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Issue 60.1 of the Review for Religious, 2001. ; Renewal Vocation Spiritual Legacy Empowerment JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 Review for Religious'helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call to holiness' ' ° by making available to them the spiritual legacies tbat flow-from the cbarisms of Catbolic consecrated 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 ° V~reb 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 inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2001 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. MI 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. view for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizfibeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm James and Joan Felling Adriafi Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bish6p Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Patricia Wittberg SC JANUARY FEBRUARY 2001 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 1 contents 6 renewal Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees A. Paul Dominic SJ relates the biblical notion of jubilee to the teaching of Jesus and the practice of the early church in order to point to ways that we might live the spirit of jubilee in our Christian life today. 20 A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia'~ James H. Kroeger MM shares the optimism and gratitude that pervade the apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia as he summarizes and evaluates its various chapters. 30 40 vocation Who Is a Brother? Philip Armstrong CSC traces the church reality of brothers through history to the present-day challenges. Vocational Being Donald Macdonald SMM stresses that, if we Christians need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then Scripture provides the practical means to make our own this perspective of faith. 2j Review for Religious 48 spiritual legacy Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Ignatian Tradition Mary Ann Foley CND traces the originality of the missionary spirituality of Marguerite Bourgeoys, drawing upon a varity of sources including the Ignatian tradition. 62 The 350th Anniversary of the Sisters of St. Joseph Joan L. Roccasalvo CSJ gives evidence that Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises are the inspiration and source of Jean-Pierre Mddaille's Maxims of Perfection, which contain the entire spirit of the foundational documents of the Sisters of St. Joseph. 76 empowerment Till the End of My Days Agnes Cunningham SSCM identifies five factors that have proved helpful in her actively pursuing retirement. 80 Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Ministering to the Dying and Bereaved Laurel M. O'Neal offers a correction to our common misconceptions of death, its relation to sin, and especially the relation of God to death. departments 4 Prisms 99 Canonical Counsel: Conclusion of the Novitiate 105 Book Reviews January-February 2001 prisms Review for Religious cele-brates its sixtieth year of publication. Sixty years is not the milestone of the younger fifty or the more dra-matic one hundred. Of course, it is not in the same league as a millennium. But a sixty-year anniversary does present the occasion for a pause--a time for assess-ment, for evaluation, for celebration, for gratitude. We have so many of these "pauses" built into our ordinary life that we can forget how important their place is for the healthy living of life, including the spir-itual. The changing seasons of the year, with their cycles of growth and dormancy, present one rhythmic pattern observed in religious practices of people through the centuries. As we quantify the rhythm of a day into our minutes and hours and then measure fur-ther into days of a week and weeks of a month and months of a year, we are struck at how we humanly have built in so many pauses into ordinary living. As a matter of fact, we humans are not meant to be "energ-erizer bunnies" (as in a famous TV ad about a brand of battery) that just keep going and going, always doing more of the same. No, we are people who have waking and sleeping patterns, who enjoy times of work and of recreation, who seek out periods of solitude and of social interaction, who are marked by successes and failures and those many "gray-area" projects whose value remains unclear. We are meant to pause, to be a Review for Religious reflective people, because we are formed by the Bible--that very reflectively written account of God's dealings with his people. We have just been celebrating the biblical jubilee year as a divinely inspired pause. We Christians are a people who appre-ciate the flow of a liturgical year, with its celebratory pauses that bring home in ever new ways the key moments of our faith-life with God. Though there are these many natural and ecclesial pauses in our life, we seem to be unwilling to choose such a rhythm in our personal daily living. Both in our personal life and in our parish or community projects, we often do not take time to set and identify some intermediate goals. We rush on, instead of reflecting on what we have done up to this point, on what changes might be desirable, on how much gratitude we should have and express for all the cooperation we have received, and perhaps on what mistakes we have made and whose feelings we may have bruised. We Christians need to make time to reflect, to assess and celebrate and apologize, as our way of working with God. We need to choose to build this kind of pause into our day (like the Ignatian daily awareness examen) and into the works and projects we are busy on in concert with others. In commu-nity we need to choose to build in these pauses so that commu-nity life and community projects can make wise choices and avoid sad crises. If we choose to make "anniversary-like pauses" ordinary and so build them into our daily life, we will discover a power source that makes for a physically, psychologically, and spiritually healthy life. We have had our new year's celebration, pausing to ring out the millennium year of 2000 and to welcome the year of 2001. As we enter into this new year, perhaps we all need to look for timely occasions when we .can pause--to celebrate, to assess, to correct, to revitalize for the continuing effort. By such choices, we grow into being the reflective Christians God's word calls us to be. We meet God, in his gift of time to us, by pausing to appreciate it and use it well. David L. Fleming SJ Janualsv-February 2001 renewa A. PAUL DOMINIC Beyond Jubilee and Jubilees The celebration of any jubilee is necessarily public. It cannot be thought of except in social terms. Even in per-sonal jubilees, which are different from institutional jubilees, individual jubilarians do not make their jubilee a private affair; they invite their relations and friends to a celebration. In so doing almost all follow the unwrit-ten bourgeois rule of making their celebration an exclu-sive affair of their particular class and so upholding the social scale. When such segregated festivities are arranged by the rich (and not the poor, who anyway have nothing to celebrate because they have nothing to cele-brate with), they hurt even the rich, not just some other people, because they bring the burden of keeping up with the Joneses. The same thing happens, mutatis mutandis, in institutions and nations, with subtle but real harm to humanity. This is not a modern phenomenon but an old, unfortunate human one. Jesus saw it rampant among his people and ~ought to save them from bringing harm in this way to themselves and others. And so he did not think it unbecoming to tell his host during the meal to imagine another pattern of invitations, one that would break the tradition of inviting select persons or rich ones A. Paul Dominic SJ writes again from Satyodayam; 12-5-33 S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. Review for Religious or relatives and instead invite particularly the poor and the hand-icapped (Lk 14:12-14). When he was thus breaking new ground in the matter of celebration, was he not inspired by the good news of jubilee that he had learned as a Jew from the Hebrew Scriptures in the bosom of his Hebrew family? Going Back to the Source of Jubilee The very word jubilee is biblical, with a specific religious con-notation of joy. Though it has come into secular parlance, all those who celebrate "jubilees," personal or institutional, would do well to be aware of the term's centuries-old wealth of meaning. The joy that is now associated with jubilees in the secular or religious worlds looks back on achievements of excellence, but the jubilee joy in biblical times looked forward to achievements still to come; also, it involved the whole of Hebrew society, without excluding any class. While all celebrated the jubilee, both the haves and the have-nots, they participated in it differently. The former were behind the whole celebration, promoting it, while the latter benefited from it. The promoters were concerned with building a promising future, not so much for themselves as for others, who unlike them had had a harrowing past of financial reverses. Who on earth could have had this joyful interest in others rather than themselves except God and God's faithful people? Hearing the cry of people who, perhaps even through their own fault, had lost their ancestral holdings and consequently their own rights of freedom and dignity, God would have the losers gain back their lost land and their very persons. As all land and all peo-ple belonged primarily to God, God would ordain a time of grace once every fifty years, when good, law-abiding persons would come forward and voluntarily restore to the unfortunates whatever the latter had lost to them even by way of fair deals. The very idea of people responding to God's call to selfless joy on behalf of the deprived will be effective only to the extent that it is appreciated for its inspire~t and sensible holiness. People will be most joyful in their jubilee only when they thoroughly accept that it is a holy thing for them and declare so (Lv 25:10 and 12). The biblical jubilee is all joy only when it is all holy. It is first and foremost holy and, as such, it cannot but be joyful. It is the holi-ness of the God of joy that makes for the joy of all his people, who are to be holy like him. January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond yubilee and Jublilees This causal link of holiness to joy in the celebration of jubilees cannot be emphasized too much. The joyous celebra-tion of jubilee enjoined in Leviticus 25:8-17 and 23-55 forms part of the Law of Holiness in Leviticus 17-27. The dynamics of jubilee should be understood in the light of the most important piece in the Law of Holiness: "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lv 19:2b). How is this orthodoxy of holiness to become, the orthopraxis of joy? This is a highly practical question even though there remains the theoretical question of how it is possible that our human nature can share in the nature of God, namely, holiness. Leviticus and the rest of the Bible have no use for such questions, but hand down in God's name ways of living that are pleasing to the very God of holiness and joy. With the stunning command to human beings to be holy, there came from God clear directions about how they were to deal with one another. He wanted his people to associate with each other in ways that included practi-cal concern for the poor and the weak and the handicapped so that they would not feel left out: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Lv 19:9-10, emphasis added) This was a practical minimum test of the maximum law he enjoined on them of cultivating a loving disposition towards one another, abjuring grudges and hate (Lv 19:18-19). If people had lived in this original spirit of divinely ordained love, shown in personal dealings and shaped in concrete societal action, there would have been no urgency for such an institution as the jubilee. From the beginning, people did not abide by, but slid from, this ideal. To stem this slide and to set a minimum for the people to reach, God brought about the program of the sabbatical year (Lv 25:2-7). Its enactment, going back to the wake of the Exodus reads thus: For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat . (Ex 23:10-11, emphasis added) . Though no definite information is found in the Bible's his- Review for Religious torical books about how and how long the sabbatical law was observed,~ there is no denying that it was (see Ne 10:32 and 1 M 6:49-53), though not always (see 2 Ch 36:21). And that is why one may dare say--in this field there are as many opinions as scholars-- that the law was further developed to include remission of debts in favor of the poor and, what is more, to be generous to them. Aiming at abolishing poverty, the new law unambiguously said: If there is among you anyone in need . . do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is near," and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing . Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so. (Dt 15:7-10, emphasis added) Who could better this law? For all its beauty (if law can be said to be beautiful), who would want this kind of beauty for them-selves? Who would observe this beautiful law? Indeed, there may be people now who would question its very place in a legal corpus. Though this was presumably not the case then, still, given human nature, it would not be surprising if it was practiced in its violation rather than observance. For this reason, and with a view to getting people to observe the high ideal of the law, it was drastically changed with regard to the time of its enforcement. The new law, unlike the old, would come into force not every seven years as before, but every fifty years, heralding what came to be known as the jubilee year, called so after the instrument used for the announcement, namely, yobe! (Hebrew for trumpet). Though the sabbatical law was thus made less burdensome (one would not have had to observe it more than once in one's lifetime, given the biblical lifespan of eighty even for the. strong), still the jubilee law retained the essential burden of the previous laws, namely, reversing the trend of the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer. Its complete formulation specified four things. (1) People must allow all land to lie fallow, must live on what it pro-duces by itself and has been stored, and must share with others. (2) In selling and buying, the rich should not cheat and oppress the poor, taking advantage of their plight. (3) Those who have grown richer by buying other~' properties should freely restore them to their former owners. (4) Those who own Israelites as slaves January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond g~ubilee and j~ublilees (because in their poverty they sold themselves) have to honorably release them and their families. Was the mitigated law observed? While some scholars say that it does not seem it was ever observed,z others opine cautiously that the possibility of its having been observed in the beginning of the settlement in the Holy Land cannot be ruled OUt.3 Relying on the two applications of the jubilee law to specific situations (Lv 27:16-25 and Nm 36:1-12), we may presume that there indeed was a time when the law was in force and not a dead letter. Also, ¯ from the fact that the Greek Alexander and the Roman Julius Caesar exempted their Jewish domain of Judaea from the annual tribute during the sabbatical year,4 may we not infer that the jubilee directives were at that time not out of vogue in the life of the peo-ple? It would be interesting, then, to know how they could have been carried out generation after generation. But unfortunately no historical observance of the jubilee was recorded in either the Old Testament or the New. Anyway, from the kind of juridical Judaism found in the New Testament, we have no compelling rea-son to believe that the jubilee still prevailed in practice, leaving us to wonder what ever happened to Judaism that God founded as a contrast communitys with its liberative laws, such as jubilee. Retrieving the Jubilee after Jesus Where does this le~d us? An answer may spring up from sens-ing how Jesus responded to the moribund custom of jubilee in his time. Though the word jubilee does not occur in the Gospels, the way he looked at some issues may point to his thinking on jubilee. He was surely positive in his attitude to the Law, and so we hear the puzzling logion: "Do not think that I have come to abol-ish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to ful-fill" (Mt 5:17). In so taking his stand, he was calling for right obedience to the Law: hearing the voice of God in the word of the Law, understanding God's genuine purpose, and acting on it. If he often invited attacks by those who were on the side of reli-gion, it was to challenge them to read the L~w aright according to the mind of the Lawgiver. He pointed out, too, that in the course of history the Law was sometimes mitigated or even distorted, as in the case of divorce, because of human hardness of heart. In order to accomplish the Law, he would advocate first and fore-most a return to its origin in the heart of God and a discernment Revie~v for Religious of its true relevance for the day, guided by the signs of the times, the ongoing surprise revelations of God's ways. Inspired by such a vision of the Law, Jesus would have insisted that jubilees were not occasions to be observed merely twice in a century, whether by omission or halfheartedly or even whole-heartedly. In this spirit he would have spoken searchingly: "If it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should return to the owner the land he had sold to you in his penury, I ask you, 'Why buy at all in the first place from a needy person?' Again, if it was said of old that you should not, during the jubilee, claim your money lent to the poor, I ask you, 'Why lend at all to the poor with a view to getting it back? Rather, give to anyone who asks you and, if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.' Again, if it was said of old that in the jubilee year you should free your slaves, I ask you, 'How dare you .ever buy out your brothers or sisters and enslave them even if they sold themselves to you in their dire need? For you are all slaves of God, and among yourselves you are brothers and sisters.'" Further, he would have told any challengers to search the Scriptures and realize how God had freed their forebears from slavery and settled them in a new land, a land that was not theirs but his, so that they might know the holy joy of living together in rich fellowship and surrounded by the blessings of Providence. Finally, in Ezekiel's fashion (Ezk 20:4-24), he would even have made them face their Roman subjugation and answer whether it was not due to their forsaking the jubilee of God and ceasing to be truly subject to the God of jubilee. It would have been with such silent thoughts that he went beyond the old jubilee and initiated a new era, calling it the year of the Lord's favor (Lk 4:19) and heralding the longed-for liberty, fulfilling Ezekiel's prophecy6 and climaxing John's preaching.7 God's own aspiration was ever to create a people witnessing to his blessing. Going Forth in the Spirit of Jubilee In picking up such possible thoughts of Jesus, what is our own jubilee aspiration and how are we to realize it? We do so by becom-ing the community of God's people and striving to do away with poverty. God's own aspi.ration was ever to create a people wit- January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees nessing to his blessing. When Jesus came on the scene, he pro-claimed that constant purpose of God. When he announced God's kingdom emerging in the world, he heralded equivalendy the com-munity of God's people. Further, in imitation of his Father, he was re-creating it visibly out of the remnant that was left of the old community.8 The new community, though very much in the world, was not of it. It was fashioned to be an alternative society in the spirit of jubilee. It had its own charter, promising and promoting the fulfillment of individuals and groups in society and thus the whole society (Mt 5:3-10). Its foremost beneficiaries were the poor of all sorts, that is, those who had been all along without name, voice, or standing, like children and women, the ritually and socially outcast, and, of course, the economically awkward. Though made up of different classes, the new community would not have the distinction and segregation of the high and the low; rather, the so-called high would serve the so-called low. If such terms as highest and lowest were to be used at all, then the highest in the community would be those who, bending over for the sake of others, made themsel+es little and served them-- even washing their feet. Their insignia would not be the tradi-tional one of selfish power, privilege, and possession, but the downward mobility of service and healthy promotion of others, avoiding all competition. Their royal rule would be: "In every-thing do to others as you would have thdm do to you" (Mt 7:12). Perhaps the one incident in which almost all the above distinctive qualities of the new community came into play was Jesus' feeding the multitude and satisfying them all with the little supply of bread and fish made available by a little boy. Living in this spirit of permanent jubilee, apart from which there is no jubilee worth talking about, we dare dream of becom-ing a contrast .community of Christians, renovating the structures of the age-old world in many details and so creating places where individual and social well-being can exist. Jubilee Praxis at the Start of the First Millennium How on earth can this become part of the realm of reality? Though we may find ourselves overwhelmed by forces against true community, did Jesus not envisage such a community of the future right at the start of his ministry when he declared that the era of universal liberation was beginning there and then with him- Review for Religious self (Lk 4:21)? Did he not confirm it as he went about forming one flock On 10:16)? And, at the very end, was he not intent on drawing all to himself and forming one community (Jn 12:32)? Did he fail in all that? The pristine community of the church witnessed that he certainly did not. Indeed, it acquired early an identity of its own, distinguishing it from the surrounding com-munity and marking its way of living together. Their identity was not so much their theoretical acceptance of the gospel, but prac-tical allegiance to it with consequences in social behavior. Luke named it koinonia, meaning fellowship or communion, which "con-notes the bond of responsibility to one another enjoined on believ-ers by their assent to the gospel."9 His firsthand report of this unique phenomenon reads thus: All who believed were together and had all things in com-mon; they would sell their possessions and goods and dis-tribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of the people. (Ac 2:44-47) Perhaps to emphasize the veracity of his report, he drew another such picture: Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apos-tles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Ac 4:32-35, emphasis added) The kernel of koinonia was thus communism in its best sense, namely, the community of goods which expressed, proved, and strengthened the community of spirit.1° The trial of koinonia even brought about the institution of diaconia or service (Ac 6:1-6) to oversee the practicalities of koinonia. Nothing like it had happened before in the Mosaic period, but it did not come out of the blue. It had its clear precedents as the law~ of the sabbatical and jubilee year show. The sharing of the rich with the poor envisaged by such laws did not merely look to the temporary or intermittent allevia-tion of the hardship of the.poor. Rather, it aimed at the divine ideal of annihilating poverty altogether according to the hopeful com-mand: "There shall be no poor among you" (Dt 15:4).~ January-February 2001 Dominic ¯ Beyond j-~ubilee and 3~ublilees Inspired by Jesus, the early church learned well, translating the above command into action and initiating jubilee living. The later church, as far as the 3rd century or so, followed suit in such a striking manner that the historian Pliny thought of Christians as tertia gens, a third group of people besides Romans and barbarians. Still the ideal had to be nurtured from the beginning against natural human hesitations, weaknesses, and failures. So Paul bade the Corinthians regarding help for the famine-stricken commu-nity in Jerusalem: Strive for equality; at present give from your abundance what they are short of, and some day they will repay in abundance what you lack. Then you will be equal and what Scripture says shall come true: "To him who had much, nothing was in excess; to him who had little, nothing was lacking." (2 Co 8:13-15, Christian Community Bible) The equality of everyone in the community, whether rich or poor, will remain no more than an illusion as long as .economic inequality remains. That is a warning implicitly given by James, when he confronted Christian assemblies with their old unequal dealings with the rich and poor: For, if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say "Have a seat here, please" while to the one who is poor you say "Stand there" or "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves? (Jm 2:2-4) On the contrary, where the rich willingly forgo some of their riches in order to raise the condition of the poor, there is equal joy for both; and so James could say, "Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low" (Jm 1:9-10). Jubilee Praxis as the Third Millennium Starts With such precedents, are we going to achieve community of equals? Yes, if we enter upon unambiguous, if taxing, praxis. The first practice would seem to be self-awareness of our "chronic" failure in shaping human communities. If even now we let the societal laws considered above provoke not offense (pace Paul, Rm 3:20) but repentance, convicting us of our share of humanity's sin in this matter, we would be on the right track. Review for Religious Part of this initial practice is to realize how we, like the rest of humanity, have cultivated the pleasing or even cozy practice of good intention rather than a.ction, of fine words rather than deeds. James had reason to ask bluntly: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them "Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? (]m 2:15-16) Is this challenge any less relevant now for the church community, and in particular the talking (even if not pontificating) theological fraternity, despite two millennia of Christianity? This is, however, no time for despair, but a time for immediate, earnest, and con-sistent praxis based on the twin nature of human beings as spiri-tual and economic. The second practice could well be conscientization for both the rich and the poor. The former may not even realize what being poor actually means. I, for one, was surprised to hear a city dweller say not very long ago that he missed Sunday Mass because he had no clean clothes to wear. Situations like this must be brought to the notice 6f the well-dressed community at Sunday Mass, among whom might be found some, like a Chicago priest I heard about, for whom a shirt worn once is too soiled to be worn again on the same day. In a school run by a group of sisters, a poor child went to class in slippers instead of shoes; for punishment her teacher, a former nun, made her wear them round her neck with her belt. Such unbe-lievable things occur and need to be made known, through chan-nels such as pastoral councils, to the rest of the community. For their part, the poor must be transformed by becoming conscious of what they deserve but are denied by society, includ-ing the church. St. Vincent de Paul Societies may serve this crit-ical cause, first learning themselves and then teaching poor people their rights enshrined in Canon Law. What a revelation to hear: There are canons that can be said to promote the ~velfare of the poor and speak fibout the defense of their rights. There are canons that promote the participation of the poor in church life, facilitate their access to the sacraments, uphold the right to receive help from the temporal goods of the church, require norms on legal aid for the poor, and so forth?~ If such conscientization is to become reality, much depends on a third practice, ecclesial leadership, which at least in India rests Dominic ¯ Beyond Jubilee and Jublilees largely with the bishops and then the clergy. Who is to tell them what their praxis should or could be? That, though, is what the Servant Leadership school in Washington, D.C., has dared, train-ing leaders in community living that is intimately associated with the life of the poor.13 It is heartening to hear of a bold Indian bishop who would not oblige his priests' clamor for his support of projects for the poor unless they committed themselves to conscientiously spend-ing for the target group all the money received. Not many, how-ever, are like him, intent on being levelers, mindful of benefiting the poor wholly and so bringing all people to a level of equality. So we hear stories of bishop~ who are not loath to receive a purse on the occasion of their jubilees celebrations, in clear violation of the spirit of the biblical jubilee. Vv'hat are we to think when a bishop, to please his family, tries to dissuade a young man from becoming a brother to serve the poor and even offers to make him a priest in his diocese? Does he have a ghost of an idea, let alone a chance, to build a true community where the poor will find their due, equal place of honor and feel blessed? Would that the unworthy bishops acted on the proposal, made by themselves or their confreres at the Synod of Bishops on Justice, to "under-take an examination of the modes of acting and of the posses-sions and lifestyle found within the church itself'U4--even though they seem not to take seriously the anticlerical strictures of Christ himself. Whatever the praxis of the leadership may be, the rest of the community may aid it indirectly by their own related praxis. And this may express itself in at least three ways. The first one is com-ing to know the likes of the locally famous Indian Jesuit Bishop Saupin (who, reportedly, would, in the style of the populace, travel in a rickshaw, clad in kurta and pajamas and smoking his beedi) or the globally famous Archbishop Romero. The second is pray-ing conscientiously and hopefully, while mentioning the ordinary's name at Mass, for the metanoia and metamorphosis of bishops so that they may know the importance of serving their community ¯ (which itself exists for serving one another in charity) by witness-ing to the incompatibility of chronic poverty with the visible king-dom of God. And the third (which is difficult but must be done) is humbly calling ecclesiastical high-ups to account, even against their resistance, in forums such as the parish and diocesan coun-cils enjoined by Vatican Council II. Review for Religious The fourth practice concerns the religious who have their own sphere of leadership for good and bad. While those in the limelight engage righdy or wrongly in discussion on the religious life of the future, there are a small number, like the Little Sisters and Brothers of Jesus, whose life itself is mostly.their practice of naturally and not optionally'5 accompanying the poor by their.presence among them in their living place, by their solidarity with them in the workplace, by their adoption of the lifestyle of their poor peers, and by their hospitality to the poor and rich which makes both groups feel equal and at ease. In the economy of communion practiced b~" Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sharing and, of course, socializing with those expe-riencing poverty, misery, and humiliation. Their way has attracted the attention even of gov-ernments. A year ago, for example, a Brazilian parlia-mentary commission made an official visit to their cen-ter in order to learn prac-tices that could help solve poverty problems in their country. Hearing the expe-riences of the Focolare entrepreneurs, they marveled at the con-crete achievements of the economy of communion, achievements that seemed impossible in the current economic context. One of them said: "The economy of communion is an already proven and revolu-tionary alternative. It is a new concept of economy, a new con-cept of wealth."16 The two groups mentioned above do not have any "apostolate" whatever as other congrggations understand the term. While other groups may benefit from the innovative experience of the these two groups, still, to develop their own praxis of involving them-selves in the lives of the poor, there would be no better way than going back to their original sources.~7 For, as a~le, religious con-gregation have always been founded with real bonds with the poor. Another thing that may help various religious congregations is the zealous search for ways to adapt present missions "for the ben- In the economy of communion practiced by Focolare members, they economize for the purpose of sha~ing and, of course, socializing with those experiencing poverty,, misery, and humiliation. January-February 2001 Dominic * " Beyond J'ubilee and Jublilees efit of the poor and for a more just and fraternal world."~s A sure test of this will be making sure that, whatever work they begin, it benefits the poor most, as was surprisingly advocated by Gandhi to the members of his congress party striving for India's freedom. Another thing that may promote right praxis among them is to go back, in the spirit of what Paul and James advocate (1 Co 2:26 and Jm 2:5), to their own personal origins and find how poor indeed they were. For one may wager that most of us hail from families that are middle class, but commonly are lower than mid-dle class or indeed poor, even very poor, not unlike the apostles. There is no better way of concluding all this than what Jesus said to his disciples so poignandy at the Last Supper: "If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them!" (Jn 13:17). Notes t See Rui de Menezes, "The Biblical Jubilee Year," Vidyajyoti Journal 61 (1997): 653. [See also Robert G. North, Biblical Jubilee, after Fifty Years (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Biblico, 2000), a revised edition of his Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee, 1954.--ED.] 2 See The New Jerusalem Bible (NyB) (New York: Doubleday, 1985), note Lv 25a, p. 167. 3 See The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (N'JBC), ed. R.E. Brown et al. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1991), n. 4:53, p. 78. 4 See Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 667, for the reference in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. s See T. Malipurathu, "Contrast Community: Its Meaning and Relevance for our Times," Vidyajyoti Journal 62 (1.998): 606-623, esp. 610-613. 6 It is striking that Ezk 46:7 uses the expression the Year of Liberty to refer to the Year of Jubilee. 7 See the relevant notes on Lk 3:3-14 in Christian Community Bible (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1990), p. 123. s See the note Mt 16g in NJB, p.1637, and the note on Ac 2:46 in NyBC, n. 44:28, pp. 734-735. 9 NyBC, n. 44:28, p. 734. ,0 See note Ac 2ffin NyB, p. 1803. n For the translation in the style of the Decalogue, see Rui de Menezes, "Biblical Jubilee," p. 654. 12 Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest in the Code of Canon Law, I," Vidyajyoti Journal 63 (1999): 924. ~3 See Henri J.M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1989), p. xii. Review for Religious 14 AS in Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 930. t5 Fausto Gomez suggests that the preferential option for the poor is not simply optional but obligatory. See Jeyaseelan, "The Poor and the Priest," p. 927. 16 Mariapolis (Focolare newsletter), December 1999, p. 14. ~7 See, for example, Decrees of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1995, and St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), §288. ,s Decrees, §289. The Sun The sun rose At 7:02 a.m.', standard time, the paper told me. The changing silhouettes of peaked boxes transformed into houses sided in pale pink and grays and browns proved it. But no explosion of color ¯ announced the moment, no silent fireworks to wake the sky. Only the quiet finger of God'~ tracing day-gold across the horizon. Suzanne Mayer IHM January-Februaly 2001 JAMES H. KROEGER A Continuing Pentecost: Appreciating "Ecclesia in Asia" "T he church in Asia sings the praises of the 'God of salvation' (Ps 68:20).-" These opening words set the tone of Ecclesia in Asia (hereafter EA), the postsynodal apostolic exhortation promulgated in November 1999: Clearly, themes of gratitude, celebration, and optimism characterize this document. The church sings God's praises for "choosing to initiate his saving plan on Asian soil," for sending "his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Savior, who took flesh as an Asian!" The church sees the "marvel of God's plan in Asia" and exults "in the goodness of the continent's peoples, cultures, and religious vitality" (§1). Pope John Paul II signed the document during his Asian pastoral visit to India (5-8.November 1999). The issuance of EA was the concluding moment of the special assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops, popularly known as the Asian Synod. This four-year project of church reflection and renewal began with the publicafon of the Lineamenta (1996), continued with discussion on the Instrumentum Laboris (1998), reached its apex with the month-long synod sessions in Rome (19 April-14 May 1998), and culminated with the proclamation of the postsynodal Ecclesia in Asia James H. Kroeger MM, a Maryknoll Missioner who has served in Asia since 1970 (Philippines and Bangladesh), is currently professor of systematic theology, missiology, and Islamics at Loyola School of Theology in Manila. His article was first published in Landas 13, no. 3 (journal of Loyola School of Theology). His address is Marvknoll; P.O. Box 285, Greenhills Post Office; Metro Manila, Philippine~ 1502. Review for Religqous (6 November 1999). Yes, "Asia-Church" rejoices and unceasingly proclaims God's enduring love! The Asian Synod was a multifaceted event on many levels. As EA notes, "it was indeed a moment of special grace" (§3). It was also "a celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). The synod event became "an ardent affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ the Savior" (§4), and, as the local churches of Asia gathered in Rome, "the synod fathers sought to discern the principal areas of mission for the church in Asia as she crosses the threshold of the new millennium" (§ 18). The synod's theme was much debated and carefully chosen: "Jesus Christ the Savior and his mission of love and service in A~ia: 'That they may have Life and have it abundantly' On 10:10)." AS the pope writes, this particular formulation of the theme was to "illustrate and explain more fully that Christ is the one mediator between God and man and the sole redeemer of the world, to be clearly distinguished from the founders of other great religions" (§2). The theme manifests the chu[ch's faith in Jesus and his mission; he is Savior who serves and bestows abundant life; he is to be.joyfi4.11y proclaimed in Asia. Ecclesia in Asia, a rich, lengthy document, now becomes an important signpost of evangelization for the local churches in Asia in the new millennium. An analysis of EA reveals three major sections or underlying thematics: (I) Asian realities relevant to the church and her mission of evangelization (§§5-9); (2) theological-doctrinal aspects of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (§§10-23); (3) The church's mission of love and service in Asia (§§24-49). The main body of EA is framed by an introduction which captures the highlights of the synod process (§§1-4) and a conclusion that expyesse~, the pope's gratitude and encouragement along with a final prayer to Mary, "Mother of Asia" (§§50-51).The entire document is focused on "seeking to discern the Spirit's word to the churches in Asia" (§51). Asian Context Ecclesia in Asia devotes its chapter 1 to the concrete situation of .contemporary ~sia--her r.eligious, cultural, economic, social, political, and historical realities (§§5-9). This inductive approach, characteristic ~)f current Asian theological reflection, mirrors the method and experience of the Federation of Asian Bishops' January-February 2001 Kroeger . A Continuing Pentecost Conferences (FABC). The Asian church accepts that "a critical awareness of the diverse and complex realities of Asia is essential if the people of God on the continent are to respond to God's will for them in the new evangelization" (§5). As EA notes, "Asia is the earth's largest continent and is home to nearly two-thirds of the world's population"; its various peoples are "heirs to ancient cultures, religions, and traditions." One is amazed "at the sheer size of Asia's population and at the intricate mosaic of its many cultures, languages, beliefs, and traditions." Asia is "the cradle of the world's major religions" and "the birthplace of many other spiritual traditions" (§6). Economically, socially, and politically, "situations on the Asian continent are very diverse, defying any simple classification" (§7). EA highlights various concrete pastoral concerns: rapid change, migration, nuclear power, tourism, population growth, poverty, women, and a host of additional challenges. In this complex situation the church's one ambition is to continue Christ's mission of service and love (see §50). Her approach is that of mutual exchange and enrichment; thus, EA confirms "the importance of dialogue as a characteristic mode of the church's life in Asia" (§3). Mother Teresa of Calcutta is proposed as "an icon of the service to life which the church is offering in Asia" because of "her loving and selfless care of the poorest of the poor" (§7). This "chosen" continent of Asia, with all its immensity, diversity, and complexity, holds special meaning for the church. God's only-begotten Son "took flesh as an Asian" (§I); "Behold, the Savior of the world is born to us, born in Asia" (§2). Yes, Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church" (§5). This church thanks God "for choosing Asia as the earthly dwelling place of his incarnate Son" (§50; see §§2, 9, 20). This unique gift implies a task; the church commits her energies to making Jesus, his gospel of life, and his community the church truly "at home" (inculturated) in Asia and her peoples (§§9, 20). Theological Foundations Three chapters of.EA, focusing on Jesus and the Spirit, describe a type of doctrinal orientation to the church's Asian mission. Yet the manner of presentation is decidedly pastoral; it blends theologies "from below" and "from above." It reads easily, the flow is smooth, and inclusive language is partially employed. Some insights even Review for Religious " enjoy poetic expression: "Contemplating Jesus in his human nature, the peoples of Asia find their deepest questions answered, their hopes fulfilled, their dignity uplifted, and their despair conquered" (§14). The thematic of girl is frequently found in these "theological" chapters. Jesus the Savior is a gift to Asia; this faith-gift is to be both appropriated and proclaimed. "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" (§10). "Only if the people of God recognize the gift that is theirs ~n Christ will they be able to communicate that gift to others through proclamation and dialogue" (§31; see §20). The church in Asia must ask itself a probing question: How do we "share with our Asian brothers and sisters what we treasure as the gift containing all gifts, namely, the Good News of Jesus Christ" (§19)? Proclaiming the Christian faith-gift meets unique challenges, particularly in the "multiethnic, multireligious and multicultural situation of Asia" (§21). Asia has its indigenous religions, soteriologies, and savior figures (see §§14, 19, 20). This reality demands a humble, dialogical stance on the part of the church; "proclamation is prompted not by sectarian impulse nor the spirit of proselytism nor any sense of superiority" (§20; see §§4, 31, 46). And yet this genuine respect and reverence for the church's dialogue partners "does not eliminate the need for the explicit proclamation of the gospel in its fullness" (§20; see §31). By her very identity the church is "a community aflame with missionary zeal to make Jesus known, loved, and followed" (§ 19). Affirming the relevance of Jesus for Asia (§§1, 9, 10, 18, 50) demands a particular approach to proclamation. The church "needs to follow a pedagogy which will introduce people step by step to the full appreciation of the mystery." She should employ "narrative methods akin to Asian cultural forms" and follow "an evocative pedagogy, using stories, parables, and symbols so characteristic of Asian methodology in teaching." In a word, the church must "evangelize in a way that appeals to the sensibilities of Asian peoples" (§20). Engaging Asian peoples, their cultures, and their religions (FABC's triple dialogue) demands genuine commitment to inculturation (§§20-23) and interreligious dialogue (§§29-31). Asia is unique as "the birthplace of Jesus and of the church." January-February 2001 Kroeger * ,4 Continuing Pentecost EA asserts that Christology is necessarily integrated with pneumatology as well as Trinitarian faith. It is the "uniqueness of Christ which gives him an absolute and universal significance" (§14); one cannot "separate the activity of the Holy Spirit from that of Jesus the Savior" (§.16). The Holy Spirit, "the prime agent of evangelization" (§17), is "an absolutely vital part of the mystery of Jesus and the salvation which he brings" (§15). Jesus and his Spirit are only adequately comprehended within,the "Trinity's plan of salvation" (§15); there are no two parallel economies of salvation. There are real, complex missiological questions, and the Asian Synod and Ecclesia in Asia attempted to face them. A Missionary Community The longest section of F~ (§§24-49) focuses on the church and her mission in the vast Asian continent. Four discernible themes emerge: church as communion for mission (§§24-28), dialogue (§§29-31), human promotion (§§32-41), and agents of evangelization (§§42-49). EA presents a vision as well as concrete approaches for mission; these emerge from a particular faith stance: "The question is not whether the church has something essential to say to the men and women of our time, but how she can say it clearly and convincingly" (§29). EA recognizes "the pressing need of the local churches in Asia to present the mystery of Christ to their peoples according to their cultural patterns and ways of thinking" (§20). "Communion ecclesiology" finds strong expression in EA. The church is a "privileged place of encounter" between God and people; her first purpose is "to be the sacrament of the inner union of the human person with God." She is also "the sacrament of the unity of the human race." This means that "communion and mission are inseparably connected [and] they interpenetrate and mutually imply each other." Communion is "both the source and fruit of mission." In short, "communion give~ rise to mission and mission is accomplished in communion" (§24). The church in Asia promotes internal communion and participation on many levels: with the successor of Peter, among various sister local churches, dioceses, basic ecclesial communities ("a positive feature Of the church's evangelizing.activity"), renewal movements, the Catholic Eastern churches,, and other. Christian churches (see §§25~2:7). Internal communion emanates outward Review for Religious ¯ toward other groups throughout Asia: the variety of peoples, cultures, and religions with whom the church shares life (§25), churches and peoples in mainland China, North Korea, and the ex- Soviet territories of Asia (§28). Regional and continental associations of bishops that foster communion (for example, FABC) are recognized and praised (§26), but their profound insights are never directly quoted. ¯ .An inherent demand of "communion ecclesiology" is dialogue. This "desire for dialogue . . . is not simply a strategy for peaceful coexistence among peoples; it is an essential part of the church's mission, ¯ . . a veritable vocation for the church" (§29). A particularly helpful section is devoted to interreligious dialogue (§31), seen as % part of the church's evangelizing mission, an expression of the mission adgentes." The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." Following the lead of Nostra aerate, "the Magna Carta of interreligious dialogue for our times," the church in Asia is called to a double fidelity: to affirm her "belief that the fullness of salvation comes from Christ alone" and to gladly acknowledge "whatever is true and holy in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam as a reflection of that Truth which enlightens all people." Interreligious dialogu~ seeks "mutual advancement [and] the elimination of prejudice, intolerance, and misunderstandings" (§31). Dialogue demands will only increase with passing years. Persons must be formed to have "a mature and convinced Christian faith" that qualifies them "to engage in genuine interreligious dialogue." They need to be "deeply immersed in the mystery of Christ [and] happy in their faith community." The call to dialogue requires the church in Asia "to provide suitable models of interreligious dialogue." In the dialogue endeavor it is imperative "to revitalize prayer and contemplation" and to give witness to "the great Christian traditions of asceticism and mysticism" (§31). The advent of the new millennium offers the church "a great opportunity for interreligious dialogue and for meetings with the leaders of the great world religions." January-Febr~ary 2001 Kroeger ¯ A Continuing Pentecost Chapter 6 treats human promotion and church social teaching. S~iving to build a "civilization of love," the church views all human development not only as a "technical or economic question; it is fundamentally a human and moral question" (§32). An integral, holistic approach to evangelization is employed, encompassing the areas of human dignity (§33), preferential love for the poor (§34), healthcare (§36), education (§37), peacemaking (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). In these diverse fields the church resists "the culture of death" in accord with her vision of"the gospel of life" (§35). Agents of Evangelization Chapter 7, titled "Witnesses to the Gospel," focuses on the church's missionary identity in Asia. The church strives to be a credible witness because "people today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories"; in the Asian context "people are more persuaded by holiness of life than by intellectual argument" (§42). EA asserts that it is "a genuinely religious person [who] readily wins respect and a following in Asia" (§23). Gospel witness in Asia needs holy men and women who themselves are "on fire with the love of Christ and burning with zeal to make him known more widely, loved more deeply, and followed more closely." Why? "A fire can only be lit by something that is itself on fire"; Christian witnessing demands "a true missionary spirituality of prayer and contemplation" (§23). Asian peoples, especially the youth, manifest this "deep thirst for spiritual values" (§6). In a word, living Christian mission in Asia incorporates and, in fact, demands "contemplative action and active contemplation" (§23). EA addresses a v.ariety of gospel witnesses: pastors (§43), religious and missionaries (§44), theologians (§22), laypers6ns (§45), families (§46), young people (§47), and those whose apostolate is social communications, "the areopagus of the modern age" (§48). Striking insights are often presented: "People in Asia need to see the clergy not just as charity workers and institutional administrators, but as men whose minds and hearts are set on the deep things of the Spirit" (§43). "The synod fathers were most concerned that the church should be a participatory church in which no one feels excluded, and they judged the wider Review for Religious participation of women in the life and mission of the church in Asia to be an especially pressing need" (§45). The pope encourages and thanks missionaries (§§20, 42, 44, 50), urging "the church in Asia to send forth missionaries, even though she herself needs laborers in the vineyard" (§44). Mission is to be central to each local church; local "missionary societies of apostolic life, characterized by their special commitment to the mission ad genres, ad exteros, and ad vitam" are strongly encouraged (§44). EA calls upon "the great host of Asian martyrs, old and new,. ¯. to teach the church in Asia what it means to bear witness." (§49). Additional Emphases The Asian Synod surfaced crucial questions facing local churches in Asia; EA reflects several of these pastoral and missionary concerns. The question of Jesus' Asianness surfaces in various discussions¯ "Jesus is often perceived as foreign to Asia. It is paradoxical that most Asians tend to regard Jesus--born on Asian soil--as a Western rather than an Asian figure" (§20). "It is indeed a mystery why the Savior of the world, born in Asia, has until now remained largely unknown to the people of the continent" (§2). To address and overcome this reality, the church must open herself to "new and surprising ways in which the face of Jesus might be presented in Asia" (§20). How can Jesus be effectively proclaimed-- bearing an "Asian face"? The subject of religious freedom arises because in various places in Asia "Christians are not allowed to practice their faith freely" (§8); "explicit proclamation is forbidden, and religious freedom is denied or systematically restricted" (§23). Christians are forced "to live their faith in the midst of restrictions or even the total denial of freedom" (§28). Governments are enjoined to "guarantee religious freedom for all their citizens" (§28), assure "immunity from coercion" (§23) in religious matters, and recognize "the right to freedom of conscience and religion and the other basic human rights" (§34). Analysis and comparison between the content of EA and the decades of pastoral reflection by Asian bishops (FABC) reveals many similarities. 'Since 1974, in its document "Evangelization in Modern-Day Asia," the FABC has promoted the local church's triple dialogue with Asia's peoples, cultures, and religions; this vision is January-Februat.~ 2001 Kroeger * A Continuing Pentecost Inculturation received much attention during the synod. repeatedly found in F~ (see §§1, 15, 18,.20, 21, 24). Again, the FABC pastoral priorities enunciated over the years, particularly the focus on the family, women and the girl-child, youth, ecology, and the displaced (see FABC VI:lS) are also highlighted by ~ (§~34, 37, 41, 46, 47). FABC itself is mentioned (§§2, 3, 26, 31), though none of its fine work is directly quoted or even noted in the copious endnotes. The theme of inculturation received much attention during the synod, and certain particular areas were identified as requiring concentrated focus: "theological reflection, liturgy, the formation of priests and religious, eatechesis, and spirituality" (§21). Central to inculturating the faith is the biblical word, the message of salvation, the sacred text; Sacred Scripture is proposed as ."the basis for all missionary proclamation, catechesis, preaching, and styles of spirituality" (§22). One may inquire about criteria for authentic inculturation; ,EA notes: "The test of true inculturation is whether people become more committed to their Christian faith because they perceive it more clearly with the eyes of their own culture" (§22). The Christian virtue of compassion repeatedly surfaces in Ed (for example, §§11, 12, 14, 20, 45, 51). The apostolic exhortation is correct in expressing the church's mission.in terms of this appealing focus. Presenting Jesus as "the compassionate friend of the poor" (§20) will find a resonance and reception among Asians. In the ' church's mission of love and service, women evangelizers contribute greatly "to bringing the compassionate Jesus, the healer and reconciler, to Asian people, especially the poor and marginalized" (§45). Jesus, the God-man, was "close to the poor, the forgotten, and the lowly"; "he wept for a dead friend [and] welcomed children"; "divine compassion had never been so immediately accessible" (§11). As the church in Asia enters the new millennium, she faces some demanding challenges. EA highlights some importfint apostolates: women (§§7, 34, 45), you.th (§§6, 47.), nuclear power (§§7, 38), peace~naking and reconciliation (§38), globalization (§39), foreign debt (§40), and the environment (§41). The authenticity of the church's "mission of service and love" (§50) will indeed be Review for Religious tested; will it produce "a great harvest of faith . in this vast and vital continent" (§1) of Asia? Gratitude and Optimism Ecclesia in Asia concludes as it began on a clear note of optimism and gratitude. "Blessed be God for the peoples of Asia, so rich in their diversity yet one in their yearning for peace and fullness of life" (§50). With committed faith, "the church in Asia joyfully makes her pilgrim way into the third millennium" (§50). "Mary, model of all disciples and I~right star of evangelization, . . . look tenderly upon the church of your Son planted on Asian soil. ¯ O Mary, mother of the New Creation and mother of Asia, pray for us, your children, now and always!" (§51). In this m6od of gratitude and optimism, the local churches of Asia accept the Holy Father's gift: Ecclesia in ~sia. Its contents are a mixture of the old and the new (see Mt 13:52), a summation of Asian.reflection and insights in the Vatican II era, a presentation of the missionoagenda for Asia's faith communities, a program for evangelization iri the new millennium. All in all, EA is a much-appreciated gift. Its treasures need opening in the coming years and decades; its dream for the church--God's holy people--beckons implementation; its theme--abundant life in Jesus the Savior-- requires contemplative action. Yes, Jesus' Asian disciples affirm that the Holy 'Spirit, who moved upon Asia in times past, "moves now among Asian Christians, strengthening the witness of their faith among the peoples, cultures, and religions of the continent" (§ 18). Contemplating God's salvific deeds and wonders during the Easter Vigil liturgy, the universal chh~ch proclaims in the Exsultet: "Rejoice, O Mother Church!" In similar fashion, th~ local churches in Asia' acclaim 'God's marvels in theirmidst; they joyfully affirm the Asian Synod event as a "celebratory remembering of the Asian roots of Christianity" (§4). They pray that the proclarriation and subsequent internalization of Ecclesia in Asia will confirm the church in her servant mission to bring Christ's love and abundant life On 10:10) to Asia and her peoples. Rejoice, O Asia-Church! .~anua~y-February 2001 vocation PHILIP ARMSTRONG Who Is a Brother? I am not sure the title should ask who. Maybe it should ask: What is a brother? People have been trying to frame an unambiguous answer for ages, and in the meantime new applications of the word brother have compounded the issue. My interest is to define, as best I can, that rare creature in the Roman Catholic Church known as a religious brother. What does the ordinary word brother usually mean today? Looking at that may help us comprehend ,similarities and differences of the term as applied to men who, by the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, commit themselves to what is commonly called religious life. What Is a Brother? Male siblings of the same parents are called brothers. People's close friends who are male are' sometimes compared to a brother: "He's like a brother to me." Sometimes males call one another brother when they do not know the other's name but feel some affinity toward him. The Great Depression is characterized by one of its slogans, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" In some seminary programs a man is addressed as Philip Armstrong CSC, of the Brothers of Holy Cross, wrote on mission and the vows for our September 2000 issue. His address remains P.O. Box 460; Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Review for Religious Brother, or its Latin form Frater, when he has achieved a certain level of preparation for the ordained priesthood. This use of the term creates confusion over lay/clerical identity. Volunteer organizations may use the term brother in identifying a mentoring relationship between a man and a boy, as in "Big Brothers." African Americans use the term brother to identify males of their race, using the word to indicate the relationship existing by reason of their common African origin and the consequent bonds that solidify them in matters of importance: "One of the brothers sold his house and moved." Some small religious denominations, particularly the more evangelical or those built on sociocultural ties, refer to any male fellow believer as Brother. "Next Sunday Brother Anderson will pass the plate at our service." In the Bible, Jesus uses brother to signify equality among people: "If you are bringing a gift to the altar and remember that your brother has anything against you . " Peter asks, "How often must I forgive my brother?" The terms brother and sister are used generically by church-related personnel in addressing members of the congregation: "My brothers and sisters in Christ." The common thread through all these uses may help us understand, too, why some dedicated men within the Catholic Church are called brothers. There is interpersonal relationship and open trust not based on kinship. The others have the same values, have similar goals, and use the same general methods to achieve their goals. This intangible affinity among brothers (or sisters) does not rely on blood ties yet depends on that relationship to provide a name for this closeness. The substance of such a relationship is: "That man accepts me, confronts me, counsels me, helps me as if I were his own brother." The image of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. Jesus' way of relating with men and women, whether they were righteous or sinful, offers many examples of what it means to be a brother to someone. Simply put, a brother is a man who at all times acts ds a blood brother would act. The Brother in the Church How did the term brother for a vowed religious in the Roman Catholic Church originally surface? Quite likely it arose from relationships in blood families: father, mother, brother, sister. The picture.would include the fact that few were educated as we define education, with those who possessed some "book knowledge" being Janltary-Februaly 2001 Armstron~ ¯ Who Is a Brother? considered natural counselors and mediators. Those representing the people before God and using their knowledge to help them understand and practice their faith could reasonably be called Father, because providing for his family and counseling them are importan~ tasks of the father of a family. Those exercising positions of leadership in communities of vowed women could be called Mother. Those who followed the lead of these fathers or mothers, who assisted; who undertook to fulfill the tasks related to the group's ministries, were called sisters or brothers. Over the years men religious who did not feel called to priesthood, but who assisted clerics in their ministry of preaching, teaching, or sacramental service, were called brothers--like male siblings helping their father do the work of a family farm or business. Help.ers somewhat behind the scenes, they were generally less-educated men doing the more hidden or more mundane and practical tasks connected with the priests' mission of sacred mediation and of education. In time brothers became in people's minds the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water" whose silent and nearly invisible presence was invaluable, essential, though largely taken for granted by the clergy and laity alike. By rule these men remained politically sequestered within their congregations, ha~ing no voice in choosing their leaders and not eligible to become leaders themselves. They prayed much, often apart from their clerical confreres, who in cloister or corridor would pass them by like supportive, exemplary specters. After the social and cultural disruption of the French Revolution, many groups of nonordained but vowed men religious sprang up through the initiative of bishops and parish priests who were in a position to support the development: These apostolic religious were to educate the untutored youth being lost to the church. In contrast to earlier brothers, these men were at least minimally educated and were dedicated to a professional life similar to that of the ordained. For more than a century such groups were formed, and their members went wherever there was a cry for Catholic education, even beyond the borders of their native lands. These became more known to stciety" at large, if not muct~ more visible, by their focus on schools . A concurrent reality that did no favors to many groups of brothers was their unwitting and unplanned gravitation toward ~an identity more clerical than lay. Many brothers, whether as members of laycongregations or as an arm of a clerical community, dressed Review for Religious like clerics and carried out ministries supportive of clerical min-istries. These brothers, nearly indistinguishable from priests, were extended the rights and privileges that a Christian society accorded the priesthood. As a result, a mindset developed among the brothers out of which they identified themselves more with their clerical associate~ than with the laity. It was the laity, though, from a strictly ecclesial perspective, (o whom brothers in fact related more closely. True, they were indeed set apart from the laity by their vowed commitment within a particular congregation approved by Rome. But their external, visible ministries did nothing to project a specific image of brother as distinct from the clerical, patriarchal image they had lived With for so long. "The Terrible Twos" of a Century After World War II and Vatican Council II, both productive of cultural and social upheaval (in a way, the century's "terrible twos"), all vowed religious were challenged to reassess how faithfully their founding purpose and their ministries responded to the newly emerging needs of both church and society and to renew and adapt accordingly. As communities they were to open themselves to the "signs of the times" that hinted at potentially diverging directions in life and mission for vowed religious. Congregations of brothers and mixed congregations (clerics and significant numbers of brothers) found themselves affected by the momentous challenges put before them by the church. Many members departed, fewer young men joined the community, and those who remained grew older, began retiring, and soon were dying unreplaced. These realities were running parallel to the clear and urgent call issued by the Vatican Council to the laity to exert by right a more prominent and active role in the church. Education was one of the first areas affected. As the numbers of brothers declined at a pace impossible to retard, lay people began to fill their places in schools. Along with their declining numbers and increasing age, brothers were suddenly challenged on the level of their profession as teachers and administrators even while they and others were waking to the fact they are not clerics. For brothers the question of the day became: Well, then, who are we, and what is our proper role now in the church and the world? Answers have not come quickly or easily, and some would argue they have not yet come at all. [---3~3-~- January-Februa~. 2001 Armstrong * WlTo Is a Brother? Immense energy has been expended reflecting on, discussing, and determining the identity of the brother for the church today. Some of that energy may have seeped over into trying to determine the brother's role in church and society. In neither case, however, does there appear to be widespread satisfaction with the results, and many retain a confused and hazy notion of the brotherhood as a way of life in the church. It does not help that some of the least informed and articulate on the matter are found among bishops and priests. Worse yet, many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. The foundations have crumbled on which some based their sense of self-definition. What will it take to pour new and indestructible footings? A Beginning Perhaps a judicious mix of the old and the new is the best place to begin forming a relevant and appropriate definition of a brother in today's church and world. Retaining acknowledged and presumably nonnegotiable hallmarks of the brother's state of life, but blending and refining them in the crucible of postmodern experience, intuition, and prayerful discernment, one might descriptively define a brother somethii~g like this: A brother is a lay religious ¯ committed to living a common life ¯ and consecrated, by public profession of the vows of religion, ¯ to witnessing to the presence of God in his life and in the world. ¯ He reveals his identity more by example than explanation, ¯ more by doing than defining. ¯ In short, he relates and acts like a brother, ¯ to the exclusion of no one.¯ As an equal, ¯ and as supported by like-minded associates in community, ¯ he is free to respond in a variety of practical ways, ¯ living and working fraternally with others ¯ in promoting and preserving human dignity and justice ¯ through his prophetic stance ¯ and professional expertise. The nonnegotiables of this definition consist in identification more with the laity than w~th the clergy;living in community; publicly professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; standing as prophetic witnesses to gospel vaiues; and reaching out in service to others. The postmodern experiential components are: more emphasis on a bold and perceptible expression of what being a brother means from the inside; a clear sense of reaching out to others in need as "brothering" them as a blood brother would; serving others out of a conviction of universal human equality under God; openness to the Review for Religious many forms of ministry to which brothers are free to respond by reason of being unrestrained by the ecclesiastical and cultural expectations imposed on ordained ministers; and, within community parameters, rightly seeking and achieving professional expertise in fields of interest and competence. Postmodern? Experiential? Is this more verbal gimmickry, or do these concepts add something substantial to the recipe for today's brother in the church and the world? I believe that both terms are appropriate and relevant. Postmodern is a term used by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists to refer generally to the period following the lengthy modern era that began in the 1500s and ended in the 1960s with the cultural revolution we in the United States tend to associate with events such as the Vietnam war and anti-establishment protests and also with Vatican II and its aftermath. There is no question that the events and the changed moods and understandings of the final four decades of the 20th century have had an immense impact on religious life, some of it distressingly disruptive, some creatively challenging. Experiential surely applies by reason of the mandate of Vatican II's document Perfectae caritatis and the Norms addressed to religious communities asking them to adapt and update their constitutions and rules as necessary, almost literally "refounding" their congregations. Experimentation through changing or discarding certain anomalous or anachronistic disciplinary elements in religious life was to be permitted for a reasonable time, normally eight to twelve years. The religious garb fell under this category, as did the daily schedule, areas and modes of accountability, the exercise of authority, forms and styles of prayer, and so forth. This experimentation was meant to contribute to a newly framed definition of each congregation's giftedness for today's church. Brothers who persevered in the religious life during these years had to respond creatively to the challenges of the day just to remain faithful to themselves as persons, let alone as religious in community. They were challenged to become more observant of evolving needs in the church and society and to search for w. ays to place their congregation's talents and resoui'ces at the disposal of Many brothers cannot adequately define their own identity. January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? the church. And they, some for the first time, had to go about this discernment out of a conscious acknowledgment that they were definitely not clerics. Still, if the brothers were not clerics, then who were they? Somewhat as the Christian adolescent needs at some point to confront the faith infused through infant baptism, the postmodern religious brother has had to deal with whatever motivated his entering religious life years ago. It has been a true moment of conversion for him, a fresh confirmation of the validity of his choice of a way of life. Without this process a new sense of identity leading to broader availability would have been impossible for him. Most religious have found this exercise challenging and regenerating, reminding them that they had in fact committed themselves first and foremost not to a structure, not to a profession, not to any particular members within the organization, but to God. Whatever permutations were introduced into the externals over the years, the substantial reality has remained immutably in place, and that is enough. But simply defining one's identity is not enough. Unless conviction and a comfortable acceptance of what it means to be a brother are internalized, there is little hope of either acquiring or cultivating the openness necessary for finding new and challenging directions in mission and ministry, for living community, or for attracting others to embrace the same way of life. What Will It Take? Let me personalize this conversion experience even further, because for each individual brother identity is a matter of deep concern. Unless I can perceive myself as a valid, needed, and effective player of a unique role among many roles in the church, I cannot muster and sustain the conviction that will provide the energy I require both to pursue my way of life and to face the exigencies it inevitably entails. As essential as this perception is, it alone cannot support my efforts. Unless the church, both in its hierarchy and in its wider membership, can be convinced that the brothers' way of life is important for the church and the world, I by myself will be able to do little except go about my daily ministry and life in community in the vague hope that the witness I give to the world is somehow being diffused like a healthy mist settling on persons, places, and Review for Religious events near or far. I could not do this alone. I need help from within the church. Yet, if appropriate authority at even the highest levels is struggling to understand the identity and role of the brother in the church today, from what source will the definition come? Who is the "credible authority" that will provide it? The answer is simple: the brother himself. Why not? We brothers may for the most part not be trained theologians or men steeped in the history and development of the church, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline, but we have a lifetime of experience being brothers that should count for something. We have evolved together with our vocational call, responding to challenges along the way that have forced us to question our identity, or purpose, and our reason for remaining brothers. Our prayer life, presumably "alive and active over the years, has kept us in touch with the One to whose call we have responded daily, and the resulting relationship has, we would hope, matured to the point where we can be at ease with our interpretation not only of who we are as brothers, but of how each of us is personally a witness to the reign of God. why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift? We should--and until we do we will continue to mill about, lost, confused, an.d impotent, within vague definitions of prophetic witness and ministerial service in the church. Until we are perceived by others as relevant and competent and are accepted as equal players on the field of evangelization, we will constitute a "loose cannon" threat to the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and receive little support or affirmation, nor will young men be encouraged who may be considering the lay religious life as a desirable option for their own futures. Why should we not define our own identity and offer it to the institutional church as a valid and authentic interpretation, indeed as a gift ? A Corporate Effort Beyond the effort each brother must exert to clari~ for himself what it means today to be a brother and to fashion a revived sense of January-February 2001 Armstrong * Who Is a Brother? mission based on renewed identity, there remains, I suggest, a need for a corporate endeavor among all brothers to invite, support, and help implement a new era, a "second coming," for men in the lay religious life. Even then it is not brothers alone who must feel responsible for resurrecting both awareness of and interest in the brotherhood. In the Vatican, in the hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, and in the lay membership of the church, a fresh attempt must be made to bring about a renewed understanding of the vital role brothers play in the church as an institution and as the community known as the people of God. Because the truly authentic essence of brotherhood in religious life has to be articulated by brothers, it is they who must be the primary educators, as historically they have been in their numbers since the foundation of their congregations. Ready teachers, of course, must encounter willing students or the lesson will go unlearned and unappreciated, leaving the church and the world the poorer for it. And so brothers must seek and gain the confidence of church authority through their expertise in theologizing about and articulating the experiential essence of the lay religious life. This aim can be achieved through two practical steps. First, the theological reflection, even if informally undertaken, must unfold in a deliberate and orderly manner. Second, a path must be opened, a clear and smooth thoroughfare of effective communication between brothers and the rest of the church. To accomplish .this, good public relations will be required, for brothers have such a history of invisibility and silence that any change, if it attracts attention at all, will tend to create or exacerbate confusion in people, if not suspicion. Brothers must learn how to harness modern communication technologies and get assistance from the media, because the teachers will be implementing the most important lesson plan they have ever devised. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, brothers must continue preparing for their vocational parousia through personal effort at educating themselves to the point of absolute confidence and conviction. Nothing less will succeed in reeducating the church, let alone the world, as to the gift the lay religious life for men is now and can be to the whole of humankind. Out of what definition ought brothers to operate in the Review for Religion, s meantime? I suggest, once again, that the italic passage above on page 34 constitutes a solid working definition, one that incorporates both nonnegotiable expectations of male lay religious and elements that seem essential in a postmodern world. O~r own experience as brothers has confirmed the validity of the definition. Let us at the very least seize its substance and begin the task of refining and developing it. The task is immense and will require every bit of our faith and hope--and our perseverance. Were it not for the One who is author of our faith and our hope and who inspires us to persevere, we would find ourselves in the nearly untenable position of expecting to increase understanding of and enthusiasm for a kind of religious witness and ministry that relates directly to neither the clergy nor the laity. Happily, the God who created the world itself and made life increase and multiply can create new little worlds within it that can grow in understanding and age and grace. It is that possibility in which we place our greatest hope, and it is that God to whom we look for its realization. Postseason Christmas is dismantled again, syncopated lights from shaggy tree transported to basement. It's time to mine the darkness of these shrunken days for fire-feeding coal , and to scan the night skies, each quadrant strung with twinkling lights stretching Christmas hope across the long winter coming. Patricia Schaapp ~M .~anuary-February 2001 DONALD MACDONALD Vocational Being d note about the cleaning and restoration of Sandro Botticelli's Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child gives an account of the artist, his painting, and its restoration. "[Now we can see] Botticelli's purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject. It is this perfect union of means and meaning that makes the painting so powerful."' To speak of "this perfect union of means and meaning" is superlative praise. In most human endeavor there is a gap between means and. meaning. Achievement hardly ever matches the intention. Brush strokes on canvas, notes from a cello, lines on a page, the lie of a golf ball--rarely do means and meaning synchronize to a person's satisfacfon. Environment and Faith From the perspective of art appreciation, Botticelli is said to have done justice to his subject and himself to an incomparable degree. The power of his painting confirms this, If the union of means and meaning reached such perfection from the artist's view-point, what might be said of his achievement from the perspec-tive of a viewer's faith? What if I, the viewer, adore Christ now in our Lady's company, aware that to paint Christ and the kneeling Virgin does not just capture an abstract ideal, but real people, liv-ing still, to whom I can relate? With dynamic faith I the viewer can be drawn into (not just to) the scene as an integral part of a present Donald Macdonald SMM continues writing about aspects of the reli-gious vocation. His address is Montfort House; Darnley Road; Barrhead, Glasgow; G78 1TA Scodand, U.IC Revie~ for Religious reality. By faith I am at one with the meaning in a way I could never hope to be with just the painter's means. "The purity of form and color ideally suited to its subject" invites and challenges my faith to express itself in reflective ado-ration. The painting directs me to consider what is within me from the viewpoint of faith. The gap between means and meaning is then evident, but so is the inspiration to adore from the center of my being. The beauty of the picture has aesthetic appeal and more, showing what might be if I were fully alert to the wonder of an incarnational faith. I, too, can do what Mary does now, for I am one with her in Christ through baptism. A growing symmetry between means and meaning results in an integrated life. "The beauty of wonder caught in Botticelli's Adoration of the Virgin, reflects what is really there. It may have spectacular appeal to the imagination, but it is not imaginary. Glimpsing this wonder and trying to answer its challenge may suggest consecrated reli-gious life. Do I need to give myself radically, as did Mary, before its wonder compels adoration? Before I adore I must first see and be taken out of myself. This means that I should take note of the environment and any clutter which inhibits insight. Only then can I see what means I have at hand by which I can pursue meaning expressed in adoration. It is neither negative nor defeatist to see in the environment much that is harmful to a life of disciplined faith. The concern for God and neighbor through which authentic faith finds mean-ing lags behind other priorities. Where the current media do not ridicule or dismiss faith, they may actively oppose it whenever they feel threatened by a lived and living faith. There are then no Marquis of Queensberry Rules to govern the fight, and writers, editors, and producers know it. In its many forms--radio, film, TV, internet, print--the media cross continents. Cherished, prac-tical values are often trivialized, and the absence of reticence often coarsens what should be held in great respect. Skillful contempo-rary presentations and inveterate noise may deaden an individual's capacity to respond in wonder to the worldview seen in the Gospels and in Botticelli. Many media movers and shakers "dirty the flower with muddy hands" whenever spiritual or religious values appear on their horizons. A contemporary illustration of this is in a national newspaper correspondent's account of the presentation in London of the Sony Gold Awards for radio broadcasting. "IX] won the music presen- January-February 2001 Macdonald ¯ Vocational Being tation award . By the time he had finished his acceptance speech, he had made half the Great Room of the Grosvenor House long, if not for the grave, then at least for the cool embrace of silence. It wasn't just that he swore. Many people who stepped up that night to receive their awards displayed scan( knowledge of any noun or verb longer than four letters. The effing and blinding was ferocious, the badinage it embellished was desperate . I have sel-dom sat so long and celebrated so little."2 This is not from some drinking den after hours or some adolescent playground, but from a prestigious hotel in a capital city, sponsored by an international company. These are the winners, not the losers, evidendy cocooned in their pei'sonal world, free to pursue their own agendas regard-less of others' feelings. Obviously they succeed, with prizes to prove it. Such behavior coarsens whatever it gets near. The name Jesus Christ in that company is invariably an expletive or a joke. Many feed on that diet and develop a taste for it, and so lack the nour-ishment to grow in Christ. This is a major reason for lack of reli-gious practice generally and for the small number of persons willing to commit themselves to a life of religious consecration. Also, it is something I need to consider if I am to find the means to give myself in adoration through the perspective of faith. How much of this has a claim on me? The evidence of hearing, if I am blessed with it, is that contemporary care to be "politically correct" in speech goes hand in hand with a massive rise in offensive lan-guage, not least among the educated. The coarsening of sensibil-ity by elements of the media makes it harder to find and faithfully use the means to achieve mature meaning as the gospel would have us do. Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. I am not made.of stone--how much have I succumbed to this environment? Necessary Means Living in such an environment, I need something practical that can help me maintain a Christian perspective, both encour-aging me and challenging me. IfI have that "something," I have a means for pursuing meaning, the fullness of which, for religious liv-ing, is adoration that engages my whole being. Several practical suggestions could be made, but assimilating Scripture is one that can help, both in judging society and guiding Review for Religious me through it. Scripture, after all, is the accumulated experience of people trying to relate their society to God. More particularly, it was largely the original inspiration behind monastic and reli-gious life. Monastic life began as a statement about contemporary society and the primacy of God. It has been said that God is either 6f sole concern or of no concern. After hearing Scripture speak and then seeing that many contemporary values either opposed or limited the freedom of faith, many persons became aware that they had to cut the cable between themselves and society. Writing of the origin of monastic life in the 4th century, a commentator notes that "what is utterly clear., is the pulsing life the sacred texts give to the daily existence of the early monks. ¯ They serve as a basic frame of reference . In. memorization, rumination, and medita-tion of Scripture, words penetrated the deepest recesses of the soul and created ne~v possibilities and challenges.''3 The Spirit who so energized the word that it came ablaze with meaning and inspiration for those pioneers can do as much for me now if I do some "humble loving listening to him who speaks. It is in fact by the light and with the strength of the word of God that my own vocation can be discovered and understood, loved, and followed and my own mis-sion carried out. So true is this that the person's entire existence finds its unifying and radical meaning in being the terminus of God's word.''4 This is a colossal claim for Scripture, namely, that all strands of life can be brought together, and meaning can be recognized at the depth of my being, if only I am attuned to Scripture. The claim is for ontological meaning in my being's depths. This guar-antees a fusion of means and meaning. Scripture is a superb coun-terweight to much in current society which could keep me from God. As the light of the word slowly dawns, adoration may well be my being's basic response. Perhaps never before in the history of the church has Scripture been available to so many. The means of communication undoubt-edly facilitate this, but this does not mean that, with the media present everywhere, the Christian message is too. In my wide experience of monastic and religious life, home and abroad, for thirty years, I have yet to be convinced that this is so. To what Where no one seems to care, it is no surprise to find that many are careless. .~anuary-February 2001 MacdonhM ¯ Vocational Being 442 degree can we speak of "the pulsing life of the sacred texts" influ-encing consecrated.life generally? How many understand what it is to be "a terminus of the word of God"? I have never forgotten Protestant scholar Frederick C. Grant's comment in 1966 on Dei Verbum, the Vatican Council's Constitution on Divine Revelation: "Why not tell people what joyful discoveries lie before them in the Scriptures, what feasts of learning, what inspiration and encouragement, what sound teach-ing, what help in facing the problems and frustrations of life? As the prophet shouted, 'Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price'" (Is 55:1).s How many individually or collectively "shout" or reflect such enthusi-asm from personal conviction? Here is a superb means to assimi-late meaning, but how many habitually make it their own? Grant's approach may yet be rather new to us. It may take generations before Scripture is sufficiently bedded down among us to produce such results. Scholarship, excellent at the highest level, has perhaps not found a way of enlightening us. Source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, reader-response, structural lin-guistics, and so forth make an ever lengthening list; and so people nibble among the commentators and do not get round to assimi-lating the text. In a sad comment on his university studies, a priest spoke of "the acid rain of biblical criticism" and its effect on him vis-a-vis our Lord. If I am hooked already on Scripture and well know what Grant experienced, then current biblical commentaries and journals can help me. Regrettably, though, many of these scholarly materials seem to lack the warmth that could come from a community's fervently.shared faith; they seem not to reflect the wondrous joy that our risen Lord brought to the early church. Has any English writer, for example, during the past twenty years or so, been so fascinated withSt. Paul (man and writer) as to claim failure to do him justice if Paul does not leap from his pages and invade the reader's imagination? This is Richard Holmes's purpose in a superb biography of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wants Coleridge's voice to be heard and to domi-nate the book. (His own edition of Coleridge's poetry functioned as ~a controlling influence on the biography.) Holmes serves the poet far better than any Christian writer has served--unless I missed it--St. Paul. In the seminary, not uncommonly, Paul is approached as an Review for Religqous intellectual problem, and the student is made to jump hurdles, to no very clear purpose. Scholars give the impression of seeing Paul as a maverick, like an unconventional student the disapproving examiner never knows how to place: "He is here to be examined, and clearly is not quite one of us!" This is a pity. (Bonhoeffer believed, incidentally, that the Sermon on the Mount could never be lived in a university context.) Paul is, of course, larger than any one pen can capture, but, rooted in Christ and in people and in his own evident humanity, his experi-ence is a genuine way of fusing both means and meaning in an authentically consecrated life. No one seeking inspiration in Scripture need read a line of St. Paul. The Law, the Prophets, and the rest of the Old Testament spread a lavish table. In the Synoptics, the sharp observation to be found in a saying of Christ or in a parable can open up much to me, as can pondering the weight of wonder of a phrase of Christ in John's Gospel. One needs only to experience them to feel their power, to bring means and meaning together. Whatever the form of prayer, wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Adoration There can be no one way or best way 'of being a religious. There are presumably as many ways to God as there are human beings called to him. But, as I have suggested, if we need to adore the gift of God in Christ from the core of our being, then we have found meaning. Taken out of myself by what I glimpse in faith, I respond in adoration as well as I can with all that is in me. Much in contemporary society obscures this glimpse, but Scripture can be a countervailing practical means to realize meaning. The church and monastic and religious life have for centuries found their deep-est reality through the Gospels. To adore, I need only to see in faith; then, following the rhythm of my breathing, I give myself to God giving himself to me. This is true, whatever the situation or however I feel. I always return to, though actually I never leave, that center. My being is engaged. The insight is increasingly more simple. Whatever the form of prayer (sacramental, liturgical, community, or individual), ~anuary-Februa~. 2001 Macdonald * Vocational Being wonder in the presence of Who is there is the underlying dynamic. Whatever is said, sung, or signed expresses this. Far from making me a maverick on the edge of a group, adoration invites me to be at one with the church in the worship of Christ. If habitual adoration underlies all I do, I can give myself faith-fully to whatever the present moment asks of me, yet not be taken over by it, since my identity does not depend on what I do or where I am. There is always, in faith, another dimension to real-ity not limited to the frame of circumstance. I function at a sim-ple level, trying t6 be at one with God's will, which, of course, is the purpose of monastic or religious life. In attempting this, I approximate the purity of line and color by which the painter real-izes his meaning. Whatever I am engaged in and whoever is with me, insofar as I adore I can recognize the gift of God and who it is speaking to me. Then, as John's Gospel promises, I can tap into a rich stream. On the other hand, pastoral plans, catechetical pro-grams, and personal apostolates are channels that may be awash by turns with limpid idealism or murky disillusion. If I invest in them, my "salvation" depends on,their success or failure; but, if I give myself to them in the light of adoration, I will receive both pru-dence and courage to persevere faithfully far from the criterion of "what's in it for me." Risen Lord I can summarize these reflections, perhaps, with a comment from M.R. Vincent's preface to his Commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. More than one hundred years ago he indicated what might be found in a letter written from prison nineteen hun-dred years earlier. His words are relevant today: "While the char-acter of the epistle is ethical . . . it gives no countenance to resolving the gospel into a mere code of morals. The moral inspi-ration which it represents has its impelling center in a person and a life, not in a code. The personal Christ is its very heart. It exhibits Christ in Paul rather than before him. Christ is not a subject of controversy; he is not simply a pattern of conduct. He is the sum of Paul's life. Th~ view of the resurrection which this letter pre-sents is a standing rebuke to the superficial conception and loose grasp which the church too often brings to that truth. The resur-rection of the.Lord is to Paul a present informing energy and not only a recovery anda hope. He would know the power of the res- Review for Religious urrection now and here as well as hereafter. He not only lives according to Christ's life; he lives it I.n. Christ he is in the sphere of infinite possibilities.''6 Here surely is the fusion of means and meaning. As Paul keeps growing, by Christ's life, into Christ, he breaks out of prison in a letter of encouragement, alive with the light of his risen Lord. Not death itself, the ultimate in defeat and separation, can come between him and his risen Lord, who is for him "a present inform-ing energy and not only a recovery and a hope." The stance of adoration is not that of the self-made individual over against the universe, with a supporting cast of witless nobodies lost on the plains below. Life has "its impelling center in a person and a life" and therefore takes meaning from our once crucified and now risen Lord. In Christ I am lost in the wonder of it all, a new creation in view of whom I see and what I am given moment by moment from before time began. Literally, it beggars description. The silence of adoration, as it deepens, is eloquent though inadequate response. Held by the prese~nce of my risen Lord in every situation not excluding death, I too believe that in Christ I am in the sphere of infinite possibilities. He it is who gives meaning to life. Insofar as I allow him to make me his, I live to some purpose and try to express this in what I do. Assimilating Scripture is a superb means toward such maturity. Speechless adoration from the core of my being may become habitual, in view of the wondrousness of the One I am graced to see. I have not the means to ~:eplicate Botticelli's Adoring Virgin and Child on canvas, but from the per-spective of faith I am awash in that same wonder. Notes ~ National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2000. 2 Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph, London, 9 May 2000. 3 Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 298-299. 4 John Paul II, Pastores dabo ~obis (On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day), 25 March 1992, §47. s Walter M. Abbott SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican H (Chapman, 1966), pp. 130-131. 6 M.R. Vincent, Critical and Exegetical CommentaTy on the Ep#tles to the Pbilippians and to Philemon (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1897). January-February 2001 MARY ANNE FOLEY Spirituality for Mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys and ¯the Ignatian Tradition spiritual legacy In the 16th century the Society of Jesus represented an innovation in consecrated life for men, differing in struc-ture and aim from both monastic and mendicant forms and supported by Ignatius's approach to contemplation and action. Ignatian spirituality appealed also to women seeking a life of service outside the cloister, and Jesuit influence is apparent in the formation of women's com-munities as varied as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Sisters of St. Joseph in the 17th century and the Religious of the Sacred Heart in the 19th. By contrast, when Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620- 1700) was founding the Congregation de Notre-Dame de Montreal in the latter part of the 17th century, her closest collaborators were not Jesuits; they were Sulpicians, other diocesan priests, and women like Madame de Miramion who were forming similar com'- munities. As a result the congregation is usually seen as a product of the so-called French school of spirituality? Mary Anne Foley CND, who discussed women's commu-nities in our July-August 2000 issue, wrote this article.for the 300th anniversary of the death of Marguerite Bourgeoys. After translation by E Richer, it first appeared as "Spiritualitfi pour la mission: Marguerite Bourgeoys et la tradition ignatienne" in Cahiers de spiritualit~ ignatienne (April-June 2000, pp. 79-91). Her address is University of Scranton; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. Review for Religious The congregation's spirituality, however, as seen in the writings of its foundress, reveals considerable affinity with Ignatian spiri-tuality. We shall ~xplore those parallels, but first a word about the congregation's origins is in order. From Marguerite Bourgeoys's perspective, the congregation began in her own experience of transformation at the age of twenty, occasioned by her gazing at a statue of Mary. As a result of this "conversion," as she calls it, she joined a group of laywomen asso-ciated with the cloistered Congregation de Notre-Dame in her native Troyes and chose Antoine Jendret, the local pastor, as her spiritual advisor. From Jendret she learned to see the "vie voyagkre" (missionary life) of the Blessed Virgin as a model for uncloistered religious life for women. At the same time, the congregation sis-ters trained her to teach children who could not attend their monastery school and shared with her their enthusiasm for estab-lishing a monastery in New France. Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, brother of the congregation's superior and governor of the new settlement ofVille-Marie (Montreal), recognized the impossibility of establishing a monastery there at that time. Instead, he requested a single lays. oman to serve as teacher, and Marguerite agreed to go in that capacity. When she arrived in 1653, Ville-Marie was a small settlement, precarious both geographically and financially. It had been estab-lished eleven years earlier by an association of pious men and women in France who hoped to incorporate French and native people into a Christian society, thus creating a spirited church in the New World. Among the associates was Jean-Jacques Olier, founder and first superior of the Sulpicians. Unable to go him-self, he sent four members of his society to Ville-Marie in 1657 to establish its first parish. As "filles de paroisse" (women of the parish) Marguerite and the women who would soon join her were thus greatly influenced by the Sulpicians of Ville-Marie. Moreover, from Paris the third superior of the Society, Louis Tronson, was actively involved in decisions concerning the congregation and proved one of their staunchest advocates) In 1659 four recruits came from France to share Marguerite's simple, mobile way of life and her educational commitment in imi-tation of Mary's vie voyag~re. Over the course of the century, more than fifty women--native, French, and native-born French--joined this new Congregation de Notre-Dame, extending its reach from Ville-Marie to Quebec and beyond. Marguerite served as supe- January-Febr~ary 2001 rior until 1693, providing spiritual as well as practical leadership. Among her relatively few extant writings are several prayers and numerous reflections on the nature of the congregation, most of which appear to be conference notes of varying lengths. Brief and fragmentary though these texts are, they provide interesting glimpses of the spirituality that informed the congregation she founded.3 Gathering Up the Drops of Christ's Blood A brief, isolated passage in Marguerite Bourgeoys's writings presents a forceful description of the source, characteristics, and aim of the sisters' missionary activity: Consider, dear, that when you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost. How happy a sister who is sent on mission will be if she considers that she goes there at God's command and in his company, if she considers that in this work she can and ought to show her gratitude to him from whom she has received all things. Oh, she will find nothing difficult or burdensome at all! She will, on the contrary, wish to be in want of every-thing, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in disgrace. (W'W!B, 78) This passage may well represent the words with which Marguerite Bourgeoys invited the sisters to go forth from the central house in Ville-Marie to missions all over New France. Her description of the congregation's aim as "gathering up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost" is strongly reminiscent of a phrase employed by Paul Le Jeune sJ, superior of the Jesuit mission in Canada. In a letter written to his superior in France in 1633 and later published and widely disseminated, he attempted to persuade wealthy women in France to support the creation of a school for native women in New France: If they applied part [of their income] to gather the drops of blood of the Son of God shed for so many souls that are lost every day for la~k of help, they would not blush with shame on the day they appear before God to render an account of the goods for which he has made them responsible.4 Two years later he renewed the request, exclaiming, "What glory in the sight of the angels, to have gathered the blood of the Son of God to apply it to these poor unbelievers! "s Review for Religious What is particularly striking is that for Le Jeune the "gather-ing" was to be accomplished by women who worked for the edu-cation of other women. Initially he suggested that the school be run by "some good courageous widow assisted by two brave young women."6 By 1635, however, numerous women in French monas-teries, "overcoming the fear natural to their sex," had offered to come to educate native women and girls. This led Le Jeune to alter his original plan and to ask that a French benefactor endow a monastery whose members would carry out the work of educa-tion: "Will not some brave lady be found to give these Amazons of the great God a passport, endow-ing them with a house in which to praise and serve His Divine Majesty in this other world?"7 Madame de la Peltrie responded to that request, and the Ursuline monastery was soon founded in Quebec as a result. Marguerite Bourgeoys's writ-ings never indicate that she read Paul Le Jeune's letters, but, given the sisters' interest in the Canadian missions, she very likely did so during her association with the Congregation de Notre-Dame in Troyes. Thus, his use of the image of gathering Christ's blood probably influenced her directly. Furthermore, although there were no Jesuits in Ville-Marie from 1657 until the end of the century, she may also have been influenced indirecdy by their approach to missionary activity through her continued con-tact with Jesuits in Quebec. Although Marguerite Bourgeoys may consciously or uncon-sciously have adopted Le Jeun~'s metaphor for mission, she mod-ified it in several ways. In the first place, she used the word ramasser, instead of recueillir, with respect to what was to be done with the drops of blood. There is a difference of nuance here. The former term suggests picking up scattered bits and pieces, and the latter suggests taking in a unified quantity (such as a harvest),s This difference in vocabulary may not be particularly significant in itself,9 but another passage from the Writings makes it clear that for her the mission of education did indeed involve gathering up the individual drops of Christ's blood: "When you go on mission you go to gather up the drops of the blood of Jesus Christ that are being lost." January-Febr~ary 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali.ty_for Mission It is work suited to draw down the graces of God if it is done with purity of intention, without distinction between the poor and the rich, between relatives and friends and strangers, between the pretty and the plain, the easy-going and the grumblers, looking upon them all as drops of our Lord's blood. (W'MB, 201) Where Le Jeune had used the imagery of gathering the blood to describe specifically the education of the native women and chil-dren, here it seems to refer to all the individuals taught by the sis-ters. (By the time these lines were written, in the 1590s, they were probably teaching few native children.) If all these individuals are the drops of Christ's blood, they must be treated as sacred objects. Teaching, then, becomes a holy activity, since it brings the sisters in close contact with those sacred objects. Second, Marguerite underlined the urgency of the sisters' mis-sion by the way she extended the metaphor of the drops of blood. Le Jeune remarks that the souls of "these poor unbelievers" for whom Christ's blood has been shed are being lost; Marguerite Bourgeoys suggests that the drops of Christ's blood themselves are being lost. So important is this to her understanding that we may interpret her as going beyond mere metaphor in her reference to the drops of blood. Since the writing of the first Letter to the Corinthians, Christian theologians have often spoken of the bap-tized as constituting the body of Christ in a real, though mystical sense. For Marguerite Bourgeoys, those who needed to learn of Christ's teachings were his blood in that same mystical sense,l° Rather than allow even one drop of that blood to be wasted, a sis-ter would travel anyw.here she was sent and endure whatever was necessary for the mission. Indeed, the act of teaching was both sacred and urgent. A prayer for the congregation written on 4July 1693, at the end of her extended service as the community superior, reveals the con-nection she saw between the sisters' mission and the passion of Christ. Declaring that her trust was not in her own powers, she tells God: "I base my trust on the merits of the precious blood given for my ransom, and with your grace I would rather give up life itself than fail to uphold the truth of your words" (W-M!~, 163). Her willingness to lose her life in order to make Christ's teachings known recalls the desire "to endure all sorts of suffering and even to die in disgrace," which she claimed was characteristic of the sis-ter who traveled on mission in God's company. Her belief that the Review for Religious missionary congregation sisters would desire to suffer in the course of their mission echoes a passage from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola describing "the most perfect kind of humility" pos-sible for one who has decided to follow Christ: Whenever the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty would be equally served, in order to imitate and be in real-ity more like Christ our Lord, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches; insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors; I desire to be accounted as worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world. So Christ was treated before me.~ As was true for Ignatius, Marguerite Bourgeoys believed the source of missionary activity for the congregation sister to be a call from the God "from whom she has received all things." Her missionary work is thus a grateful response to God's initiative: "She goes there at God's command." If the sister's mission comes from a divine invitation, then her going will be "in his company." The implication is that going on mission is a way for her to be present to God, a way of participating in God's activity, and hence a way of becoming holy. This is why she should be able to view any deprivation that she suffers in the course of her mission as a pos-itive advantage. "To be in want of everything, to be despised by everyone, to endure all sorts of suffering, and even to die in dis-grace" is to enter more profoundly into the way of Christ, whose mission was characterized by the shedding of his blood. Imitating Mary's Vie Voyag~re While the desire to gather up the drops of Christ's blood pro-vided motivation for the sisters' mission of education, Marguerite turned elsewhere for a way to depict their way of exercising that mission: the life Mary led on earth. The 17th century was remarkable for widespread and intense devotion to Mary, notably among the members of what has been called the French school of spirituality. In order to emphasize the greatness of God's working in her, they tended to focus on Mary's humility, dwelling on both the poverty of her origins and her hum-ble willingness to serve as the future mother of God. Furthermore, their insistence on the paradoxical juxtaposition of the "grandeurs" of Jesus in the midst of his humiliations led Cardinal de B~rulle and January-February 2001 Foley ¯ SpiritnalityforMission For Marguerite Bourgeoys the primary form of devotion to Mary was to honor her vie voyag re, her missionary life. his followers to reflect at length on the life of Jesus in Mary's womb. This is apparent in Olier's prayer "O Jesu vivens in Maria" and in their reflections on the Word's action in Mary's visitafon to Elizabeth. The visitation became central to Marguerite Bourgeoys's spirituality, as shall be seen; she shared as well the French school's emphasis on Mary's "littleness" which enabled her to become the instrument of God's power. While her version of the life of Mary reflects many of the the-ological concerns of her day, some of her contemporaries might have been puzzled by its omissions and even more by its focus. She refers very briefly to what most consider the two central moments in Mary's life, Jesus' nativity and his cru-cifixion. She merely notes that the circumstances of Christ's birth reveal Mary's love of poverty and the poor and that her presence at Calvary reveals her faithfulness, her accep-tance of God's plan of redempfon. In writings no longer available to us, she may have said more, but, given the detail she provides about other events in Mary's life, Marguerite's lack of attention to the nativity and crucifixion is at least suggestive. In contrast to B4rulle, for example, the brevity of her comments and the absence of sentimentality are quite striking. Even more striking is her focus on Mary's activity, rather than her passivity. Certainly she portrays Mary as the recipient of divine favor: God chose her, preserved her from sin, and made her Mother Of God and then Queen of heaven. But Marguerite pays far more attention to what Mary did. She shows her teaching and serving the other girls in the temple and making a vow of virginity. At the time of the annunciation, we see Mary imploring, preparing her-self, consenting, and offering herself to God. After that event she visits Elizabeth, gives birth to Jesus, receives shepherds and kings, and loses and. finds her child. Having witnessed Christ's teachings and keeping them in her heart, she teaches and encourages people during his public life, and afterwards she forms and reforms the members of the Christian community, even after her death, up to the present time. Review for Religious This focus on Mary's activity is in keeping with the advice Marguerite Bourgeoys gave her sisters: "To imitate our dear Foundress, we ought to go through her life and stop at what our Lord inspires us to do" (WMB, 52). In this emphasis she differed somewhat from the French school, for whom devotion took the form of reflecting on the eternal--and internal--"states" of Christ's and Mary's lives in order to enter those states oneself. Thus, even though he considered Mary a model of priestly and apostolic activ-ity, Jean-Jacques Olier still advocated above all a devotion to the "interior life" of Mary. The French school has in this respect been contrasted with Ignatius Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises involve meditating on the words and particularly the actions of God, Christ, and the saints in order to imitate them.~2 While Marguerite Bourgeoys's random reflections are far different from the highly structured meditations of the Exercises, her focus on Mary's activity is more Ignatian than Berullian. Her approach to the life of Mary, however, was not that of many early-17th-century Jesuit writers, who cul-tivated a highly imaginative form of popular devotion that focused on the details of Mary's life. They were accused, not always unfairly, of promoting an exaggerated devotion to Mary that at times superseded the need for fidelity to the commandments.'3 For Marguerite Bourgeoys and for the congregation sisters, the primary form of devotion to Mary was honoring her vie voyag~re, her missionary life: M. Jendret told me one day that our Lord had left three call-ings for women to follow him and serve the church: that of St. [Mary] Magdalen was taken up by the Carmelites and other recluses and that of Saint Martha, by cloistered reli-gious who serve their neighbor; but the calling to the jour-neying life of the Virgin Mary, which needed to be honored, had not yet been taken up." (WMB, 142) Elsewhere she explains that because Mary was a teacher she incorporated the lives of both Martha and Mary Magdalen into her own: "The blessed Virgin, who was a teacher, included every-thing in her own person to an eminent degree" (WMB, 77). This depiction of Mary's "mixed" active and contemplative life was not original to Jendret,14 but he may have been the first to apply that analogy to women's communities. Nor was it common to speak of her vie voyag?re. Ordinarily the phrase refers to Christians who are still living on earth, as opposed to those who ffanuary-Februa~y 2001 Fole~ ¯ Spirituali~forMission have passed on to glory or purification--and sometimes to the public life of Jesus.~s For many 17th-century spiritual writers, this earthly, transitory, active aspect of Christ's or Mary's life was less inspiring and worthy of attention than their enduring states. By their attention to Mary's vie voyag~re, then, Antoine Jendret and Marguerite Bourgeoys presented an alternative approach to one of the central symbols of holiness in the Christian tradition. That approach had very concrete implications for the little congregation in Ville-Marie. In order to fulfill their educative mis-sion throughout New France, the sisters had to remain free to move wherever there was need. However, because holiness was most often identified with separation from "the world," and because of women's supposed fragility, ecclesiastical legislation during much of Christian history sought to protect consecrated women by insisting that they remain behind cloister walls. Indeed, the two first bishops of New France attempted to impose cloister on the congregation by urging their union with the Ursulines of Quebec. Marguerite Bourgeoys's response was to point to Mary: "The Blessed Virgin was never cloistered. She did indeed retire into an interior solitude, but she never excused herself from any journey on which there was some good to be done or some work of charity to be performed. We wish to follow her in some way" (WMB, 50). Without calling into question the value of life within a clois-ter, this .passage suggests that for Mary, and for those who wish to live her missionary way of life, love of neighbor can constitute a higher value. Clearly Marguerite shared the traditional view that this sort of uncloistered vie voyagkre could be dangerous, but she believed that those who imitated Mary's way of life would be pro-tected by an "interior solitude" and by their union with God in prayer. Dangerous or not, if Mary's work of building up the church by educating its women was to continue, then it was not only pos-sible but necessary for some women to follow her way of life. The Visitation Traditionally the sisters of the congregation renew their vows on the Feast of the Visitation. This suggests that for them Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-52) is paradigmatic of their desire to become holy by going forth as missionaries. During the 17th century, however, the visitation was not nec-essarily associated with women who remained free to move out in Review for Religious order to serve their neighbor. In a reflection first published in 1679, the Capuchin Louis-Francois d'Argentan interpreted Mary's going up into the hill country as a reference to her ascent to God through contemplation and her willingness to share in God's redemptive plan. In this presentation, Mary is essentially passive in the encounter with Elizabeth, simply allowing the Word within her to speak in her.voice. D'Argentan suggests that during the visit Mary manifests humility by helping with household tasks, ardent charity (which he does not discuss further), and the way to engage in holy conversation with the neighbor. For him the ulti-mate fruit of reflection on the visitation is making "powerful resolutions to love seclusion, silence, and solitude, scorning all the rest so as to be attentive only to what is necessary, that is to say, to God alone and to the great matter of our eternity.''6 Such an interpretation of the visitation was not foreign to Marguerite Bourgeoys's thought. She too was convinced that Mary loved and was a model of soli-tude- but also was a model of conversation with others--and that the most important aspect of her encounter with Elizabeth was God's action in sanctifying the unborn John the Baptist. Nonetheless, here as always, Marguerite Bourgeoys's attention remained focused on Mary's activity and its effects. Moreover, her interpretation of that activ-ity contrasts with that of d'Argentan and even Francis de Sales, cofou

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Review for Religious - Issue 56.1 (January/February 1997)

Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus

Issue 56.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1997. ; for relig i ou s Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 1 lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the joumml are meant to be informative, practical, 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. Lonis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: I:OPI~ EMA@SLUVCA.SI~U. E DU Manuscripts, books for review, aud correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDouough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ° Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional ,nailing offices. See inside back cover for iuformation on subscription rates. ©1997 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy an), material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal t, se 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 uotice 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 o,aly be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisoty 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 JA~NUARY-FEBRUARY 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 1 contents living the consecrated life ~ 6 The Ambiguity of Religious Life: Does It Evolve? Nadine Foley OP highlights the living tradition of consecrated life evidenced in the phrase "consecration for mission" and its development in Vita consecrata. The Vatican II Generation and Religious Life Brian J. Pierce oP comments on his post-Vatican II experience of contemplative spirituality, community living and sharing, and ministry among the poor. Of Those Who Leave Us: A Typology Edward van Merrienboer OP describes five types of members seeking permission to leave and the behaviors that led to their petitions. growing as christians 37 Four Seasons for Christian Group Sharing Hilary Ot~ensmeyer OSB proposes a dynamic based on the framework of the four seasons for Christian groups to reach new levels of sharing. Inner Work with You~ Anger 'Paul Duckro, Marjorie Kukor, and Jean Meier CSJ present the potential of a contemplative or meditational encounter with anger, so linking the psychological and spiritual aspects of healing. On Letting Go Denise M. Callaghan SSND reflects on the pervasiveness of a "letting go" in the continuing call of God to us as individuals and as a community. Review for Religious 59 loving as celibates Nuptial Love and Discerning Celibacy's Call Daniel J. Trapp examines the specific call to celibacy as a spousal response to Christ's love. Consecrated Celibacy as Means, Peril, and Delight Melannie Svoboda SND describes a few aspects of the religious experience of consecrated celibacy which is rooted in the unfathomable mystery of God's radical-mad love. 72 finding God Mystical Moments in Daily Life Matthias Neuman OSB calls attention to the mystical moments that reveal a transcendent mysteriousness and often a holy . presence which are a part of our ordinary faith experience. Silence Donald Macdonald SMM points the ways in which silence helps us perceive the priceless gift of a Spirit-filled world. Jesus, Power, and the ONE Edmundo Rodriguez SJ presents a way of understanding how action on behalf of justice is sanctioned by the life and teaching of Jesus. departments Prisms ~.,~ /~o ~ ~-,~, ~-Jf~o,o- Canonical Counsel: Diocesan Institutes and Pontifical Institutes Book Reviews January-February 1997 prisms Jesus is the focus of this year's celebra-tions preparatory to the coming third millennium. In John Paul's apostolic letter "As the Third Millennium Draws Near," the thematic structure of the three-year period 1997- 1999 is Trinitarian. Since the distinctly Christological char-acter of the jubilee is a primary emphasis, the first year, 1997, is devoted to "reflection on Christ, the Word of God, made man by the power of the Holy Spirit" (40). National conferences of bishops, local dioceses and individual parishes, religious congregational provinces, and other church organizations have proposed various ways of entering into this reflection on Christ: Some helpful study aids, reflection guides, and discussion outlines are available. Programs and conferences, gatherings among various Christian churches, and especially prayer services are planned throughout .the year. We all are called to become a part of this movement-- like a three-year-long Advent preparation--to celebrate our Christian jubilee. The challenge for each of us is accept-ing our responsibility "to know Christ Jesus" and acting on it. Knowing Jesus was a constant theme of St. Paul's writ-ings to the young churches. It is the theme reemphasized in our preparation for celebrating the millennium. How do we come to know Jesus? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each give us a way of knowing Jesus. Every Gospel account became a composite reflection of the stories told about Jesus within an evange-list's particular community. Details and settings of the same stories differ from Gospel account to Gospel account, and it does not matter. Each way of telling the story is true in its Review for Religious ability to give us an entrance into knowing Jesus. At one moment in our lives, through the Gospel of Mark we may find ourselves impressed by the immediate sense of Jesus' activism, the uncluttered quality of his speech, the directness of his affective response. At another time we appreciate the Jesus of Luke's Gospel, who appears so much the person of prayer, compassion, and lively joy. Sometimes the longer wisdom stories of John's Gospel and the image-identity language of being bread, life, light, vine, shepherd, gate, or para-clete call us to pe~r deep into our well of meditation. Over and over as we move through the Gospels, we find ourselves always com-ing to know Jesus~ Perhaps, taking our cue from St. Paul, we might discover anew the insight especially applicable to our millennium preparation. Necessary and helpful as the Gospel accounts are for our knowing Jesus, only in entering into our own experience will we find the Jesus who calls us by name, knocks at the door of our heart, and persists in bringing about the fullness of the reign ofGod. St. Paul was marked forever by his experience of One saying to him, "It is Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting." For Paul there was no confusion of James and Joseph and Julia and Claudia with Jesus. But Paul realized that, in his dealings with James and Joseph and Julia and Claudia, he was also dealing with Jesus and coming to know him more, Paul came to know Jesus the more he preached and the. more he worked with all the people in his churches and the more he prayed. What Paul focuses for each of us is the Jesus in front of us, the Jesus whose coming we await by the way we live and minis-ter now. Jesus in his total gift of living and dying and Jesus in his sure promise of coming is always being made present to us in the Eucharist and so in his Body, the church. We experience Jesus. Experiencing Jesus is more than studying Christology or gospel reading. Experiencing Jesus is more than serving a, soup line or demonstrating for peace. Experiencing Jesus is knowing Jesus in the way that Paul exhorts his churches to know Jesus and to let themselves be seen as models of imitation because of that knowl-edge. The demand for people who know Jesus in this way has never been so clearly expressed as it is in the pope's apostolic letter. In John's Gospel, the story is told of some Greeks who came forward to Philip, making the request "We want to see Jesus." How will we, with the question coming both from within us and from with-out, respond this year to that request? David L. Fleming SJ ~anuary-FebtwaO, 1997 living the consecrated life NADINE FOLEY The Ambiguity of Religious Life: Does It Evolve? A number of years ago, in one of those seemingly endless discussions about the character of religious life that flour-ished among women religious after Vatican Council II, I remember making a reference to the evolution of reli-gious life. Within my hearing a canonist vehemently snapped out an objection. "Her response startled me; I could not see a reason for her agitated insistence. Was it the word evolution? The word seemed appropriate to me as a member of a religious congregation of women whose founders, responding to needs of the mid-1800s, emerged from their cloistered life in Regensburg, Germany, and ,.met the challenges of ministry in their new home in America. The move was not merely geographical. It entailed considerable adaptation of their lifestyle, their sense of mission, and ultimately their self-identity as a religious congregation of women. Their revered daily reg-imen of discipline and prayer as Second Order Dominican nuns was not immediately adaptable to what they were to undertake in a new and strange world. In due time they made the wrenching decision to become conventual Third Order Dominicans, an available alternative within Dominican structures. Was this development some kind of evolution? Nadine Foley OP, a former president of the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR), is professor of religious studies at Siena Heights College and is historian for the Adrian Dominican Sisters. She can be addressed at 1257 East Siena Heights Drive; Adrian, Michigan 49221. Review for Religious Other institutes of women religious, founded directly for active apostolic or ministerial life, came sooner or later to share much similarity with active institutes such as mine that have their ¯ historical roots in the cloistered contemplative life. For both of these groups, there were expectations of meeting the obligations that had pertained to contemplative life: separation from the world, limited contact with the laity, conformity in dress and often in demeanor, a set horarium of prayer and liturgical observance, and disciplinary practices of silence, self-abnegation, and obedi-ence. Many of these were unique to women religious and not shared by their male counterparts. But changes were occurring in women's religious life without the appropriate "infrastructure" to support it. Modifications were made--dropping night vigils and prayers, from the daily horarium, omitting face veils from the prescribed dress, and the like--but tensions often existed, whether acknowledged or not. The model for the religious life of women remained that of the enclosure. The 1917 Code of Canon Law, welcome in many respects, more or :less fixed the ambiguity canonically in the sense that its architects--and, no doubt, members of religious institutes as well--did not have a clear perception that something new was emerging in religious life and might require a new look at the canonical legislation. In the 1930s and 1940s religious congrega-tions hastened .to write new constitutions in conformity with the Code while at the same time many made formal application for the status of pontifical institute. The all-consuming preoccupation for women religious (and many men religious as well) was with developing the entire spectrum of Catholic education and health-care to meet the needs of a burgeoning Catholic population. The effort required education of the members in all of the relevant fields of specialization to meet the standards of accrediting agen-cies. Meanwhile, imperceptible to the outside observer and even to many within religious life, a ferment of dissatisfaction and dis-affection was gradually spreading. The competencies developed by religious in the many secular fields required for their professional ministries had the additional effect of providing them with criti-cal tools of analysis that they began to apply to their own per-sonal development and their social organization as religious institutes. Then came Vatican Council II. By this time the institutes of women's religious life were ready for the directives from Rome ffanuary-Febrttaty 1997 that followed it: Hold a general chapter of renewal within three years, consult all the members in preparation, and enter into a period of experimentation where it seems advisable. A further communication, directing the institutes to write new constitu-tions and statutes, called for a thorough review of the original inspirations of the founders. No one could have predicted the impact of what followed, particularly when the institutes devel-oped internal processes for consulting all the members. Their reflections and consultations brought to the fore a wealth of expe-rience that hitherto had not been factored into general-chapter decisions about the congregations' agendas. The questions and the solutions were wide ranging and radical in the very good sense of reaching to the roots of religious life and its very identity. Reexamining origins and reflection upon a century and a half of experience in ministry were critical in formulating new con-stitutions. The documents produced were perhaps the first to reflect the character of women's active, or ministerial, ~eligious life. Mining the rich tradition~ in the original inspirations of reli-gious institutes led to a breadth in understanding ministry, not so much as specific works, but as response to the needs of people in our times. 'But a parallel effort was in progress at the same time: the reform of the Code of Canon Law. While religious worldwide submitted data for the section on religious life, their work on constitutions proceeded without benefit of knowing how the canonical revisions were progressing. In the final analysis, while some strides were made, religious were unable to find in the revised canons support for some of the new approaches--to traditional values of governance, community, ministry, the vows-- that had already been duly incorporated into their constitutions and statutes. As one who participated in the process of gaining approval of new constitutions through conversations with members of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL, a recent name change that requires its own exegesis), I had a privileged vantage point from which to examine the notion that religious life does not evolve. While processes had been devised whereby entire congregations participated in developing new constitutions (documents that for the first time accurately reflect our sense of identity as ministerial congregations of women religious), it became quite clear that we were expected ,to fit into a Procrustean bed of fixed categories. Review for Religious The suggestion, once heard, that we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if we just settled upon calling ourselves "secular insti-tutes" epitomized the problem. We did not fit many canonical expectations of "consecrated life," but at the same time we found no comfort in being labeled secular institutes. ("Institutes of apos-tolic life," founded specifically for traditional "missionary" activ-ity in "foreign" lands, continues to be a unique category.) It is against this background that I read the postsynodal apos-tolic exhortation Vita consecrata. Many things can be said about this document, some positive and some nega-tive. (I will not dwell here on the persis-tence of noninclusive language.) But I take encouragement in the inference I draw from it that there is basis here for the idea that religious life can in fact evolve--or at leastodevelop, if that is a more acceptable word. I draw this conclusion as I move from chapter 2 to chapter 3 and find a distinct theological shift from a transcendent view of religioils life to what I will call an incar-national one. The shift is particularly evi-dent in the treatment of consecration, no longer wholly identified with the vows, but associated with mission in the phrase "con-secration for mission." While the theological reorientation is not consistent throughout, the theme is pervasive enough to be noted as a significant change. Two themes that are present throughout 'the exhortation are consecration and eschatology. The manner of their treatment illus-trates, the shifting theology. In chapter 1 the organizing biblical text is Matthew's account of the transfiguration, described as "a decisive moment in the ministry of Jesus" (§ 15, italics in the original here and elsewhere). While the document presents this experi-ence of Peter, James, and John as constantly relived by the whole church, a people on its way to the eschatological encounter with its Lord, it has particular meaning for those called to the conse-crated life. For, we read, Peter's words "Lord, how good it is to be here! . eloquently express the radical nature of the vocation to the consecrated life." The. ecstasy and the mystery of the trans-figuration lead to the evangelical counsels as "a specific acceptance of the mystery of Christ, lived within the Church" (§16). Thus reli- Reexamining origins and reflection upon a century and a half of experience in ministry were critical in formulating new constitutions. Januaty-February 1997 gious consecration is linked to the eschatological realization of the reign of God to come. Applying this interpretation to the three basic vocations within the church, the text reads: "The laity, by virtue of the secular character of their vocation, reflect the mystery of the Incarnate Word particularly insofar as he is the Alpha and the Omega of the world, the foundation and measure of the value of all created things. Sacred ministers, for their part, are 'living images of Christ the Head and Shepherd who guides his people during this time of 'already and not yet,' as they await his coming in glory. It is the duty of the consecrated life to show that the Incarnate Son of God is the eschatological goal towards which all things tend, the splendor before which every other light pales, and the infinite beauty which alone can fully satisfy the human heart" (§16). The three vocations here do not reflect the division of the church into episcopacy, clergy, and laity found in Vatican II's Lumen gentium, an outline that, by including nonclerical religious only invisibly among the laity, seems to drop them from the church (see LG §§31 and 43). While harking back to the "objective superiority of the conse-crated life" (§§18 and 32), a notion seemingly abandoned after Vatican II, chapter 1 acknowledges that religious life, in addition to its eschatological witness, is also "a particularly profound and fruitful way of sharing in Christ's mission, in imitation of the exam-ple of Mary of Nazareth, the first disciple" (§18). The "sacred bond of chastity for the sake of the kingdom of God" is singled out as the first and essential evangelical counsel. A further expansion to all the church's members' manifesting the one mystery of Christ is contained in the statement (here retranslated from the Latin) that, "as their specific but not exclusive characteristics, the lay faithful have activity in the world, the clergy have ministry, and consecrated men and women have special conformity to Christ chaste, poor, and obedient.''l This assertion occurs in the discus-sion of baptism and confirmation's conferral of a consecration that is common to all members of the people of God (§31). Erroneously but understandably, "ministry" in the official English translation of this sentence is sometimes taken to be the exclusive responsibility of the clergy, and special conformity to Christ in chastity, poverty, and obedience an exclusive character-istic of consecrated men and women. The qualifier "but not exclu-sively" seems to be attached only to the specific characteristic of the laity ("activity in the world") when in fact it pertains to the Review for Religious specific characteristics of the other two groups as well. Just as the laity and the clergy are not to repudiate the importance of their own "conformity to Christ chaste, poor, and obedient," neither priests nor (at least during the last several hundred years) women and men religious have been excluded from activity "in the world" along.with the laity. This is "missionary" activity, understood in the fundamental sense of their having been baptized into mission. It is just possible that collectively reli-gious have been quite as involved in ministry in the world as the laity have been, and no doubt proportionately more so until the recent past. Further reflection upon these three distinct-- but also overlapping (officially in this document and manifestly in historical praxis)--categories of baptized people seems to suggest that such separation of roles among the people of God no longer serves, If all the people of God are baptized into mission, and bear a responsibility for it, saving the term ministry exclusively for bishops and priests would scarcely be helpful. The term is today widely applied to many kinds of ser-vice as forms of diakonia, an essential component of mission, along with kerygma and koinonia--preaching and community. Perhaps in this connection we could profit from an expanded exploration of the meaning of the priesthood of all of the faithful. In various ways it is being exercised, but without the kind of theological reflec~ tion that would help us understand who we are as a total priestly people of God addressing the many aberrations in faith and morals that surround us in our global society today~ For many of us the subhead "Consecrated for mission" that appears at the beginning of chapter 3 leaps off the page as a sign of theological breakthrough. It encapsulates the case that I tried to"make for this concept in.my 1989. LCWR presidential address (see Origins 19, no. 13 [31 August 1989]: 209-214). At that time the idea abroad here and there that some r.eligious had opted for consecration and others for mission seemed dangerously divisive. The dichotomy became a defining issue for reflecting upon who and what women religious uniquely had become. We were and If all the people of God are baptized into mission, and bear a responsibility for it, saving the term ministry exclusively for bishops and priests would scarcely be helpful. Janltary-Febrvtmy 1997 are present in the world not merely as a kind of ethereal escha-tological "sign" of the kingdom to come--by reason of the vows we profess, that particular consecration of ours. Rather, we were and are present also as ministerial workers actively advancing the good of people and, thereby, the reign of justice and peace. In this way, too, we are a striking sign of the reign of God--by rea-son of our dedication to the mission of Jesus, consecration in that sense as well. Indeed, as the exhortation at this point says, "The task of devoting themselves wholly to 'mission' is ~,. included in their call . A sense of mission is essential to .every institute, not only those dedicated to the active apostolic life, but also those dedicated to the contemplative life" (§72). In support of this, Luke 4:16~ 19 is cited to emphasize that the Spirit has consecrated Jesus to bring good news to the poor, to captives, to the blind (§82). Consecration for mission places the vows in a new context and suggests that they testify to the evangelical counsels' "profound anthropological significance" (§87). Chastity is presented as a response to "a hedonistic culture which separates sexuality from all objective moral norms, often treating it as a mere diversion and a consumer good and, with the complicity of the means of social communication, justifying a kind of idolatry of the sexual instinct" (§88). Poverty is related to "a materialism which craves possessions, heedless of the needs and sufferings of the weakest, and lacking any concern for the balance of natural resources" (§89). And obe, dience is a response to "those notions of freedom which separate this fundamental human good from its essential relationship to the truth and to moral norms. In effect, the promotion of freedom is a genuine value, closely connected with respect for the human person, But who does not see the aberrant consequences of injus-tice and even violence, in th( life of individuals and of peoples, to which the distorted use of freedom leads?" (§91). These ideas on the vows, incarnational in my view, are more compatible with our experience than the idealized and "transcendental" notions pre-sented in the earlier sections of the document. They are consonant with the serious study we have done on Gaudium et spes and with the implications we have drawn for our identity in mission and the ministries we have undertaken to further the reign of God. These interpretations are welcome in expressing a realistic understand-ing of the vows, one with which we can identify. Whether or not~ religious life evolves is in the end not that sig-nificant a question. What really is at issue is whether or not the Review for Religious church--and the religious life within it--has a living tradition, one that adapts and grows and grafts new things into its old self, for the sake of gospel mission. The experience of women reli-gious over the years reveals that there is a dynamic interior prin-ciple among us that challenges, motivates, energizes, and adapts in our ongoing history. The traditional values of religious life are not cast aside; they are evaluated in new contexts, reinterpreted and reformulated for our mission in the contemporary world. Our communal discernment in these recent years convinces us that this interior principle is the Holy Spirit, to whom we must be faithful. Thus, Vita conseo'ata, Pope John Paul's postsynodal exhor-tation "on the consecrated life and its mission," strikes us as an affirmation of a movement of the Spirit of God that we have rec-ognized in our experience and articulated in our theological reflec-tion. We are happy to find this movement acknowledged in this exhortation. Note i "Licet varia haec genera unum Christi mysterium demonstrent, pro-prietatem peculiarem quamvis non unicam laici prae se ferunt, saecular-itatem nempe, pastores ministeriorum curationem, homines consecrati peculiarem cum Christo virgine paupere oboediente conformationem" (AAS 88, no. 5 [13 May 1996]: 405, §31). Our Lady of the Gifts Bewildered by the gifts: they bring Her son--such treasurest. and still listening For more nightsongs strange spirits sing, Her human love thrusts these apart As not fully human; let him start With just one gift; pressed to her breast For all she has to give: her human heart. Nancy G. Westerfield Janua~y-Februmy 1997 BRIAN PIERCE The Vatican II Generation and Religious Life lhad just celebrated my second birthday when John XXIII _~-went over to a dusty, closed window, threw it open with a smile, and invited the windy spirit of Vatican Council II in to freshen things up a bit. Needless to say, I do not recall the excite-ment of that time. Nor do I remember where I was when the news broke that John F. Kennedy had been shot. Only three at the time, I was probably building a fort in a sandbox somewhere-- totally oblivious to the tears and shock that swept the nation and the world, sending my mother into early labor. I do not even remember my little brother's birth the next morning. My preparation for first Communion was with a group of guitar-playing sisters who taught us a revised version of the Act of Contrition (I never did learn the "0 my God, I am heartily sorry" version that my older brother learned). They taught us, too, thaf it was okay to chew the Communion host before swal-lowing it, something my brother had distinctly been told not to do. To top it all off, none of my philosophy or theology classes as a Dominican were in Latin, and so, every time an older Dominican tosses out a Latin phrase during a dinner conversation, We younger men just roll our eyes and pretend to know what he is saying. Coming from that background, I can honestly say that I love the church and am committed to continue the journey as a Brian J. Pierce oP is a member of a Dominican community whose activ-ity includes lay ministry formation, university ministry, and pastoral accompaniment of persons with AIDS. His address is Frailes Dominicos; Apartado 2608, San Pedro Sula; Honduras, Central America. Review for Religious believer, a disciple of Jesus, and a preacher in the family of St. Dominic. I often get the feeling, though, that some of those who grew up in the pre-Vatican church look at us of the postconciliar generation as second-class Catholics: "Nobody can call himself a real Catholic if he's never attended a forty-hours' devotion," said one of those faithful daily-Mass folks to me one morning. I swallowed and smiled, not daring to confess to him that the young priest who had just "said Holy Mass" was one of those question-able "pseudo-Catholics." A sense of humor and some patient understanding help in those situations in which the distances between the generations seem irreconcilable. Religious Life and Spiritual Development In his recent book Further along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, noted psychiatrist and spiritual guide, has capsulized in simple language the stages of spiritual development that James Fowler and others had mapped out earlier. Peck speaks of four stages: (1) chaotic-antisocial, (2) formal-institutional, (3) skeptic-individual, and (4) mystical-communal. My intention here is not to give an overview of the stages, but instead to comment on my own experience as a religious withi'n the post-Vatican church in light of Peck's categories. I realize that to make sweeping generalizations about faith development, especially on an institutional level, is both preten-tious and dangerous. I do so only as a way of situating us within the present moment so that we can more readily hear the Spirit calling us to growth. All ages of church history have had persons and communities representing each of the four stages. I think, though, that i( is safe to say that the pre-Vatidan church and reli-gious life had become somewhat bogged down in the legalistic uniformity of Peck's stage 2 (formal-institutional). Vatican II opened up the windows and doors of dialogue, both within the church and with the world. This dialogue marked the social and ecclesial environment in which my generation of religious grew up. In our childhood years Catholic liturgy was being transformed (causing its share of confusion, I later learned), and we began singing such hits as "Sons of God, hear his holy word" (inclusive language being still in an embryonic stagg). Renewal brought many new apostolic groups and movements, and there was an Janua~y-Febm,ary 1997 Pierce ¯ The Vatican H Generation and Religious Life overall air of dialogue and experimentation, especially in religious life. Uniformity was out, and modified habits and consensus deci-sion making were coming in. Vatican II's fresh breeze opened up the possibility for many persons and religious communities to move into skeptic-individ-ual faith development, Peck's stage 3. Peck says that, even though this stage is outwardly less "religious," it is in fact more "spiritual.". It is the stage of healthy questioning, conscientious dissent, and the blending of psychology and spirituality. In many ways those first years manifested themselves as an overreaction to the for-malities and legalisms of years past. In a positive sense it was a time of much dialogue and growth. My generation was still too young to be involved in 'the dialogue, but our early religious edu-cation took place in that environment. I remember the lay couple who taught our confirmation class in the early 1970s stressing that for us to be mature Christians we had to learn to make moral decisions with gospel responsibility. A far cry from the Baltimore Catechism of our parents' generation! Now we are in the 1990s and rapidly approaching the new millennium. Again, recognizing the frailty of making any kind of generalization, I think it safe to say that most of us raised in the postconciliar generation and most of the religious communities that went through renewal are still in Peck's stage 3. I do not mean that we have stopped growing or have become stagnant. Quite the contrary. In the American church in general and also among religious, a strong spirit of creative searching, is still preva-lent. At the same time, though, I think that very few religious communities have moved to what Scott Peck calls the mystical-community level. This may be quite natural, given the fact that Vatican II happened only thirty years ago, but my hope is that our generation may have something to offer here. Those of us who were formed in stage-3 parishes and reli-gious communities, complete with guitar Masses and face-to-face "celebrations of reconciliation," never went through the painful birthing process that gave way to the renewal of Vatican II. We are grateful to those who have gifted us with this rich inheritance-- a more mature and liberating life of faith within the community of believers. In many ways we had it easy, and perhaps it is now our .turn to lead the way through the desert. Many of my friends (ages twenty to forty) have left the church for a variety of reasons. Some have gone back to stage-2 Review for Religious Catholicism (usually lured there by disgruntled elders) or have found security in fundamentalist Christian groups. Reactionary Catholic religious congregations and movements and Bible-thumping evangelical churches (sometimes even with a shiny, high-tech faFade) are on the rise. Others of my friends--some of whom experimented with drugs--are trying to get to stage 4 by New Age pseudomysticism. Many young people today have a thirst for religious and mystical experience, and not all of them seek just a quick fix. The large num-ber of young adults (many ex-Catholics) adhering to the rigorous disciplines of Eastern meditation practices is an impor-tant phenomenon of our day. Our gener-ation is willing to sacrifice if we believe it is worthwhile (that is, no blind obedience, please). What, then, is this new journey that calls out to us today? If Our religious com-munities are not opening up the path to a deeper mystical and communal level of faith (Peck's stage 4), how can we respond in creative ways to bring about the needed growth? I am no expert on either faith development or postcon-ciliar religious renewal, nor do I propose to speak on behalf of all the Vatican II'generation. I simply speak out of my fourteen years of experience, prayerful struggle, and reflection as a Dominican. We have been hearing for several years now that religious life is in crisis, and I basically agree with that reading of the signs of the times. Crisis, however, does not have to mean something bad, a negative experience. Crisis can mean growth, a time for matur-ing, Just as past generations of Catholic religious strove to pro-duce new forms of religious life, so must we do today. This is no time to give up or go backward. We have received a generous and precious inheritance indeed, but the "not yet" of God's reign still burns within us: Now it is our generation's time and task to carry the torch. I am aware that much is being written about the renewal and refounding of religious life these days, and in no way do I intend a comprehensive overview of the issues at'stake. I will look at three main topics (contemplative spirituality, community living and sharing, and ministry among the poor) while attempting to We have received a generous and precious inheritance indeed, but "not yet" of God's reign still burns within us. I7- Januao,-Feb~waO, 1997 Pierce * The Vatican H Generation and Religious Life reflect on them from the perspective of us who were raised beneath the cool shade of Vatican II. Contemplative, Prayerful Living My mother, whbm I consider to be a fairly open and renewed Catholic, still pulls a tattered Stations of the Cross prayer book out of her purse to reflect on before Mass or after Communion. In other words, she still holds on to and receives life from the meditative and devotional practices common before Vatican II. That kind of prayer-book piety does not fill my spiritual needs, but neither does the "my ministry is my prayer" pastoral workaholism that apparently has taken its place, especially among us younger religious. It seems to me that we went from saying prayers (Peck's stage 2) to not saying prayers (stage.3 skepticism) and somewhere along the way began to lose sight of the plain, simple art of just praying. For many of us, the charismatic renewal, with its focus on prayer rather than saying prayers, offered a stepping-stone in our spiritual development, but the emotionalism and fundamental:- ism in the movement caused many to look elsewhere. I am con, vinced now more than ever, after five years of living among the destitute poor of Central America, that being a follower of Jesus necessitates a deep commitment to prayer--and prayer requires time, energy, and creativity. Without a very intentional spiritual life, we run the risk of doing many good things on an ego~ trip rather than out of gospel-based selfless love. As I grow in prayer-ful communion with God, I discover that my loving others is freer, less needy, more liberating. In the past several years, there has been a growing interest in contemplative and centering prayer throughout the country. This is a wonderfully hopeful sign, and in many places it is the laity who are taking the lead in this kind of prayer. It saddens me that I have lived in or visited religious communities where com-mon prayer is either nonexistent (stage-3 individualism, at best) or simply "reciting the breviary" (stage-2 formalism). In order to grow into a communal, stage-4 level of faith, we must learn once again what it means to really pray together. I occasionally spend my annual retreat with a small commu-nity of Benedictine women in Oklahoma. These women gather three times a day for contemplative, sitting meditation, a blend of Review for gelig4ous Catholic contemplative prayer and Eastern meditation practices. The shared silence has been a gift beyond measure for me. In my years of formation, we were enc.ouraged to give time each day to personal or "private" prayer--can Christian prayer ever be "pri-vate"?-- but because of the previous generations' experience of having to spend a half hour together each morning in the chapel for "meditation," we rarely shared silence as a form of prayer. It seems to me that in our day and age, with all its diversity and respect of the individual, we could profit immensely from a kind of shared prayer of silence. Silence binds together and bridges gaps in ways that words sometimes cannot. The liturgical reforms brought in by Vatican II .helped to bring our com-mon prayer back into the real world, but I believe that in many ways our common prayer has become just one more task to complete in the day's busy schedule and thus something that many find uninteresting. Introducing some shared silence into our common prayer can be a way of celebrating sacred time together in a "non-doing" manner. Prayer as a,task to be completed increases the workaholism of the many religious and lay Christians brought up on "do good to your neighbor" faith renewal after Vatican II. Not that we should reverse the renewal, for the recovery of the social-justice dimen-sion of our faith has been one of Vatican II's greatest gifts to the church; but are we perhaps only following our culture's insatiable drive for success and efficiency when we burn ourselves out as gospel do-gooders? A deep spirituality.that combines contem-plative prayer and Sabbath rest not only promotes gospel values, but challenges our consumerist society as well. The renewal of the contemplative dimension of our religious life consequently brings into question the professionalization of our ministerial commitments. I think that the emphasis on solid formation in theology, Scripture, and the social sciences that has come as a result of Vatican II is to be highly lauded, especially for women religious, for whom such opportunities were rare in the preconciliar years. To my mind, this move toward professional- In our day and age, with all its diversity and respect of the individual, we cof~Id profit immensely from a kind of shared prayer of silence. ~anua~y-February 1997 Pierce * The Vatican II G, eneration and Rdi~_ous Life ization, though, has taken away much of the evangelical freedom that marked the early years of our foundations. As professionals we have had to buy into the world of competitive salaries, con-trolled work schedules, tenure-track professorships, and the over-all efficiency mind-set that characterizes the corporate and professional marketplace. Can we honestly cultivate the deeply contemplative prayer life that we entered religious life desiring while yielding too much to that system? Without losing sight of the need to be justly compensated for our ministry, have we not given up some of the freedom to "be with and for God" by trad-ing in our vow of poverty for the corporate model of church life? Have we fallen into'a minimalisrunderstanding of Sabbath (noth-ing more than Sunday Mass) because of the demands of ministry? At a recent day-long conference on Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton--given by Jim Forrest, who knew them both--someone asked what his strongest memory of Dorothy Day was. Jim answered quickly and with no hesitation: "When I think of Dorothy, I think of her on her knees praying. She spent a lot of time in prayer." Imagine that! This dedicated social-justice apos-tle of the United States is remembered as a woman on her knees praying, and for long periods at a time. Stage 4's mystical dimen-sion cannot be integrated into our lives if prayer is just another point on the "things to do" list for the day (after clocking out from work at the social-service agency, of course). Our commu-nal and contemplative prayer must be leaven in the dough of our daily lives. For, when our prayer truly becomes prayer, then our ministry and our lives as a whole will also become prayer. Real Community vs. Corporate Individualism We know it. We say it. We preach it. We write books about it. But do we live it? Do we live real community? The early Christian communities were not sacramental fast-food outlets, nor were they the early predecessor to Motel 6 (key, clean bed, cable TV,, free breakfast, cheap rates). They were brothers and sisters who had made a commitment to each other and to fol-lowing in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. They lived, shared their goods, worshiped, and died with and for one another and the gospel. The beatitudes were their daily bread, and they knew that being a disciple of J.esus was to be their everything, their cross and their deep joy. Jesus was the way, the path by which the com- Review for Religious munity of believers would walk together towards the promised reign of God. Does this sound a bit idealistic? Well, the picture which the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles paint for us probably is a somewhat idealized version of reality. But let us not forget that these pictures appear in our Scriptures precisely because they were the goal towards which the early communities strove. Many ist-century Christians gave their lives to make this dream of com-munal gospel testimony a lived reality. Today we have the same struggles, difficulties, and weaknesses as the early Christians. But can we also claim to share the same goal of offering the world a living witness of the Body of Christ? I think that women and men religious provide coundess exam-ples of Christian witness, but I also think that the communal dimension of gospel living--and consequently of religious life-- has suffered great setbacks since Vatican II. We give ourselves to excellent and creative ministries, but more and more we do them alone. Everyone in the community has a project, and all the pro-jects are nicely organized under a fancy mission statement. We have all made use of the Myers-Briggs and the enneagram to facil-itate our once-a-month interface gatherings (which used to be called community meetings!), but does the world feel the force of our communal witness to the gospel of Christ? In my own Dominican tradition, the example of the first fri-ars in the Americas stands out strongly: a small band of Spaniards on the island of Hispaniola in the early 16th century. Needing to make a response to the atrocities of the conquest and oppression of the island's native inhabitants, and convinced that the atrocities were not the will of God, the community broke with the dominant theology of the day and preached that the Spanish conquerors were living in mortal sin because of their unjust treatment of the Indians. They all signed the community's homily that was preached by Antonio de Montesino, and, as expected, their words brought upon themselves a tidal wave of reactions, one of which was a harsh reprimand from their provincial back in Spain. Listening to the homily that day was young Bartolom~ de las Casas, who years later became the continent's most important defender of the cause of Indian rights. The question that blaringly stands out is whether or not the same words from a single Dominican friar on the island would have had the same dynamic effect on the history of Latin America that the community witness had. I think not. .']anuaty-FebruaD, 1997 Pierce ¯ The Vatican H Generation and Religious Life Today's church has become so individualistic in its focus that one wonders if there is still room for a prophetic witness in com-mon. The "something for everyone" mentality has worked its way into every part of chursh life in our country. Many of our parishes look more like the food malls where thirty or so minirestaurants are squeezed in between J.C. Penney's and Florsheim Shoes. We have become pastoral experts in creating a program for every-one, in itself not a bad outreach mentality; but the lack of focus is something we have to look at seriously. What is the message we are giving about the gospel? How can we celebrate the gains brought on by the council, with its renewal of lay participation in church life, without dispersing our witness in so many directions? I believe we need to step back and ask ourselves the tough ques-tion: Is corporate individualism the same as community? The question becomes even more urgent when we ask it from the point of view of publicly vowed religious life. Are we mir-roring the communal striving of the early Christian communi-ties or the strategic planning model of IBM? Brother David Steindl-Rast~OSB, in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, uses a wonderful image to describe community living. He com-pares the old model of pre-Vatican corporate uniformity (Peck's formal-institutional) to sardines all lined up in a can--nice and orderly, but all dead. Real community, he says, is more like a school of fish swimming together gracefully'(Peck's mystical-com-munal). I think that we threw away the sardine can in the 1960s and then, liberated and full of life, all swam off in different direc-tions (Peck's skeptic-individual). How can we get back to swim-ming together gracefully in a school without destroying our creativity or drowning our witness in watered-down corporatism? There certainly are no easy answers, but we know deep down the hunger for such a life. Young people want community. Many of the people my age and younger are tired of the broken fami-lies, broken relationships, and lonely apartment living that have characterized our generation. The thousands of young people who flock to Taiz~ each year in postmodern, de-Christianized Europe must be telling us something. The human heart longs for communion, and the world denies the fulfillment of that longing to more and more people everyday. Many religious women and men are choosing to live alone and work .in their own ministries, often identifying themselves professionally with a group that is not their religious community. Review for Religious We have come to accept this reality as quite normal, but will it continue to attract young people to a life of public, gospel-cen-tered, and vowed living? Real community is an urgent need for us who long to channel our creative energies in healthy ways in a world that sees little value in the commitment of celibate living. Will we find that companionship if we come home to an answer-ing machine full of messages or a "com-munity" room full of brothers or sisters inert before the TV set like the pillars at Stonehenge? Could Acts 2:42-47 give us some hints as to where to continue journeying along the path? References there to the teaching of the apostles, the common life, the breaking of the bread, and prayer point to a community that spent a lot of quality time together. Today we have many meetings run with corporate efficiency, but do we really spend time together (sharing the day's stories during a leisurely evening meal, faith sharing, studying the day's or the week's liturgy texts together, recreating or even taking a day off together--away from the phone and TV-)? The early Christian community's life had a tremendous impact on the local people (2:43). Does ours? Have we ever considered a ministry in which the whole community works as a team (for example, a series of lay formation workshops, time each week in a soup kitchen, regular visits to the AIDS wing of a hospital), giving witness to the value of community through our example? The passage goes on (2:44-45) to the difficult point of sim-ple living and common sharing of goods. It is an area of great challenge for us today. We have adopted the "have credit card, will travel" mentality of mainstream America, some of which, per-haps,, is inevitable. But are we taking these steps with sufficient reflection and caution? Are we willing to defend the truth even when it may not be a popular stance among some of our generous benefactors? Do we tithe from our salaries and communal accounts?.Where does our province or religious congregation invest its money? Do those investments promote social, economic, and ecological justice? Are we content with generic brands of food Many of the people my age and younger are tired of the broken families, broken relationships, and lonely apartment living that have characterized our generation. ffanuaty-February 1997 Pierce ¯ The Vatican H Generation and Religious Life and a simple wardrobe? Do we have a common library, or do we all keep adding personal bookshelves? There are many questions to struggle with, but gospel witness is well worth the struggle. The last two verses of the passage (2:46-47) speak of enthu-siasm, joy, and simple sharing. We glimpse an early community that freely praised God while giving a clear witness to an alter-native, counterculrural way of living. Freedom to be for God and for others was their common ground. They risked martyrdom in order to keep giving their communal witness to the gospel. Theirs is not an easy act to follow, but it sure beats a sardine-can existence or lonely nights at Motel 6. Acompafiamiento, a Way of Walking with the Poor A great gift of Vatican II and these past thirty years has been the church's openness to continuing the dialogue with the world that the council's document on the church, Lumen gentium, high-lighted. The Latin American Church followed up with the prophetic stances taken during the Medellin and Puebla confer-ences of bishops (1968 and 1979). In the United States the pastoral letters on peace and economic justice have been lights .on the path of relating gospel faith to pertinent issues in our world today. We must not underestimate the steps that have been taken since Vatican II. Having said all this, I wish to comment on where I see a weak-ness in our post-Vatican II model of engagement with the world's poor. Not that what is being done is wrong or contrary to the gospel, but in many instances there is, I think, a need to move to a deeper level. Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred prophet of El Salvador, popularized during his years as archbishop the term acompa~amiento (accompaniment), a form of walking with the poor that is different from just working with the poor. Acompa~amiento is a way of living more than a way of doing (though, of course, this division in itself is dualistic). Several years ago I heard the noted liberation theologian Gustavo Guti~rrez say that we often reduce the option for the poor to going to the poor neighborhoods and barrios, to the social-service centers and the inner-city schools to work during the day, only to return to our comfortable homes and convents at night. To truly opt for the poor, Guti~rrez said, means to spend the nights withthem as well. In other words, we are called not only Review for Religiotts to do good things for the poor, but to be with them, to walk with them, to live with them, and, if necessary, to die with them. Romero's acompa~amiento could be translated as "sharing bread along the journey." It is different from giving bread to the poor; it is a sharing of life that dissolves the distances that separate us from them. To opt for the poor through acompa~amiento moves beyond all dualisms to make more real the concepts of global commu-nity and people of God. The hospice movement, Habitat for Humanity, L'Arche, and Christian base communities are expres-sions of this new way of being church and community. Each model portrays a community of equals, living and working together for a new world. There is very little corporate mentality present in them. This was the power of Archbishop Romero's witness--an erasing of the distances: the sheep and the shepherd together risk-ing their lives for the kingdom. How can our communities continue to make the transition to more of an acompa~amiento model over the traditional "charity" model (I do not favor the impoverishment of the word charity in contexts like this). I believe that, first of all, we have to set aside the obsession with efficiency and success that our world impresses upon us and complement our doing with an equal emphasis on being with. It is not an easy step. Rather than sending money, clothes, and food to the poor, can we pray, eat, study, recreate, and even live with them? The challenge is at the heart of the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin decades ago, and it is the call heralded by St. Paul when he proclaimed that our baptism erases all the divisions between persons, making possible a true community of equals (Ga 3:28). Finally, and perhaps this takes us back to the start, I believe that to truly love the poor as .sisters and brothers requires a con-templative (mystical) heart. To develop the capacity to stand in silence alongside the poo~r and accept the ambiguities of life is to grow into the mystical dimension of our faith. We really are not separate from "the others," but only a contemplative heart can begin to grasp the interconnectedness that holds us all together. If we grow in such contemplativeness, our being with becomes less a heroic act of giving life to .somebody in need and more a happy fulfilling of our potential as children of God: we are uninhibitedly glad of the opportunity to see the kingdom that .Jesus preached radiating from our simple act of "sharing bread along the journey." Januao,-FeblvlaO, 1997 Pierce * The Vatican H Generation and Religious Life I recently learned this lesson anew. A group of university stu-dents and I were scheduled to visit the inmates at the local prison. The students, among whom was Diana, a young crippled woman, met at our house, about ten blocks from the prison. I quietly asked if one of the students would go with her on the bus while the rest of us walked to the prison. Overhearing my request, Diana told me politely that she preferred to walk. I would not hear of it. Angry that no one offered to go with her on the bus, I decided to do it myself. By that point Diana, perceiving herself a burden to ¯ the group, had grabbed her crutches and begun walking home. When she finally had the courage to return to the group two months later, she told me I had made her feel terribly uncom-fortable that day. I had wanted to do something~r Diana. She simply wanted to be part of the group. I had seen her as a problem rather than as a person. Without a heart made flesh by prayerful silence and careful listening, we run the risk--as we go about doing good works to save the world of forgetting that we too are just part of this world already saved by God's love. To step back, to see and lis-ten to God speaking to us through poor people, is not always the quickest, most efficient way to bring about change in the world, but it is God's way. Stepping back, we discover anew each day that we are all part of one body--crippled, broken, healed, and set free. Community and Grace Thirty years after Vatican II, we all still have much to learn. The gospel is new each day and in every generation. However much progress we may have made since, the council, we need some self-critique as we continue the journey. Many people my age are not attracted to a church that differs little from the trap-pings of their everyday job, and the skeptic individualism in reli-gious life does not stand out as an exciting alternative. They can live that way and get paid a pretty good salary for it! Religious life' among the Vatican II generation must continue to offer some kind of critique of the dominant culture if it is to be viable for our times. Some cultural criticism, however, neglects important parts of Jesus' teaching. The post-Vatican II generation of Catholics is nov looking for more moralistic condemnations of modernity. They want a life with deep meaning, a simple life Review for Religious they can share with real people (and not just through their Internet modems!), a life that can help to make our world a bet-ter place without making themselves workaholic basket cases in the process. I believe it is still possible to swim gracefully through the waters of our times, guided not by the uniformity of the past nor the runaway individualism of the present, but by the Spirit of Jesus given to us and quietly moving in us with transforming new-ness and amazing grace. Awakening Golden leaves rustle and swirl Beneath the silver birch tree As sunlight from crisp blue skies Comes to rest on the forest floor. And nature poised on winter's brink Does not die but falls asleep Until it one bright spring morn Awakens to song of birds and brook. How like our lonely restless souls When in their final slumber lie Until aroused one glorious dawn By sweet sounds of an angel's horn. Eva Marie Ippolito Janua~y-Fd.-uaty 1997 F EDWARD VAN MERRIENBOER Of Those Who Leave Us: A Typology Tpe contemporary leader of a religious community is ected to be a person of prayer, with a vision, who can manage finance and who knows the legal aspects of public cor-porate life. Although few people ever fulfill all of these expecta-tions, most leaders do very well at some of them while in office. Many leadership tasks give one a sense of joyful accomplishment; of those that fail to do so, none is more painful, in my experi-ence, than participating in the departure of a member. I was a member of my province's council from 1973 to 1983 and then, until 1992, a member of our general council in Rome. In both the provincial and international contexts, the pain was ever present when a petition for dispensation came in. Impressed by the unique story that each of the many petitions revealed, I began to ask myself what I could learn from them personally and corporately about departure. During my nine years on our general council, I kept a brief list of people's reasons for leaving. My purpose was to learn from these experiences how to help those in leadership. I wanted espe-cially to help the men working in our initial formation programs so that they in turn could help our candidates avoid such painful experiences for themselves and their communities in the future. I share these reflections in that spirit. Edward van Merrienboer OP chairs the Department of Theology and Philosophy at Barry University. From 1983 to 1992 he was assistant gen-eral for the apostolic life of the Dominican order. He has written on reli-gious life, social justice, and spirituality. He can be addressed at Barry University; 11300 Northeast Second Avenue; Miami Shores, Florida 33161. Review for Religious Collating the many stories, I found that about eighty percent of those who left our community from 1983 to 1992 could be gathered into five groups, no matter what part of the world they lived in. My findings, of course, are not scientific conclusions of the sort one expects from an empirical study using a sociological method. Rather, they are reflections made after reading petition after petition regarding departure decisions that had been arrived at by individuals and/or the provincial leadership. I did not speak with the men petitioning for dispensation, nor did I interview their provincial leadership for additional data. My typology is based on what they and their provincial superiors wrote in the petitions. Typologies are models that seldom fit reality perfectly: there is always some overlap among the types. But still the general pat-terns proved helpful when I was making visits to our provinces. These types, from what I have learned from previous members of our general council, represent a change. During the time of Pope Paul VI, most members departed°to enter marriage. Today this is still a reason, but other reason~ have become more dominant. I have shared my findings with members of other general councils. They have found my insights to be valid in their communities and have encouraged me to share them more widely. What follows is a brief description of the five types of mem-bers seeking permission to leave and of the behaviors that led to their petition: the free agents, the must-have-its, the new founders, the loss-of-hopes, and the I'm-better-nows. The Free Agents Most free-agent petitions came from those who entered at the time of the Second Vaticah Council or within ten years after it. My religious community, like most religious communities of that time, was emerging from an era of strict legalism and con-formity. While we never had a fixed mold to force people into, informal ideas of what religious were supposed to be and to do defined almost every aspect of our lives. Perfection would be achieved by going through a "narrow gate," the perfect mechanism for making sure that, of the many called, few would be chosen. After the council, all the rules of our life were examined and revised. Now a wide embrace would replace the narrow way that was so well defined. Pluralism was encouraged in ministry and in 29 January-Feblwal.'~ 1997 Merrienboer * Of Those Who Leave Us local community life. Everyone was encouraged to participate in shaping our life and mission.For most of us this new freedom was a blessing because it allowed us to be ourselves and be faith-ful to our community at the same time. While limits were less defined, most religious knew that there were limits because of our vowed life. This was not the case with the members whom I am calling free agents. They enjoyed the new freedom and saw no limits. For some of them the freedom involved embracing works that were hard to locate within the mission of the institute or within the vowed life. Commonly they found ways to spend community funds while being little concerned about bringing in any money themselves or about the consequences of their expenditures on their community. Because finance is so concrete, much of the ten-sion between free agents and their community is about money. In extreme cases they establish private bank accounts or have funds that are not accountable to the community. Sizable funding is essential to them because it provides the means to express their freedom. Money provides the physical necessities they need to be free from the community's demand for responsible account-ability. Another area of conflict between free agents and their com-munity is their approach to relationships within and outside the community. Some of these relationships become exclusive com-mitments that involve genital expression. Self-direction in ministry becomes essential as part of their freedom agenda. Most are happy with the spirit of freedom that the council mandated; but, when "oppressive" superiors or members begin to challenge their lim-itless freedom, they became unhappy and start to question their vocation. They often say that they woul.d never have come to the point of seeking dispensation from their vows if it had not been for narrow-minded, or legalistic leaders. They do not see the problem of living a lifestyle that is contrary to their public commitment. Long and painful dialogues with their superiors do not enable them to see the points of conflict. Some express their anger at the community for trying to restrict the freedom given to them by the council. Many view the challenges coming to them from their community as statements of distrust. The decision to leave the community is a result of having to choose concretely between their agenda of freedom and certain Review for Relig~ous behaviors their community identifies as essential. It is tragic that often these members leave us without ever understanding that every life option imposes certain limits upon people, that in this regard religious life is no different than any other vocation. The Must-Have-Its Departing members of the second type seek dispensation within a very short time--usually three years or less--after their final profession or ordination. Judging from externals, one won-ders whether these members have really given religious life a fair chance. A common concern expressed by leadership is that these members may be acting in haste. The problems the mem-bers are experiencing could be rooted in the normal adjustment period from initial forma-tion to the wider life of the community. Because of the short time that these mem-bers have been in the community, unless there have been major difficulties previously, most religious superiors give only a very qualified support to their petitions for dispensation. This is understandable from an administrative per-spective, but I think there is an aspect of these members' personality that is perhaps being over-looked. It is this: They cannot come to a decision to leave the religious life or the priesthood until they actually possess these realities. Part of their personality demands that they prove to themselves that they can be a religious before they can decide that they do not want to be one. Some of this feeling is rooted in a need to be clear that they are rejecting the community and not being sent away. Very often I noted that, when during their initial formation they were asked as candidates to question their decision to be a religious, they responded by devoting themselves to becoming a better religious. Even when their simple vow period was extended so that they could look at their vocation, they never questioned their call to religious life. Some indicate that, almost from the day of their final pro-fession or ordination, they began to question if this was for them. They felt that before final profession they really .had not known While limits were less defined, most religious knew that there were limits because of our vowed life. Janua~y-Feb~vla~y 1997 Merrienboer ¯ Of Those Who Leave Us what it would be like; now they knew fully and were not happy. Others fully expected that after final commitment their experience of the life and ministry would change radically. It did not; in some ,cases it even became worse. They were given less attention and were expected to be fully contributing members of the commu-nity- which beEame a major source of frustration. Even in situations where a mentor was assigned to assist them in their adjustment to the postformation community life, there was little the community could do to change the attitude that, "now that I have what I set out to achieve, I noolonger want it." My reading of their autobiographies comes up with a pattern throughout their life of obtaining something, then setting it aside. Before entering the community, a high number of petitioners had obtained graduate degrees in unrelated fields and then never used this knowledge and experience. At the core of persons of this type is their inability to project their hopes into the future and make an assessment of their fitness for that vocation. Their experiences of initial formation do not enable them to make an educated guess about their ability to live religious life in the future. They only know what is present to them, and now that they have the life in its fullness they no longer want it for themselves. The New Founders Some people enter a religious community with the idea of reshaping it according to their own vision of religious life. Such an idea is in strange contrast to a community's centuries-long acceptance of its charism, but it is a fact that some people feel that their own image of religious life today takes priority over all that has come before it. One area into which such new-foundation efforts are brought is the community's mission. New founders would define this mis-sion as movement for social change or promotion of a different theological perspective. In countries where there has been a his-tory of repression in society, they see religious community as a resistance movement that offers its members prophetic opportu-nities. When the new founders promote involvement in social action, they become disappointed that not all the members feel called to participate. In more industrial countries the meaning of religious life, Review for Religious according to some new founders, is to protnote the women's movement or the gay movement. For others it is to become pro-tectors of traditional understandings of the faith. A common focal point for new founders is the community's liturgy. It becomes the platform for their view of religious life. Whether traditional or progressive, they see community prayer as a way to form the other members into a new identity. Most new founders are critical of programs for new members and of the actions of the community's leaders. They believe that, if their own vision of things prev~lils, the community will be refounded with new vitality. They blame the community's short-age of vocations on its resistance to their newcomers' vision of community renewal. The tone of their petitions for dispensation often indicates that they consider themselves to be ahead of or even better than most of the institute's members. They predict dire consequences for the community after their departure, Convinced that their own vision is important and urgent, they feel they must leave and find a place to implement it immedi-ately. Such refounding attitudes seem to stem from an assumption that the community is joining them on their journey, not that they are joining a group that already has a reasonably defined identity as it proceeds on its journey. In my experience, formation programs that encourage self-expression without enough regard for the community's corporate identity only encourage new founders in convictions that will prove problematic. The Loss-of-Hopes I have thus far described three types of departing members. I believe that the responsibility for their departure from religious life rests primarily with them and not the community. The com-munity has failed them in many ways, but the motivation of these individuals has been essentially flawed, often from their very early years in religious life. The fourth type of persons leaving reli-gious life today are different. Here the primary responsibility for the departure lies with the community, with its lack of faithfulness to its charism. These tragic petitions come from persons who have given their best effort to be faithful to the religious life and have not found much support from other members. Some have found it JanuaTy-Febtvtaty 1997 Merrienboer * Of Those Who Leave Us nearly impossible to find within their community a supportive environment for prayer and the vowed life. If they have shared their frustrations with other members, they often have received kind words but not active support. Sometimes this, alienation from the community has been caused by other members' general lack of interest in things spir-itual. These other members see themselves as professionals and have little feeling for the idea of a vocation. Considering the meaning of the vows to be very personal, they avoid discussing their own viewpoint with others for fear of seeming to impose it on them. I believe that the departure decisions of members of this type are rooted in their experience of hopelessness about the direc-tion in which the community seems to be moving. Often they feel that they do not even speak a common language about reli-gious life with the other members. They feel that the commu-nity has settled for the lowest common denominator for reasons of avoiding the tensions associated with serious conversion efforts. From my distant vantage point, there appear to be real signs of death in places where these departing members have been living their religious life; regrettably, suggestions to try another place are too late by the time the petition for dispensation reaches the major superior. It falls on leaders to learn from these tragic stories and to address the perceived failures as part of their leadeiship task. In my experience, it is almost impossible to restore hope to members who have become disillusioned; but leadership should make dis-tinct efforts to change situations in which, in the future, even more members would be likely to lose their hope. The I'm-Better-Nows Persons of the fifth and final type of men leaving religious life during my term of office were those who through most of their lives suffered from spiritual or emotional problems. Often their motive for entering religious life was the hope of having their problems resolved by the vowed life. Some of these problems were rooted in their early childhood experiences. Religiou~ life appeared to be a safe place to escape the pain of their family sit-uation. Their low self-esteem was a primary reason for entering community. Their hope, however, that religious life would con- Revie'a, for Religious fer a new value on them and make them better people had not been fulfilled. In some cases the reality of verbal or physical abuse made them fearful of any close relationship. They perceived the vow of chastity as protecting them from such trials, but as the years passed they experienced an inability to relate in a healthy manner with other members of the community. Their lives were marked by a crisis event, such as substance abuse, which made their superiors suggest or even require them to get professional help. Their petitions for depar-ture were often set in the context of the ther-apy in which their suffering was addressed. As they became spiritually and emotionally more integrated, their reasons for being a religious seemed to them less cogent. If they now were capable of healthy relationships, they wanted marriage or the freedom to find deeper mean-ing outside religious community. While it might seem strange, their main reason for wanting to leave community was that they were now happy and did not need the community anymore, Their needs for protection and status had been resolved in a positive manner. Most of these petitioners expressed gratitude to the community for their loving support through their many trials, and they knew true sorrow as they left. I have spoken with a number of healthcare givers about mem-bers of this type, and all have suggested that departure may be the best option for them. They also suggest that religious should examine within their communities the dynamics that allow peo-ple to hide from their problems until they reach the crisis stage. One healthcare professional once told me he thought that reli-gious practice "false mercy" in not addressing the problems of disturbed members until there is a major crisis. As they became spiritually and emotionally more integrated, their reasons for being a religious seemed to them less cogent. Reflections for the Future No matter how perfect our formation programs become, there will always be some members who make the decision to leave us after many years of association. This is to acknowledge frankly Janttaty-Febtvtat3, 1997 Merrienboer * Of Those Who Leave Us the human dimension of religious life, but we can learn from our experiences. It is for the sake of such learning that I have shared my insights as a general-council member who has returned to his province and seen these patterns continuing in religious com-munities. Can we learn from those who have left us? Can we speak hon-estly with our present members when we see behaviors that have led others to leave us? I believe that, if we have the courage to say yes to these two questions, the pain of occasionally having some members choose to leave us and our life together would be much more bearable. In the Temple Year followed year the two had come to this place, old man, old woman, wearing persistence like a skin. Here, perhaps, familiar shadows sharpened the eye's observance. What ¯ better place to find the light, and by it be found, than in the dark? Leonard Cochran OP Review for Religious HILARY OTTENSMEYER Four Seasons for Christian Group Sharing From time to time a gathering of like-minded Christians-- whether it be a spiritual-direction group, an Emmaus group, a Bible-sharing group, or a prayer group--expresses a desire to "go deeper." This desire, perhaps only vaguely defined, generally means that the members want to be more self-revealing, more honest in discussing areas of faith, doubts about the church, glossed-over conflicts within the group, and fears that the meetings have become perfunctory, even boring. In such a case the introduction of some simple group dynamic into the meetings may allow the group to reach a new and more comfortable, if challenging, level of sharing. A dynamic based on the four seasons seems well suited to that task.~ The first time the dynamic is used, an outside facilita-tor can be helpful, one whom the group has chosen for being able and trustworthy. Later, on its own, the group could well devote at least one session to each of the seasons. Nature's seasons are an experience with which we are all familiar. The seasons can function for a group in poetic, dynamic ways, that is, ways in which the clearest and most labored prose cannot. Such metaphors break through the limits of human speech and help us become aware of thoughts and feelings that are otherwise inaccessible. The "I am" statements of John's Gospel demonstrate this beau-tifully. Each believer brings a different set of meanings Hilary Ottensmeyer OSB wrote "The Problem with Problems" for our September-October 1995 issue. His address remains 1414 Southern Avenue; Beech Grove, Indiana 46107. Ottensmeyer ¯ Four Seasons for Christian Group Sharing on hearing Jesus describe himself as the Good Shepherd or the Bread of Life. The seasons function in a similarly evocative way. People instinctively realize that we grow only when we hon-estly share the burdens and problems of our minds and hearts. Time and again we witness this in the pages of the Gospels. The healed leper, the demoniac rescued from among the tombs, the blind Bartimaeus lifted from his roadside isolation, the breath-less disciples returning to Jerusalem from the road to Emmaus, all these Jesus restores to community where they can pour out their hearts in sharing their "stories." Some Cautions Sharing in a group must be neither .intrusive nor abusive. Certain agreed-upon boundaries need to be set to protect the sanctuary of the individual conscience and the dignity of personal free will. There can be no forced entry into the heart. Even God will not force that door, but, like a true lover, quietly tells us, ,Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me" (Rv 3:20). The ultimate dream: table companionship with God! As a minimum, the following rules apply: 1. Members should make only."I" statements, never "you" statements, that is, "I think." and not "You are . " We cannot know the full reality of other people's minds and hearts until we ask them from a respectful distance. 2. Anyone should feel free to call a halt at any time to a line of inquiry directed towards herself or himself: "I'd really rather not discuss that at this time." This allows group members to claim the reverence which is their due. 3. Members should accept responsibility for the unfolding of their lives, avoiding the chronic "victim mentality" that is pervasive in our culture. Blaming others or "life" is most often an evasion.~ As one friend expresses' it, there are four doors into the neurotic. Each door is a belief in one of the following statements: (1) I can make you happy; (2) I can make you sad; (3) you can make me happy; (4) you can make me sad. Reluctant though we are to acknowledge it, each one of us is responsible for his or her own life. Only catastro-phes that overwhelm us exempt us from facing this honestly. 4. We help each other through honest and clear feedback, painful though that may sometimes be. Simple feedback, that Review for Religious is, a brief statement about how another's thoughts or actions come up in one's own life, proves most helpful: "When I am drawn to act that way, I find ."Advice giving is to be care-fully avoided. Other cautions come to mind, but these seem basic. We do not have a direct perception of ourselves. So burdened are our thought processes, so fixed into routine are our actions, that we need the kind mirror of another's perceptions held up before us. We seem at times so suffocated by our prejudices, by our closely guarded denials and chosen ignorances, that we experience a real joy when someone gently opens the window to let in the fresh air of new ideas and new possibilities. Indeed, our deepest prej-udices are those we hold against ourselves. This is the saddest discovery of all. What a joy when someone helps us stand up and claim our own worth! Fall: Season of Fruition Easing into the sharing process is most gently done by choos-ing as a beginning the symbol of fall. Most mellow of seasons, fall is the time of harvest, when good things are gathered up and fes-tivals begin. The rewards of hard work and steady determination lie before us. We have a need to celebrate at this time of year. At this point, what are the fruits of the group's loyalties? There are stored memories of joy shared, of times when a mem-ber has been lifted up and celebrated. The group has had insights that can be recalled, times when it realized that Jesus was there in their midst and hearts burned with awareness of his presence. The Lord was walking with the group as it went along the way. Ours is a faith community devoted to the joys of remembrance, as every Eucharist proclaims. One way of beginning: Inventory the gifts each individual brings to the group. What do I bring to the group which, because of my background, education, talents, and so forth, constitutes a special gift? Follow this by a question put to the entire group: What do we think this one member contributes that is most enriching? Move on then to a consideration of how the group has changed over time, pointing out new levels of support and understanding. Where has a sense of continuity been discerned? What new and unexpected biessings have been slowly revealed in each individual? ffanuao,-Febrttaty 1997 Ottensmeyer ¯ Four Seasons for Christian Group Sharing An important benefit of a sharing group is the contact that members have between sessions. We all struggle to keep alive a "circle of friends." A support group affords an excellent opportu-nity to widen that circle beyond relatives and school-day chums. Do the members of the group reach out to each other between meet-ings? Has acquiring and sustaining friends--those essential inter-personal skills--been nurtured by the activities of the support group? What new skills have been acquired? "If you want a friend, be a friend" is a truth that needs to be lived out day by day. Living in community is of itself no assurance of having friends, but only company. Have I worked at being a friend to members of the group? Winter: Season of Perseverance Winter is the season of hoping and of endurance. For most of us in these northern climes, except for the occasional bright win-ter day, the skies are covered and a chill hangs over the land. Winds bite. Snow and ice impede travel. One has to draw on deep inner resources of strength, and hold on to memories of warmer days. There are winter seasons for a support group, too. These times have to be confronted and admitted. There is a time for breaking open the soil before spring planting. We are reluctant to put a hand to this kind of work, but it is the necessary condition for future growth. A "winter" discussion is the most difficult kind the group will have, and requires patience and loyalty. Questions needing examination fall easily into three cate-gories: 1. Where have we silently established "off limits" areas of discussion: subtly agreed-upon restrictions and withhold-ings? When and how does sharing break down in the group? What expectations did we bring when we joined the group, and how have these been disappointed because of these unspoken conventions? Was I honest with my hopes when I joined? Certainly, every group has the right to mark the boundaries of its sharing. But were these boundaries hon-estly agreed on when the group was formed? Were we too idealistic, too superficial, or too demanding? Were there angers in the group that were glossed over? ¯ 2. What does the group need to work on with determina-tion, for example, admitting and establishing boundaries, facing avoidances; or surfacing denials? Review for Religious 3. Very importantly, what healings need to take place? Does any member feel wounded or rejected in any way? How would this healing best come about? One makes a wonderful discovery in crossing this difficult winter terrain. Secrets can poison people's lives. When we have the courage and trust needed to reveal those tender areas of the heart, we find that others too have suffered in the same way. Walls crum-ble. The Jesus who draws us together out of our loneliness and fears is there, in the eyes and voices of others, to strengthen the fragile bonds that hold together a faith community. Spring: Season of Hope Renewed We all love spring with its beginnings of new life, with early crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips. Winter seems sometimes to linger stubbornly, but spring finally triumphs and spirits soar. Melting snows turn into sparkling rivulets. Sap rises in the trees, and ten-der greens appear along the limbs of trees. A support group too brings forward its hopes for renewal, for new life. It is helpful to go back and test the roots for their vital-ity. This can be done when the members share where their indi-vidual faith stories began. People are always eager to tell their stories. The vast professional therapeutic industry has risen because people are hungry to recount their stories. If the listen-ers are skilled, they can help the storyteller understand better the meaning of the tale. Within the faith story, certain elements are important. Who taught you to pray? Who were your role mod-els of faith? What were some of the significant moments on your faith journey? What was your image of God in childhood years, and how has it evolved over the years? How do you pray at this time in your life? What more do you wish for in your relationship with God? What is your answer when Jesus asks, "What do you want meto do for you?" (Mk 10:51). Not only do roots need to be inspected, but growth too needs to be looked for. What hungers are you aware of in your faith today? How could this support group help you? What aspects of your faith do you want to bring into the lives of those you love or those with whom you work? I have noticed that groups experience a surge of interest when "spring" sessions take place. A renewed commitment, a deeper investment is made in the group, and mem-bers reach a deeper trust level very easily. Januao,-FebrttaO, 1997 Ottensmeyer ¯ Four Seasons for Christian Group Sharing Summer: Season of Sustained Growth The summer months fill us with a sense of achievement. The harsh days of winter are over. The stimulating work of spring has been accomplished. Now is the time to relax and enjoy the warm days and long, quiet evenings. In fields and in flower beds around the house, buds are gathering to maturity; grains are swelling in the fields and fruits filling out to ripeness in the orchards. This is the season of contentment, when gentle rains come to nature's aid. Now people have time for visits, vacations, and concerts in the park. Indeed, the "lazy, hazy days of summer" clothe us like a comfortable garment, and we are grateful. Groups, too, can benefit from at least one "summer" session, counting the blessings the members have seen coming to fruition among themselves. What was the heritage the individual members received from their mother and father? Looking back on the ten-der years of childhood, each person recognizes a "gift" from his or her parents, a "breath of life" that only parents could breathe into the heart of a child. Influenced deeply by our family roots, we make decisions about our place, our possibilities, in the world. What was the special legacy, outlook on life, stance before the future that the members received-from their mother and father? And how has this gift been nurtured and cherished? How did the hands of your father and mother feel at your back as they sup-ported your first steps and as you still, to this da~,, feel their hands steadying your walk through life? Or, and this too must be faced, did their hands grasp you and hold you back? When did you first feel the hand of God at your back, reach-ing with help and love into your life? Perhaps you experienced God as a hand drawing you forward through difficult days and years, pointing the way prophetically towards promise. Which times were times of contentment, when your journey reached a plateau and you rested quietly for a while? Seasoned Years Our lives seem to take the shape of repeated cycles. The pri-mordial journey of Abraham comes to mind here. A call comes to move forward when we are asked to entrust our future to God in faith. Then follows a transition period presenting obstacles to overcome, anxieties and failures to accept, flesh commitments courageously to be made to our beckoning God. Finally comes a Review for Religious sense of arrival, a time to rest and gather strength for the next call, time to sing a canticle of gratitude. Such a pattern applies to a support group. How has the group experienced these calls, these trials, and these periods of rest? Does the group know how to celebrate its members, choosing activities that will express its joy? One priest group I know takes a three-day trip each summer. All eight pile into a rented van, set out for a not-too-distant point of interest, and simply enjoy them-selves. They are gathering shared happy experiences to live on through the months to come. Nothing has been said on the impor-tant topics of how a group is set up, how members select themselves into a group (or are allowed to join it), and how an individual might bring closure when leav-ing. Indeed, perhaps the group decides it no longer serves its original purposes and goes out of existence. No mention has been made of how a group defines its orig-inal goals or modifies them. Without that vital process, the prospects for a successful investment of time and energy are rather dim. These are all con-siderations for another article, one that indeed has been written many times and was not our purpose here. Group renewal is our purpose. Every group, no matter how well put together at its inception or how generous and serious the will of its members, needs to be renewed in its commitment from time to time. The four seasons of the year can help in that necessary task. When did you first feel the hand of God at your back, reaching with help and love into your life? Note ~ The seminal idea for this article was suggested to me by Donna Fyffe; CommunityWorks; 101 West Ohio Street, Suite 1776; Indianapolis, Indiana 46204. Januar),-FebJvlat3, 1997 PAUL DUCKRO, MARJORIE KUKOR, AND JEAN MEIER Inner Work with Your Anger Anger is an emotion much maligned. It is often referred to as a "negative" emotion. Many persons are not comfort-able feeling anger and seek to suppress it in the interest of har-mony and accommodation. Paradoxically, by such efforts people increase their likelihood of expressing anger dysfunctionally. When people suppress anger, or even repress it, it does not disappear; it is left to work its way indirectly, like a force under-ground. It may express itself in very rationalized statements, rec-ognized only in the impossible and recurring problems that follow in their wake. There may be episodic outbursts of anger followed by gre~t anxiety and remorse, forming a cycle of conflict. Other persons may use anger much more overtly, as a domi-nating force. In them anger is a trademark, emerging frequently with few inhibitions. It may even become crystallized in ways of viewing the world--as evil, inconvenient, incompetent, and so forth. Either extreme--expressing anger frequently or habitually suppressing it--may lead to the development of a clinically sig-nificant syndrome for which professional therapy is indicated. Along with such destructive potential, anger has many posi-tive aspects that we shall point out. Moreover, there are proactive ways to deal constructively with deleterious anger in everyday life. Behavioral therapies have been demonstrated to be very effec- Paul Duckro PhD, Dr. Marjorie Kukor, and Jean Meier CSJ, PsyD, can be written to at St. Louis Behavioral Institute; 1129 Macldind Avenue; St. Louis, Missouri 63110. Review for Religious tive. For example, cognitive behavior therapy is effective in cases of uncontrolled anger, suppressed anger, simmering resentment, or cycles of angry outburst and fearful restraint. Typically it com-bines development of new skills, modification of dysfunctional beliefs, and exploration of past experiences that have shaped a person's thoughts and behaviors. More experiential approaches are effective too. In clinical practice these have been shown to improve the recognition, acknowledgment, and expression of anger, whether or not there is the opportunity to work through the anger interpersonally. Experiential therapies take many forms. Art, movement, and fan-tasy are common ways to explore and express anger. Painting and sculpturing are evocative media through which the source of someone's anger can be revealed. Color and form can often rep-resent anger that lies too deep for words. This therapy has long been used with children, but it is no less effective with adults who feel trapped in their own anger. Exercise and movement can express and diffuse angry feelings. Emotional energy is "con-verted" into physical energy rather than being "trapped" in psy-chological or physical symptoms. Fantasy allows people to express and then explore their powerful emotions in a safe way, even toward absent or deceased persons or toward the unseen God. The persons "work through" angry feelings, moving toward a new level of integration and wholeness. Experiential therapies are important when the anger is not even recognized, much less processed, as emotion. It is not unusual for anger to be experienced and expressed--and masked-- in intellectualized forms such as opinions and logical judgments. In such cases, working in a tactually receptive form of experien-tial therapy can release emotions otherwise effectively disguised as thoughts and verbalizations. For persons of faith, contemplative or meditational encounter with the anger has great potential, linking the psychological and spiritual aspects of healing. It is on this approach to anger man-agement that we focus here. For our purposes we will refer to it as inner work. Inner work is the interior correspondent of con, flict resolution. The essence of both is movement, as opposed to remaining stuck in resentment, bitterness, or cynicism. From the exterior perspective, the time given to inner work appears to be "doing nothing." In fact, this doing nothing is true only superficially. Inner work is an active and engaging process of Janua~y-Feb~'ualy 1997 Duckro, Kukor, and Meier ¯ Inner Work with Your Anger coming to terms with both the immediate stimulus for the anger and its deeper sources within. Synergistic with the more obvious activity of conflict resolution, engaging in inner work may provide the time needed for cooling off. Beyond such a practical benefit, this doing nothing is also the space in which one can reflect and make associations and thus prepare to move forward in relation-ships. It helps individuals to insure that they are not pinning their own issues onto someone else or substituting one-sided judgment for dialogue. Stages of Inner Work Inner work with anger involves several stages. The first appears so simple that it is often overlooked: the recognition that you are angry. This step requires regular self-examination, knowl-edge of the ways you may experience anger physically and psy-chologically, and alertness to how you customarily try to mask your anger. That regular self-examination is necessary only restates the obvious: if one does not look, one will not see. Knowing the variety of ways that people experience anger increases the odds that you will recognize it. Anger is, of course, an emotion that people experience directly, but it can also be uncovered in behaviors, thoughts, verbalizations, and bodily reac-tions. Individuals will have characteristic ways in which their anger is masked, expressed indirectly, or expressed passively. Becoming aware of these patterns of human response, you will more likely recognize your own anger under such guises as logi-cal argument, social withdrawal, passive resistance, depressed mood, and spiritualization. If you do not recognize your anger, it cannot be channeled or transformed. Anger that is not experienced or expressed directly is not easily unmasked. Gruff exteriors can hide from the indi-viduals themselves an anger that is obvious to everyone else; so can a smile, and so can solicitousness. For you to relate to such a "shy" anger within yourself may be compared to relating to some-one who is reluctant to come forward. The unmasking must not be done forcefully, or hurtfully. Imagineextending your hand to the anger within, with reassurance that there is no need to hide. In this invitation the anger is reassured that it is seen as a legiti-mate emotion with a reason for being which is important for you to understand. Review fi~r Religious The simple power of recognizing your anger (we might call it awareness) lies in the fact that merely paying it attention changes the anger at once. This phenomenon, the power of simple obser-vation to transform what it observes, is well recognized, not only in behavioral but even in physical science. It can be found in var-ious forms also in our spiritual tradition. From earlier teachers we know the concept that to hold the true name of anything or any-one is to have power over it. We learn that the desert fathers and mothers taught their spiritual children first to name their demons.St. Teresa of Avila taught us that, if anything is embraced in love, it already begins to be transformed. To be true to this way of proceeding, we must remind ourselves that the power does not lie in trying to manipulate or control the anger. In each case, as in the example of dealing with "shy" anger, there is an encounter with the anger. Encounter implies relationship, interaction, and the potential for mutual change: the anger also has something to say. The second stage of inner work with anger may be described as bringing the anger inside yourself. Unpacking that metaphor is not easy; not all of its meaning will be captured in any one exposition. It is already evident that the first and second stages are diametrically opposed to what is often a reflexive response to strong, unwanted anger--trying to get rid of it. We turn to a familiar fairy tale to shed more light on the power of bringing the anger inside. Recall the story of "The Three Little Pigs." Imagine being one of the little pigs barricaded in the last house, the one made of brick. Anger at first may seem like,the big bad wolf howling menacingly outside the door. You shake within, behind the barred door and locked windows. To be exposed to such a monster would be certain death. If matters continue in this way, there can be no happy end-ing-- at best there is stalemate. You know the pigs' solution, and in a way it is related to what we will suggest. But let us modify it in the interest of love and mutual growth. In a feat reserved for imagery, imagine yourself inviting that wolf in. Already, simply to enter the house, the big wolf must become small, at least small Inner work is an active and engaging process of coming to terms with both the immediate stimulus for the anger and its deeper sources within. JanuaJ3,-FebJvtal3, 1997 D_.~ckro~ Kukor~ and Meier * Inner Work with Your Anger enough to fit through the very same door which you use. From that time the wolf already becomes more your equal; the bad wolf becomes your guest. Your fear calms down to prudent caution. Anger, upon being brought inside, begins the dialogue, furthers mutual understanding, and allows you to listen to the message-- which apparently some part of you thought was important enough to arouse such a furor. The third stage consists of continuing your association with the anger. This is the dialogue, and the very heart of inner work with anger. Although associating with your anger must of neces-sity be a free-flowing process, with content unique to yourself, it is useful to consider the general material you might encounter. The material of association might be divided into old and current issues. Old issues are the recurrent themes that come up again and again in anyone's life. Much of the message of any intense "negative" emotion has to do with these recurring themes. A popular way of conceptualizing this idea has been called the 90/10 rule. It suggests that, in understanding the message of strong feeling, very little (10 percent) has to do with what seems to be obvious, the matter on which you are focused. The greater part (90 percent) arises from old issues that have been reawak-ened by the current circumstances. Imagine a detonator: a small and harmless charge sets off a much larger and destructive explo-sion, a cache of dynamite for example. Obviously, the great positive potential in associating with the anger is in learning to listen for the old issues which come up in the process. These old issues influence your perception as perva-sively as a pair of colored glasses affects your view of the world around. They color your interpretations and lead to a type of conditioned reality. You actually see what you expect to see. Unrecognized old issues lead to compulsive or addictive cycles of behavior. You perceive each new situation through lenses that transform it into an old familiar one. In turn, you bring up and apply old familiar responses to these new situations. Outcomes become more and more predictable. Imagine a traveling theater troupe picking up extra actors in each town. The players are dif-ferent, but the plots are always the same. With anger, bitterness, or resentment, there is a kind of cold comfort in having been right about the advent of unpleasant realities (while you conve-niently forget that often it is you who make them unpleasant). Such victories are P))rrhic, Finding the results familiar becomes Review for Religious for you (however unconsciously) more desirable than finding--or trying to make--the current reality pleasant. The rigid shape of such compulsive behavior is evident. To emphasize the importance of old issues is not to say that current issues are unimportant. On the contrary, as you recog-nize the anger, calm the anxiety, and listen for old issues, the cur-rent issues become more distinguishable and more manageable. The solutions that present themselves are likely to be effective for being rooted in your actual current situation instead of being autonomous repetitions of previous experiences. When you see current issues clearly, you under-stand them in terms of relationship rather than as someone else's problem affecting you. You see a problem as relational, a matter between or among the several concerned parties rather than in one or another person. Common sources of anger in the present include threats to self-esteem, feeling vulnerable, being cheated, receiv~ ing dishonest or indirect communication. When these problems are freed from the heavy bag-gage of the old, recurring themes, their substance remains but they become much lighter to carry. Consider, for example, a threat to self-esteem. A colleague is given attention for her successes. It seems to you that some of her ideas carrie from' conversations in which you played a part. There is resentment that she is in the spotlight and fear that no one will look to you for ideas in the future. The most power-ful factors in your emotional response to the situation lie in your previous experiences. If you have felt unappreciated, if you have been afraid to speak before others, if you have learned to feel that others do not take you seriously, if you have learned to deeply doubt your own value or your ability to succeed, you will feel burning anger at your dubiously accurate perception of a threat to your livelihood and reputation. If you are not good at pro-cessing and expressing anger, you will carry it as a tortuous con-flict within you, eating at body and mind, blocking the flow of spirit. On the other hand, if you can recognize the old issues for what they are, can avoid disparaging yourself for holding them, and then begin dealing with them directly, you will find within The great positive potential in associating with the anger is in learning to listen for the old issues which come up in the process. dO dTtttltta13,-Febrtttlty 1997 Duckro, Kukor, and Meier ¯ Inner Work with Your Anger yourself the energy for doing so. You will assess more clearly how serious the immediate threat is. From that assessment you can gauge the strength of the confrontation and discussion you must have with your colleague. If you are not.skilled at assertive expres-sion, you may determine a course of action to improve such skills. The problem is resolvable. The actual method of associating with your anger requires some elaboration. An essential component is to calm yourself down. The failure to calm down, especially to calm down your cognitive activity, heightens the risk of repeating a version of the old issues that tend to inflate your angry response. Physiological calming facilitates cognitive calming, and both allow the pro-duction of fresh associations. It is important to distinguish this type of calming from sup-pressing the anger or avoiding the current issues. The idea is not to become suddenly and inexplicably blissful. The aim is simply to be present to the anger--bringing it in, seeing it for what it is, and sorting out the old issues that are inflaming it. The most effective way to calm down is simply to become aware of your breathing and then to breathe gradually more slowly and deeply, and from the diaphragm. No particular rate or pro-portion of breathing is necessary, but it is often helpful to allow each exhalation to proceed slowly, like a slow leak from a tire. With each long exhalation your heart rate will be slower, and you will feel more and more relaxed. Let yourself move as necessary to remain physically comfortable, and do not be afraid to take a big ungainly breath if you get out of rhythm; just come back to the slow, diaphragmatic breathing as soon as possible thereafter. The overall goal is a sense of effortlessness in the breathing, letting the tension and the struggle to control melt away, but feeling all the sensations of the body with even greater awareness. Focus then on the parts of the body that seem most active. You will find in these places the physical correlates of your anger, As you interact in this way with your physical sensations, move to the emotion underlying them. Remaining relaxed, let yourself feel the anger more fully, either directly as emotion or in its phys-ical manifestations. Now that it is allowed to enter within your relaxed self, it will no longer be overpowering as you contemplate it. Call it by name with your inner voice, softly and repeatedly. As you do so, remain calmly aware and allow your mind to produce the next thought, feeling, image, or memory. Accept that next Review for Religious association without judgment, and then focus on it. Continue the process in just this way until you reach an association that seems new and striking a.nd that requires more time. Stay with it for a 16nger time, just holding it in mind. Other thoughts and feelings will weave themselves around it. If you find yourself excessively dis-tracted, try writing.down your thoughts, feelings, or sensations, associating further with each one as you write. In this process of free association, you are opening doors within you. Areas which have been blocked off by shame or will-fulness may become accessible. Some of these areas may be unpleasant, exposing feelings that are painful. These you must bring to spiritual direction, prayer, intimate friends, or psy-chotherapy for support in working through them to new life. In the course of such work, you move toward oneness within; this is the essence of the integrity you seek. You see yourself more hon-estly and clearly, and you see also what is being touched within you. What you must do becomes more clear. The last stage is taking the anger to relationships.° Although our focus in this essay has been on inner work, this inner work leads to interpersonal interaction. It is in the movement from intrapersonal exploration to the interpersonal resolution of anger that we avoid individualism and act for justice and peace in our personal worlds. These personal worlds, in any particular life or set of circumstances, may range from the grand scale of interna-tional diplomacy to the intimate relationship of two persons. This inner work, then, is not an alternative to external work, but is the basis from which to move toward others. In inner work we take time to explore thoroughly .the nature of our own anger, with-holding action until we have taken the beam from our own eye. Upon so doing, when we do act we are much less likely to return evil for evil. We are more likely to be able to collaborate with God in turning all things to the good, for ourselves and others. Relational Responses In discussing this stage in which we take the anger to rela-tionship, it is useful to highlight the basic choices with which we are faced. Our choices determine whether and how much our response will further a relationship. In coming to terms with any strong "negative" emotion, we are faced with such choices, lead-ing to greater or lesser connection with others. Januaty-Febtvlaty 1997 Duckro, Kukor, and Meier ¯ Inner Work with Your Anger The mutuality required for integration rests ultimately on dialogue, people expressing their own feelings and desires and listening to one another. Y2 At its worst, anger polarizes. The participants separate into factions whose interests seem mutually opposed. Anger so expe-rienced leads to stronger or longer-lasting feelings of hatred and resentment, and to behaviors aimed at the injury or destruction bf the other parties. We easily see such hot or cold wars on the broad and somewhat anonymous levels of local, national, and interna-tional politics; they occur just as often, however, on the smaller stages of our personal and professional lives. Somewhat more benign, but still only minimally relational, is what we might call parallel play. In this live-and-let-live stance, there is no intention to hurt the other parties, but neither is there much sense of the common or universal good, and there is no intimate interaction. Farther along the continuum, we can indicate a point of compromise. This term is unfortunately not held in high esteem. What some people see as a reasonable compromise, many others see as "giving in," collaborating with evil; in fact, they see the compromiser as "compromised"-- or, at best, wishy-washy. However, com-promise (literally: putting forth, together) can be actually a high-level response with the potential for build-ing a better relationship out of previous anger and conflict. The partners in conflict become sensitive to each other's agendas and to opportunities for their mutual benefit in a common good. The arrangement might be unsteady, but continued dialogue in this spirit leads to change, however slow it might seem to those who prefer war, personal or otherwise, as a means of change. On any given day, compromise may be all the relationality we can muster. Nevertheless, its regular practice can move us along toward the point of integration. It is in the honest integra-tion of apparent opposites that we most fully participate in ongo-ing creation. Both compromise and integration must be and remain, opposed to syncretism, in which each side is reduced to being a lesser entity than it was. Integration requires the full pres-ence of both parties, each maintaining--and even realizing more fully--its own identity, but also coming together to form, from an Review Jbr Religious appreciation of their essential unifies and commonalities of inter-est, a new whole never before experienced. To accomplish such a union requires freshness of experience: two persons seeing each other as if for the first time. Obviously, the ideal is challenging and not easily reached. It is best to consider it a process that incor-porates the letting-go of egoism, that sense of self which empha-sizes self-protection and personal rights at the expense of openness and intimacy. It is analogous to the process of inculturation in evangelization presented by Pope John Paul II and articulated eloquently in the documents of General Congregation 34 of the Society of Jesus. The mutuality required for integration rests ulti-mately on dialogue, people expressing their own feelings and desires and listening to one another. Words are a poor medium to express such matters, but they are often the best means we have. In love, they are enough. At this level of relationship, anger has been transformed. It is now not merely a difficult emotion to be managed, but an impetus to new creation. Of such dialogue--two or more persons allowing their center of focus to be between or among themselves rather than within any one of them--it may truly be said that the reign of God is there. Forgiveness and reconciliation are experienced in a fresh way. Old hurts are not forgotten, but now are embodied in the new whole. They are used to create a new way of understanding which, rather than suppressing them, coopts them for the good. Taking care of oneself is redefined, as self has been redefined, beyond the limits of the corporeal body and one's personal psy-chological history. The well-being of any other person comes grad-ually to be seen as vitally important to one's own self. The Contemplative Stance This coming together in integration is certainly not without much pain and difficulty. More often than not, it seems that the creation of a new whole from disparate positions is impossible. Nevertheless, it is this apparent impossibility that in fact calls us to a new something. There is a tradition, among shamans of so-called primitive religions, that iust such apparently impossible situations signal, often in a sacred dream, the opportunity to advance to a new level of spiritual understanding. In our Christian tradition we may understand this new creation as furthering cor-poral realization of the mystical body of Christ. .~mlttaly-Febrttal3, 1997 Duckro, Kukor, and Meier o" Inner Work with Your Anger A contemplative stance in life facilitates the recognition and acceptance of opportunities' for integration as we work through strong feelings of anger. Such a contemplative stance does not imply or require a cloistered vocation; it is simply a willingness to become ever more aware of what is happening within us and around us. It is furthered by the practice of certain disciplines such as frequent self-examination, centering prayer, and medita-tive relaxation. An image passed on by Suzanne Zuercher OSB expresses the nature of being contemplative very well. Imagine holding a bird in your cupped hands. Hold it too tightly and the bird will be crushed; too loosely and the bird flies away. So it is to be present to ourselves and others. In such contemplation God, divine Mystery, is found truly in all things. All the events of life, without exception, are material for the spiritual journey. There is no need to avoid or suppress dis-tractions or strong emotions; there is only the call to work with them honestly. An ideal, of course, is a distant marker. As with ship and lighthouse, we hope not so much to find ourselves there as to be guided by its light. In the end the stuff of our growth is not found in our perfection, but in our flaws. Stumbling blocks become stepping stones, fissures become our footholds. Honest reflecting on the disruptive emotions that rise unbidden in us, and on our failures in handling them for the good, keep us rooted humbly in the truth of our lives. This truth, however unlovely it may seem, is the sure and only foundation for realizing the power of God working in us, From there we move closer to joy and compassion, holy indiffer-ence and equanimity, and become people for others. We find love. Review for Religious DENISE M. CALLAGHAN On Letting Go l~aan still see you sitting across the room from me, the light of e lamp highlighting your silver hair, your blue eyes still filled with life. You talked of how they were "putting you out," try-ing to get you to come to the motherhouse infirmary. And the best reason they could give you? They were worried about you because you seemed to be forgetful. You were not buying that, you told me. You kept insisting that you knew what you were doing, that you were not forgetful or careless about little matters of safety. I tried to suggest that there could be episodes you were not aware of. If you had been aware, there would be no prob-lem- but not being aware that you were not aware could be seri-ous. I was not just playing with words. I tried to give you examples. I tried to ease your dread of being uprooted. I hope I helped just a little, anyway. I thought of you often after you left. I found myself praying that you would be able to let go. So much of life is a matter of let-ting go. None of us does it lightly or easily. We are clingers by nature, I think. Even as infants we fasten our fingers around lit-tle baubles and hold on with surprising strength. Paul talks about that in some of his Epistles. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child . . ." (1 Co 13:11). I think (can we really remember it all now?) that it was not always easy to put aside the things of the child and become the responsible adult. Somehow, however awk-wardly, we did it. Sometimes it is not all pain--if the letting go of the old, famil-iar some thing, or some place, or some one means the reaching out Denise M. Callaghan SSND writes to us from 6401 North Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21212. 1997 Callagban ¯ On Letting Go What a beautiful gift we offer one another when we truly listen! Y6 to some one new, or some place new, or some thing new that sat-isfies and delights us. But there are those letting go's that are just that: all pain. There is no exchange; there is an emptying out, a hollowing out, a hurt, a loneliness, a void. Some of us literally break under the strain of it. Some of us do not break, but we become bitter and withdrawn. Some of us bluff our way through or somehow just bury the ache. Some of us, quietly and with great wisdom, simply let go--and then go on. What a great grace! No matter who we are, no matter how well we do what we do, we will all need from time to time to be able to let go: ¯ the older for the younger, ¯ the familiar for the new and the different, ¯ the surety of the tried and the true for the promise of the untried and the possible, ¯ the mellowed for the freshly cured, ¯ the wisdom of experience for the vision and the dream of the not-yet-chanced. It cannot be done lightly, nor should it be. Wisdom cautions weighing and measuring, reflectively letting go, effectively hold-ing on. We need to pray that the Spirit of wis-dom will inform us. We need to be attentive listeners to the movement of the Spirit in our own hearts and to trust that message. We also need to pray to be good listeners one to another. No one of us is so informed that our own judgment is always best. So we listen and weigh our view again, in light of someone else's wisdom and insight, There is a courtesy we owe one another, and a respect, and an esteem. We listen to each other, not dismissing the line of rea-soning, but attentively pondering it. What a beautiful gift we offer one another when we truly lis-ten! It is rare that we really do this. It can be singularly painful to someone when we do not do it, as when one who over a span of years has been looked up to as wise and judicious, insightful and intuitive, now senses that her views are being suddenly and sum-marily dismissed by younger members of the community. The real pain here is the feeling she has, upon seeing her remarks mentally brushed aside or not even fairly listened to, that she her-self is being discarded. This kind of not listening can go the other way, too. Someone Review for Religious young and presumably inexperienced touches deftly and wisely the very core of the issue and is merely smiled at as though youth's inexperience cannot possibly know anything that is truly perti-nent and helpful. All of us, of course, are painfully aware that most wisdom seems to come only by hindsight. Wisely did St. Augustine pray often for the grace of a "listening heart." We do indeed have to try our best to speak truth as we perceive it. Beyond that, we need the grace to be able to let go and try to pick up the truth in the words of others. Sometimes the need to let go can concern only myself: ¯ the death of a loved'one when I cannot even imagine living my life apart from that person, ¯ the loss of a friend in some painful misunderstanding that somehow cannot seem to be remedied, ¯ the diminishment and inability brought on by serious illness or aging, ¯ the hurt when politics decides who gets the promotion or the credit or the acclaim. One other demand on us individually from time to time will be the letting go of memories. We need never let go of the very heartening memories that enrich us and that are among our most precious treasures. We thank God over and over for those times, those persons, those events that set our hearts to singing at their every recall. But we do need to let go, with God's help, when the memory is painful and the whole episode shouts of injustice or rash judgments or false accusations or just plain dislike. It is right to try to remedy the wrong, particularly if it is done to someone else. Jesus asks each of us to be a speaker of truth. But when every effort fails and every avenue of remedy is sealed off, we need sim-ply to let go and to go on. It is not easy. Yet holding on and nurs-ing the grudge can be utterly destructive. We give the victory to the demon of darkness and we hurt God's cause. Ther

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