will or even qf having done our best trying. For another index, let us observe our reactions to the account, in Chapter I of Acts, of the drawing of lots to fill up the vacancy left in the Twelve by Judas' betrayal. Matthias and Barsabba

Issue 24.2 of the Review for Religious, 1965. ; The Major Superior an~ Her Subjects' Vocation by Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. 161 Approach to Mental Prayer by Thomas Dubay, S.M. 188 To Be Samaritans All by Michael M. Dorcy, S.J. 201 The Insecure Junior Sister by Sister Jean de Milan, S.G.C. 209 The Prayer of Christ by Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P, 221 Weep--There Is No Other Way by George A. Maloney, S.J. 239 Nun in the World by Mother M. Claudia, I.H.M. 244 Conte.mplation by Ladislas M. Ors'j, S.J. 248 The Superior as Community Counselor by Sister Angelina Marie, C.D.P. 265 For Teresa, Dying of Cancer by T. J. Steele, S.J. 273 Survey of Roman Documents 274 Views, News, Preview~ 280 Questions and Answers 286 Book Reviews 293 VOLUV_~ 24 NUMBER 2 March 1965 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS Ralph F. Taylor, S.J. William J. Weiler, S.J" DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answers Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Woodstock College Woodstock, Mar~l~md o~ i63 Book Reviews ~ormtm Weyand, S.J. Bellarmine School of Theology of Loyola University o30 South Lincoln Way North Aurora, Illinois 6o543 ÷ ÷ Edited with ecclesiastical approval by the faculty of St. Mary's College, the Divinity School of St. Louis University. Published bi-monthly and copyright, 1965, by Review for Religious at 428 East Preston St., Baltimore, Md. 21202. Printed in USA. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland. Single copies: 60 cents. Subscription USA and Canada: $3.00 a year, $5.75 for two years; other countries: $3.35 a year. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order. Checks and money orders should be made payable to Review for Religious in U. S. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to repre-sent Review for Religious. Change of address requesta should include former address. Renewals, new subscriptions, changes of ad-dress and business corres~ondence should be sent to: Review for Religious, 428 E. Preston Strut, Baltimore, Maryland 21902. Manu-scripts and editorial correspondence should be sent to: Review for Religious, St. Mary's College, St. Mary's, Kausa~ 66536. Quesdous and books for review should be sent to the respective departmental editors. MARCH I 965 VOLUME o4 NUMBER ~ CHARLES A. SCHLECK, C.S.C. The Major Superior and the Meaning of Her Subjects' Vocation If* one were to investigate the various pontifical docu-ments having special reference to religious communities, he would find them often referring to these as "fami-lies." This seemingly simple expression contains within itself a whole host of suggestions, and in the end would seem to be the nucleus for the spirit (and this would include even the government) and spirituality of every religious community. For these, as we know, have their existence and strength from their communion and inti-mate connection with the end of the Church itself--to lead men to the acquisition of holiness. And how im-portant they are for the life of the Church has been clearly stated by Pope Pius XII in rather striking and forceful terms: The Church would not fully correspond to the will of our Lord, nor would the eyes of the majority of men be raised to her in hope and joy as a standard set up unto the nations or as a sign standing in the heavens, unless there were found in her some who more by example than by word, were especially re-splendent with the beauty of the Gospel? This role of the religious community is not at all foreign to the economy of salvation established by God. All communication between God and man has tended to adopt a sacramental medium--language, representa- ¯ In the summer of 1962 Father Schleck gave a series of six lectures to the Conference of Major Superiors of the United States. The pres-ent article is a revised version of the first of these conferences. The other five conferences will be published in revised form in later issues of the REVI£W. 1Address to Superiors General, February 11, 1958, in The States o] PerIection, ed. Gaston Courtois (Westminster: Newman, 1962), pp. 317-8. Fr. Charles A. Schleck, C.8.C., teaches theology at Holy Cross College; 4001 Harewood Road, N.E.; Wash-ington, D.C. 20017. VOLUME 24, 161 ÷ ÷ ÷ Cha~es A. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16~ tion, the written or the spoken word, events, customs, even garb and dress. It is in this work, that is, in bring-ing before men the visible mark of holiness characteriz-ing and setting off the true Church of Christ, that religious superiors, especially major superiors, are as-sociated with the Church and her bishops and sovereign pontiff, either by receiving jurisdiction as is true of ~nale exempt orders, or by receiving dominative power by reason oF the approbation of the rules and constitu-tions peculiar to a religious institute.2 Thus, while it is the work of the Holy Spirit to begin, and to nourish and foster, and to bring to consummation the work of grace or of God's special love for those called to the religious life, still He associates with Himself in this work and service, so-called secondary causes or auxiliary instruments in whom He wishes to incarnate His own power and love and through whom He wishes this to be communicated to others. It is for this reason that the Apostle Peter writes: Whatever the endowment God has given you, use it in service to one another like good dispensers of God's mercy; if one does some service, let him do it with the strength which God sup-plies, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ? In you, however, this governing role was meant to take definite shape and form. This is evident from the very nature of a religious community which we have called, just above, a family. For a family is a group of persons ruled or governed by those who have been established over it by God--a father and a mother. And this is most important for our present considerations. For the characteristic virtue of family life is not legal justice, or human activity on a quid pro quo basis, but rather piet)~, a potential part of the virtue of justice, adding to it the modification which is brought about by the intimacies and warmth of family life. It is the virtue of justice, we might say, with a heart. For all of you the manner of governing that is to be looked for and expected by all, both those inside the religious life and those outside, even those who view your communi-ties from a distance, must always be that of a woman, a mother. Indeed the title which all or most of you bear quite clearly indicates this wish and ardent hope of the Church and the entire family oF God. This title is at one and the same time the measure and indicator oF your function and task and also the measure oF the crowning glory which God intends for each of you in assigning you your particular role in the Church. For if it is He who elects you or appoints you to your task as He did Ibid. 1 Pt 4:10-1. the Mother of the Lord, He at the same time, as He did for her, makes available for you all the graces both ac-cording to their extension and intensity that are de-manded in the work entrusted to you.4 God made every woman by nature generous, merciful, and compassion-ate; and He gave her the desire to offer herself for others. He implanted in her as her essential spirit and movement the spirit of giving, of molding, of forming, of clothing whatever she touches, of mothering it, and of loving it. And the most noble aspect of this mother-hood is the lifting up of those persons she calls her children to God. That is why the motherhood officially given to you by the Church is the most sublime that could possibly be given to any woman. In a religious community of sisters the governing power is given into the hands of women that they as mothers might lead those under them to the common goal of the entire Christian community--the eternal participation of the body-person of Christ in the mar-riage feast of the Lamb. The role of anyone entrusted with shepherding others has very well been pointed out by Isaiah: It is thine to restore those bound in darkness to freedom and light; it is thine to pasture the flock of God and provide feeding grounds for them as they make their way through barren up-lands. Under your care they will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the heat of the noon-day sun overpower them. For you will be to them a merciful shepherd that will lead them to welling fountains and give them to drink of life-giving water? In you this shepherding assumes a rather well-defined mode of expression. It is to be accomplished in accord-ance with the precise externalization which human nature takes in its being found in women rather than in men. It is precisely by using the qualities and gifts peculiar to women that you make your service contribu-tion to the glory of God and to the welfare of His Church and of your own communities. And this service contribution which you make to these ends is most im-portant today. For the Church was meant to be a mighty organization, hierarchical, structured, full of honor and dignity, having its laws and penalties and the power to enforce them. But the Church was also meant to be a Mother, patient, kind, gentle, tender, full of understanding and compassion. Both you and your subjects are always at hand to remind the Church of this maternal aspect of her mission. It is more than evident from the many writings that have appeared on the subject in recent years that a woman called to the religious life is not at all deprived See Summa theologiae, 3, q.27, a.4. h 49:44. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ]63 ÷ 4. ÷ Charles A. SchCle.c~k.C, . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 164 of motherhood. Rather she is called to exercise this function of her being in a much more intensive and ex-tensive manner than is possible in marriage. It is a motherhood that nourishes and molds and centers its whole activity on the life of Christ. By the grace of her vocation she receives in a single fulfillment the two deepest longings of a woman's heart--her woman's desire for motherhood, and her virgin's desire to be wholly God's, wholly surrendered to Him. All this is quite clear in the case of the ordinary religious sister. But I wonder how often those called to exercise supreme authority in service within religious communities of women realize that they are not at all dispensed from this work of woman but rather are called to exercise a more noble and more universal expression of this same function. They are called by God's providence to exer-cise this same activity in reference to the "more illustri-ous portion of the flock of Christ," those who by God's special predilection and love have been called to the vocation of virginity, which is the marriage of a human person with the Lord. Like the work of the Mother of God in redemption, yours is that of associate, con-tributing under the Spirit and with the Spirit to the work of your subjects' sanctification as Mary did in reference to the Church--as a partner, as a woman, and as a mother. In Christ we are given to see that all is priestly. In Mary we are given to see that all is womanly, all is motherly. Her role in the sanctification of the human race was different from that of Christ. Her "merit," her sacrificial oblation, her ransom, all were those of a woman, a mother. She worked along with Christ her Son, but not as an equal, not as one engaged in the same order of operation. Her office was addi-tional, complementary. It is true that oftentimes this work is most difficult, much more diffficult than the motherhood exercised by your subjects. But the greater the motherhood to which one is called, the more suffering and the more participa-tion in the cross-mystery must she expect to fall to her lot. Nor is this so strange. It will always be true that a mother's greatest suffering is interior, that which cen-ters around the emotions, that which involves anxiety, worry, and concern. And usually it comes only at the end of her function when she finds herself no longer in complete control of the minds and hearts of the persons under her, when she must deal with them no longer as children but as mature adults destined to their own proper creativity and life. Since this is always the situa-tion in which major superiors are called to exercise their office of ministry and service, they know with their election or appointment the rather difficult phase of motherhood to which the5, are called. It was because of this difficulty that the late sovereign pontiff Pius XII attemped to recall the image which the major superior must attempt to cultivate in the eyes of her religious: It is no doubt true, as psychology affirms, that the woman in-vested with authority does not succeed as easily as a man in finding the exact formula for combining strictness with kind-ness, and establishing the balance between them. This is an added reason for cultivating your motherly sentiments. You can say that the vows have exacted from your Sisters as from your-selves a great sacrifice. They have renounced their family, the happiness of marriage and the intimacy of the home. It is a sacrifice of great value, of decisive importance for the apostolate of the Church, but it is still a sacrifice. Those of your Sisters who are the most high-souled and refined, are the ones who feel this detachment most keenly. The words of Christ "no one put-ting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the king-dom of God" finds its application to the full, and nowadays, too, without reserve. But the religious order must take the place of the family as far as possible, and it is you, the superiors general, who are expected in the first instance to breathe the warmth of family affection into the community life of the Sisters. You must, therefore, yourselves be motherly in your exterior behavior, in your words and your writings, even if sometimes this calls for the exercise of self-restraint; but above all, be motherly in your innermost thoughts, your judgments, and as far as possible, your sympathetic feeling. Pray every day to Mary the Mother of Jesus and our mother, to teach you how to be motherly." It is quite evident that your motherhood is to reflect and in a sense continue to image that of Mary. And Mary's motherhood is one that is pure, stainless, free from every trace of contamination of the shadow, of the terrible aspect of the mother-image, of the destructive wiles of the "anima," of the desire to possess or be un-scrupulous in protecting and reducing to childishness the creative powers of those under her, of refusing to give them up to their destiny which is for them also, each in her turn and each according to her own way, to give fruit to the life of the Church of God. Thus your motherhood centers around women, not girls; and it must never become maternalistic or harmful or destruc-tive to their legitimate growth as distinct persons, to their adjustments to society and adult life. It is the proper task of a real mother to foster her daughter's competence and well-defined independence, rather than their opposites. To accomplish this task many things ought to be found in you. First, there should be a workable knowl-edge of the principles of spiritual theology, of the ~ Address to Superiors General, September 15, 1952, in The States o[ Per/ection, p. 217. 4. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 166 history and forms of the religious life in history, an experiential knowledge and almost the founder's or foundress' love for your own religious community, its constitutions, its customs, the authors of its spirituality, and its activities or apostolates. To this there shouId also be added a practical knowledge of the canon law governing religious communities of women, a practical knowledge of feminine psychology, and some principles of guidance. Second, there should also be present a discretion or prudence that is like wisdom, reaching from end to end. This would include tact, winning manners, knowledge of the human heart at its various levels of development--the young, the mature, the mid-die- aged, and the old. This discretion and prudence for our present consideration will also include a motherly vigilance, a dispassionate firmness that is without weak-ness, the ability to foresee and anticipate the needs of soul and body, an unfailing patience, and a zeal that is tem-perate, that knows how to wait and to seek out or receive those who come to you moved by God's grace. A third element or ingredient that you should possess is experi. ence, of the various apostolates, actually exercised if pos-sible or at least vicarious, of the problems and the diffi-culties they normally cause to religious; also an experience and awareness of human failings, not the least of which are your own failings and half-acknowledged shortcom-ings, a grasp of your assets and liabilities which would give you a proper and ordered self-love, with the desire to employ the former and guard against and make up for the latter, through the normal channels of the Christian life, not the least of which is consultation and personal direction. Finally, genuine holiness ol lile is required. For you ought to be not so much a teacher or one who hands out practical rules of life, of doing, and of making, nor just an interpreter of your community's spirit, but first and foremost a master of its life. For it is your privilege and obligation to see to it that the young life which God entrusts to you is begun correctly, or brought to birth in the novitiate, and then formed and made viable in your juniorates, and matured and intensified and deepened throughout the entire course of its existence in your religious family. For the motherhood with which you are entrusted by the Church does not end until you are relieved of your responsibility or until one or other of your subjects closes her eyes in death in order to greet her Lord in life. The perpetuity and continuation of a fervent community (and the life and vitality of the Church depends more upon this than upon numbers) rests with the major superiors' capacity to maintain and deepen in their subjects the spirit of the Church and of the founder or foundress whose exemplary causes they are meant to be.7 In treating of this quality or ingredient of holiness last, it is not my intention to consider it as the least important of all. Second to prudence it occupies the most important place perhaps. Knowledge in itself is not fruitful. It must be united with love. And how else can religious be taught the ways o[ God, schooled in the Lord's service if their own superiors do not possess these? You must remember that your subjects have entered religion in order to seek sanctity according to this way of life. And this is to be learned from those who are set over them in the intinaacy of their community life. It is along this line that much more stress could be laid today. The quality of the teaching of any master of the Christian life--and this is the primary role of superiors: to lead her subjects to sanctity--will be that of her own life. A young and generous soul will find no better way to learn renuncia-tion or surrender through charity than by following in the path of one who herself is practicing these same things. A secret strength goes out from her and is in some way imparted to those who come in contact with her. The ability to love the religious life and to instill this love into others is most important today when it is so easy not only for those outside the religious life, but even for those inside, to be or to become confused in their "vision of the special function and immutable im-portance of the religious state within the Church." s The primary work of a superior is to teach her subjects how to love God, how to make the gift of oneself the surrender of one's personal mystery to God and the service of the Church, a living reality. Since the religious life is essentially a theologal life, a life of faith, hope, and love, and a sacramental repre-sentation of the transcendent goal of the Christian community--the paschal mystery--it is important that these be lived by those in charge. No long dissertation or reasoning or logic will affect others on these points. The superior must live these, for it is only by being a living exemplar of them that she can really hope to exert her teaching on others. As St. Gregory the Great writes: Like Moses, a superior ought to be seen frequently going in and out of the tabernacle and while there caught up in con-templation such that when she comes out she may give hersel[ over to the needs of her subjects and tasks. She must be known as one who truly serves God and His Church.' T See The Gilts o[ the Holy spirit (Notre Dame: St. Mary's College, 1961), pp. 1 ft. 8Address to All Religious, May 23, 1964; N.C.W.C. ed., pp. 6-7. 8Pastoral Care, II, 5 ("Ancient Christian Writers," v. 11 [West-minster: Newman, 1950], pp. 56-8 passim. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 167 + + Charles A. $chleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 168 Such a life would be appreciated by almost all who saw it. It would be like the light shining on the moun-tain or the city built thereon. And this is as it should be. For while a superior should not seek the praise of others in conducting herself, this does not mean that she should not seek to be loved; but she should seek this in order that this love might prove to be a path leading to the Lord. It is most ditIicult for one who is not loved by her subjects, however well she might preach, or exhort, and provide logic for the life o[ holiness, to find a sym-pathetic hearing from those who make up her audience. "!'his exhortation to holiness is always most timely for anyone in at~thority. Often it happens that when a person undertakes the cares o[ government her heart becomes distracted by the many things demanding her attention. And then she may find that she neglects that which is most important. For when one in authority implicates herself more than is needful with what is external, it is as though she were so occupied with the actual journey that she forgets the destination. The net result is that she becomes a stranger to self-examination and is no longer aware of her own faults and the great harm that is perhaps being given to others. The care of the inner life cannot be relaxed for the sake of pre-occupying herself with external matters. On the other hand respect for the inner life should not bring about any neglect of the external either, for this is also an essential means of her sanctification and her service of Christ and His Church.a° This balance should be main-tained above all by the major superiors of religious communities. Otherwise, it is most likely that the life of her subjects will grow languid because even though they may wish to make spiritual progress, they are con-fronted with a stumbling block in the example of those over them. When the head languishes, it is rather diffi-cult for the members to retain their vigor. It is in vain that an army seeking victory over the enemy follows its leader if she has lost her way. While the office to which you have been chosen by divine providence lays upon you many duties and func-tions- administrator, organizer, pioneer, missionary, counselor, psychologist, financier (a kind of jack-of-all-trades)-- the one which overshadows all and which sub- 10 This need of the major superior, indeed of every superior, is one more reason why superiors should employ the rule of subsidiarity-- the tendency to delegate and subdelegate, especially in large institu-tions. St. Gregory again provides us with the pertinent text: "Subjects are to transmit inferior matters, so that superiors are left to fre-quently attend to the higher things, so that the eye which is set above for guiding the steps of the body may not be annoyed by dust. For all superiors are the heads of their subjects and should look forward that the feet may not go astray" Pastoral Care, pp. 68, ft. sumes them and colors them or affects them is that of being a woman and mother at the service of the com-munity. Only to the degree that this spirit permeates these functions will they be conducive to your own holi-ness, to that of your community, and to that of the Church.lz Of all these various services, however, the one which is most immediately connected with mother-hood by reason of the very nature of the society which you govern and direct is that of seeing to the spiritual development of your religious. In the series of confer-ences that we are engaged upon here, it is this aspect of your special "vocation" within a vocation that has fallen to me. By reason of the limitation of time and the vast-ness of the pertinent matter on this subject, only a few basic considerations along these lines can be taken up. They are meant to serve as directives and approaches which each of you might follow up through reading and prayer and consultation in regard to the same and other topics falling within the scope of this task. It was sug-gested by one of the members of the executive com-mittee that the areas of the vows, especially the positive aspects, and that of the apostolate might be treated. As a result the following general topics have been chosen, each, of course, with its necessary further delineations: (1) the major superior and the vocation of her subjects; (2) religious poverty and sanctification; (3) virginity and sanctification; (4) religious obedience and sanctification; (5) common life and sanctification; and (6) the apostolate and sanctification. In following out these considerations it will be my intention wherever possible to treat them both from the point of view of theory and practice, at least along general lines, such that the practice may be seen to flow out of and be governed by the theory of the topic dis-cussed. It is true that most of the problems which you encounter in the course of your ministry are of a practi-cal nature, demanding practical and concrete or down-to- earth decisions. Still it seems to me that unless you are acquainted with the directive principles which pru-nA similar idea was indicated by Pius XII in reference to the spirit which should underlie the use of canon law: "Canon law like everything else in the Church is wholly directed to the care of souls, so that by the aid and guidance of laws, too, men may secure the pos-session of the truth and grace of Christ, and may live, grow, and die in holiness, piety, and fidelity to faith. Whether in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, or in the exercise of judicial functions, or in giving the benefit of his advice to the sacred ministers, or the faithful, the canonist should constantly recall to mind that he must render an account for the welfare of souls to whom he can render great services, but to whom he can also do great harm" (Address on the Fourth Cen-tenary of the Gregorian University, October 17, 1953, in The Catholic Priesthood, ed. Pierre Veuillot [Westminster: Newman, 1957], bk. 2, pp. 270-1). ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 169 4, + + Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 170 dential judgment has to follow in coming to a decision affecting an existential here-and-now situation, it is very easy to be or to become confused (especially by reason of the complicated circumstances of today's religious life) and so arrive at a decision which would not be the best. Such a decision could easily inflict a sometimes serious harm, if not immediately at least in the future, to the lives of not only individuals but also that of your entire community and to the very life of the Church itself. It could also harm the image and therefore the effectiveness of the religious sister who occupies a more respected place here in our own country than perhaps in any other place in the world. The Major Superior and the Meaning of the Vocation of Her Subjects It is axiomatic that the whole order of grace has been ordered by God and is communicated to man in accord-ance with the nature he possesses. Thus the subject or person receiving divine communication will incarnate it and make it visible, will show its effects in a way that is patterned after the very nature of the subject. The very nature of God and His love-relationship to man were meant to be reflected not only in Christ but in all of those who would be incorporated into His body-person, the Church. For the Church is the sacramental continuation of Christ who is the perfect self-expression o~ the Father. She is His body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, as we find foreshadowed already in Genesisa2 and stated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.~3 While human nature is essentially or fun-damentally the same in both man and woman, we find it existing in each of them with profound differences and modes of expression. And this foundation and the deepest significance of this sexual polarity originates not just in nature alone or from God as the author of nature, but in the supernatural sphere or from God as the author of man's supernatural existence. According to the Bible, it is in the polarity of man and woman where we find the image and likeness of God, in fact so much so that only in man and woman taken together do we find and discover what one author has called "the blessed icon of God." In fact it would seem that we must conclude that the physical and biological differences which we find exist-ing between man and woman indicate or point to some-thing much more profound, and that is the difference of soul or human spark, the difference of personality, which exists on all and every level of their being-- ~ Gn 2:23. ~8 Eph 5:22 ft. intellectual, volitional, and emotional, as well as physi-cal and biological. Consequently, when God's grace-communication incarnates itself in woman it takes on a shape and form different from that found in man, and it expresses itself along very well-defined lines. Thus, to understand and to be able to guide or direct or form or shape or mold the life and dynamism of the woman in the order of grace, demands that one know what she is in the order of nature.14 If we were to analyze or look into the overall makeup of woman on all the levels mentioned above, we would see first of all that she is much more alTective or love-directed than man in her approach to reality. It is for this reason that she tends towards the personal and the living. To cherish, to keep, and to protect what is per-sonal and living--this is her natural, her authentically feminine propensity.15 She was created by God to be the complement of man, subject to him in domestic or family life. She was to be the heart and soul of man, of the human race, its vital force, like the human heart that moves the hnman body to action. She has received and she possesses human nature in such a way that its loving force, its receiving capacity, its conserving capacity, its pondering capacity, and its formative, molding capacity are rather strikingly manifest. Indeed it is because she possesses these capacities that she by reason of her entire personality, her body, her soul, her powers of under-standing, her capacity for love, her almost inexhaustible devotion, is made to mother the human race in one capacity or another. She is made to know it as only a mother can know it, in all of its depths, its sublime potentialities, and also in its most embarrassing and material and temporal needs. It is for this reason that God has endowed woman with a family instinct, a maternal instinct, which can be used to build a human family or something far more extensive, the family of man or the family of God. A woman is potentially mother not only in reference to individual beings, but in reference to nature as a whole, to the whole world. And this is rather important for us to recall. For once stress is laid upon this view of woman, her need and power to create in cooperation with man, it can be seen that this need and power is something that can quite easily go beyond the limited confines of the husband-wife couple and encompass all the relations existing between men and women in reference to the human family. This direct and intimate relationship with persons rather x'See F. X. Arnold, Man and Woman (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963). The entire work is excellent on this point. ~ The Writings o] Edith Stein, ed. Hilda Graef (London: Peter Own, 1956), p. 161. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24~ "1965 '4" 4. Charles A. Schleck, C.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS than with things tends to make her world compact, which is not to be understood in the sense of narrow, but rather as a concentration on what is near at hand. And this is usually true even in her professional world if she lives in such, where she might happen to be an educator, a doctor, a social worker, or a nurse. She brings to this compact world where she functions warmth and a new atmosphere. From all this it should be clear that it is not right for woman to dodge or side-step this mission, to isolate her interests, to make her life too self-centered. She exists for humanity such that every talent she has received must be put at the dis-posal of the hnman family. This analysis of woman would also show that she is in.tuitive, that she has received human nature in such a way that its intuitive ability would be rather clearly set out. She was made to understand the deep sense of the inner values of things, of their spiritual content as well as or even more than their material or temporal con-tent. Thus in the sphere of her intelligence we find a profound difference between her and man. She usually has a finer perception, a better taste, a greater potenti-ality for sensibility and tact. She possesses a greater ability for visual perception, for the visual understand-ing of the world. Her senses are more open to external attractions. In fact it is this very power of observation that is a necessary complement of her intuition, since her judgment (good or bad) is formed by a rapid, almost simultaneous, look into and through the elements of a situation. It is because she is more intuitive that she was made to reveal the deep and the more profound levels of our being which she knows not so much by cold reason-ing or by speculation or by theoretical analysis, as by intuition, by instinct, by connaturality, by an identifica-tion, by a deep and warm knowledge that understands humanity much more intimately than does man. It is her mission to understand humanity, its weaknesses and infirmities, even its sins. It is her mission even to sympa-thize with these without ever, however, consenting to them. It is her mission to encourage, to prevent, to direct, not so much by governing or dominating--for in dominating she destroys both others and herself---as by being, by example, and by living. Thus the role of woman because she is intuitive is to suggest and inspire, not to be an activist principally, but rather a contempla-tive. She is expected to be intelligent but not opinion-ated, submissive but able to lead especially by urging to activity, unassertive but capable, intuitive but clear thinking, not over-active yet quietly efficient. It is in these ways that she is meant to redeem every situation by coming forward with her immense power to heal humanity by being its seer and its poet, and by so act-ing to achieve her place and fulfill herself. An analysis of woman would also indicate that she is more emotional than man; that the emotional side of her life is an essential part of it; that it is an integral part of her so-called "passivity"; that it is the goal, whether conscious or otherwise, of much of her en-deavor and striving. She is frequently preoccupied with surface agitation because of her need to give emotional satisfaction to others and to receive it in turn from them. It is this very deep need for receiving emotional satis-faction that also brings to the fore woman's need for another. She is dependent on others because she hopes to gain from them the security which satisfied emotional needs and wants effect in her. Unless a woman has found this other source of emotional satisfaction, or unless she has sublimated it in relation to a higher person and his interests, she becomes restless, unsatisfied, and frus-trated. She is made to love and to be loved, and she cannot find her sufficiency in herself. That is why a woman who is selfish and self-centered is an anomaly that is more distressing to encounter than a selfish man. For she has denied her nature, as it were, when she ceases to exist for others; and in doing this she has dried up at its source the possibility of those emotional experiences so vital to her person. This need for emotional satisfaction would also seem to account for the woman's impulse of self-surrender, her capacity to yield or to open herself to one who advances towards her with love. Deep down in her being woman knows that her role is one of submission, that only by renunciation can she become her true self. That is why an essential part of her person and her emotional need moves her to submit since this is fulfilled by such a re-sponse. And unless a woman can find one to whom she can submit in love, she will find that her love will not flower and that her emotional need will not be satisfied. This ingredient of self-surrender so evident in the woman's makeup must not be confused with pure pas-sivity as some often think. Woman is actively passive. Her activity is directed more towards the emanation of her personality, in her protection of and care for what she has received and conceived. Thus her person im-plies an active yielding and acceptance of what comes to her in love. It is this very quality which makes woman a unifying force in God's plan. For she is meant to act as an icon or image of humanity's attitude toward God. It is for this reason that we have running through the whole of salvation history the image of the woman pointing out again and again that humanity must be-come feminine before God, open to His advance, ready 4- + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24 1965 4, 4, 4, Chades A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]?4 to be receptive, ready to yield to His every word and request. Thus it is the woman and not the man who is the archetype of humanity's relationship with God. She is symbolic of the only power which man has in reger-ence to God's love. Thus the childlike quality that we often find among women saints is not to be confused with a weak and playful infantilism. It is rather the longing for and the expression of that security which we can recognize as a rather profound condition of the finest women in history. Its essence is innocent confi-dence, based on that childlikeness which the Lord de-mands for the kingdom of heaven. It is the magnani-mous surrender of oneself, the total sacrifice of self, and unlimited confidence in God's power and fatherly goodness. Thus woman is a sign of faith taken in its biblical sense, faith which expects nothing from man, but relies wholly on God. When these ingredients of woman are found per-fectly in an individual, they would seem to present us with a picture of the divine idea of a human nature that is perfect and truly complete at least in reference to God. And they are found in one person, one woman, the Mother of God. Our Lady provides us not merely with a prototype or archetype of woman redeemed, but of mankind, humanity redeemed. This is the meaning of the Immaculate Conception. It is merely the revela-tion to us of the human being when still unfallen, of the undesecrated countenance of the creature man, of the perfect image of God in man as it existed when the "'fiat" of God's creative activity rested upon him in the dawn of his creation. Indeed what would seem to come from prolonged meditation on the purpose and image of Mary, what seems to sum up her entire personality is her simplicity, which is not so much a virtue as rather the culmination of her perfect and balanced harmonious activity. It is the expression of a real inward unity and purpose. It is opposed to multiplicity and diversity of aims and in-tentions. It is a life entirely directed to God. And sim-plicity is a mark of divinity or of the divine. Mary had a nature that was incapable of pretense, of going too far, or of stopping too short of the mark. She never added anything to what had to be said or done, nor did she ever subtract anything. That is why what we find most attractive in Mary is her complete self-possession in spite of the plethora of grace and divine favor that was given to her as the Mother of God and as the archetype of humanity. She always and everywhere preserved what was natural to her feminine makeup.16 That one person, one woman should be able to l~Ibid., p. 125. transcend the differentiation of the sexes before God is not an entirely unusual phenomenon. It has been said that many important personages such as geniuses and saints have been able to stand above this differentiation in sex, that they have been able to unite in themselves the qualities of both man and woman in a creative harmony. And we may well ask ourselves whether this transcending of natural barriers is not perhaps the highest effect of the workings of grace. If we were to study the treatise on God the Trinity, we would soon discover that the image of woman reflects rather closely that of the Third Person in the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. He is called Love, Breath or Kiss, Gift, and His operation in the economy of salvation is that of a mother-principle. He is called Love, the Person of Love in the Trinity because He proceeds by way of volitional activity in God. To fall into the realm of metaphysics for a moment, we might say that the pro-cession of love or rather that which proceeds through the activity of love proceeds as spirit; spirit, however, signifies or expresses a certain vital or life-giving move-ment and impulse. The activity of love produces an inclination or an out-going or a giving, and this is no less true in the case of the activity of love in God. Thus the Holy Spirit is movement, secret mysterious activity in His very Being, just as is love as found among crea-tures. That is why, perhaps, when He is described in Sacred Scripture it is always in terms and ideas and ex-pressions implying motion or movement--spiritus, that is, wind, breath, or breeze; or He is compared to a river or fountain that flows from the throne of the Lamb.17 It is for this reason that the fathers of the Church are fond of referring to the Holy Spirit as the breath or kiss of the Father and the Son, the most secret but sweet kiss. And this is quite correct. For a kiss is an expression of unity and a means to it. And if anywhere there is not only oneness of love, but also oneness of life be-tween persons, if anywhere lovers are of one spirit and are one spirit, surely this is true within the mystery of the Godhead. Between the Father and the Son there are not merely two lives that melt into one; there is only one life and one heart, one love-producing activity. Thus the breath or the kiss of the Father and the Son cannot be merely a vehicle or medium to procure unity of life in God; it is rather its expression. Hence the Father and the Son do not pour out their breath of life into each other by their kiss, but from the interior of their common heart they pour it into a third Person, one in whom the oneness of their love and their life is ~'See Jn 3:8; 7:38-9; 20:22-3; Ap 22:1 ff. Superior anal Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 175 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. C.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 176 manifested and made visible or expressed.IS It is pre-cisely because He proceeds by way of love and is Love that the Holy Spirit is the most mysterious of the Per-sons in God. Love is much more ineffable than the activity of the mind. For while the latter produces a definite term, a word or an idea, the former, love, pro-duces no term but only a movement toward, an out-going. This is the reason why as soon as we try to de-scribe love we must have recourse to metaphors and similes as we find in the Canticle of Canticles or in the Sequence for the feast of Pentecost. Yet for all this note of movement which is attached to the Person of the Holy Spirit, He is never to be considered as restless or feverish in His quest for any object. Like the other two Persons of the Godhead He possesses all objects, being eternally within them. And like them He is "semper agens et semper quietus" to use a phrase of St. Augustine, always active and yet always at rest. Again, the Holy Spirit is called Gift, One who is to be possessed by the one to whom He is given. This implies that He Himself possesses an aptitude and readiness to be given or the ability and desire to give Himself. A gift, however, implies a free and gratuitous and unreturnable donation the motivating force of which is love. Thus the first thing that we give to another whom we truly and genuinely love is that love by which we wish what is most conducive to his personal well-being. Personal love, therefore, is the first gift that we give to another; and it is the root of all the other gifts that we might impart to this other, for example, the use of one's body in mar-riage. Thus in the life of grace, the first thing that God gives us is Himself, as Personal Love, as Gift, that can be possessed and enjoyed and freely so. From this it should be clear that in speaking of the Holy Spirit as the Gift, we do not intend to deny that in a sense the Word of God also can be said to be God's gift to man in the incarnation and again in the mystery of the divine indwelling. Yet the title would not be as properly the Word's as it is that of the Holy Spirit. Gift is that which proceeds by way o{ love activity, which notion as we have seen is proper to the Holy Spirit. Finally, when the Holy Spirit is sent on mission we see that it is always as sign and mother-principle. He is a sign of the divine renewal that takes place within us as a result of God's love--purity and charity; and He is also the forming principle uniting those who have been created according to the image and likeness of God with their Creator and Father. He is the Sanctifier or the bond linking up man with God. Thus His prerogatives ~s M. J. Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity (St. Louis: Herder, 19t7), pp, 183-4, 188, of Love and Gift are most strikingly evident in the work of man's sanctification. It is for this reason that one of the scholastic theologians mentions that when the hu-man person embraces God or surrenders himself to Him in grace, He receives the kiss of God's mouth and the breath of His Spirit. The powers of the person are made perfect and they are elevated to a higher plane of activity. And when this conversion or this turning to God or surrender to Him is intense, then this kiss is so completely efficacious that the individual drinking in God's Spirit becomes totally transformed by Him. And it is then with sobriety and modesty that this individual allows its love and giving to overflow on others according to their worth and necessity, not giving itself wholly over to them nor seeking them for itself but only for God. This we see in the case of the Church. For she was begun by the kiss of the divine mouth, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the mouth of God and embracing in His kiss the Father and Son. And she in turn exists only for one purpose--to communicate the kiss of the divine mouth to others.1~ From this it would seem logical to conclude that there is a very definite affinity or similarity, not perfect in every or all respects to be sure but at least in many, between the woman and the Holy Spirit, such that her mission when actually and really lived even in the natural order would partially imply her being a reflec-tion of God as Personal Love and Gift or Subsistent Breath. The ideas of love and gift and breath imply movement, an outgoing or communicating activity. And the woman is known for her ability to love and to give herself, to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others, to surrender herself in total donation. And she is also known for her ability to urge on gently, irresistibly, and persuasively, like a soft ocean breeze bellying a ship's sails and moving it to port. Certainly this is the work of the Holy Spirit through His gifts and His own presence in man; and this would also seem to be the role of woman--to be a strong yet gentle impulse urging the whole of humanity on to its last goal, communion with the beloved. And finally the woman is mother-principle, or the one to whose lot it falls to communicate flesh and blood or to be at the service of life; and what she gives, life, she is meant to give in a permanent and unreturn-able sort of way. Consequently, we can say that partially at least the woman's vocation and mission is to imitate and con-tinue through space and time as a sign or symbol and cause the mission of the Holy Spirit--to lead humanity 4- 4- 4- Superior and Vocation ~John of St. Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Ghost (New York:VOLUME 24, 1965 Sheed and Ward, 1954), pp. 37-8. 177 Charles A. SchCl.eSc.Ck., REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 178 back to God by showing it that God is a God of love and of gift; by showing it that its duty is to find God, to go back to Him, to love Him by an unreturnable gift of self in the darkness and mysteriousness of a deep faith and trust. And I believe we might say that the woman would represent and personify the Holy Spirit not partially, but wholly, not merely in her origin, but also in her nature, if, without being wife and mother, she could be the center of love between father and son in a family as a virgin. When we come to the consideration of the religious sister we should not expect her vocation to be contrary to her fundamental vocation of woman. Rather we would expect it to lie along the same lines. And yet because of the increased perfection of her vocation in the order of grace we would expect it to lie much further along the road, such that it would enable her to realize and achieve or fulfill her vocation of woman much more profoundly. And I believe that even a rather brief analysis of the sister's role or place in the Church would bear this out. She is given to the Church as a sign, a visible sign of not one but rather of several realities. And because she is a sign, because she acts as a visible and public witness in the Church, she is given to the Church and to the humanity intended to belong to the Church as a visible parable, or a graphic picture, or model or icon or type, for all to see, of the intimate rela-tionship which the whole of humanity is meant to have with God. We mentioned above that all communication between God and man has tended to adopt a sacra-mental or sign-medium--either that of language or events or representations or personifications (for exam-ple, Judith, Moses, the Virgin Mary). And this is no less true of the sister's vocation. Because her role with rela-tion to man is sacramental, everything about her should indicate what she stands for---her dress or garb, the houses where she lives, the entire rhythm and disposition of her life. She is meant to indicate publicly that man belongs entirely to God, that one day he will have to live only for Him and only with Him. She is meant to indi-cate publicly that man belongs entirely to God, that one day it will have to live only for Him and only with Him. She is meant to indicate perpetually not in herself alone, but in the institution which she gives life to during the course of her earthly life, that man is called to experience God's personal love, that he is intended to receive His special attention, that he is called to enter into a relation-ship with God that can best be signified by the bridal rela-tionship, by the union existing between man and wife. Thus the sister is meant to be revelatory in the fullest sense of this word. There is a tradition which runs through revelation, as we mentioned, placing the woman firmly on this side of heaven and identified with God's chosen people, His Ecclesia. It is the feminine image or archetype, which stands for the whole of humanity, for God's chosen and elect. In this role she is not meant to be wife to husband in the sense of being merely an object for masculine projections. She is meant to indicate that the whole of mankind especially in the order of grace is the object of God's special predilection, that it receives all that it has, especially in this order, uniquely from God, as a woman, the body-person of her husband, receives her glory and her name from her husband. This would seem to be at least something of the theological mystery or the reli-gious significance of the woman consecrated to God within the framework of a religious community. And it is for this reason no doubt that her ever further unveil-ing so often means the breakdown of her public mission and of her mystery or sacrament before the People of God and before all called to belong to this People. Per-haps we might identify this unveiling today with the contemporary trend that attempts to prove or demon-strate that woman can make her best contribution to human progress by being not merely equal to man, but identical with him, instead of by being herself. There is a common desire and a legitimate curiosity within the human race to see the goal to which it is divinely destined, to catch while still here on earth a glimpse of itself in glory. And this is given to it in the vocation of the religious sister. This is part of the mean-ing of the reception of the habit assigning her a public mission in the Church and before humanity--to be a sign of humanity's belonging to God as His bride. It is in this way I think that the Sister is meant to be a sign permanently and visibly present in the world of the sublime privilege and compulsory destiny of the whole of humanity--to be open and docile and obedient to the plan of salvation, as a bride is open to her husband.2° How important this is for the vocation of your sub-jects can be seen from the fact that woman insofar as she is directed toward man and toward the love of man re-tains her bridal character throughout her entire exist-ence. Thus a wife in her attitude toward the husband she loves remains a bride throughout her entire life. For the bridal quality of the woman is merely a repre-sentation of her love in its undying and unending re-newal. If this is true of the ordinary woman, it should be even more true of the virgin who is consecrated to Christ. For she by special commission of the Church ~ ¥ictor White, O. P., Soul and Psyche (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 12 ft. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior Vocation VOLUME 24, Z965 ]79 + 4. 4. Charles A. SchCle.Sck.C,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]80 pronouncing on her call from Christ is set aside to be a permanent and symbolic or sacramental renewal in sign of the Church's and of each person's bridal rela-tionship to the Lord. In a much more visible way by her virgin's vocation and by her habit is her bridal quality renewed and her wedding day continuously and daily represented and repeated before humanity. And how perfectly this function and mission or public assignment corresponds with the ingredients of her natural vocation. Surrender to another in personal en-counter is the deepest longing of a woman's heart. When a woman makes this surrender to another creature she is underestimating her worth; and she is, perhaps with-out knowing it, making demands which no creature can possibly fulfill. Only God can receive us in such a way that He fills the quasi-infinite and inexhaustible demands of the human heart to love and to be loved. That is why the aim of the religious life--complete surrender to God--is also the one adequate fulfillment of woman's longing. From this we can see why the "fiat" of the Mother of God at the Annunciation, and its continuation throughout her entire life, and the profession of the religious sister is a visible symbol of humanity's essential religious quality, surrender to God, openness to Him. In a very special way then tlfis atti-tude is truly the special charisma, the ecclesial function of the sister in the Church. And she should not forget that the idea of charisma means not the working out of one's own career designs, but rather the obliterating of one's own person to the point of its becoming an instru-ment of service to the ecclesial community and to hu-manity as a whole. In addition to the religious sister's being a sign of the relationship of humanity with God, she is also meant to be a sign of God's relationship to the world of man. And this is one of love and concern. Thus she is meant to assume the interests and concerns of Eternal Love, or she is meant to reflect and place before the whole of humanity the personal and intense and warm love which God has for it. And she reflects these concerns and interests, even anxiety, in a light that is peculiarly her own; that is, in a maternal light. Thus the religious woman's love dynamism is not only not annihilated in her being called to assume her ecclesial function; it is rather given new life and becomes far more extensive that that of "she who hath husband." 21 It is meant to assume the status and the proportions of the God-man Himself. Thus God by calling her to the religious life communicates to the woman together with the grace of her vocation something that was not there before. This is .o~ Is 5-t: I. a divine dynamism or vitality which makes her every ac-tivity, her every response to God a form of fruitfulness and motherhood. Even though her apostolic work may be rather quiet and performed in relative hiddenness and obscurity, it is still a dynamic power or force that transforms and gives life to all that it touches. That is why her woman's natural desire is not at all annihilated. Rather, it is made to expand as she assumes more and more fully the perspectives of a daughter of the Church. The woman who is called sister is a mother in the high-est sense of the word. This was very strongly asserted by the late sovereign pontiff, Pope Pius XII, in an ad-dress given in May of 1956: The Catholic Church, depository of the divine designs, teaches the higher fruitfulness of lives entirely consecrated to God and to neighbor. Here the complete renunciation of the family should make possible the completely disinterested spiritual ac-tion which proceeds not from any fear of life and its responsi-bilities, but from the perception of the true destinies of man, created to the image and likeness of God and in search of uni-versal love, which no fleshly attachment can limit. That is the most sublime fecundity and the most desirable which man can seek, the fecundity which transcends the biological order and reaches straight into that of the spirit.~ This truth is more important for us to recall than ever before. There is no such thing as a woman's right to a child. There is only the right of the child to a mother. For a woman to be a physician, a guardian, a teacher, or a nurse is not a profession in the masculine sense of the word. It is the form which her spiritual motherhood is to take in God's designs. Thus a profes-sion is not just a substitute for the unmarried woman's lack of physical motherhood. Rather it is the working out of the never failing motherliness that is in every genuine woman. And this is the more true, the more her motherhood turns around those things which are regarded as the timeless possessions of humanity, the cultural and religious values of the human race. Thus in the Church by reason of her religious mission and her apostolate as mother, the sister has her place beside the bearer of religious fatherhood, beside the priesthood of the man. And in this respect she is like the Church who in her character as mother is a cooper-ating principle with the one working within her, Christ Himself. Perhaps it is in this vision of her vocation where we discover the fundamental reason why it was fitting that the priesthood was never entrusted to the woman. The priesthood could not be confided to a woman because then the very meaning and significance which she communicates to man would be annihilated. ~ Address to Doctors on Fertility and Sterility, May 19, 1956; see The States o] Perfection, p. 288, n. 624b. 4. 4. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ]8] REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS She is excluded from the hierarchy not becanse she is unequal to man but because she is not identical to him. This exclusion is a recognition of the distinctiveness and individuality of the woman. It is a witness to the fact that there are distinctly feminine tasks in the Church which demand the presence of women. Thus this exclusion far from being motivated from any dis-dain for woman springs from a reverence and respect for the true nature of woman, for the peculiar talents and gifts which God has given humanity in her. In fact in her not being capable of the priesthood she renders the priesthood its most outstanding service. For she teaches it by that very fact that the priesthood institnted by Christ is a service rather than a lordship and that it is a service of joy. Its object is agap~ or charity, brotherhood and the bond of love. And charity is above all not a matter of organization, but one of interior disposition of faith that is active in love. Here we find the special domain of the woman's devotion and gener-osity and youthful unselfishness.~3 It is these same thoughts which prompted Plus XII to write in 1957: We do not have to reaffirm Our certainty that Religious women are indispensable in many fields of the Catholic aposto-late, particularly in the field of education and scholastic activity, no less than in the field of charity. The Church's missionary work would for a long time now have been unthinkable without the participation of the Sisters; and in many fields, where the sacred hierarchy is in charge, the labors of the Sisters are indispensable for the well-organized care of souls. Without their help, the Church would have been compelled to relinquish many op-portunities for progress, and many positions, already painfully won, would probably have had to be abandoned. With the aso sistance of your maternal hands, beloved daughters, the Church is able to support the aged in their declining years; with your warmth of heart the Church is able to warm the hearts of tiny orphans; with your fervor of self-dedication, the Church is able to minister to the sick." The Limitations and Weaknesses of Woman In all this analysis of the woman's vocation and mis-sion in nature and in religion, we are not to forget that in the present fallen order of the human race, these ideal qualities and expressions of her image are always the goal or end after which she is constantly striving, a goal that has been ideally reached only by one indi-vidual, the Virgin Mother of God, and this only through a most special and singular grace. The reason for this need for constant effort stems from the fact that the fall withdrew a unifying force which would have kept in Arnold, Man and Woman, passim. Address to Nursing Sisters, April 25, 1957, in The States o] Per- Jection, pp. 286--7. harmony and balance and unity the various ingredients mentioned above. Thus your subjects must be made aware of these different limitations during the course of their formation and also afterwards, since they mani-fest themselves at different age-levels of our human existence. This education should be geared in such a way as to make them aware of the particular spiritual opportunities which are offered to religious women through the presence of these limiting factors and to make them aware of the various protections available against the spiritual decline to which they are then exposed. Without attempting in any way to present an exhaus-tive list of these limitations and weaknesses, the follow-ing thoughts in reference to them might prove to be helpful at least by way of area analysis. We mentioned above that the woman tends toward the personal and the living, toward the whole of things; that she tends to cherish, to keep and protect; that she tends not so much toward the abstract but rather to the concrete. This tendency toward the personal and living and con-crete can, however, become unwholesomely exaggerated. On the one hand she is inclined to be at times extrava-gantly concerned with her own person and problems and to expect the same interest from others, in the case of sisters, their superiors and fellow sisters. This brings about the tendency to anxiety, to depression, the desire to be recognized, to be given attention, to be loved. This situation can be increased when there is question of slight or serious emotional instability, or even by simple glandular disturbance, or by the rhythm of the woman's body activity. It is from this lack of and yet desire for security and acceptance that there can come diffidence, shyness, timidity, even hostility. On the other hand, this over-concentration on the personal can lead to an unmeasured interest in others, which mani-fests itself by way of curiosity, gossip, indiscreet longing to penetrate into the more intimate part of the lives of others, fellow sisters, pupils, and so forth. Again the tendency which she has toward wholeness can lead to an "explosive" use of her energy, to a superficial nib-bling in all directions without any real unifying end or goal. The tendency which she has to cherish, to keep, and to protect can lead to a possessiveness that far exceeds anything required by her work or associations with others. And finally her tendency to the concrete in preference to the abstract can easily cut off from her vision those things which lie outside her immediate environment, or from the broader view which she ought to be taking of things. Added to these there are other weaknesses which can 4. + + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 183 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]84 find their way into the life of woman, such as her tend-ency to an anthropomorphic idea of God which could lead to an over-familiarity with Him or to a sentimen-talized relationship with Him such that she would lack the true reverence for Him which she ought to have. Again, we find that she has an inclination to seIf-de-lusion and to suggestibility; that she is easily persuaded and influenced by appearances rather than by reason and logic. In fact it was this tendency that made Shake-speare have one of his female characters remark: "I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so because I think him so." Likewise because of her strong emo-tional needs we find that at times when these are not satisfied, she can be capricious, moody, unstable, extrav-agant, unpredictable, and rather weak of will. And lastly, but certainly not the least important weakness which can be found in woman is the peculiar expression which her conflicts with authority assume. Generally speaking a thorough analysis of such conflicts would usually indicate that they are not so much with the concept or notion of authority as rather with persons in authority. This would seem to follow from the woman's being occupied more with persons than with abstract ideas.~5 While all these things might seem to pertain more to the realm of mere human psychology and to be espe-cially due to the irresolution of the normal crises of human life--those of vocation, identity, intimacy, par-enthood, integrity, and prayer and action,~6 you should attempt to make your religious see that they provide them with the normal channels through which God Himself works out their salvation. They should be seen as the ordinary "dark nights" through which most religious must pass to come closer to God. Just as He makes use of human instruments to effect our holiness, so too does He make use of the ordinary happenings and situations of human life--physical, biological, emo-tional, moral, and intellectual crises--to lead us closer to Himself. Such an attitude, of course, cannot be achieved unless your subjects are educated to and constantly re-minded of the fact that they must regard the circum-stances of life--at all levels--as given and provided for by God. It is through these very ordinary events of life that grace is made visible and available for them in these rather human "sacramental" forms. It is in this way that you can hope to impress upon your religious ~nW. Demal, O.S.B., Pastoral Psychology in Practice (New York: Kenedy, 1955), pp. 54 ft. ~ For an excellent treatment of these crises, see Barry McLaughlin, S.J., Nature, Grace, and Religious Development (Westminster: New-man, 1964), pp. 1-128. the fact that they are women and that they possess some or all of the weaknesses of women in our fallen economy; that this is something they should not only accept, but in a sense respect and even reverence, seeing in them the peculiar destiny and glory which God Him-self has singled out for them. It is only in this way that the whole of life can become one continuous sacra-mental encounter with God who continues to reveal Himself through the things that are made and through the things that happen. It is only in proportion as they learn to see these things in this light that they can hope to receive in exchange for their surrender to them the life and deepening faith which He promises in return.27 Conclusion While it is impossible for major superiors to person-ally form all their subjects in reference to what has preceded, still it would seem that they would contribute greatly to the spiritual improvement of their communi-ties if they saw to it that these notions of the woman's vocation and mission in the plan of God were system-atically communicated to their religious throughout the years of their formation. It is only in this way that they can expect their religious (1) to make their precise and proper contribution to God's plan, to the work of the Church, to the apostolates o~ the community, and to their own sanctification; (2) to protect themselves against their weaknesses and the harm these could cause to the realization of the various ends and goals of their ecclesial mission; and (3) to make them aware of and able to use for encounter with God the rich gifts and humbling limi-tations of their own personalities. It is only in this way that they like Mary and the Church whom they continue to embody can provide humanity with a concrete theology of mankind or humanity redeemed. It is for this reason that I would suggest that in your visitations and personal interviews with your subjects, these ideas be frequently presented and recalled. By yourselves knowing and appreciating and loving the woman's and the sister's vocation, public function, and problems, and by making this quite evident to your communities, you will show your maternal interest in them as a family and as persons. And once this becomes evident in you, there is greater hope that the family image which ought to characterize the religious life will become an actual reality. There is greater hope that each and all of your subjects will combine all the voca-tions open to woman and reflect the virtues that are proper to them. For as virgins they must continue to ~ Adrien Yon Speyer, Meditations on the Gospel o[ St. John (Lon-don: Collins, 1959), p. 43. + + + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 185 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles ,4. $chCle.cSk.C, . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 186 reflect Mary's humility, her simplicity, her naturalness, her silence, her thoughtfulness, her reflectiveness, her caution or reserve, her complete dependence on grace, and her profound faith both in the world of the present and in that of the future. As spouses of Christ, they must practice a perfect personal fidelity to the one they have chosen; for this is the essential relationship existing between bride and bridegroom reflected so strikingly in Mary, the image or archetype of the Church standing at the foot of the Cross. To maintain this fidelity in-violate will at times demand heroic fortitude in the face of the difficulties that come not only from without but most often from within. And finally as mother, they are to practice or cultivate a sense of and use of the social virtues, of the deep interest and consideration and concern for the needs of others. For motherhood implies an encompassing care and attention, the giving of nourishment and shelter, an activity that is marked by its tenderness and gentleness yet firmness, for the weak and fragile things that are being brought forth in Christ. It demands the exact opposite of selfishness and undue self-interest, of worry and anxiety about oneself and one's personal needs, it is rather characterized by self-sacrifice, by resourcefulness, by the ability and desire to give of one's time and energy to and for others, and by laying at the disposal of the race whatever gifts and qualities God may have given her. Your task today is of gigantic proportions. For how evident is our need for a new Pentecost, for the reign of the Spirit and of His influence and His gentle rule; for love of God and obedience, submission, reverence and a sense of the sacred; for purity, warmth, and fresh-ness; for spontaneity, poetry, and the Godward force-- all of which are presented to us in the picture of the woman redeemed. In a sense we can truthfully say that the greatest need in the modern world is for the truly feminine. For to be wise, to learn wisdom, demands that one be feminine to reality, to let reality flood in, to be molded by reality and so achieve a certain fullness from our absorption of it; to rest in reality, and so achieve a certain peace. In the Consolation of Boethius it is a woman who leads him to Wisdom. Her mission is to tell him, a prisoner in the dungeon, that if he had not cast away the weapons she had given him, he would have been invincible against the attacks of evil fortune. And then she attempts to lead him gently back to the realization that not in gaining possession of anything, but only in obedience and love to and for God, will we find eternal happiness and peace. And the world has need of this collaboration. It has a profound need for women who know how to say to God "fiat," to keep all things in their hearts; it has need for women who can bring the world back to a sense of unity, of religion, and of peace. It must return to the simple things, the human things, to the mystery of life and death, of birth and redemption. And it will find these in the woman who reflects in her very body the constant rhythm of nature itself, who holds the secret of life and who knows instinctively that esse is better than agere, being is so much more than doing. That is why she is a sign of the eternal. Again, we can say that woman has need of women who are genuinely themselves. For she has been and is still attempting to find her role too much in the world of man. The world without women is more the world of adolescents than the world of men. It is a world that easily shakes off its transcendental ties. The all-too-masculine activity of self-reliance and self-redemption has dimmed man's vision of the transcendent. Before this will be rectified, mankind must once more become feminine; that is, receptive of the "Word" which con-stantly seeks entrance into its womb. The profound consolation that woman can bring and give to mankind is her faith in the immeasurable ac-tivity and efficacy of forces that are hidden and invis-ible. For the divine creative force can break forth from God to renew the face of the earth only on condition that the earth lifts up its face with its single contribu-tion: "Be it done to me according to thy word." This is the feminine power which Mary shares with all her sex who will follow her in her love and renunciation. Every woman is made for mercy, love, understanding, and mediation. But it is only when all these are ele-vated by grace that they give her a mission and a mean-ing no longer merely human and terrestrial, but divine and infinite. That is why mankind will find its way to paradise only when it meets the loving woman whose eyes rest in and on God. From all this, one thing stands out quite clearly: To be a woman is a vocation with peculiar and profound responsibilities not only to oneself but to the whole of humanity. Woman is still and let us hope she will re-main the eternal mystery. We would not want to find the solution to her in the discovery of scientific facts alone. For it is from the mystery which she is and which she has received from and in God that human-ity's ideals and inspirations arise and that the super-natural civilization which is the work of the Spirit will finally be achieved. This is your supreme task--to see to it that this is brought about in the women under your charge. And the fact that in God's plan the highest human person is a woman should only serve to spur you on in the accomplishment of your special ecclesial mission. ÷ 4, ÷ Superior and Focation VOLUME 24, 1965 18'/ THOMAS DUBAY,S.M. Psychological Considerations in Our Approach to Mental Prayer ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M., is spiritual director at Notre Dame Seminary; 2001 South Carroll-ton Avenue; New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 188 If we wish to get a man to visit and speak with a friend of ours, we talk not about the theory of conversation but about our friend. Rudimentary psychology suggests that men and women alike are inclined to communicate not by understanding abstract theories of communication but by being drawn to attractive personalities. Yet in teaching mental prayer to our young religious in postulancies, novitiates, juniorates, and seminaries we often introduce them into a supremely interpersonal familiarity through impersonal conceptual analyses and pointed outlines. We are not wholly unlike a man who in order to get Jim to date Joan explains what dating is about rather than what Joan is like. We propose in this essay to advance the thesis that a psychologically natural and humanly appealing approach to instruction in and the practice of mental prayer is through a scripturally and theologically orientated appre-ciation of the mystery of the Trinity indwelling in the souls of the just through charity. We feel that once a young novice or seminarian (or veteran, for that matter) grasps the astonishing God-and-man intimacy implied in the in-dwelling mystery as Sacred Scripture presents it, the whole concept of mental prayer will not only appear to be a nor-mal, expected next step but also an appealingly attractive occupation. And surely it is a chief function of any teacher to make his subject appealing, interesting, challenging. If, however, the divine inhabitation is presented to in-telligent young people for the purpose of moving them to a living of it, we feel that the teacher should avoid isolated approaches: merely speculative on the one hand or merely pietistic on the other. Few are moved by the former alone and no one is much enlightened by the latter alone. Hence, we prefer to begin by a study of Sacred Scripture, first the Old Testament and then the New. The Ancient Intimacy A careful research into the scriptural deposit dealing with God and man relationships will convince one that the theme underlying the whole divine message is an al-most incredibly beautiful desire on the part of God to be familiar with man. A demonstration of this fact is too vast a project to present exhaustively here, but if one studies Deuteronomy, the prophets, and the wisdom literature thoughtfully, he cannot fail to be impressed with the re-markable expressions Yahweh uses to indicate His desire to love and cherish and even fondle His people. Though we cannot attempt a complete exposition of this truth within the confines of our present discussion, we do wish to suggest a few illustrations of what we mean by the divine desire for interpersonal intimacy with man. These illustrations will serve to exemplify our intent in speaking of a scripturally orientated appreciation of men-tal prayer. Somewhat as the fully bloomed flower is contained in the tightly enclosed bud, so is the interindwelling mys-tery (the New Testament does not speak merely of an in-dwelling) of divine intimacy in the new dispensation con-tained in the many themed God-and-man familiarity of the old. Yahweh prepared the human family for the super-natural divine inhabitation by the gradual unfolding of His desire for a tender and mutual love between Himself and His intellectual creatures. In the Old Testament God uses several concrete images to make clear to the Hebrews how deep is His love and concern for them. He declares that His love is like a mar-ried love: He who has become your husband is your Maker. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back . With enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord your redeemer (Is 54:5,7-8). Then He says that His affection is like parental affection: + It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them into my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I ÷ fostered them like one raises an infant to his cheeks. Yet, though + I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their Approach toMental healer . How could I give you up, O Ephraim?. My heart is Prayer overwhehned, my pity is stirred (Hos 11:3-4,8). It would be difficult in any language to express a more concerned, a more touching, an even fondling intimacy. VOLUME 24, 1965 189 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 19~ Further, the divine love must be returned, a privilege that is also an obligation, an obligation enunciated with unusual solemnity and insistence on its being taught and remembered: Hear, O Israeli The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! There-fore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates (Dt 6:4-9). Tender concern has its root in love. A mother is anx-iously solicitous for her sick child precisely because she loves. Yahweh is at pains to convince Israel of His touch-ing concern because He loves with an inconceivably greater love. He uses the image of a father's strong care for his son: You saw how the Lord, your God, carried you, as a man carries his child, all along your journey until you arrived at this place (Dr l:~l). The divine eye is set even on the steps of a man and on each of his bones: His eyes are upon the ways of man, and he beholds all his steps (Jb 34:21) . He watches over all his bones; not one of them shall be broken (Ps 33:21). He cannot forget His human children: Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you (Is 49:15). It can come as no wonder, then, that the pious Hebrew responds with an utter and intimate trust toward this loving-kindness of his God. He piles image upon image to express it: I love you, O Lord, my strength, O Lord, my rock, my for-tress, my deliverer. My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my strongholdl Praised be the Lord, I exclaim, and I am safe from my enemies (Ps 17:2-4). His trust is implicit: I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord (Ps 26:13-4). His confidence is optimistic: Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord; let us acclaim the rock of our salvation. Let us greet him with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psahns to him (Ps 94:1-2). This loving trust brings a man very close indeed to his God, willing to pray to Him, eager to find fulfillment in Him: One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze on the loveli-ness of the Lord (Ps 26:4). Even in the old dispensation we may note how strikingly these interpersonal relations brought man near to God. No less than six or seven times in one short prayer does the Psalmist declare his proximity to his Maker: With you I shall always be; you have hold o[ my right hand; with your counsel you guide me, and in the end you will re-ceive me in glory. Whom else have I in heaven? And when I am with you, the earth delights me not. Though my flesh and my heart waste away, God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed, they who withdraw [rom you perish; you destroy everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, to be near God is my good; to make the Lord God my refuge (Ps 72:23-8). One must agree that this is a far from an indirect prep-aration for the indwelling mystery. Finally, we may not omit the yearning for God and the solid joy in the Lord themes so characteristic of any con-templative soul. If we can instill into our novices and seminarians a never to be lost sense of the Hebrew ve-hemence in pursuing God in prayer, whatever else we may do toward their proper formation, we have succeeded in planting their steps firmly and probably perpetually in a prayerful approach to the religious life. To us one of the most remarkable traits of Psalter spir-ituality is this vehemence of the Psalmist's longing for God. By any standard of judgment it is extraordinary. It betrays a lofty sanctity, a deep sense of the divine reality, a vibrant awareness that only Yahweh is the health of the soul. And this too is exactly what our young religious need to learn first in their initial meeting with mental prayer. One likes to imagine what kind of pray-ers we would turn out of our novitiates if we could merely begin to instill the following sentiments into their young hearts: As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, 0 God. Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?. 0 God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water . As with the riches of a banquet shall my. soul be satisfied, and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you. I will remember you upon nay couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you: that you are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you . I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like parched land . I gasp with open mouth in my yearning for your commands. How lovely is your dwelling place, 0 Lord of hostsl My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God . I had rather one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere . You will show me the 4, 4, 4, A tfl~roach to M~ntal Prayer VOLUME 24, 1965 191 + ÷ + Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 192 path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever . Only in God be at rest, my soul (Ps 41:2-3; 62:2-3,6-9; 142:6; 118:131; 83:2-3,11; 15:11; 61:6). If we religious sincerely possess these sentiments, not much more is required. It seems to us that this magnificent Old Testament invi-tation to intimacy with God (developed, of course, at greater length) is the psychologically sound introduction to mental prayer. Nothing is so appealing as Sacred Scrip-ture and nothing so compels a man to want to converse with another as the realization that this other loves him and is actually yearning for a conversation. And such is precisely the Old Testament story. It needs to be mastered by our formation personnel and presented to our young candidates. The New Interinclwelling Intimacy The new revelation uttered by the Word expands the old dispensation familiarity into the divine inhabitation in the souls of the just. If one examines the Gospels and Epistles without presuppositions stemming from diverse schools of theology, he will conclude, we submit, that however one looks upon the indwelling mystery as the New Testament presents it, he must characterize it as closely bound up with interpersonal relationships between the Trinity and the soul. The matter is not primarily spatial or local. God is naturally present everywhere, and the Jews who listened to Jesus knew that fact well from the clear statements of it in their sacred books. A new, supernatural presence seems to leave out of direct con-sideration-- but by no means denies--the natural immen-sity of God, His omnipresent power and His all-pene-trating knowledge. Hence, a priori we might expect that if God is present in the rational creature in some new manner, the newness may be an interpersonal affair, not a mere stark, physical location. Such it is. The indwelling of the Trinity in the souls of the just according to the new revelation is a super-natural, personal familiarity revolving around a mutual knowing and loving, an intimacy tailor-made for initiat-ing and fostering a life of mental prayer and recollected converse. Some Illustrations We may with profit examine a few instances of what we mean in saying that the indwelling presence revolves about the interpersonal relationships of mutual love and knowl-edge (and, consequently, delight). 1. The mutual love relationship. Of all interpersonal relations the most intimate and satisfying is a two-way love. Now it is surely no accident that according to the New Testament love is both a condition and a conse-quence of the Trinity's new supernatural presence in cer-tain men. I[ you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to dwell with you forever . He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . I~ anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (Jn 14:15-6,21,23; Rom 5:5; 1 Jn 4:16). Whatever the indwelling mystery means, it surely in-cludes some marvelous mutual love relationship between God and man. And what better preparation for grasping the concept and raison d'etre of mental prayer could one ask than a vivid realization of this fact? 2. The new knowledge relationship. Love presupposes knowledge. A carrot cannot love even on a sensitive level because it cannot know. We would expect, therefore, that if the new supernatural God and man intimacy demands a new love, it would imply a new knowledge. And so it does. In indwelling contexts we find in the New Testa-ment more than one reference to God somehow manifest-ing Himself to those who love Him. We learn that the indwelling Spirit somehow instructs His temple, that a man who does not love cannot really come to know God. You shall know him [the Spirit of truth], because he will dwell with you, and be in you . He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . You, however, are not carnal but spiritual, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you . The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God . In this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us . Everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love (Jn 14:17, 21; Rom 8:9,16; 1 Jn 3:24; 4:7-8). Again, how could we better prepare a young religious for a life of contemplating divine Truth than to help him understand this facet of the divine inhabitation, namely, that the Spirit of truth Himself is pouring out the light by which the soul progressively grows in an appreciation of divine reality? The more the young sister, brother, and seminarian realize this communal aspect of mental prayer the less they are inclined to take the dim view that their meditation is an individualistc, isolated, futile experience. 3. The interpersonal relations implied in "abiding, dwelling, temple." There is a vast difference between a stark, naked, merely material presence of one thing to an-other and a warm, personal, mutual knowledge-love-joy presence. If I take a bus trip with a total stranger at my + ÷ ÷ A ~rt oach to Mental Prayer VOLUME 2,~, 1965 193 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 194 side (who will not communicate with me), I am alone even though the bus be jammed with fifty passengers. If, how-ever, I journey with a dear friend, the situation is totally changed even though the rest of the bus be empty. For in-tellectual beings spatial presence is only a condition for full presence; and full presence is effected by mutual know-ing, loving, enjoying. It is significant that when the New Testament speaks of the divine inhabitation the words used usually imply much more than what we have called a stark, naked, material presence--as water is present in a jug. They imply a local inbeing, of course, but, much more, they imply the knowl-edge- love-delight presence of persons. In revelation Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are said to abide, dwell, to be given to us, to be in a temple, to be a joy, to be tasted. He will give you another Advocate to dwell with you for-ever, the Spirit of truth . We will come to him and make our abode with him . Abide in me and I in you . He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit .Abide in my love . These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?. Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? ¯. Crave as newborn babes, pure spiritual milk, dlat by it you may grow to salvation; if, indeed, you have tasted that the Lord is sweet. Draw near to him . He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (Jn 14:16,23; 15:4,5,9,11; Rom 5:5; 1 Cot 3:16; 6:19; 1 Pt 2:2-4; 1 Jn 4:16). Why are these words significant? Furniture is in a house, but it does not abide there; it does not dwell; it is not given to the house; nor is it a joy to the house. Persons, however, do abide and dwell in the house. They possess the building that may be given to them and they are a joy to one another. God is in an atom, a tree, a star. But they are not His temple, nor does He abide and dwell in them. And they in turn cannot enjoy and taste Him since they cannot know. God is also in the sinner and the pagan. But they are not his temple either, nor does He dwell in them. While both can know intellectually and the sinner may even pos-sess faith, neither possesses the unifying force of love. Nei-ther can taste and see how good the Lord is. Now all this, too, is immensely significant [or teaching and appreciating mental prayer. If this God Who is sought in prayer is so close that He can be tasted, so interested that He indwells, so good that He is given, He becomes a very easy to talk to God, a very easy to love God. And this is precisely what we are trying to get our young religious to do: to converse familiarly, to love ardently. At this point one may ask where he may find reference material on these interpersonal and indwelling relations in the Old and New Testaments. We are not aware of any work on the indwelling mystery that does what we here envision. We have ourselves for some considerable time been working on the interpersonal relations between God and man in the old dispensation and the indwelling mys-tery in the new. This much at least is now apparent, that if one does justice to the data available--and we mean scriptural and theological data--he will have a suitable introduction to an appreciation of mental prayer. We see no reason why novice mistresses and seminary professors cannot with patient study construct adequate courses on their own. 4. Activity of the Trinity within. Most of us conceive mental prayer chiefly as man's activity. God is principally an object reached by our reflections and affections, a lis-tener to what we have to say. It is we who reflect and seek and say. There is a partial truth here, namely, that man does think and will and attain his God. But it is only partial because all of his thinking, willing, attaining originate from the Fountain of all that is and operates. The children of men, we are told, have their fill of the prime gifts of your house; from your de-lightful stream you give them to drink. For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light (Ps 35:9-10). This Fountain pours out life and light from within the soul. He is not a far away God acting at a distance. He is so close He is within; He is dynamically present giving every act in mental prayer, every act of any virtue: The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your mind whatever I have said to you . He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . Whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God . In like manner the Spirit helps our weakness (Jn 14:26; 15:5; Rom 5:5; 8:14,26). Both the young novice and the seasoned contemplative should realize that their prayer is anything but a solo flight to God. Their very seeking to pray is a gift given by ÷ their indwelling Guests. All the more are their acts of ÷ faith, hope, charity, adoration so many outpourings of the ÷ Fountain within, Approacl~ to MenUg Prayer for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself pleads for us with unutterable groanings. And he who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit desires, that he pleads for the saints according to God (Rom 8:26-7). VOLUME 24, 1965 Thoroughness in Instruction Introductory instruction for our religious in the inter-personal relationships implied in the indwelling mystery cannot, in our opinion, be adequately given in a twenty-or thirty-minute explanation--not even in two or three half-hour conferences. We feel that our brief discussion in this article is not sufficiently developed for instructional purposes except insofar as it points out a general direction. To leave a deep impact not easily forgotten, the novice master or mistress should develop the indwelling mystery scripturally and theologically for perhaps eight or ten conferences. The novices will then be intellectually and psychologically prepared to see clearly that mental prayer is nothing other than a knowing-loving-delighting inter-personal familiarity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwelling within their very beings. They are much less likely to get lost or entangled in the intricacies of points and methods, and much less subject to imagining that mental prayer is a refined sort of intellectual study period in matters spiritual. Thoma~ Dubay, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 196 Methods and the Indwelling All this suggests a further question. If mental prayer is essentially an interpersonal converse on deeply intimate terms, what becomes of "points for meditation," intellec-tual considerations, truths thought out in a discursive manner? And especially if higher mental prayer is a sim-ple loving attention to the three divine Guests, why should the beginner be encouraged to engage in reflections? It is not our intention to add to the perhaps too volu-minous literature on meditation methods, but we do wish to offer several observations regarding them in the light of what we have thus far said. Once we grant that mental prayer is an interpersonal familiarity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then over-board immediately goes the notion that discursive medita-tion is a kind of study period in the spiritual life or, even less, that it implies a time for an elaborate examination of conscience. No doubt the beginner does learn about God and himself through meditation. And this is good. No doubt either that he does occasionally examine his con-duct in view of his reflections and aspirations. Good also~ provided this is kept within bounds. But, and this is im-portant, mental prayer is not primarily aimed at learning or at examining. It is primarily directed to yearning after, desiring, praising, loving God. The Psalms are inspired prayers. How much specula-tion do we find in them? How much examination? Very little. But we do find a large number of variegated expressions of praise, admiration, petition, gratitude, trust, love, long-ing--- expressions that disclose a sublime degree of sanctity in their authors. To illustrate our point we may remind ourselves of the Psalmist's ardent pining after God so im-portant to anyone who is to progress rapidly. We ask the reader to recall the strong words and the brilliant imagery the Hebrew spontaneously used to express his need for Yahweh. If before the intimacy of the indwelling presence was known men could be so vehement in their longing for God, we are hardly expecting too much when we look for the same vehemence after the revelation of the mys-tery. Beginners and the Intellectual Element These observations that mental prayer is neither mere speculation nor self-examination would seem to suggest that our instruction of novices should play down the cog-nitive elements in meditation and emphasize the affective. And this would seem especially to be the case with young sisters whose feminine nature is less inclined to specu-lation. This inference is only partially valid. For the typical be-ginner, masculine or feminine, we may not rule out dis-cursive reflection. Neither our comments nor feminine nature require that we treat human nature, even feminine human nature, as though it were not human. It remains true in prayer and it remains true for women that nothing is willed unless it is first known. This point we shall dis-cuss from the point of view of the young sister, for what we say of her applies a fortiori to the brother or seminar-ian. To say that the vast majority of young sisters do not or should not use their imaginations and reasoning power (discursive procedure) in meditation seems to us to sup-pose that the feminine psychology of cognition-appetition is not a fully human psychology. This position seems to suggest that by some sort of angelic, non-discursive intui-tion the young sister knows her prayer relations to God, while the young seminarian or brother must laboriously reason about and conclude to them. We readily grant that some young religious women even as novices are not inclined to discursive procedures at prayer but rather tend to an affective and at times highly simple prayer. But to us this does not prove that young sisters in general can dispense with imagining Christ in His human nature and with reasoning to proper motiva-tion in practicing the theological and moral virtues in meditation. All this proves is that God leads some souls more rapidly than others or, in other cases, that the young woman already understands through instruction and spir-itual reading the motives for seeking Christ and practicing ÷ ÷ ÷ A l~t~roavh to Mental Prayer VOLUME 24, 196.5 ]97 + ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]98 the virtues. In either case the religious feels no need for discursive reasoning. We doubt, however, that these cases are typical. Being human, women cannot be essentially different in their mental processes from men. And if we urged most young women in our novitiates to dispense with discursive re-flection and get on to affections immediately, most of them would be operating in a vacuum. Without solid intellec-tual basis their prayer could easily degenerate into mere emotionalism. St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila (both of whom understood feminine psychology to no small degree) supposed that the ordinary young woman imagined and recalled and reasoned in her early attempts at meditation. The former in his Introduction to a Devout Life (a work originally composed for women) tells Philothea how to make considerations at her mental prayer (Part 2, Chap-ter 5) and in the meditations he actually offers Francis presents many truths for reflection. St. Teresa, a genius both in feminine psychology and in mental prayer, told her sisters that it was good for them to meditate on God's works if they could, and this, she sup-posed by the advice she gave, was the usual case. When she speaks of beginners in prayer, more than once she refers to meditation on the life of Christ. We may note, for example, Chapter 11 in her Life and Chapter 2 of the First Mansions of the Interior Castle. A novice mistress, there-fore, needs a good deal of tact to know when to allow ex-ceptions to the rule, when to permit a young sister to omit imagination and reasoning and when to urge them. A psychological approach to instructing in mental prayer through the indwelling mystery does not require that we abandon the cognitive elements in discursive med-itation; but it does require that we see them in a proper perspective: not mere speculation nor self-examination but as a human requirement for the interpersonal relations of knowing-loving-enjoying the Trinity within. The young religious reflects on reasons for yearning after God not merely for the sake of understanding the divine goodness but for the sake of actual yearning. And the same is true of praising, sorrowing, thanking, wondering, loving, and all the rest. For the beginner discourse in meditation is a means to the end. It is not the end. Advantages of the Indwelling Approach There are several reasons why formation personnel should begin instruction in mental prayer with the divine familiarity-indwelling themes rather than with concep-tual analyses and methodologies. First of all, what we have proposed is realistic and there is nothing so effective as measuring up to reality. Prayer is converse. Not study. Not examination. And God is near, so near He is within. We do not speak with the Father, His Son, and their Holy Spirit by a supernatural telephone line. To teach mental prayer merely as methodology or examination is to teach either artificiality or particular examen. Secondly, when the young novice or postulant first hears about meditation set in this framework, it appears as nor-mal, warm, human. It is appealing, what one would ex-pect. l'Vho is not attracted to conversing with a charming person--and especially when this charming person is like-wise longing to converse? One of the obstacles facing some young men and women just leaving the world is the feel-ing that God is distant, uninterested, or, more likely, dis-pleased with them. Sometimes these youngsters have a vivid recollection of their past unfaithfulness; and they consequently experience difficulty in looking upon God as close, concerned, caring about them. This approach to prayer life through the divine Word itself can do much to break down distrust and fear. Thirdly, our proposed instruction should get the nov-ices immediately into the heart and purpose of mental prayer: the exercise of the theological virtues and the virtue of religion. If it is true that meditation is not pri-marily aimed at learning what the spiritual life is about (classes, conferences, and spritual reading take care o[ that), a method of mental prayer is commendable insofar as it leads one to acts of faith, hope, charity, and the praise of God. To begin instruction by the various methods and points seems to be saying to young novices: "I am going to show you how you can learn more about God and about yourself, so that you may apply this knowledge to your daily life by uprooting your faults and practicing the vir-tues in action." This is good, to be sure, but misdirected all the same. Genuine mental prayer does aid mightily in uprooting faults and practicing virtues, but this result comes preponderantly through growth in love. Here we may add a parenthesis that is by no means ir-relevant. Why do so many priests later give up any serious practice of mental prayer and why do veteran brothers and sisters sometimes find this exercise almost meaningless? Although the chief reason is a neglect of grace somewhere along the line, yet we suspect that a partial culprit is in-struction that presented meditation as virtues to be ac-quired rather than a lovable God to be pursued. One can get tired of reflecting on and even practicing obedience, humility, purity for abstract reasons, but he cannot get tired of pursuing someone he loves. Even in deep aridity the faithful soul who has been pursuing God finds an ir-resistible charm in intensifying the pursuit: O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines Approach to Mental Prayer VOLUME 24, 1965 ]99 ÷ Thomas Dubay, $.M. and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water . For your kindness is a greater good than life; my lips shall glorify you . I will remember you upon my couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you. My soul clings fast to you (Ps 62:2,4,7,9). Our fourth reason for suggesting this supernatural in-timacy- indwelling approach to mental prayer is that the moral virtues automatically develop once a man or woman is rightly ordered to God. Experiencing through prayer the patience and gentleness of the divine goodness to man is a powerful spur for a man to be patient and gentle with his fellows. And contemplatives know from experience that the indwelling Spirit gives more humility through infused love than they could acquire in months of medita-tion on their own lowliness. A soul which is on intimate terms with God is a soul rapidly shedding its faults. Our approach to mental prayer is aimed precisely at developing this intimacy. The final reason is the most basic and ultimate of all. The indwelling approach being utterly real is a beginning of the end. It is an intrusion of time into eternity. Man's final, inexpressible destiny is a knowing-loving-enjoying absorption in the Trinity: This is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ . We see now through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to face . Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he appears, we shall be like to him, for we shall see him just as he is . Eye has not seen or ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him (Jn 17:3; 1 Cot 13:12; 1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 2:9). Pope Leo XIII has observed that there is no substantial difference between the indwelling of earth and that of heaven. The diversity is one of state or condition: now we believe, then we see; now we love and enjoy imperfectly, interruptedly, then we love and enjoy perfectly, without interruption. Man's occupation with God on earth, there-fore, should resemble that of heaven insofar as his condi-tion permits. Living the indwelling mystery in the young religious' prayer Iife should be the beginning of an eternal intimacy: "Mary has chosen the best part, and it will not be taken away from her" (Lk 10:42). REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 900 MICHAEL M. DORCY, S.J. To Be Samaritans All We are all occasionally stopped by the embarrassing question put by others or by our deeper selves: "What is this thing called Christianity all about?" One begins pawing through the prolific--perhaps too prolific-- thematic variations to discover the underlying theme. Incorporated, often encrusted, as it is in its so many varying articulations, the essential Christian message becomes a forbidding complexity. But at its core the Christian message is disarmingly simple, although the living-out of it may be far from a simple matter. For the early Christians the Christian message was the good news, the best news yet. Paul called for a simple acceptance of Christ dead and resurrected. His epistolary explanation of the Christian vocation addressed to the saints at Ephesus has its beauty in the straightforward way in which Paul says: In those days there was no Christ for you . You were strangers to the covenant, with no promise to hope for, with the world about you and no God. But now you are in Jesus Christ; now through the blood of Christ, you have been brought close, you who were once far away. (Eph 2:12-13). The Christian today who remains attuned to his call stands out against his non-believing fellows as one who believes that life is neither absurd nor its own explana-tion, an end in itself. For the Christian, temporal existence has a meaning and a value of its own; but he is at the same time aware that life has another side to it, a side that opens out onto eternity. And he realizes that the temporal ultimately derives its value from the presence of the Eternal within time itself. For the Christian, his-tory is the concrete unfolding of the wisdom and love of God. He believes in a God who is basically a family, who authored life out of love and who labors now in time, trying to end the rift between Himself and man for which man is, and feels himself, responsible. This God, revealing Himself as a God who cares, has in the pivotal event of human history finally, physically entered time in the flesh-taking activity of the Second Person of the divine family, whose life, death, and resurrection evi- Michael M. Dorcy, s.J., is a fac-ulty member of Marquette Univer-sity High School; 3401 West Wiscon-sin Avenue; Mil-waukee, Wisconsin 53208. VOLUME 241 1965 201 Michael Dotty, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 202 dence and effect a plan whereby all men are joined to Him and would live as adopted sons within the family of God. In short, the Christian's God has said: "I have loved you, man! I love you now. This only do I ask in return: Love me." And man fumbles for a response: "God, You tell us to love You. But how do we love You?" God an-swers simply: "If you have seen, really seen, your brother, you have seen God. If you love your brother, you love Me." The Christian confronted with God's tale of love tries to answer by carving his own love story in time. But love is not an easy notion either to understand or to live by. In the New Testament which is the text for the school of love one finds passages which are more helpful than others for discerning what is precisely Christian about Christian love. One such place is the parable of the Good Samaritan where one finds in a compactness perhaps nowhere else equalled in all of Sacred Scripture the es-sentials of the love that was Christ's. Here we have the type of the Christian, of the man whose life completely revolves around authentic love. In the person of the Samaritan, Christ draws a portrait of Himself. Significantly, once when accused by some of the Jews of "being a Samaritan and possessed," Christ an-swered: "I am not possessed" (Jn 8:48-9). The Samaritan of the parable is described in terms which elsewhere throughout the Gospels the evangelists have reserved for Christ. The Samaritan is moved to compassion (literally, stirred in his inwards) as was Christ when He saw the multitudes and took pity on them, or when He melted away under the tears of the widow at Naim (Lk 7:12-3). The story itself is simple, but forever new and rich in meaning: A man was once traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Bandits attacked him. They stripped and beat him and left him to die. A priest chanced by, going along the same road. He saw the victim but went to the other side and continued on his way. Then a levite came by. He too saw him but went on. A Samaritan was also journeying by. Drawing near, he saw him. And he was touched to the heart at the sight. He went up to him, bandaged his wounds, and applied oil and wine to them. Then he put him on his own mount and brought him to an inn where he cared for him. The next day he gave two silver pieces to the innkeeper. "Take care of him," he said, "and whatever it costs I'll pay when I return." "Which o[ the three, in your opinion, acted as a neighbor to the man who had fallen into the hands of the bandits?" He answered: "The one who showed him mercy." "Go," Jesus told him, "and do the same." The Cast of Characters: The Man Without Qualities One can derive much from looking in turn at the characters who make up the story. We know next to nothing (and everything) about the man who was done in by the robbers. He is Oudeis No-Name, the man without qualities (or rather, a man deprived of all but the most insignificant of qualities, that of situs: he was "journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho"). Without name, or race, or nationality, or status in society, quali-tatively denuded of all, he is left physically naked, al-most lifeless by the wayside. He is man in the raw, any one of us, a pilgrim, homo viator, man-on-the-make, man-on-the-move, a fellow traveller on the road of life. To give him any qualities, to endow him with some de-terminations, as we instinctively try to do, is to limit the extensiveness and inclusiveness of the notion of love that is being presented. The Priest and the Levite: The Fatality of Conscious- Hess The priest and the levite are the type of those who fail in the school of love. Representative, first of all, of the twofold division of the tribe of Levi, they are the em-bodiment of the hierarchy of the old dispensation, a dispensation devoid of real freedom. They are actually men enslaved, clutching their alien gods which go by a thousand different names. They are enslaved to the various tyrannies of categorical and legalistic thinking, to idealisms which overlook the here-and-now individual in the name of futurity or collectivity. Here are the Pharisees who rejected Christ because He eluded those preconceived, static, and depersonalized archetypes which they had of the Messiah. Here, too, is the misguided spectator-priest of today who passes by life in the names of celibacy, intellectual pursuits, prayer, and a host of other things. Here is the religious man who has offered himself to God, so wrapped up and tightly closed that God Himself, as Claudel says somewhere, would break His fingernails trying to pry him open. Here is the re-ligious who has detached himself from everything except his detachment. Here is that devastating brood, the im-personal apostles of personalism, and those in love with "love" and nothing more. Here are those who are caught in what Pope John called "the fallacy of overlooking the little good at our disposal in the name of the unrealiza-ble 'better'." Here are men dedicated to "tomorrow" and who use and abuse today for their own ends; men who labor tirelessly for a vague, amorphous, impersonal "Society" and who step all over the people who live next door. Here are the men who will be charitable when things are set, conditions right--men who will dictate their own circumstances, name their own times. Here are men whose effectiveness is dissolved into nothingness because in the name of religion they flee the "world," Samaritans All VOLUME 24, 1965 203 Miclmel Dotty, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 204 forgetting that the spiritual exists for the world and that the function of the Church is to embrace the world much as a lifeguard does a drowning man or much as the Samaritan did the wounded wayfarer. These are men, in short, who have never really learned to say "we." They are those who would leap from the temporal, blind to the fact that God works immanently under their very noses, in the very next face that they meet. It is significant that the priest and the levite are repre-sentative of a class which today we would label "intel-lectuals." Here is the type of man minutely portrayed by such contemporary thinkers and writers as Thomas Mann and Andrd Malraux. These are men who are un-able to bridge through action that gulf of detachment which necessarily follows upon consciousness. In a sense it is man's fate, but paramountly it is the intellectual's scourge. For unlike the animals whose response is quick and instinctual, man with his withinness can, even in the thick of the most violent physical activity, reflect and debate and prolong to eternity that increment be-tween impulse and act. The man who is unable to bridge the gap, who becomes isolated on his "magic mountain," ultimately becomes a man who is untrue, since he neg-lects the truth of his convictions and commitments which can come only in the completion afforded by the act itself. The Samaritan: Spontaneity and Commitment The actions of the Samaritan have much to tell us about true love. The love that was his, that was Christ's, and that Christ would have our own, is a love marked by compassion, spontaneity, personal and lasting commit-ment. The Samaritan was a man who traditionally had in-herited and experienced apartheid---of locale, of creed, of social and political relationships. It should be remem-bered what sentiments the mention of a Samaritan would have evoked on the part of a first-century Jew. The Samaritan was the archetype of the alien, the Stranger, the heretic, the lost-one: in just the preceding chapter (9:52) Luke relates how the Sons of Thunder wanted to call down fire upon a Samaritan village; Christ's dealings with the woman at the well (Jn 4:5) were viewed askance by the disciples. But the appearance in the Gospels of the Samaritans as real individuals en-countered by Christ defies any categorical imposition of traits. A Samaritan was the only one of the ten lepers who returned to thank our Lord (Lk 17:17). He was a man committed, and a man who remained lastingly committed as did the Samaritan of the parable. The Samaritan woman at the well On 4:5) was a woman immediately attractive to us because of her honesty, simplicity, openness, and spontaneity. She wanted to share the goodness that had come her way. She brought others to Christ, and "they heard and believed for themselves." The Samaritan of the parable is a man marked by the spontaneity of his reaction. Both his emotional re-sponse and its resultant action are quick and full. Un-like the priest or the levite who stand for intellectual detachment, the Samaritan is instinctive, but in a thoroughly human way. He is a man who has cultivated receptivity. He is attuned to his entire surroundings. He does not channel or restrict the arena of his purview or of his action. He is open to all. He takes in all he passes by, ready and alert to act. He realizes that his first re-sponsibility is always to that which is at hand. He is completely arrested by the sight of affliction in another human being. "He took pity on him": the Greek word (esplagthtdso-mai) suggests a very human, a very physical emotion. Literally, he was stirred in his bowels (splfigthnos). It is a strong emotion, a pure emotion. And it is a loadstone to action. At times it must override the strict logic of justice or the dictatorship of a false prudence. Another name it has is mercy. What we see is a physical, particular, defi-nitely directed reaction to a particular and concrete in-stance of human affliction. The result of this spontaneous compassion is a spon-taneous recourse to action. The action is immediate and adjusted to the circumstances; it is the "little good at one's immediate disposal." Perhaps the Samaritan was later moved to take positive action towards effecting legislation for better and safer road travel. But this vi-sion of the "better," of the long-range good, did not obliterate the definite and immediate need of the robber victim. And primarily interested in conveying the dis-tinctive, primary, and essential note of Christian charity, Christ did not think it important to incorporate the long-range notion within the parable at all. That is not where the difficulty lies. The visionary can, as the priest and the levite had, blind himself to the live-a-day world in terms of which he is summoned to live out his vocation. The larger view, the looking-toward-tomorrow, are noble and necessary operations. Yet, they are never to be assumed as surro-gates for the immediate needs of today. The prompt and immediate action of the Samaritan protects him from the self-deceit endemic to the vision-ary. A man can easily deceive himself as regards his re-lationship to God, but he cannot as easily do so about his treatment of his neighbor. The truth of love lies in ÷ + + Samaritans All rot.urgE 24, 1,~,5 205 Michael Doroj, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 206 its "deed" (1 Jn 3:18). And St. John further warns us about self-deceit in this matter: "If any man boasts of loving God while he hates his own brother, he is a liar. He has seen his brother and has no love for him; what love can he have for the God he has never seen?" (1 Jn 4:20). These are harsh words in all but the ears ot~ the Samaritan. The Samaritan is remarkable for the sense of commit-ment he shows as he accepts the challenge and responsi-bility which the priest and

Issue 22.2 of the Review for Religious, 1963. ; EVODE BEAUCAMP, O.F.M. Sin and the Bible Throughout1 the New Testament the work of Christ is presented as a victory over sin. To speak of sin in this connection is to evoke an agelong experience which is highly complex and which can not be neglected if one wishes to comprehend the matter in all its extent and fullness. The word sin is a familiar one to us; yet it is no older than the Greek of the Septuagint. Before the Sep-tuagint there can not be found in the sacred text a single word exactly corresponding to it. The Alexandrian trans-lator has included under this single word the varying nuances of a number of terms; through this word he has thereby evoked all the forms which were taken through the course of centuries by the resistance of Israel to the salvific activity of God. There can be no question of giving here a study of sin in the Bible; for that is a problem entirely too large. We shall simply mark out the essential lines in order that we might have a better understanding of the problem of sin and that as a consequence we may be able to provide a catechetical presentation of sin that will be more richly nourished by the vitality of the Bible. The God of the Bible ancl the Problem o] Good anti Evil Like all the surroundin~ peoples, Israel united into one word evil and unhappiness on the one hand, goodness and happiness on the other. The first of these words is simultaneously disorder, deceit, emptiness, and death; the second is virtue, fullness of life, and peace. Every deed carries within itsel~ its own consequences: evil in-volves unhappiness while goodness implies happiness: Do no evil, and evil will not overtake you; avoid wickedness, and it will turn aside from you. Sow not in the furrows of in-justice, lest you harvest it sevenfold (Sir 7:1-3). Moreover, one finds in the Bible different ways of ex-pressing the same proverb: This article is translated with permission from the magazine Catdchistes, n. 49 (January 1, 1962), pp. 5-19. The magazine is pub-lished by Procure des Frhres; 78, rue de Shvres; Paris 7, France. 4. 4. Evode Beaucamp O.F.M., a Scripture scholar, lives at Via di Decima Kin. I; Rome, Italy. VOLUME 22, 1965 129 4. 4. ÷ Erode Beaucnmp, O.I~.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 130 Those who conceive malice bring forth emptiness; they give birth to failure (Jb 15:35). They sowed the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind (Hos 8:7). What is original in the Bible is the teaching that good-ness, physical as well as moral, has only one source: God. "O Lord," cries the Psalmist, "thou art my welfare; there is none beside thee." And for Amos the two expressions "to seek God" and "to seek the good" are perfectly identi-cal; both the one and the other offer the secret of life (Amos 5:4-14). The successful issue of human existence is found on the way which Yahweh points out and only there: For this reason will all go well with us, because we obeyed the voice of our God (Jer 42:6). You must keep his commands., that you may prosper, and your children after you, and that you may live long . (Dt 4:40). You must do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord that you may prosper (Dr 6:18; see also 12:25 and 28). The Law given by Yahweh to His people is the way of happiness: "You must keep my laws and ordinances, by the observance of which man shall find life (Lv 18:5).'° This is a point which is important to remember when the idea of the Law is presented; the love of the Jews for the Torah is incomprehensible if it is not realized that Yah-weh is legislator precisely insofar as He is father, bene-factor, shepherd, and defender of His people. Moreover, this throws light on the well-known problem of reward. The Bible does not say that happiness is received as a recompense for goodness but that happiness is the fruit of goodness and that it is to be found at the end of the way. Evil is not treated in the same way as is goodness; the God of the Bible never attributes to Himself a paternir.y with regard to evil. For the Psalmists, evil is the absence of God; and it is towards Him that one must turn to be freed from it. Nevertheless, it is in relationship to God that evil is defined: evil is the reverse of what He wills, of the course of :action that He teaches. As the author of Chapters Three and Four of Genesis has carefully sho~qn, the evils which weigh on humanity are not imputable to the Creator; the responsibility falls on man who has at-tempted to find his happiness outside of God, to flee his dependence on Yahweh by himself possessing the key of good and evil. Man has set himself on the desperate route that leads far from Paradise: Woe to them that have wandered away from reel (Hos O Lord, thou hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who prove faithless to you in the land shall be brought to confusion, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water (Jer 17:13). Let us remark in passing that the God of the Bible never reproaches man for his thirst for greatness and happiness; what is reproached is the attempt to satisfy this outside of God. Unlikei the gods of Surher and Baby-lon, Yahweh has the intention of giving His creature the fullness of life and happiness, but He teaches that this must be done by Him: If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would only walk in my ways, I would quickly humble their foes . he would be fed with the finest of the wheat; and with honey from the rock would I satisfy you (Ps 81:13-14, 16). Although man punishes himself by separating himself from God (see Jb 22:3 ft.), the Bible, nevertheless, does not hesitate to show us Yahweh personally intervening to punish with all the power of His anger. It is He who hardens the pharaoh, as it is He who brings evil upon His unfaithful people: I am watching over them for evil and not for good (Jet 44:27). I will set my eye upon them for evil, and not for good (Amos It is curious to observe how the inspired writers can com-plain both that Yahweh hides His face and remains dis-tant from His chosen ones (Ps 88:14) and that He turns His face against them (Jer 44:11): "The face of the Lord has scattered them; he no longer regards them" (Lain 4:16). And some of the sacred writers are heard to cry out: Will you never take your eye off me, nor let me alone till I swallow my saliva? (Jb 7:19). Turn your gaze away from me, that I may be glad (Ps 39:13). Yahweh never ceases to assert His exclusive right to bestow good on His chosen ones even when they turn away from Him to their own loss. In the evils which then beset them, there can always, be detected the avenging pursuit of a cheated love: So I will be unto them like a lion; or like a leopard by the road I will lurk. I will rend them like a bear robbed of its cubs; and I will tear off the covering of their heart (Hos 13:7-8). Pursued by the love he has denied, the sinner sees him-self abandoned by all: "Thou has put friend and com-panion far from me" (Ps 88:18). He is abandoned even by the earth which bears and nourishes him: I am bringing upon them a disaster which they shall not be able to escape (Jet 11:11). I will rend and be gone; I will carry off, with none to rescue (Hos 5:14). Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 13! + + + Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Behold, I am going to make a groaning under you (Amos 2:13). Unlike the Egyptian god Aten, Yahweh is not indif. ferent when He distributes life and happiness. His gifts are always made from a personal and jealous love. Hence He can not but react vigorously when man prefers deceit, nothingness, and ruin to His love. The blows which He deals as well as His tragic silence can lead the wanderer back to the road of return: I withdraw to my own place, until they realize their guilt and seek my face, searching for me in their distress (Hos 5:15). And yet it is necessary that this appeal be heard and followed: It was I that gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities . it was I that withheld from you the rain, three months before the harvest . I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards . I sent a pestilence like that of Egypt among you . But you did not return to me (Amos 4:6-10). When sin is presented as disobedience to the Law of God, it is necessary to realize that this Law is the path marked out by God and leading to life and happiness; to disobey it is to wish to conduct one's life by oneself and to run towards one's own ruin. The God whose love has been scorned will not be content to let us leave; He will inexorably bar the way that leads to peace just as formerly He posted the cherubim with their swords of fire to pre-vent Adam and his descendants from access to the Para-dise that had been lost: They are a people who err in their hearts, and do not know my ways. So that I swore in my anger that they should not enter into my rest (Ps 95:10-11). The Special Demands o[ the Covenant The Bible is not satisfied with presenting man in con-frontation with God; for the Bible the heart of the matter is the elect one in confrontation with the God who has chosen him. The peace dreamt of by the Jews of old, peace between the members of. one community, peace with the external world and the earth where men liv~.~- this peace is the fruit of the covenant of Sinai (see Lv 26:3-13; Dt 11:13-15). From the viewpoint of the history of religions, one of the most original characteristics of this alliance is the tact that the initiative belongs exclusively to God and not at all to the people; it is Yahweh who has chosen Israel and not Israel who has chosen Yahweh. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, Yahweh repeatedly emphasizes the absolute liberty of His choice, a liberty that gives Him the right to demand obedience without reserve or mur-mur. The elect one should adjust his conduct to the direc- tives given by his God; he must seek that "which is right in the eyes of Yahweh"; he must "march perfectly before Him" without "swerving" from the way "either to the right or the left." Hence.the existence of Israel was constitute~ by the acceptance of these demands;~and these;demands were unceasingly renewed nor were they ever fully completed at any given moment of history. The more Israel, through a better understanding of the obligations of the covenant, wished to submit to them, the larger the number of them grew. In its always unsatisfied thirst to stay perfectly close to the divine will, the chosen people never ceased to develop the principles at the base of the Mosaic legis-lation of the Decalogue (Ex 20:3-17; Dt 5:6-21) and of the code of the covenant (Ex 20:22-26) into the different priestly codes and the enormous growths of the rabbinical tradition. Since there existed this demand for a perfection never perfectly attained ("You must be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy" fLy 19:2]; "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" [Mt 5:48]), an exhaustive list of sins is nowhere to be found in the Bible; prophets, Psalmists, and wise men give us but certain ones among many. In every epoch and in all circumstances, the obli-gations of the covenant remain unlimited; the human party of the covenant never succeeds in rising to the level of the demands of the divine party. Basically, the sin of later Judaism will be to pretend to arrest this movement of divine improvement by attempting to imprison the divine will within the walls of a definitive and rigid tra-dition. There is no need to emphasize that the same dan-ger lies in wait for every spiritual life, that there will always be a tendency to substitute for the unlimited de-mands of Christian perfection a code of limited rules which each person can hope some day to fulfill com-pletely. The covenant not only implies the demands of a bond faithfully maintained between God and His people, but it also includes the demands of a union between the in-dividual members of this people. Yahweh expects that His people should practice among themselves the justice and mercy which He has bestowed on them. The pious Israelite must never forget to share his joy with the stranger, the orphan, the widow; for, as Deuteronomy puts it: "You must remember that you were once a slave yourself in Egypt" (Dt 16:12). For the same reason it is forbidden to retain one's brother in the state of slavery (Lv 25:55; Dt 15:15); nor ought one to treat a stranger with scorn (Lv 19:34; Dt 24:17). In this principle can be seen the first outline of the thought of the Master: "Love each other as I have loved you." ÷ ÷ ÷ Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 4. + Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIL~V FOR RELIGIOUS Hence it is that along with the infidelities of the people towards God, the absence of social justice appears as the chief accusation directed by Yahweh against Israel. From the beginning of prophetism (for example, with Elijah), the struggle is waged on two fronts: opposition to the introduction of foreign cults and the respect for the rights of the weak (Naboth's vineyard, 1 K 21). As the Lord Himself emphasized, the entire legislation of Israel re. volves around this double commandment: to love God with one's whole heart and one's neighbor as oneself. The same is to be found in the warnings of the prophets, the Psalmists, and the wise men: You have been told, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you'. Only. to do l'ustice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly wtth your God (Mi 6:8; see also Jer 7:5-11). It will not be useless to insist somewhat on this capital point; since we have too great a tendency to distinguish sins against God and sins against neighbor, it is necessary to show how every sin against God leads to injustice with regard to neighbor and how every sin against one's neigh-bor is a blow struck against the rights of God. The first chapters of Genesis in the Yahwist and priestly redac-tions already present evil under this double dimension. The murder of an innocent person follows the act by which Adam made himself independent of his Creator, while the union of the sons of gods with the daughters of men (probably an allusion to sacred prostitution) in-volves the unleashing of violence upon the earth. In a more general way, the Bible unites under the single He. brew word resha' the idea of both impiety and evil-doing, The person who so acts is frequently referred to through-out the Psaher; he is a person who intends to do without God and to live his life entirely by himself and who, in consequence, makes use of force, deceit, and lies: The fool says in his heart: There is no God. Such men are corrupt; they do abominable deeds; there is not one who does good (Ps 14:1; see also Ps 9; 10; 12; 52; 62; and so forth). His adversary and his victim is the just man, the man who expects salvation and justification from God alone and who therefore does not seek to take the law in his own hands nor do himself justice at the expense of others. The life of David furnishes an excellent illustration of these two cases of the evil man and the just man. Sens-ing that Yahweh would give to him the crown of Saul, David steadfastly refused to touch the sacred person of the king; for he intended to owe his royalty: to Yahweh alone and he did not wish to do things wrongly. Accord-ingly, through terrible execution or a no less terrible curse, he decisively disassociated himself from all those who wished to hasten the event by doing violence to Saul or his son or the general of his army (2 S 1:15; ~:28 ft.; 4:10 ft.). In contrast to the dynasties of, usurpers, the dynasty of David was not in its origin tainted by blood (2 K 2:5). But in the affair of Uriah, the king of Jerusalem took a completely opposite c#ur.se; here he acted,asian impious and evil person. Nathan" recalled to the guilty monarch everything that Yahweh had done for him and pointed out to him how He was still ready to do more. But David had lacked confidence; he had chosen to take care of him-sell and this he did at the expense of one of his own subjects. There is, then, no rejection of God which does not eventually turn into injustice, just as there is no in-justice which is not a disregard of the power of the God of :the covenant. For a Christian, to sin is not only to disobey the eternal laws of the Creator; it is also a refusal of the covenant and a scorning of the love of the Father of all. Human Resistance and God's Final Victory The covenant supposes a history; it is at the center of a plan that develops by stages. At each of these stages man tries to block the plan, but his actions do not prevent God from having the final word. It is interesting to follow step by step the resistances of those who were the bene-ficiaries of the covenant, for in them are to be found all the possible forms which man's refusal of God's offer can take. 1. The choice of the elect from the midst of a humanity immersed in sin. Because the human race had turned from Him and had obstinately buried itself in evil, Yah-weh drew forth from it Israel in the desire to make of it a people who would follow His directives. Hence the election of Abraham is presented in the Yahwist tradition of Genesis as the last effort made by Yahweh to prevent His creation from going to perdition apart from Him. This evil had begun when Adam, in his desire for in-dependence, had lost Paradise. Nevertheless, Yahweh did not abandon this fugitive from Him; He gave him the hope of a future victory over the evil in which he had immersed himself; He had even covered the nakedness that the guilty couple had become aware of. To the first couple, punished by their pride, there succeeded a gen-eration of murderers: Cain and his descendants. Once more Yahweh intervened to prevent fallen humanity from disappearing, from the earth under the inexorable blows of the curse of blood. The union of the sons of the gods with the daughters of men provoked such a release of violence that Yahweh decided on the complete de-struction of His work. Nevertheless, He saved from the catastrophe a just man with whom He concluded a cove- 4- 4- 4- VOLUME 22, 1963 4, 4, 4, Erode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 136 nant. This was not yet the last act of the drama; the last scene of the beginnings of the human race is the episode of the tower of Babel, the dispersion of the sons of Adam after their aborted attempt to construct a tower that would reach to heaven. Nevertheless, the efforts of Yahweh to arrest man in his vertiginous descent into the abyss were not in vain; for, after the episode of the tower of Babel, a new history begins: the vocation of Abraham, the epic of the patri-archs, the covenant of Sinai. To the first scene of a uni-versal invasion of evil, there succeeds that of the increas-ingly solicitous enterprise of God with regard to a people whom He would choose for His own. Under different forms the same idea is found almost everywhere in the Old Testament. To explain the fact that Israel had taken the place of the Canaanites, the legal texts, for example, tell us that the latter were chased from their land because they had done "what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh"; He had determined to give their land to a people who would agree to live according to His will. But misfortune would come to this people if they ever dared to imitate the conduct of their predeces-sors; He would not hesitate to deprive them of the land. The falling back into the world of sin from which Yah-weh had drawn them led Judah to its ruin, as Jeremiah and Ezekiel emphatically pointed out. The sin of the elect is in fact a return to the sin of the nations after having been freed from it. Each election is pictured as a rupture: Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house (Gn 12:1), Forget your people and your father's house (Ps 45:11). The call of God implies an ascent towards Him by the practice of what is "right in His eyes" and by a renuncia-tion of "what is evil in his eyes." This initial break must continue throughout the course of time; this requires a constant effort at disencumbrance, for the surrounding world never ceases to exert pressure on the elect to make them fall back under its law. This is the drama of every vocation, not only to religious life but to Christianity self. 2. Resistance to the hand that guides. After He had led the people from Egypt, Yahweh made them cross the desert before bringing them to the Promised Land. The desert is the sign of temptation, a testing of faith. In other words, Yahweh would not give the land of Canaart to the Hebrews unless they abandoned themselves to Him without reserve by remaining faithful to the memory of the marvelous act of liberation by which they left Egypt. But hunger, thirst, and fatigue quickly overcame the faith of the former slaves of the pharaohs. They soon forgot the extraordinary epic of the Exodus; they mur-mured and rebelled against Moses and Aaron; they be-came enraged at seeing themselves in a venture which seemed to be pointless; and they dreamed nostalgically of the onions of Egypt. They refused to march forward on the grounds that the:.P~-omised Land W~s~'fi0t good enough and because the enterprise was to their minds a doomed one (Nm 14). This lack of confidence induced the people of Moses to attempt to assure themselves of the protection of their God by placing Him at their service and by forcing His hand as they wished. This is what the Bible calls "tempt-ing God." Instead of Yahweh "tempting" and trying the people in order to make them proceed according to His will, it was Israel who tempted its God, attempting to bring Him into the service of human caprice. Hence when Moses delayed coming down from the mountain and Yahweh made them wait for His answer, the He-brews made the golden calf, a material representation of their God which would allow them to control Him and to"make Him advance according to their desires at the head of their army. This recalcitrant attitude of the elect blocked the entire matter of the election and prevented their entering the rest of God (Ps 95:11). The intercession of Moses effected a compromise: the rebellious generation died in the desert and only their children possessed the right to the heritage of the God of the covenant. 3. Profanation of God's gift. The covenant gift of the land of Canaan should have created the indissoluble bonds of a steadfast love between Israel and God. Unfortunately, Israel, once it was secure and satisfied, was quick to forget: I led them to pasture; with food came satiety, and with satiety pride; and with pride came forgetfulness of me (Hos 13:6; see also Dt 32:15). The riches of the land of Canaan, instead of constantly recalling to the people the solicitude of Yahweh, drove Him from their mind and nurtured in them the illusion of being able to escape the jealous influence of their God. With the products of their land, they attempted to buy protection abroad; this was a seeking after "lovers"--the famous theme of prostitution. Often this theme is con- [used with the closely related one of adultery. The idea of prostitution certainly includes the notion of unfaith-fulness, but it is wider than that; it is not only the betrayal of love, it is also the profanation of the gifts of love: But you trusted in your beauty, and played the harlot on your reputation; you lavished your harlotries on everyone who passed by. You took off your garments, and made yourself gaily decked shrines, on which you played the harlot. You took also your splendid ornaments of gold and silver, which I had given 4- 4- VOLUME 22, 196;1 4. 4" Erode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 138 you, and made yourself images of men, with which you played the harlot. And you took your embroidered robes, and wrapped them in these. My oil and my incense you set before them; my bread which I had given you-~the choice flour, oil, and honey with which I had fed you--you set before them as a soothing odor (Ez 16:15-19). The Chosen People made use of what Yahweh had given them in order to curry the favor of the baals or to buy alliances with the peoples that surrounded them. Resistance to the hand that Ied them or profanation of the gift received represent two aspects of the rebellion of the children of God. However, none of the stages of the history of salvation exists in an absolutely pure state. Hence it is that throughout the length of our Christian life sin can put on the form of a refusal to proceed in the desert and of a prostitution when one, for his own pur-poses and independently of God, makes use of the gift which he has received from His love. The Old Testament leaves us with a vision of a check-mate: God is not able to regain the human race which from the beginning had plunged itself into sin and sepa-rated itself from Him. Unless God would make a new heart for men, they would never be able to rise up to the level of the divine demands. Even the Law which Yahweh had given His elect in an attempt to free them from the surrounding evil came in the end only to increase sin (Rom 7:7-25). The cross of Christ and the gift of the Spirit are necessary in order that we might escape the in. fernal cycle. It is then that there appears that new man according to the heart of God whom the prophets Jere-miah and Ezekiel had predicted: I will give you a new heart, and will put within you a new spirit; I will remove the heart of stone out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances (Ez 36:26-27). There is no need to emphasize that one must not present the Law of Christ which alone can make us pleasing to God without adding that this Law is impractical if Christ Himself does not communicate to us His power so that we might fulfill the demands of the Law. Fundamental Aspects o[ the Discord Between God and Man Throughout the Old Testament the resistance of man to the work of God is presented under three clearly dis-tinguished aspects; it is essential to guard against con-fusing these three when the idea of sin in the Bible is analyzed. 1. Opposition to the work of divine justice. The prin-cipal adversary of divine justice is an individual whom the Hebrew language terms rasha', a term which is usu-ally translated by the word impious or wicked. This rasha' enters into association with the "makers of iniq-uity," "the proud," "the mockers," and the "men of blood." His weapons are cunning, lies, violence; he is constantly thinking of i~i~l~'ity"in his he;irt~ li'~ Sets traps for the innocent; his hands are soiled with blood and he is given to drink. His opposition to justice is shown in two ways: it is, first of all, undisguised hostility towards God who is thought to be too distant to'react against it; and, secondly, it is a merciless war against the just whose violated rights the God of the covenant is pledged to de-fend. For practical purposes, the rasha' and his satellites coincide with the adversaries of the covenant; for the justice they oppose is at the center of the preoccupation of the parties of the covenant. They appear from the very beginning of the human race, but more ~usually they ap-pear as the enemies of the Chosen People; in every case they constantly menace the stability of the work of God in the cosmos and in history. Gradually the distinction between the just and the impious is found within the nation itself; it is at this time that the realization of a qualitative Israel necessitates a distinction between the faithful and those who are traitors and apostates. None of the faithful aligns himself with the: rasha': Drag me not away with the wicked, with those who do wron.g, who speak of peace to their neighbors though evil is in their hearts (Ps 28:3). On the occasion of the demands of the wicked, the just man frequently prays for justice from God; this im-plies that he is the victim not the accomplice of the wicked. If the good man wishes to be heard by Yahweh, he must disassociate himself as completely as possible from the perverse machinations of the artisans of evil: "I hate the assembly of evil~toers, and with the wicked I will not sit down" (Ps 26:5). It is only on this condition that he can cry out: "Judge me"; "Do me justice" (Ps 26:1; 43:1). In the matter of justice, then, the Old Testament knows only negative confessions (Ps 5; 26; 139; Jb 31) like those that the dead recite for their justification be-fore the tribunal of Osiris. There is no avowal of an atti-tude of present opposition to justice, an attitude that the God of the covenant would have to punish; only past sins are confessed the consequences of which are already or about to be felt. This is evidently insufficient for Chris-tians. We not only have to present to the Father our past errors but also a heart which even now is evil and which we ask Him to transform. There can be no doubt that ÷ ÷ ÷ Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 139 ÷ .I. ÷ Erode Beaucamp, O~F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS such a prayer supposes a pure intention, and this is the profound significance of our negative confessions. Man can not pray to God while desiring evil; nevertheless, pure intentions do not effect that we see exactly what God wants nor even that we feel the power to accomplish it. Our pure intentions require from us only that we aban-don ourselves,to Him in order that we might see and will the perfection which He expects from us: For I do not the good that I wish, but the evil I do not wish, that I perform . Unhappy man that I aml Who will deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:19 and 24). 2. A state of rupture with God. The three Hebrew roots which are ordinarily translated by such words as sin, transgression, iniquity, fault, and so forth express, though each with different nuances, the idea of a state of rupture with the God of the covenant: The Lord's hand is not .too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear; but your iniquities have been a barrier between you and your God. And your sins have hidden his face, so that he could not hear you (Is 59:1-2). This state is a present situation the cause of which is a definite past act; hence one goes from the awareness of the rupture to an appreciation of its origin: "I have sinned." This is equivalent to saying that if God aban-dons me to my lot, I can blame only myself; it is my own fault: O Lord, the great and revered God, who keeps loving faith with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned . To us, O Lord, pertains confusion of face . but to the Lord our God pertain compassion and forgiveness (Dn 9: 4-5, 8-9). The awareness of sin, then, is the awareness of being abandoned by God through one's own fault; the sinner is like a child experiencing the feeling of no longer being loved by his mother; he feels himself cut off from the one who is his source of life: My anger shall blaze against them, and I will forsake them~ and withhold my favor from them; they shall become a thing to be consumed, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say at that time: Is it not because God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us? (Dt 31:17). By the fact of sin--and this holds true for the relations between man and man as well as for the relations be-tween God and man--the Protector finds Himself re-leaged of His obligation 'towards His proteges; in particu-lar He is no longer bound to see justice done them and He can consider them as His enemies: We look for redress, but it comes not; for salvation, but it remains f~r from us. For many are our sins before you, and our faults bear witness against us (Is 59:11-12). Abandoned by his God and even pursued by His ill will, the sinner is sooner or later doomed to death. In the case of an individual he will use up his strength in a dis-ease that is without hope; in the case of a country it will perish under the blows of epidemics, famines, and wars. For sin breaks not only~th@,~bbnds betwe~en,~n~fi and his God; it also isolates man frbm society and even from the earth, since peace with God is the condition of peace with one's fellow men and with the entire world. In his dereliction and total loneliness, the sinner possesses only one resource: to throw himself into the arms of the One he has offended. On the whole, the Old Testament attaches more im-portance: to this state of rupture than to the nature of the acts which provoke it. Contrary to the confessions of Babylon which attempted to exorcise evil by interminable lists of all possible sins, the Bible generally reduces its inventory to the simple assertion: '~I have sinned." For the Bible, it is God, not sin, that is of interest; it is God that is considered. A sense of sin that is not a sense of God and does not suppose the experience of a valued intimacy is a false sense of sin which can lead to the greatest catastrophes as the history of Luther and Jansen-ism have shown. 3. Impurity, the state of incompatibility with the divine presence. The notions of purity an~l impurity are among the most common and primitive ones in the his-tory of religions. In them is found everywhere the same confusion between taboos of a ritual nature and ethical prescriptions in the proper sense. Sexual pollutions, for example, whether licit or illicit, make one impure, just as the shedding of blood, whether justly or unjustly, profanes the earth. And the contagious nature which is attributed to such impurity makes the notion even more difficult for the modern mind. There has been a mis-understanding of the place which the Bible gives to such a primitive category of thought in later books like Leviti-cus; many see in this a reaction to the effort made by the prophets to form the moral conscience of Israel. But presented in this way, the problem is wrongly placed. Impurity is on a completely different level than that of sin, the rupture with God. It is not concerned with the difficulties and blocks that can lessen the rela-tions of man with God but with that which appears in-compatible with the maintenance of the divine presence in the midst of the country: Because the Lord your God moves within your camp to rescue you and to put your enemies at your mercy, your camp must be clean, so that he may not see anything indecent with you, and turn away from you (Dr 23:14). If the Bible attaches a great importance to this notion sin VOLUM£ 22, 1963 141 ÷ ÷ ÷ E~ode Benuc~mp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 142 of impurity, it is because for it the question is not re-ducible to the simple fact of not offending God; it is the much more profound matter of living with Him in His presence. The sense of purity is the awareness of the holiness which election requires, a holiness that must ex-tend to everything which conditions the existence of the elect: I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy; for I am holy; so you must not defile yourselves with any kind of insect that crawls on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God, and so you must be holy; for I am holy (Lv 11:44-45). You must be holy to me; for I, the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from other peoples to be mine (Lv 90:26). As long as Israel remained a political and sociological reality, the community of life between Yahweh and His people had necessarily to preserve a character that was both interior and exterior, implying demands both of a physical and a moral order. This combination should not, then, be surprising. It is necessary to wait for the Gospel in order that the problem of purity be elevated to a properly spiritual level, for then the kingdom of God becomes an interior reality which is not involved in the social and material conditions of the life of the elect: "It is what pr6ceeds from a man that makes him impure" (Mk 7:20). All cases of impurity, however diverse, have this in common that they create a cultic incompatibility and make the approach to the divine dangerous. But it is dif-ficult to find how this incompatibility flows from a single principle; this is a world of different and heterogeneous elements which it would be a waste of time to attempt to unify. So, for example, one type of impurity consisted of any attempt to violate a reality that was initially sacred: harvesting, the gathering of fruits, marriage, and so ford~. But impurity was likewise involved when a being was possessed by foreign divinities; the sinner fell into this category when, being rejected by his god, he became the prey of demons. Finally, every act is impure which lessens the essential integrity of a being, especially a consecrated one: the loss of blood or of seminal fluid, the cutting of the hair of a Nazirite, the cutting of a stone intended for an altar, the putting to work of an animal destined to carry a sacred object, and so forth. All this is common to the ancient world; and the Bible in this matter originates nothing, though it should be noted that matters such as sicknesses, curses, various ca-lamities, blood crying for vengeance, cadavers awaiting burial figure here as simply malefic rather than being at-tributed to foreign divinities or demons. Furthermore, it seems to us that a global impression emerges from all this chaos: a being cannot support the presence of God if its existence is diminished or threatened either by an acci-dental loss of substance or by subjection to some other power. Not being fully himself, man in such a case cannot offer himself to his God. If this interpretation is correct, then the need for purity calls out for the idea of the In-carnation, for the Priest without stain who can enter the sanctuary of the God of the covenant; this is the perfect man who has attained the fullness of his stature: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Before the majesty of the King-God who was revealed to his eyes, Isaiah becomes frightenedly aware not of his sin but of his impurity: Woe to me, for I am lost; I am a man of unclean lips. and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Is 6:5). It is not sin but impurity which impedes the vision of God: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Whatever may have been for primitive man the deep roots of the notes of impurity, the idea should not be suppressed but moralized and spiritualized. From this an-cient notion, two elements should be kept for the profit of our own Christian life: first, our Christian life is truly a life with God, and it supposes a full realization of our stature as the "new man" according to Christ and a full posses-sion of ourselves that withholds nothing from the in-fluence of God; secondly, every lessening of our personal vitality is a lessening of the vitality of the community; every lessening of our charity detracts from the global charity of the Church, and it tarnishes her purity, since impurity by its nature is contagious, always passing from individuals to the collectivity. Solutions to the Discord Between God and Man 1. The judgment of the wicked. A victorious judgment of the God of the covenant will put an end to the opposi-tion of the wicked man. This judgment, however, is never purely negative. The wicked man is a dangerous individ-ual, and his downfall affects the salvation of the just: The righteous shall rejoice that he has seen vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the wicked. And men shall say: There certainly is a reward for the just; there cer-tainly is a God who judges on earth (Ps 58:10-11). As we have seen, the wicked man is generally con-sidered as unable to be converted; this is why his disap-pearance appears as the only solution to the evil of which the just man is a victim; the world will regain its peace only when God has caused this evil to fall on its authors. Gradually, however, other conceptions of the matter came into existence. Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel envisage ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 22° 1963 ÷ Evode Beaucamp, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the case of a wicked man who abandons his wickedness to practice "judgment and justice": As I live, says the oracle of Yahweh, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather in this that the wicked man turn from his way and live. Turn, O turn, from your evil waysl Why should you die, O house of Israeli (Ez 33:11). This view of the conversion of the wicked is a direct preparation for the Gospel. Christ will proclaim that He has come not for the just but for the wicked---the publi-cans and adulterers who without conversion would fall beneath the blows of the avenging anger of God. The great revolution of the Gospel is the distinction between evil and evil men; in the Our Father it is from evil that we ask to be freed and not from our enemies, as was done in the Psalms. As long as a man has not drawn his last breath, he is never to be identified with evil and we must always hope for his eventual conversion. The venge-ance of the just is no longer the extermination of the wicked but their penance and reparation. 2. The pardon of the sin. The one who has culpably lost communion with God can only hope for the gratui-tous act of clemency and pity Which the One offended can grant or not grant when pardon is asked of Him. In the rupture man took the initiative, but the initiative in the matter of reconciliation belongs exclusively to God. More than in any other case there apears here the impos-sibility of forcing His hand. Sin, the rupture of relations between God and man, is an intolerable weight from which the sinner cannot free himself by his own effort; it is a weight that only the One offended is in a position to lift: For, day and night, your hand lay heavy upon me . I said: I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin (Ps 32:4-5). The Babylonians, in order to have greater certainty of their restoration to favor, frequently attempted to have another friendly divinity intervene with the angered god. In the Bible, as is evident, man is without the possibility of such a mediation. He must directly approach the God he has offended and throw himself at His feet while de-claring "I have sinned"; he must rely entirely on God's mercy. It is clear that such an act implies conversion; it is the return of the prodigal son to his Father's house. While the Bible does not permit the sinner to avoid encountering the God he has angered, still it does not leave him without arguments by which he can plead his case. He can, for example, invoke the glory of the God of the covenant whose name he still continues to bear: What will the nations think of Yahweh if He continues to leave his people defenseless? (Ps 79; 80; Ez 32:11-14). He can also invoke His justice: In abandoning His own, does not Yahweh yield to His enemies? (Ps 41). Finally, he can appeal to the shortness of life--life which a pro-lUonngfoedrt uabnsaetnelcye, owf eG coadn m naokte ds eelmayp thye aren du ,s epngsne~le sths e(Pses 9a0rg).u-ments which still retaiii,:th~ir~, validity for, oi~i~ prayer as Christians. We have already pointed out that the penitent does not dwell upon an analysis of his culpable act but keeps his eyes on the God the lack of whom he suffers and in whom he sees his only hope; the simple fact of the rupture is al-ready virtually the presence of death and it constitutes for the sinner the deepest kind of punishment than which nothing greater is to be feared. The penitent calls on the judgment and justice of Yahweh as a grace the right to which he has lost by sin. He awaits the moment of pardon which will reestablish him in the friendship of His God so that once again he will be protected in the midst of a hostile world: The anger of the Lord must I bear--for I have sinned against him--until he shall take up my case and do me justice (Mi 7:9). Once pardon h.as been granted, the remembrance of the sin disappears in the remembrance of the victorious love of Yahweh, a love which is capable of overpowering all offenses and which in its profundity and total gratuitous-ness leaves the soul of man in confusion (Ps 103); here already there is almost found the felix culpa of St. Au-gustine. Moreover, the world which the divine mercy re-constructs is always more beautiful than the one de-stroyed by sin. To illustrate this law, it is sufficient to reflect on the messianic prophecies which for the most part are prophecies of pardon (Ps 85; Is 40-55; 60; Ez 34; and so forth). 3. Purification of Defilement. Having been excluded from worship, the defiled man must purify himself be-fore coming into the presence of God.'It is a co.mmon idea among all the ancient religions that the gods have given men ritual materials and formulas that are capable of purifying them, their temples, and their country. In particular, there are appropriate rites that permit the expulsion from the impure being of the evil spirits and demons who have taken possession of him; thus, for ex-ample, spells and curses which had victimized a person were made to pass on to the body of animals wh~ch.~:were then driven far away or burned. In the Bible this liturgi-cal transfer has left only a few traces, the most notable ex-ample of which is that of the scapegoat of the D~y of Atonement (Lv 16). This animal, loaded with the sins of Israel, was not offered to Yahweh but driven far aw~iy to Azazel. 4, 4, VOLUME 22, 1963 ÷ ÷ ÷ Erode Beau~arap, O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 146 In place of this image of a transfer, the Bible has pre-ferred that of cleansing through ablutions and sprinkling with blood and water. This symbol is simultaneously negative and positive: at the same time as it removes the uncleanliness, the water restores all the freshness of life. This is also, as it seems to me, the function of the blood in the atonement rite and in the sin sacrifices. But we shall not delay here on this difficuh and debated point; we will content ourselves with giving our own personal opinion. Blood seems to have as its effect the protection of the things and persons which it covers; it protects them from the various evils which are the sequel of sin just as the blood of the paschal lamb did at the Exodus (Ex 12:1-15). But to this negative effect there is added a posi-tive action; for blood is life, and it is by reason of the life that is in it that Yahweh has given it as an effector of atonement (Lv 17:10-12). Thanks to it, persons, cult ob-jects, and the country that is the abode of Yahweh find their fullness of life, their first integrity which impurity had caused to be lost. The application of this Biblical rite to our Christian life is not difficult. The sin of a Christian can be con-sidered as a stain that not only changes our personal re-lations with God but also diminishes the vital potentiali-ties of the Church and impairs her charity. Reparation, therefore, is a social duty just as it was in ancient Israel. God has given us the Blood of Christ as an inexhaustible source of love so that we can preserve for the Church the immaculate appearance which her divine Spouse initially bestowed on her: He wished to summon into his presence the Church in all her beauty, with no stain, wrinkle, or any disfigurement; she. was to be holy and spotless (Eph 5:27). Conclusion By way of conclusion, let us synthesize the results of our inquiry. In order that the notion of sin preserve all the force that the Bible gives it, it must include three ele-ments: deterioration of the order of creation; rupture with God, the source of life; and impurity which hinders all commerce with the divine. All this is what is repre-sented by the word sin at the time of the New Testament~ it is all this that Christ has come to restore, heal, and purify. Under these three aspects, sin is a flight from God, the only source of life and happiness; it represents the contrary of all the effort God has made throughout his-tory to draw us to Him; it is a return back to a past from which He has drawn us; it is our refusal to allow ourselves to be led by Him blindly; it is our squandering of the gifts we have received. To depart from God is to depart from other men and finally to find oneself alone in a hostile world: And it has brought you. w " as reconciled . ,_ o ~;. ¯ - uom~ wron~ ;-,- - "-' holiness a~a t__ )vu mrough dying, ;,,~.:_ . 6 ~-o.ugn now (Col 1:2'1_~)."ee ~rom reproa~c h. .or ~Ta~'e,'~'~vt~uas op~rensve nbcoedy) ia Sin VOLUME 22, 1963 PAUL W. O'BRIEN, S.J. The Weekly Confession of Fervent Religious ÷ ÷ Paul W. O'Brien, S.J., is the rector of the Pontifical Semi-nary in Dalat, Viet-nam. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 148 The word "fervent" in the title is not meant to frighten away those good religious for whom the article is actually written, but who usually hesitate to think of themselves as fervent. It is used rather to indicate the limited perspective of the article, a perspective however which we trust is representative of religious and hehce applicable to many. It is not unusual to find religious who have a problem with their weekly confession--a problem that seems to arise not from their being tepid but rather from their being fervent. They are serious about their religious life. They would rather do anything than deliberately offend God in the smallest thing. And yet they find a certain uneasiness, tedium, even difficulty with their weekly con-fession. Time and again they have consulted the classical authors to find ways of refreshing this exercise, but usu. ally with only transitory success. The considerations pro-posed in these manuals, while excellent and fundamental and helpful to a certain point, do not really fit. For the religious we have in mind does not come to his weekly confession as an enemy of God; he does not come with mortal sins; he has no need of being "reconciled" to the Church, much less of having divine life "restored" to his soul. His confession is not one of obligation, and con:;e-quently there is nothing that he is obliged to confess (supposing always that to ensure the validity of his con-fession, he mentions his past forgiven sins, at least in a general way). In fact he rarely (more likely never) brings unforgiven sins to the confessional. For to say nothing of the many ways that venial sins can be forgiven out-side the sacrament, his daily communion is constantly purifying his soul, and his habit of immediately turning to God in loving sorrow for any fault committed, plus the. contrition that he excites before confession, brings him to the confession with really no unforgiven matter. Clearly the basic considerations of the purgative way, which may once have applied to him, and whose grateful memory will always remain with him, are not sufficient. There is need of a ditter~ent perspective~a .,shifting of emphasis, if his confession ~is" to produce the,, fruit ex-pected by the Church. ' ¯ ~. ~ For the Church is greatly concerned about these fre-quent confessions. When som~ younger members of the clergy were diminishing esteem for the frequent confes-sion of venial sins, claiming that it was useless, consumed too much time of busy pastors, and was actually un-known in the early Church, Pope Plus XII spoke out clearly and strongly against them (Mystici Corporis 87): Equally disastrou~s in its effects is the false contention that tile frequent confession of venial sins is not a practice to be greatly esteemed. Therefore those among the young clergy who are diminishing esteem for frequent confession are to know that the enterprise upon which they have embarked is alien to the Spirit of Christ and most detrimental to the Mys-tical Body of our Savior. For a constant and speedy ad-vancement in the path of virtue, we highly recommend the practice of frequent confession, introduced by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; for by this means we grow in a true knowledge of ourselves and in Christian hu-mility, bad habits are uprooted, spiritual negligence and apathy are prevented, the conscience is purified and the will strengthened, salutary spiritual direction is obtained, and grace is increased by the efficacy of the sacrament itself. In the following lines it is not my purpose to touch on all the above advantages nor to give a form to confession nor to enter into the aspect of spiritual direction in the confessional. I wish merely to redistribute the emphasis of certain aspects and thus perhaps help towards a solu-tion of our problem. Sacrament of Loving Sorrow One of the areas that calls for reappraisal and a pos-sible reshifting of emphasis concerns our habitual way of looking on the sacrament. There is danger that a way of speaking will induce a way of thinking. Because of our ordinary practice of speaking of the sacrament of pen-ance as "confession," we may develop a wrong emphasis. Now I am not advocating a change in our traditional terminology, but we must be careful lest our way of speaking throw everything out of focus. For the actual "confession" of sins, in the type of confession we are dealing with, is one of the least important elements of the sacrament. And yet it is frequently the main source of trouble for the fervent religious: "What to say?" Such a preoccupation is understandable when there is ques-tion of the integrity of an obligatory confession of mortal sins, but how completely out of place it is in our con- 4- 4- 4- Weekly onlession VOLUME 22, 1963 ]49 P. W. O'B~i~, $.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS fessions. I wonder if our exact catechetical training, given chiefly in view of a form of obligatory confession, is not unduly transferred to confessions of devotion. At any rate, it is not rare to find the problem of confession be-coming more acute as the religious becomes more fer-vent, the problem of "what to say" becoming so empha-sized as to bring on uneasiness. But even when we think more exactly in terms of the "sacrament of penance," we must still be on our guard. The very word "penance" can become a source of mis-understanding. The Latin word paenitentia of which our English "penance" is a translation, has been well-chosen and in its real meaning of "sorrow with purpose of amendment" is quite appropriate. But in English we do not think that way. For us "penance" is associated with fasting and disciplines; and even though we have been taught that true interior penance consists in sorrow for our sins, this is not our habitual association with the word "penance." Would that the translating fathers had given us something like "sacrament of sorrow." It would have helped us put the emphasis where it belongs. The emphasis then in this "sacrament of sorrow" should be on sorrow; but a sorrow that is a free and meritorius act. This should immediately put us on our guard against certain counterfeits. It is a free act; hence always in my power. I can make it on Monday; I can make it on Friday. I can make it when I am depressed; I can make it when I am as dry as a stick. Evidently its value does not and cannot depend on emotional inten-sity (which is not in my power). It is a movement of the will detesting sin because of my conviction (intellectua! appreciation) that God's will is above all. Its efficacy measured not by the accompanying emotion or affection. (if there is any) but by the strength derived from my conviction. Now for the fervent religious this conviction has become habitual. It is constantly operative in his daily life as is evidenced by his care in avoiding all that is against God's will. But it can well be that this con-viction has.become so settled in his life that it sets up no emotional resonance. He must not be surprised then when he finds that his sorrow in the confessional reta~ins the same strong voluntary but unemotional tendency that characterizes his daily life. He detests sin and all his failings because he truly loves God and has made will the supreme norm of his life. Here the question of motive enters. It is this that sets the tone to our sorrow and our confession. The faithful religious does not come to God in fear but in love,~,as to his Father. The Little Flower puts it simply: I have long believed that the Lord is more tender than a mother. I know that a mother is always ready to forgive trivial, involuntary misbehavior on the part of her child . Children are always in trouble, falling down, getting themselves dirty, breaking thing~but all this does not shake their parent's love for them. We come to God as His dearest children, sharing His very life, coming with th.e loving sorrow .of asofi; to be reassured that all, all has b&fi forgiven;' to i:eceive the embrace of the Father. Sacrament ol Purification One of the perspectives of the sacrament that opens up a rich vein of thought and deserves to be emphasized by the faithful religious is the aspect of purification-- purification not in the sense of liberation from the guilt of actual sins and faults--but rather a deeper purifica-tion that penetrates to the roots of those faults, to the habitual tendencies which cause them, and to the reli-quiae peccati which are their results. The sacrament be-comes (if you will pardon the expression) a sort of radio-therapy of our deep wickedness. We expose our wounds, visible or not, with a certain reasoned eagerness and joy to the curative influence of the sacrament. We are not so much preoccupied about our past actual faults. We have sorrowed over them and know that they have been wiped out through God's mercy. It is rather the deep of our soul, the roots of the faults, which give promise of bring-ing forth again their fruit of death--it is these roots which disturb us. And here precisely is where the "grace of the sacrament" comes into play--a grace which the Council of Florence describes as a grace of purification, a grace of healing: "Through penance we are spiritually healed" (DB 695). This grace reaches beyond the actual sins, forgiven by the absolution, to reach deep into our nature into the causes of those sins. This purifying influence acts not only on the soul but also on the body. I believe we may find an analogy in the effects of the sacrament of extreme unction which is usually considered as the complement of penance. Its influence in strengthening soul and body during serious sickness should give us some clue to the purifying action of penance. For we may well believe that the effects of this sacrament are but the "finishing touches" to a proc-ess begun and carried on through other sacraments throughout one's life. All the sacraments, even Holy Eucharist, have a purifying influence on the whole per-son, body and soul. Now one of the effects of the sacra-ment of extreme unction is to weaken the effects of con-cupiscence, to restore some part of our original integrity which was lost through Adam's sin. St. Thomas explains our inability to avoid all indeliberate venial sins by concupiscence together with the slowness of our percep- + + + Weekly Con]ession 151 ÷ ÷ ÷ P. W. O'Bden, $.L REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS tion of good, the changeableness of our will, and the frequency of temptation (S. T. 1, q 109, a 8). Now in re-ducing concupiscence, extreme unction restores order to man's strivings, subordinating the sensitive to the spirit-ual and the spiritual to God; it helps put a man in true possession of himself, so that he is able to dominate not only those positive urges of soul and body that escape control but also the oppressive weight of dead inertia by which the sensitive life impedes the striving of the will toward God. From this precious purifying and strengthening action of extreme unction, we may gather some idea of what takes place in the sacrament of pen-ance, not precisely in view of a serious sickness but look-ing rather to the progressive purification of our soul as it weakens concupiscence, counteracts sluggishness, or-ders our passions, and restores us to spiritual liberty. Awareness of Sinfulness Now it is precisely this grace of purification that draws religious to the sacrament of penance. (Perhaps I should say "drives," for there is no question of an emotional attraction, but rather the compelling force of a reasoned conviction based on faith.) It is this that explains the daily confessions of so many saints--St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, St. Peter Claver, St. Charles Borromeo, St. A1phonsus Liguori. Surely they were not deliberately sinning nor were they scrupulous. But they understood better the holiness of God. St. Francis Borgia was accustomed to confess twice a day, once in the morning before saying Mass and again in the evening before retiring. By this I do not mean that daily confession, where possible, is a goal to be aimed at. It may be helpful regularly for some persons, or for others at particular times of special grace or difficulty. This is a problem to be determined with one's confessor. I merely mention these examples to illustrate one of the great motives of frequent confession--the desire for pu-rity. This desire of the saints for purity is shared by ,~11 faithful souls according to their grace. For as the reli-gious strives to lead his life more generously, avoiding as far as he can all deliberate failings, he participates more abundantly in God's light. The effect is twofold: he be-gins to understand more clearly who God is, and in the same measure he becomes more aware of his wretched-ness. He finds himself in an attitude of soul similar to that of Eliphaz, one of Job's friends, who tells .us that his hair stood on end when in vision a spirit passed be-fore him. "I heard the voice as it were of a gentle wind: Shall man be justified in comparison with God, or shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold. in his angels he found wickedness." (Jb 4:15 ft.). Isaiah re-cords a similar state of soul, the result of his great vision of the holiness of God. "Woe is me because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts" (Is 6:l-5)~The religious~in~tlle light of God s hohness becomes painfully consc,ous, I will not say of "sin," but of sinfulness. He longs to bring his sins to the confessional, but what sins? Here precisely is the trouble. The sins that are clear have long since been sub-mitted to the sacrament in sorrow. He knows that they are forgiven and blotted from the sight of God. But the daily failings? Truly they are not deliberate sins. He would rather do anything than displease God. He cannot pin down his failings. And yet he is painfully conscious of a mass of selfishness, insincerity, sensuality, but deep in the soul where he cannot reach. He realizes that this wickedness penetrates all that he does, but it is not in acts where it can be grasped. And he also realizes that this is not an illusion; the wickedness is really there. This creates a problem for him--a problem that per-haps increases with the fidelity of the soul--and which often accounts for much of the difficulty experienced in approaching the sacrament. It seems such hypocrisy to have nothing to say. And yet no matter how long the ex-amination of conscience is prolonged, nothing more spe-cific is discovered. He has only wasted precious time that could have been more profitably spent on deepening his loving sorrow. Nor is this due simply to negligence of the soul. Perhaps most natures do not have the per-spicacity to analyze and draw out into the clear these deep tendencies of the soul. The light that is given them is not so sharp. Nor need it be; for its purpose of hu-miliation and purification is equally accomplished by the confused and painful acceptance of what the soul perceives confusedly. According to One's Light Fortunately, in this type of confession, the accusation is one of the least important parts. Hence very little time should be spent on the actual examination of conscience. The daily examination of conscience faithfully made will guarantee the religious against negligence, and a quick glance will usually reveal where he has displeased God. Hence if within a few minutes nothing specific is dis-covered, he should stop his inquiry and be satisfied with a general accusation: "I accuse myself of all the sins of my past life, especially for my sins of pride, sensuality, or against some commandment." Father Saint-Jure, S.J., gives this directive: Those (venial sins) which we should seek out and confess Weekly ¢onlesslon VOLUME Z2o '1'963 153 4. 4. 4. P. W. O'Brien, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]54 with more c~ire are those which weigh most heavily on us, and those which cause us more embarrassment and shame, pro-vided that we are able to confess them with honesty a~d de-cency; likewise those which ~hinder us most from attaining the perfection to which God calls us, or which are contrary to the virtue to. which we are particularly devoting our efforts for that week or month. And since among venial sins there are some which arise from mere weakness, which escape us as by surprise, and others from malice, which we commtt with full knowledge, coldly, understanding what we are doing and with full consent, of these latter none should be omitted in con-fession. As for the others, one should leave them to the mercy of God, and confess them in general, all-inclusive terms: If the soul is sufficiently. . .pure so that it commits only these sins of weakness, let zt ~ndzcate some of them" (On the Knowledge and Love of our Lord Jesus Christ, Bk 3, c 10, ~9). Hence we may give as a practical rule: I may accuse myself of whatever God gives me the light to see as dis-pleasing to Him (no matter how trivial it may seem in itselD. If I see specific failings clearly, it is well to accuse myself at least of some of them; if I see them only.in a confused way, as tendencies, I should be content to ac-knowledge them in this general way (paying particular attention to one or another of them for a few weeks at a time)--adding, however, a general accusation of past forgiven sins to insure the validity of the confession. This awareness of sinfulness and inability to reach it through our own efforts is often given by spiritual writers as a reason for God's intervention through the passive purification of the soul. We read of "dark nights of the soul" in which God's purifying action goes deep where the active effort of the soul cannot penetrate, purifying the roots of our evil inclinations, attacking the basic self-ishness of the soul. This, type of purification is usually associated with trials in prayer that fall to the lot of con-templatives. We know, however, that God's purifying action can take many forms, that his apostles are often purified through the trials inherent in their apostolate. Surely a most powerful means of purification and one which is often overlooked is the very sacrament of purifi-cation instituted by Christ, which accomplishes in the soul much the same work as the "dark nights" and apos-tolic trials: namely, the progressive submission of our lower nature to the higher and the higher to God, the liberation of our soul from the weight of its wicked in-clinations and its consequent gradual transformation in God. Building up the Body oI Christ As the religious grows in his vocation, he should grow also in a sense of his solidarity with the Churcli, the Mystical Body. He begins to see his sin and sinfulness in their social aspect. While clearly realizing that his sin is his own, for which he alone is responsible, he is more aware of the consequences of his sin on the organism of which he is a member--and this apart from the harmful effects that may come through bad example, coopera-tion, and so forth. He understands that the life that is in him is a shared lif~e; ~w, eakened with 'his'.~weakness, strengthened with his strength. It.is true that our liturgy today does not give such prominence to the social aspect of penance as in the old days when the penitent, after a period of public penance, was restored on Holy Thurs-day to the family life of the Church so that he might share the Paschal Bread of life with the other members of his family, the Church. Nor is there question of our religious being "restored" to the Church. But he begins to feel deeply his corporate responsibility, He is ashamed of the sinfulness that he brings to the immaculate Spouse of Christ. Aware of the lessening of love, as sin drains this Body anemic, he strives to replenish the blood ;stream with his love. He understands the general disappearance in the world of a sense of sin and rushes with his loving sorrow to make amends. If he be a priest whose mission it is to destroy sin in the world, he finds an added joy both in receiving and administering the sacrament. He offers God a soul in which He may work more purity, and thus "build up the Body of Christ" (Eph 4.9). And with this consciousness of his unity in the Mystical Body, a new dimension is added to his examination Of con-science, or rather a more acute awareness of his already existing obligation: his duty of charity; his responsibility for the spread of God's kingdom; his sins of omission through cowardice, selfishness, love of ease; the primacy of love. Meeting with the Three One beautiful but rarely stressed aspect of this sacra-ment is our meeting with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While it is true that the glorified humanity of Jesus is the instrument of all our grace, it is still the Word of God who takes away sin. "Who can forgive sin but God alone?" (Lk 5:21), Every sacramental absolution is then the action of Jesus, the great high priest, acting through His representative, a man chosen from amongst sinners. And in receiving that absolution, I come in vital contact with Jesus. Here He bestows on me the grace of redemption. Jt is for this that He came into the world, as He prolongs into my soul the efficacy of His redemp-tive sacrifice. -The life that He gives, He won in His blood. It is this that causes such joy in heaven, more than over the ninety-nine just, this prolongation of the rich mysteries of His death and glorification, for me a new 4- 4- 4- Weekly Conlession VOLUMF 22, 1963 155 + ÷ ÷ P. W. O'Brien, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 156 baptism, as plunged into His death, I rise to a new or richer life. But often we are inclined to forget the part of the Father and the Holy Spirit. If there is pardon in the sacrament and grace of purification, it is because the Father loves us beyond all telling. "God [the Father] so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." (Jn 3:16). In the pardon of the Son, I meet the love of the Father. And if there is life in the sacrament, it is because the Father, in giving His Son, gives us also the Holy Spirit who pours forth the charity of God into our hearts (Rom 5:5), this Spirit who cleanses, who burns away the impurities of our soul in the fire that He is. All this is brought out strikingly in the very institution of this sacrament of peace. It is as though the glorified Christ can hardly wait to begin pouring out the effects of His loving sacrifice. The very eve of Easter Sunday, He must come to His frightened Apostles in the upper room to give them power to forgive sin, First He shows them His wounds, the price of the sacrament, and the proof that it is really the glorified Christ in His human-ity. And then: " 'Peace be to you. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.' When He had said this, He breathed upon them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained' " (Jn 20:21- 23). The Father is there, prolonging in Jesus and through Jesus in the apostles, the love that fathered the redemp-tion. The Son is there, in His glorified humanity, com-municating the fruits of His redemptive offering. But first the Spirit must be given, for it is in the Spirit that the soul is led through the Son to the Father. What happiness for the faithful soul is this meeting in the sacrament with the ThreeI ]oy to the Heart of ]esus But if there is joy to the soul on meeting the Three, there is joy in the Three as They enrich the soul. For the eagerness of the soul to meet its God can never begin to match the love of God that goes out to meet the soul. "I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly" (Jn I0:10). The entire life of Jesus, with all its sufferings, has been aimed precisely at moments such as these, when meeting with the soul, He can com-municate the graces won on Calvary. If love that is frus-trated and refused can be such a torment, Love that gives and is received can be immeasurable joy. It is this joy that is ours to give to Jesus as we open our hearts in sorrow to His purifying love. JACQUES LECLERCQ The Priest Today In a preceding article? on active lay people, I men-tioned the confusion of priests when they ask themselves what their purpose is since now in meetings of fill kinds lay persons make meditations and in general ~ssume a spiritual role. And yet. The Presence o] the Priest And yet the laity cling to the presence of the priest. It seems that something essential is missing if a priest is not present--this priest who does nothingl Things now are entirely different from what they used to be. For one thing, previously there were no meet-ings that resemble the ones of today. Formerly when the priest .took his part by preaching a sermon, the faithful listened and then left. Or at the time when study clubs began to be organized, the priest presided and directed, trying with more or less success to make the various mem-bers speak; and frequently he was the only one to do any speaking. Today, however, he is neither presiding officer nor director. He is rather a chaplain; he assists--in Italy he is called the assistente ecclesiastico [the ecclesiastical assistant]. At times one may have the impression that everything happens without him, but in reality there is nothing that happens without him. Everything happens with him; but this "with him" is something other than "under his direction." All of this is disconcerting for those who are accustomed to the authoritarian conceptions of former times. The priest does nothing, and yet he is indispensable. When lay persons form a spiritual group of some kind, one of their first concerns is always to have a chaplain; for without a chaplain it would seem that the group is unable to suc-ceed. Is there any way in which we can point out pre-cisely what it is that the priest provides? x In La revue nouvelle, a Belgian periodical, during 1962,. Canon Leclercq published a number of articles on the laity in the Church today. The present article is translated with permission from La revue nouvelle, September 15, 1962, pp. 171-84. 4. 4. 4. Canon Jacques Le- ¢lercq fives at 102, rue de Li/~ge; Beau-lays, Belgium. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS lacqu~s Le¢l~rcq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 158 The matter is a real puzzle, and it is being investigated from almost every angle. It is not a question of the sacra-merits. As is evident, it is the priest who distributes these. But the Christian life, as it is conceived today, is some-thing other than the sacraments. It is based on the sacra-ments; it is nourished by them; yet Catholic Action meet-ings, or meetings of workers or of managers, of students, of scotits and their leaders, have a purpose entirely other than that of receiving the sacraments; they are not even spoken of. Nor is it expected that the priest give an in-struction or a sermon. It is only expected that he be there, participating in the meeting with the rest. It would seem that from the Christian viewpoint some-thing is lacking to lay persons when they are left to them-selves., And yet it is a question of their own life, for it is they who must put into practice what they discuss. But at the same time it is a question of their own life insofar as it is Christian. From this point of view, it is necessary to have a priest in the midst of them. And I think that this expression "in the midst of them" is the exact one. A French priest, who works among the working class, has made the following remark on this point: I think that the people need a founder, someone who ~'will unite them in the charity of Christ. Lay persons can do some things, but they cannot be centers. Hence they need Someone who will be a religious center, a kind of church, for them. They do not only need Christians who are the presence of the Church, but they need above all a church in the sense of the Church realized in this community; they need someone who unites them and who is the head in the sense of being a father, not someone who commands but one who assembles and who is first ("T~moignage de M. Lelubre" in Etudes sur ,le sacre-merit de l'ordre [Paris: Cerf, 1957], p. 432). When this is reflected on, one sees very clearly the ap-pearance of the reality that is the Church. Christ continues His presence and His action by the Church. The Church is the people of God; and the people of God is constituted first of all by lay persons. In order to avoid giving the impression of tending towards laicism --which consists of excluding the clergy--let me say at once that the Church is both lay persons and priests, all of them together. But priests--all of them, even the bishops and the pope---exist for the laity, for the service of the laity. When it is said that they exist for the laity-- the pope himself is entitled the servant of 'the servants of God---this means that the people of God is essentially the laity, that it is to them that the divine life flows and that it is through them above all that it manifests itself. If the Church, according to the words of Scripture, is like a lamp that one lights and puts on a lampstand, this is the laity--Christian life in the family and in daily occupa-tions, The clergy, priests, religious are at the service of this. The result of their work is not that an elite may en-close itself within monasteries in order to live in God, nor even that Christian people in more or less great numbers may gather in churches to. ce,lebrate divine~worship; rather the result of their "dork is that through Christians Christ lives and acts in families and in the world. Priests and religious must sanctify themselves per-sona! ly in order to create a climate of holiness in the Church; but the result of the Church's holiness must be found in homes and in the world. When we use the word "world" [citd] here, we are envisaging professional, politi-cal, and social activities--all that can be called public life. It is to this that the life of Christ in the Church tends. Hence the Church is above all the laity; and it is through the laity that she first manifests her dynamism. But it is priests who form the laity in a Christian way. Priests :are men of the Church and men of God. '.Their function is to represent the Church; they exist only for this. ~ The lay person must be entirely Christian and at the same time something else besides; this shows forth the character of the Incarnation, that reality which is found only in Christianity. The Incarnation consists in this that the work and supernatural action of God is accomplished in and through nature. It has been frequently remarked that the supernatural is above the natural, but not contrary to the natural; it does not. suppress nature but elevates it; it transforms the natural, but it takes the natural into account. It constructs from, above; this can never be repeated too often if one wishes to comprehend what Christianity is. The kingdom of God, then, must be built up among men by taking due account of their nature. The Spirit of God transforms this nature to its depths; this is mani-fested exteriorly by the intention that animates action and by the choice which is made among various actions; .never-theless, these actions retain their .human character, and this must be remembered by those who are concerned with them. The Priest is Leaven Christ compared the kingdom of God to leaven that makes the dough rise; good bread can not be made with-out yeast. But yeast alone is not sufficient to make bread. Flour is needed, and the baker must be careful to secure good flour. It is necessary to knead the bread carefully. It must be baked in a good oven at the right temperature and for the right length of time and so forth. If the 4. 4. 4. The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 139 Jacques l.eclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 160 kingdom of God is like the leaven in bread, one can say that the priest is the depositary of this leaven; but it the laity who are like the bakers who must be occupied with all the conditions for the preparation of the bread. Moreover, it is they who must make use of the yeast. If the priest remains alone with his leaven, there will never be any bread; and if the bakers do not have the yeast, once again there will be no bread. Both are neces-sary. Now let us transpose all this into the entirety of life. The laity found homes and give life to the world. This obliges them to think of many things that in themselves are independent of the kingdom of God. It is to be noted that I have said "in themselves," for nothing is a stranger to the kingdom of God when one places it in the entirety of life. For example, parents must be concerned with the health of their children, their nourishment, their cloth-ing, their studies. The kingdom of God takes part in all this as a kind of preoccupation that orientates this activ-ity ir,.~ a certain measure, but only in a certain measure. And the same is the case with employers, workers, farmers, students, and so forth. But the priest is the man of God. He recalls the king-dom of God by his mere presence; one can say, by his existence, for he has no other purpose for existing. Theo-retically it should be sufficient that a priest be present for one to think of the kingdom of God. The word "theo-retically" is used because men are not perfect, and both priests and the laity are men. Nevertheless, this is the way reality is, and it is this that the laity perceive even when they cannot express it; it is this that leads them, when they are concerned with the kingdom or the way in which God should penetrate their life, to unite themselves around a priest. In brief, all the matters which.form the tissue of the llfe of the laity.are of importance for the kingdom of God; but they are not the kingdom of God. If, when they wish to discuss the repercussion of the kingdom of God on these matters, people gather together without a priest, the discussion easily slips over into the purely human condi-tions of activity; the presence of a priest, however, centers it upon the kingdom. Hence the laity need to have a priest present in their life. This also explains the desire of families to have times a visit from a priest. This is especially true in towns; but it differs from one locality to another, for we are discussing here the case of fervent Christians who desire that their faith influence their lives. In places where such Christians do not exist, the matter is quite different and needs to be discussed further. But to return to our subject, the visit of a priest to families is not a matter of giving a sermon or even of speaking principally about religion. It is a presence. Christian families enjoy having a priest in their homes. They want the priest to know them, their children, and their way of life. And this contributes to the general at-mosphere which reigns iri.~th~. home; th~"~ '6hversation spontaneously takes a vein different from the conversa-tion that is had with colleagues or with friends. And the fact that the priest is involved in their life permits all kinds of questions to be directed to him. The problem of the visit of a priest to families arouses a great many questions which can not be treated here, for they deserve an article to themselves. For the present, let us limit ourselves to pointing out these aspirations of good Christians. We are concerned with good Christians. As we pointed out previously, the Church cannot reach bad Christians or non-Christians except through the laity. The laity must be active or the Church will not take hold of the world; in the terms of the Gospel, she will be a light under a basket or leaven apart from the dough. But these active laity need the priest. Left to themselves, they are liable to be routed even in their interior life. In order that they may be united under the standard of Christ and that they may attack in an orderly way the problems of their interior life and of their Christian action in the world, the priest must be in the midst of them. In conclusion, let us note that in the Church at the beginning of this century the priest was occupied with a good many other things which were often profane; by reason of a tradition which dies away only slowly, many priests today are still taken up to a large extent by ad-ministrative and other activities which the laity would be better occupied with. The result is that priests are ab-sorbed by activities which are not suited to them; at the same time they are unavailable for groups of active Christians or they find it impossible to visi~ families. In any case, this new role of the priest is so important that there can be no Church without him. And the activ-ities that correspond to this role are so numerous and pressing that good priests are crowded with such activ-ities. And there is even the complaint that there are not enough priests. And yet what we have discussed so far is but one of the activities of a priest. Spiritual Action The action of leaven can not be seen; this results in difficulty for some because man has a body and is highly dependent on it. Man needs to see, and yet the soul and action on souls cannot be seen. ÷ ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, ~.963 161 lacques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS There are, first of all, the older priests of whom we have already spoken; for these the pastoral ministry is ex-pressed by material activities and they can not conceive any other type. Moreover, they do not conceive of any other priestly intervention than the authoritarian form of formal congregational meetings composed of a sermon and a greeting. Today, all this has become secondary, if indeed it has not been completely abandoned. Formerly when the priest spoke authoritatively, he gave directions in many matters (politics, for instance) which touched religion only very indirectly. At the present time, there is a growing agreement that priests are not to in-terest themselves in the temporal. However, many priests formerly were interested in nothing else. To the extent that this remains true, one can understand that they have the impression of no longer knowing what to do. This outmoded spirit dies out only slowly; in semi-naries as well as in houses of study of religious orders clerical formation likewise becomes transformed only slowly. One even finds young priests who think that, when they are with the laity, their role should be one of teaching and that they alone should do the talking. They find themselves ill at ease when persons are not disposed to listen to them first of all. Others still think that they must do everything themselves~determine the place, day, and hour of the meetings and issue the announcements. Again they feel discomforted when a group of active Christians organize everything without them and then come to invite them. We are living in an age of transformation. The older attitude with its way of doing things is gradually giving way. But some priests still retain the older attitudes and do not conceive the possibility of allowing the laity to act. On the other hand, many of the laity retain a purely passive conception of their role; not only do they leave everything to the priest, but they will do nothing if they are asked to take over a work. "Adult" lay persons (of whom I have been speaking) and priests adapted to such are still but few in number. Nevertheless, when one compares today with the be-ginning of the century, the transformation is unmistak-able. The essential thing is that this evolution continue and that the priest should more and more return to. the spiritual; that is, to the domain that belongs to him. But is "return" the correct word? He should rather aspire to it. But man is material, and the older conception gives satisfaction to a kind of unconscious materialism. Collaboration Formerly, one spoke only of authority and obedience. The faithful should obey, and nothing else was asked of them. Today, however, as we have seen, they are asked to think and to act for themselves. The meetings of active Christians have as their purpose a united program to enable the realization of the Christian ideal in the actual circumstances of life. Accordingly, the pri~est.is, no longer '~oncerned only with teaching; he listens and he invites the faithful to make their own personal contribution. This can be seen even in the matter of worship; the Mass has ceased to be a sacrifice offered by the priest alone at an altar distant from the people and in front of a congregation uncon-cerned with what he is doing, Now the Mass has become the community sacrifice offered by the priest an'd the faithful together, the priest being the spokesman of the community, the representative of the Church and of Christ, the celebrant of a sacrifice which belongs to the entire community. This is a profoundly changed state of affairs. Priests and laity act together. The Church is a single body and all of its members are active. This is a true resurrection. And by this very fact the priest has been strikingly ennobled, for he is no longer limited to being the shep-herd of a passive flock but has become instead the ani-mator of an active community. This change is to be found on all levels of the Church. The last and highest is that at the very center of the ChurCh, the See of Rome. Vati-can Council II gives witness to this transformation; and it is clear how John XXIII envisages the matter. His man-ner is not one like this: "Let the bishops say what they want, I shall do only what I want"; rather, his attitude is this: "I am deeply concerned to know the opinions of the bishops in order that I may take their advice into account." No one can derive from this the impression that pontifical power has thereby been lessened; but every-one does get the impression that the. Church forms one living body, animated by a movement of the whole. The role of the clergy is essential for the Church. When Catholicism is compared with Protestantism and with Orthodoxy, this role of the clergy is one of the most striking characteristics of the Church. Perhaps this ex-plains the retreat of the laity after the Reformation which placed the clergy in the background and in many cases even suppressed the priesthood and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Now, however, the Church has recovered from this crisis; Christian life is now developing in its com-plete totality. Henceforth the Church will no longer be divided into the active Church composed of the clergy and the passive Church composed of the laity. The Church is a body ÷ ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 1963 ]63 ÷ ÷ ÷ Jacqo, es REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I6,t of priests and laity together, living together, thinking together, acting together. As Cardinal Suhard put it: "The true achiever of evangelization is not the simple faithful nor the priest by himself; it is the Christian com-munity." The laity are fulfilling their role; the priest turn is free to be himself. Spiritual Counselor The direction of conscience has enjoyed a large place in the modern Church; it has been one of the principal instruments in the formation of a Christian elite. Never-theless, it has been especially concerned with women. When one reads the letters of the great spiritual directors, it is seen that they have been addressed almost exclusively to women. These women belonged to the higher levels of society. Today, however, as a result of the general spread of education and of the rise of active Christians, those who are concerned with the spiritual life are becoming more numerous and are to be found at all levels; they are found among workers and in the country as well as among the intellectuals. If it is necessary to practice direction of souls as it was formerly conceived, the clergy will be un-able to cope with it. But here once more, does not the spirit of collabora-tion profoundly transform conditions? Christians gather together with a priest to reflect on their Christian life; together they confront most of the questions that were formerly treated by individual conferences between the director and his spiritual child. In these conferences those seeking direction used to speak to their director not only of their interior life but of everything that con-cerned themselves. They asked their director's advice with regard to their relations with their husbands, with their children, and with their friends. They discussed the amount of freedom to be given their children, the amount of money to be given them, their clothes, companions, activities. Now all this is discussed in groups and in a way that is far more effective. Formerly, the person seeking direction would describe a situation to the director and he would decide the matter. The one consulting would act as though the director were omniscient, and he in turn would decide everything as though in fact he were. It was even taught as a received doctrine that the word of the director, was the word of God, that the director had the required graces of state, and that one should obey him blindly. Now it is realized that this was a false mystique, foreign to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation; neverthe-less, it formed a coherent system. Christians concerned with the exigencies o[ morality would consult their con[essor on the matter o[ all their reading. No priest, however, can be acquainted with everything that is being published. The con[essor, i[ he believed himsel[ obliged to answer--and [ormerly the majority believed themsel~ces so obliged h~d~0 answer by guessing or had to make use o[ a systematic severity in order to avoid all risk o[ danger . And thereby/ other dangers were [allen into. From another viewpoint, there were husbands who op-posed the idea o[ their wives having a director o[ con-science on the grounds that they did not want between themselves and their wives a secret authority which the latter obeyed absolutely. Moreover, the women who con-suhed a director were usually women who were not mar-ried or who were unhappily married. This meant that spiritual direction had mixed in with it a purely human desire [or masculine support, and this in a proportion that is difficult to determine. All this has passed, and we have arrived at a much sounder state o[ affairs. All the matters that we have men-tioned are taken up today in groups. In [amily groups there are discussed today the problems o[ conjugal intimacy, o[ prayer in common, and the prayer o[ each o[ the spouses. In all kinds o[ groups, there is discussion o[ diversions, o[ entertainments, o[ reading, o[ the time to be given to recreation and to apostolic work, and o[ the problems o[ pro[essional li[e. Since the dil~erent kinds o[ groups are highly diversified, the questions that are confronted also differ greatly; nevertheless, the great part of matters that were [ormerly treated by individual direction is now considered by groups, each member con-tributing the results o[ his own experience; the priest has only to contribute his own element. The result is that while the number o[ Christians de-sirous o[ a Christian life that will dominate their entire existence is growing, the number of those who want direction o[ conscience in the individualistic sense of former times is diminishing. Even the phrase "spiritual director" is vanishing; the expression tod~y is that of "spiritual counselor." Everything is simplified; every-thing is developed in an atmosphere of collaboration that befits adult li[e. Hence, [or example, when a [amily group discusses the liberty to be given to children o[ different ages or the amount of money to be given them, solutions are reached that are more balanced and more realistic than those [ormerly obtained when the one consulting was limited to accepting the word of a director who was a stranger to the li[e o[ the [amily. Some Christians, however, still have recourse to a spiritual director after the older method, but they are The Pr~st ToOa~y VOLUME 22, 1963 165 ]~que, Leclegcq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in general those who are slow to be caught up by the strong current that is sweeping through the Church and reanimating Christian life. Unfortunately they are still numerous, for a great many Christians as well as a great many priests remain immobilized in older conceptions. The movement that stresses the laity touches only a cer-tain sector and certain levels of the population. There are even entire regions where it is unknown. We are seeking here to emphasize the signs of this renewal, for we are sure that it is in this renewal that the future of the Church lies. That which is merely a prolongation of the past will fall as the world progresses. Undoubtedly, there will always remain certain ele-ments of the old direction of conscience, certain needs (more or less occasional) that will require personal, in-dividual contacts. In most of these cases confession will be sufficient. It is impossible to predict what will eventu-ally happen, but it is clear that everything is being sim-plified as the Christian animation of life grows. The Word Today much consideration is given to the ministry of the word; this again is a reaction against the past. Formerly, it was taken for granted that society was Christian. Children were instructed in religion, but no attention was paid to adults. Certain traditions, peri-odically restated by councils, obliged to a preaching directed to the instruction of the people; but actual practice had stifled the rule. One has only to recall what the state was of the ministry of the word. Now the word lives again; the most significant sign of this rebirth is undoubtedly retreats. The development of the spiritual life of active Christians has been accom-panied by the multiplication of retreats and periods of recollection. These have become so numerous that or~e can speak accurately in this connection in terms of a spiritual explosion. Retreats and days of recollection are organized in every walk of life: workers, business men, engineers, physicians, young persons of every category. Every time a group with a spiritual character is founded, retreats are organized. At the very time I am writing these lines, I have before me the bulletin of the Association of House-keepers for Priests, an organization that exists in France and Belgium; they, too, organize retreats and days of recollection. Moreover, undifferentiated retreats are also multiplying; these are directed towards all Christians and include without distinction both men and women, priests and laity. Once more we can note that formerly there were some retreat houses maintained by the Jesuits who pioneered them and by convents of women imbued by the Jesuit spirit; there was also a small number of persons who went to these houses for retreats. Today it is an immense move-ment. There are parishes which have retreat leagues com-posed of persons who make a retreat each- y.ear. In certain regions these leagues are systematically organized; in cer-tain dioceses of The Netherlands they are a regular insti-tution of every parish. And I am not speaking now of women, for women retreatants are even more numerous. Hence it is not a matter for astonishment that retreat houses are constantly being opened everywhere and that there are always too few of them. Rooms must generally be reserved in advance; and it can happen that a retreat must be canceled for lack of an available retreat house. But there is also need for priests. Preaching is par excellence a priestly duty. At the present moment the number of priests conducting retreats is legion. Formerly retreats were largely reserved to certain religious orders; but now many diocesan priests (pastors, chaplains, teach-ers) give them. Nevertheless, the number of retreat masters is still not sut~ciently large. As a general rule, it is very easy to find retreatants; retreat houses are more difficult to find; but hardest of all to find are priests. At the beginning of these articles, I recalled those who asked what was left for a priest to do now that there are active lay persons; the answer is that priests are needed for things that are genuinely priestlyl The Christian people have a hunger and thirst for the word of God, and those who can dispense it to them are not numerous enough. This is a matter of the priestly ministry par excellence. The tendency of today's priest is to occupy himself by preference in such ministries, for he feels himself the apostle of Christ in the strongest sense of that term; and he prefers to leave to lay persons the care of administra-tion. I have known a pastor who had to build a church; he appointed a committee of lay persons to raise the money while he himself conducted retreats. Perhaps the building of the church progressed a little more slowly than it would have had he devoted all his time to raising money, but he was at work shaping souls. All this also supposes a transformation in the clergy; for the majority of older priests, administrators of parishes, teachers of profane subjects, have been completely held back from conducting retreats. If they left this matter to religious, this was not without good reason. Today the importance of religious has not diminished, but retreat masters now come from every ecclesiastical sector. The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 167 $acques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 168 Collaboration Once More Together with divine worship, preaching is un-doubtedly the chief priestly activity; and yet even here there is to be found an interchange of priests and laity. Retreats differ greatly. In some the retreatants are plunged into an absolute silence; the director gives them talks throughout the entire day. In this case the renewal of Christian life is marked by the radical character of the retreat--more contemplative, more silent than could have been borne before. But there are also retreats where with-out any lessened preoccupation with the spiritual an hour a day is reserved for an exchange of views; in this period each one can present his problems as he discerns them in the particular situation in which he finds himself. Persons of an older form of mind find it indiscreet to expose one's state of soul to the whole world. Formerly in a retreat one listened to the director who was the only one to speak; then purely profane recreation pe-riods were had, and the retreatants who desired it could consult the retreat master personally and individually. Often retreatants would bring up the same questions; the retreat master would always give the same answer. In general, the matters discussed were such that there was no compelling reason to keep them secret; hence it often happened that the retreatants told each other what the re-treat master had told them. Today all this is treated in a community session; every-one profits by it, and it produces a community spirit in the group. The retreatants feels themselves engaged in a common work. The divine life in us, our work for the service of God, are problems that interest all Of us to-gether. We no longer go to heaven alone; we go there with our brethren; indeed it is impossible to go there alone, for we depend on those who surround us. The king-dom of God is a community enterprise to which we belong and which we ought to undertake together. Even a re-treat is a community enterprise. In addition to this, it is now customary to have lay persons speak during a retreat. Retreats are par excellence a priestly work; nevertheless, it does happen that a layman is invited to speak of an aspect ofthe Christian life which he knows. One of my friends was invited by a teacher to speak to his students during the retreat at the end of their studies; the subject was the role of the Christian in the world; after the talk the teacher told him: "It does them much more good to hear all this from a layman." Likewise lay persons are invited to speak in seminaries. In a Canadian magazine I found a letter from Rome con-cerned with the matter expressed by Cardinal Sali~ge as "making use of the layman." The correspondent described how some theological students in Rome had invited a father of a family to speak to them of his Christian life. ¯. Montreal, Rome, Toulouse, and now this article which is to appear in Brussels and Buenos Aires--the problems are everywhere the same. Lay persons are eve~:ywher~e.;,~so also are,priests. They are together, shoulder to'~hourder. We cannot do without the one more than the other. What About the Others? The reader will have noticed that the lay persons dis-cussed here are the active la!ty who have grown into Christian maturity. What has been said is concerned only with the activity of a priest in relationship to such laymen. But what about the others--who compose the vast major-ity of men? Clearly, the groups of which we have spoken, the aware-ness of the exigencies of Christian life, and the giving of retreats are giving to Christians a shape and a form very different from that which they previously had. As we have already remarked, we are seeing a new Christian people appearing. But if these Christians remain among them-selves and if the clergy is concerned only with them, what changes will there be in the world as a whole? Whatever else may be said about this problem, it is true that they will always be there in the world. They are not isolated from the world: they are shopkeepers with a neighborhood store; they are factory workers and en-gineers; they are white-collared workers; they are physi-cians and druggists. They are everywhere. They come to-gether to arouse their Christian awareness; but afterwards they disperse and return to the mass. This is a slow work which one can judge only over long intervals. One can see, for example, that the position of Catholic literature in the world is today far different from what it was a hundred years ago. The same can be said for the position of Catholics in philosophy, in art, in politics. This is true, someone may say; but this is only a matter of a few leaders. To this I would answer that the remark is true; but every leader supposes a body of followers. If Catholic writers and artists today show both a talent and a conformity to the aspirations of the times which were not shown a hundred years ago, then this has happened be-cause the environment must have changed. And it is the same if Catholic philosophers are able to speak to the men of today. Such persons are perhaps the flower of Christianity; but the flower supposes the stem, and the stem in turn supposes the root. If I am the root, I need not be humiliated by the 4. 4. 4. The Priest Today VOLUME 2Z, ~.963 169 ÷ ÷ ÷ Jacques Leclercq REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS fact that I am not seen; it is owing to me that the flower can charm the eye. The position of the Church in the world is, then, pro-roundly changed. And in the examples given above, it will be noted that this transformation has been achieved by lay persons. Writers like Claudel, Chesterton, Bernanos, Ger-trud yon le Fort have undoubtedly done more to attract men to Catholicism than any theologian and perhaps more even than any priest. But they have been in relation with a priest. In short, the role of the priest is exercised on the interior of the Church, on those who are united in the Church; it is these latter who thereupon go out to speak to the world. At times the complaint is heard ~that Christians barri-cade themselves within a ghetto, living by themselves without contact with the outside. The complaint is well founded; if they dose themselves up with each other, the salt will not be able to give its flavor. And it is true that there is a dangerous exclusivism, a fear of leaving a Christian background. This fear is a debilitating thing, for of all the emotions fear is the one that is most debasing. The spreading of ideas, and especially the Christian spreading of ideas, is done by the osmosis of personal con-tact; it is to be noted, however, that this notion of per-sonal contact is a wide one extending to the books that are read and the films that are seen. The action of Chris-tianity proceeds from the fact that the Christian environ-ment reflects Christ. A great many who were born and raised Christian turn from Christianity because they do not find Christ in the Christianity which has been pre-sented to them. What they need is for active Christians to give them an exact image of Christianity. Others, also educated as Christians, turn from Christianity when they perceive the demands it makes on them. The Church loses nothing when such quit her, for they discredit her in the measure that they are believed to represent her. This is the case with cei'tain governments which declare them-selves Catholic. This, then, is a question of the large numbers of Chris-tians who are lukewarm and indifferent. But there is an-other group, larger still, those who are not Christian:; at all. Among these the seed must be sown. Here, too, the role of the priest is essential. Father Vinatur in the text cited above remarked that the priest is a founder. It is true; Christianity is founded only by a priest. This is seen from the very beginning; in the Acts of the Apostles there is related the ministry of St. Paul; he is seen taking up his residence in a city, making some converts, and then leaving when Christianity has been set up and a member of the community--the priest--has been established as head. This is a permanent condition of things. Active lay persons can prepare the soil; they can arouse sympa-thetic interest; but a Christian community is.formed only when a priest comes. This.i~ true on all, levels of the Church. When Catholid Action was constituted with its appeal to assume a genuinely religious activity, it was priests who took the initiative in the matter. So also when the family movement was founded to concern itself with the Christian life of married persons, it was begun by priests. Lay persons came afterwards; in a certain sense, they ended by doing everything. But the priest remains, and he will never be able to be dispensed with. This, then, is the design of the new Church, animated by a Christian life which has not been known since early times, a Church of Christians all sharing in the life and action of Christ. This Church is but sketched in the reality before us at the present time; but this sketch is the image of what is being formed. The confidence which we can have for the future comes from the fact that Christ is living in this Church in a way that He has not since her early centuries. ÷ ÷ The Priest Today VOLUME 22, 196,~ 171 LADISLAS M. ORSY, S.J. From Meditation to Contemplation ÷ ÷ ÷ Ladislas M. Orsy, S.J., is professor of canon law at the Gregorian Univer-sity; Piazza della Pilotta, 4; Rome, Italy. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS The aim of this article is both practical and doctrinal: it is to give practical help for the difficult period of tran-sition from meditation to contemplation and to show the theological background of the change that takes place in the soul. Meditation in these pages means prayer with the help of concepts, images, and more or less enforced acts of will. Contemplation means silence before God, prayer in which the soul is transformed under God's powerful ac-tion. In meditation the accent is on activity, in contem-plation on passivity. In meditation the soul tries to reach God by thoughts, feelings, and desires; in contemplation God has reached the soul and works on it without thoughts, feelings, or desires. In meditation the soul fights its way towards God; in contemplation it should stand before God in poverty. Passivity and poverty are then the foundations for a new type of activity and for new riches that have their source in God's powerful ac-tion. Such a deep change in prayer affects the whole man: it is a change in personality. It is not without difficulties; Saint Teresa remarks that there is no time in the spirit-ual life when it is so easy to give up prayer altogether as the time when contemplation begins. God's Work in the Soul God is eternally present in the soul: it is His presence that gives it life and being, it is His presence that sancti-fies it. He is not only present, He is working in the soul, infusing light and love into our mind and love into our will power. His final aim is to take possession of our person so that we should be united to Him and be His adopted children for an eternity. God is eternally present in the soul. He was there since the moment of our creation; but at the moment of our baptism He came again, not in majesty but as a good friend, and made our soul His own dwelling house where He likes to remain. He brought sanctity and holiness with Him and transformed the soul. As when fire is made in a cold and dark r0on~ ~th~ place be~ome~ ~¢arm and full of light, so when God comes into the soul it is filled with warmth and light. It is clothed with immortality, it belongs to God's family, in a way it becomes divine. The new life the soul receives is called sanctifying grace, the new light in the mind faith, and the infused love in the will power hope and charity. They are all fruits of the presence of God; should He leave the soul, there would be dark and cold again. God works in the soul. There is not one moment of rest for Him. He is supremely good and happy, and He wants to share His rich goodness and happiness with others. Consequently, His sanctifying presence is in fact a work of continuous sanctification. Light and love are given to mind and will in abundance: light that we may see and better understand things divine,-.love that we may go towards God at a better pace. This action of God is peaceful and quiet: He does not like noise and agitation. It is this action that ought to be the source of all our thoughts and deeds; unless they proceed from God they will be empty and they will not bear any fruit for eternal life. God's aim is to take possession of our person. He is not satisfied with partial sanctification of His family. He wants to bring them into the very centre of His own life where the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one and where They know and love each other without end. To say that one does not want to be more than an ordinary good Christian (meaning by it that one does not want to be perfect) is to betray a lack of generosity and to show a great ignorance of God's intention who wants all His children to grow continuously and reach their full maturity in Christ. The extent of the necessary trans-formation is indicated by the distance (which each one easily realizes for himself) between God's purity and our impurity, between His charity and our own obscurity. Nevertheless, it is this complete transformation that is God's aim and nothing less. He has the means to achieve it: by the gentle action of His love in this world and by Purgatory in the other. No person who wants to see God can escape this cleansing process; and those who are generous will want to get through it soon, if possible, in this life. Such desire is not a presumption: it is no more than conforming our will to God's will. 4. 4. 4. Meditation to Contemplation VOLUME 22, 196~ 173 4. 4. 4. L. M.'Or~y, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]74 Meditation When God comes into the soul of man and wants to sanctify him, He encounters a great obstacle which is man's fallen nature with all that it entails: sin, attach-ment to worldly things, false judgments, and selbwill as hard as steel. Purification is necessary. It is mainly done by God, but man has his part in it as well. Meditation is one of the first steps in this cleansing process. Man has heard the voice of God and wants to obey Him and be near Him. But man's mind is not clear and clean enough to perceive the light that comes from God living in his soul, his will is not sensitive enough follow the inspirations of grace. It is literally embedded in mortal and perishing things, it is ruled not by God but by the senses. Training is necessary for both mind and will in order to lift them from the visible into the in-visible, from the tangible into the intangible, from the sensitive into the spiritual. Part of this training is what we call meditation. The mind has to be trained. It should be a training in divine truth so that our thoughts, ideas, judgments correspond to those of God and thus that the two minds be united as far as possible into one. This training is done by the soul in an active and discursive way when it meditates on the words of our Lord, on the mysteries of His life, on the Church. What the person does is to fill his mind with God's thoughts instead of his own. He is really trying to m~ike his mind a better instrument for the perception of God's inspirations, an instrument more adapted to receive God's light. It is a tuning-up or warm-ing- up process. The mind is bathed in the divine truth so that it may become divine. This is done in an active way, by reasoning, by considering the call of Christ our Lord or God's beauty in nature, or by imagining the Holy Family. Man is working his way towards God. The will has to be trained as well. The attraction of things eternal is fine and delicate, and our selfish will does not easily notice it. In order to become more sensi-tive to the action of grace, the selfishness of our nature and of our will in particular ought to be broken by con-tinuous exercise in mortification. The aim is that our will should become soft and flexible, attached to nothing, so that it may follow the will of God in everything. To attain that aim, one has to work hard and in an active way. One has to do penance, one has to give up many things, many of his likings, one has to be humble; and there is no dispensation from this work. Since the mind and will are active, activity predomi-nates at this stage of the spiritual life. But sometimes it may happen that a longing awakens in the soul after God Himself, a desire to meet the living God without any human speech, image, or idea. Words and pictures are created things; they do not satisfy the soul that has been created to see God face to face. The desire to meet God without passing through created images all the time may be a sign of better things to come. Transition Thoughts, perception, and feelings are all created things. If we are called to union with God, there must be a moment when they have to disappear since no hu-man person can be satisfied with looking at the picture of somebody he loves when personal contact is possible. Besides~ those acts may fulfill their purpose in the puri-fication of mind and will. Their nature being limited, their efficacy is limited too. I can penetrate the mind of God to a certain extent by meditating on the Gospel; I can follow the will of God to a great extent by trying to do what I think the best. But neither my meditations nor my good deeds have the power to cleanse my soul so well that I may truly say that God has taken possession of me and that I am no more than an instrument in His hand. The true cleansing is reserved to God. It is He who transforms the soul by infusing light and love into it in a more than ordinary measure; it is that light and love that sanctify and purify the whole man. 1. External Signs. The first sign to indicate that a per-son might have a "vocation" to contemplative prayer is that he does not find any more "taste" in meditation: he does not enjoy it any more in the best and spiritual sense of the word. Before, he was able to collect a great va-riety of fruit in his meditation: words and images paci-fied his soul and helped him to formulate good resolu-tions. Now he finds that his meditation is more like a dried-up fountain which does not contain fresh water. But not to have any "taste" in meditation is a purely negative sign: it might well be the indication of careless-ness or of drifting towards the world. Hence, a more posivite sign is needed to confirm that it is God who brought about the change. The positive sign will be a deep longing in the soul for God and a sincere desire to follow Christ our Lord in everything and to be con-formed to His image. A sincere desire that is manifest in deeds. The loss of "taste" in meditation and the longing for God are always coupled with a turning away from this created world. This loss of interest in created things, even if they are very good in themselves, is the third sign; and it is a natural consequence of what has taken place: 4. 4. Meditation to Contemplation VOLUME 22, 1963 ]75 ÷ 4. 4- when the soul is not satisfied any more with created con-cepts in its prayer, it cannot be satisfied with created things either. The change may be astonishing for the person concerned: he used to enjoy music and art, litera-ture and human company, and now he notices that they all leave him dry and empty. When all these signs are found together, loss of "taste" in meditation after it has been practiced for a fairly long time (which may vary from person to person), longing for God in solitude (the longing being confirmed by solid virtues in practice), and the consequent loss of good and legitimate pleasure in created things, then the person concerned may have the vocation to a simpler form of prayer. If these signs are not there, any attempt to leave be-hind meditation and practice another form of prayer, namely the prayer of simplicity, may be poisonous for the soul; it may weaken its spiritual life and it may even ruin the soul altogether. 2. An Explanation. The signs just described are ex-ternal, but what is happening internally in the soul? What is it that brought the change about? The answer is that gradually and in a hidden way God is taking possession of the soul and its facilities. As mind and will have been purified to a reasonable degree, though by no means perfectly, God's work on them~be-comes more intense. Light and love are being given in a larger measure than ever before, and the hand of God begins to shape the new man, the new creature of St. Paul, out of the old. It is as if the hand of God had touched the soul from behind and in the dark. The soul recognised the touch instinctively but could not see the person. It turned away from all creatures, whether con-cepts, images in prayer, or works of art, and conceived a longing for its Maker and Creator. Hence the loss of "taste" in meditation, longing for God, and the feeling of emptiness in the presence of created objects. God comes near enough to awaken a deep desire in the soul but not near enough to let the soul perceive something of God's beauty. It follows that for a while (and it may be a very long while) one may remain in the dark: all consolation from this world is lost, but no sen-sible consolation from the other world is coming. Per-haps it would be truer to say that though the heart is pure enough to feel the obscure touch of God, as yet it: is not able to receive the light in its fullness because of the many impurities that it still has. The result is darkness; and if one does not know what is happening it is easy to lose confidence and even to give up prayer altogether. In truth, it is a time of grace for the soul. 3. Some Practical Advice. If the signs for contempla-tion are there, it would not be wise to force oneself to make meditations in a strict and methodical form. One cannot turn the clock back, not even in the spiritual life. The time of predominantly active prayer, is over; now one has to learn how to~follow~the lead The first step towards more passivity should be the simplification of prayer. Intellectual considerations dur-ing prayer time should be left out as much as possible. Their place should be taken by simple acts of faith, hope, and love, which are the beginning of any prayer and the fruit of the best of prayers. The soul should .learn how to come back to the same idea again and again and find peace, joy, and "taste" in it. Also there should be a tend-ency towards greater receptivity, but with prudence and wisdom. God likes to take His time; He likes to build slowly and gradually. Our duty is to follow the move-ments of His grace: we should not try to go any faster than He wants us to go nor should we lag behind. The adaptation to this new way of life in which it is God who holds the initiative is bound to be a long process. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a change in our personality. It is bound to affect everything in our life, our way of thinking, working, and our relations with other persons. A likeness to Christ our Lord is being formed in us. After the initial difficulties a long period of peaceful development may ensue. Prayer will be a mixture of ac-tivity and passivity; but if the soul is faithful, it may reach the stage in which the main rule is passivity. A passivity that leads to a readiness to do the will of God and to a very practical love of God and our neighbour. One final remark is necess