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Issue 53.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1994. ; OUS Christian Heritages and ContemporaryLiving MARCH-APRIL 1994 ¯ VOLUME 53 ¯ NUMBER 2 ¯ Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ° Fax: 314-535-0601 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 ° P.O. Box 29260 ¯ Washington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1994 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. review for religious Editor David L. Fleming Associate Editors Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Canonical Counsel Editor Elizabeth McDonough OP Assistant Editors ¯ Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Advisory Board Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Se~in Sammon FMS Susanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living MARCH-APILIL 1994 ¯ VOLUME 53 ¯ NUMBER 2 contents 166 feature In the Midst of the Times: Religious Life and the Ever-Present Experience of the World John W. Padberg SJ presents three historical perspectives on religious life to aid in imagining and planning for the future. commitments 182 Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love 189 196 David Maria Knight suggests that religious are examples and models of that dramatic gesture which is a key element in launching anyone into passionate relationship with God. Quest for an Undivided Heart Theresa Mancuso ponders a heart focused on God in a life of consecrated chastity. Imaged Celibacy: A Reflection for Priests Brian C. Yates proposes a way of imaging that allows us to enter more freely into the reality of celibate living. challenges 200 Needed: An Ethic of Memories 208 214 222 Joanne Marie Greer suggests various ethical aspects that need to be considered when sharing memories, especially those which are a part of therapeutic counseling. ADiscipline of Self-Respect William Mockus describes the need for spiritual discipline as a function of self-respect. A Transformational Journey Annete Adams SND observes the cycle of the monarch butterfly to gain understanding about the spiritual-direction process. Community for Today and Tomorrow Janet Roesener CSJ sets forth the call and challenges for reli-gious to live a covenantal community life. 162 Review for Religious 231 238 254 263 directions Fruitfulness versus Achievement Peter G. Van Breemen SJ reflects on the distinction which we Christians need to make between achievement and the biblical notion of fruitfulness. Old Brothers and Young, Dreams and Visions Robert C. Berger FSC uses images of the Hebrew Scriptures to shed light on the action of God and the relevance of brother-hood. Just Look at the Lord Joel Giallanza CSC presents a simple and practical melding of our desire to pray and our praying from Teresa of Avila. Pray Always: John Cassian on Distractions Kenneth C. Russell applies the insights of John Cassian to help us live a life focused on God amidst the distractions of the modern world. reflections 273 Genesis Continued Mary Michael McCulla CDP poetically reflects a kind of Genesis account of woman. 278 Called to the Harvest Vera Gallagher RGS enters us into her experience of God's healing grace in people's troubled lives. 285 report U.S. Hispanic Catholics: Trends and ~7orks 1993 Kenneth G. Davis .OFMConv presents a panoramic of the year's events within the U:S. Hispanic Catholid community. departments ¯ ¯ 164 Prisms 303 Canonical Counsel: Norms for Renewal and Reflections on Its Progress 309 Book Reviews Marcb-/lpri11994 163 prisms ~edo not necessarily compliment our-selves when we compare ourselves to the first disciples of Jesus. For example, the two disciples on their way to Emmaus do not symbolize either gospel people (evange-lizers) or apostolic people (on a mission). In a way, of course, they are pilgrim people, journeying, although they are running away from Jerusalem, where their lives are meant to be centered. They know a lot about Jesus-- enough to k6ep talking about him at least between them-selves or privately with an amiable stranger. Yet what stands out in their telling of the Jesus story is their own disappointment. Disappointment may be the common cross that afflicts us followers of Jesus all the more because we like to describe ourselves as Alleluia people. These two disciples symbolize disappointment immediately after Jesus' pas-sion. During the active ministry of Jesus, a rich man with much fervor wanted to lead a holy life, but walked away from Jesus--disappointed with his kind of "Beatitude" challenge. Other disciples caused Jesus such pain by their leaving that he asked Peter and the others identified as the Twelve, "Will you leave me too?" People had left cha-grined by all this foolish talk about Jesus being the food and drink of their lives. They were unwilling to live with promise in such incarnate guise. Disappointment can certainly be a difficult cross to bear for us Christ-followers. For us present-day disciples of the one who has overcome death, it somehow seems "not right" to have to continue to face defeat, failure, and betrayal, especially from agents that speak or act in Christ's 164 Review for Religi?us name. How can we not be disappointed when the Vatican is the only agency among all the world's states which recognizes a repressive government in Haiti? How legitimate the disappoint-ment is when we face the problem of certain clerics or religious who betrayed a trust by their sexual abuse of a child! How disap-pointing for us as a community is the high percentage of failed marriages, often within our own families--marriages celebrated with all the beauty and solemn commitment of the wedding Mass! Are we ever disappointed with ourselves--after years of striving to be Little Flowers--at still feeling more like the scrubby weeds found along abandoned railroad tracks? Disappointments come in all sizes--some so big that they seem insurmountable, but others so small and daily that we suf-fer them as the necessary "colds and flu" of our spiritual life. Disappointments come at all stages of life development. Young and old and all the in-betweens face unrealized or shattered dreams, an if-only sense of things left undone, feelings of aban-donment by ones they love. Where does the event of Christ's resurrection touch most directly the practical living of our lives? I would suggest that we need to look towards our experience of disappointments. We test quickly the firmness of our faith in the resurrection by our lived response to disappointment. Among us followers who want to distance ourselves from this hierarchical church or to walk away from a disheartened priesthood or to dismiss a seemingly anachro-nistic religious life or to reject a cumbersome parish structure, we find an identity with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. The question we face is whether we will take the time from all our talk or activity to listen to and recognize the call to believe what is central to our faith: Jesus is risen, and our response to disap-pointment need never be a time without grace, an experience without new life. The Easter e{r~nt translates into our creedal "I believe in the resurrection of the dead." But the daily disap-pointments that make us die by inches are where we all need to let our resurrection faith have.its effect. As with the two disciples on that first Easter evening, it is in our hurrying back into a dis-appointing Jerusalem--with our faith in the risen Lord--that we truly act as evangelizers arid people on mission. David L. Fleming SJ March-April 1994 165 feature JOHN W. PADBERG In the Midst of the Times: Religious Life and the Ever-Present Experience of the World The reader of these reflections by an historian will have noted at once that their title is a variation on the immediately preceding theological essay by Elizabeth Johnson csj, "Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God." That reprise is quite deliberately meant to introduce the reader to the com-plementary. intent of these remarks, in accord with the overall structure of the Religious Life Futures Project. That comprehensive, study of "the future of religious orders in the United States" included six independent ele-ments or "research units" in its work. The first five were a national survey, leadership studies, studies of caring peo-ple and of visioning groups, and a series of individual interviews. The sixth unit was to be a two-part theologi-cal/ historical monograph, of which the first part was to provide a theological framework for interpreting the data gathered in the study and this second part was to be "an historical postscript" or a set of reflections on that theo-logical essay from an historical perspective. John W. Padberg SJ is director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis. This article will be part of a companion book to The Future of Religious Orders in the United States: Transformation and Commitment (Praeger Publishers, 1993) by David J. Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis. His address is Institute of Jesuit Sources; 3700 West Pine Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. 166 Review for Religious The theological essay concludes saying, "For religious life in the United States it is now Advent, the most honest season of all. ¯. What is needed is vigilant patience, profound prayer, and the ability to act boldly toward that future where new forms of evan-gelical life will develop" (Johnson, p. 24).1 This essay will take off from that judgment, which is both correct and important. Advent is a new beginning, but it comes after the conclusion of the year-long liturgical season during which we first await and long for the arrival of Jesus and then in turn remember and cel-ebrate the impossibly good news that he himself is: a hidden life of long duration, the preaching of the good news in person and in word, his seeming defeat in his terrifyingly real passion and death, and then the paschal triumph. We might be tempted to think it is all just a cycle, but then the year goes on beyond the life of Jesus, like an arrow into the future, to tell us that the spreading of that news and the imparting of that life take place in the down-to-earth reality of the post-Pentecostal church which, if we stop to realize it, still lives on as our present church. And then the year begins again with another Advent. The history of the church has recorded many such Advent and subsequent varying seasons. So has the history of religious life in the church. As the theological essay notes, "the evangeli-cal following of Jesus in the church, traditionally called 'religious life,' has been incarnated in a great diversity of forms [which] have consistently emerged from the insights of individuals and groups responding to the Spirit in the crucible of cultural change" (Johnson, p. 7). If it is true that "the only reason for religious life is the experience of God" (Johnson, p. 16), and that such experi-ence is a "postmodern" one "between the times," it is true in another sense that the only way such religious life is lived is "in the midst of the times" and in the context of "the ever-present experience of the world." Hence the complementary title of this essay and the tenor of its remarks. The theological essay suggests that the emerging "under-standing of [religious] life is primarily that of persons and com-munities called to prophetic ministry embedded in a contemplative relationship to God" (Johnson, p. 12). It maintains that beneath changes in structure are changes in attitude and that underlying such changes in attitude is a postmodern experience of God. "Postmodernity is conscious of the end of progress, the limits of reason, the sad isolation of the unconnected individual, and the March-April 1994 167 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times Spiritualities significantly influence the ways in which °religious congregations remain faithful to their original purposes and the ways in which they respond to human need. catastrophe that results when nature is disrespected," while wish-ing to keep from the modern era such goods as "the emphasis on human dignity and human rights and their expressions in liberty and equality. Postmodernity is awake to the egregious failures that the modern ethos has wrought. It wants to go Away-From-Here" (Johnson, p. 18). But meanwhile it is absolutely nec-essary to remember that the "Here" from which postmodernity seeks to escape still mightily influences our cur-rent life. And while the contexts of pre-sent and past are inevitably different, the reactions to past contexts might yield clues as to how we shall react to the pre-sent context. Religious life has of neces-sity existed in several such past contexts of a world changing around it. Often enough that life took on a particular character from the ways in which its members, men and women religious, looked both on change "in the midst of the times" and on the "ever-present experience of the world" around them (to quote again from the title of these present reflec-tions) and from the ways in which they judged both world and change or history. The body of this essay will deal especially with those two matters. It will, firs.t, present several such modern changes in reli-gious life in the midst of changing times, in other words, several examples from history. Secondly, it will reflect more generally on the ways in which religious life responds to change and to the experience of the world, because the nature of those responses characterizes in part the dominant spiritualities which inform either religious life in general or a particular form of that life. Such spiritualities, in turn, significantly influence the ways in which religious congregations remain faithful to their original purposes and the ways in which they respond to human need. As the executive summary of the study concludes, "fidelity to the spirit of the founder and responsiveness to critical and unmet human needs are basic to the original mission of religious com-munities" (Summary, p. 42).2 168 Review for Religious Three Times in the Midst of Change In its fifteen-hundred-year history in the Latin Church of the West, religious life has experienced upheaval more often than is realized. To look only at the modern world, such upheaval has happened in a major way three times in the last four hundred and fifty years: during the time of the Reformation (beginning in 1517), during the time of the French Revolution (beginning in 1789), and in the renewal which was asked for by the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. First, the Reformation. The whole notion of religious life was rejected by the Protestant reformers. This rejection had its foun-dation in their theology, but it gained popular support because religious life had lost much of its credibility. The scandalous rep-utation of many religious congregations and their members-- especially male religious--was all too often deserved. One does not have to read Chaucer (before the Reformation) or Rabelais (dur-ing it) for examples of why that reputation was well deserved. The church documents in those years, calling for reform, are vivid enough. Over and over those calls for reform were made, and over and over again they were ignored. The effects on religious life in the lands of reform were dev-astating. In England men and women religious had already been brutally driven out of their houses. In other countries monks and nuns left their orders in droves. Even in lands that stayed Catholic, the numbers of persons entering religious life dropped drasti-cally. So bad had the reputation of religious life become that more than once during the Catholic reform it was proposed to the Holy See that all but four orders of men, and most orders of women, be suppressed. And yet, in the midst of this seemingly impossible situation, during the Catholic reform new orders and congregations arose, grew in numbers, and flourished. Older orders gradually took themselves in hand, reformed, and prospered. Why? The second major upheaval took place at the time of the French Revolution. While the religious orders in general had been far more faithful to their rule and to the furtherance of the spiritual lives of their members than at the Reformation, still many, even the most active of them, had often lost touch with the changing world around them, a world influenced in many ways by the Enlightenment. The Revolution brought chaos to the church and to religious March-April 1994 169 Padberg * In the Midst of the Times life. Europe was the home of most of the members of the church. It was the place where the administrative structures, the finan-cial resources, the educational establishments, the charitable apos-tolates, the seminaries, the religious congregations had existed for more than fifteen hundred years, all in aid of the preaching of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments. Quite simply, the Revolution swept away most of these realities upon which the church depended and in which religious life had embodied itself. The properties from which many of the dioceses and orders drew their support were secularized by the new governments and sold to the highest bidder. (For example, Cluny, the acme of Romanesque architecture, the glory of. the Benedictine Order, the second largest church in the Christian world, was destroyed, in part by revolutionary ideology and frenzy but mostly by several good middle-class families who bought it after the state had con-fiscated it and then had it taken down, stone by stone, to be sold for their profit as building material, all in the name of the sanc-tity of private property.) Many of the religious orders were officially abolished in the lands reached by the Revolution; members of almost all of them were turned out of their houses and left to fend for themselves. In 1789, as the French Revolution began, there were some two thou-sand Benedictine establishments in Europe; by 1815 only about twenty were still functioning. In fact, of the many religious orders of men in existence before the French Revolution, only two, the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits, have ever again grown to be as large as they were before the Revolution or larger. And yet, the hundred and fifty years from the Revolution to the beginning of Vatican II were for religious congregations and orders the most unusual years in the history of the church. More new congregations were founded than in any comparable period in the history of the church. More new congregations of women were founded in that century and a half than in the whole previ-ous history of the church. The older orders grew again. More missionary congregations were founded than ever before, and more women and men went to the foreign missions. Why? To turn now to our own histories, and the third upheaval, the Second Vatican Council brought undreamt-of change to the church and to religious life. Many in the church had hoped for change, but no one could have imagined the depth and breadth of the change which did occur. This is not the place to rehearse 170 Revino for Religious those postconciliar events of the past twenty-five to thirty years. The theological essay has well noted many of the changes that took place. Perhaps, however, the quantity and especially the qual-ity of that change can be evoked by recalling ten words or phrases from Vatican II. With the two exceptions of the words "liturgy" and "revelation," none had been common in the church before the council. The other eight are: aggiornamento, collegiality, dia-logue, people of God, inculturation, religious liberty, joy and hope (gaudium et spes), and ecumenism. The realities behind those words raised expectations and produced changes which often have gone beyond either the worst fears of those who wanted no change or the best guesses of those who hoped for it. But whether we now react with dismay, delight, or doubt, many of the details, good, bad, or indifferent, of the world of the church and the world of religious life in the church of thirty to forty years ago have changed irretrievably or even vanished. In and through those changes since Vatican II religious life has been in tur-moil, as it was in the two other great Changes were not introduced from some source external to the church such as the Reformation or the Revolution, but came about internally, from the church itself'at Vatican II. modern upheavals. A very great difference, however, is that these changes were not introduced from some source external to the church such as the Reformation or the Revolution, but came about internally, from the church itself at Vatican II and from what has been truly in its proportions a paradigm shift in the church's self-understanding. The notion of "tranSformation" in the organiza-tional realm, as described in the Religious Life Futures Project, is utterly apt here for what has happened in the~ church. "It refers to qualitative, discontinuous shifts in members' shared under-standings of the organization, accompanied by changes in the organization's mission, strategy, and formal and informa| struc-tures" (Summary, pp. 9-10). In the midst of all this, religious orders and congregations were themselves directly asked by the church to review and revise their own way of life in the light of the council's teachings, in accord with their originating charism, and in adaptation to the March-April1994 1 ~1 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times needs of today. In general, they have taken this request seriously and generously, often at great personal and institutional cost. They, too, have been caught up in the process of transformation. And yet, in this case, the optimistic aftermath of the two ear-lier upheavals has not occurred in the wake of Vatican II. Why? A brief response to the why asked at all three junctures will come later in this essay. The Experience of the World and of History The second major part of this essay will include some reflec-tions on the particular types of spirituality that inform the inner life and the external activities of religious orders. Again, why? Because on such various types of spirituality which inform reli-gious life in general.and specific orders in particular will depend religious life's understanding and judgment of the times in which it lives and of the world which it experiences. "Spirituality" is here understood simply as the way an individual or a group habit-ually acts in learning about and loving and serving God in accord with God's self-revelation in and through God's deeds, especially the greatest of those deeds, Jesus Christ himself. The heuristic structure used here to describe a variety of spir-itualities3 distinguishes four possible ways in which they view the world and history in the midst of a particular time and space by the responses to this question: Does a spirituality.view or not view the world and history as positive means to express itself and to practice a growing relationship to God? "World" includes not only the obvious natural, material world but also human society and institutions. "History" includes especially process, develop-ment and change. In practice, of course, no one of the four resul-tant types of response exists in its absolutely pure state, and obviously in real life they all exist in. particular sociocultural con-texts. In addition, all four types are always intermingled. Perhaps most importantly, each of them is in itself a good. To distinguish them however is, in general, useful for clarity and, in particular, for helping us to see where our contemporary religious life stands and how we might be inclined to move to the future. The first response to world and to history says no to both of them. The second says no to the world and yes to history. The third says yes to the world and no to history, and the fourth says yes to both world and history. 172 Review for Religious Particular examples may clarify these categories. The first response, a spirituality that says no to the world and no to history, might be called an apophatic spirituality, one which comes to a knowledge of God by way of negation. This is the type of spiri-tuality often and somewhat misleadingly known as mystical, for example the kind expressed through such works as The Cloud of Unknowing, or through the works of John of the Cross, or more recently through some of the writings of Thomas Merton. It is important to note that such a spirituality does not necessarily see the world as evil or history and change as meaningless. Rather, such an apophatic spirituality emphasizes that God is beyond any concepts and that the most authentic expression about God is negation of any specific image from world or history. A person goes to the love and knowledge of God through unknowing or through darkness. In our present and our immediate future, in .what the theological essay describes as "the dialectic between divine absence and presence" (Johnson, p. 23) such a spirituality and the postmodern experience of God may increasingly find sup-port in each other. A second type of spirituality finds an expression of the authen-tic not in the world but in history, that is, in change and conver-sion. In saying no to the world but yes to history, it is a prophetic type of spirituality. For example, the Old Testament prophets offer both judgments and interpretations of history. Through his radical poverty, Francis of Assisi said no to the abuse of material wealth that his world of the early 13th century was involved in; in so doing he gave to the poor a sign of hope in a God faithful to his promises. Such a prophetic spirituality is often characterized by living one or more of the gospel values to an extreme. Such a spirituality surely informed the first examples of religious life among the desert fathers and mothers of the Egyptian Thebaid. Other examples of such a prophetic spirituality, in addition to Francis and his poverty, would be early Christians spurning the world and awaiting the call of martyrdom and contemporary Christians motivated by the gospel to practice civil disobedience. Today, as the theological essay puts it, when accepted "forms are breaking down, interpretive support systems, are collapsing, rift~ with the institutional church exacerbate the darkness, [and] many members are in distress" (Johnson, p. 24), we may have a situation in which religious congregations say no to a world that is passing and say yes to a hoped-for change to a more fully gospel-inspired March-April 1994 173 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times future "in the risk that God is faithful in judgment and grace" (Johnson, p. 14). ¯ Third, what might be called a "locational" or a "city of God" spirituality says yes to the world and no to history. But here the When we seek a stable world and way of living in it or when we focus on a particular community or place or on our own hearts, we localize ideal, unchanging circumstances, bringing a changeless "city of God" dimension to our spiritual lives. world may be a world. Th~ authentic is located in one special place, in a world, geographical, psychological, temporal, theological, to the exclusion of other place's, with the changeless-ness that the fulfillment of that king-dom implies; that place then becomes a reflection of the kingdom of God. For St. Benedict it was the monastery as the place in which to live out the Rule. For The Imitation of Christ it is the safety of our own hearts where "you will see the kingdom of God come into your soul." For some it is the familiar church of pre-Vatican II observances. This type of spirituality may be the most common type throughout Christian history. It has also been one of the characteristics of every other type of spirituality and a force for stability in the midst of chaos, It may be an especially inviting and understandable spiri-tuality for those who have just come through a revolution. VChen we seek a stable world and way of living in it or when we focus on a particular community or place or on our own hearts, we are highlighting a way, or place that has worked for us. As a conse-quence we localize ideal, unchanging circumstances, bringing a changeless "city of God" dimension to our spiritual lives. Finally, there is a spirituality which answers yes both to world and tb history. This can be called an apostolic spirituality. To avoid misunderstanding the term and its application to religious life, let it be~ clear that everyone, of course, even in the most con-templative order, is called in some way to apostolic endeavor, to a life committed to the spread of the kingdom of God. But not everyone is necessarily called to an apostolic spirituality, a'spiri-tuality which seeks God primarily through involvement in the world and the transformation of its history. Ideally, such an apos- 174 Review for Religious tolic spirituality sees the world and history as a locus for trans-formation and for self-transformation. Most of the orders and congregations founded since the Reformation, and especially since the beginning of the 19th century, have been inspired by the ideal of an apostolic spirituality. But because the church since the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution has often made quite hostile judgments of the world and of history or change, this is a difficult double stance to maintain. One can easily multiply examples of church mistrust and con-demnation of the world as a source of self-transformation. And even if we have often thought the world could be such a source of self-transformation provided it had a different history or pro-vided we managed to change it, we can easily multiply examples of church mistrust and condemnation of change as a source of self-transformation, especially if it were suggested that change should apply to religious orders and more especially to the church. The way in which to give positive answers to both world and his-tory can vary greatly. Several of the 16th- and 17th-century Catholic reform reli-gious orders of women are examples of an attempt to do so. Mary Ward had a vision of such a spirituality for her Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and attempted to put it into practice. But the apostolic group, of "that incomparable woman," as Pius XII called her in praise, was forced out of existence by an uncompre-hending Vatican in the 17th century, only to be papally approved in the 19th century. The Sisters of St. Joseph, of the same 17th century, quietly and obscurely flourished, in part because while liv-ing such an apostolic spirituality, they called no widespread atten-tion to it. The members of the Society of Jesus, for the end proposed to them by its founder, Ignatius Loyola, who could "find God in all things," were supposed to find the self-transformation of holiness through an involvement with the world in spreading the ldngdom of God. It was a world that Ignatius and his first companions knew by experience was changing and needed new ways of living and preaching the gospel. But it was very difficult to get across to many of the next gene?ations of Jesuits that both present world and inevitable change were to be taken seriously as part of a Jesuit apostolic spirituality. In its more recent his-tory, the Society of Jesus in its spirituality continues to seek for "the conversion of the individual," but it also wants to help "to transform the world into a fit habitation for justice and human- March-April 1994 175 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times ity." In so choosing a double yes, it recognized the need to take seriously both the world around it and history, process, develop-ment, and change. In the 19th century, when the Society of Jesus was univer-sally restored after the French Revolution, it could not and did not For all of the 19th century, religious, life inclined heavily not to an apostolic spirituality, with a yes both to world and to history, but rather to a locational or "city of God" spirituality, with a yes indeed to the world but with a no to history or change. both the real successes wish to deny the world itself as the locus of its endeavor. It could hardly do so and be authentically Jesuit. But that world was in the midst of great change, and the church and all religious orders, including the Jesuits, were acutely uncomfortable with change and reluctant to respond pos-itively to it. In the midst of a world in which they had never been more active and thought they had an apostolic spiri-tuality, the church and religious orders were not only uncomfortable with that world as they found it, but also often nos-talgic for a past world and in fear of a world changing yet more before their eyes. In such circumstances, for all of the 19th century, religious life inclined heav-ily not to an apostolic spirituality, with a yes both to world and to history, but rather to a locational or "city of God" spirituality, with a yes indeed to the world but with a no to history or change. This fundamental attitude may help to explain and the real failures of the 19th-century structures and activities and spirituality of religious life with which most orders'and congregations lived until Vatican II. More gen-erally it also may help to explain the puzzlement; the ambiguity, even the dismay with which religious life looked around after Vatican II and could not fathom where it stood or how it expressed its relationships with the world and with history. Which one of the four sets of responses to the world and to history best characterizes the spirituality of most religious life today? When the question is put that way, there is not and should not be a single, monolithic answer. Fidelity to the originating charism and "to the spirit of the founder and responsiveness to critical and unmet human needs" imply and indeed mandate both 176 Review for Religious such a diversity in religious congregations and such an overriding purpose that, as a result, each congregation, in order to be true to itself, will have a response particular to itself, a response which at the same time will always look to those needs. There is a yet deeper question. Why answer.at all? Why reli-gious life at all? What was quoted earlier in this essay still remains the fundamental answer: "The only reason for religious life is the experience of God." It is not only in religious life, of course, that a person experiences God, but that fundamental experience, how-ever dark or bright, however tumultuous or serene, however unin-terrupted or intermittent, has to anchor our experience of the world in the midst of time and our responses to the world and to history or change. The Response to Need Let us return now to the three points at which the question why was raised, the three times in the modern world at which religious life experienced major change in church and world and thus also in itself. Just as at the beginning of religious life in the Egyptian desert and through its earlier centuries, so also, in the post-Reformation church and the post-Revolution church, reli-gious life was a response to a need. For the monks and nuns of the desert, it was a need to live out the gospel and to follow the Lord more faithfully than they thought they could in a society in which the Constantinian church and empire had made peace and had come to rely on each other. In the counter-Reformation century, religious congregations, of direct apostolic service especially, arose in response to the Catholic revival that emphasized a renewed preaching of the gospel (hence congregations for urban retreats and country missions); works of charity (hence religious commu-nities that worked in orphanages and hospitals and prisons); the centrality of the sacraments (hence congregations devoted to urg-ing the reception of confession and Communion); the outward expansion of the gospel to newly discovered worlds (hence for-eign- mission congregations)~ and Christian education (hence con-gregations that took on schools and colleges and seminaries and the publishing of pious books and pamphlets and tracts of all kinds). "Active" religious congregations, both new ones and reformed and revitalized ones, arose in response to specific needs, religious and secular, of church and civic community. As for the March-/ltrri11994 177 Padberg * In the Midst of the Times more cloistered or so-called "contemplative" orders, while they did indeed grow, growth was much slower and reform of the inter-nal life of the community was more the norm. When one asks why the apostolic-service orders grew so dra- When one asks why the apostolic-service orders grew so dramatically in the 19th century, response-to-need again seems the fundamental answer. matically in the 19th century, response-to-need again seems the fundamental answer. In Europe a shattered institutional structure had to be rebuilt. Many of the old and formerly religious educational and social institutions had been confiscated by the state, which was often at least determinedly secularist and often actively anticlerical. The second great wave of European colonial expansion into Asia and Africa took place, with the consequent open-ing of mission fields. Meanwhile the church in the persons of its highest officials and of .most of its members was determinedly con-servative and often actively hostile to the polit-ical, social, c~altural, and intellectual currents of the age. Frequently, then, European Catholics thought that only institutions parallel to but indepen-dent of the state would "protect the faith." To respond to those needs as thus perceived, new religious congregations arose locally, regionally, and nationally. Their founders and their members had maps, the almost unchanged Tridentine rules and regulations, expressed and implied and still unquestioned, of church and reli-gious life. They had the experience of present but traditional unmet needs. They responded, generously and heroically, within the boundaries of that map. They had little imaginative ability to see unmet needs that were new. But neither did the church, for example, in the case of the socially unjust consequences of the Industrial Revolution. In the,United States of the 19th century, the circumstances were somewhat the same, somewhat different, The rules and reg-ulations of religious life were the same as in Europe, but the insti-tutions of Catholic life had to be built up from the beginning, and, as the century went on, the building had to take place right in the midst of an immigrant flood of poor, uneducated Catholics coming into a vastly different and somewhat hostile environment: Here, too, the need seemed to be for institutions to protect the faith of the immigrants and to introduce them into American 178 Revie'w for Religious society. To respond to those needs, here, too, new apostolic or "active" congregations arose and old ones established branches in the United States. They too had the same maps; they knew from experience that those maps had to be modified, simultane-ously felt guilty when they did so, and were often unable to offer to Rome a theoretical basis for the changes. While apt at devis-ing new strategies in traditional apostolates, those congregations, too, lacked the imaginative ability to see unmet needs that were new, for example, in the case of the black population and the unjust institutions of slavery and then of segregation. But at least through the 19th century and up to the end of World War II and the assimilation of the Catholic population into the economic and social mainstream of American society, the active religious congregations responded visibly and successfully to the immedi-ate educational, social, and economic needs of American Catholics. At the third major upheaval in religious life, the one follow-ing Vatican II, religious were called on not, of course, to tear up the old maps and discard them, but surely to revise them thor-oughly in the light of:the council's teaching. But such revision is not a short-term, easily~done task. Religious life in the United States is still at it and, from an historian's point of view, has not been at it very long yet, not even quite a full human generation. For Americans, used to quick results, this seems both intolerable and discouraging. And the analogy of map ~revision can only be partial, since not simply documents but also attitudes, insights, and patterns of practice enter into such a revision. As for experience, the theological essay describes well the "social, economic, and political forces at work in the culture of the United States [as] contributing to changes in religious life" (Johnson, p. 10). All of those forces, even those least direcdy con-nected with the church or religious life, have been part of the context of our experience of that life since Vatican II. They have modified both our reading of the maps of the past from which we came and our tentative responses to the present. The imagi-nation to see how to put those experiences to positive use in con-temporary religious life is still in short supply. What we need most is the imagination to conceive of what we want that future to be. ' March-April 1994 179 Padberg ¯ In the Midst of the Times Something is going to happen to religious life in the United States over the next ten years. What will it be? Future History as a Conclusion An historian is really not a prophet in any of the usual dic-tionary meanings of that word. He or she neither "utters divinely inspired revelations" nor is "gifted with more than ordinary spir-itual and moral insight" nor "foretells future events" nor necessarily is "an effective and lead-ing spokesperson for a cause, doctrine, or group." But near the conclusion of these reflec-tions, an historian might urge on the readers of this essay an exercise sometimes called "future history," an exercise within which one can think about the future with realism and imagination. Briefly, taken literally, the exercise asks present participants in an activity or institution to write here and now but as if from a particular point in the future at least part of the history of what "has" happened in order to get to that future. It thereby requires the participants to imagine what might have happened and to select those things which they think most likely to happen to bring about that imagined future. The purpose, quite frankly, is to provoke people to turn their minds to the future decade. Something is going to happen to religious life in the United States over the next ten years. What will it be? That exercise in future history begins by looking back from the year 2005. What will have happened to religious life in the United States? For example, imagine the community of which you are a part enjoying in the year 2005 a successful existence in the service of the gospel, the church, and the human community. What characteristics describe that success? How did the com-munity achieve that success? Most importantly, what five impor-tant decisions were made by the community in 1994 to 1999, the first five of those years, to make it the success it now is in 2005? On what five things in those five years did you and your com-munity and the ministry you work in and your coworkers come to a consensus which contributed to making your community, its inner life and its exterior works, the success that it is in 2005? The future is in the present in such decisions. This framework for imagining and planning can bring us quickly to concrete details and can gently force us to face up to what we think realistically possible. 180 Review for Religious Where does one start in developing.such a future history? Perhaps with three questions: First, how would I describe to myself what I think my religious congregation fundamentally is? Second, what are the absolutely essential characteristics of its reli-gious community life? Third, what are the absolutely essential characteristics that any work it undertakes should have, be that work contemplative prayer or civic networking or anything in between? With the best answers in hand that we can presently give to those questions, derived from our present experience of the world in the midst of the times in which we live as religious, we might go on to imagine what ideally we want to be in 2005 and to plan what practically we can do to achieve that goal. Neither an historian nor anyone else could have predicted what as a matter of fact did come after the original Advent. What did take place in the coming of Jesus was a deed that was faithful to God's original purpose and to the origins of our salvation in the fulfillment of God's promises. It was an experience of God between the times, surely thus a postmodern experience in that it broke out of all past and present categories, and also a deed that con-tinues to be active even in the midst of times in the presence of the Holy Spirit in a world still "charged with the grandeur of God." That post-Advent deed and its consequences are the foundation for the yet unimagined post-Pentecost future of religious life. Notes ' Page numbers refer to Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ, "Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God," as pub-lished in Review for Religious 53, no. 1 (January-February 1994): 6-28; hereafter Johnson. 2 Quotations from the Executive Summary of the study will refer to the text in Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6- 55; hereafter Summary. 3This structure is taken from an article by E. Edward Kinerk SJ, "Toward a Method for the Study of Spirituality," Review for Religious 40, no. 1 (January 1981): 3-19. March-April 1994 181 DAVID MARIA KNIGHT Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love commitments I spent several years in the confused and glorious hey-day after Vatican II writing and speaking on the goal and value of the re.ligious vows. Inspired by the theology of Karl Rahner, I presented them, in a nutshell, as the "real-symbolic expressing (and therefore experience) of response to the transcendent call of grace." In English this meant that each vow was a way of realizing, of "making real," both to ourselves and to others, the truth of the faith, the hope, the love we were giving to Jesus Christ and his gospel. Poverty is a "real-symbolic" expression of the fact that we have set our hopes for fulfillment and security not on material possessions, but on the riches of the kingdom. Real poverty, voluntarily embraced, is a way of saying we really hope in God's promises, we really place our trust in God. Celibacy is an expression "in the flesh" of our belief that anyone who accepts "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" can have with God, now, on this earth, a rela-tionship of love as real as marriage, as satisfying as mar-riage, and as developmental of us as loving persons as the most ideal marriage could be. One does not have to be a celibate to be in spousal relationship with Christ--it is implicit in our baptismal consecration as "brides in the David Maria Knight is a priest of the Memphis diocese. He is a well-known author and speaker. His address is Sacred Heart Church; 1324 Jefferson; Memphis, Tennessee 38104. 182 Revie.w for Religious Bride" who is the church--but the commitment to voluntary celibacy is one way to realize, to make real in flesh and blood and action, the truth of this relationship that our faith tells us about and to experience interiorly the passionate intensity of the love we are giving to God in Jesus Christ. The vow of obedience is a real way of expressing our faith in the active presence of Jesus in the church as true head of his Body on earth, and an expression of confidence that he is able to use us and will use us effectively for the work of the kingdom through the government of those who speak for him with authority in his Body. This was new. It was a departure from the traditional way of explaining the vows as means for overcoming attachment to pos-sessions, desire for sexual pleasure, and pride. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, although it takes a much more inspiring and positive approach to religious life elsewhere, still describes the "evangelical counsels" as "having as their goal the removal of any-thing which., could be an obstacle to the development of char-ity" (no. 1973). I believe that even if nothing within us were an obstacle to the "perfection of charity" the vows would still be inestimably desirable as passionate expressions, in flesh and blood, of the reality of ourfaith, our hope, our love for God in Jesu~s Christ. Their primary value is not in what they remove, but in what they give: the deep, personal awareness (and witness in the church) of relating to God in passionate faith, hope, and love. I find myself now, however, immersed in lay spirituality. As pastor of a parish--a position I requested precisely to "field test" a plan for.spiritual growth in parishes which I have been devel-oping for ten or fifteen years-- I am fc~cused on preaching and teaching the spirituality of the laity as they are defined in Vatican II (a definition which distinguishes the secular laity from lay reli-gious): those who "live in the world; that is, in each and all of the secular professions and occupations [and who] live in the ordi-nary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven." Vatican II not only makes clear, but assumes it is "evident to everyone," that "all the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the per-fection of charity." This, I believe, is the key to all the aftermath of Vatican II. Pastoral ministry has had to refocus.The goal of parish life is no longer to provide the laity with those services they need March-April 1994 183 Knight ¯ Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love to "save their souls." It is to lead the laity, all of them, closer to the "perfection of love." Parish ministry has changed from store keeping to intensive marketing, from a "maintenance spiritual-ity" to a spirituality of growth. Gone are the days when parishes Religious have the personal experience of committing themselves to total response to the gospel and have training and practice in living it which should make them the natural "coaches" for the laity. existed just to provide a preordained set of services, and the only stress on the priest was concern about providing them well. Now every parish is, or should be, a center fomenting desire for "the fullness of the Christian life" in all of its members and pro-viding the motivation, instruction, and sup-port necessary to keep every member growing toward the "perfection of charity." Now every pastor faces the challenge of dis-covering how to do this. And it is not easy; the paths a whole parish can follow to greener pastures are neither familiar nor well -worn. But the goal is clear: parishes exist to support that kind of living in their members which makes the life of every single one of them a "way of perfection"--a term we used to reserve for the vowed life of religious. The life of every Christian should be avis-ible, lived-out response to the first of all commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind." Jesus' words "If you would be perfect." are addressed to all. To every one of his followers he says, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect., strive first for the king-dom of God." How does religious life fit into all of this? There are some obvious answers we need not dwell on, because they should be evident to everyone: Religious have the personal experience of committing themselves to total response to the gospe.1 and have training and practice in living it which should make them the natural "coaches" for the laity as the whole church turns toward this goal. Also, the "fullness of the Christian life" includes involvement in ministry, which is explicit in our bap-tismal commitment. There is no question about the fact that reli-gious, the majority of whom are nonordained women, are the most experienced and effective "lay ministers," taken as a body, that the church has ever known. In the historical context of what 184 Review for Religious is and not only in the abstract context of what theoretically ought to be, it is still true to say, "If you want it done, get a nun!" But there is another way in which religious life fits into this picture of the "new church" striving en masse for perfection, and I think it is something which must be recognized if the conversion of every Christian way of life into a way of perfection is going to succeed. Religious are examples and models of that dramatic ges-ture which is a key element in launching anyone into passionate relationship with God. When Jesus said to the young man in Matthew's Gospel, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor. ," he was giving, not a command and not a "counsel," but an example. The young man came out of a legal-istic tradition. Jesus acknowledged this in the beginning by meet-ing him on his own ground and saying, "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." The young man was still thinking legalistically when he said, "Which ones?" so Jesus gave him a list. But when the boy said, "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?" and showed that there was something in him impelling him beyond a religion of law observance, Jesus recognized in him a kindred soul, someone who could learn what he came to teach. Then Jesus said (and now I am paraphrasing), "Well, if you want to live by my 'new way'--if you want to be perfect, to 'live life to the full'--here is something you can do to start with which will show that you understand what it is all about. Go, sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor. Then you can come and follow me." What Jesus was calling for was a dramatic gesture--something that would catapult the young man into another orbit of response to God. He may have been thinking explicitly of the gesture Elisha made when Elijah the prophet called him to be his successor: Elijah set out, and came upon Elisha, son of Shaphat, as he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen; he was following the twelfth. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, "Please, let me kiss my father and mother good-bye, and I will fol-low you." "Go back!" Elijah answered. "Have I done any-thing to you?" Elisha left him and, taking the yoke of oxen, slaughtered them; he used the plowing equipment for fuel to boil their flesh, and gave it to his people to eat. Then he left and followed Elijah as his attendant (1 K 19:19-21). March-April 1994 185 Knight * Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love Jesus asks all, takes all, is worth all. Why did not Elisha just have one of his workers lead the oxen back to the barn and put up the equipment while he left with Elijah? The answer is obvious: After what he had said to Elijah and Elijah to him, Elisha felt the need to make a dramatic gesture, just to show how willing he was to leave everything immediately and give himself to the service of God. This gesture was necessary, not only to win Elijah's confidence, but so that Elisha himself would know, without any shadow of doubt, that he was sweeping everything out of his heart in undivided dedication to what he was called to do. What Jesus said to the rich young man about "selling everything" was just one example of the kind of dramatic gesture which would show that the man understood, before he started to follow Jesus, what the terms of discipleship would be. In a nutshell, Jesus asks all, takes all, is worth all. What he offers is the "pearl of great price" and the "treasure hidden in a field" for which we must be willing to sell every other pearl, even everything we own. What he said to this young man was no dif-ferent from what he said in several places elsewhere. And essentially what Jesus tells the young man is the same thing he proclaims to all when he says, "whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (see the whole of this passage, Luke 14:2 5-3 3). Another translation miti-gates for modern ears the Hebrew starkness of "hate fath+r and mother" by making it "turn your back on father and mother." This puts the interior attitude into the form of a dramatic gesture again, but the meaning is the same: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And if you want to know you do not love father or mothei" more than me, make a dramatic gesture that proves it." Jesus could just as well have told the young man, "If you want to embrace my way, show it by leaving home; abandon your father and mother!" Or he could have used the example Matthew cites right before this and said, "Go make yourself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom; that will prove you are taking me seriously!" Jesus is a teacher; he.is trying to make a point. It is of no concern to him whether his followers are rich or poor, married or celi-bate, living with their parents or missioned a thousand miles away 186 Review for Religdous from them. They can be living the "perfection of charity" in any of these situations. What Jesus is saying Ks that anyone who authentically follows him must be, in fact, total and undivided in love for God, or at least be consciously committed to such total and undi-vided love. And it is characteristic of human beings that we do not really know what is in our hearts until we express what is in them externally. As 'Karl Rahner puts it, "We do not know that we really believe in the two birds in the bush until we let go of the one bird in the hand." We cannot know that our treasure is in heaven unless in some way we renounce the treasure we have stored up on earth. And if we want to know that we really believe in the invis-ible God in our heart, one effective though rad-ical way to discover it is to give up the visible man or woman in our arms. To launch ourselves into a "way of perfection," we need to make some dramatic, radical gesture which says to us and to others from the outset that we are for real. This is what religious know, what they have experienced, and what the centuries-old tradition of religious life has demonstrated: To launch ourselves into a "way of perfection," we need to make some dramatic, radical gesture which says to us and to others from the outset that we are for real. Jesus Christ is not real to us until we take him for real. And to give up things which are very, very real to us, such as money, marriage, and independence, is a very powerful, passionate way to take him for real. It is authen-tic, it is legitimate, and it works. In the "new" church, which is consciously oriented toward the "perfection of love" as the go.al of every Christian's way of life, religious have the role of witnessing to the need and to the efficacy of expressing dramatically one's commitment to this love. Religious need to understand their vows as the dramatic expres-sion of their own intention to live single-mindedly--in "purity of heart"--in total, passionate, undivided love for God. The vows are a dramatic gesture, but a real one, like that of the bride strip-ping herself for the bridegroom. They are a gesture given daily-- every day, all day--as the expression of enduring, faithfully passionate love. The purpose of the vows is to focus our hearts on the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ offers himself daily in the dramatic gesture of March-April 1994 187 Knight ¯ Vowed Witness in a Church Intent on Love the Eucharist--"This is my body, given up for you." He asks us to open ourselves physically to him, to receive him into our bodies in the dramatic gesture of Communion which pledges us to be one with him in heart and mind and soul, in the living of our lives and in the offering of our lives together with him, the Lamb of God, for the life of the world. Religious have understood for centuries the significance of this language of love. Whatever else they did or did not do, religious, whenever it was humanly pos-sible, participated in the eucharistic celebration daily. Those men and women who daily lived their lives in love, who daily gave expression through their vows to their passionate intention of loving the Lord their God with their whole heart, whole strength, whole minds, grasped without need of explanation the appropri-ateness of joining themselves to Jesus Christ in the passionate daily expression of his love in the Eucharist. Sometimes people ask, "Why is there no sacramental conse-cration to religious life as there is to marriage and priesthood?" Perhaps an answer is that religious ire not consecrated to a par-ticular function in the church the way priests and married people are; their function as religious is that of all the baptized: to bear witness to Jesus Christ and his gospel in the total, passionate, daily oblation of themselves. But religious, by their particular and different way of life~ do this in an explicitly recognizable way. Religious life, when it is authentically lived, is a visible, convinc-ing sign (as martyrdom is) that total dedication to Jesus Christ is possible, that the grace of undivided love is present and active in the church. Sacraments are "visible signs instituted by Jesus Christ to give grace." Perhaps we can say that religious life is "grace made visible in a total commitment to Jesus Christ that is a sign," In this case the sacramental expression of religious life--as of every Christian life which actually aims at the "perfection of love"--is the eucharistic celebration. Religious, who have .been called to make their lives a dramatic gesture of love, celebrate the meaning of their vocation when they join themselves to the dramatic expression Jesus gives to his passion, to his passionate love, every day in the Mass. 188 Review for Religious THERESA MANCUSO Quest for an Undivided Heart On a dark autumn night in Far Rockaway, the rough Atlantic lurches and rolls up the sand. The tide is coming in. Foamy waves crash along the shore, filling rocky crevices with a salty spray, dislodging, sometimes, the fearless gulls that perch precariously on the jetty's edge waiting for their prey, regardless of season, regardless of cold. High up on a boulder overlooking the surf, I perch myself, silent in the coming night, watchful as my three German Shepherd dogs dart back and forth into the water playing tag along the beach. A ripe harvest moon hovers above, the only source of light as the gathering darkness wraps the shore in stillness. Alone now except for the roaring sea,which seems alive in its noisy motion, we are sandwiched here between heaven and earth, time and eter-nity. It is a good place to think, a great place to pray. In this deserted cathedral of earth and sky and sea, I often find renewal for my soul. Solitude, silence, and surrender calm and soothe when I am lonely or afraid or when, perchance, I have momen-tarily lost sight of the vision that impels me. Many-splendored master that it is, the sea is both healer and challenger and the everlasting Face of the Deep is forever a reminder of human lone-liness, longing for God. Many years ago in the romanticism of adolescence, like many others, I was drawn and fascinated by the ideals of religious life and led to embark on a spiritual journey on which celibacy, con- Theresa Mancuso's article "Prayer, Memories, and God" was published in our July-August 1993 issue. She'lives at 448 Seventh Avenue; Brooklyn, New York 11215. March-April 1994 189 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart secrated chastity, was considered the pearl of great price. For the crown of Sponsa Christi, the young religious was inspired to sac-rifice the heart, forgetful of every, human longing--not knowing for sure all it entailed. To the precious star of chastity we set our sails so long ago and far away, willing to journey through the per-ilous waters of life, armed only with faith and emboldened by the little we knew or understood about reality or ourselves. Maturity was far off, then, as we took ,.the golden chalice of chastity with both our hands, intent on draining it to the dregs. Time folded round about us like the arms of the sea as decade by decade we were washed in the flood of human experience from which there is no return. There is a solitude and silence deep in the heart of conse-crated celibacy, a surrender that echoes in the still point of the soul. Despite the changes time inscribes on the idealism of youth, it is a refreshing experience to meet today's consecrated virgins, men and women of various ages for whom religious chastity has never lost its meaning. Of their lives and their experiences, let us take note. The consecrated virgin is rather little understood and even less appreciated in the modern world. Nevertheless, religious chastity is still the sign and seal of the kingdom of God among us. We try not to forget where we came from or where we are going. There is something indelibly written in the human heart by the vow of chastity. Regardless of all the changing cultural mores in the world about us, regardless, too, of our own restless hearts, the unspeakable beauty of this vow is bound up to the essential integrity it sustains, the quest and achievement of an undivided heart. When those of us who vowed our lives to consecrated chastity long ago and far away confront the reality of today, who we are and what we. have become, deep questions await us. Have we emerged through the years with undivided hearts? Have we found the pearl of great price? Has chastity given us power to love all God's chil-dren, to nurture the world in the spirit of faith, to sustain great and noble friendships without losing the balance of a virginal heart? Is celibacy still our pearl of great price, or has it become an embarrassment to us in a world of sexual adventure,., excess, and casual alliances? Doe's chastity still shine within us with the light of happiness that shone in the promises of youth, or is our love for 190 Review for Reli~ous the celibate ideal so damaged by time and tarnished by temptation that it is long forgotten, pushed to the back of our mind as if, indeed, we had never given ourselves to God? Have we grown tired of trying? Have we lost our precious pearl? The.monk (monachos) or nun (monache) stands in the breach of the universe, a marginal person, monos-- alone. In that desert there is solitude, silence, and surrender, but there is also tenderness, joy, freedom, and peace, the gifts of the Spirit and the happiness of an undivided heart. To be alone with God in the vastness of time is sometimes frightening. We came to religious life burning with desire for union with God. The spiritual goals of enlighten-ment and self-giving called us to surrender our entire existence, everything,, right down to the deepest longings in the human heart. How shall we know if the promise has been fulfilled within us? Eschewing too much analysis, it is not with-out merit to examine ourselves with regard to chastity, for what we paid the greatest price for shall indeed be our sweetest con-solation. The reality of celibacy takes us into solitude, not once and for all, but over and over again. Every time we face the silent stillness of an unencumbered life, we recognize the act of sur-render (for there is really no other alternative), an act that leads time and time again straight to the heart of God. Along this way the saints have gone, and we may follow. Monks and nuns are not alone in celebrating the joy of the undivided heart. Many others, to be sure, in the world about us, have sacrificed sexual expression for the love of God, the practice of intensified religious living, the service of others, and the deepening freedom of the human spirit. Why be celibate in a world exploding with sexuality? Why be chaste in a society glutted by sensual allurement? Why refrain from instant and immediate gratification? The promise of chastity remains today what it has always been, an uninterrupted, pro-foundly unifying discipline of the heart, a calming of emotion. Apatheia. Passionlessness. The emptying of explosive divisive attachment. Our long journey-to God is a quest for an undivided The reality of celibacy takes us into Solitude, not once and for all, but over and over again. March-April 1994 191 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart Chastity for the kingdom of God shines beside marital chastity as a vocation complete and magnificent in itself. heart, stripped of attachment to all that is not he. Kenosis. Emptying. But we do not strive to abandon passion in order to be phlegmatic zombies. We do not strive to over-come attachment so that we can be cold, mechanical people, devoid of love. Instead, chastity is the baptism of all our feelings, all our emotions, the freeing of all the power within us, zest for life, creative energy. Chastity is the focus of our vision on God,or it is nothing. Celibacy asks its practitioner to pour out its most intimate being, not into the void, but into the Total Ultimate that is God. Chastity calls for continual repentance, continual surrender. Metanoia. Change of heart. The surrender of sexual distraction and satisfaction removes from a human being those concerns about intimacy that. often eat up the larger portion of human consciousness and creative preconsciousness. The heart that is focused on God is empowered to love and embrace the entire world, not for self-satisfaction, but with gen-uine and authentic interest and care. Our consecrated celibacy should make us more loving, more caring, more gentle and tender, compassionate and kind. That is the reality of an undivided heart. To be all things to all for the love of God, unselfishly, with purity of heart--that is the joy of chastity, the empowerment of the virgin. When today the world scoffs at virginity, it acts and reacts without understanding or knowledge of what it truly is. Our quest for an undivided heart is not futile, not wasted. It is the journey of courage that takes us into the fullness of God's abiding presence, more and more revealed to us proportionately as we lay aside all that is not God. The whole point of celibacy is union with God, nothing more and nothing less. Chastity is free-dom from the pursuit of pleasure and popularity, freedom from encrustations of endless self-adornment for the sake of vanity or "sex appeal," freedom from uncontrolled emotion and undisci-plined desire--indeed, freedom from self in areas where self may be the worst enemy. We do not posit'the beauty of consecrated chastity over against marital chastity, but beside it, its sister state. Chastity for the kingdom of God shines beside marital chastity as a vocation 192 Review.for Religious complete and magnificent in itself. Monos, alone. The splendor of the celibate heart is not servile frigidity nor some holier-than-thou imagined adornment of the soul. The consecrated virgin is not opposed to the married; the virgin lives as ultimate marriage of the spirit. The splendor of celibacy is the quickening of abil-ity to embrace the world unselfishly and bring God's love back into it. By surrendering one's right to nurture one's own offspring, one is free to take the children of humanity into one's deepest embrace and to love and serve them forever. Celibacy is a font of energy in the undivided heart, a direEting of the life force to the Life Giver. We need never be ashamed for having made this choice--indeed, for having been chosen for it. Most religious have tasted the price of celibacy. Many have traveled far from the safety of religious communities in which the vows were made, those havens where temptation was kept very much at bay. Unexpqsed and untested, we thought ourselves pure. Later, mind and heart were tested by the real world. The promise of celibacy is far deeper than all the dreams 'and aspira-tions of our youth. Life has a way of sweeping away illusion. One by one we find ourselves devoid of excuses, alone in the wilder-ness wfiere we must do battle against the pull of desire. But God teaches us quietly with relentless compassion until we understand the vigorous truth of what it is all about. And then the years are gone. Single-mindedness in the undivided heart bears fruit in quiet happiness. One finds, after all, that God is always with us, his love underpinning everything we are, everything we do. All earthly delights pale beside the effulgence of God reveal-ing himself to those who seek him with a pure heart. Immersed in him completely, we are given a new ability to focus on the things that really matter. Nor should we think of celibacy as just a physical state. It is more a state of mind, a field of completion for the soul, a refin-ing instrument that fine-tunes emotion. Chastity with diligent constancy chips and chisels all the corners of the human heart. It makes us who we are, but slowly, slow. We are forever becom-ing. As the sea chips and chisels the shore, so does celibacy remove the dross of selfishness as it refines the heart. Not without pain. Not without suffering. But, most importantly, not without joy. I watch a gull swoop down into the waves, taking his catch from the sea. The small fish is caught, devoured, by the power-ful beak of the gull, for this is nature's way. Then the lonely sea March-April.1994 193 Mancuso ¯ Quest for an Undivided Heart Our quest for an undivided heart seems to take a whole lifetime. gull flies up out of the wave and is lost to sight in the evening sky. It reminds me that I, too, fly alone over the'ocean of life, single in the world, without a mate, for one great purpose, God. The gull and I are one for this single fleeting moment as the night steals on and the only sound in the darkness is the song of the sea. Two beings in the universe, separate and complete, starkly alone. Somehow in thavfleeting moment I come to understand why I choose .celibacy. All the props have disappeared since the day on which I promised chastity to God. It is very different now, the life I am leading, Those who inspired me have vanished from the earth in the sweet embrace of death or are far away from me. Our destinies, once so closely entwined, grew separate through the years. The whole world has changed, but the heart remains the same. Over time we face our dragons, such as they are. There is no exemption. Life batters the foundations on which religious vows are built. Suffering and sin touch everyone. The best we can do is to keep on choosing God first, for he has chosen us. To keep on choosing God is to celebrate the vow of celibacy for the love of God and for no other reason. To keep one's eye on the goal is to remain in an undivided heart. All along the way we just keep fac-ing ourselves, as we are, for better or for worse. Staggering truths reveal themselves, but they do not come home to us all at once. As the years unfold, bit by bit we uncover the truths of who and what we really are. Life insists that we go beyond the images, far beyond our misconceptions and imaginings. Sometimes it is a painful, searing journey. Our quest for an undivided heart seems to take a whole lifetime. It was not the work of the novitiate nor completed in the ceremony of vow day. The richness of the vowed life dawns slowly a long way down the road from where we started. As the moon rises higher in the sky over Rockaway, the dark-ness fills with a luminous aura. The sea quiets down as the tide rests inland. The dogs hunker down beside me, digging deep cav-erns in the sand to lie down in. Questions of celibacy have long challenged me, not just tonight, but many nights for more than a quarter of a century. Now, in this luminous nightfall on the shore, all inne~ rhythms find themselves attuned to the sand and sea and sky. One with the universe for a single moment, the burdens of a 194 Revie~ for Religious lifetime fall silently into the waves. Configured in stark simplic-ity, it suddenly makes sense, lt's all about an undivided heart. I did not notice the stars coming out slowly in the black dome of sky as the evening wore on. They twinkle now light years away, far above me. There they are just as they have always been. But I didn't notice them, not until now. Only now do I see them clearly, a starry quilt across the heavens wrapping land and sea in the blanket of their glory. The whole point and purpose of religious chastity seems suddenly at last so clear, so complete. The quest for an undivided heart. Through it we are called to create an interior environment free from the remnants of undisciplined love, unrea-sonable attachment, self-centered emotionalism, and the display of ego. Celibacy re~noves distraction from the undivided heart. One consecrated to celibacy still stands in this troubled world as a sign of the kingdom of God as the stars stand from age to age, forever. Gathering my things, I descend the rocks and leave the beach, dogs at my side. The stars are twinkling high above and the sea's roar is silent. Everything is still as the fullness of nighttime falls. The burden of loneliness is gone; commotions of the mind are silent. With renewed conviction I head for home, focused, for a while at least, on the pearl of great price that once was mine and calls me still to the undivided heart that finds its all in God. Vocation Poets and prophets Are born to bleed And orily lesser ones weep. To have heard and held in hollow heart a word Seared lips al~ne may speak Is glory enough--is glory indeed! Janet Benish March-April 1994 195 BRIAN C. YATES Imaged Celibacy: A Reflection for Priests This reflection on celibacy considers the imagination in e life of a celibate. To put the theme bluntly: Do I see and imagine myself as a celibate? Do I see my celibate self as a lov-ing and lovable man? The apostolic exhortation "I Will Give You Shepherds" (Pastores dabo vobis, 7 April 1992) says, "The gift of self, which is the source and synthesis of pastoral charity, is directed to the church" (§23). My query is this: Is the self that comes to mind in these questions and in this statement my real and true self, or is it in practice my false self?. My false self--using Thomas Merton's distinction--is what may be described as my mask, my shadow, my empirical self, the self I develop in my own likeness rather than in the likeness of God. I develop the false self to cope with the trials of life; it is the self I project and display to the outer world of people and experience. The true self, on the other hand, is that deeper new reality which lies hidden within me as the image of God, the word of God that I am, the new man described by St. Paul. To paraphrase Merton, the real I is simply one's self and nothing more, one's self as it is in the eyes of God. First, then, do I as a celibate try to work at making my false self celibate? Do I attempt to accomplish the task of making who I think I ought to be celibate? Such an approach is all of my own doing--granted all the goodwill in the world--and is prone to utter frustration. Why? Because celibacy needs to be linked not to Brian C. Yates, a diocesan priest, writes for us from Galilee House; 60B Blair Street; Bondi, N.S.W. 2026; Australia. 196 Review for Religious the false, unreal, pretended self, but rather to the real self. I am firmly of the opinion that many of us celibates have tried to make our false selves celibate. It is, however, only when we get in touch with our real selves by honest and true self-knowledge and awareness that we accept ourselves as created by God in his own image and likeness. We then accept the word of God that each of us is. Only when we discover our true self and discover the real-ity of God dwelling within us can we admit that our identity rests on our being loved by God who dwells within. By throwing off the hold the false self has on me, I become open to the gifting of the Holy Spirit. The "Come, Holy Spirit" invocation is a cry from the true self, not the false self. Second, do I image myself as a celibate loving and lovable man? I propose that celibacy thrives as a reality in our lives only when our graced active imag-ination never lets us forget that we possess it as a gift of the Spirit of God. In other words, if celibacy is not imaged as a desired gift, it will not continue to be there as a gift or in any other way. The invitation to image is suggested by Jesus' question "What are you looking for?" (Jn 1:38). Men who have been ordained to the priesthood have been so gifted because, over the course of years, they have imaged priesthood and celibacy as the gifts they are. The art of imaging is not fantasy or mental picture making, nor is it a means of escaping reality and life's demands. Rather, it is the way which Providence uses to get us into the real. It is the energy and power of one's mental faculty that operates through the medium of images, symbols, myths, stories, and parables--for example, the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price, a dragnet, a hidden treasure, a festive wedding banquet. Imaging is a way of knowing--it is beyond mere reason and rational thought. When we image, we intuit and we use our feelings, emotions, and memories, without excluding logic and planning. In fact, these latter ingredients prevent us from sinking into mere reverie or daydreaming. The process of imaging has been aptly caught by the saying that "we tend to create what we love." Do I love celibacy? That is the question. The desire, under grace, to image is encouraged by St. Bernard's remark "The desire is the pledge of the fulfillment of the Imaging is a way of knowing-- it is beyond mere reason and rational thought. March-April 1994 197 Yates * Imaged Celibacy The image of celibacy has a life of its own, a life to be subsequently realized in practice. desire" and by Ricoeur's observation that to change behavior we .need to change the image. I propose that celibates will find their lives greatly enhanced by the practice of imaging celibacy. If one does not image celibacy as a gift to the true self, much energy will be exercised on the task of avoiding temptation, of coping, of excessive concern about the quality of interpersonal relationships, of asking "How far can I go?" or expressing one's sexuality in inappropriate ways, of offering up dif-ficulties, of living encumbered by suppression and repression, of merely tolerating the law of celibacy from outside as a technical requirement of ministry. When a man images celibacy as a gift to himself and practices a celibate lifestyle as a loving and lov-able person, he authors his own life as a free disci-ple of the Lord. Freedom and life are the results of such imaging and such practice. The image of celibacy has a life of its own, a life to be subse-quently realized in practice. As long as it stays healthy by being consciously lived, this life of celibacy prevents a takeover by outside factors. On our spiritual journey the passionate energy of imaging is aptly expressed in Luke's preamble to the Last Supper. Jesus' image is proclaimed: "I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." This image, this desire, was acted upon by Peter and John: "Go and prepare our Passover for us" (Lk 22:7-16). The imaged desire of Jesus became a reality--it hap-pened. The Beatitude "Blest are the single-hearted for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8) further captures the imaged energy of the celi-bate. This blessed "sight of God" is shown again in the imaged and vigorously implemented desir~ of Zacchaeus to see Jesus. His running out in front and climbing the sycamore tree secured the presence of Jesus in his house that very day (Lk 19:1-10). Annie Dillard, in her story of the Weasel in Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes of "people taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obe-dience by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling., to grasp your one necessity and not let it go." If their vision has become blurred, celibates need to regain appropriate ways of imaging their choice of celibacy--they must stalk their calling. They must do this in conjunction with their own self-knowledge and aware-ness, their conscience and their value system, They must not shun 198 Review Jbr Religious the effort involved in such imaging and such living. They must keep looking in the right direction, in season and out of season: "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37). The Sacred Temple You will find your way by the grace of God over the broad dirt road through the merchant mob: the press of children selling holy cards, the pretty, gypsy girls and brown, drunken bards yelling: "No. no plaster., alabastert." as the ocean air fills with rum and laughter rum and laughter Scattering seagulls like failed prayer's fruit in a once quiet place the mob is upon you pushing, tugging, pulling at your jacket with old gum and bloody, sad gods of plastic their playfully wild dogs between your feet looking, whining, growling for something to eat something to eat But, then your senses blur. You are taken into, away, beyond the soul awakens where the bright sweetness of eternal Light consumes that crazy mob of our false delights where the Word of God draws with gentle bands and you know and are known where the birds fly home to the holy land. John Boyd OSB March-April 1994 199 JOANNE MARIE GREER Needed: An Ethic of Memories challenges In my current careei- I teach and supervise religious who are in training as pastoral counselors in M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Personal memories, memories of inter-personal exchhnges and relationships, are very live issues for these trainees, both in their emerging clinical compe-tence and in their own processing of their own pasts. This article is a result of my reflections deriving from my work with the students. Those reflections were crystallized by the following incident. Quite by accident I met Maria, someone who turned out to be a link to my past of almost forty years ago. I found that Maria was a close current friend of Anna, some-one I had known rather well in high school and also been with in the novitiate. I had moved to another part of the country and had not seen Anna since. Further exchanges ensued: "Well, do you know X?" "Did you know Y? . Did you also live under Mother Z, and what did you think of her?" "Did you visit such and such a place?" and so forth. Then my new acquaintance said, "Oh, by the way, my friend Anna is sometimes called [a slightly salacious nickname] within her community. No one will tell me the story behind it." With a moment's reflection on my part, I was able to supply the embar-rassing information, which came from Anna's life around age sixteen, When she and I were schoolmates. Joanne Marie Greer PhD is director of research in the Pastoral Counseling Department of Loyola College; 7135 Minstrel Way, Suite 101; Columbia, Maryland 21045 200 Review for Religious Later I was reporting this incident to Susan, a current-day friend. I had felt troubled by the exchange with Maria about Anna's nickname, but could not put my finger on the reason. I was certainly not jealous of Anna's friendship with Maria. Anna had not been a close friend of mine, and I had not thought of her in years. My friend Susan reproached me for telling the mean-ing of the nickname, saying: "What you remember of Anna does not belong to you. It belongs to you and Anna together. If Anna had wanted her current-day friend to know this about the past, she would have told her herself. Besides, when Maria tells Anna what she knows, Anna will be troubled. She will wonder what else you may tell Maria about the past." I conceded that Susan was right, and felt 'there was some deep wisdom in her comment. I continued thinking about it off and on for several days. I finally concluded that this apparition from my past had caused me to momentarily regress in my judgment in a way which I still regret. But it may be useful to describe how I reached this conclusion. In this way my medium--this article--becomes part of my message, that memory is a volatile and indeterminate thing. As a psychoanalyst I have learned the professional discipline of analyzing my own thoughts carefully whenever I feel troubled, lest my lurking disturbance throw me off balance in my clinical work. Initially I set out to trace my own free associations to the exchange about Anna's nickname and to Susan's subsequent reproach. The first thing I recalled was working in the novitiate of my order, and the secrets I had painfully held within. I then moved on to the memory of seeing the pain of the novice mistress when it got back to her what gossipy and critical-things the departed trainees had said about her to their relatives and friends. I had found the novice mistress a very difficult work supervisor, and I understood the diffuse anger of the disappointed, disaffiliated postulants and novices. I resolved, however, that if I ever left the order (as I afterwards did) I would keep its dirty laundry to myself. I simply did not want to cause such pain, and I cut off all mem-ories to guard against remembering and talking. I went so far in this that none of my in-laws even knew that I had spent ten years in the convent. Memory .is a volatile and indeterminate thing. March-April 1994 201 Greer ¯ Needed: An Ethic of Memories Another association that came to mind was to a recurring cur-rent- day announcement in my parish bulletin, inviting people to join a counseling group entitled "Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families." The invitation listed several questions. If one answered yes to these questions, the implication was that one should join this discussion group. I recalled that I always read the list of ques-tions with rising irritation and impatience. I am well aware that the answers to these questions can indicate a multitude of subtle or gross psychological difficulties. I also know that these diffi-culties are unlikely to be helped by ten sessions of parent bashing, however ghastly one's parents may have been. In fact, my experi-ence has been that such discussions often give persons with seri-ous characterological difficulties a new excuse to indulge in self-pity, instead of helping them to effect in themselves hard psy-chological changes. My thoughts then went to some students in my pastoral-coun-seling classes who seemed unable to learn anything abstract because their own memories were so enlivened by the class mate-rial. I had to work against the tendency of these few to turn the class into group therapy. This led my thoughts to my admiration for a student who came to me and said simply, "I don't want to go into details, but I'm dropping your class because it's getting me too upset. I'll take it again in two years, after I've done some work in therapy." I also connected my associations to my original contact with psychoanalysis. At that time I was aware of being quite depressed at the impending death of my mother-in-law and the illness of my young son. I went to my HMO (health maintenance organi-zation) for the twenty sessions of psychotherapy included in my employer's contract. After ten sessions the supervising psychia-trist threw up his hands and said, "Go have psychoanalysis. You spend half your energy avoiding mourning over the loss of your friends in the convent, so you cannot stand up under the pres-sure of the present. We cannot do anything for you in ten more sessions." I took his advice, found it helpful, and became so inter-ested in analysis that I ultimately became an analyst myself. So I had become a "specialist in memories," as a roundabout result of my original avoidance of memories! How did this con-nect to my indiscretion in sharing my memory of the meaning of Anna's nickname and to my subsequent discomfort? I spend part of each day listening to memories that are eatin, g 202 Review for Religious at my clients, my analysands. For their own personal benefit, I almost always discourage them from sharing these memories out-side the sessions. They would dissipate the emotional power gen-erated by private reflection and structured therapeutic work on their memories if they broadcasted them to friends and relatives. That emotional power would then be less available for real per-sonal change. Anger, grief, and disappointment are powerful emotions. In the psyche they are similar to oil or coal that can be converted to fuel, used as energy for action and redirection. Endless talk dissipates rather than concentrates this energy. But I have a second reason, an important ethical one, for discouraging people from sharing these old memories that they discover as we work in therapy sessions. Memory is a tricky thing. What we empha-size, and what we forget, depends not only on what happened, but on our intellectual capacities at the time of the event and on our ability to endure the truth. What we remember is seldom the whole story. Here is the advantage to keeping these memories within the therapy sessions. If kept within the treatment relationship, this potential discrepancy between past facts and current memories is simply more grist for the therapeutic mill. If we discover together a suppression of some aspect of the past, within the ses-sion we can very usefully explore why that bit of information was so carefully forgotten and what change has made it possible to remember now. The layering of memories is such a common-place that psychoanalysis has a special name, "screen memory," for a memory that hides behind it yet another, more traiamatic mem-ory. In a full-length analysis of a person with a traumatic but largely forgotten childhood, I have seen the "screen" layers turn out to be more than two deep. This constitutes an excellent i'ea-son for those in treatment to hold their tongues while continuing to trace the red thread through the tangled skein of their mem-ories. There is, however, yet another ethical aspect to the question of sharing a memory from treatment. Suppose the person in treat-ment decides to give a sibling a play-by-play description of the current status of the therapeutic work. Several major problems ensue, which seem to me to have important ethical dimensions. First of all, the listener may have shared some of the experiences What we remember is seldom the whole story. March-April 1994 ]03 Greet ¯ Needed: An Ethic of Memories in the recovered memories. But the listener may not have a ther-apist or other suitable confidant with whom to work through the feelings stirred up by these confidences. Even if the listener is a current-day friend who did not share the speaker's experiences, the friend .may have had similar experiences which are suddenly brought into working memory. In either case, this recollection occurs, not when the listener chooses and feels ready, but when the speaker thoughtlessly imposes this unexpected psychological task. This is one good reason that therapy per se is a profession and not a friendship task. Professional therapists have been trained to attend to their own intrapsychic reactions to the client's dis-course. The client realistically depends upon this aspect of the therapeutic contract in order to be free of the burden of caring for the therapist's psyche during the sessions. Moreover, the client need feel no guilt at all about burdening the therapist, because the client is paying the therapist to perform this intrapsychic task. It is the therapist's job to have recourse to self-analysis, peer supervision, or a resumption of personal treat-ment if a client's discourse about traumatic memories then arouses troubling feelings and memories in the therapist. To expect this same degree of accommodation from a friend would be exploita-five. Such concomitant self-care cannot be appropriately forced on a nonprofessional in order to make one's friend more "useful" in working through one's past. To force this task upon a friend would be appropriate reason to feel quite guilty. A very serious problem may follow the sharing of one's mem-ories outside of therapy as if they were firm fact. The uncon-scious operates by a set of "primary process" laws. The psychoanalytic term "secondary process" refers to our rational, adult way of thought processing and is roughly equivalent to "rea-soning." In contrast, primary process is the more primitive and imaginative way of thinking that takes place in dreams, creative productions, and memories. In primary process the part may be substituted for the whole, or vice versa; one person may be sub-sfituted for another, or one event for another, because of some yet unnoted logical connection between them. In dream analysis these connections can often be recovered by asking the analysand to systematically free-associate to each element (noun, verb, or adjective) of the dream narrative until the stream of associations runs dry. But in memories per se, often the missing or substituted elements become clear only much later, when the remembering 204 Review for Religious person overcomes resistance to a more accurate memory. The dangers of sharing the "interim drafts" of the final memory should be obvious. Terrible hurts may be imposed on the innocent. But suppose the memory is accurate and stands fast over time in the face of careful analysis? There still seems an ethical prob-lem in broadcasting such a memory. Memory by definition refers to the past. The persons in the memories have current-day rela-tionships with other innocent people. For example, suppose a sib-ling who molested you now has a wife and children. What good would be served by venting one's rage within the family and destroying the peace of the newer family members? One would be obtaining revenge, or at least emotional ventilation, at the expense of the innocent. Certainly the person who recalls experiences of victimization and exploitation has every right to establish a psychological dis-tance from the past abuser. But this can be done without sharing one's thoughts. Further, over the course of a long mental-health treatment or course of counseling, the analysand usually arrives at a position of compassion towards those who caused them suffer-ing in childhood. Even in cases of former physical or sexual abuse, the termination of treatment finds the survivors in a position of forgiveness combined with appropriate self-protection, rather than a position of vengeful attack. This psychological disposition is serendipitously not only more Christian, but also more life enhancing. As we approach the end of treatment, I have sometimes been thanked for insisting on the confidentiality of the ongoing treat-ment. In the heat of remembering, one may wish to confront one's torturers. But later, after the pain has been alleviated, an analysand is often grateful that some small but meaningful rela-tionship remains, for example, with parents who are now under-stood to have been pitifully impaired by their childhoods. After the incident of Anna's nickname, one result of my asso-ciative process was a new realization that middle-aged people who have been, or still are, in a religious order have not one but two families of origin. The usual past practice of admitting very young candidates means that many candidates completed adolescence and entered young adulthood with a second set of parents, the training staff. Moreover, the drastic changes involved in enter-ing a religious order could be expected to cause, and did cause, massive regression in many candidates. This means that, in effect, March-April 1994 205 Crreer * Needed: An Ethic of Memories they spent not only some of adolescence but even all of adoles-cence and some of a second latency period within the cloister. It would be theoretically likely that the usual mechanisms of for-getting childhood trauma, recovering it in garbled form, and feel-ing a need to work through it would be present When is a memory private, and when is it community property? When must it be told, when may it be told, and when must it be kept secret? in such people with regard to t~0 childhoods and two sets of parents. My reflection led me to include myself among those who had such a past and to recall that my main dissatisfaction with my training analyst had been his utter incapacity to imagine my life experience as a young religious. Thus Anna's nickname pointed me to a new task in my ongoing self-analysis. My second realization was a personal grasp of a dilemma'I have listened to many times from the victims of family crimes. When is a memory private, and when is it community property? W-hen must it be told, when may it be told, and when must it be kept secret? I had learned that this question may surface about something as large as incest or as small as a nickname. As in many of the subtle ethical dilemmas in life, there is no pat answer to this question. It is well to keep this in mind. Here a final memory linked with Anna emerged, and I under-stood another of the roots of my early resolve against giving pain by narrating private memories of my past convent experience. In this memory I was a novice, on vacation at a rustic seaside camp connected to a rural high school owned by the order. Along the length of the washroom wher~ I was brushing my teeth, there was a ventilation space just under the eaves, open to the cloister walk outside. Out on the cloister walk I recognized, among a group of visiting major superiors, the voice of the nun who had been principal of my school when Anna and I were students together. Another superior who did not know me mentioned my name. My old principal, who had not spoken to me in three years, remarked, "Oh, yes, that one is full of the Old Nick." My eyes filled with angry tears. I felt it was unfair to judge me at age eigh-teen by my behavior three years before. At that point in my current-day reflections, I realized that each of us is in a process of becoming. Those who have remem- ~06 Rwbiew for Religious bered us only by some static moment and then have passed out of our lives do seem to have an ethical obligation to keep their own counsel. After all, persons being impugned via the narration of memory may, in effect, no longer exist; they may be thoroughly different from the persons called to mind by the reminiscence. In any case, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Participants in therapies which focus upon memories of years ago need to keep this in mind. So do ordinary folk, particularly as they age and their store of memories becomes larger and larger. Easter Lily Your bell is poised for announcement, green-white at first, the color of music not yet tongued. We have come to expect drama: spring's green entrance, the dandelion invasion, snow in the orchard, and those housewrens concealing their nest in the ivy-veiled oak. This morning you trumpeted six gold notes from your ivory cave, a fanfare for the resurrection from the dead. Avis Kunca Kubick March-dt~H11994 207 \~ILLIAM MOCKUS A Discipline of Self-Respect Forthose seeking direction in their spiritual journeys and for .1_ .those who journey with people seeking God's direction, how we use the word discipline needs to be given attention. Our assumptions about discipline significantly affect our spiritual exer-cises and practices. A few years ago a cartoon depicted one man saying to another, "Yes, I'd like to reach spiritual perfection as soon as possible; then move on to bigger and better things." Obviously, this perception of "spiritual perfection" relates more to ego achievement than to true spiritual growth. But, like most humor, what makes it funny is its nearness to truth. We desire to grow spiritually, but we are not sure of how or when the goal is reached. When asked what they desire at the beginning of a retreat or a spiritual-direction relationship, many people say a closer or more intimate relationship with God, a more faithful practice of prayer, or a sense of security around what they are already doing in prayer even though it may "feel dead" to them. Often, from what we have been taught and have come to believe about spiritual perfection, we assume that greater disci-pline, meaning greater self-control, will produce the desired spir-itual fruit. To pray well, we believe we must control our wandering imagination, our body, even our breath. We believe that, if we fdil ai' our discipline ot[ self-control, then we or someone else may judge our spiritual life, if not our entire self, to be a failure. William Mockus, a diocesan priest from Paterson, New Jersey, currently serves on the. retreat team at Bon Secours Spiritual Center. His address is Bon Secours Spiritual C.enter; 1525 Marriottsville Road; Marriottsville, Maryland 21104. 208 Review for Religious We have long recognized that, in developing most worth-while skills, some type of discipline is required. We assume, then, that living Christian lives "skillfully" must involve the "discipline" of putting the Jesus story into our everyday activity. But our image of God should not ignore Jesus' own activity at work within our lives as they are. Having such an image involves a different sort of discipline. Rather than straining to achieve a degree of spiritual perfection that will allow us to feel secure by sheer force of will, we need to seek a "disciplined faithfulness to our own advancing StOry." In the spiritual life the essential ingredient is relationship-- our individual relationship with God and our communal rela-tionship with one another in God. It is for the sake of these relationships that discipline is important, but only secondarily. In our growing-up years, it is important to learn some discipline, some self-control. Without "boundaries of behavior" for impulses and emotions, we would do much harm to ourselves and others. Good boundaries are important for developing ego identity and strength. For adults, however, it is a mistake to confine one's thinking about discipline to self-control. For people beyond young adulthood, viewing one's need for spiritual discipline as a function of self-respect can be more help-ful than striving after an unrealizable degree of self-control. In fact, spiritual (and emotional) growth may be more hindered than helped by too much of it. Mature Christians realize this. Increased self-respect comes from patient growth in God, not from aggres-sively building oneself up to self-perfection. Discipline for the journey is more a matter of trusting in the Spirit's movement than of standing tall or standing one's ground. We do not arrive at "spiritual perfection" as much as journey toward it in hope and faith. Here a healthy discipline of self-respect can prevent us from abandoning the quest for spiritual perfection in frustration because we lack enough self-control to arrive at some idealized point of our own choosing. This adjustment in our understanding of spiritual discipline can help us move from a success/failure model of spiritual life to one of ongoing progress. It is a call for respect of one's "true self" rather than control over one's imperfect self. The practice of self-respect, like most spiritual tasks, requires a real commitment to discipline. But it is a discipline that has patience for the grow-ing self's time of maturation and integration. March-April 1994 209 Mockus * A Discipline of Self-Respect People often perceive their lives as somehow overshadowed by what they have come to understand as their vocation or calling: the idealized notion of being a Christian, to be perfect as their "heavenly Father is perfect." Traditionally we have been taught to strive toward spiritual perfection in prayer and spiritual practices. Unfortunately, for us limited human beings, the reality of our many imperfections is often contrasted too harshly with the ideal. No matter how we struggle we always fall short of our desired perfection, and the ideal always eludes us. If self-perfection is the goal, the flawed reality of our lives usually confronts rather than comforts us in our spiritual quest. In terms of God's perfection, and our own expectations, we always fail. Nevertheless, thanks to the desire that God places at the core of our being, we keep. striving in one way or another to deepen the relationship with the One who is the source of all our desire. Yet, when we do not respect our own truth and wisdom, we too fre-quently seek some magical prayer discipline or some miracle that will deliver us from our failure-ridden struggle. If God wants us to be perfect, then more fervent prayer, or Jesus, or some spiri-tual director will help us finally achieve it--right? For those who seek "spiritual perfection," reaching the goal is constantly frustrated by human limitations. One's prayer disci-pline or acts of charity, one's responsibility to family or commu-nity, fulfillment of one's commitments or vows can never be as they should be because perfection moves as soon as it appears within reach. Considering what might be years of frustration in attempting to reach an idealized image of oneself, it is easy to understand some people's difficulty in determining how to improve their spir-itual practice or in ever finding the "comfort zone" of a commit-ted daily prayer practice. The built-in danger of a self-perception based on an ideal is that the reality of our limitations causes us to judge our efforts harshly, no matter how hard we try--unless in frustration we give up the quest. A typical response to what often feels like constant failure is grief or, worse, despair. In Vital Spiritualities Jerry Broccalo explains the distinction between a spirituality of the real and a spirituality of the ideal while recognizing the value of each. As with the rest of life, when it comes to our spirituality there is a radical difference between the ideal and the real. We too often confuse the difference. Despite the God-life within us, we are not God; weare not 210 Review for Religious perfect and cannot control everything in our life, especially its limits. A discipline of self-respect allows us to see the truth of our humanness more clearly. It requires that we discard the belief that our perfection is within our power. God is God; we are not. Our spiritual growth does not depend on our ability to control reality, but rather on our ability to surrender con-trol. ~ This surrender depends on our recovering what may be termed our "firsts." Making the shift from a discipline of self-control to one of self-respect is a matter of taking the right steps in sequence. One cannot skip the first step in the" process. We need to recover our appreciation of the first commandment, the first beatitude, and the first three steps of any twelve-step program thfit deals with addictions. Each of these firsts points to several parallel truths. We are not in charge, we need God, and we cannot control everything about our lives. The truth behind all of these firsts is that we are mor-tal and limited, as well as graced and saved. We cannot assume the power to judge or condemn ourselves for failures or wrong choices. Although we may judge an action or the lack of action as evil or sinful, it is God's domain to judge the person: Poverty of spirit, the first beatitude, requires that we real-ize exactly who is and who is not God in the human/divine rela-tionship. Because I know that prayer, exercise, and setting boundaries around my appetites are all essential for my well-being, for my "true self" to grow strong, I know that I need discipline, but not the discipline of self-control based on an ideal image of myself. Perhaps the most common temptation to idolatry is the ongoing desire to see myself only through others' .eyes. Butmy holiness depends on being my true self and worshiping the God in whose image I was made rather than a god made in my image. The discipline of self-respect compels me to do these things because .of what Christ has taught me about the reign of God within me. When I do not practice the discipline involved in liv-ing the Good News, I am being respectful of neither nay true self nor the gospel. If I do not pray or care for my body with proper diet and exercise, I need to look again at my spiritual discipline. But even then I have no right to condemn and crucify myself. A discipline of self-respect allows us to see the truth of our humanness more clearly. March-April 1994 211 Mockus ¯ A Discipline of Self-Respect Instead, in honest humility I can admit nay lack of self-respect and recommit myself once more to following the Lord rather than pursuing my idealized self. A discipline of self-respect calls me to constant conversion and does not allow me to assume divine authority over my own, or someone else's, failures. This discipline is one of true humility, and holds that human beings may not usurp God's authority. Maybe this is why the first commandment is the first, and the first beatitude is first, and why the same three steps are put at the beginning of every twelve-step recovery program. The first step is the need to recognize our dependence on God. The first steps in recovery, like the first beatitude and the first commandment, contradict the common belief that, if only we exercised enough self-control, we would pray better and live better and thus become more holy--and, pre-sumably, this level of spiritual perfection would make us more loved by God. This may be more a form of spiritual consumerism than a spiritually mature relationship with God in Christ Jesus. One may object that this type of spiritual discipline sounds too much like those theories which so casually justify the selfishness and self-centeredness of contemporary culture. From teachings learned in our growing-up years, it is easy to believe that all talk of self-respect promotes attitudes that are too self-centered. Admittedly, the danger of self-righteousness always remains with us, but it may be worth the risk to use the spiritual discipline I propose in the hope of gaining a more God-centered rather than self-center.ed view of what discipline is meant to be. The phrase "discipline of self-respect" may suggest imma-ture self-centeredness. People often assume that, if a spiritual dis-cipline does not involve self-denial, then it must be some form of narcissism. But such an ego-driven and immature sense of self is not what we are speaking about. We are advocating respect f0r one's "true self," as Thomas Merton uses the term, where the egoless self encounters the reign of God within one's life. In a conversation several years ago with Dr. Frederick Franck, I inquired about the Buddhist notion of decreasing one's ego desires and the Christian notion of dying to oneself. Dr. Franck responded that "first one had to have an ego." Before one dies to oneself, one must be a self or have what may be termed a' healthy ego, a sense of one's own true self. For the believer, Christ' is not only the image of the invisible God; he is also the image of our true self encountered within the reality of our lives, not in 212 Revie~v for Religious some unrealizable ideal. A discipline of self-respect is not self-ishness. It is a way to understand spiritual discipline as a call to die to one's false self-centeredness in order that one's true Christ-centeredness may be more fully realized in our lives. It is God's reign rather than our own that this discipline seeks. This call to be our "true selves" is always new and meaning-ful, no matter what age we are or in what stage of life we find ourselves. Whether we are young and need to control our impulses and urges, or mature and need to respect the truth of our real but limited lives, our spiritual discipline must reflect our experience of life and God. What is required in the spiritual jour-ney, if it is to be more God-centered than ego-centered, is a healthy and humble discipline towards one's true self. This disci-pline involves an ongoing quest for self-knowledge and self-respect and an openness to God's constant and loving call for conversion. If one's discipline of prayer or exercise or eating or working is to be tru!y healthy and whole, it must be balanced and con-gruent with one's true identity. It cannot be mere conformity to the images and masks we have held before us, whether these are images of perfect beauty or perfect sanctity. One's spiritual per-fection, then, is not a goal to be chalked up on a self-actualiza-tion chart. It is not a matter of self-mastery, but of self-surrender. The discipline of self-respect is a matter of surrendering to one's true self, encountered at the point of contemplative union with the God who made us just the way we are. Correction Do you know what the word KUMASI becomes when the spellcheck of a computer program encounters it? It becomes CHUMPS. Our apologies to the KUMASI diocese of Ghana mentioned in Susan Rakoczy's article "Charismatic Renewal and Consecrated Life" in our November- December 1993 issue, page 913. March-April 1994 213 ANNETE ADAMS A Transformational Journey May living room can be a cozy place in the winter. Making fire in the fireplace, watching the flames, listening to the crackle of wood, catching a glimpse of a spark breaking away, all move me into a very reflective mood. There is some-thing about a fire in a fireplace that captures my spirit and invites me to quiet. I began to think about images: fire, sun, wind, water, animals, insects. Since images have played an important part in my spiri-tual journey, I looked back to see what image has spoken most powerfully to me. That image is the butterfly. I began reflecting on the monarch butterfly about ten or eleven years ago. Did you know that in its caterpillar stage it can resist moving into the next stage? It can postpone moving into the chrysalis until the fol-lowing spring. This experience reminded me of a time I had been resisting a change in my own life and thinking of all the reasons why I was not the person for this new ministry. Why me? Why now? Why not someone else? I struggled for a long time and finally one day, too tired to fight anymore, I just sat and listened to some reflective music. As I listened, someone came into the room and told me of a wonderfulsight she had just seen. She had watched a beautiful monarch emerge from its chrysalis. She had never seen such a wondrous transformation. For me that was a very powerful moment, for it spoke to me of my own moment of surrender. It was not until I surrendered that I could begin to be free enough to say yes to what I was being Annete Adams SND has been a teacher and a formation director. Currently provincial secretary, she also gives retreats and does spiritual direction. Her address is Notre Dame Educational Center; 13000 Auburn Road; Chardon, Ohio 44024. 214 Review for Religious invited to do. Was this the beginning of another time in my life that was beckoning me into my own chrysalis, to a state of fertile emptiness, to a time of waiting, inviting a transformation? That image .and that symbol are still with me on my journey. I sit here now, in the midst of another transition time in my life, knowing it is time to let go, to move on, uncertain about what is ahead, and yet excited about what might emerge and bring new life and energy. I remember being on a week-long retreat and feeling as though I were a chrysalis. There was not a thought, a prayer, a song, or a gesture that spoke to me. I took a walk that day through a very quiet neighborhood and got lost. A monarch butterfly on the ground caught my eye. I went to look at it. It was dead. I remember picking up this fragile bit of creation, too beautiful to leave there, and holding it in my hand as I walked on, seemingly forever. I came to a park and sat on the grass, opened my journal, and drew what I saw; somehow it became a priceless gift for the day. At the end of the time I took it to a "safe place" where it would not be trampled on and then began my journey back. I remember sharing the incidents of the day with my director. I told her I could not even imagine why I was carrying, so care-fully, a dead butterfly. Her question to me was simple and yet profound: "Did you ever think that the dead butterfly was you-- the part of you that died, that is no longer--and that is why you carried it with you until you could let it go? I knew at once that the suggestion in her words and eyes was true. I had been look-ing outside myself for the answer when in fact it was within. As I reflected on this image later, I noticed near the fireplace a small sand castle. It had been given to me as a gift because of my great love for Teresa of Avila and her Interior Castle. I wondered if each dwelling place could be like another cocoon--a place of darkness, a place pregnant with all the possibilities of newness and a place of deep union between the lover and the Beloved--as it awaits its moment of transformation. Such a simple image and yet what profound insights! All this reflecting brought me to con-sider my own journey and' that of those on the road with me. I reflected on spiritual direction for this journey of ours. Have you ever watched the cycle of the monarch butterfly? To me it seems similar to what happens in spiritual direction. The journey is one of wonder and joy. The journey is one of searching, watching, waiting, mystery, and transformation. Marcb-.4pri11994 213 Adams ¯ A Transformational.yourney The egg of the monarch butterfly looks like a very, very tiny pearl. The Searching To get yourself a monarch-butterfly caterpillar, you would do well to look in a field, along the road, or in a garden for the milk-weed plant and then to examine its leaves and stalk carefully. The egg of the monarch butterfly looks like a very, very tiny pearl. You can take the leaf on which the egg rests and place it on a moist sponge; in time you will see a tiny caterpillar emerge to begin its new life. If you cannot find an egg, then you should look for an already hatched monarch caterpillar--with its eas-ily spotted black, white, and yellow circular bands--wherever it has left a trail of partly con-sumed milkweed leaves. Directees do their own kind of searching in spiritual direction. They search for a director who will help them unfold their real selves, one who will help them search out the truth, one who will love them for who they are and continually journey with them as they come to know a God who nourishes them on their journey. In spiritual direction directees search and find; they search and sometimes do not find; but they do not stop searching, no matter how painful it becomes. It is not the director's demand that makes this contihued search happen. It is their realization that God's search for them is much greater than their search for God because God's love for them is unconditional. The Watching If you really want to watch the monarch caterpillar in its var-ious stages, then you need to put the portion of the plant that the caterpillar is on into a large glass jar and cover it with some fine netting. The caterpillar moves all over the plant, continu-ally eating bits of leaqes, taking in all the nourishment it can for the journey. In very quiet moments, with your ear over the top of the jar, you can hear the sound of each bite. It is that kind of posture of attentive listening that is part of being a spiritual director. It takes many quiet moments to notice what is happening in a directee's journey. It takes the right setting, an atmosphere for growth, openness, and readiness for the jour-ney. The directees need to place themselves in a setting where spiritual direction can take place, to prepare themselves to be 216 Review for Religious receptive to however our God wishes to feed them with words, prayers, songs, or silence. The Waiting The caterpillar needs leaves from the milkweed plant every day. You can watch in silence each day for its constant growth-- watching it become larger and larger until one day it stops eating and begins searching for a place to attach itself so as to begin the mysterious and won-derful work of forming the chrysalis. I have watched for many hours in utter amazement at how care-fully the caterpillar walks around and around its container until it finds the place to fasten itself securely. Th

Issue 52.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1993. ; for r elig ious Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1993 ¯VOLUME 52 ¯ NUMBER 4 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ FAX: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ° 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ° 5001 Eastern Avenue ° P.O. Box 29260 Washington, D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1993 Review for Religious for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP J~an Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Se~in Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1993 ¯ VOLUME 52 ¯ NUMBER4 contents 486 feature The Most Adventurous of Nuns: Ursulines and the Future Mary.Jo Weaver gives contemporary meaning to the legacy of Angela Merici and the Ursulines. prayer 503 Hermitage, a Metaphor of Life Eileen P. O'Hea CSJ shares the struggle of a desert-day experience. 507 Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation Robert McCown SJ explains how Christian Zen, or centering prayer, as an ancillary to the Spiritual Exercises offers spiritual repose. 519 God's Human Face Revealed: A Retreat in Wales Mary Corona FMDM shares her experience of God's working in a thirty-day retreat. 532 541 548 spiritual life What Trouble Is Tad Dunne ponders how coping with trouble allows us to find energies that produce growth. Prayer, Memories, and God Theresa Mancuso suggests a fascinating relationship between recalling joyful and painful memories and praying to God. Adding Up 75 Years Vera Gallagher RGS adds up the balance sheet of God's love in her own life history. 482 Review for Religious 553 566 574 apostolate Prayer and Work, Mostly in South Africa Timothy Stanton CR believes that intercession is the main respon-sibility of the church in the painful process of bringing a new South Africa to birth. Religious Life in West Africa 1966-1990 Martin O'Reilly CFC offers an outline of the development of reli-gious life from foreign-born to local-born in West Africa. The Sanctification of Their Neighbor Thaddeus J. Kazanecki CO examines some characteristics of the Italian confraternal life within which St. Philip Neri founded the Congregation of the Oratory. 584 596 6O2 610 religious life Culture and Contemplative Community Marie Beha OSC reflects on how living the Franciscan charism in the United States can be ddngerous both for U.S. Poor Clares and U.S. culture. Canonical Room for Charisms William F. Hogan CSC emphasizes the uniqueness to be fostered by each particular religious institute for the good of the church's mission. Journal of a Novice Director Melannie Svoboda SND explores the mind and heart of a novice director through excerpts that could be found in a journal. A Family Business: Management in Religious Congregations Dennis Newton SVD spells out some practical directives for deal-ing with complications arising from interaction between religious-congregation members and nonmembers in the workplace. departments 484 Prisms 616 Canonical Counsel: The Synod on Consecrated Life 622 Book Reviews 37-uly-Aug~st 1993 483 prisms A seminarian recently told me, in a certain exasperated way, of his frustration about political label-ing in the church. Informally representing others of sim-ilar age, he pointed out that he has known no other church than the post-Vatican II church. An English-language liturgy, a catechetical training distinguished more by ques-tions than by answers, parish organizations still in devel-oping stages, a school faculty composed mostly of lay teachers, along with a few religious women and men not appearing all that different in dress or in lifestyle from their lay counterparts--these are the only memories of church that he has. He has no more nostalgia for the prac-tices of the church of earlier years than he has for the cel-ebrated golden age of radio before the advent of television. His complaint is that any expressed desires for con-nectives to a pre-Vatican II church immediately raise the likelihood of himself and other people his age being called "neoconservatives." These thirtysomething people and younger want rather to explore more fully their heritages of Catholic .faith and practice. They have no battles to fight over the rigidities and meaninglessness that were part of some Catholic devotions and regulations of the recent, past. They are gra,teful for the freedom and respon-sibility which "older" church members have not always felt comfortable with. They appreciate the maturing fits-and- starts of an American hierarchy in providing leader-ship in their letters on peace and justice and on economics and even in the failed .attempt to address the role of women in society and the church. They see as well-mean-ing but fearful the attempts at control and centralization made by what they might want to label as a "conserva- 484 Review for Religious tive" Vatican bureaucracy. But they are nevertheless looking, sometimes toward the past, for something more in their church than they have at present. They would want, in Jesus' imagery, to be like the "head of a household who can bring from his store-room both the new and the old" (Mt 13:52). If I have rather faithfully understood and presented a major concern of significant numbers of younger members in the church, I believe that their complaint is legitimate. The necessity for an in-depth contact with and study of our rich heritages has never been more apparent. We are all-too-aware of the old truism that unless we know our past we are condemned to keep repeating it. We in the church are also well aware that the danger of being prisoners of the past is all-too-real, with the embarrassing irrel-evance of various "churchy" issues in the face of modern world problems and technology. So for us to know our heritages is to have the strength of consistency with our past but also the stim-ulus to move into a creative future where our faith is a light for appropriate decision and action. Our feature article, "The Most Adventurous of Nuns: Ursulines and the Future" by Mary Jo Weaver, is one attempt to make contact with a heritage in this kind of significant way. I hope that this article will serve as a model for people to study and write engagingly about other heritages, with implications for the present and future opportunities of those very heritages. The women and men who lived our heritages before they were heritages make vivid the values necessary for today's Christian living and the courage it takes to live these values in the face of difficulties, including at times the opposition of good people. This journal has a privileged role to play in bringing people into greater contact with the good-ness within so many spiritual families that live together in our church. In coming to know more fully the relevance of our spiri-tual heritages, we dan expect that our liturgical and prayer practices will be more life-giving, our ministries inspired by gospel beati-tudes will be more clearly focused, and our lives supported in Christian community will be more vigorous. Vatican II and the subsequent years have given the church the occasion for straightening out the gospel storeroom. Now we, the church members, need to enrich our faith lives by com-ing to know and use its treasures, both new and old. David L. Fleming SJ yuly-A1lgust 1993 485 feature MARY JO WEAVER The Most Adventurous of Nuns: Ursulines and the Future I found the title of my talk in the first sentence of Agnes Repplier's biography of M~re Marie: "Of course," she says, "the Ursulines were the most adventurous of nuns." As I skimmed the book, I found phrases like "the most adven-turous of patronesses," the "robust intelligence and fear-less imagination" of the founder, and the "constitutional fearlessness and valorous spirit" of the first missionary to North America. The women most often mentioned in Ursuline history--St. Ursula, Angela Merici, and Mhre Marie--were all formidable figures, and as I read about them I was wafted back into a romantic past when pio-neering women were intrepid and when everything worked out all right in the end. Although the women associated with Ursuline history were not feminists in any modern sense of the word, I wondered what it would mean to attempt a feminist reading of their lives. I was drawn most powerfully into Angela's life, but not before the other two made me stop and take notice. The medieval legend of Ursula as a graceful, beauti-ful, wise, cultured scholar whose learning amazed the doc- Mary Jo Weaver is professor of religious studies and women's studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. Author of Springs of Water in a Dry Land: Catholic I, Vomen and Spiritual Survival (Beacon Press, 1993) and other works, she spent ten years explor-ing feminist issues in the American Catholic Church and has recently begun a long-term research project on traditionalist Catholics in the United States. Her address is 1030 S. Mitchell; Bloomington, Indiana 47401. 486 Review for Religiot~s tors of the church explains why she inspired so many paintings and poems. The bare outlines of her mythical life--martyred along with eleven .thousand virgins with whom she was wandering around barbarian Europe--are fanciful, to say the least, but I do not think it troublesome that the historical facts about her are rather dim. True or false, her legends shaped part of the Catholic tradition and tell us something about the roles women were able to play in the medieval imagination. That she was a virgin, the patron of innocent girls, and a charismatic figure and leader even though she was single--neither married nor in a convent--was obviously attractive to Angela. When I moved to the stories surrounding M~re Marie, leader of the first Ursuline mission in North America, I found genuine historical material used by her biographer in a skilled portrait. Repplier's biography can be summarized in this sentence: "She had escaped every groove in which she had been imprisoned by circumstances." It is a marvelous summary of the life of an ordi-nary woman responding to extraordinary demands, and that seems to be an Ursuline theme, at least in the North American context, where Ursulines were on the scene early and seemed to thrive in the most desperate of situations. Male historians, who typically pay little attention to women, unite in praise for the teaching charism of the Ursulines and their civilizing power on the frontier. There is more, of course, but the bottom line from the his-torians is a witness to dedicated purpose: "The development most distinctively American was the role in educating the young assumed so largely by a myriad of women's communities, begin-ning with the Ursulines in New Orleans in 1727." These same historians do not make much of the fact that the founder of the Ursulines was an independent and rather remarkable woman sur-rounded by strong, inventive women. Those attributes attracted me, however, and it became clear to me that the best way to think about Ursulines was to get to know their founder. Besides, there seemed to be excellent sources of information: well-researched critical biographies, spiritual reflections, historical notes, and modern symposium notes say something about the kind of energy Angela Merici has inspired in her followers. About Angela Merici, there seems to be solid historical ground for an interpretation, but as with the stories of other founders and other times, the pious imagination has sometimes filtered the facts. For example, Angela is remembered ih connection with the July-Aug'ust 1993 487 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns education of girls and is sometimes pictured as energetically open-ing schools; but she neither spent her time founding academies, nor was she drawn primarily to an apostolate of education. Her pioneering spirit was directed towards the moral support of young girls and the regeneration of society as it could be accomplished through a formation program within family settings. Still, because she established a company of independent women at a time when things were astonishingly bad for women, Angela is an example of the "theoretical feminism" that some critics believe has always existed even though it was seldom successful. Theoretical femi-nism means the dedication of women to the abolition of hie(ar-chics, especially those that put women under the direction of men. That description appears to fit Angela's context, and the fact that she tried her experiment during the Renaissance makes her case even stronger. One of the salient points made by feminist historians for the last twenty-five years has to do with periodization. The ways we mark historical periods have been set by men and often mark the realities of women's lives. The late Joan Kelly ~nade this argu-ment with specific reference to Renaissance Italy, Angela's time and place. According to Kelly,.there were no gains for women during the Renaissance. In fact, the age was marked by a restric-tion of the scope of women's powers. Female sexuality, women's economic and political roles, their cultural power in shaping the outlook of their societies, and the ideology about women all underwent profound changes, mostly to the diminishment of women. Yet Angela acted as if the subordination of women was not an issue for her. The "new subordination of women to the inter-ests of husbands and male-dominated groups" that went hand in hand with Renaissance "progress" did not seem to touch her per-sonally though it may account for the rather quick enclosure of the women Angela hoped could live a more autonomous existence. Like fascinating women everywhere, Angela regularly over-turns predictable assmnptions about her. The woman who gath-ered the company later valorized as "the most adventurous of nuns" seems to have been the most reluctant of founders. The founder who has gone into history as one of the world's great pioneers of education seems not to have been that at all, and the visionary who heard a voice from heaven in her teens finally got around to acting on it when she was an old woman. Angela's life fits no .pattern that I can find unless it might be 488 Review for Religious that of Dorothy Day, who summarized her own life's work by say-ing that she never planned to do very much at all. "Opportunities presented themselves and we responded," she used to say, refus-ing to be relegated to the musty shelves of sainthood, out of ordi-nary reach. Dorothy Day is not a perfect parallel figure for understanding Angela, but can help us to perceive the more or less prosaic ways in which ordinary people can be propelled into extraordinary activity. Almost everything we know about Angela Merici happened in Brescia, a small but very volatile city. In 1401 it had been dubbed "the little Rome" because it had 70 churches and 50 monasteries for a population of 16,000, yet sixty years later the apocalyptic reformer Savanarola preached sermons there evoking visions of hellfire and damnation to inspire a change of heart in a morally bankrupt population. Perhaps Brescia was simply unlucky in terms of episcopal leadership. Paulo Zane, absentee bishop there for fifty years (1481-1531), seemed to be in a contest with corrupt popes, cardinals, and priests to see who could lead the most lav-ish and egocentric life. Perhaps Brescia was simply unlucky in terms of its geographical location; it was used, stomped on, and overrun by various armies during the complex territorial wars that dominated the region in the late 15th and early 16th cen-turies. When the French sacked the city in 1512, four years before Angela arrived, the torture and killing of local citizens was so ferocious that all of Europe was shocked by it. If we think of mod-ern- day Somalia, or parts of Latin America or the Middle East, we would not be far off in our analogy. The context for Angela's life, therefore, was collapse and tran-sition. The medieval models for politics and religion were not working, but nothing better was yet in place--a time, in other words, not entirely unlike our own. It was also a time of rampant corruption and moral gridlock, in which those "in charge" appeared uninterested in the daily spiritual li;¢es of ordinary peo-ple. Outside of the 10th century, it is hard to imagine a worse set of popes, one after another, than those who occupied the Holy See then; nearly half of the men who~e stories make up Chamberlain's The Bad Popes ruled during Angela's lifetime. Religious life, although abundantly present, was scandalous rather than edifying, creating a kind of spiritual vacuum for a scream of protest to fill. And, of course, someone did produce such a scream. A young Augustinian monk teaching Scripture at Wittenberg protested .~uly-Aug'ust 1993 4.89 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns Charlotte Lichtblau vehemently, but that is a different story. It is not clear how sharply the Lutheran remonstrances touched Angela herself. Many of the reformers of the 16th century--Teresa of Avila, for example-- were so taken up with their own missions that they appear to belong to a climate of religious reform that has very little to do with the great Protestant revolt that began a year after Angela arrived in her new home. Still, ten years later, in 1527, a major anti-Catholic demonstration in Brescia signified, among other things, that people there were in a state of spiritual uproar. 490 Review for Religious To understand Angela's context, therefore, we have to imag-ine a situation that felt generally hopeless and beyond control. The northern Italian borders were not secure, and towns like Brescia were a kind of permanent war zone, not always the scene of bloodshed, but sufficiently precarious to raise the disease rate, encourage prostitution, destabilize families, and generally scuttle normal life. Religious leaders were nowhere to be seen unless one happened to be in Rome attending the theater. The streets of Brescia in 1532 probably resembled Times Square in 1993. They were full of con men sensing opportunities, young women selling themselves for their next meal, old men with diseases or old war wounds and no place to go, and ragged children darting from one bad situation to the next. Acting courageously in this little scene were some dedicated young men operating hospitals for "incur-ables" and a steadfast group of young women whose desire to help young girls led them to imagine themselves working together in a new way. What did these young idealists have in common besides a lively conscience and a desire for spirituality in action? They were all friends of or drawn to Angela Merici, an efficient, maternal woman who, by all accounts, had a magnetic personal-ity shaped by personal sanctity. She had even, so it was said, once had some kind of "vision." As I noted earlier, whatever the facts of her life, Angela Merici is not typical in any way. The outline of her visionary experience-- adolescent orphan girl sees something and claims to be instructed by it--is a standard story; but what Angela did with it is not. Her modesty in claiming very little for herself because of her experi-ence reminds me of Dame Julian of Norwich, who after a series of remarkable visions went on with a modest, reclusive life, recounting them to a scribe only much later. As an adolescent, Angela apparently had a profound religious experience--a dream or a vision--which she believed gave shape and direction to her life; but she did not immediately run to a bishop to disclose its contents, nor did she speculate about the concrete terms into which it might eventually be cast. She simply went about her life as a third-order Franciscan, te.aching catechism in her own village and willing to go wherever she was needed--to Brescia, as it turns out, when she was in her forties. Unless we count a pious life as extraordinary, she did not do anything out of the ordinary there. Perhaps the very routineness of her life calmed people: At the same time, the little things she .~uly-August 1993 491 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns Like any normal prophet, she was reluctant to believe that God was directly calling her. did made an impressibn on those around her. She lived a selfless life in the company of rich people and brought the attractive wis-dom of common sense to a besieged.situation. She apparently felt secure enough to pursue her lifestyle choice of virginity in the home of a wealthy young merchant, living in his house for more than a dozen years. She was an ascetic who was surrounded by friends, many of them men. She was a good organizer and pitched in to do what needed to be done--nursing, counseling, pro-tecting children, consoling the bereaved--but also apparently felt free enough to go galli-vanting off to Jerusalem, to Rome, and to Varolla, a kind of Holy Land theme park in the Alps. How it became clear to her that it was time to act upon her early vision and gather "a company of consecrated virgins" around her is not Clear to me, especially since I see her vari-ous trips as flights from that call. Every time someone called a meeting, she disappeared! In 1522, when she was in her early fifties, Angela went on a pilgrimage to Mantua, to the tomb of Blessed Osanna Andreasi, a third-order Dominican. Why? Did she simply want to honor this holy woman, or was she begin-ning to suspect that she herself was gifted beyond what she had up to now felt to be ordinary abilities? Did she hope by honoring Osanna, a new and popular cult figure, that she could elude her own fate, like Moses telling God that, in comparison with the articulate Aaron, he was simply not the man for the job? It seems reasonable to assume that she experienced some kind of inner turmoil and was seeking refuge from it. In that way--like any normal prophet, with the exception of Isaiah--she was reluctant to believe that God was directly calling bet. Whether at Mantua she was seeking refuge or confirmation, however, she did not quit running away. Her next pilgrimage, in 1524 to Jerusalem, is what we might expect from such a woman in those times, and having an on-site episode of hysterical illness was not untypical. People in the highly charged atmosphere of a major place of pilgrimage often have unex-pected or frightening physical experiences, but let us examine this moment more closely. She did not, like Margery Kempe, faint or have visions of herself assisting at the birth of Jesus; she did not, like 492 Review for Religious Felix Fabri, feel as if her whole life had been turned upside down. She went blind and so could not see some of the holy places. When I read that story, I wonder what she did not want to see. On her way back from Jerusalem, she stopped awhile in Venice, where city officials begged her to stay and administer a hospital for incurables there, an honor and a challenge to which she responded by fleeing quickly and returning to Brescia. Running away from this opportunity would have made sense if she returned to Brescia to take on similar responsibilities there, but she did not. She was scarcely unpacked when she booked pas-sage on another pilgrimage, this time to Rome and the celebration of the jubilee year (1525). I read this activity as a voyage of internal discovery. Those attuned to their inner voices know that "you can run, but you can-not hide," something An\gela was trying to do in ever more press- xng ways. Whatever her reasons for going to Rome, once there she managed to get an audience with Pope Clement VII. It is hard to imagine this event without the kind of bribery required by most Renaissance popes, so if she managed to see the pope without such machinations, I daresay he already knew about her and saw how she might be useful to him. In any case, if she wanted the solace of a papal blessing, she received another scare instead: he begged her to stay in Rome and administer a hospital there. Here the story gets even more dramatic because, in the face of a papal request, Angela fled lest she be compelled by obedience. Other popes might have pursued her, but Clement was not a man of swift decision. His nickname--"I will and I won't"--was given to him because be was a notorious temporizer, agonizingly slow to make any decision. His disadvantage was her victory. She got herself back to Brescia and away from Rome. Perhaps she imagined she was now safe and sound. ¯ What can one make of all this flight? I see a woman who probably knew she had led a useful life, who was self-assured and willing to help out where she was needed, but not eager to fit into a role she could not yet imagine for herself. The idea that she might be more than a reasonably pious and useful woman and the fact that young people involved in arduous and creative cor-poral works of mercy gathered around her as if around a mother hen may have strained her .self-understanding. Maybe she was just tired--she was in her late fifties--maybe she was just stub-born. I find her self-possessed, unwilling to act until she herself j~uly-August 1993 493 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns was clear about what she might do and how she might act to con-trol her own future. In "running away" she found the time and space to begin to come to terms with it. It is fascinating to see this middle-aged woman struggle with the logical implications of her own life. She had been in Brescia for nearly fifteen years, living a prayerful life and doing good works. People thought her so wise and caring that they called her madre (a tide reserved for holy women and nuns), and from morn-ing to night she was called on by people seeking her advice or drawn to her sensible simplicity, A group of courageous young people who had their own ideas about how to live the gospel in a forlorn world were drawn to her spiritual power. And an increas-ingly clear apostolate, dedicated to the care and protection of young women, had been staring beseechingly at her since Elizabeth Prato, a friend young enough and devoted enough to be her daughter, started working with lost girls in 1522. Vv'hy, then, the reluctance? And why do I find it comforting? Without intending to be cryptic, I think it is middle age, Angela's and my own. Had she been in her twenties, perhaps she would have dived right into the creative community she founded, as many of today's middle-aged sisters, in their youth, were drawn into the irresistible energy of religious life with its sacrifices and promises. But, like many of us today, she was in her fifties, not so quick to act, distracted by alternatives and the cautions that come with age. Maybe she just wanted to live out her days in the mod-est way she had been doing. After all, it is reasonable at this age to be tending the gardens of one's own soul and unreasonable to be launching a major life project. Maybe the call which had come with such clarity many years earlier now seemed distant or unreal, impractical in the present situation. VVhen we are young, the idea that God wants us for something specific seems only natural. All the scary choices--marriage, motherhood, convent life, profes-sional training--are made with the blessed ignorance of youth. But when we are older, the same idea can make us wonder if we are imagining things; we see all the reasons not to believe what we are hearing. In such cases the mysterious ways that God is famous for often manifest themselves in some dramatic way. For Angela, not unlike many of the saints, illness was a factor. Fleeing again in 1529 to Cremona in order to get away from political intrigue and an active war zone, she became gravely ill. And here, I think, she 494 Review for Religio~ts encountered an interesting temptation that may have looked like the answer to her problems. Illness and death beckoned as an option, the last flight, the final escape. She apparently thought that she might really die there and--whether with drama or res-ignation I cannot say--took to her deathbed. Yet, when one of her young supporters composed her epi-taph and read it to her, she bounced back, not as ready to go to heaven as she imagined. Again, I think, she shows the wisdom of age, for it is only when we are very young that we find a "longing for death" something to nurture in our-selves. Angela, hearing her epitaph, dis-covered new energy in herself. She still may not have been ready to lead a new movement, but neither was she ready to be led into eternity to the strains of In Paradisum. Whatever happened to her during those days in Cremona, she was resolved, at the end of this exile, to put down her traveling staff and follow the spirit she had been running from. She made one more short trip to Varolla that winter, to renew her memories of the Holy Land-- a symbol for her sense of purpose--then returned to Brescia and moved into a small room in Elizabeth Prato's house near the church of St. Afra. Now nearly sixty, Angela tucked into this new stage of her life with determination. She lived even more austerely, spent more time in prayer, and began to instruct her spiritual daughters. It is probably only a geographical coincidence that Prato's house was near the church of St. Afra, a 4th-century prostitute who achieved sainthood through martyrdom; but it is interesting that the early work of Angela's group was partly directed at.opening possibili-ties for "penitent women," a euphemism .for prostitutes. By 1532 Angela had gathered a small group around her and developed a rather extraordinary and yet quite simple idea: all the women would engage in an exterior apostolate and lead vir-ginal and virtuous lives, but would take no vows. In its broad out-lines this plan is reminiscent of the Beguines, religious associations of women begun in the 12th century in Belgium and the All the scary choices-- marriage, motherhood, convent life, professional training-- are made with the blessed ignorance of youth. July-Augt~t 1993 495 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns Netherlands. Their success in the 14th century did not impress itself upon the clerical mind so much as the fact that they took no vows and were not subject to the rules of any order. Did Angela know about them? Was she attracted by their relative autonomy? Did she think their exp+riment was worth another try? Her idea was so simple and so revolutionary that it boggled the minds of the authorities: women would commit themselves to an apostolate--the care, protection, and education of girls--and they would promise lifelong fidelity to consecrated virginity. We may consider how her plan might have threatened men. Pious men would see women able to lead useful virtuous lives without their advice, and "men of the world," accustomed to pursuing an occasional dalliance, might now have to sneak into the house late at night, only to be met with the soulful glances of an at-home daughter vowed to virginity. Angela's notion of governance was also disturbing. However much she said about obedience to authorities, the Holy Spirit was her real teacher, and so she stipulated for her daughters. Her desire to trust the activity of the Holy Spirit in the individual heart, however, did not appeal to male authorities. On the con-trary, it frightened them profoundly. Charles Borromeo--still in diapers when Angela died--found the idea of an unmediated Holy Spirit speaking directly to the heart and conscience of individual women wildly dangerous. The changes made by this young arch-bishop of Milan in Angela's Rule are not surprising to anyone with even a minimalist feminist consciousness. Borromeo was a man of his times; Angela was a woman ahead of hers. I find it fascinating that, unlike some other reformers and founders such as Teresa of Avila, Angela did not invoke the com-mands of Christ to carry out her purpose or to solidify her sense of authority. She was sure that what she was doing was made pos-sible by and would be sustained by God, but she exhibited no need to couch her ideas in the language of mystical certainty. Perhaps because she was single and surrounded by eager disci-ples she had no need to talk about divine directives. Perhaps she did not have any. Her ideas about community seem to follow directly from her own experience, an extension of her practical holiness. The memory of her vision--by now no more than a vague request to a bereaved girl--and a st.eady relationship with God were enough for her. The practicality and ordinariness of her plans made her an 496 Review for Religious inspired leader with amazing insight into the needs of women. The frescoes she commissioned for her oratory--the meeting space and prayer room for her young group--constitute a kind of "womanspace" in which her young followers could imagine new possibilities for themselves. Angela's frescoes gave her fol-lowers examples of spiritual heroism. Looking around in that room, young women saw Angela's models. Ursula, Elizabeth, Paula, Eustochium, and, by some accounts, Catherine of Alexandria make exquisite sense and testify to the power of Angela's self-concept. She did not choose prepubescent martyrs or women noted for fasting and silence; she selected strong, bright, self-confident women. It is worth lingering on this point. Although the Catholic tra-dition has a long list of impressive women saints, women whose sanctity rests on suffering, self-effacement, and masochistic penances often predominate. That Angela did not choose such models for her girls speaks eloquently, not only to Angela's time, but also to our own. The women in her murals are all.mature, educated, learned, single, undaunted by male threats or violence, and autonomous in their fashion. Like Angela herself, these women exhibit an inner certainty and independence, making no great claims for themselves, but creating atmospheres of respect by their clearheaded, fearless lives. Even if we look at the under-side of their stories--Elizabeth's sick relationship with her spiri-tual director, for example--the last line of the story is one of strength rather than brokenness. All these women are virgins-- some belatedly, some, like Ursula, spectacularly--and all com-bine devotion to learning with lives of Christlike action. Within two years of the setting up of the oratory, Angela and twenty-eight of the young women who regularly visited that col-orful space signed a book promising to serve faithfully as members of the company of St. Ursula. Within five years that number more than quintupled, and Angela died, leaving behind a growing group, three small documents, and a legacy of self-reliance. How does one survive in a world where, in Yeats's descrip-tion, "the centre cannot hold"? Angela's writings suggest that she endured by reliance on the Holy Spirit, self-confidence, adapt-ability, and kindness. She assumed that her daughters would sur-vive and that God would somehow take care of them, but I see no evidence that she had much stake in gathering a group that would last forever. She does not appear to have been much of a worrier, 3%dy-~lugust 1993 497 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns perhaps because she thought of herself as a mother and had such a fearless concept of motherhood. Angela's model of mothering was dominated neither by the medieval bias that considered women to be morally and intellec-tually inferior nor by Renaissance romanticizing. In her reckon-ing, a mother is loving, but also demanding; tough as well as flexible; able to embody both divine mercy and divine judgment. As CarolynWalker Bynum has shown, these qualities are partic-ularly important in contrast to concepts of divine motherhood that we find in the writings of medieval monks. For them, moth-ers are eternally nurturing, never critical, always available, in other words, stereotypical in the worst ways. Angela's concept of motherhood is the best indicator of her independent spirit. Like the great female mystics of Helfta-- Gertrude the Great, Mechtild--she was able to look into the mir-ror and see herself and her daughters as powerful even as they committed themselves to lives of service. She managed for much of her life to be what many of us hope eventually to become, self-accepting, aware of life's bleak realities without being defeated by them, and so quietly self-confident that it seems not to have occurred to her that she would not be able to do what needed to be done. In managing to live without marrying or entering a convent, and seeing no reason why other women could not do the same, she may have failed to recognize the extraordinary qualities of her own personality, but in that, too, I see modest ambitions con-cealing a powerful sense of purpose. If I can do this, she seems to say, so can you. Little Wonder that young women were attracted to her. She looks out from the past, not with directives, but with encouragement. "Take heart," she says, "I have confidence in you." The word that dominates her writings is kindness, the notion that people can teach more effectively, pray more openly, and act in the world more compellingly insofar as they remember to be tender, encouraging, loving. The ability of hers to enable her fol-lowers by encouraging them to trust themselves is no small thing to emulate in these times of confusion and anxiety about the future of religious life. Because I find Angela's life a statement about women's oppor-tunities, I think she is something of a feminist hero. Among other things, feminism is a countercultural movement related to the ways women are taught to act and to imagine themselves. As 498 Review for Religiozts someone deeply committed to women in an age that was deter-mined to keep women in lives of subservience, Angela was coun-tercultural. Her relationships, attitudes, and actions did not fit the norm for Renaissance women, nor did they fit into the accepted molds for "pious" laywomen. She did not take up residence with a man in order to have an overseer, for example, nor did she count it a danger to faith to be living outside the control of a husband or a bishop. When she says, in Counsel number 7, to follow the old Law but lead a new Life, she makes a countercultural statement. In the ways she used her own expe-rience to make her life and the lives of other women better, she did then what feminists urge women to do now. Like women in most times, she knew that she could not operate as men do, by domi-nating a situation, and so learned to lead by other means. She was a madre, a mother and leader whose "gov-ernance" was more by example than by decree. At the same time, she was not afraid of provocative images of power, urging her fol-lowers to be "like Judith," the Israelite woman who saved her peo-ple by beheading the enemy leader, Holofernes. In her Counsels Angela suggests that her followers serve oth-ers; practice gentleness; not be anxious if they do their best; build community anywhere; teach by example; find refuge in Jesus; nur-ture those entrusted to them; honor authority in the community; and live in harmony. People can, of course, read those bits of guidance in profoundly conservative ways to suggest that Ursuline women simply comply with rightful authority and define them-selves in terms of old-fashioned virtues of maternal charity. Compassion, prayer, solidarity, and a creative imagination, they might say, have been the tools women have used for centuries to shape life toward their purposes, find they work well in traditional models. But I think it is also possible to read them as directions from a self-possessed, powerful woman to those she expected to follow her lead. The bottom line is Angela herself: she trusted her friends and counted on them to be able to make use of their own experience as she had done. As I see her legacy, she was more Because I find Angela's life a statement about women's opportunities, I think she is something of a feminist hero. Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns interested in encouraging women to trust themselves than she was in providing them with a set of rules and regulations. However one interprets her life, the things Angela did can still be done. Women today--laywomen and religious women--have moved beyond passivity and found new ways to make innovations and to ameliorate social ills, as she did. She knew how to read and respond to the sigris of the times in creative ways and assumed that her followers would, too. She was able to read the gospel in prag-matic terms, as a demand to respond to the human demands of everyday life, and left that as part of her legacy. She looked for a new form of religiou~ life within her own experience and com-bined it with the tried-and-true formulae of work and prayer and fasting to come up with something so ahead of its time that it scared the men in charge of things. That can still be done, too. Whatever happens to "religious life" over the next few years-- and there is no end of controversy about it--I believe that at least three things need to be combined with your own reading of Angela's life. These general recommendations apply to all of us. First, we need to know the Catholic tradition: to be literate about revelation, creation, redemption, Christology, grace, and the rest, not in order to hold on in an obdurate or triumphal way, but to have a solid appreciation of what Catholicism is and is not. With Angela as a model, be assured that I am not talking about the truncated tradition handed on by men, the one that excluded women. I am talking about the full, richly embodied, woman-rich tradition of Roman Catholicism. Those who teach young people know that we now stand in a stream of Catholic tradition that very few people really know or understand. Those whose lives are focused on education might be both scandalized and galva-nized by that fact. Second, we need to have a firm grasp of the sacramentality of Catholicism since it both strengthens the spirit and informs the imagination. If we understand that the things of the world are sacred, that God is often present in the most unlikely of places, then we might see new possibilities in the universe. We need, in other words, as Angela did, to cultivate our religious sensibili-ties: to paint frescoes, create new holy cards, celebrate life. Finally, I think we should read Scripture and its commentaries and make that a part of our prayer. Angela may have done good works and taught her "daughters". all afternoon, but only, I think, because she spent the mornings in St. Afra's in front of the altar, sometimes 500 Review for Religious deeply connected, sometimes wildly distracted, but always, rou-tinely, there. I was attracted to Angela Merici originally because she was a powerful woman and, in my reading, a reluctant founder. As I read and thought more about her, I was drawn to her sense of adventure, her willingness' to risk what may have looked like an idiotic experiment at a time when she may have been mostly tempted to retire. So how can Ursulines combine their founding charism--tied to Angela Merici--with tradition, sacramentality, and Scripture? The hard part of that question for me has to do with the Ursuline charism. What is it? Education? Virginity? Working with young women? The possible answers sometimes seem as multivalent as the life of the founder and perhaps, like all life forms, reflect some facet of divinity back to God in their par-ticularities. Ursulines together embody the varieties of Ursuline life in a way that highlights the many aspects of Angela that are worth emulating. The bottom line for me is confident innovation. I do not know if that constitutes a "charism," but it seems to me that it could. Seeing what needs to be done and doing it with an embracing charity, while refusing to capitulate to fears about the future, is a rather astounding legacy, as useful today as it was then. Bibliographical Notes Many of the ideas for a feminist reading come from the work I have done over the last decade on women in the Catholic Church. My New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985) is the best state-ment of that interest (see especially chapters 1 and 3). Joan Kelly's Women, History and Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) is still the best place to start when considering the problems raised by feminist historiography. Because Kelly's work is often set within the context of Renaissance history, her essays were particu-larly useful in interpreting the context for Angela. Also, Carolyn Walker Bynum's books, especially Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) are outstanding resources for thinking about the ways late medieval women actually thought and acted in the face of various religious and social changes. To learn about Ursulines, I began with Agnes Repplier's Mbre Marie of the Ursulines: A Study in Adventure (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1932), which gave me some amusing and provocative insights into Angela and Ursula along with the f~scinating story of M~re Marie herself. I am most indebted, however, to Teresa. Led6chowska's marvelous two- .l~uly-Augus* 1993 501 Weaver ¯ The Most Adventurous of Nuns volume critical biography, Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula: According to the Historical Documents (translated from the French by Teresa Nylan and published in Rome: Ancora, 1969). I used this amaz-ing resource to reconstruct the events of Angela's life. The interpre-tation of Angela as "fleeing" from the voice of God and as a "reluctant" founder are my own. I was also instructed by various works of Ursuline historian Irene Mahoney, whose Portraits of Angela (privately printed, 1985) and St. Angela Merici: Foundress of the Ursulines (privately printed, 1985) are excellent books, full of detail and insight. Martha Bucer's Also in Your Midst: Reflections on the Spirituality of St. Angela Merici (Green Bay, Wisconsin: Alt Publishing Co., 1990) was also helpful. Friends provided me with various notes from Ursuline conferences, especially with a very large set of materials from an international conference in Rome in 1991. I read them with great appreciation and have bor-rowed from them here. Other books cited or alluded to in this paper include E.R. Chamberlain, The Bad Popes (New York: New American Library, 1969); Louise Collins, Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1964); Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes (New York: Curtis Books, 1963); James Hennesey, American Catholicism: A Histo~bv of the Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); H.EM. Prescott, Friar Felix at Large: A 15th-Century Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950); William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming," in The Collected Poems of W.B~ Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1959); and the Penguin Dictionary of the Saints (London: Penguin Books, 1965). Progeny Imagination gives birth to a new offspring with its own world of wonder. From a procreator's seed comes a poem or a painting, a sonata Or a cathedral. each pulsing with th~ heartbeat of Progenitor-God, Giver of beauty to beauty's ministers anointed with the rite of co-creation. Anna Marie Mack SSJ 502 Review for Religious EILEEN P. O'HEA Hermitage, a Metaphor of Life I am in a hermitage. It is, again, not what I expected. The brochure made it seem inviting, a way to satisfy the desire of my heart. I wanted a place to be--to just be, be an empty vessel in God's presence. I wanted to symbolize my response to God at this point in my life and to make sure I am open, attentive to any desire or whisper of the Divine. This hermitage looks out on woods that are covered with ten inches of pure white snow. As one walks, there is no sound but the crunch of rubber boots on a would-be path and the rusde of some frozen leaves that still hang on to bare branches like icicles. To be empty before the Beloved is my desire. And so I sit cross-legged on my saffron pillow before a large wooden cross, flanked by two small icons, and a vigil light. At last, I think, desire meets fulfillment in this quiet, undistracted place. But I am distracted; I am cold. I push the thermostat knob on the small gas heater behind me to its highest set-ring. The heater begins to ci'ackle and bang continuously and make little explosive noises every six minutes or so. It robs me of silence. As darkness absorbs the light of day, I get colder and colder. I have already layered myself in all the clothes I brought with me, and I have squeezed my Eileen P. O'Hea CSJ is a psychotherapist and spiritual director. Her address is 2311 Woodbridge Street; Suite 210; St. Paul, Minnesota 55113. prayer 1993 503 O'Hea ¯ Hermitage, a Metaphor of Life I want God's truth to be straightforward-- no glitches. ice-cold feet with their two pair of socks into my new "Thinsulate" mittens. As my feet flop around on the cold wood floor, I remind myself of Emmett Kelly, the circus clown. It is not quite funny, however. I force myself to persevere for one half hour of quiet prayer, but the clanging radiator, my clanging mind, and my freez-ing body do not lead me to a place of rest. I decide it is time for the bread and cheese, the orange, and the cup of tea that are to be my supper. I watch the night as I eat. Each piece of food, each sip of tea, carries its own taste when one is so concentrated. The orange is succulent and sweet, the cheese substantial and rich, the bread mealy and nourishing, the tea satisfying. I am grateful for each. Fortified, I read the Scripture that lies open as if ready for me. I read Psalm 139 out loud and slowly, wondering as I do so if this is the place God will choose to cast some direct light and move my spirit to new understanding. I want to be awake. If I am supposed to be getting a message, if that is why I am here, I do not want to miss it. Toward the end of the psalm my spirit is thwarted by the words: "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?" I cannot say these words; I check my own revised version of the text. It is the same. I close the book, wanting to feel glad that God knit me in my mother's womb, but put off by the dualistic image. This glitch prevents me from totally giving myself to this experience. I want God's truth to be straightforward--no glitches. After wrestling around a litde, I decide to again attempt some contemplative sitting. I drape the blanket around my head, shoul-ders, and feet. I set the timer for thirty minutes and wonder if I should. Perhaps this will be the time when I will just want to linger in God's presence unrestricted. So often when I experi-ence this desire some duty calls me away. This is partly why I am here in this hermitage--so I can linger in the sweet and loving presence of God or be carried beyond my own self-consciousness to a very deep and still place. I do not set the timer. I do not rest. I am very cold. I stay in this prayer position, waiting for the time to be over. I want to be comfortable. I am not. After twenty minutes I give up. I think of going to bed. I am tired and everything has taken too much 504 Review for Religious energy. The outhouse is the least of inconveniences, I think, as I stare blankly toward a small wooden washstand. Eight plastic gal-lon containers of water, icy cold, flank it. They are for washing, cleaning, and drinking. I do not like them. I decide it is too early to go to bed. It is only 6:45. I sit in the rocker, my glasses and I peeking out through the draped blan-kets, and begin to read about "unity." The cynical part of me wonders if Ruusbroec (or Ruysbroeck) could have written or known these things if he were as cold as I am. Another level of me intuits the abiding truth he is trying to articulate. I want to sip his words like fine wine and, like the effect of wine, feel them in all the cells of my body. But the resistance of my body and psyche to the frigid Minnesota weather that is penetrating this north-woods hermitage will not forsake its stance. Although I have only one page left to end the chapter, I do not continue. My heart is moved again by Ruusbroec's words when he writes about Christ's prayer for unity (Jn 17:21-23) and says it is the most loving prayer which Christ ever prayed for our salva-tion. I am touched that Christ was praying, that Christ too was filled with desire. Stay with this, I think; do not read further. I close the book. I go to bed. I am warmer. My mind goes back to Ruusbroec's words. I wonder: Is this the truth I am meant to penetrate? It has not quite caught hold of me deeply enough, I ruminate, but perhaps during the night my enlightenment will come. My mind casts about as my body begins to settle into the comfort of warmth. Perhaps Sharon, the woman running this retreat house, is a mystic who can read my soul and tell me things that God wants me to know. I fall asleep. I dream of Sharon. Morning comes. I hesitate to get up, to begin the ordeal of being cold again. I pray, eat breakfast (I do not have to dress because I am already wearing all my clothes), and go for a walk. The atmo-sphere is frigid; the sky is gray" and overcast. Ithink of leaving early. I do not need bodily hardship, I muse; things have been phys-ically hard enough this past year. I need solace and nurturing. However, I counter this thought by reminding myself that I am old enough in hermitage experiences to know one must let them be what they are, not impose oneself or one's desires on them. Let God be God, I remind myself, and you be an open space. As I reenter the hermitage, I realize I dreamt of Sharon, but can only remember her saying it is about change. I wonder if this 3~uly-A~t 1993 505 O'Hea ¯ Hermitage, a Metaphor of Life My time here has taught me how hard it is to contemplate when one is reduced to survival. is significant and a message from God or if it is a matter of my own projections and happenstance. Rather than get caught in this distraction, I reassert the pact I have secretly made with Divine Love and say: "You know my great love for you, you know I desire only you and your will; then, if you want me to move in a certain direction or to know something about you or me, you must let me know it in a way that is not obscure and leaves me free of doubt. I am open to you, but you must remove the obstacles that prevent me from knowing or seeing your will clearly. I am totally dependent on you for this and feel it is not too much to ask of one who is in a relationship of mutual love. In a word, do your stuff and I'll do mine." Inside I sit in the rocker that I have moved as close to the gas heater as possible. I pick up my pen and yellow pad and begin to write: My time here has taught me how hard it is to con-template when one is reduced to survival. Survival sets one's consciousness at the level of basic and immediate, human needs and so occupies it with food, clothing, and shelter that it gives no attention to deeper lev-els of reality. Consequently, these deeper levels of consciousness-- places where intimacy with Divine Being is realized and expressed--are, practically speaking, obliterated. The heinousness of human sin, its death-dealing power, is many-leveled. Starving peoples in Africa and war-torn countries come to mind. I put my pen down and pray: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. It is afternoon.I am still cold. In a few hours my time here will be over. I do not want to leave. As I begin to gather my things I think: This hermitage time was neither "lights on" or "lights off," as Ruth Burrows describes moments of the spiritual journey. I console myself with the thought that I came to be an empty ves-sel before God. Before leaving I sit one last time on my saffron pillow to pray. As I do so, I see outside my window a brown oak leaf surrender to a current of air, then glide gently down to the waiting snow. It is sitting there now, very still, ready in due season to become one with the earth. I sit too, quietly waiting, attentive, attuned to Love. ~06 Review for Religious ROBERT MCCOWN Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation Or What You Always Wanted to Know About Being a Mystic But Were Afraid to Ask pmeople of the ancient world strove in many ways to com-unicate with whoever they believed to be out there, with whoeveg made the world and somehow controlled their lives and destinies. They offered in sacrifice choice things: grain or wine poured out, sheep or oxen slaughtered then immolated with fire. The smoke, they thought, would rise before the gods with a pleas-ing odor. Th.ey played flutes, used prayer wheels, painted their bodies, stamped their feet, and babbled. They hoped to get the gods' attention, to bring down favors from them. Human nature has not changed with the New Dispensation, nor have the ways men and women try to pray, except these are now purified and made gentle by revelation. Christ invited us to intimacy with his Father, and we respond by lifting our hearts to him: in the Eucharist (above ~11, the true and ultimate sacrifice), in vocal prayer (such as the Rosary), and in private prayer. We address God with words often chosen from the Psalms or given us by Christ himself or by his saints. These same words, as we use them, enrich our hearts and minds with wisdom. Robert McCown SJ has traveled widely in Japan, Thailand, India, and China. He has for the past two years been teaching literature in the University of Hangzhou, on China's eastern coast. His current address is: The Shrine of the Holy Cross; EO. Box 1497; Daphne, Alabama 36526. aTuly-dugust 1993 507 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation Zen has been used for decades by Christian contemplatives who came under the influence of ascetics of the East. But there are problems with using words in prayer--even God's words. Over time we tend to multiply them and to load onto them our own intellectual and emotional baggage, allowing our selfishness to co-opt their meaning. So in some prayers we might even want to dispense with words, to use body language only, which can sometimes be for us clearer, deeper, more pow-erful than spoken words. This, I think, is the prayer Christ meant when he said, "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret." In such private and largely nonvocal prayer we offer God ourselves in our silent presence, and God responds to us, creatively, in our lives. This kind of prayer goes under a variety of descriptive names: meditation, contem-plation, and mental prayer. There is a long history of it in the church, going back to her earliest years, but it flourished especially in Europe in the fourteenth through the six-teenth centuries with a succession of great spiritual directors. St. Ignatius Loyola taught his followers in his Spiritual Exercises to meditate upon structured concepts and upon chiseled images--both anchored in powerful words--to explore the destructiveness of their sins, to accept forgiveness for them, and then, centering their lives in Christ, to redirect them to God in service of the church. But he reserved a choice place at the end of these Exercises for his largely wordless, though still rich in imagery, Contemplation for Obtaining Divine Love. Others led their fol-lowers to shun in their meditations activities of both the intelli-gence and the imagination and, instead, to go beneath these, down to the marrow of the soul, to encounter the Father in that secret "room" they felt Jesus was speaking of. Zen as practiced by Christians is, in many ways, like this lat-ter form of prayer. It is not new, for it has been used for decades by Christian contemplatives who came under the influence of ascetics of the East. Although in recent years Zen has experienced in the West a growth in popularity, many devout people, unfor-tunately, have misconceptions of it, bringing mistrust. 508 Review for Religious Zen masters themselves often give little help in understand-ing their elusive discipline. When one puts questions to them about it, they often smile and remain silent. I believe this is because they see Zen not as a doctrine but as an activity--and thus an experience--so simple and immediate that, when one attempts to conceptualize it, he only obscures it, as when one tries to define the experience of love or of life. But I feel once people see what Zen is not--certainly not a rival to Christian spirituality--they may wish to try to do Zen themselves and thus to experience the extraordinary benefits claimed to derive from it. Let us consider first--lacking a better term--traditional Zen. Rather than enter the question of the historical origins of it, let it suffice to say it has been practiced for more than 1400 years. Concerning the question of its place of origin--whether India, Tibet, China, or Japan--let us concede simply that it developed in the East, probably in a pantheistic culture. But this should not influence Zen's practical value to us as a mode of meditation any more than the lack of faith of a philosopher should keep us from benefiting from his thinking. After all, a key foundation of scholas-tic philosophy and theology is a series of clear concepts St. Thomas found in the writings of the pagan Aristotle that first came to Europe through the works of Islamic thinkers. Of grea~er importance for our purpose are the reasons Zen developed into the form it ultimately took. These we hope we can intuit as we consider the practice of Zen itself; from these, perhaps, we can gain an insight into why Zen has been found by Christian con-templatives of former times and today to be useful in their prayer life. To do Zen one follows a series of seven conventions. So that our efforts remain not an exercise in looking only but translate into a creative experience, let the gentle reader observe successively these conven-tions as we set them forth: 1. Having chosen carefully the place for our meditation--as free as possible from distrac-tions, harsh lights, sounds, and drafts--we assume the Zen position, as shown in the illus-tration on this page. In this position we join our hands and bow from the waist in the tra-ditional oriental gesture of courtesy which here means, "Now I begin my meditation." A July-Aug~wt 1993 509 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation similar bow at the end will mean, "Now I end my meditation." If we must stand to attend to something--best disconnect the tele-phone beforehand--or we have an itch or a cramp we simply can-not ignore, we bow as we break off meditating, then again as we resume it. This puts parentheses around each session of our med-itation, separating it from interruptions coming from us and from our world around us. 2. We try to keep our backs as erect as comfortably possible: the base of the spine is the key. We do not worry if at first it tires quickly. After a couple of weeks of daily meditation, it will surprise us by its new toughness, even during longer sessions of Zen. 3. Our legs should be crossed as well as possible, but com-fortably, making allowances for bad knees and general decrepi-tude. We strive to keep faithful to the time we agree with ourselves to meditate daily. Twenty-minute sessions are good to begin with. As we go longer, circulato .ry pain in our legs can force us to take a break. For this, we bow, stand, join hands before us, pace the room for two minutes; then, taking again the Zen position, we bow, and resume meditating. 4. Our hands and wrists should rest comfortably on the insides of our thighs--left four fingers on top of right four fingers, the fingers underneath press up dynamically against those above, while the tips of the thumbs touch together ever so lighdy and del-icately. Here we aim to combine a relaxed and stable dynamism of our fingers with an alert delicacy in the touch of our thumbs. 5. Our head should be erect, tilted slightly forwar.d comfort-ably, and with chin in. Our tongue should rest relaxed in the base of our mouth, and we avoid all nervous movement of tongue and jaw. Lips should be relaxed and slighdy parted to permit exhaling through the mouth. 6. Our eyes should remain half closed and out of focus. If we close our eyes, we will go to sleep;, if we focus them on anything, that thing will become a distraction. 7. Our breathing should be not from the chest but from the diaphragm. We loosen our belts, allowing our lower abdomen full freedom to expand and contract. We inhale, knowing the air we take in through our nostrils will heal and give peace, and the air we exhale through our mouth will carry out those things that rob us of peace. This breathing is indeed the key to both tradi-tional and Christian Zen because, once we are in observance of these conventions, the conscious listening to the sound of our 510 Review for Religious breathing becomes the central continuous deliberate activity dur-ing the entire time we are meditating. W.e strive to make this breathing more and more regular, more deeply from the diaphragm. We seek to become increasingly absorbed in repose-fully listening to and centering ourselves in its sound. As we descend deeper into this centering, the thoughts, desires, and images that our mind naturally gener-ates will diminish to nil. If some persist, we do not fight against them, but, by continuously renewing this reposeful centering, we ignore them. If they con-tinue aggressively, it is probably because we are not observing certain of the conventions above. Perhaps our hands have slipped away from the position of dynamism and delicacy, or we are permitting nervous activity in our mouth. But most often the reason will be found in our breathing being not from the diaphragm, or our not centering ourselves in its sound. Striving meticulously to maintain these conventions, in spite of the turmoil our daily lives may be subjected to at the time, and striving, as well, to pass the whole period with a mini-mum of surrenders to needs to scratch or to shift our body's mem-bers, make for steady progress over the months, over the years. Indeed this striving for perfection in every detail--in posture and in centering in our breathing--becomes the daily bread and but-ter of Zen meditation. Even the pain we will feel in our legs after thirty or so min-utes of continuous meditation can be turned to our advantage. As this pain grows, we seek to enter it, to center within it, and, as it were, to find in it a certain rest. Thus our concentration upon our breathing will become more complete and more central, and foreign thoughts will be more completely excluded. The above conventions are, curiously, the essentials of Zen as it has developed over the past millefinium. Being in essence non-verbal, nonconceptual, and nonimaginative, Zen does not lend itself to being systematized. To those practicing Zen, it is the experience that matters, whereas the conflicting ways one tries to describe or analyze this experience are to them secondary at best. But for us Westerners, who look for reasons to be persuaded, let us ask what we are doing when we do Zen, and why. Simply stated, following these conventions meticulously permits us a Zen does not lend itself to being systematized. j~ldy-August 1993 511 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation maximum control of both our physical and mental activities, and from this we are able to suspend them partially. Thus, during meditation, the Zen position encompasses and brings under con-trol in appropriate ways every member and organ of our body-- even our heart--which, we will find, will beat slower as we descend deeper into the centering. While consciously listening to the sound of our breathing itself, we can make it more regular, more from the diaphragm, and it will further become the key to controlling and emptying the activities of our mind: memory, intelligence, will, and imagination, including especially emotions. Thus, in doing Zen we strive to make each session of medi-tation both as dynamic and as empty as possible. As far as I know there is no better way than this to disengage our physical and mental powers over an extended period of time while still con-tinuing awake and alert. Anyone attempting to observe self-imposed silence and recollection during a conventional retreat knows how recalcitrant our bodies and our minds are to this kind of discipline. Not even in sleep itself, which we now know is filled with both physical and mental .activity, is there such a diminish-ment of these as there is in Zen meditation. This partial suspension of our bodily and mental activities for a set period of time daily is the objective of Zen, and from this derive its singular benefits. As we strive for this disengage-ment, and achieve it in a growing degree, we are actually induc-ing our physical and mental powers into a daily, deep repose. Not only are each member of our bodies, but also the thoughts of our hearts, put to rest during our meditation: our conflicting values competing for dominance; our desires, inordinate or not; our ambitions and passionate longings; and our memories, both joy-ful and painful, with ruminations of past grievances. Thus we turn over, to our own mysterious powers of healing within us, our bodies, minds, and hearts; and from this daily repose and renewing of the whole person, a peace is given. We speak, of course, of daily meditation-Z-not over weeks, but over months, over years. If we do Zen faithfully, we will become aware of certain gifts that mysteriously enter our lives. We are surprised by new insights that fall out of nowhere into our minds, perhaps not during the time of meditation, but at other times dur-ing the day or night. We acquire a deeper understanding of our own best values, of how to bring to bear our nobler motivations. We acquire a deeper understanding of our own weaknesses, and we 512 Review for Religious see ways which perhaps we did not see before to put to rest inor-dinate desires. We become less afflicted by painful images of griefs or disappointments; and we are less obsessed by regrets, by per-sonal defeats and shames. Even memories of hurts from deep in our childhood, of which we are perhaps only barely aware but which still send poisonous tentacles up into our present relationships, can be uncovered and healed. We are mystified by how our own recuperative powers can now work within us. Just as, for exam-ple, when one morning we awake and realize happily that at last we are he~iled of a drawn-out bout with the flu, so in practicing Zen we might one day realize that now--but not before--we are able to turn with sincere affection toward a friend who has deeply hurt us. In short, what we experience in ourselves is a self-rehabilitat-ing human being, perhaps with long-immobilized personal gifts now renewed. From this, then, our own creative energies can emerge unencumbered, with a new freedom. This healing will often spread to others around us in our family, in our community and work place, even when they are not aware we meditate. As described thus far, traditional Zen is not intrinsically a religious action; it is, thus, neither theistic nor atheistic. Hence the curious smiles coming from Zen masters when one asks if, as practitioners of Zen, they believe in God. Somewhere further on in this direction lies the experience of enlightenment. Zen masters describe enlightenment as a percep-tion totally beyond reason, beyond imagining; intuitive, yet at the core of our life itself. All of Zen teaching, they add, is but an effort to take the disciple beyond concepts and images that stand for reality, and put him or her in intimate contact with that real-ity itself. It is in vain, they maintain, to pursue intellectually this stage, since all ratiocination on this point is useless, futile, and confusing. Thomas Merton calls this "the Zen fact" and com, pares it to an alarm clock. When it goes off, the sleeper 1) does not hear and just keeps on sleeping; or 2) making a misguided response, in effect turns the alarm off, permitting him to go back to sleep; or 3) he jumps out of bed with a shout of astonishment that it is so late. Zen is the alarm clock, it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It teaches nothing. It points. Merton continues: "But we in the West, in ego-centered practicality and ¯ . . manipulation of everything, always pass from one thing to another, from cause to effect, from the first to the next to the last and then back to the first. Everything always points to something 3~dy-August 1993 513 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation else and hence we never stop anywhere because we cannot; as soon as we pause, the escalator reaches the end of the ride and we have to get off and find another one. Nothing is allowed just to be and to mean itself; everything has to signify something else. Zen is designed to frustrate the mind thinking in such terms. 'The Zen fact,' whatever it may be, always lands across our road like a fallen tree beyond which we cannot pass. Nor are such 'facts' lacking in Christianity--the Cross for example . . . which gives Christians a radically new consciousness." The way some Zen masters describe enlightenment, as an experience of the unity of all being, reflects the monistic, cos-motheistic, philosophical climate of Zen's origins; and it can be disconcerting to a Christian. Yet, if one takes seriously one of the central teachings of Zen itself~namely, that it is the experience and not the concept of it that matters--then one may judge pan-theistic doctrine as the above to be not central to Zen. Indeed such might be for us the "misguidance" that prompts us to turn off the alarm clock, to go back to sleep and miss the experience. The "fact" of Zen is simply the experience that puts us in touch with this ultimate personal reality itself, and that, I believe, must at last come down to be our own individual living soul--the con-crete reality, not a concept of it. We cannot think our way to our soul's living presence, or analyze or visualize it; but in doing Zen we are brought to the experience .of the soul's availing itself of space to renew itself, and then of its mysterious healing powers in renewing our body, mind, and heart. Being in Zen an apprentice of only some twenty-five years, a full-blown experience of enlightenment, with 'its sudden flash of intuition, is still unknown to me. Nor do I seek it as such; as Christian, I try to keep my heart open to whatever grace the Lord sends and to whatever form he wants it to take. But before we dismiss Zen and turn off the alarm clock, I suggest we take seriously stated opinions of respected specialists, not only of such as Thomas Merton or Dom Aelred Graham, but also of Dr. John C. H, Wu, an eminent jurist and diplomat, a Chinese convert to Catholicism, and a scholar, who is able to write of Zen not from hearsay or study alone, but from within. He is not afraid to write that he brought Zen and Confucianism with him into Christianity. Looking further back, I have been assured by Carmelites who are specialists in both their tradition of con-templation and in Christian Zen that these two traditions are 514 Review for Religious essentially the same: what Teresa of Avila, in her own inimitable way, and what John of the Cross--and what Meister Eckhart 200 years before them--practiced, perhaps unknown to them, was essentially Christian Zen. But what is Christian Zen, which we will now call centering prayer, and how is it prayer if traditional Zen is not? Will an attempt to use Zen in prayer, contrary to what Zen masters main-rain-- that one cannot accommodate true Zen to any ulterior pur-pose- render it ineffectual? To answer, let me offer an analogy. Consider a ballet apprentice who works daily on her technique. She may give little thought to what ballet grammar--the body language she is learning--might be saying or to whom; she metic-ulously strives only to perfect every move, every step of it. For the present, the immediate benefits of her efforts--pride in pleasing a respected teacher, satisfaction in mastering an art--are suffi-cient reasons for striving for self-discipline; and she grows daily in poise and beauty. But one day a certain impresario discovers her and offers her a part in a new production. Now she has two things she lacked before: a role, a dramatispersona to live within, and an envisioned audience. These give form and finality to her efforts. Just as this ballerina can adapt her previously acquired skills to this new orientation, so also, as many Christian contemplatives have found, the skills and the strengths of traditional Zen, with little change in its dynamics, can be fitted into the larger synthesis of Christian prayer. Neither our ballerina above, nor a person doing Zen medi-tations daily, acts without a certain basic desire, or even a pas-sion, which drives their actions, enabling them to keep a daily commitment. One must first wish to do what is necessary to become, to be--whether in ballet, in Zen, or in Christian prayer. Satisfaction found therein will, in turn, sustain and nourish the motivation. When the prophet Samuel was a small boy sleeping in the temple, he was awakened repeatedly by a voice calling, "Samuel, Samuel!" Each time he got up and went to his master, the elderly priest Eli, and asked what he wanted. Each time Eli replied, "I didn't call, my son; go and lie down again." Again Samuel heard the voice calling, and again he went to the old priest. But this time Eli, perceiving it was thd Lord calling, instructed him, "The next time he calls, you must respond, 'Speak, Lord, for your ser-vant is listening.'" Whether that night Samuel really heard the 3~uly-August 1993 515 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation voice of God, or whether he heard only, as he had many times before, the wind blowing through the porticos of the temple, his listening and then giving response is the same. It is the reality from which the call came that makes the difference between an obedient child and the prophet-to-be. We must listen continu-ously to the voice of the Lord who speaks to us when and how he chooses. If we find traditional Zen apt for putting us in contact with the healing and peace-giving powers of our human spirit within, how much more will we find centering prayer apt for opening our beings to the Spirit of God within us, to surrendering ourselves to this Healer, this Comforter? It will be this Spirit's voice we listen for within the sound of our breathing, as she leads us into that silence within, where, using utterances beyond human words, with ineffable groaning, she cries, "Abba, Father!" Far from taking from Zen its dignity, thi~ carries it to its fulfillment. What a grace it is that Christian contemplatives discovered Zen and were able to enrich Christian asdeticism with it. The Christ-centered dynamics of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, especially when renewed yearly, give peace and build motivations to service, but they were not meant to be used daily over a long period of time when they can become exhausting. Centering prayer, on the other hand, not in contrast to the Exercises but ancillary to them, offers spiritual repose. Many of Ignatius's instructions can be applied with profit to Zen.medita-tion: making preparation before meditation by spiritual reading and acts of self-denial; cultivating honesty and sincerity in eval-uating our efforts at praying; making from time to time reviews of moments of joy or of sadness; and, with the retreat master's help, using carefully Ignatius's instructions on the discernment of spirits. In sessions of centering prayer, unlike in other forms of med-itation, one does not pray the words of any pious text, nor even of Holy Scripture. Words, whether we want them to or not, will bloom into images, and images invite concepts which multiply, and thus we are on the way to taking our bodies and minds out of that total surrender to the Spirit, the true mode of centering prayer. Rather, we should see each session of this prayer as that time when the Bridegroom is present before us, looking into our eyes, speaking into our hearts, so we put aside during this qual-ity time his love-letters from times past, no matter how treasured 516 Review for Religious they are. With no more than a bow of adoration and a word to greet him by name, such as, "Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner," we surrender ourselves with total passivity to his Spirit within us, who will shape our minds and hearts according to his holy will. In this action of the Spirit, one is reminded of a great, silent, mov-ing body of water, imperceptibly and with ease, carrying all obstacles before it. We will look forward to this daily prayer as the best moment of our day, and find in it an anchor for the rest of our lives. Let me mention now one special blessing I have received through centering prayer. When I was a very small child, I once heard my older brothers, one six, the other seven years old, talking about how hell is "for ever and ever--for eternity, which never, ever ends." My mind became beset with fearful images of this eternity, like "the void of infin-ity" that so terrified Pascal. These were most acute when I was ill, which I often was, with high fever, and with accompanying nightmares. During these I often dreamed I was looking up and saw the ceiling above me (and all reality with it) recede up and up and up, for ever and ever. My sight was forced to go with it, on and on, and I could never, ever make it stop; and that was eternity. And I felt desperately alone and forsaken. I could not turn off the nightmare, until my screams brought my father or mother who would awake me and comfort me. This terror remained with me even into later life. When I discovered Zen meditation, which then became for me centering prayer, I took up the custom, after meditating and during the brief prickly feeling as my legs recovered circulation, of lying back on the rug and looking straight up at the ceiling, never forgetting that this was the way I had so fearfully felt I was look-ing into the face of eternity. But over the years, gradually, imper-ceptibly, the terror departed. In its place has grown a trust in God's mercy and, even, flashes--ever so brief and fleeting--of joy in looking forward to my death, which now is approaching apace. These graces I consider among the most precious of my life. Remembering how the ancients strove to get the gods' atten-tion, we know we have already the Father's attention in his son, Jesus, who taught us to pray to his father by offering, not per- We must listen continuously to the voice of the Lord who speaks to us when and how he chooses. 3~ly-Aug'ust 1993 517 McCown ¯ Christian Zen-cum-Ignatian Meditation ishable gifts of animals slaughtered or wine or grain poured out, but one infinitely more desirable: our total selves. This same Jesus promised, moreover, "whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you." Jesus must have meant precisely that, unless we ask for something that is not good for us, then he will give us something else--something far better for us. Centering prayer, as an ancilla to the Spiritual Exercises, more than any other prayer method I know, enables us to put ourselves into this total trust-ing frame of mind, not stating what we think we want, or need, or when, but silently taking Jesus at his word and waiting. The Father, who knows our needs far better than we do, will respond; and why wouldn't he, since Jesus said he would? Night Prayer The saints have left for the day, their stained-glass coves Are dark. The night, that deep iconoclast, Obscures the panes with his breath, as a prayer revolves Inside me, calling to the blackened east. I close my eyes and linger there, in the glow Of a bleak and fallen image of the outcast world, And wander through remembered brambles that grow Where squandered immortalities should. When young I crossed an ocean. Nearing land Candescent seeds arose from the water's rim As if sown in the sky by a hopeful, graceful hand To mingle with a tide of stars, to bloom unseen. From the altar candles' final gasp of light Two tendrils of smoke vanish into night. Kevin McCaffrey OP 518 Revie~v for Religious MARY CORONA God's Human Face Revealed: A Retreat in Wales Iyhad been living and working in Amman, Jordan, for eight ears when in 1989 I began reading The Journeying Self, by Diarmuid McGann. Becoming deeply involved with it, I came across these words: "The journey of faith begins at the Lord's invitation. He finds us in our places of marginal existence, where we hunger for liberation." I did not go further than that for sev-eral months, but those lines I read over and over again. I could wrest no personal meaning from them, and yet somehow they riveted me. At the same time I was picking my way through a book by Karl Rahner. Being no scholar, "picking" is how I cope with Rahner, and yet I am hugely attracted by him. Of the many sentences I jotted down knowing that I would return to them, here are a few: In contemplation the pray-er is intent on hearing an utter-ance of God never given before . We need the courage to believe that God will say some-thing permanent. It will happen when God is ready. God places me in complete freedom. He deals with me leaving intact my autonomy and self-direction. God is Love and in the face of that--I decide. There were many more, and while I went about my life in community and my teaching duties, these thoughts floated in and out of my mind whenever my interior screen was empty, setting up such a longing that I knew I would need to respond sooner or later. Mary Corona FMDM lives at 6, St. Anthony's Road; Forest Gate; London E7 9QA; England. .~uly-Auguxt 1993 519 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed Remote PreparationmI Go to Anjara The time to plan my annual retreat came round. I thought of Jerusalem, where I had made retreats before, but I had little heart for going there because of the heavy military presence at the time. Though Jordan itself has no retreat facilities, I knew that Father Joseph Na'maat, a diocesan priest in the north of Jordan, had spare rooms in a separate building which anyone was welcome to use on a self-catering basis. He said if I came during July I would have the entire building to myself. With typical Jordanian courtesy he also told me that his house and his table would be mine anytime I felt lonely. Josephine, his housekeeper, would, he assured me, keep an eye on things and make sure I was all right. The fee was so small it was a joke. So eight days on my own loomed. How would I work it out? I went along the shelves of our library and found Rahner's Eight Day Retreat and a paperback copy of the Ignatian Exercises. From my room I picked up my Bible and missal and that was all. I think the journey of faith McGann discusses began for me that day. I felt quite naked going off with what seemed so little in the way of resources. Anjara is a village in the northern Jordanian countryside. Feeling at home in the Arab world and having enough Arabic to do my own shopping, talk with people, and get by generally, I had no fears along those lines. On my arrival I was given a warm welcome by Father Joseph and the redoubtable Josephine. Then, after being shown "my" building and handed the keys, I heard the oft-repeated words "If it gets too lonely, you know where we are!" That first evening I worked out a program for the eight days, allotting time for the breviary, rosary, and Scripture reading. I then marked out three separate hours daily for prayer, leaving time for rest and recreation which, during the eight days, would take the form of walks, sitting on the roof in the sun absorbing the view, and wandering in my host's extensive orchard followed by his floppy old dog. Knowing nothing previously about the Exercises, I soon aban-doned the paperback because it made no sense to me.I stuck to the Bible and the missal and continued to read over the sentences from McGann and Rahner which had so affected me. For the full eight days I spoke to no one, except the dog. I waved to Father Joseph each morning after Mass and that was the excitement over 520 Review for Religious for the day. Through the grace of God, I remained faithful to all to which I had committed myself. On my final evening Josephine came to bring me over to sup-per and, like the hedgerow and byways folk of the gospel, I was compelled to attend. If you have never experienced an Arab sup-per or indeed Arab hospitality, you have missed one of life's love-lier moments. We sat on the verandah eating, talking, and--I must admit--drinking slightly too much of Father Joseph's homemade wine. The sun slowly sank behind the brown hills. Lamps were lit, creating a soft pool of light in the velvet darkness, and the night insects began their con-cert. We sat on. Eventually, however, and with real reluctance I rose, to a duet from Father Joseph and Josephine of "So soon?" I went to bed that night heavy with good food and wine and quite drunk--no, not from wine, but from the heady smell of honeysuckle and jasmine coupled with the heart-swell that comes from having spent a long summer evening with friends. The following day I returned to Amman knowing that I must do the long retreat. This is where the invitation mentioned by McGann and previously so dimly perceived was pointing. What a Franciscan was doing being so convinced that a Jesuit approach to life and prayer was the right one, I cannot say. But convinced I was. I waved to Father Joseph each morning after Mass and that was the excitement over for the day. To Wales I set about obtaining permissions for the following year and began to look for a place. Almost everyone I spoke to suggested looking for a Jesuit-run center, saying this w6uld be right for what I had in mind. But I prefer retreat houses run by women: they are cozier, and I like my creature comforts. After a few blanks I got a positive answer from a small guest-cum-retreat house, Coleg y Groes, in North Wales. Yes, they could take me. Yes, one of them could direct me. Yes, they were in the heart of the coun-try, and to all my other questions yes . . . yes . . . yes. I booked, hesitant to share with some of my more conservative friends that all was not as they might expect. I would be alone without the support of a group; I would be directed by a deacon, not a priest; 3~uly-Aug~tst 199.t 521 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed worse still, an Anglican deacon; worse again, a woman Anglican deacon! What would Ignatius have said? In August 1990 I returned to England, and in July 1991 I traveled to Wales. Arriving in time for supper, I found the small 18th-century house nestled behind the Anglican parish church in the village of Corwen. My room was very nice, with the promise of quiet. My quick eye noticed the electric kettle, tea bags, and coffee. It all augured well. I began to get the sinking feeling that comes from having made a big decision and then eeing the signs going wrong. I Meet My Directress Margaret, who was to direct me, suggested I join the other guests for supper that first evening; after that I would dine alone. Supper was served in a delightful low-beamed room with a huge fireplace cut from Welsh stone. Flowers were in the deeply set window alcoves, and the whole place exuded security and good living. I began, however, to get the sinking feeling that comes from having made a big decision and then seeing the signs going wrong. To my Roman mind the conversation became so Anglican, cen-tered on the ordination of women. Most of the women present, and indeed Margaret her-self, were ordained deacons. It was the last thing I wanted to get involved in. Intermingled with that were fairly long dis-sertations on the three resident cats. I drained my coffee cup as I tried to quell the rising panic within me. Relief came when Margaret suggested we go to my room for a first talk. In five minutes my fears evaporated. I knew instinctively that in her I was on to a winner. That night I slept well, waking totally refreshed. I made coffee, and one glance at the Welsh weather put me into warm trousers and a thick sweater. In the still sleeping village I found the small Catholic church. Inside, in a back pew, was a very still figure. I knelt down near the door, ready to escape if this man were not the sort I ought to seek out for company. After some minutes he looked up and said "Welcome." This was Father Joseph (I seemed destined to be mixed up with Josephs and 522 Revie'w for Religious Josephines). In answer to my question he said that so seldom did anyone come for daily Mass that we could arrange it any time suited to the two of us. Father became a true friend to me during my thirty days. He watched over me with such care and was always available for counsel or confession. That first morning he arranged for me to have a key to the church so that I could come and go at will. He knew Margaret and felt I was safe in her hands. The Thirty Days Begin And so the routine for the thirty days began. Margaret sug-gested that for the first three days I just browse over my own favorite passages of Scripture, go for walks, and take on an atmo-sphere of quiet. That first morning I took my Bible and went out. I sat overlooking a sweeping green valley and read slowly through some of my favorites: "Widen the spaces of your tent." (Is 55:2); "Behold the Bridegroom is coming." (Mt 25:7); "May He give you the power., to grow strong . " (Ep 3:16-21). And through it all I wondered just what I was doing, alone in Wales, on the threshold of this experience. Those first three days went in very gently. Sleep, walks, quiet reading, and three one-hour prayer periods a day. The kettle, tea, and coffee played their part. On the fourth day we started in earnest into the pattern of the retreat. We moved into four one hour periods of prayer a day. Each "day" would begin at 5 p.m. The four "weeks" were to be flexible as regards length. Margaret spent considerable time giving me the background to the Exercises. As she spoke, words from Robert Gleeson's intro-duction to Anthony Mottola's translation of the Exercises came back to me: "Ignatius intended to stay in Manresa for a few days. These days stretched into ten months with results that are still reverberating around the world." Yes, I thought, even to Corwen. Something of Margaret's own love for Ignatius overflowed into me. Here was no mere competent guide, but rather one who was imbued with the spirit of Ignatius. I felt very secure, but real-ized Margaret was no soft touch as she explained the conditions: no reading, other than that prescribed; no music, news, corre-spondence, conversation, and so forth. She spoke of the neces-sity of being utterly faithful to the full one-hour prayer periods, and she warned me off interior conversation which could easily become the little foxes destroying the vineyard. When she had July-Auffust 1993 523 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed finished, my snug feeling of security had drastically slipped, to he replaced by a sense of vulnerable nakedness. Thus stripped I entered the first "week" of the retreat. The First Week (Seven Days) Sin, in its hideousness, was the focus of this first week. Powerful meditations on words previously heard but never fully absorbed came back to influence my prayer. The First Principle and Foundation offered at the beginning of this week presented such a challenge thai it almost unseated me. Could I, in complete sincerity, make such a prayer? Part of my background reading said, "This law which I enjoin on you this day is not beyond your strength" (Dr 30:11-14). These words stood, like a kind mother, beside the demands of the First Principle and Foundation, urging me to compliance. Yet I hesitated. I moved on into the sin of Adam and Eve; the Angels; the Prodigal Son--all meditated on against a background of Philippians 2:1-11, Baruch 1:13-22 and 63, and Ephesians 1:13- 14 and all deepening in me an appreciation of the heinousness of sin. Karl Rahner says (I quote from memory), "I need to see sin, not so much as an offence against God, but rather as a rebuff against Jesus personally," and "I see him wasting there on the cross--for us--and ~eeing him in such plight, I make my deci-sion." It is difficult to take a detached view of sin with words like that running round one's mind. As the first week was coming to a close, the next commit-ment point was drawing near, the Kingdom meditation with its inbuilt self-offering; and yet I had still not made the First Principle and Foundation my own. I felt discouraged. If I could not per-sonalize the sentiments of the First Principle and Foundation, was there any point in going on? I told Margaret of my difficulty. She suggested rewriting it in language I would feel at home with. And that proved to be the answer. It was the stiff, masculine lan-guage that was getting in the way. After rewriting it in my own words, I could accept what Deuteronomy had been trying to tell me. On the seventh evening Margaret said that tomorrow would be a repose day. She explained what this meant: one prayer period this evening, a good night's sleep, then, after morning Mass, out for the day; on my return in the evening, one more prayer period 524 Review for Religious before she came to see me. She gave me a few ideas as to where I could go. I chose Llangollen: it seemed a place where I could continue to be quiet while doing something different. The Kingdom Meditation-- and Some Sort of Disturbance The meditation given me for the eve of the repose day was the Kingdom, so after supper, and with my inner eye on my day out, I settled down to this period of reflective prayer--and it all went wrong. The whole hour tumbled around in a confusion of despon-dency and misery. I saw myself as a hypocrite and a fool and felt sick with disappointment and embar-rassment. I was not being called as Rahner sug-gested; this was all totally beyond me regardless of Deuteronomy; there was nothing here for me. Some of us are destined for mediocrity; I was obviously one such. Illusion would get me nowhere, and get-ting nowhere was costing a lot of money and time. Leaving my room, I went out into the garden. The moon was riding high, swiftly brushing aside the small clouds which, busy about their own affairs, were trotting along in the opposite direc-tion. Shadows flitted about the garden, and some-where nearby an owl hooted. Further away a dog was barking, but it soon trailed off into a lazy yawn--his heart just was not in it. And here, under the canopy of deep sky, my thought slowly came together and clarified; I began to see what was going on. I returned to my room and found my crucifix and holding it firmly commanded, in the name and power of the crucified and resur-rected Christ, everything not of God to depart. I repeated the command twice. The result: "The storm abated and there was a great calm" (Mk 4:39). Without further ado I made my Kingdom offering as given by Ignatius, went to bed, and slept. Some of US are destined for mediocrity; I was obviously one such. The First Repose Day A glorious day of sunshine and Welsh mountains. A ride on the Railway Enthusiasts' railway from Llangollen along the moun-tainside to Deeside Halt; a leisurely walk by the canal where later I sat and ate my sandwiches while watching boys--up to the age ~uly-Aug'ust 1993 525 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed of forty plus--playing with their boats. Full of fresh air and peace, I returned to Corwen on an early evening bus. Each turn in the road presented a different scene to delight the heart, and I found myself silently singing the word of St. Francis's Canticle of the Sun: "All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made., and first for Brother Sun. how beautiful he is! How radiant!., and Brothers Wind and Air. and all the weathers' moods . " It seemed so appropriate. (Something I discovered during these thirty days was that Francis and Ignatius have much in common.) After supper Margaret came, and I told her of the previous night's upset. She said it was to be expected and then referred me to the description of discernment of spirits in the Exercises, where it was all clearly set out. The important thing, she said, was that I had made the Kingdom offering. Much was gained and nothing at all lost. The Second Week (Eleven Days) And so into the second week. I traveled far in that week. Journeying with Jesus through his life in the given meditations, I became aware of another journey I was making, toward a deeper commitment--and yet my previous fear of.fidl commitment reared up again and again. The demand was too clear, too total, too final. There was no space for maneuver. I stalled badly and frequently during that week. Margaret advised me to use the First Principle and Foundation offering and also the Kingdom offering as ways into the given meditations. She also gave me some salutary advice: "Don't try to give today what properly belongs to tomorrow." "The grace for the future is not yet being offered." I remembered similar advice given me in the past. As a young sister I had made a group retreat under a Carmelite friar. In one of his talks he said that many people fail to advance because they quail before what they fear may be asked of them if they say an unreserved yes. They forget that God is totally to be trusted and would never take unfair advantage of a generous yes. A superior, at a later date, took up the same theme with me (it seems I have had this lack-of-trust problem forever!) and said: "The Lord is total courtesy. He doesn't grab. He looks at what you have and asks 'May I take this?' If you refuse, he will not insist--for the time being any-way." Urn--for the time being. 526 Review for Religious The Two Standards and the Three Classes of Men These meditations caused the same problem that the First Principle and Foundation and the Kingdom had caused; as I saw it, all called for total and irrevocable commitment. Again I had to remind myself of what Margaret had said and what the Carmelite friar and my own superior had said when I was just knee high in my religious life. I spent long hours beg-ging the grace of trust. I tried to reset my focus and not waste precious time looking at abstract problems and missing the grace of reality. I turned to St. Francis at this stage and found his presence a great comfort. On the twentieth day, after lots of struggle but also tremendous peaks of joy and achievement, Margaret suggested I spend one day drawing the experience of the entire two weeks together and then summarize it in a truth-ful prayer of offering. As I set about doing this, I found it amaz-ing how I could look back along the road I had traveled and see so clearly the efforts, frustrations, joys, hopes, gains, losses, and desires and the loneliness and--running in and out of it all like a flame in dry grass--the'fear. And yet ~omehow it all came together with a marvelous coherence: everything fitted. I could see, with a rare clarity, that God was with me. I had moved. I had definitely moved. I had moved light years from where I had been two weeks previously. For better or for worse, I had moved. The agonizing lack of trust, the fears, the anxieties were all part of this pattern of walking. The Lord had supplied where I had been weak. Together we had made it through these two weeks. He had blessed me beyond all imagining and had accepted my desire as though it were something of substance. I was content. On the twenty-second day, a repose day, I went to Ruthin and presume I had a relaxed day, but I have no memory of it. Without the brief note in my journal saying I had been there, I would not know I had. What that says about me I have no idea. I could see, with a rare clarity, that God was with me. I had moved. The Third Week (Five Days) Margaret moved me into the last earthly days of Jesus. Over the next days, spread over five one-hour meditation periods, which j~¢O-dugust1993 527 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed included a midnight hour, I contemplated the Lord at the Last Supper, Gethsemane, and Calvary and right through to the postresurrecfion period. Having visited the Holy Land many times while living in the Middle East, I found it very easy to situate these meditations, but somehow the depths eluded me. On the twenty-fourth day Margaret suggested that I spend four of my five one-hour prayer periods reading through the four different accounts of the Passion. Anyone who has done this in one day will know it does not come easy. Physically it is draining to read something of that nature and length with concentration. By the evening it had quite taken me over, and after supper I went for a long walk, but somehow I could not shake off (was I even meant to?) the felt heaviness of trudging the Calvary road four times. Another Disturbance It is not easy to stay with someone in agony while knowing you are part responsible. During the night I woke in the grip of a strange tension, feel-ing physically cold and frightened. I have never been especially brave, but I am not given to irrational fear, and this sense of men-ace was wholly irrational; yet it made me feel that, if I did not give up this retreat, it would break me. For several minutes I did nothing beyond switching on the light and allowing the fear to swamp me. Fear of what? I could put no name to it. Then I remembered Margaret's words, based on those of Ignatius: "It is common for the evil spirit to cause sad-ness, fear, discouragement, and acute anxiety and to place all sorts of obstacles in the way of right reason. The good spirit gives courage, strength, inspiration, light, and peace so that right reason will prevail. Learn to distin-guish." Once again I reached for my crucifix and holy water and followed my previous routine. All returned to normal, but it took some time. The twenty-sixth day I spent quietly looking back over the entire Passion. It proved to be a very hard day. It is not easy to stay with someone in agony while knowing you are part responsible. On the twenty-seventh day, another repose day, I went to Lake Bala. It was a beautiful day, but too hot. Tourists and pic-nickers were all over the place--not helpful. I found the Catholic 528 Review for Religious church, a small converted stable. It was very peaceful, and I stayed quietly there for some time before boarding the bus for the ride home through heart-lifting scenery. The Fourth Week--Coming to the End I was now coming to the end of this whole experience, and Margaret suggested moving back from five to four periods of prayer, 6mitring the night one. She also brought me a tape recorder and some classical-music tapes. Winning some grand prize could not have brought me more joy. I was ecstatic. On the twenty-eighth day I meditated on John 20:11-18, Mary Magdalen's encounter with Jesus in the garden, with Isaiah 30:18- 26 and 35:1-10 as background. I also used Luke 24:13-35, the Emmaus story, with Psalm 62 as background. I became quite filled with the quiet. Jesus' sufferings were over. His pain was finished. I was able to walk calmly in the garden with Mary Magdalen--you see, I knew the answer to her question. The Emmaus road also was peaceful. Again I had the advantage: I knew who he was. All this was leading me quite naturally into the Contemplation to Attain Divine Love. From the twenty-ninth day onward I used this con-templation for one period each day, the other three periods cov-ering postresurrection Scripture. I continued my daily walks in the serene countryside, which for me became Galilee, where Jesus said he wo~ld meet his friends again and where I myself have walked many times. A Final Disturbance One meditation, on the thirtieth day, was given over to the events that include Jesus cooking breakfast for his hungry disci-ples. As I moved further into the scene, it all changed and became blasphemous; but I did not recognize it as such. My discerning powers were, it seemed, in suspension. During Mass the follow-ing morning I became aware that something had been very wrong with that meditation. I looked back at it and saw immediately the gross irreverence of the scenes which had been presented to my view. I was aghast and marveled that I had not realized at the time what was going on. I went hotfoot to Father Joseph after Mass and poured out my sorry story. He took it all very calmly--as con-fessors are apt to do--and explained how the devil will use every July-August 1993 529 Corona ¯ God's Human Face Revealed possible means to stop a person pursuing a course that has as its aim a closer union with God. Margaret, of course, said the same thing. The experience left me with a profound disgust of the one who works such evil things. The Final Days The thirty-first and final day arrived. I drew together the ele-ments of the four key meditations--the Kingdom, the Two Standards, the Three Classes of Men, the Three Modes of Humility. I then moved them into a prayer of offering that I tried to make utterly truthful and realistic for me. Later that day I had a final few words with Father Joseph and returned the keys of the church. Back at the house I had a last talk with Margaret and my retreat was over. The following day I left Corwen and--via Wrexham, Chester, Crewe, Euston, and Plaistow, changing train or bus at each one--I arrived home in London. Eighteen Months Later Days have built on days, and a year and a half has passed since my long retreat. By now it should have gone the way of all the others. It has not done so. Father Joseph's words during our final talk, "You will never be the same again, this experience has changed you," have stayed with me; I know them to be true. That retreat has changed many things. It has set sin in its right context, one which makes scant distinction between small and big offenses. It has cleared away any number of secondary purposes and under-lined the one purpose for which I was born. It has filled my store-rooms with kindling, that I may not perish when my winter fires burn low. It has increased my recovery rate, so that sin and repen-tance are almost simultaneous. It has brought a staying power I never thought to possess; a strength to stay with prayer even when, apparently, there is nothing in it to stay for. It has brought an acceptance that I am as I am and, as far as performance goes, the future will not be much different; progress will still be wob-bly, with backward steps, with fears and sin. But this acceptance of my situation has brought a new dependence; I know I will make it through to the end if I cling like a limpet to Christ. There is, quite simply, no other way. 530 ' Re~ie~ for Religious The Human Face of God But overriding and underpinning all this is the greatest change of all. I am aware that, through all the contemplations of that month, even those during which I was distracted, irritated, fidgety, or just plain bored, God was working. He was working as one whose work it is to take an old manuscript, mosaic, or fresco and restore it to its original beauty; he was etching and bringing into relief, for me personally, the lines of his own human face. I can no longer think of God without, at the same time, seeing Christ; I see him, in some small measure, as Francis of Assisi saw him in great, in the people, however seemingly insignificant, and in the events, however trivial, that form th~ fabric of my everyday life. This new vision is the greatest grace to accompany me into these, the afterdays. The word "Wales" will never again mean for me just a geo-graphical place, hut rather will set a pause for remembering: remembering that revelation did not end with the Apocalypse; remembering how God revealed his face to me in Wales; remem-bering how something of beauty was planted within me and has, in spite of me, continued to grow. My life has become perma-nently divided into "before Wales" and "after Wales." And it all started way back in Jordan, where I "hungered for liberation" and knew myself "intent on hearing an utterance of God never given before" (in the words of McGann and Rahner) and felt strongly impelled, Franciscan and all that I am, to take up the invitation to an Ignatian experience. That, and so much more, is what my long retreat was all about. Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distri-bution, advertising, or institutional promotion or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will be consid-ered only on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. July-August 1993 531 TAD DUNNE What Trouble Is spiritual life Most of us, at some lull in the cacophony of life, think to ourselves, "I really should be a person who . " And we take some stand on avoiding trouble. Of course, trouble wears many hats. There is the regular trouble of having to learn through our mistakes. There is our unwitting igno-rance of the times when our behavior makes others roll their eyes. Or maybe the trouble is our own doing, like the lies we lay on others and the follow-up work we lay on ourselves just to keep our stories straight. Or like the legacy of emotional trouble callous parents bequeath to their children that continues long after they have died and the children have grown up. The stand we take to avoid trouble is usually rather elemental. We hope a simple strategy can meet every kind of trouble coming our way. Not that we succeed. Indeed, the reason we do not succeed may well be that the way we defined our troubles was a big mistake. This is why, for many of us, our images of God are shaped less by our experience of divine help or by the Scriptures and more by how we conceptualized our getting into trouble in the first place. When people describe their spiritual journeys to me, they usually divide the chapters according to this or that difficulty from which God delivered them, but the difficulties were defined very often by simple earthly sym-bols, not by any measures drawn from revelation. Tad Dunne writes on contemporary spirituality. His address is 2923 Woodslee; Royal Oak, Michigan 48073. 532 Review for Religious We get most of the symbols of our troubles from the drama of everyday life--a vacillating boss, a domineering spouse, hard work with no reward, bad weather, and so on. But where people draw the line on what is unacceptable to them will vary nation to nation, old to young, woman to man, race to race. So, before we assume that our view of trouble is totally objective, we need to look instead at the experiences of trouble common to everyone. Then we can look at what the gospel says about trouble and make comparisons about what we have observed. Our universally common experiences of trouble lie not in the dramatic but in the practical patterns in our experiences--expe-riences like carrying burdens, feeling slowed down, running into roadblocks, taking chances and missing, setting schedules and failing to meet them, planting seeds that produce puny fruit, arranging our surroundings carefully and finding that the sur-roundings have trapped us. Everyone, in any culture, grows up with these practical troubles and looks for ways to overcome them. The Example of Physics For the sake of talking about these analogs of our miseries, it will help to classify them. One simple way follows the example of physics. In physics we expect events to occur either in a natural relationship to other events or just coincidentally. While physicists talk about the naturally related events by using terms like elec-tromagnetism, gravity, or inertia, children simply notice that when A happens, then B usually happens. Behind the merely coinci-dental events lie no laws at all, so physicists talk about probabil-ities and norms while ordinary people talk about taking chances and seizing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Each of these two kinds of expectations, of regularity and of chance, gets frustrated in its own way. Regularity is frustrated when a routine is broken or a law is not followed. Chance is frus-trated when overcontrol eliminates the lucky chance or when exceptions to the rule are somehow ruled out of court. But each kind excludes the other, and so, pressured as we ar.e by this intrin-sic antinomy to Choose only one as our fundamental code for translating experience into meaning, some of us worship a God of Law and others a God of Freedom. The Broken Routine. The God of Law is incarnated in our ear- 3~uly-August 1993 533 Dunne ¯ What Trouble Is God brings salvation by giving laws to maintain order and by raising up saints to serve as our examples. liest teacher of regularity: the sun. It gives us as children a sym-bol of what it means to be faithful, kindly, and dependable. We learn at an early age what our race took eons to formulate in a principle: that bodies in motion keep going and bodies at rest stay where they are. If only people could be that orderly! So we experience the trouble of broken routine. Things are going smoothly and something interrupts. Interruptions and contradictions are our enemies, though we can never fully avoid them. Better calm down and do what God expects and all shall be well. Pity those who live in chaos, who seem never to settle down, who spend their lives searching for they know not what. They could well learn a lesson from nature that life lies in regu-larity and dependability. This elemental experience of day alter-nating with night has a remarkable influence on the loftiest and most religious levels of our psyches. We imagine the kingdom of God as a smooth meshing of generation upon generation of peo-ple, as if the oiling of divine grace was meant to eliminate all fric-tion between people. God is an implacable and consistent Trinity, a perfect community, an example which every human family and nation is called to imitate as far as possible. God brings salvation by giving laws to maintain order and by raising up saints to serve as our examples. Life is essentially a struggle of law and order over anarchy and extreme independence. OvercontroL The second kind of trouble is practically the oppo-site of the first. As the first kind loves controls, the second hates them. At some time in our growing up, when we discover that we have taken too many of our parents' controls to heart, we start to wriggle free of them. We take a chance. When governments lay such heavy controls on people that hardly anything is left to chance, we condemn them. The worst kind of control, of course, is self-imposed--when I make more resolutions than I could pos-sibly keep or when I forbid myself to ever try anything daring or maturing. Trouble is anything that impedes probabilities. These elemental experiences tell us that God is a God of free-dom, calling us to a radical trust in all we do. The voice is per- 534 Review for Religious vasive: Let go of trying to control everything and everyone; you are ruining yourself in the process and will never succeed in any case. God will never lay a load on your back without also giving you a strohg back with which to carry it. "Look at the birds of the air . " Human planning is largely a waste of time. The goals of our endeavors so seldom match their outcomes that it is a won-der we keep on setting goals. God will intervene at the oppor-tune moment; divinity cannot be pinned down to laws and predictability. And so on. The Example of Biology Notice how these first two kinds of order and trouble are dis-tinguished by whether or not individual events are either part of some repeating cycle or the result of mere chance. We can also look at sequences of events or stages in something undergoing development. Again, to keep this simple, we can distinguish two fundamental kinds of development, those driven by a single law or principle and those driven by forces only coincidentally related to each other. The single-law kind can be illustrated by seeds. Tulip bulbs develop tulips, not dandelions, and, within quite narrow ranges of development, tulips everywhere look alike. Multiple-principle development can be represented by human relation-ships. People's values differ from each other across the face of the earth far more than tulips do. The reason is that the genetic coding in the fertilized egg that each of us once was does not confine the range of our potential development anywhere near as tightly as the tulip's coding does. Growing up, we continually "recode" ourselves by our choices. By interacting with others we develop in dialectical fashion, making something unrepeatable of both ourselves and our surroundings. If both the genetic (single-law) and the dialectical (multiple-principle) kinds of development are elemental,-then we can expect them to precondition what we mean by trouble and, by exten-sion, what we mean by God's saving grace. Again, the dichotomy between these two kinds of development tends to force a reli-gious choice between a God of Success and what I shall call a God of Exchange. The Weeds among the Wheat. One kind of trouble is caused by bad beginnings. It concerns anyone anxious to make continual July-August 1993 535 Dunne ¯ 14/-bat Trouble Is growth and progress, anyone who worships the God of Success. Long before people study genetics in biology, they experience built-in potentials and patterns of growth everywhere, in flow-ers, birds, and house pets. But some elements interfere with nat-ural fulfillment and choke the natural process of growth. These elements may be people, who themselves have been affected by their own upbringing. The notion here is that people are basi-cally good and that, given rich soil and hearty fertilizer, every person and every project will turn out a success. The worst form of this kind of trouble shows when a person feels predestined to fail because of some original and irreparable personality flaw. If we develop sheerly by genetic laws, then it would follow that God calls us to be creators, to overcome obstacles, and to keep a positive spirit. There is no doubt that the kingdom will come; the inner workings of grace in history guarantee it, sure as an acorn will become an oak. Our job is simply to help it come more quickly. It will be a kingdom of exciting new discoveries, increasing cooperation among all people, and continual improve-ment in people's health and happiness. The Good News is simply the announcement that Jesus loves you and that you have the germ of grace within you. Sin is ignorance, not malice. Evangelization is chiefly education; moral reform will follow auto-matically. In the meantime, we are called to grow in holiness, to grow closer and closer to God like a blossoming flower. Hoarding Energy. This fourth kind of trouble is also about growth, but the pattern of development is determined by a series of events related to each other only by chance. We notice how living things are determined not only by origins or seeds but through a continual exchange with their environments. Here biol-ogy studies how living things give and take within their ,sur-roundings. Flowers give honey to bees while the bees ensure progeny for the flowers. While genetic coding strictly limits any one bee's behavior, the location of beehives and the proliferation of flowers are interdependent. Should a storm wipe out one, the other soon disappears. So nature's contentious personality gives us a symbol of a God of give-and-take, a historical God, an engaged God. Farmers plow their fields and their fields return corn. The better the plowing the better the corn and the better the farmer. The quality of the exchange has a dialectical effect on both sides. 536 Revieva for Religious The same goes for the growth and decay of our friendships. Eventually the friendship is either good for both of us or good for neither one. Trouble comes when things cost more than they return. If a boy exasperates his friends by compulsive chatter, he does not feel energized. He wears everyone out, including himself. Then there is the trouble we cause when we take more from the phys-ical environment than we contribute to it, as is evident in oil spills, acid rains, and fluorocarbon-charged spray cans. Whatever the case, there is trouble eithe

Issue 51.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1992. ; for religi.ous Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1992 ¯-VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER 4 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ FAX: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ 5001 Eastern Avenue ¯ P.O. Box 29260 Washington~ D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1992 Review for Religious for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Se~in Sammon FMS Wendy Wright PhD Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1992 ¯ VOLUME 51 ¯ NUMBER 4 contents evangelizing and witnessing ° 486 Church of the Poor Juan Ram6n Moreno sJ reflects on the implications of seeing the poor as central for the identity of the church and religious life. 496 Women Missioners amidst Violence Annmarie Sanders IHM reflects the questions, fears, and chal-lenges facing foreign women missionaries in Peru. 504 School of Terror Roy Bourgeois MM speaks on behalf of the poor as he voices his concern about a particular military training camp called the School of the Americas. inculturating 508 Women Religious and the African Synod M. Gerard Nwagwu offers her thoughts on the evangelization of Africa in an article originally presented as the keynote address at the National Day of Celebration of the Nigerian Conference of Women Religious in January 1992. 519 Rerooting Religious Life in South Africa Jennifer Mary Alt OP reflects on how native African spiritual values might become better integrated into the religious-life vocation. 527 54O 545 living religiously Religious Life and Religion Albert DiIanni SM calls attention to the religious core of a belief in God and of our relationship with God which cannot be reduced to a personal~ social, or ecological morality. Detachment in Our Psychological Age Eileen P. O'Hea CSJ explains detachment as a way of freeing ourselves from our compulsive behaviors and opening ourselves to God's healing. An Ache in My Heart Bernard Seif SMC witnesses to the continuing call and direction of God in bringing forth new forms of dedicated life in the " church. 482 Review Jbr Religious focusing religious life 550 Religious Life in Church Documents Patricia F. Walter OP presents some aspects identifying religious life in conciliar and postconciliar documents of the magisterium. 562 The Ignatian Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph Joan L. Roccasalvo CSJ shows how the Spiritual Exercises per-meate Jean-Pierre M~daille's Maxims of Perfection and so fire an Ignatian spirit for the Sisters of St. Joseph. 575 Envisioning Associate Identity Rose Marie Jasinski CBS reflects on the status of the associate movement in the light of the second national conference held 5-7 May 1991. 581 Musings about Vocations James E. Claffey CM finds vocation ministry a stimulant to a broader understanding of how God breaks into our history. 585 595 600 614 484 625 632 ministering Pastoral Leadership beyond the Managerial (XL*~ Matthias Neuman OSB stresses the role of spiritual leadership in the midst of ministry challenges. Scarcity and Abundance in Parishes Thomas P. Sweetser SJ compares the parish to a desert of scarci-ties, but at the same time a desert beautiful with hidden wells of life. Marian Community and Ministry Patrick Primeaux SM combines data from both the theological and businessomanage.ment disciplines to distinguish a Petrine and a Marian way of ministering and of living community. Three Images of Priesthood Henry J. Charles proposes the images of priest as collaborator, mystagogue, and holy man for a renewed understanding of priesthood. departments Prisms /~ Canonical Counsel: Involuntary Ex~laustration Book Reviews .l~uly-Augu.ct 1992 483 prisms History happens. We human beings can write our history books and, by emphasis and omission and sometimes by romanticizing, make as if we are mas-ters of our history. It may take only some seventy years for the rewriting of the Communist history of Russia or it may take five hundred years for the European discovery of the Americas to be reevaluated. But it happens. We say that Pope John XXIII made history when he called the Second Vatican Council. We are well aware that the church experienced, through the actions of the bishops present at the council, something that has been likened to a second Pentecost. For our own availability to the God of history, we need to return again and again to the happening of that first Pentecost and the subsequent events as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. God's Spirit makes things happen, even when the very persons involved seem so little capable of being the crafters of history. Most recently Pope John Paul II has expressed his own desire to make history by his call for a new evangelization, partic-ularly occasioned by our entering into the third millen-nium. This call to a new evangelization holds the promise of another moment of this second Pentecost that came with Vatican II. It is history happening, in which none of us is the master or control-artist, but every one of us plays an important role--with the Spirit's direction. Evangelization--new evangelization--demands much of us all. A paradigm of evangelization and inculturation captures our attention anew as we reflect upon the events in the Acts of the Apostles. It means that no one can hold himself or herself exempt from the call of this second moment of the second Pentecostqthe call to a new hear- 484 Review for Religious ing of good news. This is not the time for new rules or the impo-sition of old ones--the Judaizers tried that two thousand years ago. It is the time for Cornelius, his wife, and household to invite Peter once again to proclaim the gospel so that new conversion on everyone's part can take place. It is the time for Peter to dream new dreams and hear God telling him that old restrictions do not apply in a new creation moment. One of the deepest meanings of Pentecost lies in the fact that all peoples heard the good news in a way that they could under-stand and respond to. It goes beyond the language barrier to breakthroughs involving customs, heritages, and rituals. In the Pentecost beginnings, Jesus Christ and the gospel message needed no inculturation. In the new evangelization as in the original one recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, it is not Jesus Christ who needs to be inculturated; he is already a confidant of people's hearts. It is his church that must be inculturated by being evan-gelized anew as well as by evangelizing others. The Acts of the Apostles--the story of the first evangelizing time--portrays the exhilarating and somber picture that inculturating a church does not come without cost--a cost which everyone must bear in lis-tening to ~hocking good news, in experiencing a certain amount of turmoil, in suffering the pain of differences expressed vigorously by people who serve or are served. John Paul II has said that "we need an evangelization that is new in its ardor, new in its method, new in its expressions." That ' is what we--always the disciples--must allow to happen to our-selves first: to be evangelized anew in order to be the new evan-gelizers. We need to rethink how to inculturate a church, not a gospel. If the original Jewish and pagan converts to the new Christian faith seemed to share little common religious heritage and ritual and yet, with struggle, came to form the Body of Christ, can we today not recognize the imperative of a new evangelization demanding the same kind of breakthrough for traditionalists, lib-erals, feminists, or whatever modern-day version an appeal to the party of Apollos or Paul takes? A new evangelization brings the excitement of discovery into our own lives and so into our church. Let the Spirit lead. It has happened; it will happen again. David L. Fleming SJ ~uly-Augu~t 1992 485 JUAN RAMON MORENO Church of the Poor evangelizing and witnessing Juan Ram6n Moreno SJ was one of six Jesuits mur-dered along with an employee and her daughter by Salvadoran military forces at the Jesuit residence of the Central American University, San Salvador, on 16 November 1989. He was widely known as a spiritual director, teacher, preacher, and giver of retreats and conferences and was the founder and editor of the spirituality journal Diakonfa. Besides holding other responsibilities, at various times he was novice director for the Jesuits of Central America, local superior, university professor, and president of the Panamanian and Nicaraguan con-ferences of religious. This article was first published in Diakonfa 7 (1978): 17-28 and republished in a collection of Father Moreno's writings, Evangelio y misidn (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1990). The translation is by James R. Brockman SJ with the permission of UCA Editores. The footnotes are the translator's. The term "church of the poor" is meant to express a new awareness of what it is to be church, an awareness that is growing in force among Christians in Latin America. The following thoughts are proposed as a help toward under-standing the foundation and principal traits of this way of viewing the church. Church of the Poor and Vatican II The schema on the church elaborated by the precon-ciliar doctrinal commission brought together the ecclesi-ology traditionally taught in recent centuries, and the 486 Review for Religious that allow one to recognize in Jesus the hoped-for Messiah are that "the blind see and the lame walk., and the good news is proclaimed to the poor" (Mt 11:5), what should be the traits that make recognizable Jesus' church? Church Born from Below Vatican II has allowed us to pass from a church that becomes conscious of itself and is organized and structured fr0m within, from itself, to a church that seeks to understand and structure itselffr0m without, from the world that it has been sent to in order to make God's kingdom grow in that world. Nevertheless, the reality that the world is a divided world had not yet made its full impact on the council. Consequently, the challenges to which it more directly proposes to respond are those of a world seen too much from above, from the angle of the learned and the skilled, from the culture and the perspective of the dominant classes. But at Medellfn2 the Latin American bishops began to express in an inspired and probing manner the conflictive reality of our world. The cry of the impoverished majority of the continent found an echo. The church began to become aware of itself and to organize and structure its life and pastoral action not from an abstract world or from just any part of the real, concrete world, but from below, from the world of the poor, and from there to fashion itself as the true church of Christ. Church of the Poor One must not confuse church of the poor with church3'br the poor. A church for the poo~r would be a church that is constituted in a first step that is logically prior to its encounter with the poor and then, in a second step, seeks out the poor to serve and help them. But the church of the poor is a church that in its very con-stitution has the poor as its center. There is no doubt that the church, as the historical body of Christ, must place itself in the world to transform it and to make present in it the reign of God. It must be incarnated, that is, take a body, become a visible and acting institution. But the problem is, what are the criteria that are to determine its institutional shape? What body will it take? Faithful to the incarnational logic of Jesus, the church must take the body of the poor, incorporat-j~ uly-.4ugust 1992 489 Moreno ¯ Church of the Poor ing the poor, making the poor to be those who make up what is characteristic and determinant of its body, which is structured and takes visible form from the cause and the interests of the poor. Let us take a Gospel passage that graphically illustrates this, which is the particular way of acting of Jesus. I choose the short scene with which Mark begins his third chapter. He describes a Jesus situated within a determined sociocultural-religious con-text. But Jesus is situated in it concretely, and he is situated in a way which is perceived by one of the parties as threatening to its interests--"they wer~ watching him closely" (3:2)--and which provokes a conflict so sharp that "they plotted together to see how to eliminate him" (3:6). What is indicative is the place where Jesus is situated and from which he faces the situation: solidarity with the actual man, the man in his poverty, the man oppressed by his paralyzed hand and forsaken by the institution. He has him step into the middle of the synagogue. And he obliges the others, the representatives of the grand institution, to face up to their own presuppositions: Is it licit or not? What is more important, the institution or the person, maintaining the institution or free-ing a man from what concretely oppresses him? What is the cri-terion to act on? "But they were silent" (3:4). Jesus' reaction is, "Then looking at them with anger . . ." (3:5). Countless times the Gospels speak of Jesus' look--always a loving and compas-sionate look. Now he looks "with anger." At whom? At that group of wise, prudent men who are respectful of the institution. Why? Because they refuse to commit themselves to the man, they refuse to make a decision in regard to a poor person, they refuse to take a stand in a situation that questions their rigid institutional schemes. Jesus says, "Hold out your hand" (3:5). Jesus chooses the poor person, the man in a situation of concrete need. The institution is either at the service of human beings orit does not reflect the true God. The Gospels contain many even more radical expressions about the poor as the fundamental criterion for discerning whether we are following the path to God's kingdom. Perhaps the most awesome and disquieting is the words contained in Matthew 25:31-46: "Come, blessed ones of my Father, inherit the kingdom . . . for I was hungry and you gave me to eat. depart from me, accursed ones., for I was naked and you did no~' clothe me . " There is not much room here for sociological or 490 Review for Religious theological lucubrations about who are the poor that are spoken of and what is the determinant criterion for measuring God's nearness. Crucified Church As we can see in the example of Jesus, taking the side of the poor supposes having the courage to get involved in conflict. The history of the Latin American church since Medellfn confirms what has been true all through its existence: insofar as it empties itself of power and prestige so as to enter the world of the poor and be identified with them and their cause, it has also had to suffer their lot--crucifixion and death--and it has come to under-stand why it cannot follow Jesus without denying itself and car-rying the cross. It is because the immense majority of the poor are not poor simply because of nature, but because of other persons. In reality, the poor are the impoverished. Hence, their mere pres-ence is an accusation, a questioning; it creates conflict. The poor are a cause of division, a division whose theological meaning is apocalyptically described in the eschatological discourse I have mentioned: "He will separate one from the other, as the shep-herd separates the sheep from the goats" (Mt 25:32). Jesus him-self, poor and in solidarity with the poor, appears as "a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34); and when he takes his place actually at the side of the poor, he provokes conflict and repression, and he suffers death. For this reason the church of the poor is the crucified church, the church of the martyrs. It is so insofar as it is a church of the poor. As long as it preaches universal but abstract love, as long as it is a church from above, the world's powerful praise and respect it; they consider it their church. But when it begins to translate love into historical terms, when it begins to take the side of the poor and it plans and organizes its pastoral work with them in mind, then it begins also to be the church that is slandered and persecuted. If we look at this fact in the light of the Beatitudes (see Lk 6:22-23, 26) there is no doubt which one is the church of Jesus. Church in which the Poor are Evangelized The poor are the privileged consignees of the good news of .~ly-Aug'ust 1992 491 Moreno ¯ Church of the Poor salvation. That does not mean they are the exclusive consignees. Partiality is not the same as exclusiveness. Jesus comes to bring sal-vation for all. But he comes to bring it from the poor, and fi'om them he confronts the changes that must come about in the world; he makes specific what it means to be converted, what it means to become brothers and sisters. This is not a matter of mystifying the poor, as if they were the good and the rich were the bad. It is that objectively God's identi-fication with the poor, the defense of their cause, is precisely where it is revealed what God is, a God who is love that saves, love that creates a brotherhood and sisterhood of sons and daughters, love that makes all things new. And so it is from there that salva-tion is offered to all. The Beatitudes proclaim, not the goodness of human beings, but the goodness of the God who identifies with the little ones of the earth. The Acts of the Apostles describes for us a church that under, stood this very well and where for that reason the poor find their place in such a way that they cease to be poor: Among them no one was needy, because all those who pos-sessed land or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale., and distribution was made to all according to their needs (Ac 4:34-35). It is the very gesture of him who "being rich became poor for you in order to enrich you with his poverty (2 Co 8:9). Church in which the Poor Evangelize Us This is another of the traits that characterize the church of the poor. St. John declares: Everyone who loves . . . knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love (1 Jn 4:7-8). But those who from their objective condition teach the church what true love of God, Christian love, consists in are the poor: If someone has material possessions and sees a brother in need and yet closes his heart to him, how can love of God dwell in him? My children, let us love not just with words, with our lips, but with actions and in truth (1 Jn 3:17-18). The poor reveal to us what the demands are of that love which, because it is Christian, seeks efficacy and a real change in the conditions of suffering and injustice of the poor. They makd us discover who God is: the one who takes the part of the orphan, 492 Review for Religious the widow, the stranger, the one who becomes their goeL They make us understand the Jesus who has compassion, who casts out demons, who looks with anger. They reveal to us the demons that must be cast out today, what the sin is that today stirs up the Lord's anger, what it is that today negates brotherhood, that kills our brother or sister. It is from the poor we must learn what grace means, grace that is manifested in powerlessness, that makes possible the impossible, that bursts in as pure gift. In short, they keep on making us discover the Gospel in a new dimension. On the other hand, if the poor are the privileged consignees of the good news of the kingdom, that means they must also be privileged in understanding and interpreting what that good news signi-fies. The Gospel is understood through the lens of the poor and from their per-spective. Therefore, it is in them before all else that the Spirit becomes present, From the poor we must learn what grace means, grace that is manifested in powerlessness, that makes possible the impossible, that bursts in as pure gift. and from there the Spirit speaks today to the church. There is a hierarchical magisterium in the church, but it only makes sense if it is rooted in the reality of those poor who make up the church's rank and file. The good shepherd's sheep follow him because "they know his voice" and "he knows his own sheep" (Jn 10:4, 14). The hierarchy of the church of the poor is a hierarchy of service, not of domination. It is a hierarchy that knows its sheep in dia-logue and solidarity, that is ai~tuned to their concrete needs, their sufferings, their longings. Precisely for this reason, because it can hear and understand the people's silent cry, it is able to speak with a language that is recognizable, and in the hierarchy's voice the poor find their life, their cause, their hope, their own voice. The theological reflection of the church of the poor is done from below also, tuning in to 'the awareness and the feelings of the poor. Those poor have had their voice taken away--within the church as well--for so long that they have forgotten how to speak and must learn, to express themselves; but they must increasingly acquire a voice within the church. And that voice must be heard, because in it is revealed the Spirit of Jesus that guides the church. Thus will arise a church where things are considered, struc-at~ dy-./lugust 1992 493 Moreno ¯ Church of tbe Poor tured, and carried out from the perspective of the poor. It is they who say how the institution should function, what new ministries are required for a better service, what ministries and functions they need so that they themselves may be active participants within the church's life. Church on Its Way We must not forget that this church of the poor is also a pil-grim church, a church that must keep forming itself through hard-ship and conflict. I am not referring now to conflict with the powers of the world; I am talking about the world and the sin that are still found within the church itself, about conflict that arises from the church's limitations and from different models of church. The church's unity--that unity for which Jesus died--is eschatological unity, a unity that will come about beyond the church itself as fundamental gift of the kingdom that will burst forth into fullness. The church has a mission to go on building that unity--which is universal brotherhood and sisterhood--by attacking at the root what keeps that unity from being realized. That is not achieved by denying the reality of the conflict, but by facing up to the lack of love and Folidarity that produces it. The mere existence of the poor exposes that lack of love and sol-idarity- which is why there will be protest, conflict, and division as long as there are poor--and it reminds us that salvation, the fullness of God's reign, has not yet arrived. The Religious Life in the Church of the Poor What place do we religious have within this church of the poor that I have just described? The religious life arises as protest against the values and struc-tures of the world. It arises as a search for what is radical in the Gospel, for the "one thing necessary" (Lk 10:42), which tends to be obscured in a church tempted to become worldly, to stop being the distinct event that it ought to be within the world. With its special form of Christian existence, religious life ought to be prophecy that points continually towards the church's true mean-ing and calls on it, not to settle down, but to seek ever to go for-ward. That is the eschatological meaning of the vows, as they show us a beyond that urgesus to transform the present. 494 Review for Religious But what is the natural place for religious life to flourish? Where is the root that makes our life radically evangelical? If what I have said about the church of the poor is true, then there is no doubt that the poor are the place par excellence where the reli-gious life should be located in order to carry out its charism of prophecy. In point of fact, the Spirit is stirring up a notable move-ment among religious towards a real and concrete insertion among the poor. From there the Spirit provides light for a reinterpreta-tion of religious life itself. The religious vows are seen before all else as ,consecration to the Christ who is poor and identified with the poor, as vows that consecrate by freeing us from fixity and exclusiveness so as to form Christians who are available for all and approachable by all, but with an availability and approacha-bility whose universalness is shown precisely in being dedicated by preference to the poor and effectively committed to their cause. It means being detached in order to go where the institution can scarcely reach because of the difficulty and poverty of the condi-tions. Jon Sobrino expresses it very well as a going to the desert, the periphery, the frontier: to the desert, where no one is, where no one wants to go; to the periphery, where everything is seen through the lens of the powerless (not to the center, where the powerful are, where things are seen from above); to the frontier, where risks are greater and the task is harder, where there are no trodden paths because no one has trod them and the walkways are made by walking. What better way to fulfill religious life's prophetic function within the church than to help it read the signs of the times from that insertion into the world and struggle of the poor? What bet-ter way than to point out the new paths that the Spirit of Jesus is having us discover through the poor, in whom that Spirit becomes so specially present? The challenge offered us is, how to bring this about? To what conversion does the Lord call us as religious within the church so that we may help it become increasingly a church of the poor? Notes 1 The Documents of Vatican H (New York: The America Press, 1966), pp. 23-24. 2 The 1968 Latin American bishops' assembly at Medell~n, Colombia. July-August 1992 495 ANNMARIE SANDERS Women Missioners amidst Violence efforts of two insurgency groups, drug lords, and a military that violates more human rights than the groups it seeks to suppress. Through the country more than sixty percent of the people are living in emergency zones, and a great deal of these areas have been placed under military control. Many of the towns have lost their leaders, doctors, teachers, and development workers and even their police. Often only Catholic church workers remain, the great majority of whom are women religious. The situation has called us who serve here to a new way of liv-ing and ministering among the people and to a new spirituality. Following Christ and living Christian values can no longer be done as in the past. The reality in which our spirituality is lived out is now radically different. In speaking with various foreign women missionaries through-out Peru, I see that we struggle with many of the same new chal-lenges, are asking ourselves the same questions, and are recognizing similar patterns in our lives of prayer and relation with God. Our situation is unique because of the state of the country in which we work. The complexity of problems plaguing Annmarie Sanders IHM, a member of her congregation's vocation and formation team, has been in Peru since March 1989, She also works as associate editor of Latinamerica Press/Noticias Aliadas. Her address is Apartado 18-0101 ; Lima, Peru. 496 Review for Religious Peru does not follow any pattern in the history of other nations, and thus we have no precedent to follow. To understand our questions, fears, and challenges, one must better understand the context of the violence we face. Peru's two terrorist groups, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Move-ment, hold as their primary goals the takeover of the country. So far their efforts since 1980 ¯ have resulted in 23,000 deaths, 5,000 disap-pearances and US$18 billion in economic damage. Sendero has declared its willingness to wade through a "river of blood" to expunge foreign influence in Peru and establish a peas-ant society. It rejects competition from the church, the state, and the private sector. The methods of the two groups include bombings, intimidations, blackmail, torture, and ruth-less murder. The terrorist groups are known to be linked with narco-traffic rings, and in return for the security which the terrorists provide coca traffickers, they receive an esti-mated $40 million a year. Although the current government of Although the terrorist problem has been present in the country for over a decade, only recently has the church been directly affected. President Albert Fujimori attempts to control the drug trafficking and terrorist situations, it also battles cholera, endemic corruption, frequent drought, eighty-percent underemployment, and a deep economic depression leaving 13 million of Peru's 22 million inhabitants in extreme poverty, a figure which has doubled in three years. The government must also contend with the Peruvian military and police forces, which, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, are among the worst violators of human rights in the hemisphere. The U.S. State Department's 1990 human-rights report notes "widespread credible reports of summary executions, arbitrary arrests, and torture and rape by the military, as well as less frequent reports of such abuses by the police." The United Nations Commission on Human Rights noted that in 1991, for the fourth consecutive year, Peru had the highest number of disap-pearances of all the countries in the world. Although the terrorist problem has been present in the coun-try for over a decade, only recently has the church been directly affected. Between the church and the terrorists there had existed .~dy-August 1992 497 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence an "understanding." Generally, when terrorists entered to take over a village, if church workers complied with terrorist expecta-tions they were left unharmed. The church work often had to be significantly curtailed,.'but the religious could remain as a presence to the people. The recent direct destruction of church projects and prop-erty; the deaths of Irene McCormack, an Australian Sister of St. Joseph, in Junin in May 1991 and of Zbigniew Strzalkowski and Michael Tomaszek, Polish Franciscan priests, and Alessandro Dordi Negroni, an Italian priest, in Chimbote in August 1991; and the attempted assassination in July 1991 in Chimbote of Miguel Company, a priest from Spain, changed the scene signif-icantly. More religious encountered terrorist demands that their works--especially food aid and development projects--be stopped, and many received direct threats on their lives. Rather suddenly priests and religious became direct terrorist targets. Sendero Luminoso proclaimed that the church was the enemy of the peo-ple and an obstacle to revolutionary triumph. As the Rev. Robert Gloisten, a U.S. missioner and a staff member of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference for Social Action, stated, "We have become a church under fire with no idea of what will happen day to day." For several years, denial of the serious-ness of the situation was possible. Life was carried on with a vague knowledge that terrorists were active in a few isolated areas; as long as their activity did not directly touch us, we could continue peacefully. Those days are past. ~ The level of awareness and acceptance of the reality of this sit-uation naturally differs for each person. Much depends on one's personal experiences. For example, Pittsburgh Sister of Mercy Rita Harasiuk, who works in the diocese of Chimbote, was jolted by the death of her three colleagues into a new view of the situation: Although I began seeing things differently with the attempted assassination of Miguel Company, it was really the deaths of the two Franciscans that affected me the most. The two, along with two mayors from nearby towns who were also killed, were laid out together in coffins--all open-- and one worse than the other. For some of us, it was the first time we had seen what a human body looked like after having been shot in the head with weapons designed to destroy and mutilate . When Sandro [Alessandro Dordi] was killed two weeks later, we could see that more killing might go on. That's when we really began to strug-gle with what our response to this situation should be. 498 Review for Religious For California native Teresa Avalos of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, an incident directly involving her community played a significant role in making the situation more real for her and her sisters. In July 1991 a group of Sendero Luminoso ter-rorists entered Moho, where five of her community members lived and worked. They dynamited several buildings, executed six people, and ordered the townspeople to break into and ransack the convent. "This brought the fear of violence that is directed toward us much more into the open," Avalos said. Others of us have grown in our acceptance of the seriousness of the situation from our hearing such accounts by our colleagues. We stand in solidarity with them, aware that the problem is no longer isolated. An important task most of us have faced has been the admission of our feelings in the midst of such turmoil. Fear, nat-urally, is among the most common emotions, and, unfortunately, sometimes very difficult to accept and share with others. "We are all at different stages of being able to accept the real-ity, and some are still in a stage of denial," said California native Liane Delsuc of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. "This leaves me often feeling alone and sometimes I don't want to share my fears because others don't feel them. I start to think--is it only me that feels this way? Does that mean I should leave? That I am not able to handle it? But I do not feel that is the case. So I look for people with whom I can more freely share because in sharing it I feel stronger and as if I can continue living this." The sharing has helped us understand the wide range of emo-tions we feel. "Reflecting with others enables me to sift through real fears and imaginary ones," said Pauline Maheux, an Edmonton, Canada, native of the Ursuline Sisters of the Chatham Union; "in sharing we help one another admit to our fears and face them." The emotions one feels get mixed up when one watches the sense-less killing and destruction of years of work. Feelings include shock and anger. Often what is hardest for us to accept is the distrust we now feel towards others since we know that we must be aware of terrorist infiltration into our parishes and workplaces. An important task most of us have faced has been the admission of our feelings in the midst of such turmoil. July-August 1992 499 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence Harasiuk received a shocking revelation of this after the funeral for the slain Franciscans. At the offertory two gifts were quietly brought in procession to the altar: the rope used to tie the hands of those killed and the blood-covered cardboard left on their bodies with messages from the assassins. "We later dis-covered that among the young people bringing the gifts to the altar were persons who belonged to Sendero." Our situation naturally causes us to reflect on death--that which we see around us as well as our own. "I think much more about the possibility of my own death," said French native Anna Ingett of the Sisters of Christian Education; "not that I think death will come in the next few days,,but I am more conscious of its nearness." Given this stark reality, we are constantly asking ourselves on personal, communal, local, diocesan, and national levels: How do we deal with this personally and how are we to respond as church workers? One of the greatest challenges we face is receiving accu-rate information about what is happening in the country. The media in Peru are severely restricted and often rely on third-party sources; great doubts remain. Although organizations such as the Religious Conference of Peru work hard to gather facts, the dis-semination of information is very difficult, given the lack many religious have of telephones and reliable mail service. Many reli-gious, however, felt aided by the Religious Conference's meet-ings and workshops on violence and also by programs dealing with situations and problems in the various dioceses. What seems most useful to us are open, honest dialogues with our community members and other religious working in our areas. Many of us have listened to the facts, tried to process our feelings, and then asked ourselves some hard questions: How much more of this can I take? Will I leave if one more religious or priest is killed? Can I live with this tension? Can I remain a sign of hope in what looks like an apparently hopeless situation? Once some sense of peace was reached about our presence here, we began reexamining why we are staying. Many of us, espe-cially those working the emergency zones, began looking at our work with very different eyes. "After the deaths here, most of us slowed down and started thinking, evaluating, praying, and talk-ing together about why we are here and what we should be doing," said Harasiuk, who has been working for ten years as a pastoral team member in Chimbote. She recalls a meeting of priests and 500 Revlew for Religious sisters where someone asked, "Do you think you should continue working as you have been?" Not one person said yes. Many pastoral workers have reduced their work to simple presence in their parishes. They no longer lead groups, distribute food and aid, or attempt to organize the people. They maintain a low profile and lead quiet lives of simple accompaniment. For Delsuc, who is principal in a Lima barrio of a Fe and Alegrfa School, one of forty-three institutes set up by the Jesuits to educate young people in Lima's shantytowns and in the provinces, the questions about work are many: "I wonder if we are presenting relevant, peaceful alterna-tives that will allow the people to respond with Christian values to the violence around them? I wonder if it would'be better not to be involved in a certain work and just live alongside the people? I wonder if our commit-ment to the people is valuable even if it brings death?" Many of our ques-tions must be left unanswered. But we recognize that simply by asking them we have allowed our lives to be changed. For many of us, before we could accept the change the situ-ation calls us to, we had to let go of the past. Harasiuk says that this was a common experience for the religious in Chimbote after the deaths. "Our grieving process was not just for persons, but for a whole way of life that is passing. This situation has taken away from us a freedo~n to move day and night without fear, to speak openly without worrying about what we say or to who~n we are talking." For Harasiuk this experience also helped her to evaluate her life and her activity and to decide what really matters. "So many of the things I had been involved in suddenly did not seem so important." Maheux, who has served as a pastoral worker for eight years in Chiclayo, had a similar experience. "The situation has enabled me to sift through what is of essence and what is truly insignifi-cant. Relationships have taken on profound meaning . . . to be nourished and cherished." The change in relationships extends for most of us also to I wonder if we are presenting relevant, peaceful alternatives that will allow the people to respond with Christian values to the violence around them ? j~t~-Aug'u~ 1992 501 Sanders ¯ Women Missioners amidst Violence our relation with God. Many have noted that prayer is more dif-ficult, little ecstasy is experienced, much more anger is expressed, fewer words are used, and often God becomes the scapegoat for all of Peru's problems. Christ, for many of us, reveals himself in new ways in Scripture. "I experience Christ more in his passion, where he ends up in the midst of violence, mistreatment, and ridicule but stands strong to his values and commitments," said Delsuc. Many seek a sense of consolation in their relation with God--an assurance that they are loved and that God is still in control. Many, feeling lost in the confusion of these times, turn to God as a source of wisdom. For Lia Finnerty, a Canadian Holy Cross sister working in Juli, prayer is now more integrally connected with what is hap-pening in the news and in her village. "My prayer is the time when I can try to integrate our reality with God's word and see how our community is touched by all that." That need to connect our prayer with the wider community and to pray with others is co,ninon among us. Many note that the desire for communal peti-tionary prayer is much stronger and that it is a helpful experi-ence to bring to God each day all that we see and experience each day. Ingett, who serves on a pastoral team in Sicuani, notes that her community's time of petitionary prayer is also a time for asking pardon for all that these women experience in their daily inter-action with the people. Living in the midst of so much violence and structural injustice has clearly revealed to many of us the anger and violence present within ourselves. "Sometimes it's so hard to hear that the police have attacked innocent victims or tortured young people," admitted Finnerty. "My first reaction is often a violent one, even though I want to be nonviolent." We all seem to struggle with the anger we feel and our desire to be compassionate, and we ask ourselves many questions about how we can be more nonviolent people. We are trying different approaches. Massachusetts native Carmen Foley, a Halifax Sister of Charity serving as a spiritual director in Lima, is looking at her interactions with others and her judgments and is trying to be more merciful in her attitudes. Avalos, a pastoral worker in a Lima barrio and formhr.vice-provincial of her congregation, is look-ing at violence in her speech and her reactions. Finnerty, a pastoral worker among the Aymara people, is returning to the Aymaran value of solidarity and community as a block to violence. Delsuc 502 Review for Religious is practicing communication techniques to become more skilled in conflict resolution. Probably most important for all of us, however, is an openness to learn from the Peruvian people, who seem to know better than any of us just what hope in the midst of crisis is all about. As Maheux concluded, "My greatest source of hope for the future is the women, men, and children with whom I live. Their faith-fulness to the daily struggle to just live--to being able to eat, to the one-day-at-a-time facing of tremendous obstacles--teaches me that justice, peace, and life will endure and win out." Coming Out one shall know as dawn disentangles morning from night if one's desert spell was purgation or vacation was awakening or escape when one emerges anointed in power or scorched and spent Andrea Wild OSF July-August 1992 503 ROY BOURGEOIS School of Terror write from the Federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where am serving a sixteen-month sentence for an act of civil dis-obedience to protest the training of Salvadoran soldiers on United States soil. As I look back, I feel my being here is no accident, but rather the result of God's grace at work in my life. Growing up in rural Louisiana, I was a Sunday Christian and gave little thought to issues of peace and justice. I studied geology in college with the hope of getting rich in the oil fields of South America. After college I became a naval officer and volunteered for duty in Vietnam, feeling it was. my patriotic duty to fight communism. There I met a missionary who, amid the war, gave me a vision of Jesus as a healer and peacemaker. I left Vietnam wanting to be a missionary and entered Maryknoll, whose work is in twenty-eight countries overseas and in the United States. I was ordained in 1972 and went to serve the poor of Bolivia. A slum on the outskirts of La Paz became my home for six years. In Bolivia, as in Vietnam, the poor became my teachers and challenged me to grow in my faith. I then returned to do educational work in the United States. My involvement with E1 Salvador began in 1980, after Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down at the altar and after four church women from the United States were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Two of the women, Maryknoll sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, were friends of mine. Their death forced me to confront what was happening in this small Central American country. Roy Bourgeois MM writes that prison can be a good place to read Scripture, pray, and do ministry. His address is Register No. 01579-017; PMB 1000; Tallahassee, Florida 32301. 504 Review for Religious After several trips to E1 Salvador, it became clear that the problem was not "communism" or "subversion" but hunger. As is the case almost everywhere in Latin America, the wealth, power, and land of E1 Salvador are in the hands of an elite few. While these live in huge mansions where they are waited on by servants and enjoy frequent vacations and shopping sprees in the United States and Europe, most Salvadorans live in dehumanizing pover.ty and die before their time. The poor, once told that their suffering was the will of God, now know better as they gather in small groups to read and reflect on the word of God. They now real-ize that their poverty and suffering are the result of exploitation, greed, and irresponsible stew-ardship of God's creation. In May 1983, five hundred Salvadoran sol-diers arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia, to undergo U.S. Army training. At the time, I was speaking at churches and colleges in New Orleans about the injustice of U.S. military aid to E1 Salvador. I felt it was no time for business as usual, so I went to Columbus, Georgia, the home of Fort Benning, and began meeting with local residents. After two months of meet-ings, talks, and prayer vigils, three of us decided to enter Fort Benning at night, dressed as U.S. Army officers. Armed with a.high-powered cassette player, we climbed a tall pine tree near the barracks that housed the Salvadoran soldiers. At lights out, we tuned the cassette player to its highest volume and played Archbishop Romero's last homily, given in the cathedral the day before he was assassinated; in it he called on the military to stop the killing and lay down their arms. We were arrested, tried for criminal trespass ~and impersonating military officers, and sen-tenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. After serving my term I sought a few months of silence and solitude at. a Trappist monastery, then returned to the pulpit and classroom. On 16 November 1989 six Jesuit priests, their coworker, and her fifteen-year-old daughter were brutally murdered in E1 Salvador. According to a U.S. Congressional task force sent to El Salvador to investigate the massacre, five of the nine soldiers arrested for the slayings had been trained at Fort Benning. Today, hundreds of Salvadoran and other Latin American soldiers are being trained at Fort Benning's School of the Americas. The The problem was not "communism" or "subversion" bu t hunger. .y~dy-August 1992 505 Bourgeois ¯ Scbool of Terror School of the Americas (SOA) was located in Panama before mov-ing to Benning in 1984. Since 1946 this training ground for Latin American soldiers has quietly readied some 45,000 officers and enlisted men for right-wing Latin American governments. Manuel Noriega is a distinguished alumnus, as is General Hugo Banzer of Bolivia. In 1984, when the SOA was forced out of Panama, then Panamanian president Jorge Illueja described the school as "the biggest base of destabilization in Latin America." The foundation of the course work at the School of the Americas is low-intensity conflict (LIC), which, by military ana-lyst Michael Klare's definition, is "that amount of murder, muti-lation, torture, rape, and savagery that is sustainable without triggering widespread public disapproval at home." Students of LIC learn that the enemy is not just an opposing armed force; rather, the enemy can include anyone, armed or unarmed, who threatens the stability of the existing order. Hence, priests, teach-ers, health-care workers, union leaders, cooperative members, and human-rights advocates are among the victims of the School of the Americas. On 3 September 1990, ten of us--Vietnam veterans, Salva-dorans, a teacher, and members of the clergy--began a water-only fast at the entrance of Fort Benning to protest the training of' Salvadoran soldiers. When our fast ended after thirty-five days, our bodies were weak but our spirits remained strong. Miguel Cruz, a Salvadoran in our group who had been forced to leave his country because of a death threat, said, "We have the option to end our fast. However, the poor in my country do not. For them hunger is an everyday occurrence." On November 16, when we had recovered from the fast, three of us--Charles Liteky, a former army chaplain who had received the Medal of Honor for heroism in Vietnam; his brother Patrick, who had trained at Fort Benning's Infantry School, and I-- returned to Fort Benning to observe the first anniversary of the killing of the six Jesuits and the two women. After a prayer service, we entered the post, placed a white cross with photos of the eight martyrs at the entrance to the School of the Americas, and poured blood in one of the school's main halls. We wanted to impress on our country that we cannot wash our hands of the blood of inno-cent people killed in E1 Salvador by soldiers trained in the United States. We were arrested and tried. A jury found us guilty of dam- '506 Review for Religious aging government property. The Liteky brothers received six-month sentences, and I received sixteen months because of my previous conviction at Fort Benning in 1983. "Was it worth it?" I am often asked by friends and critics alike. Prison is hard and very lonely at times, even with the support of family and friends, who also suffer. My dad cried when I called home to tell him of my sentenc-ing. Yet I feel I did what my faith and the poor called me to do in the face of such violence, death, and suffering. As a Christian I feel I must try to relieve the suffering of the poor and integrate my faith in a loving God with action. It is indeed tragic what our silence did to the people of E1 Salvador over the past twelve years as our po!iticians fun-neled billions of dollars (hard-earned tax money) to a military regime that killed thousands of innocent people. ~ The recent peace accords in E1 Salvador now bring new hope, and it is a time for rebuilding after all the death and destruction. It is also a time for the hundreds of Salvadoran soldiers who continue their training at Fort Benning to go home--along with the troops from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries. I am convinced that we can relieve some of the suffering of the poor in Latin America by closing down the School of the Americas. It is a school of terror and should be shut down. While I am in prison, friends in Georgi~ are carrying on the peace-and-justice work. To learn more about our efforts, write to School of the Americas Watch; P.O. Box 3330; Columbus, Georgia 31903. Archbishop Romero said, "We who have a voice must speak for the voiceless." I pray and hope that we will speak clearly and boldly. As a Christian I feel I must try to relieve the suffering of the poor and integrate my faith in a loving God with action. j~dy-August 1992 507 M. GERARD NWAGWU Women Religious and the African Synod inculturating Following the initial enthusiasm with which our people welcomed Pope John Paul II's announcement of a special assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops,l an accom-modating attitude of tolerance for whatever might result from the event seems to have settled in. In such a frame of mind, any document coming from the synod will proba-bly be treated like any other Vatican document---it will be gratefully accepted and respectfully mentioned, but lit-tle else will follow. If, however, the document were to grow out of our experiences and be developed from our contributions, then its contents would have a better chance of being well received and more fully observed. The introductory chapter to the Lineamenta2 speaks of the period of preparation and celebration of the synod as the "tempus acceptabile," the favorable hour, the hour of Africa. This is the hour we have all waited for. It offers us a unique opportunity to bring about some of the changes and modifications religious life in Africa needs. It is a time for religious women in Africa to state our vision of commitment and involvement. This favorable hour con-tinues until the synod is actually celebrated and concluded, As part of this process it is important for us to raise issues and speak out about the problems that women religious encounter as they try to contribute to the work of evan-gelization in Africa. Indeed, for Africans this synod truly M. Gerard Nwagwu does much of her teaching at the Catholic Institute of West Africa; P.O. Box 499; Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 508 Review for Religious promises to be a "third Vatican Council" in what it could accom-plish for us. Consequently the initial period of intense preparation needs to be followed by a continued interest in the synod that fosters a receptive disposition of willingness to adopt its directives. The next generation of religious is likely to question how we made use of this opportunity, criticizing chances wasted and applauding those utilized. The older generation in their turn will be less critical insofar as they have never experienced such an event during their active days and therefore cannot be blamed for not effecting changes. Our contemporaries themselves could point accusing fingers at us if, for all our ideals and foresight, we achie~ced nothing when the circumstances were most opportune. Accepting facts as they are can be a mark of virtue on occa-sion. However, if we were to do that in the present situation, it would indicate complacency and inertia exactly when the action of working toward objectives that will benefit our people is demanded of us. Accepting the status quo just when the church calls us to make a move could indicate a cowardice and portray a fear of "launching out into the deep waters and laying out the nets for a catch," as Christ challenged the Apostles to do at a point when all hope seemed lost.3 We need an openness among ourselves to help us discover our weaknesses, our duties, and our obligations of evangelization--duties that the Code of Canon Law itself demands of religious in canons 211 and 758. Aware of these challenges, we can begin searching for an effective strategy. The Lineamenta presents a good number and variety of themes for our consideration. In any of these themes, the African reli-gious woman-has a role to play, not simply because she is an African or works in Africa, but because her religious life is directly intertwined with the life of the church. Vatican II witnessed to the fact that at no time in history has the church lacked some form of religious life.4 Religious life, in other words, is a con-stant and inseparable feature of the church. This universally his-toric fact is no different on African soil. However, it would take us too far afield to dwell on all of'the proposed themes as they relate to women religious in general. Rather let us consider those that focus strictly on the life of women religious in Africa, their apostolates, and their relationship with the world around them. Presently, most of the countries in Africa have celebrated the centenary of the arrival of the early Catholic missionaries. The few July-August 1992 509 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod who have not will do so in the near future. Mmost everywhere the native indigenous clergy have assumed the direction of the particular churches, on both the diocesan and parish levels. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for all congregations of religious women in Africa.5 These factors and others highlight the growth of the church in Africa. Specifically, religious institutes are not left behind in the development. The momentous rise in the number of vocations to the religious life, especially in women's congregations, attests to this growth. Indeed the problem for many religious commu-nities is not so much trying to attract candidates but finding ways of adequately training and forming them in the spiritual and apos-tolic life. It is no wonder that foreign religious institutes endeavor to recruit girls from Africa to fill up their depleted ranks. Such recruiting, however, has been limited and conditioned by the authorities since it has often left a trail of disillusioned women who believed they were sent abroad for further studies, only to find that they were meant to supply domestic services. Though the road remains open for taking candidates abroad, yet some condi-tions must be fulfilled.6 The obvious growth of the church in Africa is one of the "signs of the times" that determine the form evangelization should assume in our midst. The evangelization that starts first with inte-rior conversion of hearts, matures to a personal witness of life, and finally develops into external commitments and service is the type that best suits the vocation of religious women. Before evan-gelizing others we must evangelize ourselves, for only after we have been converted can we support those around us.7 We shall be witnesses, yes, but only after an interior transformation of heart. Through such an authentic witness of the life of the evan-gelical counsels, we can make our own contribution to the new stage of evangelization required in Africa. With regard to reli-gious life, this first stage of evangelization involVes modeling to our people the values of total dedication and consecration to God with a hope of evoking a corresponding response from young women and men to embrace religious life. The second stage of renewed evangelization which suits our time is that of deepen-ing the faith of those who already believe and are baptized, We are already experiencing an influx of vocations, but how deep is their faith, how reliable is their commitment? Religious women, particularly, must ask probing questions, 510 Review for Religious admit the facts, and make worthwhile proposals. The point at issue is whether we realize that the effective contribution of women religious in the evangelization of Africa depends first on the genuine and generous commitments of our communities and second on the spiritual and apostolic formation we give our younger members. The vitality of religious life in Africa depends on these elements and on its being a true witness of the presence and love of God among our people. Such an objective compels us to examine some of the negative currents that undermine our abil-ity to evangelize our people in the manner referred to above. Primary among the negative currents is the wind of secularism that has blown through the world from the 1980s to the present day and has begun to register its presence in Africa. Some see it as materialism, others as atheistic humanism. Secularism, as Pope Paul VI has pointed out, views the world as entirely self-explanatory without any reference to God, who thus becomes unnecessary and is, as it were, an embarrassment. Secularism of this kind seeks to assert the power of humankind and leads to a situation in which God is ignored and denied.8 An allied expression is secularization. Where secularism is a theory and an ideology leading to denial of God, secularization is, instead, the fact and reality of experiencing life with a secular-ized mentality and attitude--that is, evaluating life from a worldly point of view. This, then, is the new form of atheism by which God is perceived to be less present, less necessary, less capable of providing a valid explanation of personal or social life experi-ences. In its undiluted form, secularization should not find a stronghold in Africa, given the characteristic spiritual vision of life within an African society wherein the divine permeates all aspects of life. However, what has invaded this sense of the sacred is the aftermath of secularization, revealed in such characteristics as superficiality, the desire for power and domination over others, autonomy and individualism, and a pleasure-loving orientation. Within our religious circles, when we lack an original experience of God and consequently fail to lead others to a similar experience, the evangelical counsels are confused or glossed over in various attempts to describe, them. We shall be witnesses only after an interior transformation of heart. j-~uly-August 1992 511 Nwag~u ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Poverty is explained away in the tendency to acquire and accu-mulate in the name of the congregation; chastity in the necessity of having the comfort, convenience, and satisfaction of personal fulfillment; obedience in the assertion of autonomy and individ-uality as marks of our uniqueness and originality. In the maze of such ambiguity, the question for religious women to answer is whether at the present stage of their religious experience they can lay claim to preserving in full the religious sense and charac-ter of their consecration. Where secularization has made its mark, it is difficult to be a witness of the Gospel message. Secularism holds out to us the values of the world and urges us to conform; the Gospel offers us the mind and values of Christ. If we examine our situation and find out that our choices are secular in character, it is important for us to admit it, and so be able to discover what strategy to adopt con-cerning it. The type of choices we make and the attitudes we have clearly show whether we are evangelized at heart or not. On a secondary level the way we treat each other and the interpersonal regard we nurture in our communities would truly show if the Gospel values were operating among us. For when we continue to make discriminatory preferences between persons or congregations, then our witnessing cannot be anything but counterproductive to the task of evangelization. When we are carrying out a common objective, what should matter is the appre-ciation of a sister as a religious and the virtues she possesses for her to be entrusted with an undertaking which she will accomplish in the name of all, not whether she is a member of one congre-gation rather than another, or whether she has occupied a position of importance in her institute, or whether she has important con-nections, and so forth. Evangelizing witness on the community level is likely to be rendered nugatory as ~vell if, instead of the communion and unity which religious life signifies, we have the division and disunity of uncoordinated activity. The difficulties occasioned by lack of cooperation and coordination are most often seen between dif-ferent congregations rather than between members of the same institute. How often have we witnessed the complaints and dis-enchantment of institutes whose services are unceremoniously terminated in a place in favor of another institute--especially when the institute that takes up the apostolate in question may be completely ignorant of how the first institute left the scene! Such 512 Review for Religious a practice is exploitive and appears to be based on the availability of women religious. Apart from the circumstance related above in which two con-gregations of religious women are made to be victims at the same time, division of opinion among institutes is certainly a question that needs to be considered if the challenges of our times are to be adequately addressed. The church regards women religious as experts in communion both because of the communitarian quality of our consecration and because of our natural tendency to bond ourselves closely to oth-ers. Our best field of operation, therefore, is to work for unity and communion within our African church in all its various components. Women have a great capacity for personal adaptation in the face of the varied and often unexpected needs of the real life of societies and churches. We are thus often in a better position to ensure not merely the survival but even the development of evangelization.9 A determination to form deeper and stronger bonds of solidarity and sharing between our various institutes is the best way to confront the changing political, economic, and social conditions of our times. Such operative and meaningful solidarity will happen if various congregations are able to evolve while each institute retains its unique identity and character. As Pope Paul VI told us,'° we are missionaries to ourselves at this stage of the evangelization of Africa. We Africans are cat-echizing and witnessing t6 our own people in our home missions. We are also undertaking the evangelization of other African coun-tries outside our homeland--not overlooking, of course, the invaluable assistance offered by our foreign missionaries. Taking into account the greater number of women .religious, these foreign missions are mostly operated by religious sisters. We must ask ourselves, therefore, whether there exists a corresponding mis-sionary cooperation between the various religious congregations whose members labor on these foreign missions, or whether mis-sionaries carry along with them to the missions the lack of coop-eration and perhaps rivalry which possibly exists at home. We need to remember the call of John Paul II as he spoke about the problems facing evangelization in Africa: secularization has made its mark, it is difficult to be a witness of the Gospel message. July-August 1992 513 Nwagcvu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Let all form one unity. Let everything be done to smooth and multiply the ways of mutual esteem, of fraternity, of collaboration. May anything that might be the cause of suf-ferings or casting aside, for one group or another, be ban-ished! May all be penetrated with sentiments of humility and of mutual service! For Christ! For the witness of the church! For the progress of evangelization!'~ With a unified front, we religious could more easily discover new approaches to problems that arise in the apostolate. These problems include the challenge of Islam and the determination of Muslims to spread the Koran from coast to coast by whatever means available. Carrying arms and matching violence with vio-lence is definitely not what the church expects religious women to accomplish in this regard. Neither is it possible to close our eyes and imagine that the friction and conflict with Muslims will even-tually ease off while we do nothing. We must, however, evaluate our strength and discover unobtrusive ways to reduce the threat of Islam for our people. In the face of such an offensive, the church has in the past usually adopted the practice of intensified prayer and a rigorous asceticism lived with generous hearts. Some apostolic religious institutes were founded to labor in countries of Islamic faith. But there are relatively few, if any, contemplative orders founded exclusively for the propagation of faith among Muslims. Such contemplative orders, which by their i~rayers, works of penance, and sacrifices labor to effect the conversion of souls, are crucial for the growth of Christian faith amidst the increased onslaught of Islamic hostility. It would be a welcome endeavor if the tendency our religious folk have to found new religious institutes is allowed to mature into communities that will pitch their tents among the Muslims of our country despite foreseeable opposition and even death. If such an inspiration of the Spirit were to happen, it would cer-tainly respond to the needs of the times. The challenge of Islam requires a radical religious decision. It calls for active institutes to reawaken their consciousness of the value and practice of the con-templative dimension of religious life. The Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes exhorts: The contemplative dimension is the real secret of renewal for every religious life. Being a reality of grace, it preserves in the religious the commitment to bear witness before the world to the primacy of a personal relationship with God. They can thus avoid the constant danger for apostolic work- 514 Review for Religious ers who often become so much involved in their work for the Lord as to forget the Lord ofalI work,~z Another area of concern is the proliferation of sects and evan-gelical movements. The increase in their adherents means that some other churches--the traditional Christian churches includ-ing the Catholic Church--are losing members. The sects usually direct their proselytizing toward those who are already Christians and offer them what they apparently cannot get from their mother churches. Again Paul VI sounded the alarm when he noted: It is well known that in some places the church in Africa runs the risk of the fidelity of its sons and daughters being subjected to dangers and struggles, and to being tempted by false teaching. Indeed, Christian faith must become some-thing interior like a personal possession of each individ-ual.' 3 In the face of such phenomena, congregations of women reli-gious can be of immense help to the church if they include this ground among their fields of apostolate for the second stage of evangelizing Africa. By identifying the reasons Christians are attracted to these sects and the group of Catholics that are easily influenced by them, they can develop a strategy for deepening the faith of those most affected. Often a shallow faith, which offers no reply to the vital questions of suffering and pain, poverty and misery, doubts and fears, insecurity and emptiness, sickness and death and so forth, is quickly abandoned for what seems a better way out of problems. Such defections occur where people seek a church that'proffers some human warmth and mutual con-cern, an experience the larger churches cannot easily provide.'4 Even if religious themselves do not minister directly to the sects and their adherents, they can train the Christian laity to assume their role of searching out and reevangelizing their brethren. Similarly, it is important to examine the variety of means of social communications available in order to determine the ones best suited for evangelization in Africa today. Every institute is able to evaluate the effect of each of the means on individual members and on the community. For while it is necessary to know what the world around us is saying through the media, we must not allow it to monopolize our attention and dictate our conver-sational exchanges. Growth in religious commitment does not follow from an indiscriminate and sometimes imprudent use of the mass media, or with the exaggerated and extroverted activism the 3~uly-August 1992 515 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod media can generate, or with an atmosphere of dissipation which contradicts the deepest expectations of religious life. The search for intimacy with God needs silence, never involving noise and confusion.~s Presently, however, our discussion on the media is not how much we adopt them in our communities, but how well we use them for evangelization. Since the various means are each an effi-cacious tool for communication, the message of faith can be divulged to millions of our people at the same time with their aid. What prevents us, for example, from publishing a magazine that focuses on African religious life? Other Christian groups take the lead in the use of media while Catholics lag behind. Sacred songs and music on the thousands of audiocassettes that flood the market are ahnost always produced by Protestant evangelical groups. In the past there used to be a festival of the arts for Catholic schools. Now the competitions organized for parish choirs do not seem to generate the same interest. When an institute chooses to engage some of its members in apostolates using more contemporary methodologies, the initial difficulty will be lack of trained personnel. Requisite educational competence is important; however, some religious superiors are reluctant to send sisters for further studies that take time to com-plete and cause financial constraint, especially in the face of past disappointments. All the same, such reservation should give way before the conditions of our times and the needs of the church, which demand specialized training in some fields of study. No field of study can be superfluous if it furthers the mission of the institute. And since evangelization is a common mission for all, then adequate preparation is necessary for its realization. We cannot meet our contemporaries handicapped. For priests and religious to grow in requisite skills and maturity, it is essen-tial for them to receive the type of formation usually done in cen-ters of study at the university level or in institutes of higher studies. Specialized studies undertaken by religious should be prompted not by a misdirected desire for self-fulfillment with a view to achieving personal ends, but with the sole intention of meeting the apostolic commitments of the religious family itself in the context of the needs of the church.16 In view of the renewed call to evangelize, some significant changes may have to be made in the initial stages of formation. This sensitive area touches the autonomy and identity of insti- 516 Review for Religious tutes. Nevertheless, some general criteria may be adopted on the intercongregational level while the exact details can be left to the creativity of each institute. A rereading of the conciliar guide-lines for renewal shows that there is no question of simple adap-tations of certain external forms such as the habit. There is question, rather, of a deep edu-cation in attitude and in lifestyle that makes it possible to remain true to oneself even in the new forms of being present--a presence as con-secrated persons who seek the full conversion of people and of society to the ways of the Gospel through personal witness and service.~7 The challenges presented to religious women by the forthcoming synod will demand prayer, discipline, and sacrifice. It will not be easy to effect changes because part of the pattern of life and action we have grown used to will have to be renounced. Though renun-ciation may be spiritually rewarding, it is never gratifying to the ego. All the same, the changes need be made. The "signs of the times" are ripe and they offer us incentives to renew and revise our pattern of life and to give a preferential treatment to the duty of evangelization. The traditional ministries carried out in hospi-tals, schools, and social centers remain important, but their rel-evance in meeting the people of our times and engaging them in faith encounters has diminished. Women religious who are solidly founded in faith and suffi-ciently prepared and who can use their feminine qualities of devo-tion, refinement, faithfulness, and patience and their great capacity to adapt to the unexpected demands of real life can transform sit-uations which would intimidate others who lacked the weapons of faith and culture. In conclusion, let us remember the call of John Paul II and our obligation to respond to his invitation: We cannot meet our contemporaries handicapped. You have lived a first great stage, an irreversible stage. A new stage is open to you. It is no less an exalted one, even if it necessarily involves new trials, and perhaps the temp-tation of discouragement. It is the stage of perseverance, in which it is necessary to pursue the strengthening of the faith, the conversion in depth of souls and ways of life, so that they will correspond better and better to your sublime Christian vocation.18 July-August 1992 517 Nwag-wu ¯ Women Religious and the African Synod Notes i The exact date for the synod has not been set, but observers do not expect it to take place before 1994 or 1993 at the earliest. ~" Lineamenta, General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Vatican City, 1990. 3 Luke 5:4. 4 Lumen Gentium §44. s Some congregations of women religious still have nonindigenous administrative personnel. 6 This includes the establishment of a local community in the area, which in turn requires.that a diocesan bishop invite the institute in ques-tion to his diocese. 7 Luke 22:32. 8 Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §55. 9 Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Dans le Cadre, The Role of Women in Evangelization, in Vatican Council H Postconciliar Documents, vol. 2, p. 322. l0 Paul VI, Inaugural Session of SECAM, Kampala, 1969. llJohn Paul II, Address to Zairean Bishops 3 May 1980, in Origins 10, no. 1, p. 6. 12 SCRIS, La Plenaria, The Contemplative Dimension of Religious Life, January 1980, §§ 2, 4, and 30. 13 Paul VI, Address at the 4th Plenary Assembly of SECAM, September 1975. 14 Paul V-I, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §58. is SCRIS, La Plenaria, §14. 16 SCRIS, Mutuae Relationes, §31 and §26. ~7 SCRIS, La Scelte Evangeliche, On Religious and Human Development, January 1981, §32. is John Paul II, Address to Priests and Religious, Zaire, 1980. 518 Review for Religious JENNIFER MARY ALT Rerooting Religi ous Life in South Africa the dialogue has been to develop a religious-life spirituality that would be less foreign and more of a special flowering and inter-pretation of African human and spiritual values. These values encompass all of human life. The spiritual is never seen as apart from the material, and people are seen as depending on other people, and therefore on the Divine, for life and meaning. Outside of their social relationships, individuals are less than nothing. If religious life became better integrated with native African spiri-tual values, it would witness more clearly and bring greater hope to South Africa's strife-torn people. Religious life is not foreign to Africa. In fact, its cradle is to be found in North Africa in the early centuries of Christianity. Organized religious life took its conception from the life and work of the Desert Fathers and was rooted in the form of Christianity found among the rural tribal people of North Africa. This rural tribal Christian expression was eventually declared heretical and has since been known as the Donatist heresy.- St. Augustine, the well-known urban African, a man cut off from his Jennifer Mary Alt OP, a member of the Cabra Dominican Sisters, is director of the Catholic Centre for Spiritual Growth sponsored by the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference. With her doctoral research in cross-cultural personality studies, she has worked with religious in developing an African religious spirituality. She may be addressed at the Catholic Centre for Human and Spiritual Growth; P.O. Box 53 505; Troyeville (JHB); 2139 South Africa. ~uly-August 1992 519 Alt . .Re~roo~ng Religious Life cultural roots, was chiefly responsible for the suppression of the Donatists. Early North African Christianity was predominantly rural. These rural Christians had been formed by their own primal reli-gion. This religion revolved around being in harmony with the spiritual in life. The Ancestors--important good people who had died and who then lived on in spirit in the living--were seen as important mediators of the spiritual. Life among humans was seen as essentially social, and people got their meaning and pur-pose from living and working in harmony with other people. To be in a group was part of life. Over fifteen hundred years separate us from these earlier times, and Africa south of the Sahara is in a different position today. Yet it too moves from a very strong primal religious back-ground. In parts of Africa, for instance South Africa, much of the primal past has disappeared, but the beauty of its spirit remains. Unless one pays attention to it, one will find it difficult to under-stand the modern movements in religious life in Africa. A primal outlook on life in terms of human values is'a profound way of looking at it. The work of the Divine is easily seen in it. The connectedness between this outlook and the teachings of Jesus is easy to recognize. Unfortunately, modern religious life has been presented in Africa south of the Sahara as something foreign and Western, as something that has nothing to do with African values. In fact, African values had to be somehow discarded as one entered a reli-gious order. Westerners find the intricacies of life in Africa very difficult to understand and, without ill will, have misjudged much of what they saw, dismissing it as primitive and pagan. It is exceedingly important for people entering religious life to realize the continuity between the values they were given in their families and the values outlined in their religious rule. African religious largely see religious life as divorced from their past, as something quite other. They see the rules and regula-tions of religious living as something totally new which has to be learned. Because of this the rules of religious life remain largely outside of them. The rules have little effect on their feelings and attitudes. The result is that religious life tends to lose its mean-ing and become more a drudgery than a life-giving program. There is a saying which is practically ubiquitous in Africa. It runs in South Africa: "People are made people through other 520 Review for Religious people." In Swahili a similar saying is: "I am, you are, and because you are, I am." This circular statement sums up the insight which Africans have about people depending on one another and the insight that without people the individual is nothing. This aware-ness of dependence and interdependence is a far cry from the individualism of the modern. Western outlook. Dependence on God is the source of all spir-ituality and is clearly discernible in the African outlook. Africa has a strong belief in the spiri-tual life. Death is seen not so much as an ending, but as a passing into a spiritual way of being. In Africa everything material has its spiritual equiv-alent. In fact, nothing exists without its spirit. It follows that religious life is seen as essentially for the purpose of bringing people into contact with the Divine in a special way. If this does not happen, then religious life for the individual tends to remain on a material and self-centered level. The religious vocation is a call to a special relationship with the spiritual realm. Religious with their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience are marked as essentially different from others, for they are in a sense outside the primal group of family, clan, and nation. They live in an area of liminality in life and in this area make contact with the Divine. Everywhere in Africa the call to the spiritual is treated with great respect and reverence. The call is seen as mysterious and very important. It is not questioned. Take, for example, persons who discern that they are called to be a sangorna, to be one who understands the relationship between the material and the Divine and who is specially equipped to interpret rifts that occur between the human and the Divine, rifts that are seen as the cause of all mental and physical illness. Such calls will not be dismissed lightly, and people will undergo rigorous training to equip themselves for their special task as a sangoma. The religious call is seen in this context. It also comes from the Ancestors of the family, and therefore no one should interfere with it. The Ancestors will protect the person so called. Africans believe that when outstanding members of the family or the nation die, they join the living dead. They live on in spirit in another member of the family. As a human being casts a shadow, so each human in the flesh represents the spirit of an Ancestor. A parent 'People are made people through other people.' 3n-uly-Augus~ 1992 521 who first refused to allow a daughter to enter a convent remarked on her behavior: "I was fighting with the Ancestors." In Africa the spiritual revolves around the Ancestors, who mediate the Divine in life. The blessing of the Ancestors needs to be invoked in all circumstances. This ancient method of prayer might seem fundamentalist to a Western person, but it suits many people in the indigenous churches. They invoke God in all cir-cumstances: when getting up in the morning, at the beginning of all jobs--nothing, in fact, is done without prayer to the Ancestors. MI church services center on asking the Ancestors for blessing and healing of any rifts between the living dead and the humans in the flesh. Prayer then centers on the spirit of reverence and respect: through prayer, healing and forgiveness are brought to ordinary human relationships, and rifts with the Ancestors are healed. In this way the negative effects in our lives are resolved, and we become healthy again. Religious in this context are people who are especially moved by the spirit, in a charismatic sense. Prayer then is warm, spon-taneous, and real. But if religious life is seen by Africans as a bureaucratic organization in which material advantages follow the keeping of the rules, even though many of the rules may cen-ter on saying prayers; then it remains outside the person and will not lead to a true conversion of heart. Young people who enter often see a religious house as a house protected by God. They see religious as being protected by God, and the convent as a place of shelter from the storms of life; God will protect the people whom he has called. Many young people enter to be protected from the violence in the streets. Young girls come to escape being raped. Parents send children to convents in order to prevent .them from joining gangs. As people turn to sangomas (the spiritual healers) to protect themselves from the chaos around them, so they send their young girls to convents for the same protection. They feel that no evil can enter a reli-gious house. They also feel that God protects his religious from economic disaster. Young people and their parents see religious houses as places where people will be educated, fed, and housed; as places where the chaos of grinding poverty and ignorance will be kept at bay. Religious will be protected from thes~ material disasters. It is essential in these circumstances to help young people, through self-reflection, to an acceptance of their African values in 522 Review for Religious the light of the Gospel values. This helps to bring about a con-version of heart in which the person is moved to choose Jesus and break out into the wider world of other people and their needs. Young persons, in answering their call, answer it on behalf of their entire family and the Ancestors whom they embody in their life. Therefore, when young people join a religious order, they do not come as mere individuals with little significance. They come as deserving of great respect. They are not alienated people of no back-ground. They are not nobodies. God calls people through an entire network of relationships. Young religious who respond are responsible, therefore, for answering the call of the entire network. This gives the religious a great sense of sup-port and responsibility. To know that one bears the spirit of a beloved grandmother or grandfa-ther in one's life makes the path less precarious, less lonely, and more meaningful. Second, it gives the religious a great sense of dignity and worth. Religious need to respect their own call, and others must respect it too. Without this sense of reverence and respect, the young reli-gious fails to have any sense of liminality. Religious life then becomes more a question of obeying external laws which do not touch the heart and of obtaining an education. Instead of reli-gious life being a development or an exploration of the spiritual, it can become monotonous and meaningless. When the crises come, as come they must, the religious will not choose Jesus, but will make an easier, more selfish choice. A common saying in Africa expresses this lack of conviction and choice: "That person is a Christian by day and an African by night!" A difficulty inherent in the above outlook arises when a reli-gious wishes to leave the convent. Leaving is looked upon as a disaster: the religious loses her ties with God. Her relationship with him is broken. It is in the light of this broken relationship that all future troubles will be judged. The following example is typical: A young'sister left a religious congregation and then failed to pass her nursing examination. She moved to teaching and was equally unsuccessful. This was seen to be the result of leaving the convent, not the result of lack of sufficient talent. It is important to stress, therefore, that the divine call arises out of our baptismal God calls people through an entire network of relationships. j~ly-August 1992 523 Alt . Rerootin Reli "ous Life call. It is this call that must be answered, whether it is lived out in the context of religious life or not. In Africa, to be in a group is part of life. The richness of the human exchange in a community enriches the individual. The individual who is not included in this exchange is drained of life, so to speak. Group living is full of all that is human. Contentment, excitement, joy, happiness, and security are part of that living as are tensions, fears, suspicions, and disharmony. But the underly-ing attitudes of loyalty and respect can keep a group together through major emotional upheavals. In Africa, people truly live community. In the West, people tend to theorize and talk about community, but find it difficult to live it. Both lifestyles have their problems. In Africa, people are meant to live in harmony with one another and with the Ancestors. The individual is meant to enrich the lives of others and to be enriched in return. A religious group thatis not living a life filled With the Spirit will tend to exhibit the spirits of discord and chaos. In such close-knit and complex living together, the individual can feel very vul-nerable. Fear of one another, fear of authority figures, is a natural component of such living. Unless the group is living in the Spirit, fear instead of acceptance and warmth can dominate the group. Community life is held back by fear. Individuals will keep quiet at community meetings, for example. Many opinions which could build up a community are not stated. This can lead to seri-ous mistakes being made. Superiors can go unchallenged and do irresponsible things. Individuals who choose to live a life which is not in accordance with their vows are also left unchallenged because others are afraid to say anything. Those who have this fear feel humiliated and inferior; they grow depressed; in the end, tension shows itself as an illness. Such fear of disharmony, of expressing conflicting opinions, can cause great problems to social and group life in Africa. If disharmony and conflicts arise, the group tends to split and quickly polarize. This process is very evident in the histories of many of the African Independent Churches. African political leaders have generally chosen a one-party style of government in order to avoid disharmony. In so doing they have introduced a totalitarian system which in practice is marked by tribalism and greed. Modern urban societies demand that we learn to live with some disharmony and difference of opinion. In fact, differences of opin- 524 Review.for Religious ion can lead to positive growth, for without differences adaptation to changing times and circumstances cannot take place. In Africa the method of handling differences is for the entire group to°come together and to discuss fully the pros and cons of the different opinions. In these long conversations each person is listened to, and the conversation does not end until consensus is reached. This is like methods of conflict management in the West. The Gospel message of Jesus enhances and brings to fruition the message which Africa can give our world in terms of the interdependence of humans and their dependence on the Divine. The message of Jesus is close to the heart of the African experience of human living together. The message of the great religious founders like St. Benedict finds spontaneous resonance in Africa. The message of religious life, which strives to express the values of the Gospel of Jesus, is not much different from African value systems. The message of Jesus helps people choose less selfish values. In Africa, choices are made according to how a person feels. They tend to be made in terms of present time. A person might, there-fore, at one time choose some abstract Christian value and at another time choose against the same value. But people who are moved by the Spirit choose more responsibly. For instance, peo-ple might not feel like helping when help is needed, but if they are filled with the Spirit, they will go against that feeling and help nevertheless. Or, again, people may feel like getting revenge by not sharing, but if they are filled with the Spirit, they will share. The transcendent message of Jesus helps people to consider beyond this present moment. Christians need to think about the consequences of present actions: Would the future be better, more Christian, as a result of choices we might make now? Often enough, thoughtless pragmatic choices can bring immediate sat-isfaction in terms of money, goods, or pleasant feelings, but the long-term effects of these choices can be extremly destructive. Africa is full of examples of people who pragmatically and selfishly participated in their own destruction. Africans took part in the slave trade. African leaders have greedily plotted the economic ruin of the countries they govern. Tribal rural people have taken The message of Jesus is close to the heart of the African experience of human living together. AI~ o R~'ng Reli ~ou~ monetary handouts from the West, which have led to the destruc-tion of their way of life and to a dependency on further hand-outs. Other cultures can be less utilitarian and selfish by taking their heritage very seriously and protecting it. The Chinese, .Japanese, and Indians have not allowed Western materialism and individualism free access into their cultures, and they have been less enthusiastic in terms of cooperating with the West. Africa can be rather like Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pot-tage, because Africa does not appreciate the richness of its social and spiritual heritage for itself and for the world. The message of.jesus builds deeper trust. Christ has through his death and resurrection conquered death and despair. He is above all spirits. He is above all ancestors. There is no need for Christians to fear curses or sangomas or their neighbor. Life for Christians is secure because .jesus has already overcome the spirit of death and chaos. .Jesus speaks a message of love of one's neighbor and of one's enemy. Christians have to consider people who do not belong to their group or clan as nevertheless belonging to the family of .Jesus. Such "outsiders" are not objects, and they must be treated with love and respect. In this way the Christian message brings peace to the troubled area of ethnic and tribal violence--some-thing which has brought misery and death to many millions in Africa and has impoverished whole nations of people. If Christ's message is allowed to bring to fruition the values which the African people received from-God through the Ancestors, much that is unauthentic can be removed from African life even as its contact with the West increases. 526 Review for Religious ALBERT DI IANNI Religious Life and Religion Some recent discussions on "refounding" religious life in which I participated were passionate and at times ended in discord. Admittedly the groups involved were tired and overworked, but this was not the whole explanation. The heat manifested in exchanges about potential cures for the ills of contemporary religious life springs from a deeper source, from a basic disagreement about the nature of Christianity and of religion. When I first encountered the notion of"refounding" currently in vogue, I welcomed it as an improvement over "renewal" because it seemed to demand a deeper conver-sion and a more radical rebuilding. It brought to mind the Carmelite reform at the hands of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross through an inventive retrieval of the spirit and discipline of the founders. Refounding seemed to invite us to set out once again upon a religious adven-ture demanding both great sacrifice and an engagement with the world that remained in some way separate from the world. Resistance to the notion mounted, however, with the repeated calls to identify "change agents" in the group who might encourage creativity in ministry and develop alternative community lifestyles. The more speakers lim-ited their discussions to talk about "delivery systems" for Albert DiIanni SM serves as vicar general of the Society of Mary (Marist). His address is Via Messandro Poerio 63; 00152 Rome; Italy. living religiously ~-uly-dug~_st 1992 527 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion change, namely, leadership models derived from anthropology and from corporate-reflection techniques borrowed from busi-ness psychology--the more they discussed only means--the more I felt I was being bundled down some primrose path. Before I discuss means, I want to discuss goals; before I accept help to move forward, I want to determine where I, where we, should want to go. This is possibly because I suspect that I do not want to go where some speakers want to lead me or that their advice about means carries some hidden freight about goals with which I do not concur. In a recent conversation about refounding, I found myself suddenly compelled to ask some strange, basic questions, not about religious life but about religion: What, for you, constitutes the heart of the Christian religion? What is its basic meaning or purpose? What engenders religion in the first place? Such ques-tions came to mind because I suddenly realized that our dis-agreement lay at a deep level, that we could not simply assume we would all answer such fundamental questions in the same way. This was not because anyone had expressly denied any belief which I held, but becaus{ they seemed to deflect or sidestep cer-tain ideas as old-fashioned or not in line with the particular action steps being recommended. The urge to ask fundamental questions comes upon me espe-cially when I sense that religion is being reduced to sociology, psychology, or even to morality, be it personal, social, or ecolog-ical morality. In fact, any tendency to reduce religion to morality fires me up more than sociological or psychological reductions because it is more subtle and plausible and thus more seductive. But let me put my own cards on the table. What do I believe is at the heart of the Christian religion? (I will ignore the eso-teric distinction drawn by some between faith and religion and the theory that Christianity is not a religion but.a faith.) Though Christianity like other religions is an amalgam of many compo-nents, I believe that its strictly religious aspect lies in its being an answer to the experience of human contingency and the con-tingency of the world. Most people at some time in their lives have felt wonder that the world exists at all and have faced into the void of their own death. They moved beyond the taken-for-grant-edness of the world and became frightened by the thought that nothing at all might have existed and no possibility of anything. They wondered if there were an ultimate meaning to life or if 528 Review for Religious humans were but a sport of nature. Christianity's central doctrine is that the world need not have existed and that it was the object of creation by a good God. A Christian believer is convinced that at the center of the universe is not a surd but a personal Love. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was not a believer. Norman Malcolm, his former student and biographer, says that he could not be called a religious person, but that he was passionately interested in religion and always seemed close to the possibility of religion. Wittgenstein once produced two examples of what he consid-ered bona fide religious experiences as opposed to moral or aesthetic ones. He respected them even if he thought that in entertaining them he was running up against the limits of language. One was the experi-ence of uncanniness that the world exists at all. The second was the conviction he some-times had that, whatever might happen, he would be safe. Neither of these experiences points of necessity to the existence of some transcen- The urge to ask fundamental questions comes upon me when I sense that religion is being reduced to sociology, psychology, or even to morality. dent reality, but they provide, the experiential ground from which many people move to affirm the existence of God. In such feelings and experiences, the affirmation that God exists is existentially grounded, becomes more than an intellectual proposition, takes root, finds a home. The first experience is the sense that a fleet-ing world must be rooted in a stable fundamental Reality. The second bespeaks a trust that cannot be explained without the pres-ence of a loving center of the universe. My own thoughts about religion center on experiences of this type. Admittedly my idea of religion has strong mystical over-tones; it is our response to radical contingency and, in its most primitive and deepest meaning, has little to do with morality. Religion refers primarily to a "holy" space out of which we and the world spring and gives rise to the imperative that each of us become holy, living our life in and for God. Beyond this I know that religion and morality are intimately intertwined and that a religious or holy person must also be morally good. One can hardly be holy and evil. Holiness means in part being extraordinarily kind, socially just, honest, temperate, a ~dy-Augvmt 1992 529 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion peacemaker. Yet it cannot be reduced to the practice of these moral virtues. For it is conceivable that someone could be morally good, could follow punctiliously the rules of a moral system, fos-ter social justice, be chaste and kind, and yet not be a religious per-son. He or she could be moral out of personal taste, by temperament, for aesthetic reasons, or out of natural sympathy toward others, and not because of his or her relationship to God. Philippa.Foot, an Oxford moral philosopher and avowed atheist, once told a seminar group that she was such a moral person and that she refused to be patronized by being called an "anonymous Christian." A Christian religious person not only acts morally, but also sees the world in a new way--that it is dependent for its very existence on a transcendent reality and that this makes all the dif-ference. Because it is focused upon the transcendent, the Christian vision has specific ethical implications different from Enlighteflment theories which place the human person or freedom at the center of the moral endeavor. For the Christian the pri-mary response to the world is not that of owner and Promethean creator, but of humble and obedient creature; not an entrepreneurial relishing of power and freedom, but a Marian gratitude before God for all that God has wrought. From this Christian gratitude is born the imperative to love God and God's creation, to allow God to express the divine mercy through us, especially toward the weak and the abandoned. This Christian gratitude and its ethical implications are nourished and deepened through a close union with God in prayer. It is this vision, it seems to me, which should be at the heart of the life of consecrated religious. If they are to be prophetic, it is in this: that in their lives they point constantly to the tran-scendent moment of the universe and try to develop what it means. It is up to each group to decide how it will express this. Christian meaning exists in--and is to be found in--religious sis-ters, brothers, and priests when they are rapt in contemplation of God as well as when they are picking up dying persons from the streets. When people see one of them unremittingly engaged in both, they believe they are in the presence of a saint. Some contemporary Catholic lay people and members of reli-gious congregations seem to have lost sight of the transcendent pole of Christianity. Their model of Christianity has become what Charles Davis labels "pragmatic." The pragmatic version of 530 Review for Religious Christianity arose, he says, when "the Christian religion ceased to function mythically as an overarching totality . The emphasis therefore shifted to Christianity as a practical way of life or eth-ical system. This is still conceived in religious terms, such as the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of God's children, the kingdom of righteousness . But all these expressions are different ways of formulating the moral imperatives gov-erning human existence." ~ Both conservatives and liberals have made this pragmatic shift in Christianity. Conservatives stress per-sonal and family morality and such questions as abortion and euthanasia, and progressives stress social justice, ecology, and women's rights. Future historians may judge that the Vatican itself, but to a lesser degree, has been drawn into what I am characterizing as an overemphasis of morality. They may well remember Pope John Paul II as the "morality pope" because of his repeated statements about both per-sonal and social morality. In practice if not in theory, love of neighbor and enemy seem to have taken precedence over con-cern about union with God. Today's heresies all seem to be moral heresies. Not many Catholics seem concerned about dogmas, about trinitarian, soteriological, or Christological errors. And yet the history of the early church reveals that this was not always so. (I am at times tempted to fashion a brand-new trinitarian heresy to spur people to think more about God and less about themselves!) In this excessive emphasis on morality, the modern church reflects our secularized times, the age that mistook the world for God. In the late sixties, a time noted for its air of revolution, our seminary faculty once gathered the seminarians for a discussion on the question: W'hat are the most important qualities for being a priest and religious today? Some suggested approachability, oth-ers learning and competence, still others kindness or some other human virtue. I was surprised that no one spoke of holiness--a sure candidate just ten years before--and I pointed this out to Someone could be morally good, could follow punctiliously the rules of a moral system, foster social justice, be chaste and kind, and yet not be a religious person. ~dy-August 1992 531 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion the group. One of the seminarians fixed me with a stare and said with an air of disdain: "Just be human, Father!" Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Kiko ArgOello, the Spanish layman and artist who founded the Neo- Catechumenate movement, which offers a series of steps, a way, for modern Catholics to rediscover their baptism and be com-mitted to evangelization. I played the devil's advocate and asked whether his way (camino) of training lay people over a period of years did not produce an arrogant elite and end up creating more division than unity in parishes. His answer was in strict contrast to the seminarian's. He insisted that becoming a Christian today was not easy, regardless of what many priests trained since Vatican II seemed to believe. It did not suffice to simply shout the love slo-gan. Belief that God exists and that Jesus is in some way the son of God was difficult in a secularized culture. Besides, our world of drugs and violence, suburban adultery and abortion, euthana-sia and consumerism, was full of snares. It would not be suffi-cient simply to limit our preaching to a form of positive reinforcement. People had to be called to a public confession of their belief in God and Jesus, be brought to a felt need for con-version, be tested in their resolve, b~ supported by a tightly knit community, and be nourished by an adequate participative' liturgy. Needed, in his view, was a method, a way, a structure, a catechu-menate, 'to bring people squarely before their baptism and its implications for their lives. In so many words he was saying that it was simplistic for the 1968 seminarian to have said: "Just be human, Father." Yes, Christ is at work in the world wherever human good is being done, and we have to recognize and foster such work wher-ever we find it; but we must be aware, too, that fostering human-istic values and being a Christian are not in every way identical. Besides demanding that we be thoroughly moral, Christianity demands belief in many strange things, like the incarnation, the need for redemption, the resurrection, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and the role of Mary. For a time in my adolescence, I wished I had been brought up neutral vis-~a-vis religion so that at the age of twenty-one I might consider all the major religions and choose among them without the prejudice of early Catholic training or brainwashing. But I know now that this is naive, for I have recognized that young people who have not been brought up in any religion end up by 532 Review for Religious having no religious sentiment or religiosity. They tend to remain religion-neutral, unable to make a choice in favor of any religion. George Lindbeck, a Protestant theologian, believes that, unless some religion is taught to us when we are young, unless we are brought up in some religious prac-tices, we might not even be capable of religious experience. This may be exaggerated, but I am sure it contains a grain of truth. One thing is certain: People are never brought up in a vac-uum of vision and values. If they do not absorb religious vision and val-ues, they absorb the secular vision and religion-neutral values of the movies and television. Especially in Europe several new lay Christian movements and reli-gious orders have been born in full awareness of this: the Focolarini, the Sant' Egidio community, the Neo- Catechumenate, the Lion of Juda, the Legionaries of Christ, and so forth. They all believe that becoming Christian in a secularized world is especially difficult and demands a way, a method, an entry through a kind of Christian subculture. It means leaving behind a lot of things that can seem very important from the world's point of view, but really are not. It demands kenosis, emptying oneself, in preparation for a radical decision in favor of Christ and God. Karl Rahner once declared: "A Christian in today's world will be a mys-tic or else he will not exist." And he went on to speak of mystagogy, the need of a method to lead people to see everything in God. I believe that one reason why religious congregations are in a mere survival situation today is that, in their admirable effort to take a positive view of the world, they have identified religion too strongly with a humanistic morality that tends to be secular-istic, individualistic, and overly egalitarian. History shows that almost all religious congregations enjoyed strong growth at their beginnings. They were exciting and attractive in part because they were new, but part of their attraction lay elsewhere. The early members had a sense of a religious adventure and cause larger than themselves which rendered them willing to forgo many personal rights and privileges.~They were members of what Besides demanding that we be thoroughly moral, Christianity demands belief in many strange things, like the incarnation, the need for redemption, the resurrection. July-August 1992 533 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion have been called "intentional" communities as opposed to various "associational" and "bureaucratic" ones that have come into exis-tence since Vatican II.2 They were quite unconcerned with self-expression and equality, not because they were naive and subservient (today's caricature), but because they were caught up in a higher religious vision that enhanced and focused their ener-gies for God and the church. Most religious congregations were founded for three main purposes, the salvation of the members, the salvation of others, and dedication to a devotion or a way of the apostolate. Their charism did not lie only in the third element but in all three. Their purposes were decidedly religious and eschatological as well as incarnational. Today the eschatological has been pushed aside by an incarnational theology interpreted too secularistically and humanistically. Transcendent themes have been toned down in favor of an emphasis on egalitarian rights, on a type of justice interpreted not only as equity but as evenness, a kind of unifor-mity without differences. Everyone knows that only in unity is strength. But egalitarianism, by its very definition, effects an atomism and separateness within a group inasmuch as it deems individual rights and desires more important than the group's religious cause and adventure. Such stress upon egalitarian and humanistic ideals is an ide-ology. It is one way--and only one way--of interpreting democ-racy and justice in society and in religious groups. To oppose that ideology is not to give up democracy but to give it another inter-pretation. This was brought home to me recently as I overheard a conversation between an Mnerican priest--a born-again egali-tarian- and a young female member of the lay Sant' Egidio com-munity in Rome.3 Describing how the community functioned, she mentioned that in her particular community, because of its makeup and history, only certain men and no women were asked to speak at the prayer services. The American priest objected that this was a grave error, that it was supremely important--as a sym-bol and sign to others if not for her personally--that women be allowed to preach in every community. She answered that the Sant' Egidio community did not approach questions ideologi-cally, but pragmatically. Some of the other communities did have women preachers, but because of its particular history and tal-ents, her group preferred not to have them and she was happy with things as they were. She explained that for the Sant' Egidio 534 Review for Religious group three things were of paramount importance: (1) prayer together over the word of God, (2) friendship or mutual support, and (3) work for and with the poor. All else must cede before the achievement of these goals. The American priest's voice rose as he insisted that she was wrong and that the American interpretation of women's rights was correct. But she stood her ground and deftly changed the sub-ject. We have come full circle. In the 1960s, after many years of repression and an exaggerated supernaturalism, we needed to stress personal free-dom and responsibility and a true equality among the races and sexes. We had to recognize our duty before God to take responsibility to build up a world of justice and peace. But this did.not mean that such concerns should come to prevail in reli-gious congregations and sweep all else away in their wake. Now that we have seen the shadow side of such emphases in religious life, we can bet-ter take stock and rediscover that our involvement with the world must begin beyond the world. While the psychological and political agendas were very important for religious life, neither of them was the "one thing necessary." Religious life should center upon that in Christianity which relates our lives to the transcendent. It is here that we must seek its prophecy. It is in reminding people of the divine enchant-ment of the world that it must be countercultural. It is upon this that reflection on refounding religious life must insist. In her arti-cle "Religious Life and the Need for Salt,''4 Joan Chittister asks the right questions regarding contemporary religious life. She wisely concludes that the project of encouraging self-expression in traditionally repressed religious has now been achieved. She says we must now move to questions about the group and how it can be prophetic in today's world. But her answers, giving her interpretation of prophecy, are still too much centered on ecology, social assistance, and human rights and thus, by remaining within a pragmatic model of Christianity, seem but another reiteration of the program of liberal politics. These liberal concerns are impor-tant and must be addressed by the church: the laity, the clergy, and the religious. But addressing such issues, in my opinion, is not going to be the salvation of religious life. Its problems do not 'A Christian in today's world will be a mystic or else he will not exist.' .July-August 1992 535 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Relig4on arise from a neglect of them. Religious lack, not moral outreach, but religious centering. They fail to realize what the poor them-selves realize and express in their popular religions, that our union with God through Jesus is central, that we must work at it, and that it is primarily in this that we will be countercultural. Which is more countercultural--to say we must strive to save planet earth or to say we truly believe that the dead are with God because Jesus rose from the dead and that this makes all the difference? I have made some hard remarks and asked some hard ques-tions, and I would welcome a dialogue about them. I am sure I have not expressed them adequately, but I am convinced that they contain at least a grain of truth. I am encouraged in uttering them by the swing of young people in both Europe and North America toward an interest in the mystical sense of religion. In the 1960s the young were caught up in the humanistic values of psychol-ogy and sociology, but today's youth exhibit a great interest in mysticism, religious cults and movements, apparitions and heal-ings, the afterlife; and even reincarnation and the satanic. Does this not indicate that they are experiencing a deep void of mean-ing in an anorexic and bulimic world where money, notoriety, power, individualism, and equality have become the primary val-ues? Does not this cultural change signal that secular humanism for all its ethical achievements has also been an impoverishment by reason of a dearth of religious imagination? Is it not a sign of the times when people living in sophisticated technological cul-tures begin to be attracted to religious beliefs interpreted in a most .simplistic fashion? I know the good responses to the distinction I draw within Christianity between morality and religion. Most will describe it as dualistic--for contemporary pundits the most damning of epi-thets. They will say, "You are separating things that are essen-tially linked." Love of God and love of neighbor are two aspects of the same thing. If you do not care for the person you see, how can you say you love the God you do not see? Those who love God should find their love's primary expression in their dedica-tion to caring for their neighbor, whether friend or enemy. Prayer is missionary and missionary activity is prayer--and on and on. Others will say that I give a false description of the present sit-uation of religious life; they will deny that those engaged in social justice and ecology tend to pray less and to be less interested in the transcendent, in sacraments, and in the eschatological. 536 Reviezv for Religious I know these rejoinders are partly true, but also that they are partly false. I know that the two aspects of Christianity, religion and morality, love of God and love of neighbor, are very closely intertwined, and I am aware of Karl Rahner's brilliant attempt to conjoin them.5 But I know too that they are conceptually distinct because I have seen them separated in the history of the church. At times the church has experienced the extreme of quietism, an overem-phasis on faith without good works, and other times the heresy of action, a hectic involvement in important works of justice and charity to the detriment of prayer and interiority, the soul of the apostolate. It is up to each of us to examine our life to determine where we are. But I am convinced that the problems of religious life stem only partly from a lack of adequate delivery systems and from ignorance about psychol-ogy, social systemics, and anthropo-logical models in an age of rapid change. I am convinced that their deeper source lies in the confusion between religion and morality and in an insistence upon moral-ity because of a loss of faith and interest in religion. If Christian religion is centered almost exclusively upon doing the moral good, upon promoting social justice and ecology, or upon fighting pornography and abortion, then what is the mean-ing of doctrines and dogmas? Are they but religious, accouter-ments? If so, why not be honest and simply drop them? What is the meaning of the redemption through Christ for a religion reduced to morality? What is the meaning of the Eucharist? Are these dogmas and sacraments only stimuli for action, stories and symbols subtly swaying us to do what is truly important: foster-ing the construction of a socially just and ecologically sound world, creating the. kingdom of morality? Is the resurrection just a story whose real cash value is all those smaller resurrections which can occur in a society, in history, or in each human life? How is a religious congregation which centers so strongly on morality to be differentiated from such groups as UNICEF or the Which is more countercultural - to say we must strive ~ to save planet earth or to say we truly believe that the dead are with God because Jesus rose from the dead and that this makes all the difference ? ~dy-Augzlst 1992 537 Dilanni ¯ Religious Life and Religion A life steeped in prayer will produce something we may have lost: a solid number of holy men and women whose life clearly is centered on God. FAO wherein men and women devote themselves to humanitarian causes at times for wages far lower than they could obtain else-where? I know that, since Vatican II, theologians including Rahner and Schillebeeckx have highlighted the thesis that Christ is at work in the world wherever good is. being done and humane causes are fostered. I am acquainted with the theories that the work of building up the kingdom of God is primarily a matter of our present life in the world, that salvation is not only after death but begins here, that the glory of God is man and woman fully alive. I am in sympathy with such emphases, but must also admit that they do not set me on fire; and judging from the vocation statistics of "progressive" congregations, I know that they have not stirred the young. For in my heart I suspect that such emphases are quite incomplete and were (in part) born of a loss of faith in the transcendent. For me Christianity centers not on us but on God. It demands a different vision of the world and reality, which generates a humble gratitude to the God who is responsible for all that is. One of Christianity's concerns is our inborn tendency to distort our freedom, arising from what Luther called the "in-curvedness" of our will. Christianity is about God and sin and the need for God's grace-ful hand to help us make proper use of our freedom. Christian religion must be about God and our relationship with God not only implicitly but also explicitly. It is from a union with God in prayer that light will emanate on how we are to relate to God, the world, and each other. And if a life is to be devoted to religion in a special way, if it is to be a consecrated religious life, it must be lived primarily in view of this relationship to God, not only in ideal but also in structure. It must be structured in such a way that the life of,the group abets in its members this concern about each one's relationship to God and gives witness of it to others. Such a life steeped in prayer will produce something we may have lost: a solid number of holy men and women whose life clearly is centered on God. If this proves true, young people will surely again be attracted to this kind of life, not so much because 538 Review for Religious it is relevant or more interesting than the world, but simply because religious life so construed and so lived is what it purports to be--religious. Notes ~ What is Living, What is Dead in Christianity Today? (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 39. -' See Patricia Wittberg SC, Creating a Future for Religious Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1991

Issue 50.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1991. This is a special 50th anniversary issue on Ignatian spirituality. ; Review for Religious Volume 50 ¯ Number 1 January/February 1991 Ignatian Spirituality Ellard ¯ Grace ¯ Barry ¯ Ong ¯ Klaas Murphy ¯ Divarkar ¯ Cannon ¯ Fischer Fleming ¯ Flynn ¯ Townsend ¯ Wickham REVIEW FOR R~;Uc~OUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Mis-souri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus; Editorial Office; 3601 Lindell Blvd., Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to REVIEW FOR Rr:LI(;Iot,sP.O. Box 6070; Duluth. MN 55806. Subscription rates: Single copy $3.50 plus mailing costs. One-year subscription $15.00 plus mail-ing costs; two-year subscription $28.00 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover fi)r subscription information and mailing costs. 01991 Rv.w~.:w voa RELII;IOUS. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Micheal G. Harter, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. January/February 1991 Volume 50 Number I Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editnr should be sent to Rt:\'~t:w t't~a Rt:u~aous; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. lamis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Eliza-beth McDonough, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue; P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. Back issues shnuld be ordered from Rt:w~:w voa Rt:~J~;~ous; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. la~uis, MO 63108-3393. "Oat Df print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Review for Religious Volume 50, 1991 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis. Missouri 63108-3393 David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Michael G. Harter, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS iS published in January, March, May, July, Sep-tember, and November on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR REL~GOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright© 1991 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion of each issue of R~wEw FOR RZL~G~OUS is also regu-larly available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually im-paired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS begins its fiftieth year of publication with this issue. To celebrate, we are dedicating this entire issue to contemporary reflections on Ignatian spirituality, the spirituality that enlivened and in-spired the three founding editors--Augustine Ellard, Adam Ellis, and Ger-ald Kelly, all Jesuit priests. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS has never been identified as the publication of a particular school of spirituality or of one religious-life tradition. In the vision of the founding editors, the journal was to serve all religious-life communities and at the same time to be a forum for the wide exchange of ideas and developments in the spiritual life and apostolic mission of the Church itself. Over the years all religious groups and spiritual-life traditions have been represented among the authors and through the arti-cles found in the pages of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. The strength and the ap-peal of the journal have been in its broadening of our horizons for both understanding and developing our Catholic spiritual and apostolic lives. To use the imagery recalled in the title of this foreword, the authors and articles have given us various prisms through which we can view from various angles the Christian calling to be with Jesus in the bringing about of the reign of God. This issue, however, in one sense narrows that focus and centers on lgnatian spirituality, not just as a tribute to the founding editors, but also as a particular contribution to the celebration of the lgnatian anniversaries~50 years from the founding of the Society of Jesus and 500 years from the birth of Ignatius Loyola. The contribution which Ig-natius has made to the spiritual vitality of Christian life is especially evi-denced in the widespread retreat experience of laity, clergy, and religious according to the method of the Spiritual Exercises. At its beginnings, lg-natian spirituality played an important role in the Church renewal stimu-lated by the Council of Trent. In a similar way, since Vatican II the lg-natian tradition of discernment has been key to religious chapter renewal and choice of apostolic mission, in addition to personal and parish re-newal. Because of the widespread influence of this lgnatian tradition over the centuries on both the Christian devotional life and the de-velopment of religious-life forms, the decision was made to let this is- Review for Religious, Janua13,-February 1991 sue take its "Ignatian" shape from various unsolicited articles recently submitted for possible publication and from a few "classical" Ignatian articles reprinted from earlier issues. One of the founding editors, Father Augustine Ellard, S.J., provides us with an overall review of the elements of Ignatian spirituality; when the article was originally published in 1952, it was one of a series on vari-ous religious-life spiritualities. Two other articles drawn from early past issues deal with the meaning of the A.M.D.G. motto and its directional value for our living (written by Walter Ong, S.J.) and with the retreat movement as influenced by the Ignatian Exercises (written by Augustine Klaas, S.J.). Parmananda Divarkar, S.J., touches upon the apparent Ignatian para-dox between a growing sense of personal freedom and an ever more bind-ing loyalty to Christ and to his Church; he finds his reflections embod-ied in the former superior general of the Society of Jesus, Father Pedro Arrupe. In a similar way, William Barry, S.J., traces the development of a freeing experience in the self-and-God imagery of Ignatius as a possi-ble model for our own growth. In their two articles, David Townsend, S.J., and David Fleming, S.J., consider two different aspects of the lg-natian prayer tradition captured in the contemporary phrases of "find-ing God" and "centering." In two articles which specifically consider the Spiritual Exercises, John Wickham, S.J., introduces us to a deeper appreciation of the com-munal dimensions involved in the Ignatian Exercises, while Dr. Helen Murphy shares her experience of familiarizing people, particularly col-lege students, with the movements of the Exercises. William Barry, S.J., proposes an understanding of discernment as particularlyrelevant to the spiritual crisis of our time. Then in two articles reflecting on ministry today, David Fleming, S.J., points to the "secret" of an Ignatian way of ministering, and James Flynn, S.J., reviews the contemporary collabo-rative effort to share the lgnatian spirit among all the parties who make up a complex apostolic institution, such as a Jesuit university. What Ig-natian spirituality, especially in the form found in the Christian Life Com-munities, has meant to lay people is reflected in Mrs. Ligeia Cannon's article. How deeply intertwined Ignatian spirituality is with the Church's devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus inspires a fresh and invigorating re-examination by Edmond Grace, S.J. The book-review section, too, centers on Ignatian spirituality. Be-sides the reviews of three recently published books dealing with Ignatian spirituality, with the Spiritual Exercises in daily life, and with the per- Prisms sonal diary of the Jesuit John Eagan, Philip Fischer, S.J., provides a sum-mary introduction to the many publications of the Institute of Jesuit Sources since its beginning in the 1960s. He also calls our attention to some of the books dealing with Ignatian themes which have recently ap-peared or have been published consistently by certain other publishing houses. We hope that the authors and their articles in this unique issue pro-vide all our readers with a way to share in the celebration of the Ignatian anniversaries and the fiftieth anniversary of this journal. The editors also want to express our deep appreciation for the cover design produced by Thomas Rochford, S.J., and Michael Harter, S.J., which sets off and marks this issue as special. For those who may want to share this issue with others, individual copies can be ordered from the editorial offices in St. Louis at $3.50 plus $1.50 for postage and handling. Ad multos annos! David L. Fleming, S.J. Ignatian Spirituality Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. Father Augustine Ellard, S.J., along with Fathers Adam Ellis, S.J., and Gerald Kelly, S.J., is a founding editor of REvw.w FOR RF~.~C~OUS. These three Jesuits re-mained the editorial board for the first fifteen years of the journal. The following article was published in the May 1952 issue. Although some of the militaristic stress of Ignatian spirituality would be mitigated by commentators today, the article re-mains an excellent summary of lgnatian principles. Father Ellard died on February 17, 1970--the last of the founding editors to die. I Ignatian spirituality is one of the modern schools. It acknowledges its jun-ior status, and gladly and gratefully accepts the rich inheritance that the older schools of Catholic spiritual tradition have put at its disposal. Fa-ther Dudon, in his St. Ignatius of Loyola, devotes the whole of chapter twelve to showing that just when he was working out his own ideas and ideals, St. Ignatius was under the influence of a rather large number of different currents of spirituality. The two principal instruments of his con-version were the Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony and the Lives of the Saints by Jacopo de Voragine. The former was a Carthusian, and the latter a Dominican. Ignatius often thought: "St. Dominic did this, St. Francis that; should not I also do as they?" As a matter of fact, for a time he thought of becoming a Carthusian. His favorite book through-out life was Thomas ~. Kempis; thus he put himself in debt to the "De-votio Moderna" that the Brothers of the Common Life and the monks of Windesheim were propagating. These three works were major forces in his formation. In addition to these he came under the personal influ-ence of the Benedictines at Montserrat, of the Dominicans with whom he lived at Manresa, of the Franciscans, of the Hieronymites, of the Cis-tercians, and probably of others also. It is the opinion of at least one man who has made a very special Ignatian SpiritualiO, / 7 study of Ignatian spirituality, namely Boeminghaus, that Ignatius fused two streams of spirituality which before him had come down in more or less parallel lines (Boeminghaus, Die Aszese der lgnatianischen Exerci-tien, 10-34). These traditions were those typified by Thomas fi Kempis and St. Francis of Assisi. During the later years of the Middle Ages the school of spirituality that was most fresh and vigorous was that of the Christian Renaissance, just referred to under the Latin name that it usu-ally goes by, namely, "Devotio Moderna." It marked a reaction against excessive speculation in piety and stressed the supreme importance of be-ing practical in one's religious life. In particular, it tended to put more method into the spiritual life and especially into the mental prayer that should animate and vivify it. In a word, one may say that its asceticism was that which we are all familiar with from the Imitation of Christ. The second stream was the Franciscan. It taught pious souls to take the Gospel literally, to seek evangelical simplicity and poverty, to look to Jesus in his human nature as he really existed in time and place, to respond to him as a person with love and devotion, to keep united with him as intimately as possible, and finally to live and work with him. Hence vitality, enthusiasm, and personal response characterize it, as prac-tical method and earnestness marked the other. Boeminghaus sums up his idea in suggesting that, to a great extent, St. Ignatius took his method from the Christian Renaissance group and the content of his system from the Franciscan tradition, and then united them in his own original way. In these pages Ignatian spirituality is taken to include not only the teaching of St. Ignatius himself, but also that of his order. For the saint's own doctrine the primary written sources are, besides his Spiritual Ex-ercises and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, his Spiritual Jour-nal and some of his letters. Certain letters are very important and do not always get the attention they deserve by those who profess to present his doctrine, especially on mental prayer. Some of the letters, too, are equiva-lent to little didactic treatises; examples are the celebrated Epistle on Obe-dience and the letter on perfection to the students of the Society at Coim-bra (May 7, 1547). The spiritual teaching of the Jesuits is to be found partly, in certain official documents, for instance, letters of the Fathers General, and principally in the numerous published works of Jesuit as-cetical and mystical authors. Moreover, Ignatian spirituality is understood to comprise both that according to which Jesuits themselves try to live, including a certain con-ception of the religious life, of the vows, and especially of obedience, and also that which they propose for others who accept their instruction. Of course, it is not implied in presenting Jesuit ideals that all Jesuits Review for Religious, Janua~3,-February 1991 fully realize them. Basic Ideas The fundamental element in any school of spirituality is the theory or set of ideas underlying it and giving it life and direction. There must be some definite conception, for example, of God, of Christ, of human nature, and of the world. Different initial views on these fundamental re-alities or their relations necessarily give rise to different attitudes of will and divergent practical principles. St. Ignatius's mentality ,was not at all theoretical. Hence the general intellectual outlook in his system is simple and concrete. It is decidedly akin to that of the Synoptic Gospels rather than to St. John or St. Paul. It is not learned or theological, like, for instance, that of the Dominican Fathers or of the French Oratory. God is conceived mostly as a great and good king, as a grand mon-arch on the divine scale. It is emphasized especially that he is the crea-tor and hence the sovereign lord of all. St. Ignatius liked to refer to God as "His Divine Majesty," or "the Supreme Goodness." Among the di-vine attributes liberality is often singled out for mention. God is not thought of as "All in all" or as "Prime Mover" or as "the Divine Spouse." Christ, the God-man, is so rich in various aspects that no one person or group of his disciples could exhaust them all. Hence different schools of spirituality emphasize different phases of the great reality that he is. One could consider him as an adorable divine king sitting at the right hand of the Father, surrounded by a heavenly court of angels and saints, and receiving the homage of prayer and work from devout men on earth. Another could concentrate attention and affection above all on the scenes of the crib and the cross. A third, utilizing the concepts of theology, could make much of the Word Incarnate. St. Ignatius sees Christ mostly as the son of the divine King, and a king himself, but with a kingdom still to be conquered. He is a crusading king, at the head of his army, announcing his intentions, and inviting men to volunteer for service. The peculiar temper of a school may depend much on how it con-ceives human nature, to cite an historical example: ancient Alexandrine spirituality took intelligence rather than any other faculty to be the great thing about being human and accordingly it stressed the place of con-templation in the perfect life. The modern French School (Cardinal de B~rulle) is noted for its pessimistic conception of human nature and the effects upon itof original sin. St. Ignatius is characterized in this matter by a certain optimism and voluntarism. Human nature is indeed some- lgnatian Spiritualio, / 9 thing that needs chastening and training, but basically it is good and to be developed and put to work in the cause of Christ. If all creatures have their value, afortiori human nature has; in fact a human being is the end and purpose of all other things. Bodily strength is not t6 be diminished by indiscreet austerities, but to be brought under control and made ef-fective for service of God. The voluntarism of St. Ignatius is abundantly illustrated throughout the Exercises; he never ceases to refer to "what I wish." The Ignatian view of the world, too, is rather distinctive. Unlike many ascetics of old he did not look upon it as something evil to be fled from and shunned as much as possible. Nor like St. Bernard did he con-sider it better to avoid creatures than to use them. He did not share St. Francis's tender sentiment toward lowly creatures as brothers and sisters. St. Bonaventure and many holy people of the Middle Ages stressed the fact that all things are likenesses of God and should be looked upon as enlightening us about him and attracting us to him. St. Ignatius is more utilitarian and practical. For him everything in creation is a means to help people to work out their destiny; everything is to be regarded and treated solely with reference to that purpose. Corresponding to the ideas that one conceives of God and of human being will be one's ideal of perfection, that is, what one takes to be the completely right relation between God and us. Of course, the followers of St. Ignatius would be entirely submissive to their Creator and Supreme Lord. They would make God's ends their own and seek to achieve them by the means that God prefers. To the divine liberality they also respond with magnanimous liberality. Enrolled in the apostolic campaign with Christ, they endeavor to associate themselves as closely as possible with their great leader, to work with him as effectively as possible, and to imi-tate him in all respects, but especially in bearing poverty and humiliation nobly. Thus in everything they strive to love and serve the Divine Maj-esty. They conform their will altogether to that of God. "What I wish" becomes precisely what God wishes. Leading Principles Logically and naturally the basic ideas of a system of spirituality, in themselves more or less theoretical, give rise to practical principles in-dicating the appropriate action that should follow. The Divine Purpose and Plan The first and supreme principle of lgnatian asceticism is to seek the end for which God created one. "Man is created to praise, reverence, Review for Religious, Januat3,-FebruaO, 1991 and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul": the "First Principle and Foundation" in the Spiritual Exercises (23).(Quotations from the Exercises are from Louis J. Puhl's translation: the figures refer to the paragraph enumeration introduced by the editors of the critical edi-tion, Madrid, 1919.) As God begins, and we may also add, ends, with a certain definite purpose, so does St. Ignatius, and so too will his disciple. In fact, we are invited to intend just what God intends. Between God and us there are to be no cross-purposes. Moreover, and especially, one should seek, not a part of what God intends, but all of it, and to work it out always by using precisely the means and method preferred by God: what is this but to have just the same plan as God? Praising and reverencing God is substantially the same as glorifying him. Striving for the greater glory of God, "Ad majorem Dei gloriam," is very probably what the name of Ignatius is most apt to suggest to most people who have some knowledge of him. It is well known that when-ever St. Ignatius wrote or dictated he was constantly referring to the glory of God. In the little book of the Exercises the glory or praise of God is proposed as the end no less than 33 times. In the Constitutions of the Society the reference occurs about 135 times in 247 pages (the edi-tion of 1937; so Lawlor, "Doctrine of grace in the Spiritual Exercises," Theological Studies, 1942, 524). Nor was the expression always on his lips only. Seeking to make God better known and loved was ever in his thoughts and aspirations and supremely strong and dominant among them. Hence explicit and uninterrupted aiming at the greater glory of God is a conspicuous mark of Jesuit spirituality. A similar and more or less equivalent idea that was a great favorite with St. Ignatius and occurs still more frequently is "service." "Lo-cutions such as 'to the greater service of God,' 'to the greater service of God and the help of souls,' and their like, are repeated 157 times in the Constitutions" (Ibid). Serving God is, of course, the same as work-ing out his purposes or extending his glory, and it may be said to be cen-tral in Ignatius's whole conception of what our relations and activities toward God should be. Some religious leaders would no doubt put prayer or even mortification in the central place; for Ignatius, everything, prayer, recollection, self-abnegation, and so on, must be subordinated to the glory and service of God. Intending what God intends, seeking his glory, serving him, all this implies the need and use of means. St. Ignatius is broad enough to re-gard all created things as these means. He is insistent, too, that they are Ignatian Spirituality to be used neither more nor less than in the measure of their utility with respect to the final end. In no way or degree are they to be sought for their own sake as goals if they be pleasant and attractive, and no repug-nance to a useful but disagreeable means is to be allowed to interfere with using it. To the noblest end the best means is always to be chosen. Hence, another celebrated term and idea of Jesuit spirituality: namely, indifference. Association with Christ A second leading principle in St. lgnatius's system is "Associate yourself with Christ as closely as possible," or "Know, love, and imi-tate Christ as far as possible." The divine purpose and plan become more specifically the program of Christ. All Christians, of course, strive to as-sociate themselves with Christ, or to know and love and imitate him, but not all in precisely the Ignatian way, that is, in the spirit of "The King-dom" and the "Two Standards." As we have seen, St. Ignatius likes to consider Christ as "Our Lord, the Eternal King," a prince who is organizing a military expedition or crusade, to conquer the whole world and bring it back to loyal submis-sion to its divine sovereign. He summons all good people to become re-cruits in his army, to share his warfare, and then to rejoice with him in the fruits of victory. Both the royal commander and his soldiers are to live and fight under the same conditions of toil, combat, and suffering, that subsequently they may enjoy the same glories of victory together. The motives for enlisting are considered so attractive that nobody with good sense could decline; one would at least join the expedition as a com-mon soldier. But with this degree St. Ignatius is not at all satisfied. In view of the singularly magnetic qualities of the Leader and the ex-cellence of his cause, any with a spark of spirit about themselves will volunteer for distinguished service. They will be glad to show their love and affe~ztion by offering themselves for deeds of greater value beyond the call and strict.requirement of duty. They will i~ot wait to be attacked, but will themselves take the offensive and carry the war into the enemy's territo'ry ("acting against"). In particular they will first make a perfect conquest of their own interior foes, and aggressively overcome their own "sensuality and carnal and worldly love." They will profess themselves ready to imitate their great king in bearing humiliations and poverty. It is, therefore, a cardinal principle of Ignatian spirituality that to the sum-mons of Christ the King one should respond with all the magnanimity and generosity that one can muster. The eager new recruit soon gets lessons in the basic principles of strat- "12 '1 Review for Religious, January-Februat3, 1991 egy of the leader and also of the enemy chief. These are presented in the colorful exercise called "A Meditation on Two Standards." They are further developed and enforced in rules for the discernment of spirits. Lucifer's tactics are to be understood well, and since they are insidious one is ever to be on guard against his deceits. His general ruse is first to seduce people into an inordinate ques~ for riches and honor, these be-ing indifferent, and then into pride and finally into all vices. The inten-tion of Christ is just the contrary, that is, by example and precept he in-duces people to cultivate the spirit of poverty, or even actual poverty it-self, to conceive "a desire for insults and contempt," to acquire the virtue of humility, and thus then to attain all the different virtues. It will be noticed that St. Ignatius makes great efforts to have his discipline look especially to two aspects of Christ's moral character, namely, his pov-erty and his humility. In the Constitutions of his order and in certain of his letters he adds a third great virtue, that is, obedience. At least for the members of the Society this gets so much emphatic commendation and insistence that it is in a sense the point in which Jesuits are supposed to specialize. The Third Mode of Humility The "third mode of humility" is so highly characteristic of St. Ig-natius's whole doctrine and so important in itself that it should, it seems, be proposed as a third leading principle. It is presented in the Exercises as the last disposition to be sought in the ideal preparation of soul to dis-cern and choose the will of God in ordering one's life. It is also the high-est point that one could reach in conquering self, in achieving the vic-tory over one's disorderly and rebellious impulses, and in bringing them into that order which the divine plan and the program of Christ require. In the first mode of humility one submits to God in everything that is of serious obligation. The second degree disposes one so to submit as to avoid not only venial sin but also every defect of indifference and hence all positive imperfections (failure to carry out counsels). In the third kind "whenever the praise and glory of God would be equally served, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches, in order to imitate and be in reality more like Christ our Lord; ! choose 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" (Ex-ercises, 167). In a word, the perfect associate of Jesus makes oneself like him as far as possible, in all virtues, but especially, other considerations being equal, in poverty and humility. Evidently reverence and love and lgnatian Spirituality devotion to him can go no farther. Practically one prefers just what Christ prefers. To Love God A fourth leading principle in Ignatian spiritual training is "in all things to live and serve the Divine Majesty" (Exercises, 233). Every school of spirituality, merely to be Christian, must keep in the forefront the primacy of love. Some people have been disappointed that in express-ing the end for which God created the human person St. Ignatius did not mention love. True, it is not named there; but as surely and as fully as it enters into the divine plan and intention, it is there by implication. The constant desire, too, to choose only that which is most conducive to the end would involve much love for God. Even in meditating upon hell it is St. Ignatius's mind that love should have a certain priority: one prays "that if through my faults I forget the love of the eternal Lord, at least the fear of these punishments will keep me from falling into sin" (Exer-cises, 65). Throughout the second, third, and fourth weeks of the Exer-cises the prevailing general objective is to achieve, with an intimate knowl-edge and exact imitation, an ardent love for the God-man. The climax is reached in the celebrated "Contemplation to attain the Love of God" (Exercises, 230-237). Love shows that it is genuine by "deeds rather than words." It con-sists especially "in a mutual sharing of goods." On his part God pre-sents us with the whole gamut of creation, the totality of his external goods, and then in addition "the same Lord desires to give himself to" his beloved "according to his divine decrees." In grateful and gener-ous response one breaks out into the "Suscipe," relinquishing to the great Infinite Lover the complete possession and disposal of oneself. Every word in this magnificent exercise prepares one to love the ineffa-ble Divine Goodness literally with all the energies of one's soul and body and to demonstrate the truth of one's affection by really doing everything that pleases God and nothing that could displease him. Before working out the Constitutions for his Society St. Ignatius laid it down as the first principle thai it was not any exterior regulations that were to guide the order, but rather the interior law of love and charity that the Holy Spirit inscribes in the human heart. One of the Society's first rules is that its members should strive in all their acts to serve and please the infinitely good God for his own sake and with a view to re-paying his love and his immense liberality to them. Hope for rewards or fear of punishment are to have only a secondary role. God is to be loved in all his creatures, and conversely too they all in him. Review for Religious, January-FebruaO, 1991 A distinction has been drawn between two philosophies of love: one, called physical, emphasizes the tendency of love to base itself on unity and to proceed to ever greater union; it is seen for example, in the desire to be with one's parents or relatives. The other, termed ecstatic, empha-sized duality or division and the inclination in certain cases for a lover to go outside of oneself, as it were, or to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved; it is exemplified in the self-sacrifice of mothers for their children or of soldiers for their countrymen. Likewise attention has been called to two theological conceptions of charity: one, that of personal desire, we might say, considers the act whereby one wills the Infinite Good to oneself to be charity; so, for instance, St. Bonaventure. The other, that of pure benevolence, regards this act as belonging to hope and excludes such self-reference from charity; so Suarez; it would love God simply and absolutely for his infinite goodness or for himself. Corresponding to the'se two philosophical and theological views one may discern two general types of spirituality: the first centers around the direction of seeking greater union with God. It would find gospel war-rant in the text: "That they all may be one; that, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I am in Thee, they also may be one in us" (Jn 17:21, Spencer version). It would like to save its life. A mystery of predilection for it is the Incarnation, the supreme union of God and man. It is illustrated in the lives and doctrines of Saints Augustine, Thomas, Teresa, John of the Cross, John Eudes, and many others. It makes for contemplation, and would like to "taste" or "enjoy" God. The second type of spirituality takes rather the direction of self-giving. It gets inspiration from the text: "Greater love has no one than this--that one should lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn 15:13). It is glad to lose its life (Mk 8:35). Naturally the passion and death of Christ are favorite mysteries. Martyrdom would be its great consumma-tion. Representatives of this type are St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas a Kempis, Francis de Sales apparently, and certainly Margaret Mary Alaco-que. St. Th6r~se's idea of love was "to give all, nay, to give oneself!" Clearly with these latter, exemplifying the ecstatic tendency of love, and the pure-benevolence conception of charity, and the self-sacrificing type of spirituality, St. Ignatius and his school are to be ranged. The whole tenor of his spirit, with its climax in the third mode of humility, or in serving the Divine Majesty in everything, is not toward union, but serv-ice; not toward enjoyment, but sacrifice; not toward rest in God, but work for him (See De Guibert, ~tudes de Th~ologie Mystique, 239- 281). lgnatian Spirituality Union and Familiarity with God Finally, a fifth major principle in St. Ignatius's general method con-cerns union and familiarity with God. He was wont to formulate it in some such terms as these: "to seek God in all things"; "to find God in all things"; to be a pliable "instrument" in "the divine hand." In the Constitutions, IX, 2, St. Ignatius gives a rather long and par-ticularized account of what the ideal general of the Society should be. Naturally this picture is at the same time a characterization of the Saint himself. Among the qualifications required in a future general the first is as follows: "that he should be most fully united with God our Lord and familiar with him, as well in prayer as in all his actions." Similar prescriptions are made for others who are to be appointed to lesser of-fices (Epitome Instituti, No. 740). Thus the Founder showed his supreme concern that above all else members of the Society should cultivate the closest and most intimate union with God. The large place which work holds in the Jesuit ideal and the relations between prayer and work in it are highly characteristic. In no other school, as far as I know, is there so great a tendency to favor work at the expense of prayer. A deep foundation of mortification and solid vir-tue being presupposed, from, say, the novitiate, or some similar train-ing and including a thirty-day retreat, prayer is to be cultivated until one has the proper disposition, that is, the will to love God with all one's heart and to carry out the whole of the divine design for one. But then, in view of the grave necessities of souls and the needs of the Church, one should leave prayer and give all one's energies to doing God's work, saving and sanctifying others, long ago pronounced to be, of all divine things, the divinest. When one goes about one's work precisely as God's, doing just what he indicates, because he wills it, and in the manner that he wishes, it is relatively easy and natural to pass back and forth between prayer and work. Striving to do God's work according to the mind and in the spirit of God may be said to be itself not the least form of prayer. Faithful disciples of St. Ignatius are "contemplatives in action." To illustrate the union that should exist between one who works for God and God himself, a favorite comparison of St. Ignatius was that of instrumental adaptation. The human worker should be a completely pli-ant instrument in the divine hand. A perfect personal instrument would be fully sensitive and responsive to all the motions of that hand. To give one such instrumental flexibility is, according to St. Thomas, the ten-dency of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (I, II, 68, 3). The most exquisite docility to the Holy Spirit is a capital aim in the doctrine of one of the Review for Religious, Januat3,-Februat3, 1991 Society's most distinguished spiritual masters, Fr. Louis Lallemant. Distinctive Practices Certain practices are characteristic of Jesuit asceticism. Nowadays some of these are more or less universal in the Church. But in origin, or at least in their wide diffusion, they are due largely to the influence of Ignatius. Spiritual Exercises, Retreats Perhaps the practice that is most obviously distinctive of those who follow the Jesuit school is that they make retreats and attach great im-portance to them. And more particularly, they do it according to the scheme and sequence of exercises sketched out long ago by the knight-convert at Manresa. The Exercises were originally calculated to last for a solid month, and in this integral form they are made by all Jesuit nov-ices and again by Jesuit priests and brothers toward the end of their train-ing. Other Jesuits regularly repeat them in a condensed form for eight days every year. So also, for varying periods, do many who do not be-long to the Society and still make use of its spiritual aids. The numerous students in Jesuit high schools and colleges throughout the world make annual three-day retreats. Moreover many devout lay men and women make Jesuit retreats annually. St. Ignatius himself did not advocate regular retreats. The custom gradually grew in the Sogiety and was made a matter of rule only in 1609. It is very largely due to Ignatius's influence, directly or indirectly, that now the practice of making annual or regular retreats is for relig-ious and clerics a point of canon law and a received ascetical usage in the Church. The Particular Examen Another practice that was originally most characteristic of the Igna-tian approach is the particular examination of conscience. Essentially it is nothing else than using in the war with one's faults that ancient prin-ciple of strategy: "Divide and conquer!" In more modern and universal terms one might say that it exemplifies the rule: "Specialize! Concen-trate on a limited field!" The particular examen was always a great fa-vorite with St. Ignatius. It is now one of the common techniques of Catho-lic asceticism. Sometimes it is censured by men who concentrate all their scrutiny of it upon some minor detail or other in the method and over-look what is substantial about it. On the other hand, even some of the minor features of it have of late been getting commendation from sci- lgnatian Spirituality/17 entific psychologists. Direction A third practice that is distinctive in its way of Ignatian spirituality is its idea of direction. St. Ignatius considered it especially useful, if not necessary, to prevent one from falling victim to the illusions that may come either from one's own imagination and emotions or from the de-ceits and snares of the evil spirit. As compared with the older schools, St. Ignatius advocates, if I mistake not, a more thorough-going and a more methodical use of it. On the other hand, he did not employ it like St. Francis de Sales or others in seventeenth-century France. The Exer-cises were originally designed to be made individually with a private and experienced director and the exercitant was urged to be very frank and open with the director. In the Society it is expected that subjects should make themselves, even their innermost consciences, all their good and bad points, culpable or inculpable, fully known to their superiors or con-fessors and in return receive individual paternal guidance. Any eager ad-herent of Jesuit asceticism will, if possible, seek constant expert direc-tion from another in the problems of one's interior life. Complete can-dor of soul and docility toward a director or superior fit in very well with certain qualities of character that were particularly dear to St. Ignatius: namely, his preferences for mortification that is interior, of judgment and will, for prudence, humility, discipline, and obedience. Mental Prayer An outstanding mark of any system of asceticism is its doctrine on prayer. If one compares the modern theory and practice of prayer with the ancient or the medieval, one will notice great differences in the rela-tive positions of vocal and mental prayer. The changes had been coming of necessity in the historical evolution of the spiritual and the religious life. In determining the actual extension and form that they have taken since the sixteenth century the influence of St. Ignatius, direct or indi-rect, was a major factor. In making the Exercises and then later in striving "to arrive at per-fection in whatever state or way of life God our Lord may grant us to choose" (135), it is considered most vital that one's soul should be filled with "the intimate understanding and relish of the" great Christian truths (2). Often enough people refer to the first method of mental prayer in the Exercises, the one there named from "the three powers of the soul," as "the Ignatian method." As a matter of fact, in that little booklet the Review for Religious, Jamlao,-February 1991 Saint proposes at least six methods, and this one, used for the consid-eration of abstract truths, is almost immeasurably outnumbered by the "contemplations," according to persons, words, and actions, that deal especially with the life and passion of Christ. Except when misconceived by ill-informed critics or misused by ig-norant persons, Ignatian methods of prayer do not hinder liberty of spirit or stand in the way of the Spirit's inspirations. It is the most rudimen-tary principle of Jesuit spirituality to keep the end clearly in mind, to pre-serve liberty with respect to the means, and to select and use the most apt of the means. Even in the Exercises, written especially for beginners, to aid them in the specific and passing task of rightly determining their vocation, the admonition is given: It "should be noted: . . . I will re-main quietly meditating upon the point in which I have found what I de-sire, without eagerness to go on till I have finished" (76). And again later on: "If in contemplation, say, on the Out" Father, he finds in one or two words abundant matter for thought and much relish and consola-tion, he should not be anxious to go on, though the whole hour be taken up with what he has found'" (254). Incidentally, one may notice that thus from the start St. Ignatius promotes the tendency to pause in contempla-tion rather than to busy oneself with discursive or analytic reflections. Outside of retreat time Jesuits and their followers may and should cultivate those forms of mental prayer, including the highest degrees of contemplation, that will most effectively advance them in loving God and in executing his designs. Naturally, of course, the prayer of apos-tolic workers will differ from that of cloistered Carmelite nuns. Similarly the inspirations of the Holy Spirit will be in harmony with one's divine vocation, not contrary to it. St. Ignatius was a great mystic himself, as his Spiritual Journal am-ply attests. In others as a rule be looked to solid virtue and mortification rather than exalted states of prayer. If we may generalize from a letter to Francis Borgia while the latter was still the Duke of Gand~a, that form of prayer is to be considered best in which divine favors are received most liberally: "The best thing for each particular person is that in which God our Lord communicates himself most freely, bestowing his most holy gifts and spiritual graces, because he sees and knows what is most suitable for him, and, as knowing all, he shows him the way . These gifts I take to be those that are not within our power, to have when we wish, but rather they are pure presents from him who gives and can do all that is good; for example . an intensification of faith, of hope, of charity, delight and repose of spirit, tears, intense consolation, eleva- lgnatian Spirituality tion of mind, divine impressions and illuminations, with all the other grati-fications and spiritual feelings ordained to such gifts" (Monumenta His-torica Society lesu, lgnatiana, Series i, Epist. et Instruct., 1548-50, 233- 237). With respect to mysticism, as in Catholic spirituality generally, so also in Jesuit spiritual teaching, it is possible to distinguish two histori-cal currents, the one decidedly mystical, and the other rather ascetical. To the first belong, for instance, St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, De la Puente, Alvarez de Paz, Caussade, Grou; to the second, Rodriguez, Roothaan, Meschler. Of the masters in mysticism the one best known is Louis Lallemant (France, 1587-1635). He was followed by a number of noted and influ-ential disciples. The work which presents his teaching, The Spiritual Doc-trine of Louis Lallemant, has traditionally been used in the Society to form its young priests in their year of third probation in much the same way as the ascetical Rodriguez is used for the instruction of the novices. Certain spiritual writers of the Society have been considered anti-mystical; among them are Mercurian, Rodriguez, and in a way, Scara-melli. When their statements are viewed against the historical back-ground, properly interpreted with allowances for changed terminology, and compared with the utterances of other authorities of their times, then the significance of the anti-mystical bias is seen to be more apparent than real. In any case, no matter how great it should seem to be, it is com-pletely outweighed by what other Jesuits have done for the cause of mys-tical contemplation. Moreover, no Jesuit ever went so far as to deny that one should fully develop his gifts of the Holy Spirit, welcome every in-fusion of grace that God should wish to give him, and then eagerly make the most of it all. In the recent controversies over the nature of infused contemplation, its place in the general economy of the spiritual life, and the call to it, there have been Jesuits on both sides. Self-Abnegation The lgnatian and Jesuit practice of mortification is very different from the ancient and medieval austerities, and it in turn appears to have had great influence in determining what the use of it should be in the mod-ern Church generally. Now, evidently, bodily penances do not occupy so prominent a place in the total scheme. They are more consciously and more narrowly subordinated to the greater and superior elements in the spiritual life. The employment of them is muchmore under the control of directors and confessors. There is far greater tendency to seek the nec-essary self-abnegation in the hardships of community living and espe- 90 / Review for Religious, Januarv-Februar\, 1991 cially in laborious work for souls. The body is spared much punishment and in exchange it is expected to become a more effective instrument for the spirit. In principle lgnatian mortification is as austere as one could wish. The indifference of the Exercises implies that one should be willing, when-ever the divine purpose or plan requires it, to forego the most pleasant means or undergo the use of the most unpleasant. Self-conquest and self-control are to be so complete that no movement of the lower propensi-ties can draw the deliberate will after it. Asking Christ, crucified for one's own sins, what one should do for him and then giving the decent answer to one's questions also includes the utmost degree of self-crucifixion. The noble knight's response to the summons of Christ the King and Captain involves the fullest oblation of self, and in particular the firm determination to take the offensive in waging war on one's own sensuality and worldliness. Finally the climax of self-abnegation is reached in the third mode of humility: preferring, other things being equal, the poorer and humbler things just to be more closely united with Christ poor and humiliated. One of the rules that St. Ignatius left for his sons is that their chief pursuit should be to seek in the Lord their greater mortification and, as far as possible, constant self-abnegation. In dispo-sition of will he exacts as much as St. John of the Cross does, but his manner of doing it is much less forbidding, as it in turn is harsher and less attractive than that of St. Francis de Sales. In applying the principle or in practice St. Ignatius would have disciples be careful not to injure their health or diminish their bodily forces and interfere with their spiri-tual development or ability to work efficiently. The outcome has been that Jesuit direction and influence have tended greatly to moderate the use of corporal inflictions by pious people. The interior mortification of the mind and will, in perfect obedience, for example, is assigned a large margin of priority. Devotion to the Sacred Heart A practice that is very prominent in modern Jesuit spirituality and cannot be said to characterize the original asceticism of St. Ignatius is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the revelations made to St. Mar-garet Mary, Christ expressed the desire that cultivating the devotion and propagating it as widely as possible among all the faithful should be a special charge of the Society of Jesus. The Society, whether in its supe-riors or its members generally, has always felt that this commission was peculiarly in keeping with its primitive spirit, and hence has been glad to do whatever it could toward making the heart of its great Leader and Ignatian Spirituality/21 King better known and loved¯ Any means to win hearts to Jesus is wel-come, and this devotion to his loving but neglec ted heart is a most at-tractive and effective one. Fostering and deepening their own dedication to the heart of Jesus ts considered by all Jesmts to 15e one of the best meas-ures that they can take to sanctify themselves anld. to vivify their apos-tolic activity. One could not be a student in a Jes,6it school or amember of one of their parishes without being under a certain constant urging to honor the heart of Christ. Great multitudes of the faithful daily make the offering of all their works and sufferings in union with the intention of that heart¯ Nor could one read very far in modern Jesuit spiritual litera-ture without finding much that gives it all a turn toward loving the heart of the Savior. Distinctive Traits Modernity is a mark of Jesuit spirituality, obviously in the chrono-logical sense, and especially also in that its genius is not ancient or me-dieval, but in harmony with the modern Catholic mentality. Negatively, and by way of "going against," it has animated men who were in the forefront of the Church's war against Lutheranism, Calvinism, Jansen-ism, and Quietism. Positively it possesses certain points of affinity to mod-ern social conditions. In contrast to the Middle Ages, Catholics now are in a more hostile milieu, and an aggressive type of spirituality befits them. Men and women cultivating the supernatural life now as a rule get less help from cloistered seclusion, live in the turmoil of large cities, are required to give more attention to action and less to contemplation, and lastly must be educated as well as devout. For the loss of the cloister Jes-uit spiritual training compensates in various ways, all designed to make up in interior individual strength for the external aids that had to be given up. From "the Kingdom" and "the Two Standards" on, it is thor-oughly orientated toward living and struggling in the midst of groups. Its connections with the active life in the Church and education need no comment. Another note of Ignatian asceticism is its high degree of organiza-tion. It is hardly conceivable that one could become well acquainted with the Spiritual Exercises or the Society of Jesus and their spiritual system without remarking what a complicated but strictly unified order or method characterizes all three of them. No other school of spirituality is so consciously methodical and insistent about prudently arranging means to ends. From a military office one might expect well-thought-out strategy. However, the aim of it all being union of the human spirit 99 / Review for Religious, Janttat3,-Februat3, 1991 with the divine spirit, there is nothing mechanical about it. Ignatian spirituality is conspicuously and eminently apostolic. Typi-cal is the injunction said to have been given by him to St. Francis Xavier when dispatching him to the Orient: "Go, and inflame the world!" Jesuit asceticism is eminently practical. There is nothing theoretical about it. It emphasizes above all the actual accomplishment of the divine will and purpose. Doing the will of the Father is always possible, feasi-ble, and most fruitful. The directives given are clear, precise, and am-ple, but not more restrictive than the divine plan itself. Personal initia-tive is encouraged, and it is suggested, with both St. Augustine and St. Thomas (In Mt XXV, 15), that where there is more effort, there also there will be more grace. Natural means are cultivated and exploited to supernatural ends. A peculiarly distinctive mark of lgnatian spirituality is the milita~3, and chivalrous note that runs through it. Don lfiigo Lopez de Loyola was born and brought up an aristocrat. By profession he was an army officer. Early sixteenth-century Spain was still tense with the spirit of the crusades. Upon the soldier's conversion divine grace sublimated to the supernatural sphere his knightly ideas and ideals. The very title of the Exercises states that they prepare one for "the conquest of self." Of all those exercises his two favorites were "the Kingdom" and "the Two Standards," both of them thoroughly military and crusading in in-spiration. The Society of Jesus is dedicated to "waging war for God un-der the standard of the Cross." It was conceived as a sort of shock troop to be thrown into battle wherever the Church's danger seemed to be worst. Its name originally was, and as a matter of fact in several lan-guages still is equivalently, "the Company of Jesus." It was its first su-preme commander's great aim to be himself, and as far as possible to make everyone else, "a noble knight of Jesus Christ." Another note that appears to characterize lgnatian ascesis is a cer-tain dynamism; that is, in a special sense it is marked by force, power, energy. There is not much about it that is gentle, tender, or mild. St. Ig-natius himself was naturally a virile personality of great earnestness and intensity. He came into the history of the Church at a most critical turn-ing point. In particular, the early Protestants were preaching the depre-ciation of good works. An emergency situation called for the most vig-orous reaction, and that is just what the Saint's magnanimous nature in-clined him to. In our days he has been reproached by Henri Bremond with being, "not a master of prayer, but a professor of energy." He would have his disciples share in God's own eagerness to communicate lgnatian Spirituality/93 his goodness and in the Eternal King's ardor to conquer all souls. The feeling dominant in the Jesuit spirit is not one of seclusion and peace: rather it is a sense of war and battle. Nor is it one of quiet study or contemplation: it is rather an air of tenseness and activity. Nor is it one of want or suffering: instead it is an eagerness to make use of things and to get a great task done. "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam" suggests this fact: it points to the incessant, irrepressible, dynamic, straining for ever greater and greater accomplishments for God that the Jesuit sets as his goal. Finally, to conclude, we might sum up Ignatian and Jesuit spiritual-ity in some such terms as these: the first and basic principle is to pursue the divine purpose and plan; the central principle, to know, love, and imi-tate Christ as fully as possible; and the last and highest, "in all things to love and serve the Divine Majesty." ANIMA CHRISTI--aTraditional Prayer Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me; Within thy wounds hide me; Suffer me not to be separated from thee; From the malignant enemy defend me; In the hour of my death call me, And bid me come to thee, That with thy saints I may praise thee Forever and ever. Amen. Spiritual Exercises I Loyalty as Liberation: Ignatius of Loyola and Pedro Arrupe at La Storta Parmananda R. Divarkar, S.J. Father Parmananda Divarkar, S.J., served as one of four General Assistants to Fa-ther Pedro Arrupe, who was Superior General of the Society of Jesus from May 1965 to September 1983. Father Arrupe was well-known among all religious since he served as President of the International Union of Superiors General for five consecu-tive terms. Father Divarkar can be addressed at St. Marys: Mazagaon: Bombay 400010: India. The last public statement of Father Pedro Arrupe, which may well be re-garded as his testament, is the homily that was read out for him at a sol-emn Eucharist on the 4th of September 1983. "It is in many ways fit-ting," the text begins, "that at the conclusion of my ministry as Su-perior General of the Society of Jesus, I should come here to La Storta to sing my Nunc Dimittis--even though it be in the silence imposed by my present condition." The little chapel at La Storta, on the outskirts of Rome, is tradition-ally associated with a very special experience of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, "that God the Father placed him with Christ his Son," while on his way to offer to the Pope the services of the group of young men that had gath-ered around him. This chap, el and the memories it evokes were for Fa-ther Arrupe an inexhaustible source of inspiration and strength in the midst of the many challenges he had to face in the difficult period fol-lowing Vatican II. Ignatius recounts his experience in what is popularly known as his autobiography but is, in fact, an untidy collection of reminiscences cov-ering just one third of his life. He did not actually write anything but spoke out his story, in bits and pieces and under trying circumstances, 24 Loyalty as Liberation because of the insistence of his disciples who desired that before he died he should compose an account of his intimate dealings with God, which might serve as a model for future Jesuits. Such a document, he was told, would be his testament, and to produce it would be truly to found the Society of Jesus. In the language of today, the demand was for an authori-tative statement of the charism of the founder--and that is what stands out clearly in an otherwise clumsy text. All through the narrative one sees that Ignatius had a veritable gen-ius for loyalty--even a felt need to be loyal, to find a person or cause that might claim his total devotion. As a young man he is constantly get-ting caught up in unrealistic ambitions, and not even the sobering expe-rience of a shattered leg can break the spell that holds him captive. But some accidental reading reveals to him the true object of his ceaseless quest: it is Christ. In his encounter with Christ, Ignatius experiences the paradox of loyalty as liberation. Loyalty is something that binds, but loy-alty to Christ is a liberation from all that hampers true and total growth. For through intimate union with Christ one comes to share in his own experience, of God as Absolute and all else as relative. This is the truth that makes for freedom. As the story proceeds, each succeeding situation brings to Ignatius the realization that commitment to Christ carries with it other commit-merits-- which may seem to tie him down once again, to be a restriction, but are experienced as a further release, as new opportunities calling forth fresh generosity: loyalty to Christ means loyalty to the Church, loy-alty to the Church means loyalty to the Pope . After many adven-tures, accompanied by singular graces, the process of bringing his loy-alty into ever sharper focus comes to a peak point in a mystical experi-ence at La Storta, of the Father placing him with the Son, of the Son bear-ing the cross and inviting him to service, of a promise that the power of God would support his little group in Rome. This group of recently ordained priests, who had earlier called them-selves Friends in the Lord, took it for granted that once they had fulfilled their resolution to be at the disposal of the Pope for any task he might entrust to them, their fellow~ship would end in dispersion. But, at the very point of parting, they realized that their mutual loyalty, the bond that held them together, had never been a bondage but rather a liberation of their latent talents and the very condition of their availability for serv-ice. So they decided to remain united both in spirit and as members of one body, even when they scattered. Paradoxically, the very thing that would have separated them--their commitment to the Pope--became Review for Religious, January-February 1991 "the basis and chief foundation" of a new religious order, compact but mobile: so the Society of Jesus was established on the principle of loy-alty as liberation. Father Arrupe has an intuitive grasp of this principle, and a lived ex-perience of its validity. Herein is the clue to the distinctive feature of his personality that stands out among all his admirable qualities and charm-ing traits: an unshakable attachment to whatever is'fundamental and a fear-less openness to all that is relevant. This it was that put him so finely in tune with the formula for the renewal of religious life proposed by the Second Vatican Council: fidelity to the foundational charism and adjust-ment to present circumstances. It explains his great popularity and ef-fectiveness as a spiritual leader in the post-conciliar Church--as well as the incomprehension and rejection he met in certain quarters. Not all could understand that adherence to the old and acceptance of the new were not two things for him. So some were alienated by what they perceived as inconsistency, while others followed him erratically, without the delicate balance and unflinching loyalty that characterized Arrupe himself--who was free, bold, and innovative, not in spite of be-ing traditional, but precisely because he held on so tenaciously to the sources of his being. Speaking at a thanksgiving on the completion of fifty years as a Jes-uit, he made a simple profession of the triune loyalty that ruled his life-- to Christ, to the Church, "and to the Society of Jesus. He named them in reverse order and called them his loves: three loves, flowing one from the other, feeding each other, and united in one loyalty that embraced everything and everyone. It pained him to see people, Jesuits especially, caught in a conflict of loyalties. Conversely, he could not hide his joy in the midst of sor-row on the several occasions when his men met with violent death in fi-delity to their mission among the poor. His big concern as General was to bring the Society to an ever greater fraternal unity and apostolic fruit-fulness through a deeper understanding and a more meaningful practice of Ignatius' ideal of loyal service. A small but significant expression of this concern was his desire and effort to get Jesuits all over the world interested and involved in the proper renovation of the chapel of La Storta, which had been badly dam-aged and poorly repaired during World War II. He had the joy of seeing this satisfactorily accomplished just as he retired from office. But the oc-casion was signed with the cross--as was the original experience of Ig-natius. Father Arrupe's closing years are marked with many kinds of suf- Loyalty as Liberation / 97 fering. It is a bittersweet consolation, and a potent inspiration, to think that what he did not entirely succeed in achieving in a decade and a half of earnest striving, he in large measure obtains at the end through the manifold pain he bears with such fortitude and submission. When in the wake of his crippling stroke there came the papal in-tervention in his government, many people--Jesuits and others-- thought that the move would split the Society of Jesus--indeed would splinter it, with bits flying in all directions. Nothing of the sort happened. Rather the contrary: the reaction, led by Arrupe, but universal, was one of faith and fidelity. There was a renewed sense of belonging together, and a rallying around the banner of the cross "to serve the Lord alone, and his Bride the Church, under the Roman Pontiff." For countless Jesu-its, the challenge to identify themselves with a Society that lay in sor-row and humiliation was a supremely purifying and enlivening experi-ence: an experience of loyalty as liberation, with a wholesome impact on the whole Church--a parting gilt, a legacy from their much-loved Gen-eral, who said at the conclusion of his homily at La Storta: What was for Ignatius the culmination and summing up of so many spe-cial graces received since his conversion, was for the Society a pledge that it would share in the graces of the Founder in the measure in which it remained faithful to the inspiration that gave it birth. I pray that this celebration, which is for me a farewell and a conclusion, be for you and for the whole Society represented here, the beginning of a new period of service, with fresh enthusiasm. May the collaboration of the whole Society in the renovation of the chapel of La Storta be an abiding sym-bol and an unfailing inspiration for a united effort at spiritual renewal, trusting in the graces whose memory is enshrined in La Storta. I shall remain at your side with my prayers. The Changing Self-God Image of Ignatius of Loyola William A. Barry, S.J. Father William Barry, S.J., is currently rector of lhe Jesuit community at Boston College. His address is Jesuit Community: Boston College; Chestnut Hill, MasSa-chusetts 02167. ~]~'e have become accustomed to describing the developing relationship of a person with God in interpersonal terms. I have tried such a descrip-tion in a monograph on Jesuit formation where I spoke of prayer as con-scious relationship and then attempted to describe the development of that relationship in terms of the dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises. ~ Those of us who use such a framework often use a form of what Freudi-arts call "object relations theory" and apply it to the relationship with God. According to this theory, we all carry around with us self-other sche-mata learned in our interactions with significant people. With these sche-mata we approach all new people. Such a theory serves to explain in-stant likes and dislikes. A new person is assimilated to an image of some-one in my past life whom I liked or disliked. The theory is also used to explain how people get into repetitive destructive relationships without ever learning from experience. These schemata are self-other psychic structures; they are relational in nature because they are learned through relationships. In other words, the images with their associated feelings and thoughts are of the self in relation to another and others. All our self-images are relational. According to this theory, we also meet God with learned self-God schemata which derive from our relationships with parents and others, from teaching about God, and from past experiences of the Mystery we call God.z These schemata are always distorted and untrue to the reality 28 The Changing Self-God hnage / 29 of who God really is for us. In other words, our experience of God is impoverished because of our self-God schemata. We could say that the development of the relationship with God consists in the learning of pro-gressively more realistic images of self and God in relationship through the actual encounter with God in sacraments, prayer, and life in general. The development could be seen as a process of losing our idols or false images of God (and self) through the encounter itself just as the actual encounter with a new person in our life will teach us something new about ourselves and that person if we let the relationship develop. While these ideas have become more and more commonplace for those of us steeped in the psychological culture of our age, we do not expect such psychological theories to color the descriptions of older spiri-tual writers. The question is: Can their experience of the relationship with God be understood in terms of such a theory? Recently I had occasion to read The Autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola3 with some under-graduate students in a class on Jesuit spirituality. I believe that the expe-riences Ignatius describes in the first three chapters of that work can be understood in terms of Ignatius' progressive education about his relation-ship with God. In other words, the changes he describes can be under-stood as changes in his self-God schema. In the course of demonstrating this thesis we will discover that Ignatius, who calls himself the pilgrim in the Autobiography, shows himself to be a pilgrim from an impover-ished image of God to an image of God as Lover pat" excellence. In the process his own self-image changes as well. First, let us note that Ignatius' initial conversion experience came about through noticing the difference between two sets of daydreams as he convalesced from his wounds and the leg operations those wounds en-tailed. In one set of daydreams Ignatius spent hours on end imagining the great deeds he would do, the fine words he would say to win the heart of a great lady. In the other set Ignatius spent equally long hours dream-ing of the great deeds he would do for Christ in imitation of saints like Dominic and Francis. He notes that there was a difference in the two ex-periences. When he was thinking about the things of the world, he took much dclight in them, but afterwards, when he was tired and put them aside, hc found that be w~s dry znd discontented. But when he thought of going to Jerusa-lem, barefoot and eating nothing but herbs and undcrgoing all the other rig-ors that he saw the saints had endured, not only was hc consoled when hc had these thoughts, but even aftcr putting them aside, hc rcmaincd content and happy. Hc did not wonder, howcvcr, at this: nor did hc stop to ponder Review for Religious, January-February 1991 the difference until one time his eyes were opened a little, and hc began to marvel at the difference and to reflect upon it, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others happy. Little by little hc came to recog-nize the difference between the spirits that agitated him. one from the de-mon, the other from God."~ In these two sets of daydreams the same vaulting ambition, the same vivid imagination are at work, but to different ends. The reading of the life of Christ and of the lives of the saints piqued Ignatius' interest and fired his imagination much as did the romantic literature he so enjoyed and would have preferred to read during his convalescence. Finally he noticed that the two sets of daydreams have different emotional conse-quences in his heart, and then he discerned that one set is from God, the other from the demon. With this decisive discernment Ignatius was set upon a new path, but he was not yet a new person. The rather amusing story of his encounter with the Moor on the road to Montserrat shows how far he was from be-ing a man of discernment.5 He and the Moor, both riding donkeys, got into an argument about whether Mary was a virgin after the birth of Je-sus. Perhaps the Moor felt that Ignatius was getting hot under the collar; at any rate, he spurred his mule on at a fast clip so that he was lost to view. Ignatius began to wonder whether he had done enough to uphold Mary's honor, whether he Should have struck the Moor with his dagger. He could not decide whether to follow the Moor and strike him or leave him alone. In his quandary he decided to let the mule make the decision by letting the reins go slack. The mule did not follow the i'oad the Moor took. We will never know what turn history would have taken if the mule had followed the road to the Moor. What was Ignatius' image of himself in relation to God at this time? A telling phrase occurs in the passage where he recounts his desire to enter the Carthusian house in Seville. But when he thought again of the penances he wished to do as he went about the world, the desire to enter the Carthusians cooled; he feared that he would not be able to give vent to the hatred that hc had conceived against himself.~' That self-hatred tells us much about his image of God at this time of prepa-ration for the journey that would end up in Manresa. If Ignatius hates himself so violently, we can speculate that he harbors an image of him-self before an implacable God. Not long after his arrival in Manresa we hear ominous hints of where such a self-God image can lead. Each day he begged alms in Manresa. He did not cat meat or drink wine, The Changing Self-God hnage / 3"1 even though they were offered to him. Hc did not fast on Sundays, and if they gave him a little wine, he drank it. As hc had bccn very attentive in taking care of his hair, as was the fashion at that time (and he had a fine head of hair), he decided to let it grow naturally, without combing or cut-ting it or covering it with anything by night or day. For the same reason he let his toenails and fingernails grow because he also had been attentive to this.7 He began to attack his body and his former attitudes with reckless aban-don to the point where he did permanent harm to his health, as he notes later. It is at this point that he mentions the serpent-like image that "gave him great comfort." "He found great pleasure and consolation in seeing this thing, and the more he saw it the more his consolation in-creased. When it disappeared he was saddened."8 Ignatius did not make the connection with his earlier discernment when he noted that the day-dreams of doing knightly deeds delighted him during the dreaming, but left him sad afterward. Moreover, he notes that around the time when this vision began, "a harsh thought came to trouble him by pointing out the hardship of his life, as if someone was saying within his soul, 'How will you be able to endure this life for the seventy years you have yet to live?' "9 With this temptation began the great swings of mood which led him into the terrible bout of scruples which he so poignantly de-scribes in the following pages of the Autobiography. The agony of his struggle with these scruples brought him to this point. Once when he was very upset by them he began to pray with such fervor that he shouted out loud to God, saying, "'Help me, Lord, for I find no rem-edy among men nor in any crcalurc, yet if I thought I could find ih no labor would be too great for me. Show me, O Lord, where I may find it: even though I should have to follow a little dog so he could help me. I would do it. "" While hc had these thoughts, the temptation often came over him with great force to throw himself into a large hole in his room next to the place where he was praying.~° The self-hatred has taken a very violent turn. What kind of image of God lies behind such scruples? It has to be a God who, in the words of the psychiatrist J.S. Mackenzie, "is always snooping around after sin-ners." ~ Ignatius felt that he had not completely confessed his sins. At one point a confessor ordered him not to confess any sins of the past "'un-less it should be something very clear. But inasmuch as he thought all those things were very clear, this order was of no benefit to him . "~- God must be a terrible judge ready to pounce on every sin. Finally, Ig-natius had a couple of days in which he felt free from scruples. 39 / Review for Religious, Januao,-February 1991 But on the third day, which was Tucsday, while at prayer hc began to re-member his sins one by one, and he went on thinking about one sin after the other out of his past and felt he was required to confess them again. But after these thoughts, disgust for the life he led and the desire to give it up came over him. In this way the Lord wished to awaken him as from a dream. 13 , Ignatius, we can speculate, has realized that the image of God with which he has operated thus far in Manresa was a product of the demon, and not an image of the true God. From the lessons God had given him hc now had some cxpcricncc of the di-versity of spirits, and he bcgan to wonder about the means by which that spirit had come. He decided very clearly, therefore, not to confess anything from the past anymore: from that day forward he remained free of those scru-ples and held it for certain that our Lord through his mercy had wished to deliver him.~'~ God is not implacable, but merciful, and Ignatius can count on this God. Thus he need not continually grub around in his mind for possible un-confessed sins. Immediately after recounting this discernment Ignatius describes how he rather easily discerned God's will in two matters which before would have led to agonizing indecision. He prayed for seven hours each day, but when it was time for bed, he was overcome with great spiritual con-solations which cost him much sleep. Wondering about this at times hc thought to himself that he had assigned much time for converse with God and all the rest of the day as well, and he began to doubt, therefore, whether that enlightenment came from a good spirit: he concluded that it would bc better to ignore it and to sleep for the appointed time. And so he did.~5 How his image of God has changed! In the next paragraph he describes how an experience of the image of meat compelled him to abandon with-out any hesitation or doubt his firm practice of never eating meat. Even when his confessor asked him to consider whether this was a temptation, Ignatius could not doubt that the good spirit was the source of the im-age. He then says: "God treated him at this time just as a schoolmaster treats a child whom he is teaching,''~6 and goes on to describe in five points the ways God revealed himself, culminating in the description of the extraordinary enlightenment on the banks of the Cardoner. After this experience he recognized the image of the serpent-like figure as a temp-tation. The final demonstration that the encounter with God changed lgna- The Changing Self-God hnage / 33 tius' self-God schema comes from the very next paragraphs where Igna-tius describes three instances when he faced death. The first occurred at Manresa when a fever brought him to death's door. He was convinced that he was about to die. At this a thought came to him telling him that he was just, but this caused him so much trouble that he rejected it and recalled his sins to mind. He had more trouble with this thought than with the fever itself, but no matter how much he strove to overcome the thought, he could not do so. Somewhat re-lieved of the fever so that he was not at the point of expiring, he began to cry out loudly, calling him a sinner and reminding him of the offenses hc had committed against God. ~7 Contrast this experience with the next one he describes. He was on ship from Spain to Italy and in a storm everyone on board was convinced that death was inevitable. At this time, examining himself carefully and preparing to die. he was un-able to be afraid of his sins or of being condemned, but he was greatly con-fused and sorrowful, as he believed he had not well used the gifts and graces which God our Lord had given him.~s Now Ignatius knows that he is a sinner, and that knowledge saddens him but it does not frighten him. He trusts in the mercy of God. The self- God image seems to be that of a person who is convinced that he is a sinner loved and forgiven by an all-merciful God. Then Ignatius describes a time in the year 1550 when he and every-one else were convinced that he was about to die of a fever. At this time, thinking about death, he felt such happiness and such spiritual consolation at having to die that he dissolved entirely into tears. This hap-pened so continually that he often stopped thinking about death so as not to feel so much consolation.~9 Now Ignatius seems to be enamored of God, totally caught up with the desire for ultimate union with God. Thoughts of his sins do not seem to arise. The self-God image seems to be that of beloved to lover. God has taught Ignatius the ultimate lesson of who God really is for Ignatius, and for all of us, Loverpar excellence. Fidelity to the relationship with God has changed Ignatius' image of God as well as his image of himself. Ignatius urges the one who directs the Spiritual Exercises to "per-mit the Creator to deal directly with the creature, and the creature directly with his Creator and Lord."2° In that encounter with God the retreatant can learn a new and more realistic self-God schema. All of us have sche-mata that impoverish our experience of God and, thus, of ourselves. In Review for Religious, January-February 1991 his Autobiography Ignatius shows himself as a pilgrim from a small view of God to one of God as Lover. Ignatius believed that the same change can happen to us. NOTES ~ See William A. Barry, "Jesuit Formation Today: An Invitation to Dialogue and Involvement," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 20/5 (November, 1988), pp. 5- 8. 2 See Ana-Maria Rizzuto, Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 3 Translated by Joseph F. O'Callaghan and edited by John C. Olin (New York: Har-per & Row, 1974). '~ Ibid, p. 24. 5 Ibid, pp. 30-31. 6 Ibid, p. 25. (Italics mine.) 7 lbid, p. 33. 8 Ibid, p. 33. 9 lbid, pp. 33-34. ~0 lbid, p. 35. ~ Quoted in Henry Guntrip, Psychotherapy and Religion (New York: Harper, 1957), p. 195. ~2 Ibid, p. 35. ~3 lbid, p. 36. ~'~ lbid, p. 36. ~5 Ibid, p. 37. ~6 lbid, p. 37. ~7 lbid, p. 40. ~8 /bid, p. 40. 19 lbid, pp. 40-41. 20 Louis J. Puhl, trans. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (Chicago: Loyola Uni-versity Press, 1951), No. 16. A.M.D.G.: Dedication or Directive? Walter J. Ong, S.J. Father Walter Ong, S.J., well-known writer of articles and books and long-time pro-fessor at St. Louis University, wrote this article for the September 1952 issue. His reflections on the A.M.D.G. motto remain just as timely today. His address is Jes-uit Hall; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. By a kind of irresistible momentum, as an expression becomes more and more widely circulated in the form of a byword or motto, it tends to lose its original identity. There is an externality attendant on all human com-munication, which is involved with the external senses and spoken words, and this externality becomes only aggravated on the lips of a crowd. By the time an expression becomes widely quoted, its sense tends to be controlled not by the purpose of those who originally drafted it, and gave it. its identity, but by the shifting kaleidoscope of external con-ditions. Thus Polonius' "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't," when it is quoted today, takes its meaning from the current signification of method as fixed by our interests and way of living, not from what Shakespeare meant when he wrote it and what his contemporaries under-stood. Today it is generally taken to mean that Hamlet's madness was directed to some ulterior purpose. But Shakespeare was referring rather to the interior organization of tl-ie speech Hamlet had just uttered--mad as it sounded, this speech gave evidence of being coherent, of being logi-cally organized in the way speeches should be. Literary history is strewn with stock 6xpressions whose meanings are lost in such easygoing misinterpretations.' This is true of secular litera-ture, but perhaps more of spiritual literature, for the fortunes of a spiri-tual expression are even more precarious as the very terms it deals in are 35 Review for Religious, Januat3,-Februat3, 1991 more elusive and fraught with deeper implications. When we try to give them close attention, to discover their real iden-tity, spiritual sayings have a way of tripping us up unawares--and the tripping up is done not only by what we might take for recondite spiri-tual maxims but by what are downright spiritual commonplaces. It comes as a shock for us to realize that the particular manner in which we em-ploy even so basic a motto as the Ad majorem Dei gloriam, or "To the greater glory of God," associated with St. Ignatius of Loyola does not quite correspond to the older use of the term. More and more, this phrase has come to be used as a motto or de-vice which is affixed as a sort of dedication to objects--to books, per-haps, or to banners or to buildings. Certainly, against such procedure no valid theological or ascetical objection can be urged. But it is worth not-ing that this procedure does represent a significant shift in emphasis. It represents a kind of externalization, as A.M.D.G. becomes a dedicatory motto for public proclamation. In such cases, the A.M.D.G. is felt as applied to the thing, used as a sort of spiritual rocket attachment to shoot the creature off Godward. Certainly, this is as it should be. Still, it does not quite represent the basic lgnatian use which reserves the phrase rather for interior applica-tion and prefers others .for publicity purposes. While it is true that the A.M.D.G. has roots in Christian tradition far older than St. Ignatius, so that we cannot expect his use to control the whole economy of the maxim, nevertheless, since the maxim as it is used today traces chiefly to him it is worth noting the nature of the current divergence. To do so, we may start with an actual incident. Some years ago, a non-Catholic friend of mine admonished me for not putting A.M.D.G. at the head of my letters to him--as, he said, all the other Jesuits who corresponded with him always did. Of course, in my letters to him I have used the initials ever since, but not without wondering whether the other Jesuits used to bludgeon me into the practice have not themselves been dragooned into it first by this intrepid promoter of Jesuit conformity. For the fact is that not a one of the Jesuits I I~now normally writes A.M.D.G. at the head of his letters--not when he writes to me, at any rate. It is simply not the general practice of Jesuits todo so, and apparently never has been. A strange fact, if A.M.D.G. is to be taken as a dedicatory motto. The reason is to be sought in history and tradition. As is well known to readers of her correspondence, St. Teresa of Avila had the practice of writing "Jesus" at the top of her letters. An odd motto, we may A.M.D.G. / 37 think. Not even a phrase. Just one word. Still, this, and not A.M.D.G. is the motto with Ignatian antecedents. It occurs over and over again at the head of St. Ignatius' letters published in the Monumenta lgnatiana, as A.M.D.G. does not. Similarly, the seal of the Society of Jesus from earliest times im-pressed or printed on books or documents or other objects bears not A.M.D.G. at all, but again this simple word "Jesus," abbreviated in its first three letters which, written in the Greek alphabet, are simply the "IHS" known to everyone as the monogram of our Lord. It is the seal, this "Jesus," on the title pages, and not the A.M.D.G. which serves to identify early Jesuitica. "Jesus" is the dedication which is applied to objects. Things, like men, are to put on Christ. This is one dedication, it should be remarked, or one motto, which is both easy and thought-provoking. What is more, as one simple, mys-terious word, it defies distortion. A second word might offer a purchase for applying pressure to this one and thus make distortion possible. But left alone, the mysterious Name retains its self-possession. Unalloyed, isolated, the name of Jesus becomes proof against the externalization which threatens everything that human expression touches. Thus, Jesuits fail to use A.M.D.G. to head their correspondence to-day because such usage has no place in their tradition from the very be-ginning. But this is far from saying that the A.M.D.G. is not central to the Catholic tradition of spirituality which flows through the Society of Jesus. On the contrary, the expression has its principal relevance and ap-plication at the very heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which define this tradition. The relevance here is deeply interior, for here the Ad majorem Dei gloriam is referred to the individual soul at what we may call its extreme depth. It concerns the crisis within the individual consciousness which is the moment of decision, the moment when we make up our mind, the crisis so deep as to precede not only exterior ac-tion but even interior action as well, the crisis in which is set the act of the human will--"the selfless self of self," as Gerard Manley Hopkins has it, "most strange, most still." As their title is at pains to explain, the entire Spiritual Exercises are focused at these strange, still depths of decision within the soul. They have as their purpose to enable a man to make a decision as he should, without being swayed by things he should not be swayed by--"without being determined by an affection which might be badly ordered,~' the title of the Exercises states. St. Ignatius is at his most painstaking when, after the first two "weeks" of preparation, he finally comes to discuss 38 / Review for Religious, Janua13,-Februal3, 1991 how, in order so to make a decision, the individual must keep his eyes fixed on God. The discussion comes in the part of the Exercises called "Three Sorts of Humility," which bulks so large in his mind that Igna-tius does not treat it as a simple meditation in the way in which the ma-terial up to this point has been treated. Rather, introducing it here, he says that this material on three sorts of humility is to be pondered over the whole day through. This material is the last item in the Exercises before the "election" itself, the making of the decision toward which the whole Exercises are oriented. As the exercitant leaves the three sorts of humility to embark on the election itself, the state of mind which he has, with God's grace, prepared for himself is such that he is now to take his clue from God, and from God alone. In the last of the three sorts of humility he consid-ers, St. Ignatius envisions this preoccupation with God in all its present richness, at the point at which the depths of the individual soul are touched by the depths of revelation and of the Incarnation itself, which hereupon becomes an inseparable part of the Christian's way of making a choice. In the last analysis here, so much is the soul to take its clue from God and from God alone that the fact that God has decided on the Incar-nation, which means on a way of doing things more difficult than might otherwise have been, predisposes the soul to clutch to itself the difficul-ties rather than the easy things it encounters. The great manifestation of God to the world, the Incarnation, as St. Paul insists (Ph 2:6), began in an emptying-out of the Word, a step toward difficulty as, for the first time, one of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity became capable of suf-fering. The soul, eyes only on God, can never forget this initial determinant and dominant factor in the whole of the Redemption. The resulting state of mind can be called indifference in that it regards directly God alone, and not creatures. But in a sense, it is not indifference, because, in this vision of God, seen in terms of faith and the Incarnation, created reality is now included by virtue of God's own choice--Christ's body and soul are in the direct line of vision. They are testimony to the fact that, for reasons we cannot fully comprehend, God himself was not indifferent-- he chose to "empty" himself into a human body and soul, chose to be able to suffer when this was not necessary at all. The soul wants to copy God, since God is the End to which means are to be adapted. Regarding creatures as means in the light of natural reason alone, it can be indiffer-ent to them. But regarding them in the light of revelation, the soul sees A.M.D.G. / 39 that Christ's use of means involved more ,~uffering than seemed neces-sary. The result is a permanent torque boira s~ i,n the soul, an inclination toward what is difficult after the manner of Christ--an inclination justi-fiable nevertheless, curiously enough, as indifference on the score that it is a torque induced not by the means at all, but by the End, Christ, who is God. The inclination is mysterious and cannot be discussed fully here, but its authenticity is certified by the fact that the difficulties we have in explaining it parallel those we have in explaining God's choice of means to his end in the Redemption. This inclination cannot quite translate itself directly into action, for suffering is necessarily passive, and the activity involved in the direct infliction of suffering, even on self, is not what St. Ignatius has in mind, for he says nothing about it here. But the inclination is none the less a positive inclination, for in the meditation on the "Two Standards" al-though there is question of being received in the band of those who en-dure actual poverty and of bearing injuries and embarrassments, St. lg-naiius directs the exercitant to pray positively and actively to be allowed to undergo these things. The mixture of activity and passivity is of a piece with Christ's passion, which was utldergotle by Christ, not inflicted on himself, but for which he offered himself positively by an act of his human will, and which was thereby a welcome means when it was pre-sented to him. Ultimately, the mystery here traces to the fact that the end is not suffering, but God, and that by the Incarnation God became in-volved personally in suffering. This inclination or bias toward what is difficult is the matter of the third sort of humility envisioned by St. Ignatius, and it is when the exer-citant has thus descended deep into the mysteries of Christianity to find the framework for the making of a proper choice that he encounters in full force the prescription Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Two ways of mak-ing the election or choice are reviewed by St. Ignatius, and in both the exercitant is counseled to let the determinant in the balance be God's greater glory. In the first way, the soul is to consider before God con-cerning the alternatives it is faced with, "what tends more to his praise and glory." In the second, it is again to consider what, in a similar case of various alternatives, it would counsel another to do "for the greater glory of God." "Greater," it will be seen here, enters into the scheme precisely be-cause there is question of comparing alternatives. The famous expres-sion is thus as central as it is to the tradition that comes to us through 40 / Review for Religious, Januarv-Februar\, 1991 St. Ignatius because it is inseparably engaged with the focal Ignatian ac-tivity of making a choice. That the expression is thus polarized as a prin-ciple of decision rather than as a dedication of existing reality can be con-firmed in this same part of the Exercises concerning the "election." For, in this very context, when Ignatius comes to speak of something other than the making of a choice, he drops the "majorem" to say that man exists "for the glory of God" ("ad Dei gloriam" in the "Vulgate" ver-sion, that rendered by Father Andr~ de Freux, S.J., into Latin accept-able to Renaissance humanists, which Ignatius could not write, but gone over and approved by the Saint himself) or "to praise God our Lord" ("ad laudandum Deum Dominum nostrum," in the "Literal" version made to keep close to St. Ignatius's Spanish by Father John Roothaan). Because of the focus of the phrase as a principle of choice, in the "To the greater glory of God," it is the "greater" and not the "glory" which receives the psychological stress, the glory being in a sense taken for granted: any action, and more particularly any action done for God, adds to God's "accidental" glory, that is, adds something to created re-ality and activity which can be referred to him. This reference of the "greater" is eclipsed when the phrase is understood simply as a dedi-cation, and a puzzle easily results. For, simply as a dedication, how can "To the greater glory of God" be preferable to the simple declaration "To the glory of God"? If an object is devoted entirely to the glory of God, what more can be asked. The puzzle here can give rise to strange answers, expressed or implied. There is an American city in which a large Masonic temple standing opposite a much larger Catholic university bears on its facade the dedi-cation "To the glory of God." Most of the Catholic university's stu-dents are conscious of the more familiar "To the greater glory of God." Do they fix their attention on the "greater" so as to construe the uni-versity's commitment to this motto as a brag, a gesture vaunting the uni-versity's activity in the face of that of the Freemasons across the street? Nothing could be further from the truth or from the spirit animating St. Ignatius, but the interpretation is inviting insofar as the fact is lost sight of that A.M.D.G. applies primarily to the depths of one's soul. Even there, it is a principle for making choices, not for congratulating our-selves on past choices we have made. The Spiritual Exercises are the earliest of Ignatius' own major writ-ings, and they determine the case of his further written work, as of his whole life. This determination makes it possible to observe the workings of the phrase Ad majorem Dei gloria~n on an even larger field than that A.M.D.G. / 41 of the Exercises themselves. The lengthiest of St. Ignatius' written works are the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and in these the Ad majorem Dei gloriam occurs so often as to become almost a refrain. It does not lose its primary orientation here. This orientation toward the choice of one among various alternative means is patent enough when the phrase occurs in a place where the Con-stitutions do not determine a procedure in detail but leave the determi-nation to be made by the superior or by the subject in terms of the indi-vidual case--a thing they do far more often than persons who do not know them might believe, for St. Ignatius had a great distrust of strait-jacketed procedure. Here the Ad majoreJn Dei gloriam comes into its own, for it is posed explicitly as the instrument and directive for action, for meeting a time of decision and making a choice. For this, it avails in great things and in small. It is to be the princi-ple for decisions taken in the General Congregation of the whole Soci-ety of Jesus, which meets only on such important occasions as that of the election of the General (Constitutions, VIII, vii, I). But it is also a principle of ordinary day-by-day life. The Jesuit in his studies, wonder-ingjust what mixture of literary and spiritual conversation would be best with the other students he is thrown with, is told that he must measure his decision here, as the General Congregation must measure its deci-sion, by what in each individual case is "ad majorem Dei gloriam" (Con-stitutions, IV, iv, 6). Instances of like sort can be multiplied from through-out the Constitutions. The Ad majorem Dei gloriam is similarly oriented toward choice when it occurs in the Constitutions in places where the alternatives are not left free but a definite policy decided upon. This becomes clear when the phrase is seen in the light of what the Constitutions are and how they were written. The Constitutions are not meditations or doctrinal instruc-tions, but directives for procedure, and as such they are of their very na-ture determinations, matters on which the mind is made up, a decision taken. But if they are decisions, someone had to draft them in the first place, and it was St. Ignatius to whom the task fell. The accounts of St. Ignatius' life leave no doubt that the making of these decisions was not easy for St. Ignatius. In his own autobiography, as recounted to Father Luis Gonzales, he tells how he spent forty days coming to a decision on just two points alone, and how at these tires he was preoccupied singu-larly with God. Once the principle of choice is given and accepted in the full, it may still take labor to decide wha~ God's will really is, although we become more adept at this by spiritual maturity and by prayer. Hence, 49/Review for Religious, January-February 1991 when the Constitutions prescribe--as they do so often that it is superflu-ous to list passages--that a thing be done this way rather than that way "for the greater glory of God," we have in the phrase a reminiscence of the labor of St. Ignatius, an echo of the deliberation prefaced to this act of choice, which is protracted permanently in the Constitutions. Here it does seem that the phrase becomes almost a dedication, and, in a certain sense, it really does insofar as a dedication represents a kind of protraction of an act of the will made in the past. But if it is a dedica-tion, it is one of a special kind which arises out of what we may call a choice-situation. The apparently tautological "more" is a permanent re-minder of this fact. In this sense, the phrase is a useful reminder of a decision made for God, a means of protracting the decision and of keeping our attention on him. In this sense, too, used as a motto, the A.M.D.G. is perhaps a little disconcerting in the way it points to the interior of our own hearts. Inscribed on a building, it does more than point to the building and more than point the building to God. It points to our own interior life. In ef-fect, it says that this object represents somehow a choice we have made with our eyes on God. So long as this fact is kept in mind, the motto will notbe a perfunc-tory label. We cannot reverse the evolution of the use of this phrase, even if we should want to. Changes in emphasis such as this evolution repre-sents correspond to altered emphases within the reality around us and have behind them psychological and sociological drives which we would be hard put to counter. But the drift toward externalization here is some-thing we must always be ready to resist. It is good to remind ourselves that the A.M.D.G. is basically a directive concerned with something deep within us, with a focus of our being which none but God and our-selves can touch. It applies primarily not to buildings nor to books nor to letters, but to the brink of decision within us. "To the greater glory of God" is not a mere label, but the baring of one's soul. Finding God in a Busy Day David Keith Townsend, S.J. Father David Townsend, S.J., a member of the British Province of the Society of Jesus, is part of the staff of St. Beuno's Spiritual Exercises Centre. His address is St. Beuno's; St. Asaph, Clwyd; North Wales LLI7 0AS; Great Britain. [~]any of our current Western prayer-forms were first elaborated in earlier times, when people lived in an atmosphere of faith, and in a Europe which was Christendom. Such is the case with the examen. Until quite recently, in English-speaking countries, the examen was known popu-larly as The Examination of Conscience. Despite all attempts to modern-ize, rename, and generally rehabilitate the examen, by calling it the Con-sciousness Examen or the Daily Review of Life, its origins lie in an un-divided Christendom. Moreover, the examen owes much to its use by St. Ignatius Loyola, the sixteenth-century founder of the Society of Jesus, in his book the Spiritual Exercises. We do well to remind ourselves that we are not sixteenth-century Christians living in Europe at a time when an undivided Christendom was being rent asunder. Then, despite the religious quarrels, the vast major-ity of the citizens of Europe were Christian believers. The majority of those who were not Christian believers would tliemselves have been be-lievers in the One God. The existence of God was generally acknowl-edged to be real both in public as well as in private relationships. God was explicit. The Divine Reality was woven into every aspect of life, and at every level. The World of Today's Christian The God-pervasiveness of the past is totally unlike the atmosphere in which the twentieth-century believer lives. At least, it is quite unlike 43 44 / Review for Religious, January-February 1991 the secularism and individualism prevalent today in First World coun-tries. In earlier eras God was part of the atmosphere breathed. Then the reality of God did not have to be positively fostered. God was palpably present, not least in the hearts and minds of the people and in the shrines strewn throughout both town and countryside. Today, in the developed countries of the West, God is excluded from public relationships, except, perhaps, for great state occasions and other similar formal and cultural events. Perhaps, too, God is excluded in ef-fect from the majority of private relationships. There is a prevailing at-mosphere, if not of unbelief, then, certainly, of the suspension of belief. The atmosphere is not one of faith. At best, and perhaps for the most part, God is an irrelevancy. God rarely enters into the considerations of a person or of a group concerning the living of life or the making of decisions. For the major-ity today there is little awareness of the involvement of God in each and every aspect of life. For so many, it is not God-mindedness that lies at the center of their world and universe. Therefore, for the majority there is little attempt to discover what God might be doing in our own times. Neither individual Christians nor whole Christian communities are exempt from the effects of this lack of God-mindedness. Individual Chris-tians and whole Christian communities are not removed from the pro-cesses at work in society at large. Whatever can be said regarding sociopo-litical processes and their effect on the individual Christian applies with perhaps even more force to the churches and to any.groupings of Chris-tian people. The contemporary believer, as an individual and as a mem-ber of a particular Christian community, is not spared being influenced by the prevalent atmosphere which would relegate God to particular places, to particular times and circumstances, to particular types of per-sons, even, perhaps, to complete oblivion. Reality being what it is, a Christian's first task today, and the first task of any Christian group, is the fostering of a positive awareness of, and a sense for, the reality of God in life. Believers need to ensure that they bring into each and every aspect of life a faith in God's involve-ment in the world. The individual believer, together with others, can then strive to read the signs of the times. It then becomes possible to know what God's activity is, in the wider world, and in the more personal worlds of both individual Christians and the groups to which they be-long. Today Christians have to do battle lest practical unbelief increasingly and negatively affect their manner of living with God. As always, life Finding God in a Bus), Day / 45 itself will be the reality check on the truth of such a "faith-full" God-centered life. The truth concerning the centrality and authenticity of the Christian group's faith, as that of the individual Christian, will show it-self in action: in the quality of the decisions made, in the values inform-ing those decisions, in the relationships formed, and in the quality of the attitudes informing those relationships. These qualities will show them-selves as much in the public spheres of life as in the private. The examen itself can so easily degenerate without the explicit, posi-tive fostering and nourishing of this element of belief in God being pres-ent and at work in all of life, both personal and communal. It can de-generate either into that kind of harsh moralizing which does not need God and which suffers from the absence of the God of compassion. Or it can degenerate into an un-christian and self-centered form of self-improving. The experiences of those brought up in the past on the examination of conscience suggest that both forms of degeneration can all too easily occur. Both forms of degeneration are differing forms of idolatry. The idol has no place for the life-giving, creative Trinity. The True God is effectively ousted. Something humanly created attempts to replace the uncreated Trinity (see Psalm 135:14-17). With the self focus, of course, the examen ceases to be God centered, and so ceases to be prayer. The examen becomes barren. Hardly surprisingly the result was frequently a total abandonment of this particular prayer exercise. The Day: Divine Meeting-Place A help in this crucial self-composing in faith is to consider the day as the privileged place for the moment-to-moment meeting with God. Likewise, the day is the place where that meeting with God can fail to be effective. Then, in this latter case, although there is the presence of God to the believer, this presence is neither acknowledged nor recipro-cated. There can be then no specific and concrete awareness of the pres-ence of God to the believer. There can be then no specific and concrete awareness of the presence of the believer to God. What is said here of an individual Christian speaks with greater force when applied to whole Christian communities. Christians believe that God is being revealed continually. The work of creation and salvation does not cease. The divine activity continues in and through the places, the events, the groups, and the people of the day. If this is the case, it does seem rather important to look at this day in which Christians and Christian ggoups meet and fail to meet God. The day is the providential vehicle for this meeting. It is by means Review for Religious, Januap3,-Februat3, 1991 of this daily providence that an individual's commitment to God finds, and fails to find, its expression and reality. It is, after all, in the day that believers live out, and fail to live out, the appropriate response to that particular calling of God which we name "vocation." It is in the day that a Christian family, or other Christian group, lives out, and fails to live out, its appropriate response to its "vocation." The day is where God moment-to-moment exercises loving provi-dence over all, including this believer and this believing community. The day is where Christians allow, and do not allow, God to work the divine desires for them. The day is the place where believers respond, and do not respond, to the moment-to-moment calls to the love and service of those around. The day is where the Christian community lives out, and does not live out, in concrete detail, the implications of its own special calling and vocation. With the viewpoint and the perspective of a faith in God present and at work in the world and among all the peoples of the world, the succes-sion of days allows the believer to see whether and to what extent the various human communities, including that believer's own Christian com-munity, are responding to the calls to justice, love, and service. The in-dividual believer, challenged by the Gospel of Jesus, will sense how his or her own desire is touched. The Gospel stirs in the believer desires to respond to personal and world events in a more Christ-like way. That Gos-pel challenge and the promise of Jesus, shared with others, will revital-ize the Christian community, for the life of the world. How can a person, or a group of people living and working together, grow in awareness and sensitivity to the God living and working in their own world and life? The simple answer: Look back over the day.t Not just to look back in general terms, but to look back expressly seeking to find where God has been active for that individual in his or her own world and life that day. To look back to see where concretely and spe-cifically God has been present and active for that community. To look back, to see, and to share with others what is seen. The examen is a way of initiating and facilitating this inner dialogue for each individual. The examen can become a communal experience of God's goodness and presence when shared in the family or other Chris-tian group. The examen challenges the individual and the group as if to say, "How can you say you are living a Christian life, if you never re-flect on it?" Or, "How can you say you are doing God's will if you never look to see what it is that you really are doing'?" Or, "How can you say you believe in God present and active in the world for all peo- Finding God in a Busy Day / 47 pie if you never reflect on the divine meaning of each day?" Or, "You say you want to serve Christ, and you want to live a more Christ-like life; well then, reflect on how your day has been, and let the experience of that day teach you what it will." Believers and Christian groups claim that they have faith in God work-ing through the Spirit both in their lives and in the world. Unfortunately, only very few seem to reflect positively on this crucial fact. The examen is a short prayer exercise which can assist in developing in a believer, and within a Christian community, a greater positive awareness of and sensitivity to the presence of God. There develops a sense of the con-crete ways God has been working in him, her, or them during the day. This greater positive sense of God can lead the believer, and that be-liever's community, to a more accurate and to a more immediate re-sponse to the initiatives of God's presence as they occur moment-to-moment during the day. Christians can become much more finely tuned to the presence and activity of the divine, moment-to-moment during the day. The deeper sense of the divine allows the Christian and the com-munity to respond so as to become molded according to the desires of the Trinity, to become "God's work of art" (Ep 2:10). The examen, therefore, becomes a particular application of the Con-templation To Attain The Love Of God, found at the end of the book of the Spiritual Exercises (see Ex. 230-7). There, having made the full Spiri-tual Exercises, the retreatant prayerfully becomes aware of and contem-plates the reality of the Trinity present and at work in all of creation, in the struggle, in the effort, and in the disappointment, as much as in all else. In the offering "Take, Lord, and receive" (Ex. 234), of the Con-templation To Attain The Love Of God, the retreatant makes a commit-ment to live out that contemplative presence to the divine in ,the actual realities of daily life. The examen can become an examination of the extent to which the person's actual response to this moment-to-moment divine presence, ex-pressed in that offering of the Contemplation To Attain The Love Of God, is rooted or not in the realities of actual daily living. When, by the shar-ing of individuals, the examen is allowed to become the prayer of a peo-ple, a family, a community, a church, that Christian group will be con-stantly recommitting itself, from within its contemplation of the love of God present and at work in its communal life, to a profound communal service. In our own day We experience the godly social challenge and influence exercised by such Christian groups, for example the base Chris-tian communities. 48 / Review for Religious, January-February 1991 The examen can also indicate just how inclusive or exclusive is the life of an individual Christian or the corporate life of a Christian com-munity. A community's world, like a person's world, can be larger or smaller, embracing more or less, more self-centered or more other-centered. The examen can throw light on just how much or how little of the world is allowed by believers to reveal the Trinity at work. The examen, therefore, can be the instrument whereby a Christian or the Christian community is invited by God to widen the area of peo-ple, groups, places, and circumstances in which the love and justice of God, and the God of love and the God of justice, can be found. The ex-amen can become the instrument whereby the individual Christian and the Christian group are invited to make an ever larger self-offering. The examen can be an aid to believers becoming more greatly involved in the ever wider love of God wherever it is found. The love of God urges Chris-tians as individuals and as communities to a greater concern (see 2 Co 5: 14). Traditionally, there have been five aspects or moments to the ex-amen. On any individual occasion one or more of these aspects will pre-dominate. That being so, it is enough to say here that these five aspects are not a syllabus to be plowed through relentlessly on each occasion. On any one occasion of praying the examen, the believer, and indeed a Christian group praying the examen together, gives to any of these as-pects the time needed and desired. The examen is prayer. Therefore, the one praying the examen remains in the aspect where he, she, or they find what is sought without trying to hurry through the other aspects. The First Aspect: Gratitude Thefirst aspect is the fostering of an attitude of thanksgiving, or grati-tude. For the person or group developing such an attitude, there is noth-ing that has not been given. Here, therefore, Christians are not being thankful merely for those aspects of the day that have given pleasure whilst remaining unthankful for those aspects of the day that have not pleased. The believer is not picking and choosing what to be thankful about, in the sense of choosing some things, events, or people, but rejecting oth-ers. Some aspects of the day may, indeed, stand out positively from the rest. Here Christians, as anyone would, will be grateful for such aspects. But such thankfulness for what is gratifying does not exhaust what is meant by gratitude. In praying for gratitude Christians are asking to be responsive to a God whose nature it is to givel and to give freely and constantly. This Finding God in a Busy Day / 49 is the attitude of true humility and of spiritual poverty. The believer, the believer's family, the Christian community, and, indeed, the whole of creation, is always on the receiving end of gift. The believer has noth-ing except what is given. What is given is given to be enjoyed and to be shared. In gratitude for such gift, the Giver is received. The Christian will be trying to foster this sense of gratitude in her or his own personal life experiences. The Christian community likewise will be trying to foster a communal sense of gratitude in its life experi-ences. Those areas of life, of persons, groups, places, and events, which seem to lack gratitude will stand out in contrast. Into these areas the per-son and the community will endeavor to bring both thanksgiving and the God who is thanked. Christians will not restrict the fostering of gratitude to personal life experiences. Christians will want to foster an ever wider sense of grati-tude that will embrace larger society. Such positive social fosterings of gratitude in Christian people will raise an awareness of that lack of grati-tude which is part of the fabric and organization of wider society. Christians will notice where ingratitude, where possessiveness and greed, where pride and arrogance are at work in the world, in political and social decisions, in the way corporations and public life are orga-nized. Believers will see where God is excluded effectively from public life. Believers will notice who are the ones who suffer in consequence. Believers will see the destructive effects of communal avarice and ag-gression on the life of the very world which God has given as gift to all (see Is 45:! 8). Again the person of faith and the faithful community will endeavor to bring both thanksgiving and the God of gifts who is thanked into these social areas of life. The believer, in his or her own person, is God's most crucial gift. He or she is the gift by which all other things can be known, and known as gifts. The believer is the gift in which, and by which, the person's own giftedness can be known. Gratitude, or thanksgiving, is the attitude in which the believer acknowledges, and expresses, his or her own di-vine giftedness. Gratitude allows the believer to be gift in such a way that the Giver of the gift is also received. Without thanksgiving the individual will belittle himself or herself. When the creation which is that individual is despised, so too is the Crea-tor despised and excluded. It is obvious how important it is that grati-tude and thanksgiving be the very essence of a Christian community's shared life together. St. Paul's letters to the churches are full of such ref-erences. The Christian community's great gathering and centering of life 50 / Review for Religious, January-February 1991 is called the Thanksgiving, Eucharist. Persons with faith in the goodness of God cannot but want to prize that same sense of gift in others. Seeing the God-who-becomes-incarnate in any and every human face can have the effect of helping oth-ers to believe in themselves. Individual Christians with such awareness will be less likely to denigrate another. Christian communities with such awareness will be less likely to denigrate either individuals or other com-munities. Perhaps, even, the other individuals or other groups concerned will be less likely to denigrate themselves. Individuals, whether Chris-tian or not, with a sense of gratitude in themselves are less likely to ac-cept the denigration of others, since their affirmation and encouragement comes from "the God of all consolation" (2 Co !:3). This sense of one's own personal worth, together with the sense of worth of every other individual, as being God's handiwork and being made in God's image (see Gn 1:27), will automatically throw in relief the areas in private life and in public life where such worth is lacking or where it is being withheld. Again these areas are going to relate to particular kinds of people, particular groups, particular places, and par-ticular activities. Believers will notice the cruel effects of this version of ingratitude which would try to denigrate and undermine the sense of gift and the sense of worth in a human being, or, indeed, which would try to dispar-age whole categories of human beings. All too often we, as individuals and as members of groups in society, give worth and withhold worth ac-cording to our own immediate advantage and benefit, both as individu-als and as members of wider society. Only a God-given gratitude for all will inspire and challenge individuals and larger groups to a wider, less selfish, and less self-centered vision. It is in this moment of thanksgiving that believers spend the time that is required to become aware of their need to be grateful: to savor and be in touch with the giftedness of their own lives and living; to savor and be in touch with the God who gives, who gifts. In a world that has little practical use for God, and where aggressive consumerism, productivity, success, and achievement color all, this orientation of gratitude, in faith-ful receptivity to giftedness before God, the Giver of all good gifts (see Jm i :17), is all the more important. The very effort to become aware in gratitude helps counter any tendency to be God-forgetful. Gratitude, in fact and in desire, can help stop a person or a group of people relating to themselves, to other people, to other groups, to the events and to the places of the day in a largely self-centered manner. Finding God in a Busy Day / ~ As the effects of gratitude develop, so too does the awareness that social and political decisions affect people in similarly self-centered ways. There may grow in believers a practical commitment to greater jus-tice for all in society. Gratitude centers a person and a community on the divine reality. The individual, that individual's injustices and self-centered gratifications, and the selfishnesses of that individual's society can no longer form the center of the world. Similarly that individual's family, group or community, together with that group's own self-centered gratifications, selfishnesses, and injustices can no longer form the center of the world. Christians are opened to seeing gift in the unex-pected. Such people can be surprised by the God of surprises. This first aspect of the examen also helps put believers in a better perspective before all that has been going on in the course of the day. The attitude of thanksgiving helps center Christians on the Trinity at work moment-to-moment in the day. The word "Trini.ty" reminds Chris-tians that God is "community." To be caught up into the life of the Trin-ity is to be caught,up into the lives of all aspects of creation. To be caught up into the life of any part of creation is to be caught up into the life of the Trinity (see Mt 25:31-46). So Christians will become aware of the Trinity at work not only in private life, but in the wider life of society. Gratitude allows believers and believing communities to include more and more of life and society under the challenge of the divine benevo-lence and goodness. As gratitude, or the desire for it, touches people, so those people can enter into gratitude, and respond to it in ways that seem appropriate. It may be that an individual or a community will feel drawn to make a con-crete commitment to gratitude in some public or social manner. In some way that is real to an individual or to a community, an appropriate re-sponse will be expressed to the Trinity, to the God who gives: Father, Son, and Spirit. The Evangelist St. Luke puts the Magnifica~t (see Lk !:46-45) on the lips of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, as her appropriate response to her exulting in the great things the Lord has done for her, and following her "yes" of acceptance to the invitation of God's good-ness to be at the service of the Word. The Second Aspect: Light The second aspect is to ask for light. Since believers receive all from the gifting of the Trinity, believers ask from the Trinity the gift of wis-dom, the gift of being open to seeing as the Trinity sees. The

Issue 49.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1990. ; R[ vl~ w ~-OR R~-t ~G~OUS (ISSN 0034-639X) ~,, pubhshed b~-monthly at St Louis Unlver,,~ty by the M~s-soun Prov~nce Educational Institute ol the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office; 3601 Lmdell Blvd. Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United States $15.00 for one year; $28.00 for two years. Other countries: US $20.00 for one year: if airmail. US $35.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address. write: R~vtEw FOR R~-:~.w, ous: P.O. Box 6070: Duluth. MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes tu R~:vw~:w vor Rv:~.~aot~s; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. ~1990 Rv:vt~.:w vor Rl.:Li~;~ot~s. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. September/October 1990 Volume 49 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rv:\'~:w v'o~ Rv:w.uaot~s; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. I~mis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Eliza-beth McDonough, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue; P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. Back issues and reprints should be urdered from Rr:\'~:w roa Rr:~.~;m~s; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. IA~uis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion uf each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Suciety for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York. NY 10010. PRISMS. At the May meeting of the Advisory Board for REvIEw FOR RELIGtOUS, the members became engrossed in a discussion of the heritages-- Benedictine, Dominican, Salesian, and many others--that consecrated life fosters and should foster in the Church. Sometimes women and men religious forget their special call to be channels of their own spiritual tra-dition and practice. Religious life, signalized in Vatican II documents as belonging to the charismatic structure of the Church, continues to give birth anew to its members by the overshadowing of the Spirit. The particular spiritual in-sights and practices which establish each religious community become permanent gifts not only to the vowed members but also to the whole Church. The Church's recognition and approval is based on this prem-ise. Religious life plays a critical role in carrying forward the Christian spiritual-life traditions in the Church community. The Church expects in-dividual religious and religious families to give witness to their spiritual traditions. It is no surprise, then, that books and journals dealing with the spiritual life (such as REv=Ew FOR REUCtOUS) are so often the product of people living in this consecrated lifeform. In our times we are being made far more aware of the tradition of the Pauline Body of Christ, with the differing gifts of its members. One of the gifts specially present in religious life is its responsibility to hand on the spiritual-life traditions within the Christian community. Obviously God's gifts are never merely self-enhancing, and so religious life was never meant to be a caste apart or its own separate church. The gift of religious life within the Church only heightens the ways that Christians feel called to live out their following of Jesus in their own day--not only the members with a particular religious calling,.but also friends, cowork-ers, students, parishioners---in a word, all who are touched in some way by members of a religious community. This journal's very title could seem to restrict its reading audience to people following a certain consecrated lifeform recognized in the Church. But, as a matter of fact, from its beginnings almost fifty years ago, REvmw FOR REL~CIOUS has invited diocesan priests, bishops, and lay people to find in its pages the roots of our Christian spiritual heritage which nourish us all. The number of subscribers other than religious was small in the beginning, but has grown steadily, especially with the bur- 641 642 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 geoning of ministries and prayer groups in the Church after Vatican II. Articles in REvmw FOR RELm~OtJS will continue to focus on various Christian heritages which religious life helps keep alive in the Church. We hope thereby to provide for all our readers access to roots as well as to budding developments in the living of the Christ-life. The authors in this issue again are representative of our reading audi-ence. For example, Barbara Dent, well-known for her spiritual writings, continues her own experiential reflections on a prayer tradition deep in the Carmelite religious family. Father Richard Lamoureux, a.a., takes an "American" approach to an age-old Augustinian tradition of prayer. The diocesan priest Father Clyde Bonar uses the experiences of St. Fran-cis of Assisi to suffuse with faith the human experience of shame. Dr. James Magee, professor of gerontology, in his article "Planning an In-tercommunity Skilled Nursing Facility," tries to facilitate the working together of religious groups coming from various religious traditions. Perhaps at this time in history we especially need to grow in our ap-preciation of religious life as the purveyor of the Christian spirituality heritage. If we do grow in this way, the Church worldwide will become all the richer in its own life and mission. David L. Fleming, S.J. Moral Issues in Spiritual Direction Shaun McCarty, S.T. Father Shaun McCarty, S.T., teaches in the Washington Theological Union and is a staff member of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. His address is Holy Trinity Mission Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. My gracefully aging mother has acquired a certain Wisdom from the ex-perience of her years, yet she still seeks confirmation from her clerical eldest in matters of faith and morals! Vatican II suited her just fine be-cause, she says, "It said a lot of things I always thought!" On my weekly visits, she will often begin with, "Now tell me if I'm to think this way, but . " And then she will go on to comment on some issue she has been thinking about in the quiet of her "digs" in a condomin-ium for the elderly (which she sometimes thinks may be the only heaven she will get to!). On the issue of Church: "I go to church because I like to, not because I have to. But I can't see running in and out all the time. Especially when people need you. What good is it to go to church if it does not help you be a better person outside?" On prayer: "God's not just in church. He is (she is not fully feminist yet!) in my apartment too. And I do not think ! have to say a lot of prayers; God and I just have these talks when I say what is on my mind and he talks to me." On sev-eral occasions she has raised this moral issue: "Now tell me if I am wrong to think this way, but I think a lot of these rules that come from the Church are not God's. Most are man-made. Now I think God gave us heads to think ourselves. Not just run off and ask the priest what is right or wrong or wait for the Pope to tell us what to do or not do. If you ask me, I just think the reason people do that is because they are too damn lazy to think for themselves! Now is it wrong for me to be think-ing this way?" I ask her: "Now, Morn, don't you think the Church has 643 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 anything to say about what is right or wrong?" She answers: "Of course, but I'm choosy about whom I listen to!" I just smile, shake my head and assure her that she will probably escape ecclesiastical censure! Actually, she gives new meaning, life, and hope for the terms spiritual and moral life! 'Moral is one of those words laden for many with negative undertones ~uch as repressive, punishing, puritan, pharisaical, and the like. Spiri-tual often connotes an a_nemic and pious evasion of down,t0-earth~ d~ ~o-day living. Until we encounter both embodi_e_d_and~i0tegr_~t_ed_i_n~--~l ,rpeople like Mom ,hose lives and choices validate t~]~ch~i'~hg0i~nd prayer! rYOften, too, moral life and spiritual life are separated: the former re- .ferring to what is right and wrong; the latter, to what is good and beetler. 19 the ministry of spiritual direction, which aims primarily-at-'spiri~ual ~rowth, moral issues frequently arise and discrepancies become appa~ ~.nt either within the value system of the dii'ectee, between the dire~tee an~ Church teaching, or between the value systems of the d~rector and the~ dtrectee. What follows wall be an attempt to provide a frame.w~o_rk m which spiritual gu~des~can-tleal'w~th~moral-~ssues'and'grapple with such ~liscrepancies. ~I will first explore the meaning and relationships of some key terms ip.cluding moral and spiritual life, conscience and discernment. Then, I will consider the role of Church as teacher and the role of the spiritual director as guide in the formation of conscience, including some specific ~reas in which the director can be helpful. Finally, I will raise some dif-ficulties that can occur in dealing with moral issues in the ministry of s~iritual direction. ~Moral and Spiritual Life I.n the context of this article, spiritual life means graced growth in the~spirit, that is, in that dimension of human existence by which we are ~.open t~___.transcendent_ rove and drawn by the Spirit into intimate union ~.with God and communion with each other through, with, and in Christ. ~lokalli~ refers t0-th-~t ~i~e~ct of life that has to~do with. human C~h~0~ic~-s ~fi~eely~made~and~lowngl6ehav~ors~freely:embraced~that;-:under:grace, en- ~able one to pursue good, avoid evil, and~ herice, grow hurria-~ly. ,~ As moral theologians point out, unfortunately in the past, there tii~S ~.been and continues to be a split between moral and spiritual theology. Respected Redemptorist theologian, Bernard Haring says: Moral theology for the use of confessors and penitents was almost un- Moral Issues / 645 avoidably guided by the knowledge of dominion and control. Since such a theology, written mostly for controllers, could threaten the freedom of believers in the realm of things solicited by grace, it seemed best to leave out or bypass spirituality . ~ This resulted in a dual track for Christians: one for an elite who wanted to strive for maximum ideals in "seeking perfection" and the other for those who were satisfied to meet minimum expectations in "sav-ing their souls." Beatitudes were for the former; commandments for the latter. Not only was there a split between classes of Christians, but indi-vidual conscience also was divided into two compartments: one for moral norms, the other for "works of supererogation" (those above and be-yond the call of duty!). ~e dichotomies_are unfortunate. Moral and spiritual life are warp and w~i'~?oi;~ameTf:~l~i-U.~'~'~]i~fiaor~a~:~on focuses on an~ai-ea key to human, and therefore, spiritual growth--namely, that of choices that define a person more-thah anything else and behaviors that promot~ ~0~ih~. ;there is a universal call to holiness. To love God with all our hearts and to love others as Christ loves us is a normative ideal for every Christian. The choice is not between a "spiritual" life or a "moral" life. Whether intentional or not, every Christian is on a spiritual journey and summoned to be challenged by the beatitudes as well as by the com-mandments. Again, B. Haring: It is detrimental to the very fundamental norms of Christian ethics, but especially to the formation of a distinctively Christian consciousness, if the law of growth and the criteria for a deeper understanding of Chris-tian love are relegated to another discipline . But it should be equally clear that a distinctively Christian formation of conscience does not belong to those who specialize in "knowledge of control"! For it is at the very heart of salvation.2 The bottom line is that love is the highest common denominator of every moral act as well as the source and goal of all spiritual growth. ~Con~_s_cience ~I~n general, as a faculty of moral lif~-,-~ohscience is concerned with .~ ~ . ~.-:~ ~. . - ~ . .~- ,h~urfian cbOic6s of good or ewl. An ~nformed conscience is the final ar-biter of moral choice. It refers to that element in the experience of free-dom that makes one aware of responsibility and accountability for one's decisions and actions. The biblical term for conscience is "heart" in which God's will is written (Rm 2:15). Theologically speaking, it is "self-consciousness passing moral judgment.' ,3 In speaking of the dig- 646 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 nity of moral conscience, the Fathers of Vatican II described conscience as ". the most secret core and sanctuary of a man (sic). There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths."4 Conscience may be said to operate at three levels: ~(1) Fundamental level: This refers to th~ hiJFria--ff-~apacity freely t6 ~hoose a life-orientation towards God (the Choi~ce); _tp. p~_rsue .good(the Wight) and to avoid evil (the Darkness) with an awareness of respp.n__s_i~ ~ility and accountabilii'~At this level, one may be said to have a ge~n- ~ral sense of value.' A fundamental choice for the Light assumes that to be human is to have basic freedom and to have a radical openness to the mystery of God which, again, defines a person more than anything else. To take this option is to experience metanoia (change of heart) which af-fects the whole person (body, mind, and spirit). It is an invitation to turn over all of one's energies to God, to put one's life at the disposal of God, to be a disciple in loving service of others as Christ did and to live under the guidance of the Spirit in subsequent day-to-day decisions. It is in the light of this fundamental level of conscience that important life-decisions such as marriage, priesthood, and vowed life should be made. (2) Reflection/assessment level (individual choices): This level con-cerns day-to-_day choices of varying degrees of importance requiring a process of moral reasoning related to concrete situations.~It calls for re-flection, discussion, and analysis. I think it is what my mother means I~y "using the head that God gave us." Here one is concerned with spe-cific perception of value. At this level, there is room for difference, dis-agreement, error, blindness, distortion, rationalization, confusion, and cultural blindness. Consequently, it is primarily at this level that a per-son needs assistance from more objective sources including Sacred Scrip-ture, one's faith community, friends, confessor, and spiritual director. It is precisely at this level that conscience needs continually to be formed and informed. For that to happen effectively, a person needs humility so that conscience can "kneel at the altar of truth" to which conscience is always subject. It is at this level that the teaching Church as reposi-tory of the values of a faith-community, has an important but limited role as moral teacher and one distinct from that of spiritual director. More about this later. ~,~.(3)~Action level: This refers.to.the_moral judgment or choice of wh~t one believes to be right that brings with it a moral imperative to act. At C~his lev~e_l, a person exercises responsibility and accountability for actions ~and for the consequences of actions that conscience commands. A sign of responsible moral choice is growth in willing, compassionate concern/ Moral Issues / 647 action as opposed to willful, selfish action/inaction. In other words, genu-ine moral judgments and decisions find their completion and become enfleshed in moral deeds. pis:ernn~en~t i Discernment refers to the prayerful sorting out of interior movements ~expenenCe~d ~n-theprocess of tnakmg judgments and deos~ons to deter-m~ ne'wh~ch are of the Spent consequently resonant w~th the fundamen-taVl level-of c-~fiscie0.~e.-It presupposes a quest Of interior freedom as w~ll ~.ffs-careful attent~0n to the concrete particulars of a situation taking into i~onsideration subjective feelings as well as objective facts. It is possible to speak also of levels of discernment that bear some correlation with the levels of conscience occurring at: (1) the fundamen-tal (or core) level of faith, where a person becomes aware of God-experience in light of which one perceives that way of life where she or he can best express and pursue a fundamental choice of God and the good; (2) the reflection/assessment level of day-to-day choices of vary-ing degrees of significance and permanence made with a sufficient de-gree of interior freedom and in resonance with one's fundamental expe-rience of God; (3) the action level whereby a discerned judgment or de-cision is brought to completion by translating it into a concrete behavior that, if it is truly discerned, will bear the fruits of the Spirit. Relationship of DiScernment and Conscience Discernment is critical in the process of what lawyer-priest, R.P. Stake, calls the "evangelization of conscience" which entails the power of the Gospel to reveal to an individual the fact and the seriousness of one's sins.5 What discernment brings to the evangelization of conscience in:~ cludes: (l) a sharper focus on the subjective and unique factors at work,] for this person in this .situation (especially important at a time of accel-erating moral complexity and waning adequacy of objective moral norms and extrinsic moral authority); (2) a situating of decision-making within ff ~?a biblical tradition of both Old and New Testaments, especially in the letters of John and Paul;~(3) a rooting and contextualizing of the decision-r~ aklng process in a person's prayer and experience of Go~l; (4) a more ihtentional attempt to examine motivations to see from where they are ~commg and to where they are 'l~ading so as to create the conditions for greater interior freedom in making choices;~(-5) a nuancing of choicest-- not just of the good over the bad, the genuinely good over the supposed good, but also choices among goods; ~(6) in contrast to an excessive de- 6411 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 pendence on laws and authority as sources of moral judgment, discern-ment is conducive to ~clearEr focusing of responsibility four,the decision ~. 3. -- a~nd its cons~equ_e_n-ces on_ the pers_on making the de_.c~!s~on; (~7) ~n contrast to an individualistic and isolated process, a situating of the decision~ making process within the context of a person's faith commUfiity; (,8)~ contrast to a more exclusively rational and deductive approach (~s is often the case in the exercise of prudence ), ] serious~consideration of human affectivit~ as an important locus of grace~in human choice. , In testing the spirits oy measunng them against one s tunoamen-tal God-experience, moral judgments are more likely to be integrated with conscience as well as reinforcing of conscience at the level of one's fundamental choice¯ In short, discernment makes for a more prayerful, thorough, personalized, interiorized, and human process of conscience formation¯ Hopefully the discussion thus far makes clear that discernment is not dispensation from moral law, but rather an invaluable help in observing it. Rather than an "occasional exercise," discernment presupposes the cultivation of a "prayerful mode" and commitment to contemplative practice that can clarify one's vision and solidify one's dedication to truth¯ It is interesting to note that moral theologians today are showing a marked interest in a discernment approach to moral choice.6 ~,Role of the Church in Formation of Conscience ~The Church (understood as the e~n~ir'~Z~P~'o~le~f~G~d)~ qt preserves and hands down a faith-community's values, is an impor-tant, but limited agent in the evangelization of conscience¯ The teaching ~'Church is not a substitute for conscience; nor is its proper role one o~ ~Grand Inquisitor"; nor yet is it the ultimate arbiter of morality¯ Con-science is. But the Church is a privileged moral teacher and recognized ~leader that plays a significant role in thg~ilJp_mination of conscience. It d~es not create morality. Rather it helps people to discover God's de-sires for humankind which are written on the "fleshy tablets" of the hu- ~man heart¯ Not only does the Church embrace historically and cross-culturally an experience far wider than that of a single individual or cul-ture, but believers hold that the Church has special guidance from the Holy Spirit. Though the Church cannot be expected to address all the val-ues in every moral situation, it can provide norms against which people can measure their own moral judgment. Such norms protect values. Val-ues may be protected in different ways in different eras and/or cultures. Above all, the Church is eminently equipped to help form mature Chris-tian consciences that will enable people to accept responsibility for "us- Moral Issues / 6t19 ing the heads God gave them" in arriving at sound moral decisions. ~Role of-Sp~tual Director in Formation of Conscience ¯ ,Since:mOraVand~spiritual~life:should not'be d~vided~ the~d~rector ob7- ~o~s.~y ~ concerned w~th the moral choices of the directee. In the pro-cess of disce~ment, choices should be consonant with a fundamental choice of the Light and with the person's value system. Though neithe~ ~a represeatative 6fthe-teaching Church as such nor a moral judge of oth- .ers -Consc~ence~ ~n the role of spiritual dire&or, nevertheless ihe-dir~' t~r dbe~ have a responsibility to assist in the ongoing evangelization of conscience by way of enabling individuals to find their own way.- The director also needs to pay attention to his or her own blocks, biases, and unfreedoms that can arise from conflicts between the director's value sys-tem and that of the directee. The director's moral code is not normative ,for the directee. ~ spiritual director acts best as moral guide by being a witness to ~,(trut~hd pers0ndleXample Of integrity~- In addition, the director can help form consciences by appropriate interventions, pat~'e nt wa~t~ng," " compas-sionate understanding, and by maintaining a non-judgmental attitude, -~hde at the same t~me offering honest challenge. The most helpful in-tervention is attentive listening. All spiritual growth, including the evangelization of conscience, happens incrementally. This calls for pa-tience and attentiveness to the readiness of the directee in a~iving at her or his own judgments. It should be noted that self-denigration is one of the most basic moral issues with which many in direction need to deal~ Real or supposed moral lapse especially can deepen it, and this calls for compassionate understanding. Yet, good people are prone to subtle ways of rationalizing and, at times, need honest challenge. It is one thing to experience ambiguity in moral issues; it is another to refuse to wrestle with it] It is comfo~ing to remember that when difficulties arise, the same Holy Spirit who illumines discerning hea~s is also leading persons to moral integrity~ What specifically can a spiritual guide do to enable the formation of conscience? At the fundamental level of conscience, it can be assumed that the person coming for direction has made a fundamental choice of God and the pursuit of good. It would be important in making discerned moral choices that persons continue to refer back to the deepest level of their God-experience. In reference to a major life-decision affecting a per-son's deepest commitments (for example, to enter or to leave marriage, priesthood, vowed life), a director might ask: Has the directee spent shf-ficient time in serious prayer? Made a careful examen of motives? Asked 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 others for feedback? It is at the reflection/assessment level of conscience that most guid-ance is sought. :S~6'~ " a "ec o be ~i~fulz ~ (1 ) In assessing moral maturity: What is the quality of the moral rea-soning process of the directee in reference to this choice? Does the per-son have a sufficiently informed conscience? Where are the blind spots? To what extent is the directee open to outside input? Is she or he making efforts to inform conscience by some reference to moral norms? (for ex-ample, Scripture, norms of his or her faith community?) Has the directee already made up his or her mind and now is unwilling to be "confused with the facts"? Does the directee rely on authority and law for some directives she or he likes, but on a subjective process of "discernment" for others she or he does not? Who will be affected and how by this moral choice? (2) In clarifying values: What values seem important to the directee (as they become visible in choices acted upon as well as spoken of!) and in what priority are they held? Does the person have sufficient clarity con-cerning these priorities? What values does the directee perceive in refer-ence to the specific moral issue with which she or he is now struggling? Is there any struggle? In "grey" areas is the directee willing to strug-gle? Has the director grappled with the same issue and know where she or he stands at present? Is the director clear about his or her own value system? What unfreedoms in the director might significantly hinder fa-cilitating the directee's discernment? (3) In establishing a prayerful mode: Is the directee bringing the is-sue to prayer/discernment: sufficiently in touch with her or his experi-ence of God? seeking inner freedom? gathering sufficient data? attentive to affective responses as options are explored and data gathered? In re-flecting on and in assessing options, does the directee feel any incongru-ence or resistance within towards one or the other option? In deciding on the action level of conscience: Does the directee trans-late moral judgments into deeds? Is she or he open to accountability? Will-ing to take responsibility for his or her actions? What are the conse-quences of the directee's moral decision for others? For self? ~Difficulties Facing Directors in Dealing with Conscience ,Since consciences differ as people do, it .is tO be expe~.cot_eod_~that diffi- ~'ulties can arise indealing with moral issues. These include: ~(1) Difference in moral conviction: When there is a difference of moral conviction on an issue with a directee (for example, divorce, Moral Issues / 651 greed, tax fraud, contraception, sexual activity, and so forth), what is the moral responsibility of the spiritual director? Although a guide in the process of moral choice rather than a teacher of morality, a spiritual di-rector must make a judgment as to whether she or he feels so strongly about an issue as to be unable to help the person deal with it. The direc-tor might pose the question: Will my own strong conviction constitute a major interference in the direction process? What would be appropri-ate to share with the directees at this time concerning my difference of conviction? (For example, a director might be absolutely unwilling to help a person "discern" an abortion.) ~(2) Inadequate social moral consciousness of the directee: What can a director do to help a person broaden the horizons of a conscience lack-ing in social consciousness or with little sense of social sin? On the one hand, the director needs to respect the value system of the directee and to respect readiness for change. On the other hand, the working alliance between the two should also have provided for appropriate challenge as a help to growth. If social consciousness seems to need broadening, a director might: (a) suggest readings to provoke thought; (b) be attentive to possible points of entry for discussion arising from life experience re-ported by a directee that can be occasions of broadening social aware-ness-- for example, a chance brush with a beggar or a personal experi-ence of discrimination; (c) suggest firsthand exposure to situations of so-cial concern--for example, volunteering time at a shelter for the home-less; (d) at times of periodic assessment (for which a good working alli-ance will also make provision), an honest and direct, yet gentle challenge may be in order. ~)(3) Distress after moral lapse: Without unduly mitigating a healthy sense of guilt that helps a person to recognize culpability and move to repentance, a compassionate director can help minimize the debilitating preoccupation that often accompanies guilt. If a person is overly dis-traught over a moral lapse, a director can help by getting the directee to contextualize it, that is, to see it in relationship to his other fundamental option and to the rest of his or her moral life. Does it reverse the funda-mental optioh? Erode it? Not substantially affect it? In addition to sin, where has grace been experienced? How might the experience of moral lapse and its aftermath (for example, a lessening of spiritual pride) been an occasion of grace? Conclusion In dealing with moral issues in spiritual direction, we have explored the meaning and relationship of moral and spiritual life and seen that the 652 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 two should not be divided. Moral life has as one of its concerns a key aspect of spiritual life--namely, decision-making and its relationship to character formation. Discernment is not an alternative to, but an enrich-ment of moral decision-making. Both Church as moral teacher and spiri-tual director as moral guide play significant, but different and limited roles in the formation of conscience--the final arbiter of moral judgment which, in turn, must always remain open to ongoing formation. Finally, we considered some ways for a spiritual director to deal with difficulties that arise in dealing with moral issues. Hvopefully, both Church and spiritual director will provide teachi~g~ find guidance that will enable folks, as-Mom says, "to use the heads God !~ga,~ethem to think for themselves!" That might give both the terms moral and spiritual life better press! You know, as I think of it, my mother was and continues to be my first (and probably my best!) profes-sor of moral and spiritual theology! Exercise Can you think of a situation in which your moral judgment differed from that of a directee? One in which the directee's was in conflict with Church teaching? What did you judge as your own moral responsibility towards the di-rectee? How did this affect your ability to discern as spiritual director? How did you try to discern what you should share with the directee? What aided your discernment? NOTES ~ See B. Haring, Free and Faithful in Christ, Vol. I (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 2-3. 2 Ibid, p. 253. 3 K. Rahner & H. Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary (Herder & Herder, 1968), p. 95. 4 "Gaudium et spes," (n. 16) The Documents of Vatican II, W.M. Abbott, ed. (New York: Guild Press), p. 213. 5 R.P. Stake, "Grounding the 'Priest-Penitent Privilege' in American Law," Con-fidentiality in the United States (Washington, D.C.: CLSA, 1988), p. 151. 6 For example, see Tracing the Spirit, J.E. Hug, ed. (New York: Paul ist, 1983), pp. 379ff. Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? Timothy Brown, S.J. and Harriet A. Learson Father Timothy Brown, S.J., is assistant professor of law in the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. Harriet Lear-son, M.B.A., M.A., is a senior management consultant, Right Associates, in Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania, and is a practicing spiritual director. Correspondence may be addressed to Loyola College; 4501 North Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21210- 2699. In today's service-oriented society, one can hardly avoid the media's al-most daily reports about the issue of malpractice. Doctors, lawyers, psy-chologists, psychiatrists, and human service professionals are becoming increasingly liable and vulnerable to public scrutiny regarding their prac-tices, philosophies, and ethics. In an editorial in the Jesuit publication Human Development Father James Gill, S.J., a Jesuit psychiatrist, raised the question of licensing spiritual directors. He comments: Haven't we reached a point in the Church's history when a group of well-trained and experienced spiritual directors can come together and deter-mine what type and amount of preparation would entitle a candidate to be licensed as a spiritual director? For the self-confidence of the direc-tors, no less than the well-being of their directees, a board of examiners and a certifying process comparable to those maintained by clinical psy-chologists, nurses, and physicians should be created. These profession-als have, in conscience, set high standards for their performance for the sake of their clients. We who are given access to the deepest recesses of souls should hardly be less conscientious. I There has been an outpouring of lawsuits against Churches and clergy as a result of alleged malpractice in recent years. The term that 653 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 has been coined is clergy malpractice which covers a wide variety of torts and crimes including child abuse, paternity suits, and intentional inflic-tion of emotional distress. The constitutional questions, under both state and federal Constitutions, oftentimes deny a cause of action because of the First Amendment issue of separation of Church and State. A number of cases have come to the attention of the media in the area of clergy mal-practice. One of the most noteworthy comes from California, Nally vs. Grace Community Church.2 In this case, parents whose son committed suicide brought an action against a church and church-related counselors, alleging negligent coun-seling and outrageous conduct which ultimately led to the death of their son.3 I. Constitutional Issues in Nally Vs. Grace Community Church Kenneth Nally committed suicide after having become part of a re-ligious organization that his parents alleged suggested to his son that, if you kill yourself, you will go to heaven. His parents brought suit against the Grace Community Church of the Valley, a fundamentalist sect, lo-cated in Southern California. The parents sued the church and four pas-tors for malpractice, negligence, and outrageous conduct. They con-tended that the church's evangelical fundamentalist teachings "in-culcated in their son the belief that he had betrayed Christ's love and trust, and otherwise exacerbated Ken's preexisting feelings of guilt, anxi-ety, and deep depression with the knowledge that these acts would in~ crease the tendencies of Ken to attempt to take his own life."4 The church countered that the young man had been examined by five physi-cians and a psychiatrist after an earlier suicide attempt and that the coun-selors had arranged or encouraged many of these visits. A trial judge dis-missed the case after the close of the plaintiff's case, 5 and the case was appealed. The appellate court reversed the trial court's nonsuit of the negli-gence and outrageous conduct allegations against the Grace Community Church and several of its pastoral counselors. They held that the Church's counselors negligently failed to refer this suicidal youth to those authorized and best suited to prevent his death.6 Associate Justice Johnson writing for the majority began the opinion by clearing up the confusion regarding the issue of clergy malpractice: The court., does not view the causes of action discussed in our opin-ion to involve 'clergy malpractice.' Instead, we see them more accu-rately characterized as 'negligent failure to prevent suicide,' and 'inten- Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? tional or reckless infliction of emotional injury causing suicide'- which negligence and intentional or reckless acts happens to have been committed by church-affiliated counselors. In our view this case has lit-tle or nothing to say about the liability of clergymen for the negligent performance of their ordinary ministerial duties or even their counsel-ing duties except when they enter into a counseling relationship with sui-cidal individuals.7 The church appealed the ruling by the California Court of Appeals for the Second District. After eight years of litigation after the suicide of Kenneth Nally, the Supreme Court of California in a 5-2 opinion held that the "legal duty of care" imposed by the State on licensed praction-ers did not apply to the clergy.8 Chief Justice Lucas writes: "Neither the legislature nor the courts have ever imposed a legal ob-ligation on persons to take affirmative steps to prevent the suicide of one who is not under the care of a physician in a hospital. Imposing such a duty on nontherapist counselors could have a deleterious effect on coun-seling in general and deter those most in need of help from seeking treat-ment out of fear that the private disclosures could subject them to invol-untary commitment to psychiatric facilities."9 The California court notes the California legislature's recognition that "access to the clergy for coun-seling should be free from state imposed counseling standards." to Two other Justices agreed that the case should be dismissed but said the defendants did have a legal duty of care but that the evidence showed the pastors never breached it or contributed to the man's death. The Court unanimously dismissed the case. II. Spiritual DirectionmA Definition Whether spiritual directors should be licensed to prevent the kind of tragedy described in the Nally case is a question that is presently being debated by many in the field. Spiritual direction has a very broad con-notation. It can be defined as an interpersonal situation in which one per-son assists another person to growth in the spirit, in the life of faith (prayer), hope (difficulties), sufferings (trials), and love (the person's life in the Christian community). 1~ Spiritual direction may better be defined by what it is not, rather than by what it is. Spiritual direction is not pri-marily information even though it may be the occasion for sharing ideas. It is not primarily therapeutic even though there are times when issues of mental and psychological need get discussed. It is not seen as primar-ily advisory although in many situations good advice is imparted. Spiri-tual direction is viewed as primarily the opportunity to get clarification and discernment. How this gets accomplished is by discussing the prayer 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 life and spiritual life of the directee so as to shed some light on what is happening in the life of faith, hope, and love in relation to God. In spiritual direction, the directee tries to describe to a spiritual di-rector his or her prayer experiences. The subject matter of that discus-sion constitutes such areas as when prayer happens, how often, how, what actually happens in the prayer period, other daily life issues such as anxiety over family, job, day-to-day depressions, joys, consolations and desolations, issues of tolerance, patience, and possible manipulation of others. The director's role is to help the person to objectify those per-sonal experiences, to assist by asking appropriate questions in order to gain some clarity on the directee's personal issues. The spiritual direc-tor is interested in helping the directee in the life of prayer so that the relationship with God and the men and women with whom they live and work can become strengthened and enhanced. III. Basic Skills Required of a Spiritual Director At the Jesuit Spiritual Center in Wernersville, Pennsylvania a com-petency profile was developed in an effort at concretizing and articulat-ing the requisite personal qualities, knowledge, skills, and graces to do spiritual direction. Here are some of the standards that were established in that study: 1. Personal Characteristics/Qualities A. Living a vital spiritual life B. Being a recipient oneself of spiritual direction C. Docility to the Spirit D. Kindness E. Gentleness F. Psychological Maturity G. Initiative H. Having a broadly lived human experience J. Stability K. Respect for confidentiality L. Sociability M. Detachment N. Productivity 2. Knowledge A. Lived experience in the Christian tradition B. Christian Doctrine/tradition C. Sacred Scripture D. Christian mystical/ascetical traditions E. The Spiritual Exercises Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 657 F. Ecclesiology G. Grace H. Christology J. Vatican II K. Justice L. A psychological matrix (theory & language) M. Jungian Psychology 3. Skills/Abilities A. Intrapersonal (affective awareness) B. Discernment C. Listening D. Clarifying E. Diagnosing F. Prescribing G. Judgment H. Common sense J. Interpersonal Skills K. One-on-one L. Group M. Trustworthiness 4. Graces A. Spiritual freedom B. An ongoing call to this work by others C. Called by grace to this work D. Seeing the Gospel happening~2 IV. Ministerial Malpractice Malpractice refers to professional misconduct or the failure of one rendering services in the practice of a profession to exercise the degree of skill and learning normally applied by members of that profession in similar circumstances.~3 The traditional elements necessary to state a cause of action in negligence have beenstated by Prosser as: 1) a duty, or obligation, recognized by the law, requir-ing the actor to conform to a certain standard of conduct for the protection of others against unreasonable risks; 2) a failure on his part to conform to the standard re-quired; 3) a reasonably close causal connection between the con-duct and the resulting injury; and 4) actual loss or damages resulting to the interests of an-other. 14 Review for Religious, September-October 1990 The problem that the courts would face in trying to construe a duty, and then defining that duty in the area of spiritual direction, is in attempt-ing to define what falls within the parameters of the spiritual as opposed to psychological counseling. How would a court make some kind of de-termination as to whether a directee's problem is, in fact, a spiritual or psychological one. The reason that distinction is so necessary is to safe-guard and protect members of the clergy involved in spiritual direction. Father John English, S.J. has written that the distinction between spiri: tual and psychological counseling is oftentimes a fine one. He comments that "although it may be helpful for the director to distinguish between psychological and spiritual counseling, these realities are not distinct within the person being counseled. And the concern is always with the total person." ~5 There are occasions when a director can see that the real need in direction is no longer to facilitate growth in relationship with God but instead to move the person into a psychological counseling setting so that other issues in the directee's life can better be addressed. What are some of the occasions when someone should be referred to therapy? One spiritual director, Mercy Sister Maureen Conroy, R.S.M. regards three situations as clearly signals to refer. They are: 1) when a person experiences serious psychological and emotional disorders, including depression, severe neuro-sis, suicidal tendencies, psychosis; 2) when more time needs to be spent exploring a present life issue, such as a marital problem; and 3) when specific therapeutic skills are needed to explore the conscious and unconscious effects of past life expe-riences, such as sexual abuse or emotional neglect in child-hood. 16 The Supreme Court of California in the Nally case addressed the is-sue of referral of seriously ill directees. Regarding the duty as to "whether the court should impose a duty on defendant and other 'nonth-erapist counselors' (that is, persons other than licensed psychotherapists who counsel others concerning their emotional and spiritual problems) to refer to licensed mental health professionals once suicide becomes a foreseeable risk," the court said no.~7 In determining the existence of a duty of care in any given case, a number of factors were considered, including: "the foreseeability of harm to the injured party, the degree of certainty that he suffered injury, the closeness of the connection be-tween defendants' conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame at-tached to (defendants), the policy of preventing future harm, the extent Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 659 of the burden to the defendants and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk in-volved. ' ' 18 The court cautiously noted the inappropriateness of imposing a duty to refer in areas involving spiritual counseling because of the very na-ture of the relationship. So many times those relationships are informal, spur of the moment, and gratuitous. The foreseeability of harm may not always be recognized in a one hour session with a disturbed directee. The court concluded by saying that "imposing a duty on defendants or other nontherapist counselors to. insure their counselees [are also] under the care of psychotherapists, psychiatric facilities, or others authorized and equipped to forestall imminent suicide could have a deleterious ef-fect on counseling in general." 19 The California legislature has exempted the clergy from any kind of licensing requirement applicable to "mar-riage, family, child and domestic counselors, and from the operation of statutes regulating psychologists.' ,20 The court took note that the reason why the legislature has exempted clergy from licensing is in order to ex-plicitly "recognize that access to the clergy for counseling should be free from state imposed counseling standards, and that the secular state is not equipped to ascertain the competence of counseling when performed by those affiliated with religious organizations.''2~ V. The Difficulty of Devising Workable Standards For Determining Negligence Along with the difficulty the court recognized with arriving at some kind of workable standard of competency to be established in religious counseling situations, the Nally court also noted the added problem of identifying to whom the duty of duc care should be applied. It would be an immense task to define what exactly constitutes a spiritual direction relationship. Who qualifies as aspiritual director (only the ordained? mem-bers of religious orders?) as well as trying to resolve the issue of relig-ious diversity demonstrates difficulty in determining in what context the interaction is framed. There are all kinds of First Amendment issues in-volved as well. The court expressed the dilemma writing: "Because of the differing theological views espoused by the myriad of religions in our state, and practiced by Church members, it would certainly be impracti-cal and quite possibly unconstitutional to impose a duty of care on pas-toral counselors. Such a duty would necessarily be intertwined with the religious philosophy of the particular denomination or ecclesiastical teach-ings of the religious entity.' ,22 66{I / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Establishing some kind of criteria of competency that a court could apply would always involve a state intrusion into the realm of religious doctrine and practice. The state would be put in the position of asking whether a particular religious practice was indeed being employed, a par-ticular teachin~g applied correctly, a particular style of spirituality or dis-cernment used properly. All these determinations entail a great deal of state entanglement in sectarian matters. In 1971 the Supreme Court in Lemon vs. Kurtzman,23 adopted a three prong test to decide whether a government activity violates the Estab-lishment Clause of the First Amendment. The test requires that: 1) The purpose of the action be clearly secular; 2) The primary effect of the action must neither advance nor inhibit religion; and 3) the activity may not result in excessive government en-tanglement with the religion.2a Any kind of judicial enforcement of some kind of standard of com-petency for spiritual directors would fail the Lemon vs. Kurtzman test on all three points. The effect of the government overseeing the practices of spiritual directors would more than likely inhibit some of the freedom required to explore, discern, and clarify issues in spiritual direction. The potential for excessive church-state entanglement in the area of enforce-ment of guidelines for direction is limitless. Any standard of care applied in determining qualified licensed prac-tioners in the field of spiritual direction would involve some sort of check as to whether the practice was in step with the religious criteria set forth in the religious teachings of the sect. At best it could be argued that some minimum standard of.training and competence to protect the public from religious fanatics, charlatans, or frauds might be established, but any full-fledged licensing would stifle First Amendment freedom and inhibit re-ligious practice. VI. Difficulties in Establishing a Standard of Care for Spiritual Di-rectors Looking at the Competency Profile of the Jesuit Spiritual Center, one wonders how a court would be able to determine what constitutes com-petency when the spiritual qualification requirements of directors include such characteristics as: 1) Living a vital spiritual life--a life of charity; 2) Habitual experience of individual prayer; 3) A life of Charity .toward all peop!e coupled with an awareness of the w~der needs of the human family; Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 661 4) An evermore intense interior experience; 5) An ever-growing delicacy of conscience; 6) Kindness--having and showing a benevolent readi-ness to intend the good of others; 7) Giftedness--honoring another's perceptions, judg-ments, and person; a non-defensiveness of spirit, pa-tience, and sympathy; 8) Psychological maturity--free from crippling emo-tional, mental, or volitional habits of a neurotic nature; 9) Sociability--the ability to interact with a variety of per-sonalities; 10) Knowledge--lived experience in the Christian tradi-tion; 1 1) Skills and abilities--interpersonal awareness of one's interior mental and emotional states; 12) Discernment--the experiential knowledge of self in the congruence of the object of choice with one's funda-mental religious orientation; 13) Judgment--the ability to form wise opinions, esti-mates, and conclusions from circumstances presented to the director; 14) Graces-spiritual freedom --without undue influence of disordered affections and attachments; 15) An inner suppleness of character.25 Looking over this list of characteristics needed to be a competent spiri-tual director one could see the difficulty that a court of law would have in trying to render a determination of standards which would meet licens-ing requirements. Courts are not in any position to evaluate the content of the prescribed qualifications. Aside from the obvious First Amend-ment problems found in making judgments on what grace, kindness, char-ity, and other criteria operative within the practice of spiritual direction are, licensing could discourage and diminish the gifts of both the direc-tor and directee. It is the view of the authors that licensing, evolving in the current secula¢ context, goes against the very grain of what spiritual direction is all about and could do a real disservice to those who enter into a direction relationship fearing lawsuits. It could also have a chill-ing effect on directees as well. There is something unique, healing, and very human about spiritual direction as a growth process if we view it as art, science, and discipline. 662 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 VII. Some Final Observations In reviewing the current legal opinions regarding malpractice in the area of spiritual and pastoral counseling, the authors present several ob-servations. --Licensing spiritual directors is clearly a prophetic question as pro-posed by Gill and is coming increasingly into its own time. The issues surrounding licensing are complex, profound in their implications, dis-turbing, and hopeful as we look at the work of defining the criteria for training, developing, and evaluating competent directors. --Defining what competencies are needed in a spiritual director in different schools of spirituality, religious groups and sects, and what con-tent needs to be included in their training programs producing such pro-fessionals is a challenge that is only beginning to be publicly addressed, discussed, or attempted. --In light of the current legal findings and opinions, spiritual direc-tors need to demand and seek training that is concerned with addressing issues of competency as defined by the required knowledges, skills/ abilities, and personal characteristics/qualities reflecting their spiritual tra-dition towards achieving competency in the training of spiritual direc-tors. --First steps would be for practitioners in the field to come together in a spirit of open inquiry, genuine unselfish concern, and humble aware-ness of the enormity of the task to be accomplished. Developing semi-nars and forming associations or professional forums could provide prac-titioners the milieu to discuss, study, and outline priorities and action steps towards the establishment of professional criteria and guidelines for training, developing, and evaluating spiritual directors. NOTES Gill, "License Spiritual Directors?" 6 Human Development 2 (Summer, 1985). Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 204 Cal. Rptr. 303 (Cal. App. 3 Dist. 1984). Ibid, at p. 303. 4 Ibid, at p. 303. 5 Ibid, at p. 303. Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 253 Cal. Rptr. 97, 1988. lbid, at p. 219. 8 lbid, at p. 105. 9 Ibid, at p. 105. ¯~o Ibid, at p. 105. Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Competency Profile. ~2 Restatement (Second) of Torts 299A (1977). t3 Ibid. ~4 W. Prosser, Law of Torts (1966). 15 j. English, Spiritual Freedom (1975). 16 M. Conroy, Growth in Love and Freedom (1987). 17 Nally vs. Grace Community Church, 253 Cal. Rptr. 97 at p. 106. Should Spiritual Directors Be Licensed? / 663 18 Ibid, at p. 106. 19 Ibid, at p. 103. 20 Ibid, at p. 108. 21 Ibid, at p. 108. 22 Ibid, at p. 109. 23 Lemon vs. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602. 24Ibid, at p. 60. 25Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Competency. The Risk You take a risk when you invite the Lord Whether to dine or talk the afternoon Away, for always the unexpected soon Turns up: a woman breaks her precious nard, A sinner does the task you should assume, A leper who is cleansed must show his proof: Suddenly you see a hole in your roof And a cripple clutters up your living room. There's no telling what to expect when He Walks in your door. The table set for tea Must often be enlarged and decorum Thrown to the wind. It's His voice that calls them And it's no use to bolt and bar the door: His kingdom knows no bounds-~of roof, or wall, or floor. Marcella M. Holloway, C.S.J. 6321 Clemens Avenue St. Louis, Missouri 63130 Prayer as Desire: An American ViewI Richard E. Lamoureux, a.a. Father Richard E. Lamoureux, a.a., has been provincial for the Augustinians of the Assumption. His address is Assumptionist Center; 330 Market Street; Brighton, Mas-sachusetts 02135. The contemporary American artist Andrew Wyeth teaches us a good deal about prayer. Many of his paintings, depicting everyday objects--a bowl of fruit, a cookie jar, a cooling blueberry pie--invite a quiet, simple gaze. But it is not just Wyeth's spare, silent scenes that lead us in the direction of prayer. So many of his portraits are unconventional inas-much as they present the subject turning away from the viewer, appar-ently looking for something in the distance. Forrest Wall, shown in the Man from Maine (1951), turns his back to us and peers out a window partially visible on the right. Elizabeth James, in Chambered Nautilus (1956), does the same from her sick bed. What may be Wyeth's most famous painting depicts Christina Olsen (Christina's WorM, 1948) sit-ting in the field below her home, straining with all her might in the di-rection of the house as if she might return there on the strength of her desire despite the palsied legs that restrict her to the ground. Two of his most beautiful paintings are portraits of Jimmy Lynch. One (The Swinger, 1969) shows him on a porch swing looking off into the dis-tance; the other (Afternoon Flight, 1970) catches him similarly absorbed. What is it on the horizon that draws his gaze?2 This most American artist explores a dimension of our existence that I would consider to be a central ingredient in prayer. In what follows, I want to explain how longing or desire is at the heart of prayer and how desire has fared in our recent American experience. Finally, I will sug-gest a way to address the particular challenge that faces us as American 664 Prayer as Desire / 665 women and men of prayer. No one has explained better than Saint Augustine how desire is re-lated to prayer. Sometime at the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine received a letter from Proba, a Roman woman whose husband had just died.3 Her purpose in writing was to ask a simple question: can you tell me something about prayer that would be helpful? In his response, Augustine writes unexpectedly at great length about widowhood and then tries to explain how it relates to prayer. For example, he says to Proba: What characteristic of widows is singled out if not their poverty and deso-lation? Therefore, insofar as every soul understands that it is poor and desolate in this world, as long as it is absent from the Lord, it surely commends its widowhood, so to speak, to God its defender, with con-tinual and most earnest prayer (p. 400). Augustine very simply reminds Proba that her widowhood, that is, her experience of loss and especially her desire for presence once again, is a precious opportunity to learn about prayer. If you would want to pray, Augustine seems to be saying, begin with the experience of desire or longing. Augustine, then, defines prayer primarily as desire. Words and pi-ous activities, which we normally think of as prayer, are useful only to the extent that they intensify our desire for God. They are necessary, he writes, so that we may be roused and may take note of what we are asking, but we are not to believe that the Lord has need of them . Therefore, when we say "Hallowed be thy name," we rouse ourselves to desire that his name, which is always holy, should be held holy among men and women also . . . (p. 391). Desire then is synonymous with prayer. In relating the two in that way, Augustine teaches us three very important lessons about prayer. First, prayer is really very simple. It is as natural for human beings as desire is. And desire, as we all know, is a universal human experience. It is as natural for a person to pray as it is for a person to desire. And a person who desires is a person who can pray. Second, by defining prayer in terms of desire rather than in terms of methods or formulas or actions, Augustine more clearly situates it as a function of the human heart. There is little that is more personal to us or that we are more hesitant to divulge than our desires. And Augustine would have us understand that it is precisely in that most intimate and personal place that prayer is born and grows. 666 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Finally, by relating prayer to desire, Augustine helps us to under-stand that we can grow in prayer, for taking our desires seriously is a stimulus to such growth. He develops this idea in his letter to Proba and most especially in the Confessions. To Proba he writes: God wishes our desire to be exercised in prayer that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give (1 Co 2:9) . Therefore, it is said to us: "Be enlarged, bear not the yoke with unbelievers" (2Co 6:13, 14), (p. 389). Desire helps to enlarge the heart. Augustine would claim that by fan-ning the flame of desire, we will become more able to recognize God's gift when it is offered and to appreciate it to the extent that it deserves. In the Confessions Augustine explains even more clearly how tak-ing our desires seriously is a stimulus to growth in prayer and can lead to deeper faith and intimacy with God. These desires are a complex re-ality ["Who can unravel that complex twistedness?" (II, 10)4] But rather than shy away from the complexity, Augustine sets out on a long journey precisely to get to the bottom of those desires. He goes all the way back to his earliest desire for the milk from his mother's breast, then recalls the games of his youth, and also the longing for wisdom when he read Cicero. With anguish, he remembers the burning desires that char-acterized his early relations and the resistance he put up to other desires lurking in his heart. "My soul turned and turned again, on back and sides and belly, and the bed was always hard" (VI,16). Augustine's long journey through the labyrinth of his soul was marked by a painful experience of desires at war with each other, but even more so by a confidence that the battle waged in all honesty and with his friends would lead to a liberation of his deepest desire, one that he came to understand could only be satisfied by God. "Behold thou art close at hand to deliver us from the wretchedness, of error and estab-lish us in thy way, and console us with thy word: 'Run, I shall bear you up and bring you and carry you to the end' " (VI, 16). Augustine took all of his desires seriously, even those that troubled him and brought him to tears, because he believed that all of them were in some way, at times in some distorted ways, a path to the deepest craving of the human heart. He seemed sure of God's love and also confident that deep within his own heart was an enormous love for God: "Thou hast made us for thy-self." (Confessions I, 1). Those are convictions we all find hard to come by, but they are crucial for growth along the way of prayer. To summarize then and to make the point clearly: for Augustine prayer is not more complicated than giving free rein and full expression Prayer as Desire / 66"/ to the sometimes confused desire for God that God has placed in our hearts. As he writes in his commentary' on the first letter of St. John: "Love and do what you will." Or perhaps I can say: "Desire and do what you will." Now, that may sound simple, but there are a few complicating fac-tors, some of which Augustine was aware of. Many of the complicating factors, however, are particular to our own time and culture; they are the shadow side of the cultural qualities we cultivate in the United States. One of the recent most popular movies, Dead Poets Society, is a se-rious indictment of American culture. It tells the story of a private pre-paratory school in the United States in 1959, where faculty and student body alike hold in highest esteem the pursuit of successful careers and high social status. Along comes an eccentric poetry teacher, effectively portrayed by Robin Williams. He succeeds in opening a few sleepy, even blind eyes, urges his students to ("carpe diem") "seize the moment," and awakens them to the excitement of poetry. Dull, distracted boys be-come spirited young men full of powerful desires. They found their own secret society where dead poets--and dead students-~come back to life. The movie was successful, I suppose, because it touched a sensitive chord in our American hearts. Though we are reluctant to admit this, the movie helped us see that we might be dull people, men and women with-out longing, without desire. But you might object: "Doesn't every human being desire some-thing?" As I reflected on the movie, I came to understand that for a va-riety of reasons and in different ways desire has been drained from our hearts. I could see it happening in four or five different ways. At other times and in other contexts, I might present the following items in a much more positive vein, as qualities that are proper to us as Americans. But in the context of this discussion on desire, what might be consid-ered the merits of our particular American way of living and looking at things becomes a liability. 1) In our day, in this country, by hard work, ingenuity, abundant natu-ral resources and a little bit of luck, we have attained a level of material satisfaction that enables us to meet most of our needs. We acknowledge that there are unsatisfied needs in us, but we are also confident that the only kinds of needs we have are needs that we can eventually satisfy our-selves. And if it takes too long to satisfy them, we energetically look for and usually find other remedies; there are many "quick fixes" we can turn to. But then if all the needs are satisfied, what is there left to de-sire? I am not simply condemning American materialism, nor am I re- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 ferring here to the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure and sensual satisfac-tion. Instead, I am suggesting 'that the level of material security we en-joy may be having a subtle, debilitating effect on our capacity to long for less material goods. When the Israelites complained to Jeremiah that it would be preferable to return to Egypt rather than remain in exile, he urged them to stay where they were for Yahweh was with them. Instead, however, they returned to Egypt "where at least they would not hun-ger" (Jr 42:1~4). It is not pleasant to be hungry, but can we live without desire? We can call this sort of person "the comfortable self," and the "comfortable sell'' has few desires. 2) Today especially we seek to be creative and responsible members of the human race. We are inclined to set aside as somewhat irrelevant and escapist distractions those vague interior Iongings that apparently can never be satisfied: there is too much in the world to do and no time to lose. We tend to set aside the simple and less gifted i~mong us and have little patience for wasted time and effort. In Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe would say that our ambition is to be a "Master of the Universe," and we are convinced we just might succeed. The "creative, functional sell''has little time or. need for vague longings and can realize his desires by rolling up his sleeves. 3) Psychology has helped us uncover, identify, and explain many of our desires. But Freud would also have us demystify these desires, re-duce them to understandable drives, and either "manage" them so they do not interfere or banish them completely. The "psychological sell" runs the risk of reducing desires to insignificance by denying them the possibility of any transcendent origin, significance, or purpose. 4) Dead Poets Society points an accusing finger at a society drained of desire and life. But I think the movie suffers from the sickness it is trying to identify. Note the poets that are quoted in the movie: they are almost exclusively what we call the romantic poets. Other sections of the poetry anthology used by the students are ripped out. No mention of Shakespeare or Homer, Milton or Hopkins. Why should we read poetry, according to this movie? For the excitement of it, I gather. The movie seems to say: it does not really matter what you give your life to as long as you feel passionately enough to give your life. I admire the passion, but it is a self-destructive passion, self-preoccupied, narcissistic. Really, in the end, no passion at all. The desires of the "romantic sell'' self-destruct in a beautiful, but tragically brief burst of flame. 5) Finally, a word about the "tolerant sell'' and what that, in its most recent form, has done to desire. In many ways I consider this to Prayer as Desire / 669 be the most serious attack on desire in our day, and I will discuss it at greater length.5 The founders of our country, acutely aware of the reasons for which Europeans came to these shores and the political struggle that led to in-dependence, enshrined the principles of freedom and equality at the heart of our Constitution. They did so in revolt against oppression in the coun-tries they came from, to assure that in this new regime each person would be free to profess and practice the religion of one's choosing or none at all. In order to assure that no one religion would be given ascendancy and that all religions would be considered equally valid. Such liberty and equality imply a prior commitment to tolerance. As Locke had earlier suggested,6 not only does tolerance forestall religious wars and oppression, it would seem to be synonymous with Christian char-ity. We should hesitate to tamper with a doctrine such as that of toler-ance, which has brought us many blessings, but there may be some side effects that need to be taken into account. If tolerance leads us to assert that all religions are equally valid, then it seems inevitable that at some point one will begin to wonder whether it is worth embracing this par-ticular religion rather than another., or any at all. Tolerance as the paradigmatic American virtue in religious matters erodes conviction and desire; it all too often leads to indifference and loss of confidence.7 Let me explain with a non-religious example. For one person, work-ing hard to provide housing for the homeless is an important "value"-- to use that word as we are accustomed to using it today. For another per-son, earning a million dollars a year and dining at a 4-star restaurant five nights a week is a "value" she or he would hold to with as much, per-haps even more vigor. In a society where tolerance is the paramount vir-tue and where there can be no criteria for ranking so-called "values," our social worker has no right to consider his "value" more important than that of the millionaire. I think that is the conclusion we have to draw, and my guess is that our "tolerant" selves would be reluctant to draw any other. In that case, I could easily imagine the social worker, returning home after a frustrating fifteen-hour day, and exclaiming in quiet desperation: "why bother?" If all "values" are equal, our social worker will begin to doubt the real worth of what she or he is doing and be drained of passion or desire for the cause being promoted. Tolerance is a great American virtue. It protects us from oppression and even allows us to be critical of the regime. But the brand of toler-ance practiced today also exacts a high price. It can drain our soul of all 670 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 passion. Without passion or desire, the "tolerant self' will find it very difficult to pray. The comfortable self, the creative self, the psychological self, the ro-mantic self, the tolerant self--so many ways in which desire has been disarmed. It has been disarmed or short-circuited. What keeps desire alive has been eliminated. Etymologically, the word "desire" with its reference to "sidera," the stars, suggests that without an object that tran-scends the self, desire that is not created by the self, or under its con-trol, or in any way dependent upon the self, desire quickly evaporates. I think the social and political consequences of diluted or disarmed de-sire have been considerable, but in the context of this discussion I want to draw attention to the consequences for our faith and our prayer as well. So, how do we recover desire? The question is an old one. It already appears in the Gospel. But, as I have tried to explain above, our American context leads us to pose it in a particularly acute way. It should not come as a surprise that since we Americans are closest to the problem that it is we Americans who have also hit upon a solution. I think that Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step program, begun in this country some fifty years ago, may be helping us rediscover desire and could be more helpful to those wanting to pray than any crash course on meditation.8 This may come as a surprising suggestion. But consider some of the more traditional methods used to foster growth in prayer. Among the early desert fathers and mothers, one popular and effective method (known in the Russian Orthodox tradition today as "starchestvo") is a practice whereby the novice reveals to his spiritual master all of his in-terior thoughts and feelings and humbly seeks help in discerning what God calls him to through these apparently confused experiences.9 Augustine himself sought to grow in prayer by telling story after story of how he pursued one way then another in search of happiness and peace. Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century devised a system of spiritual exercises, whereby the one seeking to grow spiritually reveals the promptings of his heart to a spiritual guide who helps him interpret and discern the desires that will lead to growth. Ignatius even urged that his followers, members of his Society, regularly "manifest their con-science" to their superiors, much like the monks in the desert, in order to gain enlightenment. Those are the traditional methods of spiritual growth, but for some reason today for many they are not working, or we are not inclined to take them seriously. But many are taking the 12 steps seriously. One of Prayer as Desire / 671 the insights on which the 12-step method is based is the importance of recounting, at a meeting or to a sponsor, the story of one's desires-- desires for alcohol, for sex, for food, desires that have run out of con-trol, but also a desire, perhaps only a small spark at the outset, but a de-sire for sobriety. It is in the telling and the retelling of the story that the desires are sorted out, that the healthiest sparks are fanned into stronger flames, and that one begins to come to deeper serenity and happiness. Why does the 12-step program work? Because I begin to name desires rather than blindly accede to them, proudly condemn them, or run from them in fear. Because I acknowl-edge that a power greater than I alone guides human affairs, inspires hu-man desires, and fulfills the deepest among these: the desires I can sat-isfy will not bring peace to a restless heart. Because I acknowledge that in addition to that power other people are necessary to test my desires and help me keep the best alive. Because I know that helping others will intensify my own desire at the same time as it helps another. I cannot explain adequately in this context the effectiveness of the 12-step program. I am grateful to those friends and confreres who have given me some understanding of the 12 steps and for their own witness to the program's power. They could better make the point I want to make. Beneath the program is an understanding of life deeply consonant with the Gospel and, I would maintain, profoundly nourishing for one's life of prayer. Remember Augustine's words to Proba: Insofar as every soul understands that it is poor and desolate in this world as long as it is absent from the Lord, it surely commends its wid-owhood, so to speak, to God its defender, with continual and most ear-nest prayer (p. 400). Prayer is impossible if you start from a distorted understanding of the Gospel. As Americans, our comfortable self may be too sated to seek a Savior, our creative self may lead us to think we can save ourselves, our psychological self may convince us that the desire for a Savior is escapism, our romantic self may consider the desire an end in itself, our tolerant self may think open-ness and tolerance are identical with love. The Gospel, the writings of Augustine, and the 12-step program re-flect both more skepticism and more confidence about human nature than any of these false selves. They are not so afraid or angry with their hu-manness that they deny or disregard their desires, but they do not accept 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 that responding to the most pressing desires will necessarily lead to the greatest happiness. They are deeply confident that their deepest desires can be satisfied, but have surrendered the illusion that they can or must explain or satisfy those desires on their own. They, like St. Paul, refuse to judge and condemn themselves, and certainly not others, but they cou-rageously and unambiguously name the desire that has led them to dis-aster and they can say: "My name is Richard or John or Dorothy, and I am an alcoholic!" Many are seeking new ways to pray, and a 12-step meeting is hardly an ancient method. But if I were to suggest the practices of sacramental confession or spiritual direction as ways to grow in prayer, many would not take note. Something has happened to our traditional practices or our use of them that has made them seemingly ineffective. What I am sug-gesting is that the 12-step program with its emphasis on confession/ story telling, community, and commitment to service--is a contempo-rary method that I feel convinced can teach us how to pray. I cannot help but believe that God is attentive to the simple prayer of a recovering al-coholic, a wounded person full of desire, who speaks with the words of the psalmist: God, you are my God, for you I long. For you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory, for your love is better than life. My lips will speak your praise, so I will bless you all my life. NOTES ~ A first version of this paper was presented as the keynote address for a Conference at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, entitled "Prayer--A Psychologi-cal Perspective." I am grateful to the organizers of the Conference, Dr. George Scar-lett and Rev. Edgar Bourque, A.A., for their invitation to address the Conference. 2 These paintings are reproduced in Davis McCord and Frederick A. Sweet, Andrew Wyeth (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1970). 3 Quotations from Augustine's letter are taken from The Fathers of the Church-- Saint Augustine: Letters Vol. II (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc. 1953). 4 Quotations from the Confessions are taken from the translation by Frank J. Sheed in The Confessions of St. Augustine (London: Sheed & Ward, 1984, original edition 1944). 5 Although many have discussed this notion, the most thorough and cogent discus-sion recently is in the book by Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 6 See John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed, by James H. Tully (Indian- Prayer as Desire / 1573 apolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983). 7 In J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, (New York: Fox, Duffiealad and Company, 1904, reprinted from the original 1782 edition), pp. 64-65, we read an eighteenth-century account of religion in America. After describ-ing in letter no. 3 the variety of creeds cultivated in the country, the author contin-ues: "Each of these people instruct their children as well as they can, but these in-structions are feeble compared to those which are given to the youth of the poorest class in Europe. Their children will therefore grow up less zealous and more indif-ferent in matters of religion than their parents. The foolish vanity, or rather the fury of making Proselytes, is unknown here; they have no time, the seasons call for all their attention, and thus in a few years, this mixed neighborhood will exhibit a strange religious medley, that will be neither pure Catholicism nor pure Calvinism. A very perceptible indifference even in the first generation will become apparent." 8 A good deal of Alcoholics Anonymous literature deals with prayer and spiritual-ity. The eleventh step explicitly encourages the practice of prayer and meditation ("We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us, and the power to carry that out.") But the program can have even broader implications for the spiritual life. See "Origins of A.A. Spirituality" by Dr. Ernie Kurtz, The Blue Book, Vol. XXXVIII, Proceedings from the 38th Annual Symposium-June 16- 20, 1986 (January, 1987). Catholic writers and lecturers are beginning to discuss the spiritual potential of the program. See, for example, the recently released confer-ences of Father Richard Rohr, "Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps" (Saint Anthony Messenger Press Audiocassettes, 1989). 9 See B, Pennington, O.C.S.O., O Holy Mountain.t (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984), p. 92. The Emptiness Within Barbara Dent Barbara Dent, mother and grandmother, has been for eighteen years a Secular Carmelite. One of her most recent books has been The Gifts of Lay Ministry (Ave Maria Press, 1989). Her address is Postinia: 7A Cromwell Place; Pukekohe, New Zealand. Ours is an age of space-consciousness and space exploration. These have induced an awareness of a limitless beyond that can be terrifying. We know that in space universe extends beyond universe in an infinitude of expanding galaxies. The immensity is beyond our comprehension. Ours is also an age of inner exploration of our own human psyche. Depth psychology probes level on level of inner awareness, submerged awareness, and non-awareness. These probings link up with that aspect of spirituality which mystically intuits the indwelling of the Trinity, the homeliness of God in us that Jesus spoke of and promised to his faithful followers the night before he died. Just as there is endless mystery in the outer universe, so there is also in the inner one. God dwells in us--if we long for him and prepare our spiritual house to receive him. Not only that, but he permeates our inner being further and further as we open ourselves to receive him. "How rich are the depths of God!" exclaimed St. Paul. And it is these very depths that merge with our own through the divine penetra-tion and the graces it brings. This is by no means always a consoling experience. On the contrary it can seem to hurl us into an abyss of unmeaning which is caused by our incapacity to understand divine meaning and purpose in all their in-finite inclusiveness. Only faith can cope with the apparent absurdity, and too often in this state we experience ourselves as lamentably lacking in faith. 674 The Emptiness Within / 675 In this article I examine and comment on this negative aspect of di-vine and human intermingling by using the concept of "the inner Void." Normally, we human beings fill our days and nights with the busi-ness of living, working, playing, and social interchange. This is the way it has to be if society is to continue and be dynamic. For committed Chris-tians this day-to-day living and doing is permeated with another dimen-sion- that of being-in-Christ. The more fully they relate mundane ac-tivities to loving and serving the Lord, the more Christocentric their lives become. The more they cleave to him, the more the Trinity enters into their inner selves through the purity of their intentions, so that they truly become temples of the Holy Spirit. A pure intention is one that is centered on what Jesus stressed must be our fundamental option--"God's will, not mine, because I love him with my whole being." Strangely, the intensity of such a single-minded love can lead not to a blissful sense of fulfillment, but to its opposite-- an experience of crucifying inner emptiness, a void of unappeasable long-ing crying out for a God who appears not to care or even answer. How much longer will you forget me, Yahweh? Forever? How much longer will you hide your face from me? How much longer must I en-dure grief in my soul, and sorrow in my heart by day and by night? (Ps 13:1-2). The ache for God, disguised as it may be in a multitude of ways, yet seems to be endemic to the human heart. In Christ's followers it can be-come so insistent that it rules their lives. After many years of loving, faith-ful service to this object of their desire, a paradoxical inner state is likely to develop. The searcher for the pearl of great price and the glorious lib-erty of the sons and daughters of God, though consumed with an intol-erable yearning for God, now experiences him as absent just when he is loved and longed for most. This is usually a sign of the call to a much deeper relationship with him, one that has a different quality from any that preceded it. We are drawn by the Spirit into this state of being when all created things have lost their power to compel or fulfill us. We have learned, often in bitterness and pain, that none of them can supply anything but a temporary and partial satisfaction. Behind and through them we have kept glimpsing their Creator, and now he fills our vision and summons us to come closer. We have begun floating in our inner Void, sure at last that only his love can fill it. 676 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 Aware that he is calling and drawing us, we want with all our will to respond, yet we remain thwarted. Yearn and strive as we may, we can neither reach nor receive him. Empty and grieving, we experience him as the absentee God, yet we have never in our lives been more free of sin and fuller of love than we now are. Why has this Void opened at the very time when we are possessed by love-longing for God? To anyone familiar with the inner depth reality of the subconscious and unconscious, the answer will make sense. The roots of our attachments to what God has created, and the causes of our persistence in letting them come between us and him, are still bur-ied deep within us. They fasten us down to where we are so that we are unable to soar in freedom to him. Though we have done all in our power, with the help of grace, to love and serve him, and though deliberate sin of any kind has long been eliminated from our living, the roots of sinful tendencies remain there hidden away, so that we are not even conscious of them. We cannot locate or name them, let alone wrench them out or dissolve them away. In our impotence and humiliation we gradually re-alize only God can do this through his own mighty love and the grace he pours into us through his Spirit. Only his action can gradually dilate our hearts so that they are able to receive more and more of what he offers. Only his grace can pene-trate into our subconscious to reveal what is concealed there. Only it can in various ways impel upwards into consciousness what is hidden. Only his Spirit of Wisdom knows and can reveal to us in ways we can accept what must be made conscious and purified if we are to enter into full un-ion with the Trinity. By invading our depths, the Spirit is not violating our free will, for God knows our longing for him is such that at last we are prepared to let him have his way with us, no matter how much it hurts. "Oh God, my God, for you my heart yearns, like a dry, weary land without water" (Ps 63:1 ). God's answer to our yearnings is to fill our Void with himself. This process is purgatorial. After death we pass outside time and space into eternity and infinity. If at this transition we are not already filled with God, our Void goes with us. No one has returned to tell us how God deals with it then, but traditionally the Church has taught the doctrines of purgatory (a cleansing process through which grace fits us to receive and behold God), and hell, where our Void remains just that forever. All those, known and unknown, who have become saints before they died, The Emptiness Within / 677 have had their Voids filled with God in this life. Some have left records of what their experience was like, and these indicate something at least of what they endured under the Spirit's ruthless but perfectly loving ac-tion. St. John of the Cross's testimony is probably the most authoritative, instructive, and detailed, After stressing that this state of purification is one of darkness and pure faith, he elaborates as below. "The Divine assails the soul in order to renew it and thus to make it Divine; and, stripping it of the habitual affections and attachments of the old man, to which it is very closely united, knit together and con-formed, destroys and consumes its spiritual substance, and absorbs it in deep and profound darkness. As a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death, even as if it had been swallowed by a beast (as Jonas was). (and) in this sepulcher of dark death it must needs abide until the spiritual resurrection which it hopes for. ". But what the sorrowful soul feels most in this condition is its clear perception, as it thinks, that God has abandoned it, and, in his ab-horrence of it, has flung it into darkness. It is a grave and piteous grief for it to believe that God has forsaken it . For indeed when this pur-gative contemplation is most severe, the soul feels very keenly the shadow of death and the lamentations of death and the pains of hell, which consist in its feeling itself to be without God, and chastised and cast out, and unworthy of him; and it feels that he is wroth with it" (Dark Night II, Ch. VI, 1 & 2). The intensity and pain of this inner experience of the Void will vary according to the strength and depths of our sin-roots, the greatness of our love and longing for God, our perseverance and abandonment during the process, the degree of holiness (or wedding garment splendor and soar-ing freedom) God intends for each sufferer. This purpose of his is, of course, hidden in the mystery of his endless love, of which the Void it-self is but one aspect. If the Void is endured until the process of cleansing and freeing is completed, we have been through and emerged from our own personal purgatory. We are united with the Trinity in what has been called "trans-forming union" ("I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me") or "the spiritual marriage." "Alleluia! The reign of the Lord our God the Almighty has begun. Let us be glad and joyful and give praise to God, because this is the time for the marriage of the Lamb. His bride is ready, and she has been able Review for Religious, September-October 1990 to dress herself in dazzling white linen, because her linen is made of the good deeds of the saints" (Rv 19:7-8). Our Void has been emptied of self and filled with Christ. What are some of the hallmarks of this emptying and filling of the Void, in the here and now? Here is a commentary on a few of the main ones. 1. Helpless Waiting In the Void we have no alternative but to wait. I think of Mary be-tween the annunciation and the birth of Jesus. She knew she had con-ceived and that the Christ of God was growing and developing within her, but the process was and had to remain hidden and secret. What she did not know was exactly what and who the child would prove to be. God was at work in her, and she was co-operating pas-sively, through her fiat, by letting it happen and trusting him about the outcome of his labors. She was "full of grace" and so the whole pro-cess was under the Spirit's complete control. Her personal contribution was to stay still and see what eventuated. Once the Void opens in us, we too, must wait while Christ is formed in us in his fullness. We continue to live and love as Christians, to serve God and neighbor in our work, personal relationships, duties and offer-ings, all aimed at renewing the temporal order and purifying our lives from self-love and self-seeking. We have been doing these things for a long time and had assumed we would be persevering in them in much the same way till death. We do persevere, but not "in the same way." For now the Void is there, and we begin to enter a new dimension and level of being. Gradually grace enlightens us so that we understand something of what still needs to be done in our inner depths to open us to God so he can penetrate further. At the same time we are shown how it is beyond our own capacity and resources to bring about such a self-exposure. A chasm of helplessness and poverty gapes within us. We realize that in our frozen immobility we are still able to act in one specific way. We can let God act, and stay passive ourselves. We can let him do the un-veiling and the choosing, for us and in us in his own way and time. Our role is to surrender and wait. And wait. And wait . Waiting is a difficult art to learn and practice in our frenetically ac-tive and materialistic age. Neither our environment, education nor life aims and circumstances have prepared us for it. Though we try, we go The Emptiness Within on failing, because we cannot help interfering with God in spite of our best intentions. Humbled, we learn that only grace can enable us to learn this painful art. Under its influence, we slowly begin to relax and be still, and our Void gently opens wider in faith, trust, and hope. We realize how im-portant patience is, how lost we are if God does not help us, how he does not and cannot do so unless we deliberately exercise our free will and let him. Here the active and the passive merge. As we go on waiting, our helplessness deepens into a sense of im-potence. We are rather like quadriplegics who must depend on others for most of their needs. If they are not to be consumed with self-pity and rage, they must turn the necessary waiting that forms an indelible part of their lives into an art. We ourselves are not waiting for other people to help us, but for God. "I waited and waited for Yahweh. Now at last he has stooped to me and heard my cry for help" (Ps 40:1). 2. Longing for God Thirst for God consumes us in this state. "As a doe longs for run-ning streams, so longs my soul for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, the God of my life" (Ps 42:1-2). We are like "a dry, weary land without water" (Ps 63:1). When two lovers are parted, they long ardently and painfully for each other's presence. In the Void we experience God as an absentee God, even as one who spurns us. We are hopelessly in love with him-- we would not have been invited by the Spirit into this level of being were it not so--yet he seems to be denying himself to us, to be teasing us cru-elly on purpose. We know he is there, believethis is so, and in some indescribable, formless way even experience him as indeed with us, enfolding us, and yet we never seem to reach or catch sight of him. In his absence we have faith he is present, but this is no comfort. It is like being alone in a completely dark room, yet having an intui-tive awareness of another Presence with us in the same enclosed space. We cannot see or touch him or even hear his breathing. Yet, shiveringly, we are completely certain Someone is with us. Perhaps because of this strange certainty, our longing that is never appeased intensifies until it possesses us. This absentee yet ever-present God and Lover we experience as capricious, so that our longing is a form of bitter suffering, and often we have to struggle against feelings of re- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 sentment and hopelessness. We challenge him, "It is you, God, who are my shelter. Why do you abandon me?" (Ps 43:2). There is no answer, no comfort. The silence is absolute, our hunger unappeased. In the end, we become dumb. Our patience in waiting has deepened as our longing intensified. We understand the time for consum-mation is not. yet, for we are not ready. We see that our longing is a grace, given to us so we will more readily submit to an even more radi-cal emptying out. We have not yet reached that total nakedness o.f un-selfed love which will indicate our readiness to be clothed in Christ. We have yet to long for this for his sake, his honor and glory, the fulfilling of his incarnational aims, instead of for our own self-gratifica-tion, and our pleasure in our own "holiness." At last we understand that our motives need radical purification, for they are laced together every-where by tenuous, yet tough strands of self-love and self-will. All holiness is God's. Of ourselves we have none until we have put on Christ and can glory in his glory, and love with his love. Our longing is being purified till this is what we truly want above all else. 3. Loss of Meaning and Purpose Whether it is a cause or a result of the Void is hard to say, but one of the hallmarks of this state is loss of meaning and purpose on one level, and final regaining of it on another. The loss shows itself in our life situ-ation in doubts and disillusionments about our personal relationships, and our aims, activities, and ambitions to do with worldly matters. What preoccupied us and fed our drive in our work now seems taw-dry and not worth all this effort. We question its reality and its right to absorb so much of our energy, to demand and receive our concentrated attention. Has it the right to fasten us so securely to the daily grind when God's insistent call to another level of being is there in the background all the time, distracting us? Of what use is "getting to the top"? Winning that big increase in salary? Being treated with respect and deference as the one who "has it all at her fingertips," the indispensable manager and organizer? There are times when we ardently want to "throw it all away" be-cause it seems so fatuous. Yet we know we cannot opt out, for we have a spouse to be faithful to, offspring to put through university, the mort-gage to pay off, obligations to associates to fulfill, our own lifelong am-bition to bring to its triumphant peak, a whole life pattern to round off harmoniously. Somehow we have to learn to live with our growing awareness of it all as a mindless treadmill "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The Emptiness Within In the face of the Void, it lacks reality, but, nonetheless, must be at-tended to. The true reality is an indefinable something located in our inner emp-tiness. It is drawing us till we want to let go of everything else and reck-lessly jump into that abyss to meet its embrace. At this point some people have a breakdown so that circumstances force them to take a long rest from their life-in-the world obligations and ambitions. Others keep on mechanically, but their heart is no longer in it, and they feel nothing but relief when someone else replaces them or the time comes for them to retire. This disillusionment and lack of drive registers as a humiliating disaster, yet it may well be a special grace open-ing the way for us to concentrate on "the one thing necessary." Alarmingly, the problem increases, rather than diminishes, once we free ourselves enough for such concentration. It is like a slap in the face to discover that we cannot find "mean-ing" in the things of God either, though we dumbly and idiotically know the meaning is there somewhere, expressed in ancient Babylonian hiero-glyphics no doubt! (And no one taught us at school or in the boardroom how to interpret these!) Faced with the Void and its implications, we find ourselves unable to understand God's meaning and purpose in our own lives or those of others. His actions seem arbitrary and often absurd. In fact, a general senselessness defying the rational mind pervades the whole Void. We slither aimlessly about, till we remember the lesson about staying still and waiting. When we apply this perseveringly, we are able to accept that it is no wonder we cannot understand the divine meaning and purpose when it is infinite and eternal while we ourselves remain time and space im-prisoned. It is also perfect love and omniscient wisdom, while we are full of "lacklove" and distorted vision. During the years spent in the Void we slowly learn to rest in peace in God's incomprehensible will, to trust its apparent irrationality, to have faith in its aim to express his beneficent care of us in and through our life circumstances even when they appear to be nothing but "a tale told by an idiot," to hope doggedly in a future blessed by fulfillment in bliss-ful union with him. Our concept of life's meaning and purpose has changed radically as grace permeated those levels where our basic semi- and unconscious re-bellion and misapplied self-will lay hidden but potent. 4. The Darkness of Entombment Review for Religious, September-October 1990 In the Void we are in the process of dying with Christ and being bur-ied with him so that our life may be his life and we be hidden with him in God, our glory part of his (see Col 2:12, 3:2-4). When Jesus hung upon the cross, he was in a kind of void between earth and heaven: the vacant space left by total immolation for the sake of others; the blank of utmost loneliness and dereliction expressed through his cry of abandonment and desolation; the kenosis of the God- Man brought about by the complete surrender of his awareness of his God-ness, coupled with his immersion in his representative Man-ness--his slav-ery as sin-taker for us when he himself was sinless. In various degrees and ways we, his lovers and beloveds, are invited by him to enter into his crucifixion and kenosis with him so we may even-tually share his resurrection glory. We have to die to self by hanging there with and in him through the sufferings--physical, mental, psycho-logical, emotional, and spiritual that God permits to come to us, and that our own and others' sins and sinfulness bring upon us. After the crucifixion comes the interlude of the entombment before the resurrection can occur. The sense of entombment is an essential as-pect of the Void. If we think of Jesus' corpse lying still,, cold, and alone on the stone slab, we shall understand some of the basic elements of the spiritual state of those called to die with him in order to rise with him. There is the darkness of this stone cavern behind its stone door. No chink of light anywhere. It makes us feel our intellect has been blinded and we shall never understand anything about God again. Though we carry on with our daily lives more or less satisfactorily, we suffer a kind of sense-deprivation of the spirit, (Only those who have experienced this state of being will find meaning in this paradox.) One form of torture of prisoners is to lock them into a pitch dark cell where there is complete sense deprivation so that time ceases to have meaning, as does everything else. Entombed with Jesus, we are in a similar state because all the satis-factions and enjoyments that come to a human being through his senses of hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste no longer have power either to distract or fulfill us. We have become one-purposed in our longing for God, and the senses cannot tempt us away from it with their promise of surface, ephemeral delights. Since we have renounced the lesser good for the greater, the Spirit obliges by paradoxically taking away their irrelevant enticements--in a spiritual sense. To express it otherwise, our senses and our bodies and The Emptiness Within/ all our material being continue to function adequately for the purposes of everyday life. However, in relation to the spiritual life, we have be-come numb and dumb to their joys, attractions and any urge to seek deep meaning and fulfillment through them. We have been brought to that State where we float in the Void of blind faith that none of our senses can affirm as a reality. We gaze upon God without seeing him. We hear his Word without understanding it. We taste his supportive love without any sweetness or consolation--as if our taste buds had been anesthetized. He is weaning us from all such reassurances by imprisoning us in this Void of sense deprivation. He means us to learn how to enter, unencum-bered, into the central mystery of his Being, spirit to Spirit. He has led us into the depths of the Night of Faith. In it, usually for years after painful years, we learn to lie down with the dead Jesus in the tomb. We learn to lie there patiently and wait in our nakedness. We learn what being still really means as we contemplate the Savior's unbreathing body--not with bodily eyes, but with spiritual ones of unquestioning faith and a love stripped of self-seeking. We are seeds fallen into the ground and undergoing the hidden meta-morphosis from which we shall at last emerge, essentially changed per-sons, into spiritual resurrection. 5. Loneliness The inner Void is a crucifyingly lonely space of nothingness. We shall probably find there is no one who can understand our state, except one who is also in it, or one who has endured it and emerged. The one in it may be able to offer sympathy and sharing. The one emerged can give reassurance, understanding, encouragement, guidance, support, and hope for the future. This is so only if she or he has some understanding of what the lonely one is passing through or has emerged from. Such un-derstanding is rare. The Void can have many guises, including those of mental, emo-tional, or physical breakdown. It is often mingled with factors associ-ated with these. It adapts itself to whatever needs to be purified in the particular sufferer, since it is always under the control of the Spirit. It is not easy, and almost impossible, to discover a fellow sufferer who is enduring the same searching trial in the same ways. A qualified, learned, compassionate spiritual guide who has had both personal experience of the Void and of supporting others immersed in it is a very special blessing from God--one that is seldom given. An es-sential part of learning to live at peace in the Void's faith dimension is Review for Religious, September-October 1990 that of being able to trust oneself blindly to the hidden guidance and con-trol of the Spirit coming directly instead of through an intermediary. The purification process includes enduring it alone with God--and an absen-tee God at that. The only sure and never-failing companion is Jesus in his passion, especially in Gethsemane and in his cry of dereliction on the cross. We can find here, in union with him, the strength and purpose to endure, to hang helpless and in agony in absurdity, giving oneself up out of love for his redemptive work, staying with, and in him gladly, for love of him, sharing his loneliness and comforting his desolation. This is anything but mere sentimentality, as anyone who has really done it knows. It is a genuine, self-obliterating response of "Yes" to his questions, "Will you drink of the cup I must drink of? . . . Will you watch one hour with me? . . . Will you take up your cross and follow ¯ me? . . . Will you give yourself with me for others? . . . Will you love my Father's will wholeheartedly as I do to the end? . . . Will you fol-low me wherever I lead? . . . Will you go down into the darkness and die with me and then wait with me in my tomb till resurrection morning comes? . . . Will you dare Sheol with me? o . ." If we agree to share his loneliness, we shall indeed be lonely, and in that desolation share the essential loneliness of all abandoned, help-less, despised, outcast, comfortless human beings whom he represented on the cross, as well as those lost in the black loneliness of habitual, sev-ering sin, or those immured in purgatory in this life or the next. We may have friends who love and try to comfort us, but this will do little to ease what is a loneliness of our very essence crying out for God. Only if they have been through it themselves will they be able to apply balm. In the ultimate there is only one who can fill the Void of loneliness with genuine fulfillment and it is God himself. He is busy preparing in us a place fit to receive him. All we can do is wait in faith, hope, and love that feel like unbelief, despair, and a numb indifference that will never be able to love again. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!" 6. Awareness of Sin The Void strips away inessentials, leaving the emptiness of nothing to cling to but God--and in.bare, stubborn faith. Because the motes in our own eyes (our absorption in the secondar-ies of created things instead of the one primary necessity of God) have The Emptiness Within now been removed, at least partly, by grace, we see much better. One of the things we see with our new sight and in startling clarity is the re-ality of sin. Not so much actual sins--these are fairly obvious to discern and we have long ago trained ourselves to watch and guard against them in our own lives. No--what we now see with the eyes of our spirit enlightened by the Spirit is innate sinfulness. We become aware of its substratum in ourselves (those tangled "roots" I mentioned earlier), and in other hu-man beings we have to do with. We helplessly observe it issuing from us and them in all kinds of meannesses, envies, prevarications, self-delusions, self-loves, rationalizations. Squirming and humiliated, we face, with the help of grace, that, "This is me . . . that is the person I loved and revered so much . " If we do not take care, this pitiless insight will cause discouragement and fear in ourselves, and a judg-mental, condemnatory, disillusioned attitude towards others--even cyni-cism. The taste of this racial and personal basic sinfulness is bitter indeed. We want to spit it out and rush to grab something, sweet to gourmandize on and hide that vile flavor. We have been living all the time with a des-picable traitor within us, and till now we have never even glimpsed him. His cronies are present in all other members of the human race, and from them emanate the sorrows, sins, evils and disasters of living on this planet that has been tipped off its axis. Some of the penitential psalms now have for us as never before a co-gent, humbling, and intensely personal message. Paraphrasing a little, we cry with St. Paul, "Who will rescue me from this enemy within?" and reply with him, "Nothing else but the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." We know now that we really do need a personal Savior, that we would be lost without Jesus, that an essential part of our Void experi-ence is acknowledging our personal, basic sinfulness for which the only cure is the grace that Jesus gives. We cry, "Lord, you came to save me-- because I needed you so much. I need you even more now you have shown me the truth about myself. Only show me what you want of me, and I will do it. I will do anything at all for you, my Lord and my Sav-ior, because you have rescued me in my great need." This time we really mean it, because we are so much closer to Truth itself. We have been given the grace of a genuine horror of sin because of what it did to Jesus, and still does to him suffering in his members. We long to help heal the wound of sin in his Body. We offer our per- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 sonal wound of sin to him, humbly pleading for the grace of healing. As never before we understand the cleansing power and action of grace, sac-ramentally and otherwise. We hunger for it, seek it, open ourselves wide to receive it. We become beggars for it. We learn what spiritual poverty really means, and again lie down with Jesus in the tomb, content to be naked, trusting in his Body and Blood to heal us of our grievous wound. We are learning what it means to be dead to self and alive to Christ and his members. In the inner Void the self becomes so tiny in the Allness of God. We do not lose our individuality, but we long for it to be absorbed in Christ, so that we become exactly that aspect of his extended incarnation and continuous passion destined for us by the Father. We pray for deliverance from all evil--for ourselves, and for every other human being. We pray fervently, for at last we have "seen" what naked sin and evil are, and what they bring about--the death of the Loved One. 7. We enter a state of Heroic Abandonment and Endurance. Our Void has opened up enough for us to receive the grace we must have to enable us to lie down in the Lord in a state of advanced inner stillness, trust, and hope. The Void's darkness begins to take on the faint glow of incipient dawn, the intense silence is broken by the first tenta-tive twitterings of birds as something soundlessly rolls away our tomb's stone door. The sense of being stifled eases and we draw deep breaths of sweet, cold, dew-drenched air. There is deep within us an awareness of wounds having been healed, of a terrifying emptiness having been filled with Someone, of Love himself annihilating loneliness forever, of a still, si-lent, crystalline joy, and blessedness welling up from deep, deep down, crying in exultation, "Abba! Alleluia! Amen!" Then we see a Person is walking like a king towards the light grow-ing and glowing every second in the tomb's open doorway. It is as if the light emanates from him, as if he is The Light. Wondering and worship-ping, we rise from our stone slab, gather about us the new white gar-ment we find there and follow the Light into the new day. There is no void of inner emptiness anymore. Christ risen and triumphant fills it with himself. Shame: A Barometer of Faith Clyde A. Bonar Father Clyde A. Bonar is a priest of the diocese of Orlando, Florida. He holds ad-vanced degrees in formative spirituality from Duquesne University and in political science from George Washington University. He has served as parochial vicar and administrator of various parishes. His address is St. Joseph of the Forest Catholic Church; 1764 S.E. 169th Avenue Road; Silver Springs, Florida 32688. Aristotle called shame "a feeling or emotion . a kind of fear of dis-grace."~ Interestingly, what one values and what one distains can pro-vide a source for these feelings of disgrace. This allows shame to become a barometer of faith. For the faithfilled person, lapses in living one's faith, for example, can be causes for shame. Conversely, one who scorns religion may find shameful any personal exhibition of faith in an Eter-nal Being. In this paper I shall examine the generic core of "shame" and re-late the experiences of shame in the life of Francis of Assisi (ca. 1182- 1226). Francis' well-known incidents with the lepers caused that saint feelings of shame. Notably, why Francis felt shame about the lepers dif-fered in the earlier and the later parts of his life. Because of that, Fran-cis becomes illustrative of how shame can be a barometer of one's faith. On Shame The Generic Core The core of the shame experience is a sense of exposure and visibil-ity. 2 First, shame is intimately linked to the need to cover that which might unwantedly be exposed. Experiences of shame involve the expo-sure of the peculiarly sensitive, intimate, and vulnerable aspects of the self.3 Something is to be hidden, dodged, or covered up; even, or per- 687 61~1~ / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 haps especially, from oneself. Feelings of shame included "I am weak" and "I am inadequate." The particularities of what must be covered to prevent exposure may vary widely and are individually determinate. For example, while a physical deformity caused Philip in Of Human Bondage4 to feel shame when his clubfoot was exposed, a deeper shame burned "in secret" as Dimmes-dale in Scarlet Letter saw Hester Prynne bear in public the blame for their joint carnal indiscretion .5 Socrates warns of the disgraceful shame of ap-pearing inept in the presence "of some really wise man.' ,6 Personally, for example, I have felt shame for the way I treated a traveling compan-ion during a three-day trip. Second, there is an intimate connection between shame and visibil-ity. 7 When Yahweh called to Adam after he and Eve had eaten the for-bidden fruit, Adam said: "Because I was naked . . . I hid" (Gn 3:11). In his phenomenology of shame, Jean-Paul Sartre claims that shame arises from the look of the Other. "Shame. is the recognition of the fact that I am indeed that object which the Other is looking at and judg-ing." 8 When another looks at him, Sartre comments: What I apprehend immediately., is that I am vulnerable, that I have a body which can be hurt, that I occupy a place and that I cannot in any case escape from the space in which I am without defense--in short, that I am seen.9 Everyday expressions repeat this connection between visibility and shame. We speak of being "shamefaced" or "hiding my face in shame" when others know our failures, inadequacies, or losses of con-trol. A Happy Blush Two other aspects of shame need to be kept in mind as we proceed: that the feeling of shame comes unexpected. That first and physiologi-cal manifestation of shame, the blush, highlights the involuntary and sud-den characteristic of shame. Helen Lynd is perceptive on this aspect of shame: Shame interrupts any unquestioning, unaware sense of oneself . More than other emotions, shame involves a quality of the unexpected: if in any way we feel it coming we are powerless to avert it . What-ever part voluntary action may have in the experience of shame is swal-lowed up in the sense of something that overwhelms us . We are taken by surprise, caught off guard, or off base, caught unawares, made a fool of. ~0 Shame / 689 In his illustration of the voyeur at the keyhole, Jean-Paul Sartre confirms the "immediate shudder" of being unexpectedly caught: "All of a sud-den I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking at me!''~ Importantly, this self-consciousness contains a revealing capacity. Again, it is Sartre who captures this: "Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me." ~2 Shame carries the weight of "I cannot have done this. But I have done it and cannot undo it, be-cause this is 1.''13 The thing that is exposed is what I am. To "recognize" one's self is to be open to reformation, and there is the delight. Adrian van Kaam writes that "reformation implies a re-appraisal of formative and deformative dispositions, judgments, memo-ries, imaginations, and anticipations." ~4 If experiences of shame can be fully faced, if we allow ourselves to realize their import, they can inform the self and become a revelation of one's self. The question is exactly what personal disposition is revealed by the quick reddening of the blush, the sudden feeling of shame, this which involuntarily and unexpectedly just happens. Writing back in 1839 on The Physiology or Mechanism of Blushing, Thomas Burgess reported that the blush reflects "the various internal emotions of the moral feel-ings [so that one could] know whenever we transgressed or violated those rules which should be held sacred." He continued to point out that, given this "spiritual" nature of the "blush," it is "solely a moral stimulus that will excite a true blush.''15 That is~ it is our value system that is re-vealed by shame. For example, if I hold dispositions mostly congenial with the particular individual God designed me to be, a blush will reveal that there are also some uncongenial and not-reformed dispositions. Or, by contrast, if my fundamental orientation is that talk of God is mean-ingless I may blush at some scruples within my disposition constellation that would be more in agreement with faith in an Eternal Being. Among The Lepers The immediate question is what should not be exposed, what should be covered from visibility. Francis' experience with the lepers proves in-structive. In his "Testament" he wrote: The Lord granted to me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way: While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweet-ness of soul and body.~6 This too brief statement includes all the elements of experiences of 690 / Review for Religious, September-October 1990 shame. Fallen Nature of Humanity By his words "While I was in sin" Francis refers to his youthful years. In his parents' home he enjoyed the easy life his successful father could provide. He was a most likable lad, clever, charming, smooth-talking, and insanely generous. Francis had a gift for business and seemed born to be a merchant like his father. The son enjoyed dressing with a studied elegance and entertaining at a good inn with the best of everything. Friends flocked around Francis when he appeared and played the troubadour with his Provencal songs. 17 One would say that Francis was reflecting the fallen nature of hu-manity common since the first sin of Adam, living in ignorance of the true transcendent nature of humanity. ~8 Caught in the competitive trade of the cloth merchant, his father taught Francis to live by that competi-tion. Escape in the exigencies and the excitement of being the business-man became a way of life, with questions of transcendence relegated to minor, occasional thoughts. Responsibility for being a faithfilled Chris-tian example for others was evaded, for the other was also typically the customer, who was to be sold something even if that meant a little de-ception and an excess of charm. Immersion in the sensual joys of life was a natural corollary in a society of, according to Pope Innocent III, "obscene songs, dances, and fornications." 19 Still, why was Francis affected by the lepers as he was? Other youths, his peers in cultural refinement and the easy life, would merely hold their noses when they smelled the horrible stench of the lazaretto where the lepers were confined, and unashamedly turn their horses a dif-ferent direction. But for Francis the human misery breathing death right into his face was incredibly disagreeable. And, the young clothier would experience shame when a wretched beggar would intrude.2° A clue to Francis at this early point in his life, while he was still "in sin," lies, I opine, in the phenomenology of shame. As we saw above, shame is an experience of the whole self: in moments of shameful expo-sure it is the self that stands revealed.2~ Existentialists state this force-fully: in the consciousness of shame, there is "a shameful apprehension of something and this something is me. I am ashamed of what I am . Through shame I have discovered an aspect of my being."22 The self that was standing revealed for Francis'was, in the terms of Adrian van Kaam, his foundational life form. The image of God deep within Francis was being exposed. Thomas Burgess, cited above, might say it was the internal moral feelings of Francis which were being ex- posed. As early as twelve years old Francis was struck in some special way by the elevation of the consecrated host during Mass. In the mud-dle of being dominated by his sensual and functional dimensions and his sociohistorical situations, the inchoate thunderbolt of the transcendent was there. But within the flamboyance and egotism of the sensuous and romantic party giver he appeared to be, Francis would feel shame when his more basic faith in God would protrude. His lifestyle hid from visi-bility the transcendent, as he took greater pleasure in identifying him-self as a prince of the world and knight of Assisi. As God's chosen who would become God's anointed, the young Francis would feel shame where others had no such self-consciousness. According to our paradigm of shame, what Francis's apparent life form, or way of being in his environment, sought to cover during these early years of his life was his foundational life form. When his "vul-nerability" or "inadequacy" was exposed, that is, his sensitivity to the sufferings of lepers and beggars, he felt shame at the "flaw," which was his deeper felt love of God, becoming visible through the cover of how he presented himself to others. Attuned to His God Francis was twenty-four when he stood in front of the episcopal pal-ace at Santa Maria Maggiore and stripped off his clothes in hot haste and threw them at his father's feet. God had seized him: the sinner faded to give way to the saint. But watching his second naked birth, the crowd fell silent, for this "erstwhile dandy" was seen to be wearing a hair shirt. "It was a hideous penitential device of horsehair for killing the instinct of sensuality and chastising the flesh day and night."23 The peni-tential hair shirt was a symbol for what had been happening for some time in Francis--the transformation from dissonance to consonance with the Eternal, a change from running away from God to running toward God. For our present emphasis, we might remember the words of Francis: "Bernardone is no longer my father," but Our Father who art in heaven. The words indicated his change. For Francis, shame is no longer from having love of God exposed within a life lived as a merchant, but henceforth the shame was in having any failure to love God exposed within a life of excited faith. Now, when Francis embraced the leper, as we quoted above in the words of Francis, "that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul." The contrast is sharp between the experiences of shame for Francis before and after his transformation. Upon encountering the so distaste- Review for Religious, September-October 1990 ful leper, "He slipped off his horse and ran to kiss the man . Filled with wonder and joy, he began devoutly to sing God's praises." He be-gan to render humble service to the lepers and "with great compassion kissed their hands and their mouths." Further, the lover of complete humility went to the lepers and lived with them. He washed their feet, bandaged their ulcers, drew the pus from their wounds and washed out the diseased matter; he even kissed their ulcer-ous wounds out of his remarkable devotion.24 Francis took the bold step of overcoming the conventional perception of what is attractive and what is repulsive by reaching out to love what re-pelled him. And the change in the source of shame was seen in other aspects of his life. When his pre-transformation apparent life form had dominated, Francis's selfish pride would tell him to feel deep humiliat

Issue 47.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1988. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The edito-rial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS iS owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year; $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail, add $5.00 per year; for airmail, add $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVtEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. BOX 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors May/June 1988 Volume 47 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Effective, Nondefensive Communication Between Clergy and Religious Women Robert J. Wicks, Psy.D. This article is adapted from an invited address presented at the 1986 Annual Vicars for Religious Eastern Regional Conference on November 7, 1986, at the St. Raphaela Retreat House, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Dr. Wicks, author of Availability. the Problem and the Gift, is Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Director of Program Development in the Loyola College Pastoral Counseling Department; 7135 Minstrel Way, Suite 101; Columbia, Maryland 21045. Good communication cannot solve every problem; to think so is naive. However, good communication can set the stage for metanoia (conver-sion). Therefore, in light of this all must be done to take advantage of the opportunity it offers-~even though, as one might expect, the cost of this conversion (in terms of openness, patience, and persistent assertive-ness) may be quite substantial. Considering this cost, from a psychological point of view there must be a real effort taken to remove all of the unnecessary interpersonal stress involved through the employment of good communication techniques; whereas, from a spiritual vantage point we must see the goal of effec-tive communication and relationship formation between male and female leaders of the Church as a positive challenge which inspires further steps toward openness rather than one that is threatening and discouraging, caus-ing avoidable anxiety. The movement toward Christian intimacy and interdependence must then be based on a hope that is very much tied to our faith; for with a strong faith--even when we are in the midst of an interaction that seems 321 399 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 to be pulling us apart or are in an apparently complete impasse--we will never lose sight of the key biblical injunction "Be not afraid." In the simple words of Paul to the Philippians: In the name of the encouragement you owe me in Christ, in the name of solace that love can give, of fellowship in spirit, compassion and pity, I beg you: make my joy complete by your unanimity, possessing the one love, united in spirit and ideals. Never act out of rivalry or conceit; rather, let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves, each of you looking to others' interests rather than his [her] own (Ph 2:1- 4). His call must be one that all men and women in Christ must heed. And clergy and religious women (the term "religious women" is used instead of "women religious" because it is more inclusive) need to lead the way in continuing to model this struggle for partnership in ministry. One of the realities that I believe many of us do not realize about com-munication between clergy and religious women in this age of occasional ministerial conflict between women and men is that communication is better now between these two groups than ever before in the modern Church. In the past the dissemination of information may have been easier and the discussions more comfortable, but if we are to look at commu-nication as a two-way communication where self-disclosure and the un-covering of agendas are involved, communication between clergy and re-ligious women is, in a real sense, a recent post-Vatican II phenomenon. Prior to this, in many instances because of structures and roles, the in-formation flowed primarily in one direction; this was not only unfair to all concerned but it also held back the Christian community because com-munication is a mainstay of interpersonal vitality. With these points as a backdrop then, we must enter into the topic of effective, nondefensive communication between clergy and religious women with a sense of reality and a deep attitude of hope. If we want, psychology can provide practical information to help, but we must also recognize that this is a spiritual movement; tht~s, in this light we have a responsibility to guide it but an equal mandate not to try to control it. To do so would only prove both frustrating and disastrous. In an effort to place sound psychology at the service of this move-ment, three questions will be addressed: I. How do people respond to communication?This question is im-portant because we often have the assumption that communication is nor- Effective, Nondefensive Communication / 323 mally received with welcome arms and are surprised when this does not happen. II. Who is receiving the message? This question is helpful to address because of the dramatic way a message can be affected, accepted, or re-jected when there is little reflection on whom we are addressing in terms of a number of variables. III. How is effective communication an element in an overall trans-formation of one's attitude and response to God? Good communication is only important if it serves to build up the Kingdom--the Kingdom within ourselves and the Kingdom among ourselves, that "Sacred Space" within which we make the spiritual journey. I. What Are Some of the Ways People May Respond to Communica-tion? Communication can be greeted in a number of ways including: with suspicion or paranoia, with unrealistic expectations, or with hope and chal-lenge. Understanding a bit about each of these types of responses is help-ful when preparing for or involved in communicating with others. Suspicion or Paranoia: Alan Paton once said that some persons "fear social change more than they fear God." Communication often leads to change, and in the institutional Church there sometimes is a sense of suspicion or even paranoia about where the current movements will lead. Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to the move-ment toward full partnership on the part of women. Quite honestly, al-though the suspicion and paranoia are not warranted if we have real trust in the Lord and are healthy psychologically, there is still a reality aspect to the whole issue which is senseless to bury or deny. Communication, real communication--which has at its heart the burning desire for inclu-siveness- is a Trojan horse in the institutional Church today. Inside the horse is true Christian equality--something that will, as it develops and grows, bring with it confusion and concern, just as Christ did in his times to his religious structure. So, although we really must not turn back and hide ourselves behind former types of organizational breakdowns (to do so, I think, would be a futile and sinful exercise in misplaced nostalgia for past structures), th.e question we must not hide through Christian de-nial or behind "chronic niceness" is whether, in envisioning unity, we are also prepared to face many systemic questions which may shake us as a body to the core? Unrealistic Expectations: Among the unrealistic expectations of com-munications we sometime~ hold on to are that good communications will almost always produce comfortable agreement, or somehow if it is done 324 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 correctly will always be pleasant. Agreement does not occur all of the time; this is natural. However, some people erroneously believe that if there is not agreement, it means the communications involved are not good. This is false because there could be a meeting of the minds but the minds may not agree. This is an important point to realize in the Church today. The Church takes time to change; those who have had time to see the institutional manifestations of the Church around the world and have reviewed Church history know that the structures often take time to catch up to the reality of the movement of the Spirit in the People of God. So, while communications and respect between clergy and religious women must be at the top of our agenda, to expect that this will lead to immediate change of certain laws, traditions, and systems is to court unnecessary frustration. Another unrealistic expectation is to expect that if communications are good the results will be pleasant. This is obviously also not true. To see injustice-~either in our own behavior or others--is certainly not a joy. As a matter of fact, good communication may bring us closer-- truth has a special power to do this--but we may not feel it because the issues that divide us may become clearer and we may feel more alien-ated because we are starting to honestly confront them. Using the terminology of Merton, in communications our "true selves" may well see each other and be attracted but at the same time our "false selves" will probably turn and run for their lives! For in-stance, let us take the case of a clergyman who is a firstborn male with an eastern European background. For him to have to face as a result of communication the possibility that he has been acculturated to see him-self as the "worthy one," someone to be waited on hand-and-foot, and that he must somehow in the Spirit of the servant Jesus move away from this learned style is not going to be easy. Likewise, for a religious woman to own the fact that she has been displacing some anger she rightly feels about injustice in the Church onto a particular priest who has not shown any evidence of sexism but has happened to be nearby when she was feeling her justified frustration is also not pleasant. Hope and Challenge: However, thankfully, communication can also be greeted in a positive way. It can be greeted with a sense of hope and challenge; and that is the attitude we must all seek to "put on" as we would seek to put on Christ. Yet this positive Christlike attitude does not deny that communication takes effort, is easily affected, and often gets distorted because of past experiences. Effective, Nondefensive Communication / 325 Gestures never substitute for actions; this all of us probably would admit to knowing. Yet one of the burdens of the human condition is that we often make a gesture when we think we are taking an action. This is especially so in communication. Real communication requires that agen-das be cleared. We must risk speaking our minds and our hearts, but often we shy away from this because we can lose face, uncover unpleas-ant anxieties, or lose our position in the relationship (even though this position is a matter of self-protection rather than of Christian friendship). The "bottom line" then is that, even with a sense of hope and challenge, good communication takes real effort. II. Who Is Receiving the Message? Age, socio-economic background, race/ethnic origin, intelligence, and any number of other determinants will affect how our message is re-ceived. This is especially important in terms of personality and sociali-zation as a result of gender. With respect to personality and communication, given the focus of this paper, the specific factors which we will treat here are domination and avoidance. Domination: Some people have a great fear of being dominated or influenced while others are themselves dominators. In both cases, the per-son will receive communications in line with these personality determi-nants. Sometimes very bad past ministerial experiences will cause this kind of issue to be at the forefront. An example of this is the person in ministry who has been--in the name of "Christian service"--pulled into doing all kinds of work and has filled all kinds of inappropriate roles. He or she may then respond to communication in what I call a "pseudojustice" mode. Trying to communicate with such persons about involvement can be like pulling teeth because of their fear that their own space will be intruded upon as it has been in the past. With them you may feel exasperated and feel like yelling: "I'm not trying to control you. All I'm trying to do is to find out how you would like to serve as part of the team." The hidden agenda such people have and their past feeling of being dominated and forced into too many unwanted, possi-bly unsuitable roles need to surface and be dealt with so communication and involvement can proceed. On the other hand, for persons receiving the message who are them-selves dominators, the problem will be somewhat different. In this case they show constant concern that if they agree or open up they might lose necessary control of the situation. In communicating with them, the situ-ation is also frustrating because if you are not careful you may begin to 326/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 feel that you are in fact gUilty of trying to wrestle control or get away with something. To such persons, nevertheless, you must express the idea clearly and question their hesitation so that they can get in touch with the domination problem they are experiencing. (Th.e more uncon-scious the problem is, howex;er, the more defensive the person will be because of a lack of awareness about it and a resistance to looking at it on his or her part.) Avoidance: Avoidance of involvement with another person may be due to a number of reasons. When we are speaking about communica-tions between clergy and religious women, though, one of the primary concerns could be the fear of heterosexual intimacy. As we learn from the psychological literature (for example, Daniel Levinson: The Seasons of a Man's Life), this may especially be a problem with males because of a confusion between genital relationships and nongenital heterosexual relationships. In Levinson's words: A man may have a wide social network in which he has amicable, "friendly" relationships with many men and perhaps a few women. In general, however, most men do not have an intimate male friend of the kind that they recall fondly from boyhood or y.outh. Many men have had casual dating relationships with women, and perhaps a few complex love-sex relationships, but most men have not had an intimate nonsexual friendship with a woman. We need to understand why friendship is so rare, and what consequences this deprivation has for adult life (p. 335). For the religious woman, the case may be a failure to have had enough heterosexual opportunities herself to feel at ease in the situation; another reason could be a negative history early in life or in ministry (for example, steps at healthy intimacy either rebuffed or responded to in a genital way thus producing confusion, anger, or possibly unwarranted guilt). Now that we have looked at the above two elements in understand-ing whom we are communicating with--since the "who" very much de-termines how a message will be received, let us briefly look at the dif-ferences communication takes on from the socialization a person receives because of gender. Gender, along with the socialization and human development that oc-cur in line with it, is a very crucial variable in how someone receives communication. Carol Gilligan (In A Different Voice: Visions in Matur-ity, Harvard University Press, 1982), Robert Kegan (The Evolving Self, Harvard University Press, 1982), and Jean Miller (Toward a New Psy-chology of Women, Beacon, 1976) b.ave shown that recent studies on Effective, Nondefensive Communication women's psychological development characterize them as more open to, and interested in, affiliation than men. However, of more import is that these findings, rather than being evidence of regressive dependence, are reflective of a high level of development that should be integrated with (male-oriented) differentiation at each level of maturity. Joann Wolski Conn, in her work Women's Spirituality (Paulist, 1986), points to this: ¯ . . o.ne should notice the similarities between the Christian goal of un-ion with God demonstrated by loving care for all persons, and the ideal of human maturity promoted in essays by Miller, Gilligan, and Kegan. Gilligan rejects autonomy as the only appropriate goal for human ma-turity in moral decisions and presents instead a goal which equally val-ues relationships . [Kegan] explicitly intends to present a model which listens as carefully to women's experience as it does to men's. As a result, his model demonstrates how the qualities which have come to characterize men and women stereotypically--autonomy and relation-ship-- are the focus of life span tasks at every stage of everyone's de-velopment . Miller explains that autonomy as the goal of maturity is a carry-over from men's experience and implies that one should be able to give up affiliations in order to become separate and self-directed. Women seek more than autonomy as was defined for men; in-deed, they seek a fuller ability to encompass relationships simultane-ously with the fullest development of themselves. Too often women are misinterpreted or penalized for affirming to men a basic truth: every-one's individual development proceeds through affiliation as well as dif-ferentiation. And this development involves conflict which is an inevi-table fact of life and is not necessarily harmful (60, 61). The above is particularly relevant for us here because it is the devel-opment of the female "gender" (as opposed to biological sex), with its emphasis on affiliation,versus the male "gender," which focuses on sepa-ration, that determines whether communication will be sought to build up the Kingdom via an emphasis on relationships or via an attempt to foster "God's will" by furthering a truth or cause at the possible ex-pense of excluding intimacy in the process. ¯ This is not said to disparage men. Jesus in his communication mod-eled both the male and the female gender (that is, he stood for the truth but saw charity and relationship as the greatest law). On the other hand, in an effort to attain equality, it is equally possible for some women to mistake "machismo" for the masculine gender and seek aggressive power in their communication rather than an assertive appropriate de-fense of the truth that will in turn bring us together as brothers and sis- ~i98 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 ters. Consequently, gender is an important issue when reflecting on the person with whom we are trying to communicate. III. Effective Communications as an Element of Overall Transforma-tion Changes in one's attitude and approach to life are areas in which thera-pists have had a long-standing interest. Because of this they are aware of the resistance to change that people have-~even when there is an ex-pressed conscious desire to progress. One way of dealing with such re-sistance, bad habits, or unwanted yet seemingly ingrained negative pat-terns is to address one or all of the following: behavior, cognition, af-fect, and imagery. (I am indebted in this section to my colleague Rich-ard Parsons for his model for therapeutic intervention based on the first three of the factors just listed.) This information is important with respect to what we have already discussed because unless communication is seen as an element of one's overall need to be transformed in approaching God, it will not be suffi-ciently integrated into one's life to have significant impact on one's daily outlook. For instance, when a depressed person comes in for treatment, the problem during the course of therapy can be dealt with in each of the ar-eas listed above; the following is a sample: Behavior: The person is helped to develop a strategy to get out of bed and move about since activity and depression do not coexist well to-gether. Cognition: The person is assisted in recognizing negative thinking, seeing the link between it and depression, and learning how to correct for this thinking as a way of dealing ultimately with a negative belief sys-tem. Affect (emotions): The person is encouraged to express negative emo-tion (anger) so it is not directed against the self in a destructive fashion. Imagery: The person is given exercises in positive imagery as a means of correcting the inordinate negative images that the person fre-quently has and erroneously believes. In this way, the person is able to enter upon a process of self-reeducation, in terms of which, rather than behaving, perceiving, feel-ing, and imaging negatively, he or she realistically and positively takes greater and greater hold. In our openness to grace (using the above model including behav-ior, cognition, affect, and imagery), similar moves must be taken with respect to.ensuring the presence and growth of effective, nondefensive Effective, Nondefensive Communication communication between clergy and religious women. As a way of en-suring this, in each of the four categories, a series of sample questions is offered. They are not so much a comprehensive list as a way of ap-proaching what we have covered in this paper on a broader scale. How they are addressed initially and every day will help determine how the clergy and religious women feel about and act upon their stated desire to open up clear lines of communication between them--regarding, that is, what they do, perceive, affectively experience, and envision. Since emotions are hard to impact directly (except with drug therapy or via ex-ercises in catharsis--that is, ventilating emotions when relating an event to a friend so that the emotions do not come out in an inordinate way in an encounter with someone else), the three we will focus on in terms of a listing of reflective questions are: behavior, cognition, and imagery. (Naturally, there will be some overlap between categories.) Behavior: 1. When someone treats me with disrespect/anger, do I inquire about it or do I withdraw and absorb the negativity or retaliate against the per-son? (Am I able to say: "You seem angry. Is it me that you are angry with or someone/thing else?") 2. Do I time sensitive interactions correctly, or do I bring up things at a time when the person will feel on the spot, rushed, or unable to re-spond? (The "attack-in-the-open" or "hit-on-the-run" techniques.) 3. Do I let other people's behavior (defensive, angry, rigid.) de-termine (excuse) a like negative response on my part? 4. When I have a confrontation, do I employ empathy and respect? 5. Do I group people (sexes, roles . . .) together, or do I take the trouble to appreciate each person individually? 6. Do I treat my partner in ministry like a child or parent or assume one of these roles myself in communication? 7. Do I demand that people agree or have a constantly pleasant de-meanor as a price of interacting with me? 8. When I communicate, am I trying to be myself, or am I trying to project an image so as to keep people controlled, at a distance, or in awe of me? 9. Do I hide behind the rules--be they correct or not--as a way of ending a conversation or cutting off a person's desire to brainstorm or be an adult with me? 10. Do I give in--in the name of "charity"--because I want to be liked? 330 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 11. Am I difficult to deal with and .overly exacting about a job de-scription- not merely to ensure justice is done, but as displaced revenge for past injustices, hurts, or inordinate demands? In other words, am I willing to be assertive enough to set limits for people when I am being asked to do things I should not do, and, on the other hand, am I gener-ous enough to go the extra mile when it is called for rather than hide be-hind a "union-type" contract which may destroy ministerial morale? (This question is material for an article in itself, given the undeclared psy-chological war that is often taking place between some manipulative, con-trolling, dominant ministers in the Church and the obsessive-compulsive persons who report to them.) 12. Do I use emotional words or parental actions (pedantic tones, sar-o casm . . .) as a way of controlling or attacking other persons? 13. Do I use indirect or passive aggressive/dependent behavior as a way of getting back at someone because I cannot or will not face my own anxiety about being directly assertive? 14. Do I catch myself when I am not taking someone seriously or am making a premature judgment about him or her? 15. Do I tie people up in specifics, rules, or implications rather than allowing them to share their hopes, ideals, and visions with me? 16. Do I look for defensiveness in the other person as a help to moni-tor how I am presenting my view? (Am I using evaluative rather than de-scriptive language, which then sets the other person up to respond nega-tively?) 17. Am I being specific and recent, rather than vague, general, or historical? That is, am I dragging in what I perceive to be the person's whole negative history with me? 18. Am I falling into the trap of employing a communication de-stroyer such as: ordering, directing, commanding, warning, admonish-ing, threatening, exhorting, moralizing, preaching, lecturing, giving so-lutions, .judging, criticizing, blaming, flattering, name-calling, shaming, withdrawing, humoring, or diverting? i9. Am I acting the way I am because of the person's "church cre-dentials" or because of who they are as persons . . . my brothers and sisters in Christ? 20. Am I giving other persons enough distance, or am I moving ahead in the communication and relationship because of my own needs, my own sense of where relationships should be after a given period of time? Effective, Nondefensive Communication 21. Am I able to not "take the whole stage" or "hide behind the curtain" but instead find an appropriate verbal place in the communica-tion? 22. Am I self-disclosing enough without inappropriately or too rap-idly overwhelming the other person with my personal life? 23. Do I use anger, pouting, tears, tantrums, or seduction to get my way? 24. Do I look for the other person's point in communication so it re-ally can become a two-way process of exchanging information? 25. Am I looking for those signs in myself which would help me see when in my interactions and thoughts I may be setting myself up for un-necessary failure? (Do I expect that the reality of the diocese or present partner in ministry will meet my ideals and, when it does not, see it as a total failure?) Cognition: I. Do I try to be as clear as possible in the way I express myself--in other words, do I try to look at all my motivations and agendas? 2. Do I catch myself when I feel either angry, anxious, or guilty so I can try to understand the source of it rather than merely blaming my-self or someone else? 3. Am I sensitive to the times I personalize things? For instance, do I quickly take the blame for some external negative event that I was not primarily responsible for and as a result feel unnecessarily angry/guilty? 4. Do I hold on to the biblical quotation "Be not afraid" at a real belief/trust level to the extent that I can move forward in communica-tion even during those times when I feel pain, rejection, threat, or panic? 5. In my communication of the expectations I have of people, am I presenting them in a way which puts them on the spot, or do I really try to call them to be all they can be without embarrassing them because they are where they are? 6. Do I predict failure or put the other person down in my mind even before the communication has had time to develop? 7. Do I pick up my feelings of annoyance or frustration and catch the underlying thought which is causing it and thus avoid lessening my motivation to continue the communication and work through the prob-lem? 8. Do I fearlessly try to separate my motivations and agendas so I can see what mature/immature elements are involved in my thinking when I prepare for an important discussion, confrontation, or meeting? 332 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 9. When I am at an intimate level with a person, am I checking all the thoughts going through my mind---even the negative or unrealistic ones--as a way of picking up my unfulfilled preconscious desires or needs so they do not interfere with the communication or lead me to act out some immature behavior that would be detrimental to the relation-ship? I0. Am I thinking that, if this person does not like me, it means am not likable in general? Or do I believe that when I am on a ministry team everyone must get along equally well? 1 i. Do I see disagreement as tantamount to disloyalty or start to be-lieve such an attitude if I am given that message by the person with whom I am communicating? 12. Am I willing and able to recall past supportive adult situations I have had with other partners in ministry so I do not generalize when I have a bad experience in the present? Imagery: 1. Am I imaging myself as an assertive sister/brother of Christ, or do I perceive a non-Christlike negative image of myself? 2. Am I truly imaging the opposite sex as being in the image of God? (Am I able to image her/him as being my superior even if I am now her/ his superior in the apostolate?) 3. Do I image myself as loved so I can behave as a healthy person rather than a "good/nice" person who retreats, placates, etc., because of a desperate need for acceptance? 4. Do I try to cut through all of the past culturally determined im-ages I have had of the Lord in order to reenvision the masculinity (as op-posed to the "machismo," power, superiority . . .) of Christ, and am I also able to see Jesus as mother? Or, do I really believe this area is silly and avoid it? 5. Do I take the "Abba" image of God as my guide and meditate on it as an assertive yet tender role model? Or do I still have a "superego-oriented," patriarchal image of God? These are just some of the questions that must be faced with respect to behavior, cognition, and imagery if communication is to change and become effective, if our attitude is to be truly transformed. Epilogue Abraham Heschel once said: [A person's] plight is not due to the fear of nonbeing, to the fear of death, but to the fear of living . The fear of living arises most corn- Effective, Nondefensive Communication monly out of the experiences of failure or insult, or having gone astray or having been rebuffed. It is rooted in the encounter with other human beings, in not knowing how to be with other beings, in the inability or refusal to communicate, but above all in the failure to live in complete involvement with what transcends bur living. I think that, in discussing effective, nondefensive communication be-tween clergy and religious women and in looking at our behavior, cog-nition, and imagery, we are being asked whether we will fear living or whether we will live in complete involvement. We are being asked whether we will follow "Holy Mother the institutional Church" in such a strict way that we are not open to "Holy Mother our God" to the ex-tent that we allow her to carry us where she will. The questions being asked here, then, are not easy ones. Neither are the answers so immediate and accessible. Psychology can help, and we should employ it wherever we can. But, in the last analysis, it is prayer and spirituality that will turn the tide. James Fenhagen said at one point in his book Invitation to Holiness (Harper & Row, 1985, p. 57): "People live cautiously because they pray cautiously." I think this is so, and I think St. Peter felt it when he was confronted at Rome's gate after being asked the question: "Quo vadis?" Accordingly, I wonder, in this whole issue of communications and rela-tionships between clergy and religious women (as might also possibly be the case with respect to the modern movement toward a lay-centered Church), whether it would be too dramatic for us to see that the whole Church is at the gate being questioned again by the Lord as to our cour-age, fortitude, and faith? I wonder. I wonder. Leading People into Prayer Paul Wachdorf Father Wachdorf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, is an associate dean of for-mation and a spiritual director at Mundelein Seminary. His address is: University of Saint Mary of the Lake; Mundelein, Illinois 60060. For the past six years I have served as a spiritual director for the theologi-ans at Mundelein Seminary, the graduate school of theology of the Arch-diocese of Chicago. An increasing number of our incoming students have never been in a seminary. Frequently their knowledge of the history and teachings of the Church and of the various prayer traditions of the Church is at a very basic level. Some come with no prayer life at all. For others, their experience of prayer is limited to saying prayers, occasionally read-ing from the Bible, or talking to God. One of the challenges I have faced as a director in working with these students is to lead them into a deeper experience of prayer. Out of my experience of the last six years, I would like to share some of the insights and practical wisdom that I have found helpful in work-ing with these students. Although I have worked primarily with semi-nary students, I believe that what I have to say can be helpful to anyone working with beginners in prayer: spiritual directors, RCIA facilitators, pastoral-care ministers, homilists, prayer-group leaders, and many oth-ers. It is very important to be aware of the special issues and concerns that beginners in prayer face as they seek to come before God. The Foundational Conviction The most important insight that I have come to is this: God leads peo-ple into prayer. Through God's own invitations, people come to prayer in their own good time and way. As a director I can invite people to a life of prayer. I can walk with them in their attempts to pray. I can help 334 Leading People into Prayer / 335 to facilitate their movement into prayer. But I cannot make them pray, and I cannot control the movement or the experience of God in their prayer. As a director I have had to face my own impatience and desire to have someone become a person of prayer overnight. I have come to see that there are many starts and stops; but, over time, people are given the gift of prayer. Prayer cannot be forced. It is a conversion experience. When people come to experience firsthand the power of God at work in their lives and prayer, then prayer becomes something that they want to do and not something I expect them to do or something they are obli-gated to do by the Church. Until this happens for them, I try as much as possible to affirm their fledgling efforts to pray and to be understand-ing and accepting of them in their failures, their discouragement, and their resistances as they attempt to pray. Beginning by Doing When I meet.with prospective spiritual directees, I tell them that one expectation I have of them is that they commit themselves to developing a regular prayer life. Furthermore, within the context of spiritual direc-tion, I want them to talk about what happens to them when they do pray. I also tell them that I am not going to dictate to them how, when, or how often they should pray, nor am I going to scold them in their failures or difficulties with prayer. I am not indifferent about their prayer life. Within the framework of God's gift and their freedom, I try to be an accountability factor. What is a value to me, I want to be a value for them. In addition, I tell them that their commitment to prayer insures that what we do within the con-text of spiritual direction becomes more than just guidance and counsel-ing. Some of those I direct have told me that my invitation to prayer has been an important stimulus in their attempts to develop their own prayer life. In Solidarity and With Support At Mundelein Seminary, the full-time members of the formation team commit themselves to an hour of personal prayer every morning in our house chapel. We invite the students to join us in our time of prayer, and many of them do. In this hour of quiet time with God, there is a soli-darity that develops among us. Many of our students have said that this daily commitment of the formation team to prayer has been an impor-tant witness and invitation to them in their own prayer life. 33t5 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 Related to this, on occasion I have invited a student I am directing to join me for this time of quiet prayer. We have used a common prayer form or passage from Scripture as the basis of our prayer. Afterwards we spent some time talking about what we experienced in our prayer. Within the context of direction, I try to share on a limited basis, and when-ever I feel it is appropriate, some of the content of my own prayer life and what happens to me when I pray. These two things have helped some of my beginners in prayer to come to an experiential insight into what can happen when they open themselves up to God in prayer and to understand what prayer in gen-eral and what specific prayer forms can be like for them. The Spiritual Dialogue About Prayer When I first meet with new spiritual directees, I ask them to spend some time telling me their life history. Among other things, I ask them to tell me about their prayer life and their experiences and images of God. In particular, I ask them if they have ever had what they consider to be a religious experience or a powerful experience of God at work in their lives. What I have found is not only that many of those I direct have had such experiences but also that these experiences have played an impor-tant part in their own vocational discernment and their understanding of God. I have also found that people feel very shy or embarrassed about hav-ing had such an experience, have never told anyone about it before, and have a difficult time articulating just what the experience was like. As a director I find that it is very important for me to listen carefully to what they have to say, to reassure them that they are not weird or crazy, to invite them to explore further what they have experienced, and to give them permission to talk about such experiences as they might occur in the future. During the course of direction, I ask people to talk about their prayer life in terms of consistency, method, content, and inner feelings associ-ated with praying. Initially they find this difficult since they frequently lack the language to talk about what happens interiorly when they pray. Very often they have not developed the ability to sit quietly for any ex-tended period of time, to notice what they are feeling, and to distinguish the difference between distractions and movements of God. As we begin, I encourage people to talk about whatever they thought or felt or experienced in their prayer, whether they considered it to be significant or not. I find it important for me to move slowly and to be Leading People into Prayer patient with their attempts not only to pray but also to notice and talk about their experience of prayer. I also find that I need to be sensitive to their desire to please me, to do well in their prayer, or to have some-thing significant to say. I need to reassure them that whatever happens in their attempts to pray is fine with me and is pleasing to God. Related to these considerations is another question we examine early on: For whom is prayer intended? Is it primarily for my benefit, for what I get out of it? Or is it primarily for God? If prayer is just for my benefit and if nothing seems to be happening, I will feel it is a waste of time and will be tempted to give it up. On the other hand, if prayer is for God, it does not make any differ-ence if anything "productive" seems to be happening. Even if it feels like a waste of time to me, I am praying because I am giving my time to God in a way that says that my relationship with God is primary. The fact that I am consistently present to God in my prayer is initially far more important than what ! do or what happens when I pray. When peo-ple come to a different understanding of what prayer is and for whom it is intended, they relax and are more open as they approach prayer. Resistances, Difficulties, and Dryness Beginners in prayer are usually eager and enthusiastic as they begin to develop and deepen their prayer lives and to experiment with new prayer forms. They may experience in new and surprising ways the power of God at work in their prayer. As time passes, however, and they run into resistances, difficulties, and dryness in their prayer, they may become discouraged and disheart-ened with their prayer life. They may feel as if God has abandoned them. It is important to help them understand the dynamics of what is going on in their prayer. A list of some of the common difficulties that tend to make prayer difficult for beginners follows: a) Called to a Different Prayer Frequently the difficulties encountered by beginners in prayer are con-nected to being called by God to a different way of praying, to a deeper level of prayer. Although this is true for all pray-ers, it is especially true for beginners. My experience with beginners in prayer is that they soon discover that the ways of prayer taught them as children and carried with them into adolescence and young adulthood are no longer satisfying to them. It is important to let them explore their dissatisfactions and new yearn-ings and to help them see that perhaps God is calling them to a differ- Review for Religious, May-June 1988 ent, deeper way of praying. b) Wondering What to Do Exploring different ways of praying, however, often brings begin-ners to another difficulty: They do not know how to begin or what to do in their time of prayer. They are intimidated by silence and fear that noth-ing is going to happen or that they will be plagued by distractions. When they are unfocused as they come to prayer, when they have no sense of how to open themselves up to God so that God can enter into their lives, prayer will be extremely difficult for them. I find it is important to explore with beginners what prayer is, what attitudes to bring to prayer, how to interpret and deal with distractions, and what prayer techniques may suit them and open them up to God. If they know their Myers-Briggs type indicator, I offer to go over with them some of the research that has been done on prayer and tem-perament. One resource I would suggest is the book Prayer and Tem-perament by Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey (Charlottesville, Va. : The Open Door, 1984). The Myers-Briggs type indicator seems to be a limited but useful tool in helping people to understand how they ap-proach the world. This understanding can put them in touch with a fa-vored and a shadow side of prayer, an insight that can open them to a sense of God at work in their lives. c) Unworthiness Another difficulty beginners face is the feeling that they are not wor-thy to pray. More specifically, they feel unworthy to come before God, that they have nothing worthwhile to offer to God, and that .they are not worthy to receive anything from God in their time of prayer. These feel-ings are often connected with earlier lifestyles which now cause shame. Sometimes they are connected with images of God which portray God as a perfectionist or as a harsh, impersonal, unforgiving judge who pun-ishes wrongdoing. I find that it is important to let people freely explore their life histories, their images of God, and their own sense of unwor-thiness. d) Looking at All Facets of Life I encourage those I direct to get in touch with their feelings and to tell God in their prayer what they are feeling, thinking, and experienc-ing. This tends to bring into focus several related difficulties for begin-ners in prayer. Leading People into Prayer / 339 The first is their image of God as all-knowing. If God is all-knowing, why should they bother to express what God already knows? A second is that they are often not in touch with what they are feel-ing or with inner movements which might or might not be of God. They have never cultivated the reflective side of their lives. A third is that they are frequently suspicious of emotions, especially those they consider to be negative or sinful, such as anger, lust, or de-spair. They have a difficult time admitting to themselves that they have such emotions. And even when they do, how, for example, could they possibly express to God their angry feelings? Such feelings can be very threatening to them and can reinforce their sense of unworthiness before God. It is important to help beginners get in touch with their feelings and thoughts, to claim them in a non judgmental way, and to begin to express them to God in their prayer. As they do this, God is able to be with them as they are and as he wants to be with them. e) The Right Time and Place Difficulties in prayer can also be related to lifestyle and environment. A poor environment, such as the clutter of their rooms where there are many distractions, can make prayer difficult. I encourage beginners to explore various prayer environments to help them discover a place where they can be with God in peace. The time of day for prayer is important. "Morning" people or "night" people need to adjust prayer times according to their natural biological rhythms. I encourage people to find a time of day when they can give quality prayer time to God, a time of alertness and concentra-tion. The general rhythm of life affects prayer. A scattered life or a life out of balance will not help prayer. One needs a regular and rhythmic balance of work, play, and attending to relationships. I encourage peo-ple to examine their life patterns because a healthy life is related to healthy prayer. t') Consistent Commitment Inconsistency or not enough time given to prayer can make prayer difficult. The development of a healthy, loving, life-giving relationship between any two people requires that they spend sufficient, consistent, quality time together. Our relationship with God is no different. If God is to be present to us as God truly desires, we have to make time for this relationship to develop. It is important to explore with beginners the dis- ~140 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 cipline of consistent prayer. g) Wasting Time with God In the midst of the hectic pace of modern life, it is difficult to find time to pray. Often, for pragmatic, production-oriented Americans, prayer seems like a waste of time. People can always think of "better" ways to spend their time. The need that beginners have for productive prayer is one that needs to be carefully explored. I encourage them to see prayer as an opportunity to waste time gracefully with God. h) Dealing with Setbacks When people miss prayer for a day or two or three, they become dis-couraged. They may want to give up on prayer. My response is encour-agement. When they miss, they do not need to get upset or give up on prayer as a lost cause. I tell them to come back. Prayer is a decision that continually needs to be renewed. If they fall, they should simply get up and start over again. God, I believe, is not all that interested in how many times they have fallen. God is more interested in how many times they got back up and started over again. i) Desolation In his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Week I [322], St. Igna-tius suggests three important reasons why we suffer desolation or diffi-culty in prayer. David Fleming, S.J., in The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978, pp. 210-211), "reads" the text of St. Ignatius as follows: I. It is our own fault because we have not lived our life of faith with any effort. We have become tepid and slothful and our very shallow-ness in the spiritual life has brought about the experience of desolation; 2. it is a trial period allowed by God. We find ourselves tested as to whether we love God or just love his gifts, whether we continue to fol-low his call in darkness and dryness as well as in light and consolation; 3. it is a time when God lets us experience our own poverty and need. We see more clearly that the free gift of consolation is not something we can control, buy, or make our own. These Ignatian guidelines are geared for beginning Christians. When explained properly, they can be helpful in giving beginning pray-ers some insight into what might be happening in their prayer. Leading People into Prayer / 341 Prayer in Direction I invite those I direct to take time, if they are comfortable in doing so, to join me in prayer at the beginning and/or at the end of our ses-sions together. My/our prayer might be spontaneous or more formal. As we begin, the prayer is a simple petition inviting God to be a part of our time together and asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we end, the prayer might be a moment of thanksgiving or praise to God for the ways in which the Spirit works in our lives and in the process of spiri-tual direction. It is important not to force this. Beginners in prayer are not usually very comfortable praying out loud or spontaneously. At the same time, such prayer does sensitize beginning pray-ers to the importance of con-tinually inviting God to enter into their lives and of noticing and acknowl-edging the ways in which God can and does act in their lives. Conclusion My experience is that leading people to prayer is an art and not a sci-ence. There is no one textbook approach that works for everyone. Prayer is something very personal and unique. It is a special relationship that develops over time between God and the pray-er. People come to prayer in their own good time and way. As a spiritual director, I cannot make prayer happen; but I can help to facilitate this loving relationship. In work-ing with beginners in prayer, I do not apply the suggestions I have of-fered in this article in any structured or systematic way; but I have found that there are certain common themes and experiences that it is good for me as a spiritual director to be aware of as I seek to lead people under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit into a life of prayer. Marian Year: A Prolonged, Ardent Pentecost Gene Barrette, M.S. Father Barrette last wrote for us in the November/December 1987 issue. The pre-sent article has been adapted from a letter of his to the La Salette Missionaries, of whom he is the superior general. His address: Missionari di N. S. de la Salette; Pi-z, zza Madonna della Salette, 3; 00152 Roma, Italy. I'leturning to Rome from Argentina on June 6, 1987, after nearly twenty-four hours of travel, I was only hazily aware of the events of that day. I noticed some members of my community in front of the TV joining the Holy Father as he prayed the rosary at St. Mary Major's Basilica. A Veri-table prayer chain around the world was formed as simultaneous trans-mission linked groups of the faithful praying in some of the major Marian shrines on five continents. Later in the evening a group from the house went to the Pentecost vigil celebrated in St. Peter's Square, a ceremony full of splendor and evocative images of fire and flowers. These were festivities marking the pope's official opening of the second Marian Year in the history of the Church. This special year, which will close on the feast of the Assumption, 1988, was launched with media fanfare, receiv-ing extensive TV and newspaper coverage here in Rome for a couple of days. And yet, I must humbly admit, in my own jet-lagged heart I felt little excitement or response. In fact, when the Marian Year was first announced, a little demon voice in me had muttered: "What is this man doing? Here the world is facing enormous problems: war, possible nuclear annihilation, the col-lapse of social structures, massive oppression and injustices, and moral confusion; and what does he hold out to the world? A Marian Year!" My 342 Marian Year / 343 initial reaction was not only less than enthusiastic, it was even slightly embarrassed. How shallow that reaction was! For what has Pope John Paul done? I believe he has done something very prophetic, prophetic in the same sense that La Salette is so pro-phetic. At La Salette Mary described a world suffering from famine, dis-ease, and turmoil. And yet what did she propose as a solution? Prayer, attendance at Mass, fasting--in a word, conversion. She proposed solu-tions that in the eyes of the world certainly could only appear "foolish." And so too, perhaps in the eyes of the world or, even worse, in our own worldly eyes, the pope's proclamation of a Marian Year as an important way to prepare for the Third Millennium may seem foolish. But it is the kind of foolishness that in the eyes of God is, in fact, wisdom. In proclaiming a Marian Year, the pope is saying to all of us: "Be-hold your mother!" Yes, this is a year that can help us behold and relate to this maternal reality which is life-giving and life-nurturing; and the life that Mary gives and nurtures is precisely the Christ-life so desper-ately needed in the famine of our days. Yes, behold our mother; behold the woman who is our privileged doorway to Christ, Christ who in fact is the only true answer to the fragmentations, oppressions, and forces of nonlife and darkness threatening our today and shadowing our tomorrow. Any word or act that leads us to this heart of our reality is prophetic. Bringing Mary Out Of Eclipse It is no e×aggeration to say that Marian devotion suffered a diminu-tion during the past twenty-five years or so. Some blame the Vatican Council, others hold theologians at fault. And yet no council has ever spoken so beautifully of Mary as does Lumen Gentium, nos. 52-69. Promi-nent theologians such as Karl Rahner, Schillebeeckx, and even the non- Catholic Max Thurian have written exquisitely on Mary. Bishops' con-ferences have issued pastoral letters on Mary, such as the American bish-ops' beautiful letter Behold Your Mother. The eclipse came as an over-reaction to excesses that at times existed in some Marian devotions; the eclipse also came because our attention was focused on other essential aspects of our Christian, ecclesial life. But Mary is so integral a part of the fabric of our faith that she can-not remain in eclipse. In fact, in Argentina Cardinal Primatesta, in a con-ference to the members of the Council of the Congregation, went on at great length to emphasize that it is Marian devotion that has preserved the Christian faith of the Latin American people over the centuries. This great gift cannot remain in eclipse. :344/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 Through the Marian Year, Pope John Paul wants to put dramatically before our eyes and our hearts this life-giving reality that is Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church; your mother and mine. We are not dealing with pious images or metaphors nor with devotional projec-tions; we are dealing with a reality present to us. Do we recognize this presence? Is it vital for us? Permit me to use an analogy to help me get my point across. Walk outside and look up into the air. Do you hear music or voices and see images? Of course not. And yet that seemingly clear air is full of sounds and images. All you need is a radio or TV and click--you capture them. You hear the music and the voices, you see the pictures. All you need is the proper instrument, properly tuned and with a power source. It is the same thing with the presence of God, the Lord, the Spirit--and yes, of Mary. They are real presences. But unless we have our minds and hearts empowered by the Spirit, attuned in faith, then there is no way that we can be aware of these presences; no way that we can respond to them; no way that we can be touched and transformed by them. In a cer-tain sense the Marian Year is a "tuning time" for us; tuning in to the presence of Mary to her people. How sad it would be not to take advan-tage of this gift. This Spirit-inspired invitation of the Holy Father to give Mary her rightful place in our lives is not intended to lead us simply to a superfi-cial polishing-up of Marian devotion. It is actually a call to enter into the richness and the profound meaning of a Marian spirituality. As John Paul's recent encyclical Redemptoris Mater suggests, it is a question of seeing Mary not simply as part of our "doctrine of faith," but much more of Mary as part of our "life of faith." Mary is the prototype for our own stance before God and the world. Mary has led and continues to lead the way on our pilgrimage of faith. Recognizing that and actively drawing strength from that reality is one way of insuring that Mary will no longer live in a sort of eclipse. This is not the place for a treatise on the fundamentals of a Marian theology. I simply encourage you all to give Redemptoris Mater a prayer-ful, meditative reading. The encyclical, plus chapter VIII in Lumen Gen-tium, gives an excellent summary of Mariology. In these pages I simply want to point out some aspects of Mary that can touch our life of faith; points that may.be light and food for our own journey. Mary: Model for Our Pilgrimage of Faith A recurring phrase in the pope's encyclical is Mary's place in the "pilgrimage of faith" (6, 14, 25, and 26 especially). The whole image Marian Year / 345 of the pilgrimage of faith is a dynamic one capturing the movement, the evolution, the story of a people, of individuals. What is this "pilgrimage of faith" that the Church has lived out through space and time in her individual members? The pope says that its essential character is interior, a "question of a pilgrimage through faith, by the 'power of the Risen Lord,' a pilgrimage in the Holy Spirit" (RM 25). The essential element of this interior pilgrimage is the response that each person gives to the encounter with the Holy Spirit. The faith-response of yes-~offiat, a total "obedience of faith" to the Spirit invit-ing into God's plan-~creates a receptive space for the conception and birthing of Jesus. This pilgrimage of faith is of crucial importance not only because of what it accomplishes in the individual, but more because of what is accomplished through the individual: making Christ present in the world. And Mary, in a unique and special way, is present to and part of this ongoing pilgrimage. "Mary is present, as the one who is 'blessed be-cause she believed,' as the one who advanced on the pilgrimage of faith, sharing unlike any other creature in the mystery of Christ . Among all believers she is like a 'mirror' in which are reflected in the most pro-found and limpid way 'the mighty works of God' " (RM 25). Mary is the prototype and model for all faith-pilgrims. And what can we learn when we look at her response? We discover that "to believe means 'to abandon oneself' to the truth of the word of the living God ¯ . . accepting fully and with a ready heart everything that is decreed in the divine plan., a complete openness to the person of Christ, to his whole work, to his whole mission" (RM 14, 39). This total acceptance, this total giving oneself to God's plan, is evi-dent throughout Mary's life: in thefiat of the annunciation moment, in the journey to Bethlehem and the birth in such humble surroundings, in the flight to Egypt, in the "ponderings in her heart" during the early years, in the intercession at Cana, in the years of remaining in the back-ground during the preaching, teaching, and healing and on the fringe of the crowds adulating or condemning, at the foot of the cross, and then in the midst of the apostles for the empowering on Pentecost. Certainly it is not difficult to see in Mary the total gift of her person to serving the saving plan of the Father. Unique? Yes, Mary is. And yet we share in the same call, the same mission. As the American bishops stated in their pastoral letter: "Mary conceived in her heart with her whole being, before she conceived in her :346 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 womb. First came Mary's faith, then her motherhood. Faith is the key . All who truly follow Christ become 'mothers' of Christ, for by their faith they bring Him to birth" (Behold Your Mother, 71). This radical response of faith, as Cardinal Ratzinger effectively stated in a homily at St. Mary Major's on June 10, 1987, shows that Mary is "above all the sign of the fecundity of faith in history." The fecundity of faith is that it brought forth Life itself, which is Jesus. Je-sus is God's supreme entrance into history. It is in Jesus that God once and for all puts history on the road of salvation, of liberation, of com-pletion. Jesus is the ever present Life that transforms history. What bet-ter way, therefore, to move towards the third millennium than to look at Mary, the supreme example and model of the power of faith to bring Jesus into the world? The Marian Year is an invitation to do this. Mary: A Maternal Presence Mary is model for our pilgrimage of faith, but she is more. She is an accompanying maternal presence--guiding, interceding, helping with the sensitivity that only a mother can have. And that is also a reality-- she is truly a mother to each of as. Mary as mother of the human race, again, is not just poetry. It is clearly stated and established at the foot of the cross. "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother." Mary as model is a great gift of the Father to us; but even more, Mary as mother is the great gift of the Father and the Son to us. Again, in the words of Pope John Paul, "Mary's motherhood which becomes man's inheritance is a gift; a gift which Christ himself makes personally to every individual . Of the essence of motherhood is the fact that it concerns the person. Motherhood always establishes a unique and unrepeatable relationship between two people: between mother and child and between child and mother" (RM 45). Mary is not "out there" somewhere; she is intimately linked with you and me, whether we pay attention to that link or not. This relationship is part of our reality. Turning and relating to Mary as our mother is not an appeal to senti-mentalism. Rather it is turning to a source of life. Again Cardinal Ratz-inger had a beautiful and suggestive image in his homily: "If the Church in its everyday life does not want to be reduced merely to an arid institu-tion or to an activism that burns itself out, it must look to Mary. Life can grow and develop only under the warmth of a maternal heart." It is there under the warmth of the mother's heart that life first begins and grows in the womb; and it is in the light and warmth of the love of a mother's heart that life continues to grow and be strengthened and made whole years and years after leaving the womb. This immense maternal Marian Year / 347 love Mary has for us has a transforming power. Why do we hesitate or simply neglect to reach out for and seize this maternal love? It may be just the thing that many of us and our people need to turn our lives around and become spaces open to the Spirit and be Christ-bearers. The picture of Mary as our mother certainly is central in Mary's ap-parition at La Salette. She began with the words "Come near, my chil-dren . . . I have great news to tell you." In these very opening words there is already great news: the news that we are her children, and there-fore she is our mother. While Cardinal of Cracow, the Holy Father gave a very insightful observation on the motherhood of Mary during a homily he preached on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the presence of the La Salette Missionaries in Poland. Speaking of Mary as mother of the hu-man family, mother of the Church, he said, "We know well that a mother who loves cries more than once . . . and if among the Church-approved private apparitions of Mary there was lacking this Mary in tears, our image of maternal love would somehow be incomplete. The mother who loves, sometimes weeps. Even more when a grave danger menaces her child . Her maternal tears are a special proof of love, necessary for humanity, necessary for our people today." How often do we ourselves draw near to those tears of love? How often do we lead our people to those tears of love? ¯ The tears that Mary's love produces are shed in response to our own pain, our own suffering, our own danger, our own brokenness, our own sinfulness. Towards the end of Redemptoris Mater (51-52), the Holy Fa-ther refers to the lines from one of the Marian hymns after compline: "Loving mother of the Redeemer, gate of heaven, star of the sea, assist your people who have fallen, yet strive to rise again." He speaks of the great advances of recent times in human history. And yet, throughout the marvels of our journey in time and space with all the transformations we have witnessed, there remains a fundamental transformation, and that is the ongoing transformation from falling to rising, from death to life. As the Holy Father points out, "the Church sees Mary maternally present and sharing in the many complicated problems which today beset the lives of individuals, families, and nations, and she sees her helping the Christian people in the constant struggle between good and evil, to en-sure that it does not fall or, if it has fallen, that it rises again." This should resonate in each of us if we are sensitive to our own pil-grimage of faith with its rhythms of falling and rising, with its experi-ence of our fragilities and infidelities, with our failings and beginnings 341~/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 anew. Such is our experience as individuals; such is our experience as a community, as a congregation, as a Church, as God's people. Mary's appeal at La Salette certainly relates to our need for conver-sion. (Is the same thing perhaps happening today at Medjugorje?) Yet why do we shy away from this gift offered to us? Why are we so often indifferent, blas6 about these obvious signs of maternal love rushing to us, children in danger, children in pain, children needing help? Is it that we feel that we are big boys now, grown up, ~tnd therefore no longer need-ing this consolation, this warmth, this encouragement, this drying of our own tears, and this loving embrace that helps us believe in our own good-ness and the Spirit's action sending us onwards in new beginnings again and again? The Marian Year can be the privileged occasion for us to re-discover this great gift if we have been neglecting it, or to deepen our love for it if we have not forgotten it. Mary: Continued Presence in Mission to Us Mary, model for us on the pilgrimage of faith; Mary, continued pres-ence as mother. Let us now look at Mary and her own mission, which continues today. As Redemptoris Mater (21) reminds us, Mary's own sense of mis-sion began to be felt at Cana. There we see Mary's solicitude, her com-ing to people in the wide variety of their wants and needs. This solici-tude has certainly been manifested during this last century and a half in her apparitions, especially at La Salette, where her caring wrung tears from her heart. Mary's mission has a twofold movement. She comes to the aid of human needs, but this means that she brings those needs within the ra-dius of Christ's salvific power, as she shows at Cana. At La Salette this is seen in the image we have of the two children, representing our bro-kenness and neediness, being drawn into the radiance that streamed from the crucifix, the ultimate symbol of Christ's saving love. "Thus there is a mediation: Mary places herself between her son and mankind in the reality of their wants, needs, and sufferings . Her mediation is in the nature of intercession: Mary intercedes for mankind" (RM 21), a truth echoing Mary's own words at La Salette, "How long a time have I suf-fered for you . " Lumen Gentium (62) described this same reality: "Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving role, but by her manifold acts of intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal sal-vation." This mediation, this mission, this divine pastoral, we might say, continues in the history of the Church and the world. Marian Year / 349 Karl Rahner describes Mary's life as "the archetypal apostolic event . What the apostolate is can be read from her and what she did; she is a productive pattern for the apostolate, not a mere ideal instance of its abstract essence" ("Mary and the Apostolate," Mission and Grace, vol. 1, p. 181). He then outlines some of the characteristics ob-servable in Mary's apostolate. They can serve for reflection on our own apostolate during this Marian Year. In the apostolate of Mary: a) There is a consciousness of its being a mission given from above. (How vivid is this conviction for our own life and ministry?) b) She shows a capacity to wait for the right moment, to know that the mission is to be fulfilled in God's time and manner. (Does not much of our own discouragement at times come from relying too exclusively on our own power, our own schedule, our own programs?) c) There is self-withdrawal behind the person she serves; most of her life is hidden, it is Christ who is brought to the fore. d) There is loyal perseverance. Mary did not merely say yes once, in one great moment. She sustained that yes patiently, silently, con-stantly in the serene assurance of the true believer, in the mature sim-plicity of real greatness, throughout a whole lifetime. (How strongly do we strive for this in our age of easily abandoned commitments? How con-scious are we of deepening this yes every day?) e) There is the cross, a heart stabbed through with the sword of suf-fering together with her Son; there is even the noncomprehension of the decrees of God and of the actions of the Lord himself whom she served. It is an apostolate of hope against hope, of faith before victory is won, of a venture whose reward is not paid in advance, of a loyalty that gives all. (To what extent can we find this spirit of sacrifice, of trust, during our darkest and driest moments in our own lives?) These are foundations for a ~olid Marian spirituality inserted into the very fabric of our apostolic call and going way beyond simple devotion. Yes, Mary is there for us as model for our apostolate. But even more, she is there as a source of the help that we need. Not help with this or that small favor, but help for our deepest need--help in being effective Christ-bearers. Mary's Magnificat Finally, Mary serves as a powerful example and model of the capac-ity to recognize what God has done and is doing in our lives. Her Mag-nificat is precisely this: Mary's personal experience of God's action in herself and in her people. This consciousness compels her to break out 350 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 into simple and wholly inspired praise, boldly proclaiming the undimmed truth about God, who "has done great things" in her as well as in the whole universe (RM 37). Mary was truly attuned to what God was accomplishing. Could we not write our own Magnificat---on a personal level and on a community level? I recall how touched I was in Angola upon hearing of a mission community having its yearly meeting with its satellite communities. The celebration began with the recounting of their history: how the commu-nity had started, the first ones involved, the failure of the first commu-nity, the second effort, the people involved, the priests who served them. And this was not simply read, but was corrected and added to by the mem-bers themselves. They were recounting the Lord's deeds, the great things he had done for them. And in this regular exercise they were keeping this reality vividly before them. What a beautiful way to attune one's heart and mind to the reality to which we can so often become blinded! The Magnificat is also used extensively as a solid Marian light which makes us vividly aware of God's love of preference for the poor, the hum-ble, and how this is intimately connected with the Christian meaning of freedom and liberation--of redemption. Here again Mary has her place. She can serve as an inspiration in this aspect of the Christian mission be-cause, as stated in the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation published in 1986, "Mary is totally dependent upon God and completely directed towards him, and at the side of her Son she is the most perfect image of freedom and of the liberation of humanity and of the universe" (97). Mary helps us understand that the most radical source of true lib-eration of individuals and even structures is precisely this total surren-der or, as she reminds us at La Salette, this submission to God and his plan for us. Without a revolution of the heart, merely political and so-cial revolutions only lay the foundations for the.next revolution in an end-less chain of humanly oppressive and destructive revolts. Mary proclaims the great things that God does, but these are done for those "who fear him," those who not only are poor and lowly, but have surrendered to him. Mary calls, in a variety of ways, to this radical revolution, which is first and foremost conversion. There is much richness to. draw from here and in other truths about Mary, such as her role in the growing appreciation of the feminine as-pect of the divine presence and the Church. Mary truly offers a seem-ingly inexhaustible source of faith reflection. And again, the Marian Year is an invitation to do such reflection. Marian Year / 351 How Celebrate the Marian Year? Concretely, what are some of the things we can do to benefit from this year of grace? First of all, spend time with Mary. It is as plain and as simple as that. If we are not already doing so, we should make time for her in our day. Let us do like the apostle John and welcome Mary, take her into our own home. Let us bring her into everything that makes up our inner life; that is to say, let us take her into our human and Christian "I," as the pope beautifully expressed it (RM 45). This is the first step: profess our faith in Mary's great love and presence by simply spending time with her and opening our hearts, our lives, as wide as possible to her maternal love. Prayerfully read Redemptoris Mater and other texts on Mary. Again, do this to feed the heart more than the head. Avoid reading only the kinds of works that foster such a strong analytical, critical spirit that one ends up with slices and splices, theological abstractions about Mary, but not with a living presence. Read not to try to dispel the mystery that natu-rally accompanies any great truth of our faith, but read to encounter this mystery with ever greater love. Read and pray to move from professing to living a deep love for Mary, Mother of Christ and of the Church. If some of us have left the rosary aside, let us explore ways to begin to re-discover its possibilities for reflection, for rhythmic, simple centering on Jesus and Mary. If you have a good imagination, use it. St. Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises does not neglect this tremendous power that we have. In re-cent. years we have easily dismissed using the imagination in prayer and meditation, often because of our climate of high intellectualization, often from a desire to quickly arrive at more advanced levels of prayer. My own suggestion is to try imaging as you spend time with Mary. The re-sults may surprise you. Visualize Mary with you in every situation of your life and of her life. Talk to her, let her talk to you. Let her hold what is still the child in you that may be trembling with fear, doubt, an-ger, confusion, fatigue. Hear her call you by name; hear her invite you to come near; hear her send you forth. Write your own Magnificat. Spend time tracing the great things God has done both in your own life and in the congregation. Recognize God's action in the flesh and blood of your own history: when and how he looked with favor on his lowly servant; when and how he smashed and scattered you in your pride, cast you down from any little thrones you had set up for yourself, or sent you away aware of how empty you re-ally were when you thought you were so rich; how and when he lifted 352 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 you up even as you experienced most forcefully your own lowliness. Put all that into concrete, vivid terms. And then give praise. Then write your own fiat. Look into the depths of your present and look out towards the possible future and with conviction spell out the fiat, the yes, even though you are not sure of the cost, the possible ex-iles, the shape or duration of the cross you may have to carry, to climb upon. "Yes--be it done to me according to your word." Yes, I let go of my plans, my conditions. I surrender, I submit. Fiat! Again, spell that out in the concrete terms of your own life. At the same time, offer a prayer to Mary asking for her assistance to live out thisfiat as fully and as deeply as possible. And let us not fail the people we serve. Invite them to Mary. Let us attract and lead them to what the pope calls the "specific geography of faith and Marian devotion., these special places of pilgrimage where the People of God seek to meet the Mother of God in order to find, within the radius of the maternal presence of her 'who believes,' a strengthening of their own faith" (RM 28). Our shrines, our programs of devotion, all these can be sources of grace through Mary for the con-tinuing pilgrimage of faith. Be creative in bringing Mary to people and people to Mary. I close with words from our Holy Father's prayer for the Marian Year: "Mary, you received Jesus with ready obedience and undivided heart. You allowed yourself to be led by the Holy Spirit's hidden and powerful action. Sustain us, O Virgin Mary, on our journey of faith." My own prayer for all of us echoes the pope's prayer at a Mass re-cently in Foggia: "May this Marian Year be for individual souls and for the entire community a prolonged, ardent Pentecost." Personal Responsibility in .Initial Formation Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D. Sister Melannie's most recent contribution to this journal is her "Quotations for Com-munity" in the January/February 1988 issue. She may be addressed at Notre Dame Educational Center; 13000 Auburn Road; Chardon, Ohio 44024. For most formation directors, one thing is clear: One of our main con-cerns in the initial formation process is to encourage personal responsi-bility in the persons we direct. What is less clear is the answers to these questions: What exactly is personal responsibility? Why is it so impor-tant in initial formation? How can we encourage it in our directees? What are some signs that a person is, indeed, growing in personal responsibil-ity? And what are some of the obstacles to our encouraging of personal responsibility? This article attempts to explore some answers to these questions. It is based on a series of discussions that our initial-formation team had this past year. I am indebted to our candidate director, Sister Annete Adams, and our director of temporary professed, Sister Mary Catherine Caine, for their valuable input on this topic. Although we were primarily inter-ested in personal responsibility in initial formation, much of what is said here can also apply to the ongoing formation process as well. What is personal responsibility? It is perhaps easier to describe personal responsibility than it is to define it. We saw personal responsibility as a person's ability to make good decisions and to accept the consequences of his or her decisions. Such decisions are made freely; they are not made out of fear or guilt or coercion. The decisions or choices are basically good; that is, they are 353 354 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 based on Gospel ~alues and they are motivated by love. They take into consideration factors other than the person's own feelings and prefer-ences. And, finally, the decisions are open to the Spirit and open to change as life presents the individual with more knowledge, more expe-riences, and more insights. Why is personal responsibility so important? There are a number of reasons why personal responsibility is so im-portant in initial formation. One reason concerns one of the goals of the initial-formation process: the making of a life commitment. Such a com-mitment is valid only if it is made freely, with adequate knowledge and understanding, and if it proceeds from love. In other words, the very mak-ing of valid vows presupposes personal responsibility. But personal responsibility extends beyond the making of a commit-ment; it is essential for the living of such a commitment in a healthy and happy way. Once a person "graduates" from the "schoo| of initial for-mation," he or she is expected to assume responsibility for his or her own growth and development. It is crucial, then, that formation direc-tors see and encourage personal responsibility throughout the initial-formation process. A third reason why personal responsibility is so vital concerns the nature of religious life today. The many changes in the structures of re-ligious life since Vatican II call for far more personal responsibility than in the past. Changes in our understanding of the vows and community also put far greater emphasis on an individual's ability to make good de-cisions and choices. How can we encourage personal responsibility? If personal responsibility is so important in initial formation, what are some of the ways we can encourage it in the persons we direct? One way we can encourage it is to talk about it. We do this not once and for all, but over and over again, in a variety of ways, from different per-spectives as the person grows and matures in the initial-formation proc-ess. We should talk about personal responsibility in both a general way and a specific way. In a general way we discuss with them the nature and importance of personal responsibility. In a specific way we talk with them one on one about how responsible they are. This means we have to ask some probing questions such as these: When and where are you praying? How do you see yourself carrying out your duties such as study, housework, your involvement in community? What are your responsi-bilities in your current ministry and how are you handling them? What Personal Responsibility in Formation / 355 personal decisions or choices have you made recently? Do you see these decisions or choices as good? Why or why not? How are you getting along with the people you live with and work with? Do they see you as a responsible person or not? A second way to encourage personal responsibility is to allow the per-son in formation the freedom to make choices--both good choices and not-so-good choices. This means that as directors we allow an individ-ual to make mistakes. It has been my experience as novice director that some of the worst choices my novices made were some of the most bene-ficial for their growth. Thirdly, we encourage personal responsibility by affirming a person when we see him or her assuming personal responsibility. We can also encourage it by allowing our directees to live with and work side by side with professed members of the community who have achieved a healthy level of personal responsibility. Nothing teaches better than example. What are some signs of personal responsibility in a person? What are some tangible signs that a person in formation is assuming personal responsibility? For brevity's sake, I will merely list some of those signs as we saw them: The person: --gives evidence of self-knowledge and self-esteem --is basically happy and at ease with life --is able to learn from experience --is able to do things he or she does not like to do --gives evidence of being essentially self-directed ~isplays a consistency between stated beliefs and choices --is able to draw from a variety of sources when making serious deci-sions --gives evidence that he or she has thought through and prayed over the more serious decisions he or she has to make --is open to suggestions and direction --is able to deal with irresponsibility in others; this means he or she can accept it when necessary, but also is able to confront it when this would be the more appropriate option --is consistent in behavior no matter who is or is not present --gives evidence of a healthy interdependence with others --assumes initiative ---can deal with boredom or routine 356 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 --- can handle both failure and success What are some obstacles to encouraging personal responsibility? As formation directors, what are some of the obstacles we face in trying to encourage persona.I responsibility in the persons we direct? I think the main obstacles come from three different sources: our directees, the wider community, and ourselves. Sometimes the persons we have in initial formation make it difficult for us to encourage personal responsibility. Some individuals come to religious life desiring to hand over all personal responsibility in the name of holiness. They come to us with a tell-me-what-to-do-and-I-will-do-it attitude. In sharp contrast, others enter religious life equating personal responsibility with let-me-do-whatever-I-want-to-do. Both types make it difficult for formation directors to encourage a healthy personal respon-sibility. Other times one of our obstacles may be members of the wider com-munity. Some professed members may possess an obsolete understand-ing of initial formation which says, "Tell the novice what to do. If she does it, fine. If she doesn't, tell her to leave." When a formation direc-tor, in the name of freedom, allows a person in formation to make a poor choice, other members might cry out: "You're letting her get away with murder!" At times like these, formation directors must be convinced that there is much more to formation than having a directee make what ap-pear to be "the right choices all the time." But the greatest obstacle to encouraging personal responsibility usu-ally lies within ourselves as formation directors. We can fall into two "camps" depending on our personalities. If I, as a director, am a per-son who likes to be in control, then I might want to control my directees too much. This means I might not allow them the real freedom to make their own decisions and thus to grow through them. Perhaps I might con-trol their choices through force or even charm. Perhaps, in the name of saving them the pain of a poor choice, I might tell them what to do. Or maybe I control their decisions for fear of what the next director or the wider community will think of me. On the other hand, if I am fearful of my authority as a formation di-rector, I might adopt a laissez-faire style of direction. This means I might let anything and everything go. I might not challenge the persons in for-mation. I may be afraid to question the choices I see them making. Be-cause most communities have so few in initial formation, I might be tempted to "keep" everyone no matter how much irresponsibility I see. Personal Responsibility in Formation / 357 In conclusion, then, we have seen that growth in personal responsi-bility is an integral part of the initial-formation process. But more than that, it is an intrinsic component of lifelong happiness. Someone has said, "There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are differ-ent from the things we do." Through the encouragement of personal re-sponsibility, formation directors can help individuals achieve greater har-mony between belief and behavior. Your World is Your World, mythirst. Love, will all these as beautiful earthly treasures as the one stillbemine? You give me orshall I each day? lose forever will I see thesmell the changing of burning leaves, of the sky., noreveragain will I watch see the trees the birds fly ofmy autumn days beyond my horizon., change their dress? will I feel wherewill the touch all these be, of warm water Love. ? as it caresses oh! surely, my flesh, I'll have or its cold them all coolness in having You! as it slakes Claire Mahaney, R.S.C.J. Valparaiso Community 140 Valparaiso Avenue Menlo Park, California 94025 Refounding Through Values Barbara D. Ledig Ms. Ledig is president of Omega Associates, Inc., in Santa Clara, California. With others from Omega, she has for almost ten years helped religious orders and congre-gations to adjust, with value-based systemic discernment, to the significant changes of the post-Vatican II world. This paper explains the theory and practice of Omega's methods, methods that will be used in the August 1988 workshop for religious lead-ership personnel to be held at Santa Clara University and sponsored by that university and by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. She may be addressed at 410 Pinehurst Avenue; Los Gatos, CA 95030. What is happening in our institutions today? This question is being fre-quently asked by religious congregations, educational institutions, health-care facilities, and,~more recently, sectors of business and industry. It seems that the guidelines and structures that characterized these systems since their first formal beginnings have become increasingly unfocused. This is unsettling not only for those who administer and lead these institutions but for those affected by them. A major portion of society, therefore, is dealing with a shift that is little understood, a shift accom-panied by anxiety and indecision. Solutions that once worked have be-come obsolete and there are no models for new ones. Our religious institutions are experiencing this shift more profoundly than many others in that they have been around for a longer time. They are, therefore, further away from their beginnings, beginnings rooted an historical reality very different from the one in which we are currently living. Members of these institutions are finding that the ideas on which they were built and the type of management that enabled them to sur-vive and flourish are no longer working. The population of religious per-sonnel who drive these institutions is diminishing; as a result people who do not necessarily share the original values that gave birth to them are 358 Refounding Through Values / 359 the ones responsible for making decisions regarding the way they func-tion and how they will be carried into the future. An Historical Perspective The extreme change in the Western world resulting from the French and American Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution in England led to the birth of the great teaching and mission orders of the 1800s. These orders, especially those of women, generally came to operate on a basis of uniformity in dress, behavior, and prayer, with detailed rules and con-stitutions regulating daily life. It was through Vatican II in the 1960s that these issues were readdressed and the Church began to return to a more flexible, collegial orientation and urged religious congregations to re-study and return to their founding charism. Communal life in the convents, and seminaries, where often a hun-dred or more people shared living quarters, began to take the form of small communities for the purpose of increasing the quality of life through relationships in which personal growth could more readily be en-couraged and nurtured. The ultimate goal was increased unity in the Church for the purpose of common mission. The vision was a good one but did not anticipate sufficiently the wide range of skills needed to cope with a radically changed environment and more complex interpersonal relationships. The old hierarchical structures and lines of authority were removed or became unclear, and participative decision making was en-couraged. The effects of these changes increased dramatically over the years and are now being experienced in their extreme. The Dynamics of Transition The removal of clear lines of authority has created multiple handi-caps for those in leadership positions. When clear rules dictate what is right and wrong and when authority is vested in one person, as was the case before Vatican II, decisions can be made on objective criteria that are commonly understood and accepted. When these lines of authority become hazy, when the guidelines are unclear, decision making becomes a more complex issue. Personal and communal discernment, methods that have replaced the more authoritarian ones for decision making, re-spect the integrity of the individual on the one hand but require a more complex level of skills on the other. There has been a shift from a rigid structure to a more flexible one. During the last seven years our work with numerous national and inter-national congregations has, however, shown that this shift is incomplete. Most religious institutions are resting somewhere between a hierarchi- 360/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 cal, rule-oriented structure and a flexible, collegial one. The result is con-fusion, internal conflict, and tremendous stress on leadership. It is a time of difficult transition. Older sisters and priests who have given their lives to build these in-stitutions in order to provide relief to the suffering through their minis-tries feel unappreciated and confused about changing a way that was once so strongly validated. Younger sisters and priests are also experiencing confusion about the past as well as the uncertain futures into which their congregations are moving. The dynamics of such a transition are two-fold. There is a pull back to the old, secure model on the one hand and an equally strong pull to move quickly to a new model on the other. Mem-bers of a congregation caught in the first dynamic may become rigid, an-gry, and controlling while those in the second are prone to overly inde-pendent behaviors. In both cases there is a loss of meaning. These dy-namics are not necessarily related to the different age groups within the congregation but appear to be more dependent on the personalities of the individuals. Going back is not possible, nor desirable. What once worked was ap-propriate for the times. Society has changed, our institutions have changed, and people have changed. How do we bring clarity, unity, and efficiency into our institutions so that they can serve the function for which they were created and at the same time enable them to respect and dignify the growth and well-being of the individuals they serve? The hi-erarchical structures that once worked so well must change in form to meet the demands of this new age and become flexible structures that fa-cilitate caring for individual members and releasing the original energy of the charism of the congregation. The values that gave birth to the in-stitution must be renewed and preserved so they 'can flow through its mem-bers and be expressed in mission, but the way in which those values are expressed must change. The structures that have been removed must be replaced by value-oriented ones. In order to effect this change the insti-tution must first become clear about what values lie at the heart of its system. The core center of values, the faith center, must be identified and clarified. Once this is accomplished the clarified core values, imple-mented by historically congruent means, provide the new structures which enable appropriate adaptation to the future. The Nature of Values Values are not a new phenomenon in our society. Aristotle and Plato spoke of them in the light of ideals, or virtues. They were dealt with mainly in the abstract in terms of states of being to be strived for. Refounding Through Values / 36"1 St. Paul spoke of values in his letter to the Galatians: "Anyone can see the kind of behavior that belongs to the lower nature: fornication, im-purity, and indecency; idolatry and sorcery; quarrels, a contentious tem-per, envy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, party bouts, or-gies, and the like . But the harvest of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control" (Ga 5:19-23 NEB). In this case values were seen as signs that differentiated behaviors guided by the Spirit from those that were not. In more recent history we have the value-clarification movement of the 1960s and in the 1980s the high point of value consciousness in busi-ness and industrial settings brought forth largely by such books as In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman, Theory Z: How Ameri-can Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge by Ouchi, and Corpo-rate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life by Deal and Ken-nedy. However, the reality is that it has been difficult to work with values because they tend to elude the possibility for practical application and measurement. The work of Omega Associates, Inc., of Santa Clara, Cali-fornia has been focused on value research for the past twenty years. Dur-ing this period of time we have worked on discovering ways to identify and measure values so that they can be used more creatively to enhance the quality of human life. The first step in this ongoing process was the identification of 125 value words in the written and spoken language. We found that these val-ues appear consistently throughout the life span of individuals and or-ganizations and appear to be stable and evident across all social strata, languages, and cultures. They constitute one segment of a values theory developed by Brian Hall, Benjamin Tonna, and more recently Barbara Ledig which is the basis for an understanding of how values on the indi-vidual and corporate level work. The values theory holds as a basic assumption that language influ-ences behavior, whether it is written language, spoken language, or the language of art and architecture. Some words and groups of words have a greater effect on behavior than others, and we call these words values. The value words we identified form the basis for computerized programs which analyze values in individuals, groups, institutions, and documents and serve as a framework through which we can look at all sections of a system through a common denominator. The basis of the framework is the 125 values. The principles which guide the understanding of how 362 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 the values work are found in the values theory. Values Theory and the Genesis Effect The basic concept underlying the values theory is taken from an an-cient idea that has only recently been confirmed by modern science. That is, each thought, feeling, and action is preceded by an internal image. That image is transformed into action through language, the language of values. Value words are conveyers of energy and form configurations that reflect the internal imaging process through human or organizational behavior. That is, they identify clusters of human experience and act as a bridge between the inner world of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intuitions and the outer world of concrete reality. Values are understood in this context as behavioral priorities that an individual acts on. This proc-ess has been defined by Hall as the "genesis effect" in a book by the same name and is based on the biblical concept that it was through, the spoken word that God transformed an inner image of creation into real-ity. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, "Let there be !ight," and there was light. God saw how good the light was . Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cat-tle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground." God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them (Gn 1:1-4, 26-27 NAB). Values and Their Patterns To identify and clarify our values is a step in the right direction, but what do we do with them after that? Our research has shown us that it is not so much values in themselves that are important, but the way in which they combine with other values in one's life and the priority these combinations take at a given time. We have long been aware of some of the value combinations and the way they can be grouped into clusters and patterns. However, a significant point was reached in our work just six years ago due to new advances in computer technology. Brian Hall and associates of Omega in cooperation with students in the Graduate Di-vision of Counseling Psychology and Education at Santa Clara Univer-sity in Santa Clara, California, discovered new ways to measure and ap-ply values and new ways to break them into patterns and clusters so that they could be compared and contrasted more extensively. This gave us Refounding Through Values more comprehensive information regarding their meaning in the life of persons and institutions. Since that time we have validated our meth-odologies and applied them extensively in religious, educational, and health-care systems involving several international cultures and over 6,000 individuals. The information we obtain from the identification and comparison of value priorities and clusters is used to do a value analysis for the pur-pose of understanding the qualitative nature of the values and their rela-tionship to the meaning system of the individual or the institution. Once this is clear, rigid rule-oriented structures can be replaced by new life-giving ones based on the energy and purpose inherent in the individual or system rather than on external, objective criteria that may be histori-cally biased. Value Pattern I: Phases and Stages In this value pattern we see the 125 values placed along a progres-sive developmental scale divided into phases and stages. The range of the phases is from I to IV with those most basic to human life and devel-opment falling into Phase I. These values progressively become more com-plex as the human being grows and develops, with Phase IV reflecting values of maximum complexity requiring high levels of intellectual, spiri-tual, and emotional development and an environment that supports their expression. This developmental scale does not assume a positive or negative value but rather places emphasis on the integration of the values in the life journey of the individual or the institution in terms of the skill de-velopment needed in order to live them out behaviorally. It is the com-bination of the values and how they fall against the backdrop of the four phases in relationship to one another that determines the quality of life expression. Each of the four phases is divided into two stages, an A stage and a B stage. Values in the A stages are personal values, and values in the B stages are those lived out primarily through institutional interaction. These institutions include the family, place of work, church or syna-gogue, government structures, and religious congregation. Because a per-son's value choices are always limited and influenced by the institutions in which he or she lives and works, the degree to which this interaction can be measured and understood influences the degree to which the per-son can have clarity about the environment's effect on the quality of his or her life. The end result is heightened insight and the ability to make more focused choices. Likewise, an institution can become aware of the 3611 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 impact it is having on its members. Value Pattern II: Act, Choice, and Vision The value combinations in their phases and stages can also be pat-terned according to the priority they take in one's life in terms of pre-sent choices, past development, and emerging futures. Choice values are those that are the present focus of one's life in terms of time and energy expenditure. These choices are not always made freely but are condi-tioned by one's life circumstances. For example, a person may value his or her family a great deal, but if a crisis in the work place occurs he or she may have to work twelve hours a day until the crisis is resolved. In this case, the value of family would of necessity become secondary in terms of the time and energy available to be dedicated to it. Act values are those values that are foundational to human life. They are the basic values which enable survival and security in the world. When these values are threatened by a change in one's environment, such as a move to a new culture or the loss of a job, priority energy must be diverted from the areas of choice in order to deal with the change. Vision values are those values which energize us and pull us toward hopeful futures. They motivate us in the present by giving meaning our day-to-day experience and enabling us to see beyond ourselves and our present reality. In an institution, Act values serve as the foundation in terms of poli-cies, procedures, benefits, and so on. The Choice values are those which guide day-to-day direction and define the management structure. Vision values provide the purpose of the institution and affect the way in which Choice values are operationalized. Value Pattern III: Cycles A third value pattern emerges when the combinations of values in their personal and institutional dimensions form cycles of development. There are seven such cycles, and each has its own unique worldview. Information around the values in each of these cycles helps in the inter-pretation of an individual's or group's leadership and management style, ethical orientation, faith stance, management of time, and behavior pat-terns under stress. Of particular significance to professional religious per-sonnel are the different ways in which the vows can be understood at each of these cycles. The first cycle is called the Primal Cycle. At this cycle the individ-ual experiences the world as a hostile and alien place in which primary needs are those centered on security and survival. He or she emphasizes Refounding Through Values / 365 material possession because it is through material structures that survival is made possible. This is primarily the world of young children or aged adults who must depend on others to care for them and provide them with basic security. However, through the life journey most people will ex-perience values in this cycle from time to time, for we never lose our need for safety and security. The ethical stance of this cycle is one of self-interest which insures survival. A leader who operates primarily out of Cycle I values will have an autocratic and authoritarian style with his or her subordinates for the purpose of maintaining total control. Delegation comes with difficulty because it is perceived as a diminishment of personal power. God is ex-perienced as a savior who heals one's pain but who is distant and imper-sonal. The task at this cycle is to learn the skills needed to survive in an alien environment and to develop a creative and positive imagination that will facilitate healthy movement into other cycles. The second cycle is the Familial Cycle. As the world becomes less alien and new skills are learned, there is an emphasis placed on values related to belonging to a family, a particular group, or a respected insti-tution. It is important to learn skills that enable one to be accepted by and to contribute to the group. The ethical stance at this cycle is based on fairness and mutual re-spect. Laws and rules are expected to be followed so as to maintain an ordered environment. A leader operating out of this cycle will tend to be benevolent to those who work for him or her but will expect them to obey the rules. The attitude is best described as maternal or paternal in that followers are cared for but are not given any authority. This becomes problematic when the follower wants more autonomy and responsibility. At this cycle God is experienced as a parental master and teacher, through one's parents and through the ministerial figures in the church or synagogue. The primary task at this cycle is to learn skills through formal edu-cation and to begin to understand the world more broadly. Sound relig-ious education in the Faith and in Scripture are important. The third cycle is called the Institutional Cycle. It is here that the world begins to be experienced as less alien than before, and increased emphasis is placed on education as a means to achievement and success. There is often tension between the time spent with one's family and the time spent doing things necessary to enable the family to survive. 366/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 Ethical choices are most likely to be based on what the law and re-spected institutions say is right. A leader operating with priority values in this cycle will have a bureaucratic style and will place high value on efficient and orderly management. Loyalty to the company will be ex-pected and rewarded and disloyalty considered a serious offense. The bu-reaucratic leader may delegate to others but only to those who are most skilled and who have proven their loyalty. God is experienced as master and teacher and is often represented through the ministers and priests of the church. The sacramental life and personal prayer are considered important, as are institutional religion and commitment to a local church or synagogue. The primary task at this cycle is to learn interpersonal and social skills and the skills of one's profession. It is also a time to begin under-standing the difference between one's own values and the values held by one's family. It is a time of preparation for conversion to special service related to God's call. The fourth cycle is the Intrapersonal Cycle. At this time the world begins to be experienced as less certain than before, and new questions arise regarding previously held beliefs and attitudes. A search for new personal meaning and values may be embarked upon and the teachings of formerly respected institutions looked upon more critically. Profes-sional successes may become less important as the individual strives to discover his or her unique skills and abilities. There is a pull between a strong need for independence and meeting the demands of the institu-tions of which one is a part. Issues around social justice may take on new interest and lead to increased involvement in political or social arenas. The ethical orientation at the Intrapersonal Cycle becomes confused as one pulls away from old ways of making decisions and strives to put into action values that are beginning to create a new, more individual-ized way of assessing reality. A leader with priority values at this cycle will struggle between meeting the needs of the institution and being sen-sitive to the more personal needs of his or her employees. It is a time of confusion and of search for the balance between these two, often op-posing, factors. Hence, it may also be a time of inaction because it is simply too difficult to make decisions. This is a transitional stage of lead-ership, sometimes referred to as laissez-faire, for things are very often left to happen as they will. It is critical for persons operating at this cy-cle to learn the skills that enable them to make decisive decisions which meet both institutional needs and the needs of the individuals in the in- Refounding Through Values stitution; otherwise there is the risk of returning to a more bureaucratic and controlling management or leadership style. God is now becoming internal and personal as a friend and lover in-stead of master and teacher. For many, this period is marked by conver-sion to a new commitment to the Faith. The development of skills in the imaginal area is needed in order to see the world more wholistically and creatively. Meditation and spiritual exercises as well as attention to one's physical health are important for growth into a world that is experienced as more complex. It is important to find a p~rticular life-sustaining value system that enables a new com-mitment to faith. The fifth cycle is the Communal/Collaborative Cycle. Individuals functioning at this cycle will experience the world as a place in which they feel they can participate by using their unique skills in a productive way, The search is now concentrated on discovering new ways to inte-grate individual abilities with the needs of society. Because of the high level of interaction at which the individual is now functioning, issues of time management become critical. Persons at this cycle begin to see the world more clearly, resulting, in an increased awareness of issues around justice and oppression. It becomes impera-tive that they have support structures such as a group of respected peers and trusted friends as well as people of the same professional status and ability with whom ideas and problems can be shared regularly. Ethical choices at this cycle are based on the personally meaningful set of values that have developed, and actions are guided by an inner con-science. Laws are respected but not considered infallible. A charismatic and democratic leadership style becomes possible, for the individual has a new sense of personal creative energy and a renewed vision of an in-stitution that can be efficient and can dignify its members as well. Be-cause leaders of this type are in high demand, issues of time manage-ment, stress, and personal health are more important than ever. God now is experienced as a personal friend and companion sharing in the new ex-pression of the gifts that are becoming a part of the individual's life ex-perience. The sixth cycle is the Mystical Cycle. When individuals are able to acquire the skills, maturity, life experience, and integrated personal de-velopment which characterize this cycle, they begin to experience the world as a revered gift they must be responsible for and with which they must creatively interact. 3611/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 Ethical choices are based on an awareness of the rights of all human beings. Activities include doing those things necessary to diminish in-justices in institutions and organizations. A leader operating with the val-ues and skills of this cycle is called a Servant leader. Servant leadership is characterized by interdependence, mutual responsibility, collegiality, and creativity. Group decision making becomes a natural process, and authority is always used corporately. God is now lover, friend, and Lord of creation. Persons at this cycle experience humanity in a new, more complete way through God's eyes. Intimacy with others is a condition for intimacy with the divine and re-quires radical commitment to service and the contemplative side of one-self. This means balancing the personal experience of intimacy with con-templative solitude and obligations to work and service. Those persons who are able to achieve this high level of functioning must learn new skills, the most critical being the skills that will help them to balance their involvement in the development of just and humane in-stitutions with ample time for solitude and intimacy. It is this balance that will enable them to maintain the level of emotional, physical, men-tal, and spiritual integration necessary for being a powerful and yet posi-tive influence in the world. The seventh and last cycle is the Prophetic Cycle. The world here is viewed as a mystery for which "we" must care. "We" is used in this case as Prophetic leadership primarily expressed at a global level. It requires the collaboration of all institutions concerned with human dig-nity and justice. It is also expressed through being a member of a sup-portive community of peers who appreciate a global level of involve-ment. Global involvement assumes equal attention to local levels. Ethical choices at this cycle lead to involvement in activities de-signed to improve the balance between the world of material goods and the needs of each human being. Prophetic leadership is characterized by interdependence at an interinstitutional and global level and is concerned with global ethical issues centered in ecology, human rights, and tech-nological advancement. God is now experienced as the Lord of creation calling all people to cooperate in establishing a more just and ecologically balanced order in the world. A critical skill component of this high level of development is an awareness of the field of consciousness of all of the preceding cycles and the ability to interact with persons at each level. Spiritually, there is a new appreciation of God's Lordship over the whole creation and a reali- Refounding Through Values / 369 zation that all people are being called to cooperate with God in estab-lishing a more just and ecologically balanced order in the world. Value patterns I, II, and III are based on the perspective of the Hall value theory that holds that life is developmental. In this case time is ex-perienced as linear, moving from the past into the future. This is a help-ful way to view the values in their connection to skills as skills are learned step by step in the developmental process. In reality, however, our past and future can only be experienced in the present. Past devel-opment affects the quality of our lives in the present as do our envisioned futures. This brings us to value pattern IV, which sees life as wholistic, with past, present, and future forming the present reality. Value Pattern IV: Goals and Means Values The fourth value pattern is the combinations of Goals, which are long-term values, with Means, or short-term values. A large part of the analysis of values is concerned with this interactive, or dialectical, rela-tionship between Goals and Means. The significance of these combina-tions can be realized when one looks at the difference in the quality of the behavioral expression of different combinations of Goals and Means values. For example, when the value of Worship, a Goal value, is ex-pressed through the Means value of Institution, the behavioral conse-quence would be personal worship through institutionalized expressions such as attending Eucharist or praying the Liturgy of the Hours. When the same Goal value of Worship is expressed through the Means value of Expressiveness/Flexibility, the result may be worship through faith sharing, dance, or creative liturgy. Two people sharing the same Goal value may be at odds about how this Goal value is expressed. Likewise, persons in religious congregations, united by the same goals, may be di-vided in their opinions about the way in which these goals should be ex-pressed. Frequently, institutions have Goal values that are in keeping with the original vision on which they were founded, but have outdated Means values for reaching those goals. Understanding the Value Patterns: The Discernment Process The methodology for working with value information must be con-sistent with the nature of the values themselves. For that reason, unlike most methodologies that were designed to give reports based on factual findings, the methodology for collecting value information and analyz-ing value patterns is based on a process of discernment, a reflective proc-ess that raises questions rather than gives answers. There are several steps in the discernment process. 370 / Review for Religious, May-June 1988 The first step is the collection of information. The information (I) must be high-quality information as well as statistical/financial informa-tion and (2) must be collected in a consistent manner. High-quality information is information that comes close to the pulse and heartbeat of all parts of the system. It is, in this case, value infor-mation. It is collected consistently by specialized instrumentation that uses an underlying algorithm based on the 125 values and the values the-ory. All of the information is processed by the use of the methodology of Convergence, Congruence, and Confirmation. ConVergence occurs when particular value patterns repeat themselves. The information is then checked for Congruency with what the person or persons in the institu-tion know to be true about themselves and for Confirmation in the lived reality. The Instrumentation is as follows. HT-Doc This abbreviation refers to the HalI-Tonna method of collecting in-formation from the formal documents of the institution. This may be the philosophy of the person or persons who founded the institution in which its purpose, mission, and charism are delineated as well as information contained in the rules, constitutions, or directives. By analyzing the val-ues in each paragraph of the documents, a values.profile can be obtained on the paragraphs, on each part, section, and chapter, and on the docu-ments as a whole. In addition, identified areas of interest throughout the documents--such as those dealing with leadership, charism, vows, and mission---can also be analyzed for their value content. These value pro-files are then reflected on and analyzed in terms of congruences and dis-crepancies and the significance they may have in light of internal con-sistency. The information derived from these profiles can be translated into practical applications. For example, by looking at the value patterns in the Act, Choice, and Vision areas, it is possible to see what the docu-ments are saying in terms of the Act area as related to policies and pro-cedures, the Choice area as related to management structures, and the Vision area as related to long-term goals. In a religious congregation the Vision values would define the expression of mission. The Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values The Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values is a 77-item forced-choice ques-tionnaire which raises questions relative to an individual's preferences and choices. The result of this questionnaire is a 15-to-25 page report which shows the individual's priority value choices on a developmental scale. A set of questions is raised for each cluster of value choices. The Refounding Through Values / 371 recipient of the report is then asked to respond to these questions by read-ing through them and identifying those that reflect issues of priority con-cern based on specified criteria. If desired, the Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values can be combined for specified groups of individuals in order to produce a composite profile. This is often helpful in looking at the com-bined values of a leadership team, local house, or general council for pur-poses of planning, education, or creating a corporate mission-and-philosophy statement within the boundaries of the value information ob-tained from the analysis of the documents. Another way to apply this in-formation is to look at the composite values of the entire institution and compare them with the envisioned values of the institution as expressed through its documents. The Hall-Ledig Interview Format (Interform) This is another method by which information can be collected on in-dividuals through a one-hour personal interview for the purpose of com-paring value information from the Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values with value information from the lived reality. Once the collection of information has been completed, the second step in the discernment process is reflecting on the information. The information which has been collected thr.ough one or more of the above instruments is then reflected on and analyzed. The value pat-terns which have emerged are compared with one another, convergences and discrepancies are noted, and discernment questions are raised from the composite information. It is, once again, through the process of Con-vergence, Congruence, and Confirmation that priority issues can be dis-cerned from the large amount of data collected. If more than one type of instrumentation has been used, the process repeats itself each time with questions being raised based on the internal relationship of the value clusters to one another, the relationship between different sets of value clusters, and the relationship between sets of value clusters gathered with each type of instrumentation. This brings us to the third step of the discernment process, which is acting on the information. The focal issues in the data that has been col-lected up to this point have now been identified. Each issue results in a series of discernment questions. As the questions are responded to, the plan for action begins to unfold based on the discrepancies in the infor-mation gathered with each type of instrumentation as well as discrepan-cies between the information from all of the instrumentation used. The information is then moved to action in the form of value-based policies, procedures and minimal-norm statements, leadership training, education 379/Review for Religious, May-June 1988 focus for initial and ongoing formation, and long-term strategic planning. Conclusions The Church today, like many of our institutions, is experiencing a significant crisis. On the positive side this can be seen as a call, a call to reevaluate the way in which it is moving into the future. History has introduced new concept

Issue 47.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1988. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The edito-rial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year; $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail, add $5.00 per year; for airmail, add $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors Sept./Oct. 1988 Volume 47 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to R~.wEw EOR R~.LtGWOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW ~o~t REI.IGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. The Social Dimensions of Religious Ministry Joseph P. Daoust, S.J. This is a slightly revised version of Father Daoust's well-received address on August 13, 1986, to the thirtieth national assembly of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. He has been his province's assistant for social ministries and higher educa-tion. At present he is on sabbatical in Africa and Asia and has no fixed residence, but he may be addressed at Jesuit Provincial Office; 7303 W. Seven Mile Road; De-troit, Michigan 48221. In a terrifying image of where our civilization is leading us, a prominent Italian writer envisions Western 'man (and woman) becoming like an earth-worm: a simple organism having only mouth, intestines, and anus, do-ing nothing but ingesting, digesting, excreting. ! It is an image of pro-ducing in order to consume, and consuming mindlessly in order to move what has been produced through our societal '.~'gut." Any kind of con-sumption will do, just as the earthworm moves any kind of soil through its intestinal tube. Indeed, that is how the earthworm (and Homo con-sumens) moves ahead in dark, dank, endless underground burrows-- consuming, producing, excreting. When indigestion sets in because of overproduction, war serves as a purgative,°consuming the detritus of ex-cess lives and goods, relieving the constipation of our maniacally pro-ducing and consuming system. Such is one vision of what we are doing to ourselves as a society. There is another vision of what society can become: [God] will reign over many peoples and arbitrate for mighty nations; and they shall beat their swords into pl6wshares,.and their spears into prun-ing hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit, everyone under his vine and un- 641 649 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 der his fig tree, and none, shall make them afraid; for the mo~th of the Lord of hosts has spoken it (Mi 4:3-4). In this vision, peace comes when each peasant has enough of the earth's goods for simple sustenance and can sit in quiet contemplation of the goodness of a just and beautiful world. All of this is achieved by learning God's ways and walking in God's path.2 Neither of these visions is fully realized in our world today. There are forces at work leading toward the first; the Spirit of God continues the age-old struggle to draw us toward the second. We are called as citi-zens of this age, as Christians, as religious, to invest our lives in help-ing our society make the ancient Deuteronomic choice: "I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Dr 30:19). Life is what the reign of God would bring about in our midst; the flowering of a society of justice and peace. The reign of God has profound social consequences. Justice and God's Reign: Scriptural Considerations in Scripture the reign of God is inextricably linked with social trans-formation. When Israel came to know Yahweh, it was as a God who heard their groaning in slavery and delivered them out of bondage (Dt 10:18-19). Remembering their own deliverance by God, the Israelites were bound in covenant not to oppress the poor or weak in their midst (Ex 22:21ff.). For Yahweh is a God who hears the cry of the poor (Ps 34:6). Again and.again Yahweh intervened through the prophets to call Israel back to this elemental demand: Is not th'is the sort of religious p?actice that pleases me?--it is thb Lord Yahweh who speaks--to break unjust fetters and Undo the thongs of the yoke, to let'the oppressed go free., to share your bread with the hun-gry and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be na-ked and not turn from your own kin? Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over. Your in.tegrity will go be-fore you and the glory of Yahweh behind you (Is.58:6-8; see also 1: 16, 10:1, 42:5). The religions and gods of the ancient Near East were primarily con-cerned with the legitimation of the established order of things3 (a func-tion still all too current today!), Imperial power, divinely ordained class structures, codes of behavior which reinforced "the way things have al-ways been"--these were the trappings of (eligions whose gods could be captured in images, located in certain sacred places, and therefore con-trolled. The divine power was thus subject to purchase (propitiation), Social Dimensions of Ministry / 64:3 able to be administered and routinized so as to support society's estab-lished ways of proceeding. Israel in the Old Testament is constantly tempted to refashion God in controllable images. Royal leaders and wealthy classes are portrayed as the initiators of this "whoring after' other gods" so as to legitimate their oppression, wars, and sumptuous ways. What distinguishes ancient Israel from surrounding societies is the constant intrusion of an imageless God, who refuses to dwell in temples or in"gold idols fashioned and controlled by the powerful. Yahweh dwells only ineffably on high, and with the lowly (Is 56: 15). Israel's God is dis-engaged from the ways of worldly power and identifies over and over again with the marginal, the dispossessed in society.'~ Indeed the iden-tity of this imageless God cannot be captured in traditional religious ways, but is expressed only by what Yahweh does--primarily acts of so-cial liberation: I am Yahweh . . . who delivered you from bondage (Ex 20:1), who loves j,ustice (Ps 99:4), who sees justice done for the orphan and widow, who answers the poor and needy (Ps 86:1 ), who chooses the weak (Dt 7:7), who reduces princes to nothing, and annihilates the rulers of the world (Is 40:23). Jesus spends his public ministry extending the good news of God's compassion and reign to all. It was a scandal to his contemporaries that he especially~ included suspect classes (shepherds, publicans, tax collec-tors), social outcasts (lepers, prostitutes, adulterers, Samaritans), and the poor. He went to his death coffsciously assuming the role of the Suffer-ing °Servant of Yahweh, knowing that this was the only way to bring about the reign of his Father. Some sought his death because he reso-lutely presented an unconventional, iconoclastic face of God Ioying the outcast, the db'wntrodden, the poor--"He has blasphemed.'~ Others sought his death because' his proclamation of God's justice threatened the social order.5 The Scriptures, then, portray a God who cares passionately about jus-tice, indeed even a "pain-embracing" God6 who acts in solidarity es-pecially with the oppressed and the marginalized. Christ in his ministry and message seals this revelatioh of God constantly acting in the world so as to bring about its transformation. The Gospels close with Christ risen inviting us down through the ages to "Follow me." Justice and God's Reign: Cultural Considerations Down through the ages the Church has wrestled with that impera- 644 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 tive with varying degrees of success. Like the Israelites of old, the Church is often tempted to replace the radical, transforming call of the Gospel with something more palatable to the cultural and social powers that be. Oppressive divisions of wealth and power, wars to protect these divisions, sumptuous living for some and dire poverty for others--these still need legitimation as of old. The idols which legitimate today are ide-ologies, social and economic theories, materialism and consumerism apo-theosized as a way of life. Idolatry in a literate society is more likely to use words than precious metals to achieve its effects. But religion is still being domesticated so as to legitimate and maintain, rather than confront, these idolized patterns of injustice. One hundred fifty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville visited America and found our culture and social institutions permeated with a new idea: Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citi-zen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself . They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands . Each man is forever thrown back upon himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.7 This individualism intersected congruently, then as it does now, with the competitive pursuit of self-interest, defined in terms of material well-being. But de Tocqueville found these social "habits of the heart" coun-terbalanced and modulated by a strong tradition of biblical faith, with its emphasis on self'-sacrifice for the common good, supported by the re-publican virtues of our early democracy: public duty and civic equity. Modern commentators have found these modulating forces to be with-ering, and individualism, competition, and rampant pursuit of material self-interest becoming exclusive social preoccupations.8 Individualism, like any other human creation, has much to recommend it, much human value. But when it becomes absolute, unquestioned, unfettered, it dis-torts and truncates human interaction. Its idolization creates and sustains injustice in society on a mass scale. Recent studies of American life and religious values have shown the distortions that unfettered individualism produces ir~ our cultural patterns of faith and religion.9 Historically., the disestablishment of religion America may have helped compartmentalize religious faith away from public social concerns. But religious individualism has been the moving force for the privatization of religious faith and practice. Social and cul- Social Dimensions of Ministry / 645 tural patterns of our society have been immunized from religious critique or challenge in the faith of many. Religion is felt to deal only with per-sonal or family issues; it intersects with public policy only to challenge it if' it intrudes on these narrow issues. Other social policies and struc-tures, individualism itself, materialism, the competitive economic envi-ronment- all are beyond the competence of religious critique. God and faith have no relevance in the marketplace, the business or political world, or anywhere outside the "soft" inner realm of the personal and the familial. In fact, religion blesses "the way things are" in these secu-lar real-world social settings. It legitimates them and the results they bring about, as effectively as the compartmentalization of religion to tem-ple worship and sacrifices did in ancient Israel, with consequent uncon-cern for the oppressed, the hungry, the poor. Religion is seen culturally by most as an idiosyncratic choice, a strictly personal preference or conviction as to which "brand" each per-son would like to "consume." And American consumers of religion largely choose a faith distorted by cultural forces so as to give them res-pite from social chaos and from a sense of social destiny beyond their control. They do this by retreating inward, to focus on the inner self, or by retreating outward, to externally imposed structure coming, they be-lieve, directly from God. The first of these privatized patterns of religion, the dominant U.S. cultural preference, is the retreat inwards to the inner self. ~0 Personal ex-perience of one's inner self is the one secure basis for religious mean-ing. Self-realization, personal growth, is the highest aspiration. There is a great similarity to the goals and language of psychological therapy. Re-ligious practice is spiritual utilitarianism: "What's in it for me?" Spiri-tual experience is primarily individual and prescinds from the world and its problems. The world and even God are seen in terms of their impact on this inner self. Morality is individualistici commitments to others, to the world, are transient: "s(~ long as it feels right or helps me grow." The Church can be reduced to a kind of spiritual Kiwanis Club or psy-chological. therapy group in the individual's pursuit of self-fulfilling ex-perience. The second pattern of religious individualism is no less privatized. It is more prevalent among the less affluent, or among those whose self-image is not strong enough to found religious meaning there. Faith is placed in sources of meaning external to self and the real world. God speaks from "outside'"the ordinary world (and the inner self), directly giving rules and tenets which, if they are rigidly adhered to, will bring 646 / Review~or Religious, September-October 1988 about salvat.ion of the obedient individuai--there is little hope for the world. Fundamentalist adherence to biblical texts, magistral father fig-ures, or traditions gives meaning and some sense of security in a bewil-dering social Order. Morality is personalistic rather than societal; it deals with interpersonal and family relations in clear, simple answers; it leaves unchallenged the sociocultural setting in which these are played out. The world, society at large, is either beyond question or beyond salvation. In either case, faith has little to say to it. ., Both of.these cultural patterns of religion, therapeutic withdrawal to the inner self and sectarian withdrawal to external structure, are the prod-uct of individualism. It is individualism retreating from confrontation with a chaotic, seemingly uncontrollable social environment. Material-ism, competitive pursuit of self-interest, ruthless power pervade the secu-lar realm of business, politics, the media. Recent rapid shifts in social structures and paradigms destabilize a cultural setting already inhospita-ble to traditional religious values. Individuals, frightened, isolated, pow-erless, withdraw from the imperatives of biblical faith which might re-quire them to confront these social forces to work for the new creation of God's reign. A religion of inner escape or outer control seems to of-fer a haven from the heartless world. But both forms of religion lack the ability to integrate the self and/or God with the surrounding society. Per-sonalized religious experience supplants the "mighty acts of Yahweh" as the basis for belief. And such faith is fragile, fading when the per-sonal experience fades. There is only a faint hold on commitments, to faith itself and to the other-centered giv.ing which builds on faith. Church, rather than being the fundamental sacrament of God's insertion into the world, becomes a community of convenience or of protection from the world. In solipsism or sectarian withdrawal, religion stands apart from worldly matters. It is a pale shadow of robust biblical faith: the faith of a people on mission from a world-transforming God. This description of American religious behavior is not just the way millions.of lay believers of all religious backgrounds practice their faith. These are tidal forces affecting the faith life of all of us as members religious orders and congregations. We are equally tempted to withdraw from the fullness of biblical faith into therapeutic blandness or rigid struc-turalism. We too can live more easily with these idolized forms of relig-ion, which neither do justice nor admit the injustice of such unconcern. Religious life itself can become an enclave for self-realization or secu-rity, safely compartmentalized away from the rigors of God's call and mission to a troubled world wracked by social sin. Which one of us has Social Dimensions of Ministry / 64"/ not felt keenly the longing to huddle, Jonah-like, even in the belly of a whale, rather than face Nineveh? Justice and God's Reign: New Directions But also in our lifetimes as religious, we have witnessed a remark-able movement of God's Spirit. It is transforming the Church and relig-ious life, calling us again to our biblical roots. The God who cares pas-sionately about this world, who hates idols and the injustice they le-gitimate, is neither absent nor sitting quietly in a culturally designed com-partment. Embracing the pain of the poor and the marginalized, God broods over our bent world "with warm breast and with ah! bright wings." ~ In Vatican II, the Church chose to position itself as a people in serv-ice to the world, seeking to transform it in the biblical image of God's justice. ~- The 197 ! Synod of Bishops specified this further: J~stice and participation in the transforming of the world fully appear to us ~s a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or, 'in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation (Justice in the World, no. 6). The social teaching of the Church has gone~ beyond a reformist long-ing for organic, static society. In ,.magisterial teaching and theological de-velopment there is the commitment to struggle for and with the margi-nhlized to achieve justice. The spiritual is not compartmentalized from the affai'rs of this world, but integrated as a critical, driving force to shape '~'a new earth where justice will abide.''~3 In'theory and in prac-tice, from Medellin to the Philippines, in our inner cities and in recent pastoral letters of U.S. Bishops, we have witnessed the Church exercis-ing the ancient 'special love of Yahweh for the poor. ~4 Our challenging mission is newly clear, as are the many social forces which oppose it. It is the mission of our "pain-embracing" God, it is the mission of Christ see~king the reign of God.' It is fresh and new in our age, and as old as the prophets: "This is wfiat Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God" (Mi 6:8). What Justice Requires But what does it mean to do justice'? or to transform the world? or change social structures? The justice which flows :from faith in Yahweh has a dynamic, trans- 648 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 formative quality. Subtle philosophical distinctions may be appropriate for impartial, uninvolved observers. But there is a simplicity and stark-ness to biblical justice questions, which are raised in God's name from peasants (Amos, Micah), slaves (Moses), and exiles. ~5 The royal circles of Egypt, Jerusalem, or Rome are preoccupied with questions of pros-perity (how to get more) or security (how to keep it). The prophetic voices from below demand that freedom, sustenance, places of dignity in the community be given (back) to every one Of God's chosen people. Everyone has a right to these goods, as a birthright from God who cre-ated and gave them all to the community in the ~fi~:st place. God will act to make things right again if those in power will not listen. The primary expectation of God from Israel is the doing of justice, in this sense sharing with or restoration to those on the margin of society: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor. Every other ethical norm or covenan-tal requirement flows from this reading of social reality. There is to be a redistribution of social power and goods to achieve a society where all can sit under their own vine and fig tree, with no one to trouble them. Or as gentle Mary puts it in Luke: "[God] has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled, with good things, the rich sent empty away" (Lk 1:52-53). The pastoral letter of the U.S. bishops, Economic Justice for All, contains an eloquent articu-lation of what justice requires in our times. The scriptural section of that letter is especially worth meditating upon, to touch i'nto our faith as the force which moves us to justice. The religious reality described there can be summarized as the community of the human race--the community in which and through which God creates each of us as individiaals-- building community. This community is given all of creation to enjoy, and God's love be-sides. In response, God asks in covenant that the community be com-mitted to care for one another, that they show the same resilient love (he-sed) and solidarity toward each other that God has Shown them, The touchstone of this solidarity, from the time of the prophets, has been whether the community cares for those at the margins of society, those without power to demand a share of what the community has been given by God. This preferential option for the poor is as ancient and as crucial to the covenant as Yahweh's earliest commands to Israel concern-ing the widow, the orphan, the stranger in the land (Ex 22:20; Dt 10:.18). In fulfillment of the covenant, the community needs to do more than distribute food and clothing to the poor~ It has to bring ,them in from the margins, allowing them to participate in the creative life of the commu- Social Dimensions of Ministry nity. Then they can provide for themselves in dignity and will no longer be marginalized. In this, the pastoral letter goes beyond the usual em-phasis, in Catholic practice, on works of charity. These are seen to be insufficient since the poor have a right to a creative place in society, not just to be passive recipients of our largess. Bringing the marginalized into full participation in community life will, of course, build up the community itself. It will then be more able to show solidarity to those still at the margin, bringing them into fuller participation, and so forth. The cycle of response to the covenant is also the cycle of the community regenerating and building itself up as a soci-ety of justice. The ~uli religious insight is that, in this dbing of justice to one another, God is made present, is found, is worshiped at the cen-ter of this communal re-creation. Faith and justice reinforce each other, even merge, as God moves us to transform our society. This cycle de-scribes positively how God cails us through justice to renew the face of the earth. But there is also resistance to the Spirit of God; it creates injustice in the structures of society and reverses the cycle of creating a commu-nity of justice. A community can tear itself apart by denying meaningful participation to the poor, ignoring the increasing masses of the margi-nalized, replacing communal solidarity with relentless pursuit of self-interest. This injustice the Spirit of God calls upon us to confront, for the Spirit "convinces the world concerning sin and justice and judg-ment" (Jn 16:8).~6 A practical example may clarify how social structures can resist trans-formation. Some one hundred fifty years ago, the Jesuits in Maryland owned slaves. When Jesuit authorities in Rome remonstrated with them over this situation, the American Jesuits responded that the slaves were being very well cared for and, indeed, would likelY suffer much worse if they wei'e given their freedom and turned loose in American society. The Jesuits of Maryland missed seeing the social structure--slavery-- which needed to be transformed, and focused on the personal dimension of care the slaves received. It seems so evident now, but to those en-meshed in the toils of unjust social structures, they often seem "natu-ral," "the way things are,", unquestionable and unconfrontable. The U.S. bishops of the last century were also unable to confront slavery as an institution until the Civil War settled the question for everyone. ~7 One wonders if the terrible price of that war would have been paid had the churches and religious .people of the land not resisted, by and large, the call of the Spirit to transform the structure of slavery. 650 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 While it is clear that God can work to bring good even from wars and great social cataclysms, this is not the way in which the Spirit of God desires to achieve the transformation of the world. The model of the Suf-fering Servant of Isaiah becomes normative for us in the cross of Jesus. Justice is a constitutive element of what the reign of God is about, but "suffering with" the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized is the man-ner of achieving God's jus.tice. We are called to follow our "pain-embracing" God, and our crucified Lord, in confr6nting the evil of this world. It is a manner far different from ou~ ordinary human institutions of violence, vengeance, and material power. God's ways are not ours, and God's just,~'ce cannot be fully achieved w. ithout a~lopting God's ways. Principles of Ministry for the Reign of God If I have been at all clear, it seems to me that two principles flow from what has been developed thus far. I would like to make these two principles explicit, go on to a couple practical strategies for implement-ing them, and then conclude with three sets of questions for considera-tion. What God has done for us and what God asks of us create a first prin-ciple. An essential part of the reign of God is justice, specifically the jus-tice which flows from living out a faith in Yahweh, faith in Jesus. There-fore, followers of Christ should have a concern for justice as a central focus of all their ministries. There are not justice ministries separate from other ministries, any more than there can be ministries separated from faith. Faith and justice are the complementary core of all Christian min-istry. Secondly, the "pain-embracing" love of God, especially inclusive of the marginalized in soc.iety, characterizes the ministry of Jesus "even unto death, death on a cross." The followers of Jesus are missioned to work for the reign of God in like fashion: through experiencing the strug-gle for justice "from below," at the sidle of the downtrodden, accept-ing the conflict or defeat which that entails, believing in the way of the Suffering Servant who is the Lord. Practical, Strategies The following suggestions are practical strategies for implementing these two principles. They are not new, but they might be helpful~ 1. Reflection on mihistry, and particularly on the justice dimension of ministry, should be based on experience. We experience the living God in ~'the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men [and women] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way Social Dimensions of Ministry / 651 afflicted.'? ~8 Christ dies and rises again for us in sharing the struggles and visions of real people. Experience draws us beyond ideologies and preconceptions; it energizes us for our quest for the reign of God. But the experience must be reflected upon. Stream-of-consciousness ministry may be personally vivifying, but it does not help us understand the social forces that create what we experience, or how we habitually respond. Social analysis can gradually remove the limitations of our cul-tural blinders and make us more critically aware of the social structures which must be transformed to "make clear the way of the Lord" (Mr 3:3). But so~zial analysis is often sterile, immobilizing, unless it is joined with faith and reflection on what God is saying to us. Relating both our experience and our analysis to the wellsprings of our own faith life en-ergizes us to act, and inspires us to discern how to act, for the reign of God. Our ministry is, then, m~ade reflective and revivifieO. And it gives us. further experience, which can be further reflected upon, leading to fur-ther inspiration and discernment. And so on. Many of you will recognize this process for reflection on ministry. It has been variously called the hermeneutic circle, the circle of praxis, or the pastoral cycle. 19 It is a methodology for moving steadily and re-flectively toward more authentic ministry. It may sound a little ominous at first, with terms like "social analysis" and '.'theological reflection." But it can be done very simply. It has been effective among illiterate peas-ants. 2° All of us ought to be able to do it. As a strategy for ongoing re-flection on ministry, it is.best when done communally, as a form of com-munal discernment. 2. In all ministries, there is the opportunity to experience the joys, hopes, griefs, and anxieties of ordinary people. But at least in orders like the Jesuits, most ministerial settings provide scant opportunity to come into contact with the poor and the marginalized. This should not mean that these ministries are exempt 'from the imperatives of justice-seeking or that they are unable to carry out ministry for the reign of God authen-tically. Ministries such as education or pastoral work with middle- and upper-class publics can seriously commit themselves to the work of con-scientization for the reign of God. These ministries deal with those who exercise power and influence over "the way things are"; their publics can bring about or at least come to tolerate changes in the social order which lead toward justice for the marginalized. It is a crucial element of the mission of all these ministries to communicate the call of the liv-ing God for solidarity, especially with the marginalized, and to urge con- 659 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 sistently that social injustices be transformed to bring about the reign of God. But particularly in these ministries, the lack of any lived experience of the poor or oppressed strengthens ct]ltural-religious tendencies toward therapeutic blandness or conformist externalism. We should attempt to build into these ministries, and into the lives of their publics, some ex-perience of real people living at the margins, victims of unjust social con-ditions. There are immersion programs, social-service projects, inte-grated discussion groups, and other forms of contact between people whom our social structures tend to isolate from each other. Such ex-periences will often be episodic, ephemeral, perhaps even seem voyeur-istic. But they can be honed to a finer edge of reality if they are carried out in cooperation with people who are in consistent, full-time ministry or presence among the poor. Within religious congregations we can leaven all our ministries by missioning some of our best people to ministry among the poor, asking them to share with all of us the insights and challenges of their lived ex-perience. The enlivening experience of God present at the margins can be corporate, shared by brothers or sisters in widely divergent ministries, if conscious efforts are made to foster such sharing. For this leavening to occur, it is important that the religious we mission to ministry among the poor be among our best, mainstream people willing and able to in-teract with a wide range of our corporate membership. My experience has been that we too often allow the lone rangers, the disaffected, the angry, or the difficult to wander off in ministry to the poor. Or we so isolate good folks sent into difficult ministries of social justice that they burn out quickly. As religious communities we can become more effec-tively present with the poor, with consequent enriching of all our apos-tolates, if we will take care to engage in such ministry corporately and reflectively. Mere presence among the marginalized does not guarantee any re-flective stance, in terms of either social analysis or theological reflec-tion. There is ample evidence of religious, ministering regularly among the poor, who never question the social structures which afflict their peo-ple. Or worse, they adopt a benevolent one-way relationship of "giv-ing" to the poor, rather than living with and learning from them about the reality of God. To counter these tendencies, itis helpful to be in con-tact with those engaged in the direct ministry of social change, challeng-ing some aspect of social injustice from an integrated faith perspective. As a full-time occupation, religious ministry for social change is rare Social Dimensions of Ministry / 653 this country. There is every indication that God's spirit is calling us, through the Church, to make it more prevalent. But it is unlikely to be-come a dominant mode of ministry in any religious congregation. That does not mean that a few good men or women could not be missioned, in each of the larger ~ongregations, to engage in this newly urgent min-istry. Not only will this serve social transformation for the reign of God; it can helpail our ministries become more competent to deal with the so-cial and theological questions most pressing in our society. Small or large religious congregations can relate to interreligious social-justice centers in most major cities of the United States. And individuals in any minis-try can become advocates of social change in one area or another, as par-ticipants in coalitions of concerned people devoting time and energy out-side their ordinary works to transforming society.2~ There should be no religious congregation so burdened with maintaining historical com-mitments that it cannot find ways to mission at least some key members to collaborative or part-time work for social justice, so as to leaven the entire ministry of the group. In this strategy, then, every ministry can participate in some level of social action for the reign of God: conscientization of the more afflu-ent and powerful, ministry of presence and social service among the marginalized, direct ministry for social change of unjust social structures. Having all three levels of social ministry within a congregation, if there is communication and cross-fertilization among them, can enrich the mis-sion of all for the reign of God. Even where all three levels are not pos-sible, much the same effect can be achieved by collaboration with other religious and lay people committed to working for the transformation of society. No matter which ministries are present within a congregation, all must become imbued with a central concern for social justice. The reign of God and the love of Christ draw us all to this. Some Questions for Consideration Let me turn now to three sets of questions, for which, I assure you, I have no answers. But they may be worth wrestling with in thinking about the future of religious life. I. Most religious congregations had as part of their founding charism a special concern for ministry among the poor.22 Most of our congrega-tions several generations ago ministered mainly among the poor in Amer-ica: immigrant Slavs and Germans, Italians and Irish, still on the mar-gins of American society. Why now are the vast majority of American male religious working in ministries for the more affluent? Was it a form 654 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 of ministerial "bracket creep," where we drifted up the income ladder along with the traditional publics we served, moving with them in from the margins of American society? If we were to decide anew about where to focus our ministries, what might the Spirit call us to do for the reign of God? 2. Most young men and women coming into reiigious life have been formed by American sociocultural conditioning. They look to religion to foster their own self-realization or to shelter them from the world's turmoil through external authority. Our older veterans of religious life are subject to these same alluring siren songs of American cultural relig-ion. Doour models of early and continuing formation, with their empha-sis on psychosocial development or on external structures of religious life, challenge cultural limitations of religious belief and practice? How much therapeutic self-nurturing or sheltering in external authority do we allow? How can we transcend these tendencies in order to instill full bib-lical faith, which integrates God, society, and self? How form religious for mission, to join our suffering, pain-embracing God in transforming the world? 3. The last set of questions is not mine. They come from Archbishop Weakland when he was asked how Jesuits could help implement the so-cial vision of the Economic Pastoral. :His response went something like this: (a) You Jesuits have a lot of access to the powerful in society. They are your alumni, counselees, fellow board members. You turn to them to support~your own works. Will you use that access to power on behalf of the marginalized and their agenda of justice? (b)You Jesuits have ex-perience of the third world, knowledge of the marginalized. Will you bring that forcefully into the consciousness of the American people, who are so woefully ill-informed about the struggles and attitudes of the poor? (c) There are many good young people, in business, the professions, or factories, who are dissatisfied with what our society offers. They want to remain lay men and women, but long for a way of life, a vision, more consonant with the Gospel. Can you imagine, and then image credible lifestyles and life goals for these lay Christians? Archbishop Weakland's q'uestions are generalizable, I would think, for almost any religious con-gregation. Conclusion ¯ I would like to observe, in conclusion, that fait.h does not seem to be a question at the margins of society. Faith in God is very much alive in the third world and in the inner city. There the overwhelming ques-tions are those of justice. Faith seems most fragile and in doubt in the Social Dimensions of Ministry / 655 sterile, cluttered tunnels of our earthworm society of affluence. Faith with-ers here, though we overnurture it with self-concern, though we fence it in with our fears. But faith in the living God is a wild thing. It thrives at the margins, where struggle and hope for God's justice blaze brightest. If we go there, our own religious life may be rekindled, as we join our God in renewing the face of the earth. Let us go, then, without guilt or rage. Let us go in joy because our God draws us, calls us to join the struggle there for the transformation of the world. There, too, we shall meet the love of our lives, Jesus the Lord. NOTES ~ Alberto Moravia, The Red Book and the Great Wall (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968);' pp. 12-21. -~ Mi 4:2. See Walter Brueggemann, "Vine and Fig Tree: A Case Study in Imagina-tion and Criticism," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 43 (1981): 188-204. 3 See W. Brueggemann, '~OId Testament Theology as a Particular Conversation: Ad-judication of Israel's Socio-Theological Alternatives," Theology Digest 32:4 (1985): 302-325. This excellent study of the conne~ztion between Old Testament theophany and justice in the social order was the Bellarmine Lecture at St. Louis University in 1985. I am indebted to it for many of the insights in this scriptural section. 4 See Norman Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Orbis, 1979), chapter 49: "Mutual Reinforcement of Yahwism and Social Egalitarianism." 5 Jn 11:48-51. See Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Orbis, 1978), pp. 201 ff. 6 The term is Brueggemann's. See his "A Shape for Old Testament Theology: Em-brace of Pain," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47:3 (I 985): 395-415. 7 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, first published 1835-1840. Quota-tion is from Anchor Books edition (1969), pp. 506-510. 8 See J. F. Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society (Orbis, 1981), or his address to this Assembly in 1985: "Religious Life and Leadership in the Con-text of American Culture." From a different perspective, see Daniel Bell, The Cul-tural Contradictions of Capitalism (Basic Books, 1976). 9 An outstanding example of such studies is Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Univ. of California Press, 1985). I have relied upon it heavily for this section: ! cannot recommend it highly enough. Another recent study of religious and social trends concurs with much of Bellah's findings: see J. Chittister and M. Marty, eds., Faith and Ferment (Augsburg/Liturgical Press, 1983). ~0 See Bellah, op. cir., pp. 235ff. ~ The phrase is from G. M. Hopkins's poem, "'God's Grandeur" (1877). ~2 See especially Gaudium et Spes, nn. I-3 and passim. ~3 Gaudium et Spes, n. 39. See C. Curran, "Catholic Social Ethics: A New Ap-proach'?" Clergy Review (Feb.-Mar. 1985). 656 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ~'~ On the history of the preferential option for the poor, see D. Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teachings (Orbis, 1983). ~5 See Brueggemann, Parks, and Groome, To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Hum-bly: An Agenda for Ministers (Paulist Press, 1986), a fine series of reflections on the Micah text and on justice. m6 See Pope John Paul ll's two recent encyclicals on sinful social structures, Domi-hum et Vivificantem (1986), no. 56; and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988), passim. ~7 See Doris Gottemoeller's talk to this Assembly in 1985: "Challenges to Relig-ious Leadership from a Changing U.S. Church," p. 7. ~8 Gaudium et Spes, no. 1. 19 As developed, respectively, by Juan Segundo, The Theology of Liberation (Or-bis, 1976); by Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppzessed (Herder & Herder, 1970); and by Holland & Henriot, Social Analysis (Center of Concern, 1984). The last has a simple, practical treatment in chapter I. 20 See Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname (Orbis, 1979). 2~ Examples nationally include: Amnesty International, Bread for the World, Catho-lic Worker, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Interfaith Action for Economic Justice, Just Life, Network, Pax Christi, to name only a few. There are countless local and regional grouPs as well. 22 From a brief survey of the self-descriptions of U.S. male religious groups listed in the latest vocation guide, Ministries for the~ Lord: A Resource Guide and Direc-tory of Catholic Church Vocations for Men (Paulist Press, 1985), this seems to be true for the great majority of nonmonastic religious congregations of men. I'd Love to, Lord, But. Paul Wachdorf Father Wachdorf's "Leading People into Prayer" appeared in our May/June 1988 issue. His address remains the same: University of Saint Mary of the Lake; Munde-lein, Illinois 60060. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, Jesus returns to his home town of Naza-reth, goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and reads from the prophet Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore, he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord (Lk 4:18-19). These words give a tone and a direction to the public ministry Jesus was about to begin. In 1971, the Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome produced a docu-ment entitled Justice in the World in which they state: Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemp-tion of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation (Justice in the World, Synod of Bishops, Second General Assembly, Nov. 30, 197 I). The teachings and the ministry of Jesus and the teachings of the Church have consistently proclaimed that action on behalf of justice is not simply an option, not just a matter of personal preference or inter-est, but is an integral part of the gospel message and the Christian life-style as we are called upon to live it. 657 Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Given the crucial importance of this ministry in the Church and in the world today, I would like to reflect on my own journey into and ex-perience of the ministry of social justice from two viewpoints. First, I will look at some of the common resistances people encounter in them-selves as they hear the gospel challenge of social justice. Then, I want to examine some possible steps which people might profitably pursue to help them break through their resistances and respond more fully to the challenge of social justice. Intellectual Assent vs. Active Participation For the past seven years I have worked with the social justice pro-gram at Mundelein Seminary. Prior to that, I served in a parish for six years. During my years in a parish, I always gave intellectual and verbal assent to the principles of social justice. After all, how could I as a priest do otherwise? But as I look back on those years, I realize that my no-tional assent was not often translated into real and different patterns of behavior. Practicing what I preached about social justice was no simple task, although I did not realize that at the time. Resistances, Excuses, Rationalization~ After my appointment to the seminary, I was elected as the faculty representative for our Peace and Justice Committee. Frankly, I was not enthused about this appointment. But since ! felt somewhat insecure in my new environment and in my new work, it seemed to be an offer I could not refuse. I began to think about my commitment and involvement, l won-dered, "What am I supposed to do?" Soon I recognized within me sev-eral resistances, excuses, and rationalizations. In the past, they had kept me from becoming involved in the ministry of social justice in any sig-nificant way. I wanted to say yes to the Lord and to respond to the call of social justice. But my excuses kept getting in the way. At that point, I realized that 1 would have to critique my resistances with honesty through dialogue and prayer. Otherwise, my resistances would effec-tively block me from ever becoming involved in any way at all. Prophets Are Not Popular Quickly, I recognized the first resistance. Prophets are not popular. From Old Testament times to the present day, men and women who sting the conscience of a nation, a people, or a Church become unpopular. They are often criticized; they have their motives questioned; and they are pushed to the fringes of society. I'd Love to, Lord, But. / 659 ! remember very clearly an incident that happened as I was growing up. In the early 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King led a march through my neighborhood, a white Catholic stronghold, to Marquette Park. I remem-ber standing on the corner on which my parish church and rectory were located watching the march. There were hundreds of white people lin-ing both sides of the street. Many of them were shouting, cursing, or throwing things at the marchers. Two of the priests came out of the rec-tory and began telling the people to go home and leave the marchers alone. Some of the people responded by cursing at the priests and tell-ing them to mind their own business. I saw a man spit on one of the priests. The following Sunday at Mass, the priests spoke out in favor of the marchers and their cause and spoke against the behavior of the bystand-ers, many of whom were good parishioners, pillars of the church. A few people at the Mass got up and walked out. Those days, I helped count the Sunday collection. That week and for a few weeks afterward, the col-lection went down significantly. I have never forgotten that incident. I still admire the courage of my parish priests. At the same time, I am aware that my later reluctance in seminary and in my initial years of priesthood to become involved in the ministry of social justice or to preach about justice issues was strongly influenced by that experience. In my initial involvement with the Seminary Peace and Justice Com-mittee, I soon came to a basic understanding. ! must be willing with com-plete honesty to critique that part of myself that desires to be popular and to be liked by others. Otherwise, I would never say anything controver-sial or would never speak out or would rarely take action on behalf of issues of social justice. Poverty is Messy and Unglamorous A second resistance for me rests in a simple fact. Poverty is messy and unglamorous. For the past seven years I have volunteered on a part time basis at an overnight shelter for the homeless. Many of the people who come to spend the night there are not "pretty." They are dirty; they smell; they are often sick; some have head lice; some are alcoholics; some belong in a halfway house or mental institution. I have always been fortunate enough to grow up and live in a clean, healthy, and comfortable environment. Throughout much of my life I have been isolated and insulated from the poor and the homeless. I rec-ognized another need for honest critique. I needed to confront that part of myself that wants life always to be nice, comfortable, and pretty. Oth-erwise, I would never become involved. 660 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Myths, Stereotypes, and Prejudices A third resistance for me consists in myths, stereotypes, and preju-dices. Our culture is filled with them--about racial, ethnic, and relig-ious groups and about the poor and those who work for and with them. "The poor are lazy and would rather be on welfare . If they really wanted to, they could better themselves . They like being poor. See how happy they are . People involved in social justice causes are un-patriotic . All social justice organizations are communist inspired." The list goes on and on. I cannot go to a social gathering without hearing at least one joke that plays upon racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes. At times, I have told and laughed at those same jokes. I needed to confront and honestly critique my own myths, stereotypes, and prejudices. Otherwise, I would never become involved. Social-Justice Ministry is Disturbing There is a fourth resistance. I find this ministry disturbing. Working in the area of social justice has forced me to critique my own lifestyle, my attitudes about material possessions and wealth, and my use of the world's resources. I must admit that I like the good life. Conspicuous consumption is the name of the game in American society. In my early years of priest-hood when I was no longer a poor student but had a regular salary, I re-ally enjoyed having nice things. They compensated for my "great sac-rifice" of celibacy. I needed to honestly critique my own desire to live the good life and my tendencies toward materialism. Otherwise, I would never become involved. Fear A fifth resistance for me is fear. I found within myself a whole clus-ter of fears. I believed that if I worked with the poor and on behalf of social justice, I would be injured, harmed, or abused in some way. When I spent my first night at a shelter for the homeless, I was thor-oughly convinced that I was going to get head lice. TV news broadcasts and newspaper articles have always been filled with stories of crime and violence among the poor and in the inner city. When I was in college, I was robbed at gunpoint by two young black men. That experience re-inforced an attitude that had been drilled into me in all kinds of ways in my neighborhood: all black people are dangerous and to be feared. I needed to critique with honesty and courage that part of myself that de-sires security and safety at all costs. Otherwise, I would never take the I'd Love to, Lord, But. / 661 risk of becoming involved. An Overwhelming Sense of Poverty and Injustice in the World There is a final resistance. When I consider the extent of poverty and injustice in the world, I feel overwhelmed. I say to myself: What can one person possibly do to make a difference? My efforts will be futile and a waste of time. The work is innately frustrating. I will continually run into brick walls and have to deal with bureaucratic red tape and unsym-pathetic people and institutions. Progress is often measured in inches. You live with little or no sense of accomplishment. I realized that if I was not willing to honestly critique my own feelings of being over-whelmed and my own desire for instant results, then I would never be-come involved. Overcoming Resistances ~ It was not easy for me to look at my resistances. It is no easier to-day. Life seemed to be more pleasant when I closed my eyes to the re-alities of poverty and injustice as they existed all around me. Even after seven years of working with our Peace and Justice Committee, I find that I can still bring out of my storehouse old and new excuses which warn me to "back off," to rest because "I have done enough." As I con-tinue to come in touch with each of my resistances, I am aware that there are various steps that I have to enter into in order to overcome them. MyNeed for Challenge A first step is to allow myself to be challenged by others. I found myself challenged recently in a way I least expected. My sister who is a registered nurse and a certified nurse midwife recently volunteered to work for two years in Papua New Guinea as a lay missionary. I asked her why she wanted to do this. She told me that she was aware of the many talents, gifts, and blessings God had given her throughout her life. She felt that serving as a lay missionary was one way in which she could best express her gratitude to God. As I listened to what she had to say, I felt a lot of pride and admira-tion for my sister. At the same time, I felt a bit embarrassed as I realized that my own commitment to serving the poor at times looked pale in com-parison. I need people like my sister to challenge me and to keep me look-ing at my resistances. I need people like my sister to inspire me and to keep me in touch with my desire to bring to others the Good News that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Luke as he began his public ministry. They need to say little. Their lives are bold proclamation. 669 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 As important as they are, such challenges are ~not enough for me. I have an amazing capacity to ignore or rationalize away the challenges that come from outside of me. To break through my resistances, I need to pray, to dialogue With others, and to simply begin. MyNeed for Prayer A second step for me is to bring my .resistances before the Lord in prayer. I begin by naming as honestly as I can my fears, my doubts, and my inner resistances. I express to God in my prayer what I am feeling and why I am feeling it. I ask God to break through my denial, to re-move from my eyes the scales that blind me to the,breadth and depth of my resistances so that I can see them for what they are. I place my resis-tances in the hands of God and invite God to respond. Here begins what I call the zone of discomfort in my prayer. To say to God "thy will be done" rather than "my will be thine" is~very fright-ening. What if God reveals to me something 1 do not want to see? What if God asks me to do what I do not want to do? At this point, I must qui-etly and patiently wait for God to respond, trusting that the God who loved me into existence will not abandon me or ask me to do anything that I am not capable of doing. MyNeed for Dialogue Prayer leads me to a third step. I need to talk to another person about my resistances. St. Ignatius in his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Week I [326] talks about the evil spirit as a false lover who "acts in or-der to keep his own suggestions and temptations secret, and our tactics must be to bring out into the light of day such suggestions and tempta-tions to our confessor or director or superior" (David Fleming, S.J., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and A Contem-porary Reading [St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978], p. 213). Resistances need to be brought into the light of day so that they can be seen for what they are. When I do not talk to another person about my resistances, I find that they can gain power to control me, even after I have brought them to prayer. I can easily deny them or sweep them un-der the carpet. In hones( dialogue with another, I am given the gift of freedom of choice. In honest dialogue with another, I find challenge, new perspective, affirmation, support, and the courage to begin. My Need to Begin A fourth step is to begin. At Mundelein Seminary, there is a Spiri- l"d Love to, Lord, But. / 663 tuality and Justice group composed of faculty and students. Each mem-ber of this group has chosen a concrete action to pursue during the school year in some area of social justice. People have chosen to fast, to work at a soup kitchen or a shelter for the homeless, to deaccumulate their pos-sessions and to live more simply, or to pursue the Pax Christi vow of nonviolence. The premise behind this group is that we live ourselves into new ways of thinking, valuing, and behaving. The way to begin is robe-gin. The way to break through and break down our resistances is to be-gin doing something, no matter how small or insignificant. I have chosen the Pax Christi vow of nonviolence as my action for this year. In the sh"ort time that I haqe pursued this, I have already be-gun to experience ways in which my thinking, my attitudes, my values, and my behaviors are changing. I can feel my resistances to living out this vow b(eaking down in the very act of acting. The words of Mother Teresa are most applicable here: I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. As Jesus said: "Whatever you do to the least of my breth-ren, you do to me." So you begin . ! begin. I picked up one per-son. Maybe if 1 didn't pick up that one person, 1 wouldn't have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you, same thing in your family, same thing in the church where you go. Just begin . . . one, one, one. (Source unknown) MyNeed for Support A final step for me is my need for ongoing support. My commitment to working for justice in the world is fragile and tenuous. I find that I need ongoing challenge to help me keep looking at and dealing with my resistances. I also need the support and affirmation of others to keep me going when I experience moments of discouragement and frustration. The Spirituality and Justice group of which I am a part provides me with opportunities for ongoing challenge, prayer, dialogue, and action. At our initial meetings, we spent time praying about the commitment we hoped to make. We broke into dyads to talk to another about why we chose to be a part of this group, about the action we were planning to pursue, and about the fears and resistances we were experiencing inside of us as we prepared to begin. We came back into the larger group to share the fruits of our dialogue. We concluded with shared prayer. At this point, most of us in the group have chosen and have begun 664 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 to pursue an action. We see future meetings as an opportunity for us to take time for solitary prayer as we continue to bring our actions before God. The meetings help us to share in aone to one way and in the larger group the impact that our action is making on our thinking, valuing, and behaving. The meetings offer support and prayer for and with one an-other in our actions. Here we give witness and challenge to one another as we keep looking at and confronting our resistances. Conclusion The journey into the ministry of social justice is challenging, diffi-cult, and painful. There are many ~tesistances that cooe from within and without. There are many starts and stops. It is a journey that cannot be successfully negotiated alone. There can be no authentic journey with-out God and fellow travelers. My experience is that the journey is well worth the effort for my good and the good of others. May the Spirit of the Lord be upon us in our quest to "bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners." Understanding Novitiate Formation Wilkie Au, 'S.J. Father Au has just completed six and a half years as novice director. He is writing a book tentatively titled Acquiring Habits of the Heart: Holistic Religious Forma-tion. He may be addressed at Loyola Marymount University; P.O. Box 45041; Los Angeles, California 90045. Vatican II,s call for the renewal of religious life set into motion a radical reexaminatio.n of the purposes, processes, and structures involved in the formation of candidates for religious life. The aggiornamento of John XXIII required that those responsible for religious formation make the adaptations needed to prepare religious candidates fora lifetime of dedi-cation and service in a rapidly changing world and Church. Because sen-sible adaptation depended on having a clear sense of what objectives were sought, much of the discussion among formation personnel (forma-tores) in the postconciliar years centered on the purposes and goals of the different phases of the formation process. Consequently, the noviti-ate or initial formation in many orders was thoroughly evaluated in light of the renewed understanding of religious life in the modern world, and many dramatic changes followed. Nevertheless, more than twenty years later the question is still being asked today: "What should be the overriding aims and objectives of the novitiate?"~ According to Father Gerald Arbuckle, S.M., a former as-sistant general of his community, many formation personnel today agree that the experience and the efforts to adapt the novitiate program accord-ing to the requirements of Renovationis Causam have not always been as successful as they would have wished. Many are still uncertain about what to do in the novitiate. Many questions remain: "Should there be a one,to-two-year novitiate? . When should the formative apostolic ex-periences take place and what should they accomplish? . How much 665 666 / Review for Religio. us, September~October 1988 separation, if any, from the world around them should novices experi-ence?" In brief, many questions about the aims and objectives of novi-tiate formation persist.2 Today the drastic drop in the number of those entering the novitiate adds further reason for adaptations in novitiate formation. To be accept-able, these adaptations must, however, retain the essential goals of the novitiate. Precisely what these needed changes are and how they are to be implemented will depend on concrete circumstances of place and per-sonnel. But, more importantly, before any sensible adaptation can be made, it is imperative that there be a clear rearticulation of the basic goals of novitiate formation. Otherwise,. there is the danger that our ad-aptations will be misguided and essential aspects of novitiate training be inadvertently°lost. The purpose of this article is to articulate an under-standing of novitiate formation, based on my si'x years of experience as director of novices of the Jesuits of the California Province. It is my hope that this article will stimulate and contribute to a discussion of novitiate formation at a time when formatores throughout the world are attempt-ing to deal with the adjustments made necessary by, among other things, declining numbers. While this article will. reflect Jesuit documents and my ,own experi-ence working within a Jesuit novitiate (with a group averaging between twelve to fifteen,new candidates every year), I am hopeful that other re-ligious groups of men and 'women working with smaller numbers can dis-cover in my comments what is universally true of the novitiate process in general. In a word, I believe that any novitiate program that purports to embody the spirit of Vatican I1 must include three essential aspects: (1) vocation discernment; (2) religious, socialization; and (3) Qngoing in-dividuation. These three overlapping purposes of the novitiate must, in my opinion, be retained no matter what adapta!ions, are made to accom-modate changing circumstances. What follows is a discussion of these three major goals of the novitiate. Vocation Discernment The objective bf vocation discernment in the novitiate is to help nov-ices come to a peaceful awareness and a free acceptance' of God"s will for them in regard to their state of life. Candidates come seeking help in discerning wh(ther God is indeed calling them to a lifelong commit-ment to tile service of Christ with this particular religious group. Sev-eral considerations are helpi~ul in providing this assistance to them: Confirmation of a Call versus "Weeding Out" The nOvmate must be Viewed as a positive process, as a concrete aid Novitiate Formation / 66"/ to those trying to test out their call to religious lif~. The novitiate should not be designed or perceived as a "weeding out" system, something ,like the basic training of an elitist military unit or the strenuous audition for a coveted part in a chorus line. The novitiate process would be vitiated at its core if it were to be seen as a systematic attempt to test candidates by deliberately placing artificial obstacles before them and screening them on the basis of their ability to overcome these obstacles. The de-structive and dysfunctional consequences of this negative view of novi-tiate formation can be documented in the "horror stories" of many older religious. In addition to the regrettable pain and htirt inflicted on peo-ple, a negative approach ~to the novitiate is fundamentally flawed because it encourages fearful and anxious novices to circumvent, rather than in-vest in, the complex process of discernment. Vocation discdrnment requires an openness and attention to one's in-terior movements, especially in prayer, and an honest disclosure and dis-cussion of these movements in spiritual direction. These attitudes of open-ness and honesty cannot exist in the kind of atmosphere of fear and threat which a "weeding out" approach inevitably produces. Furthermore, such an approach focuses too much attention on external requirements that need to be met in order to survive, like ~'hoops one has to jump through" to make the grade. Dangerously distracting, such a pre-occupation with "making it" can seriously jeopardize the integrity of one's discernment process. Good discernment relies heavily on a per-son's ability to hear the voice of the Lord speaking deeply in the soli-tude of one's heart and in the concrete circumstances of one's life. In light of this, the novice director can be most helpful by imitating the posi-tive role of Eli, the priest, who directs the young Samuel to the place where he is instructed to respond to the Lord's summons by saying, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" (1 S 3:1-9). The Dynamic of Election and Confirmation The term "election"' was used by lgna~tius of Loyola to designate the choice made by a person seeking the will of God regarding some con-crete matter in his or her life. For the last four centuries, Christians have found the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius helpful in making an elec-tion, especially when trying to determine how they should serve Christ. For Ignatius, such a determination was best done in the context of prayer, for "prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow. ,,3 The spiritual discernment that takes place in the novitiate results in an election regard-ing the direction one's vocation should take. Besides providing direction, Review for Religious, September-October 1988 however, the election process in the novitiate also seeks to test out the depth and freedom of a person's desire to serve Christ through the life of the vows. The Exercises were designed by Ignatius to help in "preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, [in] seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul."4 In a Jesuit novitiate the Exer-cises are usually made in the course of a thirty-day retreat soon after en-trance. This experience provides the context in which the Jesuit novice director helps the individual novice either to make an election regarding his vocation or to reaffirm his previously~ made decision to be a Jesuit. Those who make an election to pursue the Jesuit way of life must then generously engage in the novitiate process with the hope that the Lord will clarify and confirm their desire. Thus, vocation discernment in the novitiate involves a two-year period of' monitoring one's deepest desires and ascertaining whether the desire to serve the Lord as a Jesuit perdures and deepens throughout the course of the novitiate. If this desire per-dures, the novice can then express this desire through the first vows of a Jesuit. Michael J. Buckley, S.J., describes these first vows as an offering, following upon an election, made in perpetuity, very much like the initial election of the Exercises. Like this offering, they are con-tingent upon the subsequent confirmation by the Lord, worked through a human being's personal religious history over the next ten or fifteen years.5 Until he takes his final vows many years after the novitiate, "the Jesuit lives in a period of probation, testing whether the first offering of his life to God [through first vows] is accepted and confirmed by divine providence."6 Buckley summarizes this Ignatian dynamic well by explain-ing "the way in which one moves toward finding and giving his life over to the will of God" within the framework of the Spiritual Exercises. There isthe initial offer of a choice to God our Lord, an offering which is made according to a time for making an election and which is then presented before the Lord . What the dynamic of the election looks for after the moment of offering is the subsequent confirmation'by God. Election as a religious history, as an experience of Providence, devel-ops over time between these two major events: the time of human offer-ing and the period of confirmation by God.7 Clearly, then, the objective of vocation discernment in the novitiate is to help novices determine whether the depth and direction of their Novitiate Formation / 669 heart's deepest desires move them to make a self-offering of themselves through vows. Absolute clarity and certainty regarding the future can-not be expected at the end of the novitiate period, since the person's self-offering must await "the subsequent confirmation by God." As Buck-ley eloquently states, For a man who follows God, who listens to God throughout his serious experience, the future is unknown and mysterious--not unlike God him-self. And he moves into this mystery without prematurely forcing clar-ity because his experience of God directs this movement.8 The Test of Existential Validation Colloquially stated, the test of existential validation asks novices this question: "Does the shoe fit?" This is an important question for voca-tion discernment, and it must be asked on a regular basis. While the Ig-natian election helps novices find God's will for them in the deep de-sires of their hearts, the test of existential validation enables them to dis-cover God"s will in the concrete details of their lives. The method of existential validation is basically very simple. When they first enter, the novices are asked to live the life of a Jesuit as if they have already taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Then they are asked to pay attention to the "fit" throughout the course of their novitiate. In other words, they are asked to "try on the shoes of being a Jesuit" and check for the fit as they actually walk in those shoes. In their concrete experience, do they find that living the vows in an actual Jesuit community is life-giving and productive? Do they dis-cover that, with the passage of time, there is an increasing congruence between what they want for their lives and Jesuit ideals? As they grow in knowledge of what being a Jesuit involves concretely in this histori-cal time and place, do they find a match between what they desire and what life in the Society of Jesus offers and requires today? Another aspect of existential validation involves testing the authen-ticity of one's desire. This is done mainly by checking for the congru-ence between what one professes to value and desire and how one actu-ally chooses, decides, and behaves. Although all human beings live with a discrepancy between the ideal and the real, drastic and consistent de-viations from the norms and aspirations of religious life should make one question the genuineness and depth of one's desire to be a religious. Though painful and disruptive, getting in touch with authentic desires can be a liberating experience. Furthermore, while self-reporting is an important means for gather- 670 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ing data in the process of existential validation, the feedback of the re-ceiving community is also very important in testing out the existential fit between the individual novice and the peculiar charism of a particu-lar religious institute. Vocation discernment in the novitiate must ascer-tain not only if a person desires to take on religious life, but whether he or she has been given the gift and charism to live that life. A realistic assessment of this capability is a crucial aspect of vocation discernment. For example, from the concrete evidence of a person's life, can it be judged that the Lord has given the aspirant to an apostolic religious com-munity the following prerequisites: -- the ability to live in community with relative peace and joy? -- the capacity to love with celibate chastity in a non-exclusive man-ner? -- the.freedom to live with simplicity and detachment? -- the ability to be mobile and available to be sent anywhere on mis-sion? The underlying presupposition of this line of inquiry obviously is that one's God-given abilities, personality, and inclinations can indicate in helpful ways the precise form and manner in which one is being called to serve Christ. Not to pay serious attention to these concrete indicators is to disregard an important aspect of vocation discernment. Vocation Shortage and a ~,ranny of Numbers I would like to make a final comment regarding vocation discern-ment in the novitiate. It seems to me that the declining number of candi-dates c~n create a ,~ituation in which vocation discernment is not engaged in with seriousness and detachment. The disordered desire to keep the few that come can jeopardize and short-circuit the discernment process. At a time of drastic diminishment, external pressures to hang on at any cost to the few that do enter are sometimes exerted by formed members of the community. This pressure, as well as the interior unfreedom of formatores themselves, can impede a thorough discernment process.9 Fur-thermore, unconsciously treating novices with a "precious few" men-tality can lead to a form of coddling that would be unhelpful for relig-ious formation and spiritual growth. Religious communities that have had only a few candidates during the last decade and at present experience only a trickle from year to year are particularly susceptible to this dan-ger. Religious Socialization: "Habits of the Heart" The term "religious socialization" has been popularized by John Novitiate Formation / 671 Westerhoff III in discussing the question of how elements of religion and faith ,~are transmitted from one generation to another. While he does not apply the term to the formation of religious candidates, nevertheless, it seems to capture quite well one of the essential purposes of the noviti-ate, that is, the handing on of a religious tradition and lifestyle to per-sons desiring to enter the life of a religious group as fully participating members. Religious socialization, according to Westerhoff, is a process consisting of lifelong formal and informal mechanisms, through which persons stistain and transmit their faith (worldview', value ~syst~m) and lifestyle. This is accomplished through participation in the life of a tradition-bearing community with its rites, rituals, myths, sym-bols, expressions of beliefs, attitudes and values, organizational pat-terns, and activities.~° As defined by Westerhoff, religious socialization is a lifelong proc-ess and thus does not exactly describe the novitiate, which (to the relief of all involved) is limited to one or two years. Technically speaking, re-ligious socialization is equivalent to the whole process of formation, which more and more is being viewed as a lifelong affair. Because of ongoing liturgical renewal, biblical and theological reflection, and the rapidity of changing conditions of our times, religious have been urged to commit themselveS seriously to "continuing formation." ~ Neverthe-less, the ~oviiiate is the initial phase of the lifelong process involved in the assimilation of members into religious life. Viewed as such, Wester-hoff's notion of religious ~ocialization provides a useful way of under-standing an essential purpose of the novitiate. Adaptations of novitiate formation must be guided by the essential goal of religious socialization. The basic question raised by the task of handing on the tradition Of religious life to new aspirants is this: What is tO be~handed down and how? What values, beliefs, mores, and ways of proceeding has the receiving community judged to be of perennial worth, such that they should remain permanently .definitional of the group? To employ a phrase of Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French observer of democracy in America (a phrase recently popu-larized by a national bestseller), what are the "habits of the heart" that the receiving community deems absolutely essential for maintaining its group life with integrity and vitality'? In "habits of the heart" Tocqueville included "notions, opinions, and ideas that 'shape mental habits'; and 'the sum of moral and intellectual dispositions' " as well as habitual practices with respect to such things as religion. ~- Once the receiving community has come to a clear consensus on the 672 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 content which it wishes to transmit, then it must decide on the most ef-fective means for this transmission. The question of how to raises a num-ber of considerations which every novice director must ponder if the no-vitiate program is to have any intelligible rationale. Some of these im-portant considerations will be discussed below. The Question of Contact and Separation For the sake of effective religious socialization, there often arises the question of what contact novices should have with family, friends, those in ministry, and formed members of their own religious order. Arbuckle has provided a very useful framework to reflect on this question. ~3 Re-lying on anthropological data regarding initiation rites, he proposes three-stage process for the novitiate, which, according to him, is essen-tially an initiation rite: the stages of separation, liminoid, and the incor-poration or reaggregation. Stage I emphasizes separating the novices from the ordinary life they have left behind in order to dramatize the radicality of the transition from lay life to religious life. While this stage may be brief, the separation also symbolic. The symbolism must express to the candidate that in order to respond to the call of the Lord there must be a withdrawal from the world of "or-dinary" living with its roles and interests, its speed, and its distraction. The symbolism must convey the message that to follow the radical de-mands of the gospel message one must be prepared to "leave father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all things" for the sake of the Lord. 14 To convey this new dramatic reality, novices should, at this stage, be separated physically and geographically from other members of the group who have already gone through the passage of initiation. Not to separate them, "when the aims of the initiation process are so different from the aims of postnovitiate training, is to make the realization of the novitiate aims impossible to achieve."~5 The second stage, called liminoid (from the Latin, limen, threshold), requires the kind of seclusion that fosters strong investment in commu-nity building. It is precisely in the context of a vibrant community life that the novices are to experience the "habits of the heart" which the receiving community wish(s to transmit to its new members. This is the time for introducing the novice to the unique spirit of the institute, peculiar charism within the Church, and its characteristic way of proceed-ing. By so inculcating its spirituality, mores, history, and tradition, the receiving community aims to bond the new member to its past and thus Novitiate Formation / 673 to provide a foundation for the novice's identification with the group. According to Arbuckle, this second stage of relative seclusion should last about a year. The third stage is that of incorporation or reaggregation, a period when novices are reconnected with the religious family outside the no-vitiate. This stage should be as long as or even longer than the liminoid stage. Basically a time of "evaluated pastoral experience," this stage is to be seen as an integral part of the novitiate process. Arbuckle ex-presses the aims of the third stage by citing paragraph 25 of Renovationis Causam: Besides gradual preparation for apostolic activities, they [that is, the ex-perimental periods outside the novitiate] can also have as their purpose to bring the novice into contact with certain concrete aspects of poverty or of labor, to contribute to character formation, a better knowledge of human nature, the strengthening of the will, the development of personal responsibility and, lastly, to provide occasions for effort at union with God in the context of active life.~6 In my opinion, Arbuckle's three-stage approach provides a rich and comprehensive understanding of the novitiate process, as Well as a sound basis for determining the question of the amount of separation and con-tact that would be helpful for novices. That there be some kind of alter-nation between separation and contact has also been clearly endorsed by others. For example, the Jesuit decree on novitiate formation states: Although entrance into the novitiate should entail a real separation from the life previously led in the world, superiors should nevertheless pro-vide that the novices, while consistently maintaining a spirit of recol-lection, should have sufficient social contact with their contemporaries (both within and outside the Society). Likewise the necessary separation from parents and friends should take place in such a way that genuine progress in affective balance and supernatural love is not impeded. IV The Arbuckle model is useful because it enables the novitiate to ef-fectively bond new members to the religious group, which is the goal of religious socialization. The bonding is both with the past (the commu-nity's traditions and history) and with the present (its present members and ministries). By means of form'al and informal contact, then, the re-ceiving community links its new members to its group life. The Question of Structure and Nonstructure It is my opinion that both structure and nonstructure have important and different functions in the process of religious socialization. The no- 67'4 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 vitiate process must include times for both. Structured time is important for thi~ development of the habits and skills necessary for sustaining a lifetime of religious dedication. This time of structure is the period tra-ditionally known as "common order" during which the novices's day is regulated according to a schedule with definite periods for communal and personal prayer, for work around the house, for conferences and classes with the novice staff, for individual study, and for apostolic in-volvements. Because the development of habits such as those that con-tribute to a faithful prayer life and spiritual discernment requires regular repetition and practice, structured time for such training is important in novitiate formation. Equally important is time for more freedom and less structure in the novitiate learning process. These times of nonstructure provide an op-portunity for the novices to test out to what extent, they have internal-ized and appropriated what they have sought to learn during times of struc-tured learning. For example, has the individual novice found himself or herself able to faithfully sustain a regular prayer life when away from the structural supports of the novitiate? To foster personal responsibility among novices for their own development, the Jesuits' 3 i st General'Con-gregation stated that "a necessity is that the no~,itiat~'s way of life be not so rigidly determined that the novices, lacking in all initiative, can hardly ever practice spiritual discernment, or even obedience itself, ex-cept in the form of a passive and impersonal submission."~8 The non-structured periods of the novitiate allow the novices as aspiring religious to find out truthfully and behaviorally what changes in their lives and at-titudes have actually taken place as the result of their training in the limi-noid stage. Therefore, I believe that a rhythmic alternation between struc-tured and nonstructured time is an essential dynamic of the novitiate learn-ing process. The Question of Experience and Reflection Another important learning dynamic in the novitiate involves the com-bination of experience and reflection. This mode of learning, variously called experiential learning or praxis, calls for the novice's active engage-ment in learning experiences and a subsequent reflection upon those ex-periences, with an eye to what insights and knowledge can be.,gleaned from them. This form of experiential learning is applicable to many ar-eas in which novices are called to grow, that is prayer,t9 interpersonal relationships,2° and ministerial effectiveness. The goal sought through this mode of learning is, in the words of the Jesuits' 33rd General Con-gregation, "a transformation of our habitual patterns of thought through Novitiate Formation / 675 a constant interplay of experience, reflectipn, and action.' While experiential learning can be a powerful form of learning, there is always the danger that it can lead to anti-intellectualism, if it is not carefully applied. Experience is the indispensable raw material of expe-riential learning. But it remains unprocessed--that is, raw material-- without the equally important process of reflecting on the experience. The danger is effectively obviated when serious effort an~d sufficient time are devoted to dwelling on the experience in such a way that ideas and principles are abstracted out of it and feelings are symbolized. In addition'to serious reflection, there is a further requirement of ef-fective praxis. To be used intelligently, experiential learning must be grounded in a well-thought-out theory of experience. As John Dewey warned in 1938, "The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other."zz Mere insisten~ze on the necessity of experience, there-fore, is notenough. In Dewey's words, "Everything depends on the qual~ ity of the experience which is had."z3 Therefore, to use the experiential mode of learning in the novitiate effectively,formatores must ensure (!) that the quality of the learning experiences engaged in by novices be se-riously evaluated and (2)that the novices, with the assistance of a skilled facilitator, give sufficient time and attention to follow-up reflection on their experiences. The Ongoing Process of Individuation The third major aspect of novitiate formation calls for the ongoing fostering of the personal growth of candidates. While the agenda of the receiving community is stressed in the process of religious socialization, the individuation process respects the agenda of persons in their individ-ual growth process. Since it is the case, more and more, that candidates enter the novitiate at such diverse ages and at such different points of p.er-sonal development, novitiate formation must seriously recognize individ-ual differences and aid individuals to move ahead, not regress, in the de-velopment of their selfhood. After all, the ability to give of oneself in self-donation presupposes that one first possesses a self. According to Carl Jung, the process of individuation is a gradual growth toward whole-ness and harmony, involving the progressive differentiation and detailed development of all parts of the human personality. Since individuation is a lifelong project, entry into religious life cannot halt its progress with-out stunting the healthy maturation and development of religious as hu-man beings. 6"/6 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 Since Vatican II, religious have been strongly ehcouraged to take con-tinuhl human growth seriously and to take care that their commitment to religious life does not impede their prior responsibility as human beings to a~tualize their God-gi~,en potential. In the eyes of an increasing num-ber of c,~ontemporary theologians, the motivation for continuous human growth is clearly a religious one. Human life'is seen as a gift fr6m the Fi~ther. At the same time, God couples the gi~ft of life with a challenge to person~s to be cocreatorsof their lives, freely fashioning their lives into "something beautiful for God." In this ongoing process of human de-velopment,~ the Lord of creation and the human works Of his hand col-laborate. Therefore, for the person who seeks to respond to God's in-itiative, a commitment to continuous growth'is not only a choice, but requirement. To deny the inner impulse t.oward continuous growth is tan-tamount to not responding to God, because, in the words of Gregory Baum, "as d.estiny, as summons, as love., God is present in man's mak-ing of man."~-4 John Haughey, S.J., states that the refusal to take seri-ously one's vocation to be a cocreator with God also takes on a moral dimension. When the refusal to choose leaves the work of God's hands unfinished, then this peculiar kind of inaction takes on a moral dimension. Why.'? Because the unique way of manifesting some aspect of the fullness of God that every person is born to manifest remains potency. Refusal to come to the point of decision, choice, or commitment can leave some-thing of creation itself unfinished and hence God's glory incomplete. This constitutes evil at the level of:being itself. An individual thwarts the purpose of God's creating him by refusing to exercise the cocreator-ship that he could exercise. That which is called forth by God is ren-dered void by man.25 Consequently, religious life and novitiate formation must reinforce among no'vices the importance of continuing their commitment to the proc-ess of individuation as they are simultaneously socialized into the group. Growth in spiritual maturity depends heavily on integral human devel-opment. This truth has long been captured in the Scholastic adage that "grace builds on nature." Leo P. Rock, S.J., a former novice director, applied this truth 'to novitiate formation in a pithy way: "Grace does not substitute for nature, but fulfills it. Healthy, sane personality develop-ment is the most fertile soil in which grace can take root and grow. Growth in religious life can best happen in the situation which best fos-ters personal human growth.''26 The following considerations may be helpful toformatores as they consider how to best foster such prerequi- Novitiate Formation / 677 site human growth in the novitiate: The Developmental Nature of Human Growth Human growth takes place in stages, with each stage presupposing and building on preceding ones. As deveiopmentalists put it, these stages are. invariantly sequential. A person cannot, for example, go from stage one to stage four by skipping the intervening stages. This principle thus requires t~at every individual novice be met where he or she is on enter-ing the novitiate, and then helped to proceed ~forward, stage by stage, from tha.t personal starting point. This is especially important because per-sons entering religion today .vary so much in age, background, and de-velopment. An undifferentiated treatment of novices would prove to be an unenlightened and eventually frustrating appr6ach. Another key consideratibn is that, as a Jesuit formation document puts it, "human development does not proceed at the same pace in eve-ryone." z7 This fact calls for adaptation of the process to individuals. Therefore, in. fostering growth in the novitiate, it seems important that the focus be kept on the individual and the particular~areas of his or her life that stand most ready for development at any particular time. Force-feeding of any kind not only risks dging violence to people, but will ul-timately be countbrproductive in leading to any kind of significant, long-term learning. Personal Responsibility and Religious Obedience The renewal of religious life since Vatican II has certainly challenged men and women to understand and qive the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in ways that do not impede personal maturity and psycho-logical health. Twenty years ago Jesuit John Courtney Murray spelled out this challenge in a talk to fellow Jesuits. He warned that religious obedience poses a real danger to personal maturity if it fosters the abdi-cation of personal responsibility for one's life and choices. Obedience is a perilous"path to personal maturity, according to Murray. This is be-cause the vow of obedience, if poorly lived out, produces people "who to a degree are purposeless, their lives not consciously and strongly pat-terned, not inwardly directed toward a determined goal with all the or-ganized power of the whole self.' ,28 Religious can succumb to the trap posed by obedience by being pas-sive and overly submissive to authority figures in order to gain accep-tance and approval or to enjoy a kind of infantile dependence free from the anguish of personal decision-making. Those who manifest these and othe'r forms of immature behavior often rationalize their way of acting Review for Religious, September-October 1988 in spiritual terms, thus disguising and denying what they~ are actually do-ing. When they say that they "just want to follow God's or the supe-rior's will," it is sometimes simply a rationalization to justify their to take responsibility for themselves.29 This becomes obvious when the superior clearly has no strong feelings or particular preference about wfiat should happen and in fact would like the religious to assume some independent initiative and to indicate a clear preference. Realizing this threat to maturity, ihe document on Jesuit formation makes clear that "the more the noviceg are stimulated to assume respon-sibilities with prudent and discerning charity, the more successfully will .they acquire Spiritual maturity and the more freely will they adhere their vocation."3° A correlative document on Jesuit obedience states that mature obedience is unattainable apart from the constant cultivation a spirit of initiative and responsibility.3~ A Discernment Model to Develop Responsible~Obedience To foster personal responsibility within the framework of religious obedience, I have used the following eight-step model to teach novices a way of practicing dis~zernment: Step 1" Identify the decision to be made or tl~e issu~ to be resolved. Step 2: Examine the underlying values or concerns (human, Chris-tian, religious, and Jesuit) involved. Step 3: Take time to pray over the matter, paying attention to how one is being drawn or led in prayer. Step 4: Discuss the matter with a spiritual director. Step 5: Dialogue with the superior and engage in a mutual search for God's will in the matter. Step 6: Strive for a state of lgnatian "indifference," that is, a state of inner freedom and equipoise which allows one to accept whatever decision or resolution would be for God's greater glory. If a person is unable to achieve "indifference," discussing the matter in spiritual direction can bring valuable self-knowledge and clarity about how best to proceed in the search for God's will. Perhaps, more prayer and dia-logue with the superior regarding conflicting values and perspectives may be needed before a peaceful closure and decision can be arrived at. Step_ 7: Accept the superior's decision with ,trust in God's. provi-dence at work within the dynamics of religious obedience. Step 8: Stay open to the emerging data of ongoing experience to check for confirmation. In a study of lgnatian obedience, John Futrell, Novitiate Formation / 679 S.J., states that "the principal means of confirmation of the decisions of the superior., are the mutual contentment of himself and his com-panion and the proof of living experience.' ,32 If there is serious doubt "that the superior's decision truly reflects God's will, the process of ,prayer, consultation, and dialogue must begin again. This discernment process promotes personal responsibility and growth because it requires the full engagement of the novices. In com-ing to a decision, they must work with.their religious superior, rather than have things fully decided or resolved for them from above. Step I requires them to invest in the process of defining the parameters of the issue from their personal point of view. Step 2 involves a process of val-ues clarification in which they state the values that are at stake in the de-cision. Steps 3 and 4 give them the chance to critique these values, both alone in prayer and together with a spiritual director. Steps 2, 3, and 4 press them to ask an important twofold question: "Am I free to pursue my values.'?" and "Are my values worth the pursuit?" By requiring them to come to some kind of tentative stance or decision before dialogu-ing with the superior, these steps promote their sense of selfhood, which is largely shaped in the process of personal decision-making. Finally, if attained, the spiritual attitude of Ignatian indifference provides them with the inner freedom which guarantees that their act of autonomous choice can be integrated with religious obedience. For, in the end, indifference allows them to accept whatever is decided with a sense of adult respon-sibility and commitment to the way of evangelical obedience. Summary Reflections Before ma~king a concluding recommendation, it might be helpful to summarize what has been proposed here: I. Adaptations in novitiate formation must always be guided by the three, essential goals of the novitiate: vocation discernment, religious so-cialization, and ongoing individuation. 2. Novitiate formation as it relates to vocation discernment must be seen as a positive aid concerned with the confirmation of a call, rather /han as a negative process of "weeding out" candidates. The process of election monitors the will of God being expressed in the heart's deep-est desires, and the process of existential confirmation searches for the will of God manifested in the concrete circumstances of one's life. 3. Novitiate formation as it relates to religious socialization is the proc-ess by which a religious community receives new members and bonds them to the community's past and present by (a) sharing with them its tradition, spirituality, mores, and "habits of the heart" and (b)welcom- 680 / Review for Religious, September-October 1988 ing them to its current fellowship and ministries. 4. Novitiate formation as it relates to ongoing individuation is the process by which the, personal growth and development .of individual nov-ices are fostered, even as the novices are being socialized into the com-munity. Towards this end the novitiate attempts to promote individual initiative and personal responsibility within the context of religious obe-dience. In light of what has been proposed above, I recommend-~that, wher-ever and whenever possible, communities with small numbers of nov-ices (for example, five or fewer) join together with,other compatible groups ~to form a larger formation community, Examples of compatible groups might be novices of different provinces of the same religious or-der (for example, an interprovinciai Jesuit or Dominican novitiate) o con-gregations with the same founding spirit (for example, Franciscans, Bene-dictines, Mercy Sisters, St. Joseph Sisters). In my opinion, the goals of religious socialization are. better accomplished in larger groupings and are very difficult to achieve with just two or three novices ~ibsorbed into a regular apostolic house. This is especially true of the liminoid phase of religious socializa-tion, which relies heavily on an experience of community. During period, novices are meant to acquire the religious values,mores, and spiri-tuality of the group by experiencing daily life in a vibrant community, whose central ministry is the socializing of novices into religious This regrouping for the sake of forming larger formatiow communities can be on a full-time or part-time basis. A very successful example a full-time merger has been Loyola House in Berkley, Michigan, which houses the joint Jesuit novitiate program of the Chicago and Detroit prov-inces. Part-time collaborative programs have taken various forms. For example, for two straight years the Jesuit novices of the California and Oregon provinces joined together for two months to experience the Ig-natian Exercises together. Last year three Jesuit novitiates'pooled their resources and spent five weeks together to study the history of the or-der. Another example of such successful collaboration is the intercom-munity novitiate experience in such places as Los Angeles and Denver. Large and autonomous formation communities can provide S'everal very important dimensions of novitiate training that communities of or two novices cannot provide. Briefly, they are the following: Peer formation. In my experience, peer formation is an important as-pect of religious socialization, As novices experience together the dif-ferent aspects of religious life and share theirjfaith and religious experi- Novitiate Formation / 681 ences with each other, they are supported and "edified," in the best sense of the word. Spiritual conversation among novices regarding the story of their vocation, their experience in prayer and ministry, their strug-gles with the vows and with community living can provide much needed support and insight. Liturgical formation. Larger, autonomous novitiate communities are more likely to have a well-planned, coordinated liturgical life, which can be very important in the spiritual formation of novices. When there are only two or three novices living together, chances are that there will be no orga0ized liturgical life in the community. Instead, the novices may merely join in a convenient parish liturgy. When this occurs, the peda-gogical function of liturgy within formation is greatly diminished. Staffing and programmatic advantages. Because of the growing short-age of active members in practically every religious community in the United States, the search for qualified personnel for the various apostolic works of a community often invites a subtle competition among the vari-ous ministries. As a result, there is a danger that novitiate formation will get short shrift because of the very small number of novices being min-istered to. A larger group of novices in some kind of interprovincial ar-rangement would provide a stronger claim for greater investment by the community (a) in qualified formation personnel whose work is given full-time status and assured of some continuity and (b) in some regular and relatively fixed program of instruction for the training of novices. With-out this kind of investment, it is hard to expect that a person asked to be a part-time novice director for one or two years will devote the time and energy needed to understand the complex process of novitiate for-mation and to develop the skills and knowledge needed to do a good job. When left to function on their own, communities with just a trickle of novices tend to create a makeshift, ad hoc arrangement to handle the for-mation of the few. It seems that having several ongoing, large-group, com-mon novitiate programs which could accommodate novices from vari-ous communities that share the same charism or spirit of a founder would be helpful for meeting the need created by the drastic drop in recent years. None of this would be complete without a word about the inherent, not to say mind-boggling, paradox of religious life and growth. While we are called upon to use all of the knowledge and expertise at our dis-posal, it is the Holy Spirit who effects growth, who gives life, and whose gifts shape the soul--a Spirit who, much to the surprise, despair, and con-fusion of our best-made plans, still blows where it will. This does not Review for Religious, September-October 1988 relieve us of the responsibility of bringing what expertise we can muster to fostering human, spiritual growth. But it reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit, whose ways transcend all our human expertise and wisdom, often confounding them, who effects and shapes the growth we hope to facili-tate. NOTES ~ See Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M., "Planning the Novitiate Process: Reflections of an Anthro.pologist," in REVIEW FOR REL~6~Ot~S (July/August 1984): 532-546. , 2 Ibid., 15.~ 532. ~' 3 Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 20. '* Annotation # I, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, translated by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Upiversity Press, 1951). 5 Michael J. Buckley, S.J., "Final Vows in the Society of Jesus," in National Jes-uit News, vol. 10, no. 7, April 1981, p. 8. 6 Ibid., p. 9. 7 Ibid., p. 8. 8 Michael J. Buckley, S.J., "The Priesthood as a Religious Event," in The Berkeley Jesuit, spring 1970, p. 7. 9 "In all selection and testing of seminarians, necessary standards must always be firmly maintained, even when there exists a regrettable shortage of priests. For God will not allow his Church to lack ministers if worthy candidates are admitted while unsuitable ones are speedily and paternally directed towards the assuming of other tasks and are encouraged to take up the lay apostolate readily, in a consciousness of their Christian vocation." Paragraph 6, Decree on Priestly Formation (Optatam Totius), in The Documents of Vatican !I, ed. Walter Abbott, S.J. (New York: Amer-ica Press, 1966). ~0 John Westerhoff III and Gwen K. Neville, Generation to Generation: Conversa-tions on Religious Education and Culture (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1974), p. 41. ~ Nos. 138-140, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), pp. I I 1-113. See also no. 23, "Companions of Jesus Se~nt into Today's World," Decree # I, Documents of the 33rd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1984), p. 50. ~2 Quoted in Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Com-mitment in American Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986), p. 37. ~3 Arbuckle, op. cit., pp. 540-545. ~': Ibid., p. 540. ~5 Ibid. ~6 Quoted ibid., pp. 542-543. t7 No. 22, Decree 8, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 104. Is Ibid., no. 19, p. 103. 19 For an explanation of how praxis or experiential learning is applied to prayer, see my "Teach Us to Pray," in Company: A Magazine of the American Jesuits, vol. Novitiate Formation / 683 I, no. 3, April 1984, pp. 8-10. 2o For a discussion of the experience/reflection dynamic in learning about interper-sonal relationships, see my "Particular Friendships Revisited," in Human Devel-opment, vol. 7, no. I, spring 1986, pp. 34-38. 2~ Decree I, -#40, Documents of the 33rd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus. 22 John Dewey, Experience and Education (London: Collier-MacMillan Company, 1938), p. 25. 23 Ibid., p. 27 (emphasis in the original). 24 Gregory Baum, "Reply and Explanation," in Ecumenist, vol. 9, Nov.-Dec. 1970- Jan.-Feb. ! 971, p. 18. z5 John Haughey, S.J., Should Anyone Say Forever: On Making, Keeping, and Break-ing Commitments (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975), pp. 23-24. 26 Leo lb. Rock, S.J., "The California Province Novitiate: What We Do and Why," an unpublished paper, September 1973, p. 4. 27 No. 24, Decree 8, "The Spiritual Formation of Jesuits," Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 105. 28 John Courtney Murray, S.J., " The Danger of the Vows," in Woodstock Letters, fall 1967~, p~ 42 I. 29 For a discussion of obstacles to mature religious obedience, see my "Dealing with Projection: Recognizing and Removing a Common Obstacle to Mature Religious Obe-dience," in Human Development, vol. 6, no. I, spring 1985, pp. 6-1 I. 30 No. 23, Decree 8, " The Spiritual Formation," in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, p. 105. 31 Nos. II and 12, Decree 17, "The Life of Obedience." Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, pp. 164-166. 32 John C. Futrell, S.J., Making an Apostolic Community of Love: The Role of the 'Superior According to St. Ignatius of Loyola (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), p. 143. Some Thoughts on the Vocation to Celibacy Clifford Stevens Father Stevens has been, over the course of many years, a Trappist, a parish priest, an Air Force chaplain, an editor of The Priest, and a small-town pastor. He has pub-lished a novel, Flame Out of Dorset, about St. Stephen Harding, twelfth-century Cis-tercian. Last appearing in our pages in 1986, he writes from the monaste(y he founded: Tintern; Monastery Road; Oakdale, Nebraska 68761. The very foundation of the vocation to celibacy must be the complete free-dom from compulsion with which the choice of celibacy is made. Free-dom from external compulsion, in that no one can be forced by external pressures to choose the celibate vocation, and freedom from internal pres-sures, ascetic, moral, spiritual, which would make the choice of celibacy anything but a conscious, free choice, based on something within the vo-cation to celibacy itself. The choice of celibacy is not a rejection or de-nial of the excellence of marriage. ~ It is rather an affirmation of realities that transcend sexuality and marriage.2 This "anthropological" base of the choice of celibacy is a critical factor in celibate happiness, and that celibate happiness is based precisely on the facts that [ could find happiness in marriage, that in choosing celi-bacy3 ! am just as free to choose marriage, and that marriage has a good-ness and nobility all its own. There is a profound reason for this complete freedom from compul-sion based on the specific excellence of celibacy itself, and not in com-parison with something else. The profound reason is this. The gift of sexuality and its directedness toward intimate expression'~ in marriage comes, with our very creation, from God's goodness, his wis-dom, and his benevolence. It is an integral part of our humanity and our 684 Thoughts on Celibacy masculinity, and no power on earth can deprive us of it because it comes with the~very blueprint of our nature. (This article looks at celibacy from a masculine point of view, not because the feminine viewpoint is not im-portant, but becduse it is outside the author's experience.) The ,gift of sexuality, in fact, is the root reality of our bodily exis-tence and of our masculine nature, and has a power and a goodness that enriches human life immeasurably. However we want to describe it, you and I, men endowed with all the gifts of a masculine nature, are shaped and fashioned by every ripple and nuance of our living flesh for physi-cal intimacy with a woman. To hide this from ourselves in the name of celibacy would rob the choice of celibacy of half its meaning. The choice of celibacy can never be based upon a denial or ignoring of the inherent goodness of sexuality or the preeminent goodness of sex-ual intimacy in marriage,s Moreover, it is possible to possess one's sexu-ality in this full awareness of its essential goodness, in complete inno-cence, with a wholesome sense of dignity, freedom, wonder, apd joy in its possession and, with the same complete innocence, to look forward to and experience its joyous expression in marriage; or, if one is a celi-bate, to be profoundly appreciative of its joyous expression in marriage, with the same complete innocence.6 The choice of celibacy is not based upon a lack of appreciation for sexual intimacy in marriage or upon any conviction that the experience of marriage is in any way displeasing to God. These are simply unsound anthropological bases upon which to build a vocation to celibacy and, unwittingly, they can plant deep in.the recesses of one's motivation a time bomb ready to go off. It is unfortunate that in the history of Christian spirituality the voca-tion to celibacy has often been explained in terms that denigrate the value and beauty of sexual love in marriage. The impression is given that the choice of celibacy is somehow a flight from something radically unspir-itual and that the celibate looks upon conjugal intimacy as something be-neath his dignity, something that would mar his perfect purity. The choice of celibacy, if it is genuine, has nothing of this motivation about it, but is based solidly and squarely upon something more positive and something more exhilarating. Celibacy must be based on a profound appreciation for the gift of sex-ual intimacy as personal gift and endowment from God and as an inte-gral part of one's masculine inheritance. Nobility of soul does not fail to plumb and to appreciate the riches of masculine possibility which is the natural inheritance of an awakened and full manhood. Review for Religious, September-October 1988 This possibility, with all its splendor and enrichment, does not ex-haust the human possibility, but it does enshrine some of its noblest in-stincts, of the feelings and of the mind, and an intimacy that mirrors the very passion of God himself. As a celibate I set aside intimacy with a woman, with all its rooms of joy and beauty, only for a greater intimacy and its even more won-drous rooms of beauty, and its universe of joy. But in doing so, I will not deny the power, the significance, or the magnitude of the masculine expectancy that I set aside and turn away from. This intimacy, by what-ever name it is called, is riveted into my very flesh; the lineaments of this passionate preoccupation are traced and interlaced in the warp and woof of my very biology. The gift of manhood with all its passionate possibilities is one of the richest gifts of God. I set it aside freely, not with no appreciation for its beauty, and not with regret, but because I have stumbled on a greater beauty, a more powerful intimacy, and a more earth-shaking encounter. In the shadow of that intimacy and in the tremor of this expectancy, every other human possibility fades into insignificance. I do not hide from myself the shattering loveliness and singular beauty of the sexual intimacy that could be mine, but celibacy reaches out to something greater, fully as rich, fully as valid, and as fully a com-plement to my manhood as the rich experience of love in marriage. This is the sound anthropological base upon which the vocation to celibacy is founded. It may not be part of one's original motivation since, in the beginnings of a vocation, you are simply too busy and too taken up with the excitement of a new direction to reflect upon every element of your motivation. But ultimately what is implicit in your choice must be made explicit by thought, reflection, and personal exploration, and there must not be in the root motivation of celibacy anything resembling spiritual or moral snobbery or looking down on marriage. The choice of celibacy must be based upon some excellence in the vocation of celibacy itself, and not in mere comparison with something else. Only then can the specific excellence of the vocation to celibacy become part of your own life,~and--I am sure I do not have to repeat--thespecific excellence of celibacy is not the fact that you do not have a woman in your life or that you sleep alone. This is a necessary condition, but if that is all that celibacy means to you, you could end up being the most miserable of men, deprived of the crowning act of your masculine nature, the finest and noblest expression of your manhood, with nothing to take its place. That would be a deprivation of singular magnitude. Thoughts on Celibacy And this is something that we should never forget: As celibates we deprive ourselves of this crowning act of our masculine nature, the fin-est and most genuine expression of our masculinity that is sexual inti-macy in marriage. If that terrifying vacuum were not filled with some-thing that touched with joy the very roots of our manhood, the dep-rivation and emptiness would be almost too much to bear. This is one of the consequences of celibacy that has not often been touched upon, but it certainly explains some of the strange aberrations of clerical and religious life and some of the tragic consequences of an ill-motivated and immature commitment to celibacy. One of the major problems in the vocation to celibacy is that many celibates have not through deep personal reflection made explicit in their own minds what was implicit in their choice of celibacy and have ac-cepted, quite uncritically, an evaluation of sexuality in general, and of their own sexuality in particular, that is based on tenets of a Neoplaton-ist and Stoic anthropology embodied in an older type of spirituality. This evaluation notonly placed no value upon sexuality itself, but tended to denigrate as totally unworthy of the spiritual person the inti-mate expression of sexuality in marriage, thus negating the very mean-ing of sexuality and placing a negative judgment on the very possession of one's sexuality. Really, it all starts and ends there: What evaluation and judgment do you place upon the intimate expression of sexuality in marriage? If that judgment is a negative one, you can never really be com-fortable in the possession of your own sexuality. The true Christian evaluation of sexual intimacy in marriage, based upon the vision of sexual love embodied in the Christian revelation it-self, is that the intimate expression of sexual love in marriage is (i) the crowning act (in fa~zt, the primary and unique act) of one's manhood, (2) the finest, noblest, and most genuine expression of one's masculinity, (3) the unique expression of love between a man and a woman, (4) God's crowning gift to one's bodily existence, and (5) the gr,eatest earthly gift that God has given to the human race. This is implicit in the very choice of celibacy, even though that evalu-ation may not have been part of the conscious motivation when the choice of celibacy was made. Historically, the negative sexual tenets we have mentioned are part of a North African phenomenon that included Neoplatonism in Alexan-dria, the monastic movement in the same area, the spirituality of Eva-grius Ponticus, Tertullian, and St. Augustine (and the ascetic movement in the West), and the monastic spirituality of John Cassian, who reflected Review for Religious, September-October 1988 in his writings the sexual anthropology of the Alexandrian monastic move-ment. A healthier anthropology can be found in the robust passion for life in the classical Greek tradition, reflected in the best of Plato and the monu-mental work of Aristotle, later embodied in the Spirituality of the Greek Fathers and in the philosophical achievements of Saints Albertus Mag, nus and Thomas Aquinas. That anthropology recognized the inherent goodness of our senses and our sense life, the inherent goodness of hu-man sexuality, and the innate and preeminent goodness of the intimate expression of sex in marriage. This view, however, was never embod-ied in "traditional" spirituality and had little influence on spiritual doc-trine. The work of Aquinas, however, bore fruit in many areas over the cen-turies even though some of his basic tenets were condemned by an older "Augustinian" sChool soon after his death in 1274. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, particularly, Gaudium et.Spes, the Aqui. nas view was recovered, and we have in the council documents a posi-tive and wholesome anthropology of sexuality7 which should have a pro-found influence on future spirituality. NOTES ~ "Students should have a proper knowledge of the duties and dignity of Christian marriage, which represents the love.that exists between Christ and the Church." Op-tatam Totius, Decree on the Training of Priests of the Second Vatican Council, ed. by Austin Flannery, 0.P~., no., 10, p. 715. 2 "They should recognize the greater excellence of virginity consecrated to Christ, however, so that they may offer themselves to the Lord with fully deliberate and gen-erous choice, and a complete surrender of body and soul." ibid. 3 Celibacy seeks, on the basis of personal:experience and personal judgment, a con~ tinual intimacy with God and with divine things; it provides that personal solitude without which, for this p_articular individual, such continual intimacy with God would be impossible or unlikely. Celibacy is not chosen because there is any value in mere sexual deprivation, but because it is a natural step towards a lifestyle totally or domi-nantly preoccupied with the eternal and the divine. Celibacy bears witness in one's own person to the eternal dimension, to the reality and significance of the eternal in human life. '~ For the purpose of this article, sexuality and sexual intima~3, have these meanings: Sexuality is a gift of God that comes with the act of creation, a personal endowment that should be borne with a certain masculine dignity and yet worn joyfully~ and lightly. Our sexuality is inherent'ly good, and so, too, is the intimacy with a wdman to which it leads. Sexual intimacy is a gift of God that comes with the very blueprint of our nature, Thoughts on Celibacy in the sense that the pattern of that intimacy is molded into our very bodies. Sexual intimacy is part of our human and masculine inheritance, and its expression in mar-riage the very crown of masculinity and femininity. But while sexual intimacy is a gift to our person and our nature, its expression is meant to be embodied in a personal choice based on love, embedded in the marriage covenant, and to be the setting and inexhaustible source of the deepest human hap-piness. Sexual intimacy comes with our nature and our personhood. It is the living expres-sion of the noblest human love and is itself the image and mirror of God's own love for human beings. By celibacy we freely deprive ourselves of this most enriching gift,'this crown of our masculinity, for the simple reason that we, called by God, have other plans for ourselves. 5 The nature of the vocation to celibacy is not a denial of the inherent goodness and sublimity of married love, but an affirmation, the affirmation of something beyond the sexual and beyond the earthly, the affirmation of another relationship and the cul-tivation of that relationship as the main occupation of one's life. Celibacy is a dep-rivation, but it is a freely chosen deprivation of something seen to be part of one's own human inheritance and something preeminently good. St. Thomas links celi-bacy to the virtue of magnificence, a certain exuberance in living, a bursting of the bonds of the ordinary to reach out to the extraordinary. It is based on a hunger for the eternal and for an intimacy as real and as stunning as the intimacy of man and woman in marriage. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), pp. 145-180.' 6 Celibacy is part of the virtue of sophrosyne, touched upon in Aristotle's Ethics, with a fuller treatment in the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. The object of sophrosyne is the body, and those things that are of the body (soma, somatos). There are several levels or kinds of sophrosyne: (I) joy and pride in bodily being itself (simple sophrosyne), (2) joy and pride in bodily well-being (dignity), (3) joy and pride in bodily senses (liveliness), (4)joy and pride

Issue 46.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1987. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Deparlment of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1987 by REWEW FOR RELtG~OtJS. Single copies $2.50. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $11.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (surface mail); airmail (Book Rate): $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELI(;IOUS: P.O. Box 6070; D~luth, MN 55806. Daniel F.X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors September/October, 1987 Volume 46 Number 5 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to Rt:wEw voR Rt:Lmu)us; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW t'OR REI.I(:IOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M1 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visu-ally impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. What Do the Laity Expect of Religious Life Guzm6n Carriquiry This article was prepared for the USIG (International Union of Superiors General) and originally appeared in the USIG Bulletin (no. 73, 1987). It is reprinted here with permission. Dr. Carriquiry, a native of Uruguay, is married and father of four. He is head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and a professor at the Pontifical University Urbaniana. Two Remarks and a Propitious Occasion '~(ou have proposed and requested a very difficult task. Probably I accepted it with a considerable lack of awareness. Preparing for this meeting, I was able to realize the predicament in which I had placed myself. I am not a theologian by profession and even less an expert on the theology of religious life. I have had to read and reflect a good deal on the theme, but even so, I feel very inadequate in facing such a delicate question. I will limit myself, therefore, t.o giving some impressions, reflections and challenges, without any pretense at having a profound penetration into the "mystery" of the religious life. I would like to make a second remark., through a concern for hon-esty. "What do the laity expect. ?" is the question. When we speak of "laity," however, we are referring to many different people. It is good to suspect, or at times to smile at, those who with an excessive fa-cility and pretension claim to be "representatives" of the laity (or of youth, or of the poor, or of women . . .). We are tempted to dress our-selves in plumed clothing in order to hide our nakedness and to give our-selves a better or stronger "image." I am going to answer the question-- What do the laity expect. ? knowing that there will be much that is 641 1542 / fleview for Religious, September-October, 1987 personal to this individual layman, to this poor Christian, as a result of his own journey, experience and convictions. The fact of working in the Pontifical Council for the Laity for many years, however, has placed me in a privileged situation because if one wishes to serve the participation of the laity in the life and mission of the Church effectively--which is the competency of this Dicastery--then it is necessary to listen to and follow with special attention the sensitivities, demands, needs and ex-periences which are part of this multifaceted lay world. I hope to be able to transmit some of this rich experience to you. If, however, there are two evident limitations to this contribution, there is no doubt that it comes at an opportune and propitious moment in the life of the Church. We are in the time between the recent past extraordinary Synod--a commemoration, verification and actualization of Vatican Council II twenty years after its conclusion--and the next ordinary Synod of 1987, which will have as its theme "The vocation and mission of the laity in the Church and in society." The relations between laity and religious are adequately clarified by the knowledge the Church has at present of its mystery of communion and of the demands of i(s mission. And all, bish-ops, priests, deacons, religious and laity--as is stated in the final mes-sage of the extraordinary Synod--are invited to participate in the work of preparation for the next Synod, which "should constitute a decisive step so that all Catholics might receive the grace of Vatican II." From an Ecclesiology of Communion We can begin from an obvious daily experience. Many walls of sepa-ration- material, cultural, ecclesiastical--have been torn down, and to-day a close, simple, fraternal experience of collaboration between the la-ity and religious is lived and shared. This occurs within the most diverse Christian communities, in the most varied works of the Church, in asso-ciations and movements, in structures of "communion and participa-tion" of the combined pastoral team of the local Churches . It is like an immediate, accessible, verified evidence of fraternal collaboration and of common participation. No one can deny it. It can be stated that this is like a reflection and a fruit, a sign and a realization of the "ecclesiology of communion" of Vatican Council II. This I give here as something taken for granted. I find it interesting to point out a double movement, indivisible, in the carrying out of this con-ciliar ecclesioiogy. On one hand, we have gradually gone beyond a cor-porate or governmental division between clergy, religious and laity, com-partmentalized and sometimes in tension or in struggle for the division Expectations of Religious Life / 643 of "power" in the Church. What is anterior and interior to any dis-tinction has been affirmed and accented in this developing movement; that is, what is more essential, common to all, more original and radical in all Christian life. We are members of the great family of the "Chris-tian faithful," incorporated into Christ by baptism, participants in his priesthood, called to holiness, with equal dignity in the eyes of God, all co-responsible for the communion and the mission of the Church. But all "in their own way" because, at the same time, we experience that we are distinct, that this unity of all does not reduce us to uniformity and impoverish us by it, but that it develops fruitfully in the diversity of vo-cations, ministries and charisms which express and enrich the commun-ion and mission of the Church. It is with this ecclesiological basis and in intense ecclesial experience that we pose the question of what the laity expect of religious life . The Laity Expect "Something More" In the first place, I believe that many lay people would be surprised and somewhat disconcerted with the question, unable to respond in a con-scious and well-planned way. However, I think that, instinctively, in-tuitively, their response would be that of expecting "something more" of religious. Yes, they expect something more! Something more radical, more total, more definitive, more profound, more demanding and chal-lenging, in the relationship with God. They expect something more of holiness. In giving this spontaneous response, I pictured the alert, concerned, astonished reaction of the sister who says: "but, Dr . are not the laity also called to sanctity? . . ." And she says something obviously true if considered in the light of present ecclesial self-knowledge, but not so obvious in the understanding of all Christians. That conventional and arbitrary prejudice which seems to reserve holiness to the religious state, judging it in some way the monopoly of the following of Christ or of the evangelical counsels--has been gradually abandoned, and yet, at the same time, the lay condition was often considered a second-class Chris-tian life, a concession to human weaknesses. Ai times, the ideal of holi-ness was seen as a heroic and somewhat "aristocratic" option of per-fection, attained through the initiative of superior men and women. But, be at peace; good sister, because in ever greater numbers, the laity are becoming conscious of this universal vocation to holiness to which Chapter 15 of Lumen Gentium refers in a clear and distinct man-ner. 644 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 This being accepted, perhaps you still remain disturbed that the laity continue expecting from religious a greater radicality of commitment and donation to God (the three vows are like dimensions of a unique vow--I read this some days ago--of the vow of one's whole self, the gift of the entire person, offering oneself to God with all one's energies.); they expect a greater, more immediate and more total liberty and availability in order to follow-imitate-serve Christ; they expect a more direct and tan-gible referenceto the presence of the mystery of God in human life. They are very sure of what they expect even though they cannot always ex-press it well. For this reason, the ordinary lay person is much more exi-gent in observing and in judging the witness given by religious than that given by lay people. In general, this is so. It is surprising that this ex-pectation- which rises up from the "sensum fidei," from this "super-natural instinct" of simple Christians--corresponds perfectly to what the Church considers the radical originality of the religious life: to give wit-ness to and "impulse" in the area of the growth of life, of sanctity. Con-sciously or intuitively, the laity expect that religious will keep as a high priority the primacy, the radicality of the witness to sanctity, not as .a,pat-rimony or goal exclusively their own, but as a call and warning, a chal-lenge and attraction for all the members of the people of God toward this vocation and program of life. It is right that religious should be a bit disturbed when they feel them-selves burdened with such expectations because they feel that it is not. a question of a privilege but of a grave responsibility. In other words, there is a preferential love of God for each one of you--it was he who chose you first and who put his "aspiration" in you, and not you your-selves who decided to be more holy--which burdens you with responsi-bility in the response to God in the Church, I would say before the most "insignificant" of the baptized . . . and even before the most "care-less" of human beings. And it is not sufficient to p~ut on the habit~t~) say, "Lord, Lord." This vocation must be carried out effectively as the will of the Father. Saints or Reformers? In the long history of the Church one can find strong confirmation of what the laity today expect of the religious life. They expect what the Church has always expected, an assurance that they will never be de-prived of this "special gift" which is the religious life. Almost two mil-lennia of life teach that the crucial periods or phases of renewal of the Church--in its communion and in its mission--were brought about and' carried out through the great and liberated energies of holiness, and that Expectations of Religious Life / 645 in the "vanguard" of these holy and reforming energies the numerous and diverse charisms of the religious life proved powerful and fruitful. Let us have a bird's eye view of all this. - When the Church lived under the tension of the seducing powers of "worldliness" on the one hand and of vigorous heretical movements on the other, during the Roman-Christian Empire, the tradition of con-secrated life, of which the first witnesses are already met within the New Testament writings, flowered in the monastic experience, raising up a new spiritual "oxygenation," a passion for unity and a lively responsi-bility for the truth. - Shortly,afterwards, when Ambrose saw "the end of the world" in the total destruction of the Roman Empire of the West and before the invasion of the "barbarians," there came the charism of a Benedict-- as well as of Cyril and Methodius--whose cloistered disciples and fol-lowers would be nothing less than the evangelizers of the new peoples and the principal protagonists of the construction of a new civilization, medieval Christianity. - When the liberty of the Church was being strangled in the suffo-cating and corrupting embrace of feudal chains, currents of sanctity ra-diating from Cluny and Cister made possible the Gregorian reform and a sort of "second evangelization" of medieval Christianity. - And before the upheaval of the urban-mercantile-university revo-lution of the later medieval period--when the sectarian phenomena were swarming like so many devious responses to new sensitivities and cul-tural demands which went beyond the limits of the feudal "order"-- God enriched the communion and mission of the Church with the men-dicant orders for the most incisive and suitable evangelization of the new world and the new culture in process of being born. - And how is it possible to speak of the "Catholic reform" at the moment of the Council of Trent in face of the drama and challenge of the "Protestant reform" and the new missionary needs created by the European expansion at the dawn of modem times without considering the holy charisms of Ignatius, Teresa of Avila, Philip Neri, Angela Merici, Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul. ? - In the second half of the nineteenth century, the intellectual, spiri-tual and missionary revival of the Church, harassed by the impetus of the secularizing and anti-clerical modernism, had its strong point in the multiplication of religious orders, masculine and feminine, which it would take too long to mention . 646 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 This is a mere schematic outline, certainly, but substantially true in what I wish to demonstrate. Speaking to Superiors General, after hav-ing mentioned the names of great and holy founders, John Paul II con-cluded: All these names testify that the paths of holiness, to which the members of the people of God are called, passed and continue to pass in great part through religious life. And there is no need to marvel at that, given the fact that religious life was founded on the most precise "prescription" for holiness, constituted by love lived according to the evangelical coun-sels. Also, mentioning two essential criteria for the renewal of religious life, the Pope said during his trip to Brazil: The first criterion is that religious life (and concretely every religious community) is not seriously renewed if the objective of the renewal is, in fact, the seeking of the greatest ease and convenience, but only if this objective is the seeking of what is most authentic in religious life and most harmonious with it. The second criterion is that religious life is re-newed by being ever more a road of sanctity. This is nothing else than what is stated by the conciliar decree Per-fectae Caritatis in Number 21. All this brings to mind a marvelous reminder of John Paul II to the laity, when he celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the conciliar de-cree Apostolicam Actuositatem in November, 1985: The Church needs great currents, movements and testimonies of holi-ness among the Christian faithful because it is from holiness that all authentic renewal of the Church is born, all enrichment of the intelli-gence of faith and of the following of Christ, a vital and fruitful re-actualization of Christianity in meeting with human needs, renewed forms of presence in the heart of human existence and in the culture of the nations. More than "reformers," the Church needs saints--frequently re-peats the Pope because saints are the best reformers. And this is the same point stressed by all the participants in the recent extraordinary Synod. Twenty years after the end of Vatican Council II the "univer-sal vocation to sanctity" must have the primacy. Between Crises and Hopes Well. twenty years after the end of Vatican Council II, that great gift of God to the Church of our times, in this crucial phase of renewal of the Church. how does it appear to you? Are religious in the van- Expectations of Religious Life / 647 guard, as first and primary witnesses of those energies and currents of sanctity which effectively renew the Church and the world? A lay per-son responds with fear and trembling: it does not seem to me to be so. Certainly there are not lacking admirable personal and communitarian tes-timonies in religious life--we have them present here--which have an impact far beyond the visible limits of the Church. Thanks be to God! But, in general, there are also the weighty results of the convulsive cri-sis which occurred during the first phase of the "post-conciliar times." The great yon Balthasar says that the strong crisis felt by the Church in the immediate post-conciliar time, and which was partially a crisis of secularization and partially a crisis of comprehension of authority in the Church, affected the priesthood and the religious state in the very depths of its theology and in a manner in-comparably stronger than for the laity who had no great reason to re-flect on its identity and to question itself. What a painful distance there was between the great conciliar hopes of an "adequate renewal of religious life" and the heavy price of un-certainty and instability, of disquiet and disoriented nervousness, of secu-larization and crisis which followed it: so heavy a price that some are still suffering from the results of it and many were ruined by it. A heavy price which indicates, on the one hand, how fossilized and anachronis-tic were some forms inherited from the past--already hatching a crisis under a rather sclerotic shell--and which signals, on the other hand, de-vious and unilateral interpretations and actions in the realization of the renewal desired by Council;, in which there tended to predominate worldly criteria rather than an authentic and rigorous discernment "of the spirit." And this is not the result of expert examinations. The ordinary laity witnessed this crisis when, for example, sending their children to Catho-lic schools, they realized that many religious were leaving their commu-nities, that there were very few novices, that those who remained were usually the oldest . But where do vocations come from? From the grace of God which is never lacking, and from the response of lay men and women who wish to live their baptism more radically. These have not been lacking in these twenty post-conciliar years either. So? We tend to take refuge in a detailed and often rather intellectual enumeration of all the obstacles which are found on the road of total commitment: secu-larism, consumerism, pansexualism, and so forth. Who can deny this? But the "worldly" difficultie~ ought to make even more evident the chal-lenging vigor in the sign, the witness, thecalling. Perhaps the most se- Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 rious,reply with regard to the "crisis" is that, in these last decades, re-ligious life has failed to be radical enough in its following of Christ, suf-ficiently rooted in the full certainties of life, passionate enough as an ex-pression of the mystery of communion, challenging enough for con-version, vigorous enough in its apostolate, transparent enough in its wit-ness to awaken amazement, fascination, admiration, imitation among the many laity made aware of the requirements of baptism and of their Chris-tian responsibility. Today the "uneasy time" has passed. Serenity has been regained. There are promising signs of an increase of vocations. From the at-tempted experimentations there have come more criteria to consolidate the positive and reject the negative. There is a different atmosphere. Re-ligious life is beginning to reflect the new ecclesiai climate. But the Church expects much more from it. It should be strengthened in the Lord. A crisis is fully overcome when the reasons which caused it are discerned in depth: crisis of spiritual discipline, crisis of authority, obe-dience, crisis of communion . It is necessary to "refound" relig-ious life, said Don Egidio Viganb a few years ago. And the great con-necting threads for this new phase of the carrying out of the Council, which gave direction to this refoundation, seem clear: radicality on the road of holiness, passion for the truth, solidity and fidelity to com-munion, missionary impetus of a new evangelization. New Forms of Consecrated Life If there has been a crisis of religious institutes--also states Balthasar--it cannot be said that there has been a crisis of consecrated life because, in addition to the traditional forms of religious life, there have been developing lately new forms of consecration, new forms of "monastic" experiences in the world. In the vigorous "ecclesial move-ments" at the present time--such as the Focolarini, Communion and Lib-eration, Charismatic Renewal in the Spirit--and also in very many other communitarian experiences on local levels, there have been maturing per-sons and groups of persons who have decided, privately, to assume as a radical commitment the practice of the evangelical counsels in life com-munities. These types of vocations have abounded and a great number of new vocations, especially to the contemplative religious life, come from these movements. To be sure, history teaches that different impulses of renewal of re-ligious life are generated from strong charismatic and communitarian ex-periments which do not fit easily into existing forms and which were gen-erating--- or were heading toward--new roads of sanctity. But those more Expectations of Religious Life / 649 and more numerous lay vocations to live the evangelical counsels in a radical form, in forms that are different from the traditional forms of "consecration," should constitute a questioning and challenging sign for religious institutes. Why do they not have a similar attraction? On the other hand, the institutes have a precious patrimony of traditions and of spiritual wisdom which, revitalized and clarified, could be of primary im-portance in facing and directing the new forms which are arising. In the Return of the Sacred Not a few attentive observers at the present time note the emerging signs of a complete process of cultural transition, as if we were in mo-ments of maximum realization and, at the same time, of exhaustion 'from the process of secularization stirred up by the secularist and materialis-tic ideologies: a nihilistic phase, the indifferent absence of great motives and ideals of life, spiritual emptiness and lethargy, the predominance of the miserable idols of money, pleasure, power. At the same time there are emerging everywhere, at times with surprising or ambiguous mani-festations, new sensitive, new "significant" dem~inds, new "religious" expectations. Do we, perhal~s, 'see this under such varied signs as the re-vitalization of the cultural-religious substratum of some nations-- Poland, the Philippines, Haiti;--the resistance to secularizing modern-ism: the renewal of Islam; the accelerated and dangerous expansion of sects and of "mysterious" and "esoteric" cults; the sensitive "relig-ious" antennae of the new generations of youth; the increase of priestly and religious vocations; the great number of places in which individuals and whole peoples claim at the present time to have enjoyed apparitions of the Virgin; the enormous popular repercussions of the apostolic trips of the Holy Father; the growing flood of pilgrims going to the sanctuar-ies of their country? And in so many other and varied ways . "In s.pite of secular-ism," says the final message of the extraordinary Synod, "there exist also signs of a return to the sacred . . , of a new hunger and thirst for the transcendent and the divine . We should open the way to the di-mension of the 'divine' or of the 'mystery.' " This resurgence of the sacred--states a synodal father--will be more vigorous yet in the perspective of the end of the second millennium, but care must be taken so that the response and satisfaction of this new sen-sitivity and need is not given through devious channels and forms, frus-trating in the end because it will appear that the Catholic Church does not itself refer sufficiently to the sacred. 650 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 The whole Church is challenged, but I ask if there is not a special warning call to religious life. Instead of pursuing a retarded and submis-sive adaptation to a secularist culture in process of disintegration, the signs of an emerging culture can be fed on and deciphered only by the signs of the Absolute of God, by the radical testimony of the Mystery of God in human life. In the Agitation of the Secular Life Now let us be more specific. Let us look more carefully at the con-crete and daily experience of lay people. It is their specific work to or-der the world according to the designs of God, to live their Christian vo-cation in the ordinary conditions of family, work, and social life, in the logic and even dullness of created things. This is the road-~diversified in an enormous multiplicity of ways---of their sanctification. Yes, in-deed! I believe that there are many silent, hidden, daily witnesses to sanc-tity among lay people. At times, however, it is truly wearying to have to endure a certain "idealism" or a great deal of ecclesiastical rhetoric when reference is made to the lay state, to the "adult lay person". One gets the im-pression that often it is an abstraction of the real rhythm and weight of the normal day of an ordinary lay person. It is necessary to sanctify and to sanctify oneself in the family, professional and social life. But, how avoid being "pulled about," absorbed by a permanent agitation of the rhythm of life in order to obtain those material and spiritual times nec-essary to give "breath," "feeling" and an orientation to one's own life? Generally, in order to find these moments, as, for example, to as-sist at Mass, to pray in the family, to speak of God with one's children, to grow spiritually as a couple, to be silent., it is necessary to strug-gle and even more, to acquire a "discipline" and to respect it and to put it into practice. Most often one is pulled along by the bustle of the activities, preoccupations, responsibilities and the immediate anxieties of daily life to such a point that life becomes opaque, gray, is impover-ished of spiritual content, goes on marginalizing "the religious" to de-termined ritual moments which become ever more infrequent. And yet more . The laity are asked to assume ecclesiai and secu-lar responsibilities which are on a large scale and require time and la-bor. They are asked to be "militant." And that i~ fine. But what does it mean concretely? That the hours dedicated as catechist in the parish or in teams of service, or to meetings of movements or apostolic groups to which they belong, or absorbed by union responsibilities or participa-tion in the political party--and in this type of commitment the demands Expectations of Religious Life / 651 always seem to multiply if one wishes things to go along better continu-ally-. those hours of "militancy" have to be taken or "stolen" from the domestic and family life at the end of a day's work. For this reason, lay militants are always unstable minorities, threat-ened with discontinuity, doubly sacrificed, in abnegation and dedication. This is not to be regretted; it is their normal habitual condition. Great institutions are not built nor great works done with "extra" hours. Two remarks seem important for service of religious life in face of these situations of the laity. The first is to realize the need that the lay people have--today more than ever---of time, signs and specific spaces of prayer, of being filled with the perspective of the kingdom, savoring the things of God, becoming impregnated with the spirit of the beatitudes which can provide specific nourishment for their family, professional or political life. Many lay people look at and are seeking the contemplative life of religious communities so as to enter into contact with their spiri-tual radiation. You know how difficult it is to be contemplatives in the secular life, since many of your communities are dedicated to works of the apostolate. You can imagine how much more difficult it is for the laity . The second remark refers to the availability of religious for the serv-ice of the Gospel when compared to the obligations of lay people. When I end my day's work, I return home, not in order to rest but to help my wife who is carrying out her duties for the children, to bathe the little ones, to attend to a thousand little domestic needs . I would like to read so many things that could help me grow--and my wife also, natu-rally- but I do not have the time. I would like to visit friends in diffi-culty, to participate in ecclesial or cultural meetings which seem impor-tant to me, to get to know important persons or experiences. But I can-not sacrifice more than a minimum of family time. It is in my marriage and in my family that I see my first and most important responsibilities as a Christian. I am a happy man, but at times I admire and envy the "full time" workers for the Gospel, the "professional revolutionaries" of the Church, those who consecrate themselves exclusively and totally to the Lord. They should show a liberty and availability of tremendous energies for the most varied services for the Christian people. Does it perhaps happen that where there is more time to dispose of, there is more time to waste? On Political Participation If the chief witness of the laity is the Christian presence in the con-duct of the economy of creation, this does not mean that this is a field 659 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 exclusively reserved to them. The witness of lay people challenges re-ligious to go beyond caricatures of flight from the world and to consider their own consecration to God a radical commitment in the service of hu-man beings and of society. The great contributions of the religious life in social construction and progress can be found throughout history; but it is a fact that since the Council they have been going beyond the nar-row horizons, the so-called exclusivity or spiritual incompetence in the name of which religious life degenerated into forms of insensitivity in the face of situations and conditions of injustice and oppressiori suffered by persons, social groups, entire peoples. If the struggle for justice is a constitutive dimension of evangeliza-tion; if the defense and promotion of the dignity, rights and liberties of all human beings are a necessary part of the mission of the Church; if the kingdom of God--kingdom of peace and of justice, of truth and of love--is growing mysteriously in human, history--no religious can con-sider extraneous to her own peculiar vocation these commitments and tasks. It also falls to the religious "to evangelize the political' '--as says the Puebla document--in the sense of values of the Gospel and in con-formity with them. Up to this point, everything is clear. But there are cases in which, in the face of flagrant situations of injustice, misery and violence, when a vigorous and incisive commitment on the part of lay people is lacking, religious feel called to a more direct, surer, more incisive social and po-litical action. No one can be "neutral" in face of such situations. Even in these cases, however, it is necessary, on the one hand, to control the "immediate reaction" which ends up by absorbing and weakening the original vocation of the religious, and on th~ other, to prevent their ac-tions ending up in a well-determined political praxis, in a militant, dis-ciplined commitment, organized in a political party or strategy, with a basic reference to power. In taking this road, the premises for "secularization" are created. In addition, there is the "clerical" temptation of using prestige, social weight and the cultural representativity of ecclesiastics--above all, in Christian environments--as a basis to affirm definite political options worthwhile and free in themselves, and left then to the prudence of each Christian. In cases in which this "political praxis" of religious exists, many of the laity are conscious of a great lack of preparation of an "idealis-tic" voluntarism which substitute forms of "moral indignation" for the complex calculation of political .analysis. Expectations of Religious Life The categorical imperative "it is necessary to become committed" is identified, by some religious, in a mech'anical or simplistic manner with a "plunging into" the agitation of political matters without discern-ment. And this "plunging," with their lack of technical and political preparation, with their "ecclesiastical" condition of life far from the re-alistic stability of family and professional life and responsibility, with their lack of respect for the "weightiness" of the daily life of ordinary mortals, and with their counting on the particular protection of the Church--all this ends up by creating a particular type of untrustworthy political person and confused religious. The ease and simplicity with which some religious pass from traditional forms of life to political radi-calizations and moralistic ideologies is incredible. They are easily ma-nipulated and absorbed into a horizon which gradually becomes a prior-ity and then into a respect which becomes a substitute for ecclesial communion. Truly the Pope is right in insisting that it is not the proper role for religious to be converted into political or union leaders, and even less into state functionaries! Various Methods of Service to Humanity In these experiences of specific political participation, there is, on the part of religious, even if not consciously, a certain devaluation of their particular vocation and, consequently, an inferiority complex which makes one want to excel in the typically lay manner of service to human-ity. This service seems identified with social and political militancy if it is to be truly efficacious. Anything else seems like alienation, indif-ference and even the complicity of religious with injustice and oppres-sion. With this attitude as a basis, there comes a loss of confidence in the specificity of the religious consecration as a fundamental manner of serv-ice to humanity. The council was already warning about this when it said: Let no one think that, by their consecration, religious have become strang-ers to their feliowmen or useless citizens of this earthly city. But, even though in some instances they do not directly mingle with their contem-poraries, yet in a more profound sense, these religious are united with them in the heart of Christ and cooperate with them spiritually. In this way the work of building up the earthly city can always have its foun-dation in the Lord and can tend toward him. Otherwise, those who build this city will perhaps have labored in vain (LG n. 46). Does not the witness of St. Th6r~se of Lisieux teach us the incom- 654 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 parable value of prayer for all human service? Those who take on as a priority the construction of the world through matrimony, the administra-tion of goods and power--such are the laity--greatly need those who ac-company them with prayer as a priority, who remind them that we are in the world but not of the world and that we cannot conform ourselves to the present time; that we must safeguard and strengthen our Christian liberty in face of the seductions of the idols of money, power and pleas-ure; that the "logic" of the beatitudes is authentically revolutionary; that Christ is the cornerstone of all social construction which is to be truly human; that it is worth the trouble to struggle and sacrifice in order to continue creating conditions and experiences of greater justice, solidar-ity and peace so that nothing will be forgotten and all will be redeemed when God grants us "new heavens and a new earth". The best and most radical service to humanity is the testimony of a life which manifests the total supremacy of the love of God. For this rea-son, the special road of service to humanity for religious life consists, today more than ever, in being centered in one's "consecration," in a special care and cultivation of its religious dimension, of its discipline of life and spiritual growth. Living and Manifesting a Specific Charism This life according to the Spirit is diversified and deepened in the fol-lowing of the "charism of the founders." The apostolic exhortation Evangelica Testificatio and the decree Mutuae Relationes emphasized this in a special way. For the majority of lay people, however, I believe that this statement would not be well understood because there is the dan-ger of considering religious life generically, with little variations, with more or less uniform ways, barely differentiated into families with dif-ferent names and habits. It is necessary to ask if the various religious com-munities witness effectively to the gift they have received, to their own original spiritual richness, their particular contribution to the Christian enrichment of all the people of God. If fidelity to one's own charism is a form of obedience to the grace of Christ, if it characterizes the origi-nality of an evangelical project for the following of Christ and encour-ages the discovery of new lights and new dimensions of the totality of Christian life, if it is a specific way of sanctification, the greatest contri-bution of a religious community to the life of the Church and of each Christian is to keep'very much alive the fidelity to this charism, to live it with the same radicality as the founder lived it, to regenerate and radi-ate its relevancy before the needs of the Church and the people, I believe that thus the whole of the people of God would feel more "encouraged" Expectations of Religious Life / 655 and "worked upon" by the powerful ferment of renewal of Christian life. The laity who have contact with religious communities, directly or through schools, clinics, and so forth, would be much more "struck" by these radical charisms. All of that is contained in the generic term-- the Sisters. In this sense, we find much to the point the words of John Paul II in Brazil when, after having emphasized the great pastoral and apostolic service accomplished by religious, he stated: It is not because it is useful to the pastoral work that religious life occu-pies a very definite place in the Church and has an indispensable value. The contrary is true: religious life lends an efficacious service to the pas-toral work because it is and keeps itself firmly faithful to the position it occupies in the Church and to the charisms which characterize this po-sition. In addition, I ask myself if religious communities should not put more emphasis on the witness of the sanctity of their founders or spiri-tual teachers. Many times witness is of more value than words and Chris-tians need "models," fathers and teachers on the road of faith. Life Communities in the Church Permanent life communities which fully involve the person are found in the life of the Church only in religious communities and in Christian families. The differences between these two are obvious. The famil~ is a "natural" community, whose matrimonial nucleusbin the loving and fruitful union of the man and woman--is "sacramentalized" by the Church. The religious community does not have a "natural" base and those who participate in it freely sacrifice precious goods--such as the whole field of conjugal love, the free disposal of material goods, indi-vidual autonomy for the great decisions of life--for a Good, for a Love which is much greater. ~But in both cases we see, in different forms, the mystery of commun-ion which there is in the human origin and destiny and which becomes a daily miracle. In societies which are ever more disunited and frag-mented, where the powerful and uniforming tides of massification break up social bonds in the social fabric--much has been written about th'is-- these very forms of community life acquire even more importance and a great "impact." There is an intense desire for personal recognition, friendship, solidarity, authentic reconciliation, deeper and fuller human encounters and relationships so that people are very sensitive to the hu-man witness and acceptance of these life communities. 656 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 There are beautiful analogies which could be made between religious communities and. family communities. Do not the various aspects of hu-man love which are found ,in family life and which reflect the insepara-ble dimensions of divine love exist in their own manner and even more fully in the religious community as signs, glimpses, first-fruits of the king-dom? Both communities are based on the indestructible and fruitful foun-dation of a spousal love. While in the person-to-person encounter of the man and his wife, their passionate experience of love truly reflects the covenant of Christ with his Church, the religious lets herself be grasped directly and tota~lly by the limitless love of Christ, in the immediilcy of the covenant between Spouse and spouse, with the totality and sublima-tion of a commitment to which all human love is called. Cohsecrated vir-ginity- lived in its serene and mysterious fullness~is the sign of p~ssi-bility and of example to order and encourage the "chastity" of married life in this vital, delicate and fragile complex between the spi,ritual sway and instinctive impulses. There is a complete education to lib~rty, to do-minion over selfl which 'is a ~:ondition of authentic love--so important and urgent today on the level of tlae' new generations, determined and marked by a hedonist mentality and an atmosphere of flagrant eroticism-- which shines through a healthy religious life. ~ ~ The family, although implicitly, also requires a "rule" for i!s com-munity life, and authority is the prinqiple and guarantee of communion. In the rule of rules--that of St. Benedict--the "superior".of the com-mu~ nity is called "father"--abbot. It is good that the superior is recog-nized as "mother" and all are "sisters." Without paternity (maternity) we would remain orphans, community would disintegrate because it would be without a source and point of reference. This is the value of "authority" as derived from "augere," that which helps to increase, to grow in life, which permits the human to grow in persons. It i~ always a reflection on the paternity (maternity) of God, who giyes us life, makes. it grow in faith, brings it to plentitude. There is a spiritual fruitfulness which~.engenders abundant fruits of Christian life. Lay people often observe with special attention the life of r~eligious communities so as to see if they discover, if they perceive that "some-thin~ more" which they expect. For this reason, excessive formalism, minor quarrels, divisions, absence of human warmth, and more dull the communitarian witness. It is as if community were more an obligatory formality than a radiation of liberty and life. The laity must be able to see in the life of religious communities the carrying out in a small way of this reconciliation in depth, of this fraternity and solidarity,, of this Expectations of Religious Life / 657 peace and happiness in communion for which all human beings yearn in their heart, a strong sign of "reconciled humanity" in the interior of the mystery of communion of the Church, a model of "the new society" in which can be found united liberty and solidarity, where authority is exercised as paternity (maternity), where there is a different attitude to-wards riches, in which human relations are brought to their fullness by liberty and do not degenerate into domination, and which brings all its members to an ordered participation;'and "above all," as says a beauti-ful text bf the Puebia document: where it is unequivocally manifested that, without a radical communion with, God in Jesus Christ, any form of purely human communion re-mains in the long run incapable of being sustained and ends totally in tu'rning against the human person. In other words, nothing less than a corner of heaven! Some Priority Areas Lay people are very sensitive to the way religious life witnesses to poverty, and they are also very demanding, at times too demanding, with religious and little, indeed, with themselves. It is good, howev.er, to be challenged by this exigency. More than an "area" of work or of commitment, poverty is a radi-cal dimension of "cbnsecration" insofar as it is detachment from mate-rial goods and affirmation of the liberty which recognizes God as its only good. These are admirable witnesses. On too many occasions, however, the laity do not succeed in seeing how this vow of poverty is manifested concretely as detachment and liberty. Even more, many times, with no malice, they notice that religious liv~e rather conveniently~---even comfort- ~ably--x~ith all material problems settled in the present and in the future, and that in environments which show nothing of "poverty." It'is not a question of their asking for "romantic" gestures nor of exaggerat)ng criticism. But, at least a greater austerity and severity of life is required, a more generous availability in the sharing of material and spiritual goods, the elimination of all that is superfluous . This exigency is even more challenging since it is within a Church which is ever more conscious of and determined concerning the so-called "preferential option for the poor." "This preferential option for the poor," says Don Egidio Viganb in a very expressive synthesis which we cannot examine in detail now, questions religious very concretely, especially the institutes of active life. It demands a review of the specific mission in light of those receiv- Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 ing it. It requires a study and replanning of the presence of the religious. It deepens the sacramental meaning of the vow of poverty, places in dia-logue the great values of evangelical poverty with the pressing obliga-tions of social misery, proclaims with ever greater clarity that the pov-erty of the beatitudes is a challenge to materialism and opens doors to solutions which are alternatives to those of the consumer society. Religious should also take to heart the criteria mentioned by the magis-terium of the Church as to the evangelical authenticity of this "option": it is not exclusive nor excluding because the message of salvation is di-rected to all; it is animated by an intention which is primarily religious and not political; it does not let itself be entrapped by nor reduced to a class dialectic; it takes into consideration the existence of various forms of poverty in situations of 'hunger and misery, of unemployment and marginalization, of deprivation of liberty, of physical or mental health or other material and/or moral privations. In this preferential love for the poor as derived from the love of Christ for all is found in great measure the witness of religious life today. A special attention to the young also seems to be a basic and urgent requirement for religious communities of our times. There is a long and impressive religious tradition of the education of youth which shou!d not be abandoned but should be renewed and deepened. The point is clear; an individual becomes social and is educated, from the most tender age, fundamentally through the family and the school. These are the two ba-sic "channels" to lead youth to reality. But could it be that the States, political parties, ideological strategists would take a strong interest in the school in order to "penetrate" into the world of youth and direct it ac-cording to their various criteria and interests, while the Church-- especially religious communities--would underestimate its educational tradition and its educational institutions and responsibilities? In times of crisis of credibility and of search for "ideologies," when the most no-ble energies and concerns remain dissatisfied with the suffocating mate-rialism of the consumer society, it is more important than ever to offer to the young great and vigorous proposals, ideal certainties of life as signs and guides for their own education. Christian lay people, parents of families, need to count on the help of the Catholic school because the first responsibility for education falls on the parents, and the family is the basic place for growth in the faith of its members. Nevertheless, there is a considerable amount of catecheti-cal instruction, of Christian attitudes, of fruitful joining of faith with cul-ture which is acquired in. the environment and activity of the school. The Expectations of Religious Life I 659 most fruitful means is that of an active and co-responsible educational collaboration between the family and the Catholic school. I am sure that it is not without concern to the laity that educational religious communi-ties are abandoning the field of the school. On the contrary, they should intensify their commitment involving the collaboration of the laity, es-pecially of the parents, and should go beyond the "administrative" and routine activities in the running of the school, transforming it ever more into a vigorous, radiant, highly educational environment and seek means to make their services always more accessible and fruitful. Here there is much to rethink, to plan and to carry out along the line of a scholastic pastoral which meets all these demands. I think also of other milieux and human activities which have been converted into new frontiers of the ecclesial mission, in which the pres-ence of the Church cannot be limited to some free-lance laity. There surely is no lack of religious charisms for the apostolic work among in-tellectuals, artists, professionals of social communication, factory work-ers . According to the Measure of the Gift of Christ One last remark. The Council says that while profession of the evangelical counsels involves the renunciation of goods which undoubtedly deserve to be highly valued, it does not con-stitute an obstacle to the true development of the human person, but by its nature is supremely beneficial to that development (LG 46). Thus the renunciation should not diminish the human but rather help to develop the human stature according to the measure of the gift of Christ. This "something more," this "much more," of holiness, which the laity expect of religious finds its response in the witness of new men, of new women, penetrated with the Absolute of God, radically incorpo-rated into Christ, totally dedicated to the service of others. If Christ re-veals to human persons the 'fullness of their being and their destiny, all radical following of Christ can be only a path of integral fulfillment for humanity. It is necessary to show that what one abandons in order to fol-low Christ will be recovered even now, multiplied, as more human riches more full of humanity. Lay people hope to meet in religious well-balanced Christian person-alities because they are centered in God and, therefore, persons having an effective equilibrium and emotional serenity (how many "argu-ments" reveal psychological immaturity !) of ever more solid intellectual formation (why in the past did one so rarely meet religious on this 660 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 level?), with 'a great liberty because a great obedience radiates a richness of life from their "interior castle." They expect them to be attentive and generous in dedication and service, spreading a happiness and a joy which come from within, persons of whom one can speak and think of as models for women of hidden but full life, in the image of Mary, first and greatest disciple of Christ. Words, Words, Words How glibly do we toss them off, precious self-wrought jewels, precious beyond diamond, sapphire or pearl: Mined from quickened breath, warmed by channeled blood, carried live on currents of air they glow to foul or fair. Let us then nourish them ~with care, knowing their fire can rage uncontrolled to devastating No or curved to simple Yes, can make a world of bleak distress spin in giddy joy, and bring a God to birth while angels sing! Marcella M. Holloway, C.S.J. 6321 Clemens Avenue, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130 The Public and Witness Religious Life Dimension of David F. O'Connor, S.T. Father O'_Connor, past president of the Canon Law Society of America, is chairman of the Department of Church Law at the Washington Theological Union. He resides at the Holy Trinity Mission Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. Religious life has a public dimension to it which is intended by the Church. Religious, both in their personal and their corporate lifestyles, are meant to be identifiable as Church-people and to witness Gospel val-ues. They engage in' forms of the apostolate and in ministry always in the name of the Church and under the authority of their respective relig-ious SUl~eriors and local bishops. All of this manifests their distinctive character, their place in the Church and their canonical status. An awareness of this--and it is not always viewed by everyone as an unambigtious biessing~--helps us better understand some of the events occurring on the contemporary scene; for example, the reaction of the hierarchy to religious who are seeking public office or those who sign published statements which a.ppear to be contrary to Church positions. The following article is iritended to elaborate somewhat on this pub-lic dimension of the religious life and some of its implications for relig-ious. The Institutionalizing of a Charismatic Fbrm Since Vatican II, we have a renewed awareness of the religious life as a charismatic vocation, a gift of the Spirit to the Church.2 This has helped deepen our understanding and appreciation of its place and role in the Church. For the Holy Spirit is not only the source of the inspira- 661 662 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 tion of the founders, but also of those who have followed after them down through the succeeding generations. These charisms have contrib-uted in a significant and special way to the very holiness of the Church and to its ability to fulfill its mission in this world.3 A religious commu-nity is obliged to hand on an awareness of its charism to new members so that these gifts of the Spirit may be lived, safeguarded, deepened and constantly developed.4 Charisms are given within the Church for the building up of the Church community. Whenever a claim is made by a group of the faith-ful that it is living a radical form of the Gospel life, such a claim cannot be ignored by the wider Church, especially by the bishops who are the pastors and guardians of the faith.5 The assertion that one is being led by the Spirit, now as in the past, needs to be examined and authenticated by the wider Church community before it can be given credence and ac-ceptance. Historically, ecclesial recognition was given informally and im-plicitly for the first few centuries. But, beginning in the fourth century, bishops of the local churches, aware of certain abuses and of the disrup-tiveness of some wandering monks, required monastic groups to have of-ficial and explicit approval before establishing a foundation. Indeed, the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (45 I) established the norms Which regulated the relationship of bishops and monasteries up until the Mid-dle Ages. Then, because of the development of large and centralized re-ligious orders in the thirteenth century, official recognition was fre-quently reserved to Rome. It is a fact, then, that ecclesial recognition and authentication of charis-matic groups existed in some form from the beginning of the devel-opment of religious life. It was necessary in order to determine whether or not a particular group or rule truly was presenting a viable form of Gospel life. Ecclesial or canonical approbation had the added benefit of helping to preserve the original charism of the founder and the first mem-bers by institutionalizing it within the visible community of faith. Ca-nonical authentication of a particular style of Gospel life has helped it to be passed on to succeeding generations of men and women, and this has redounded to the benefit of the wider Church. The religious life, as we know it today, is canonically established only through the official recognition of the Church's pastors, the hierar-chy. This has helped safeguard the faithful from. being led astray by ab-errant forms of Christianity which, in the past, frequently ended up in fanaticism, schism or heresy. The Church possesses within itself the charism of discerning spirits, and this is exercised by the bishops as part Witness of Religious Life / 663 of their pastoral office. As Karl Rahner has stated: " . . . the official Church is also the guardian and guide of the charismatic element--she herself possesses the gift of the discernment of spirits."6 Canonical Approval of a Religious Institute The Church, through the pastoral office of its bishops, is forced at various times and places to state what it considers to be compatible or incompatible with the Gospel because the Church does sponsor groups, institutions and agencies which publicly and officially represent it. These public institutions have to be supervised lest they present a distorted pic-ture of the gospel values which the Church incarnates. Religious insti-tutes are one such form. Both the institutes as such and its members rep-resent the Church. Once canonical or ecclesiastical recognition is granted to a religious community, that community no longer exists as a private and independ-ent group of the faithful, nor does the institute exist in isolation from par-ties external to it, even though it does enjoy some canonical autonomy.7 For, once having sought and been granted official recognition and ap-proval, the religious institute takes upon itself an added identity--it be-comes an ecclesial institute and is linked to the hierarchy in a special man-ner. 8 Official Church recognition identifies the institute as a Church in-stitution, and it identifies its members, women or men religious, as Church-people, involved in a life of public dedication and service in the name of the Catholic Church.9 Membership in a canonically approved form of consecrated life, which requires the profession of public vows, involves an ecclesial form of commitment that distinguishes religious from other members of the faithful, even those who may be in secular institutes. The latter do not represent the Church in its public life, but live somewhat anonymously, maintain their secular vocation, and qui-etly work to Christianize their milieu. ~0 A Personal Witness That Is Public Religious, as publicly consecrated members of the faithful, are ex-pected, as is every Christian, to witness a personal commitment to Christ. But because they are called by their vocation to an ecclesiai form of public consecration, they are expected tO bear a visible witness to a deep, personal experience of Christ and to share the faith, hope and love which it inspires. ~ For religious, above all, are consecrated to the Lord. Their development in holiness of life is more important than the good works they perform. As John Paul II has remarked: "What counts most 664/Review for Religious~ September-October, 1987 is not what religious do, but what they are as persons consecrated to the Lord." ~2 The canons of the Code of Canon Law reassert some of these essen-tial personal obligations. Canon 662 states that religious are to have as their highest rule of life the ['ollowing of Christ as it is proposed in the Gospel and in their constitutions. The constitutions of each institute help specify and make the Gospel particular for their religious, how it is to be lived in service to others in the name of Christ and of his Church. Re, ligious are to bemen and women of prayer. Their first and foremost duty is the contemplation of divine things, and assiduous union with God in prayer. ~3 They are expected to use the traditional forms ,of, worship and devotion: daily participation in the eucharistic sacrifice, the prayerful read-ing of Sacred Scripture, mental prayer, devotion to Our Lady, and the Liturgy of the Hours. ~'~ .Religious, as individuals,.are ,to engage, in the asceticism required for personal conversion of heart through a daily ex-amination o~ conscience and by frequently receiving the sacrament of pen-ance. 15 These devotional obligations are assumed personally by every relig-ious who takes his or her spiritual life seriously. The cultivation of the interior life is an absolute necessity if the public consecration of a relig-ious is not to become a charade. Without a deep, personal spiritual life, perseverance in a public form of consecrated life becomes tenuous and the fulfillment of the vows turns int~) a heavy burden. " Th~ faithful have a right to expect that those who have publicly ded-icated their lives to Christ by religious profession will be living exam-ples of a GoSpel life. The Church presents religious to the world as pub-lic witnesses of evangelibal values. Holiness of life and a generous, un-selfish service of the People of God are a'rightful expect, ation from each religious. A Corporate Witness That Is Public Religious life is characterized by a communitarian lifestyle. All reli-gious are expected to live in some form of common life which is proper to the specific institute to which they belong. 16 Because of the centrality of the enclosure for monastic religious and some form of active service for apostolic religious, the styles of their common life will be radically different. Indeed, monastic institutes which are totally ordered to the con-templative life are prohibited from engaging in any form of pastoral min-istry outside the monastery,. ~7 However, all religious are expected to live in a house of their own institute with their.brothers or sisters. ~8 Their life together is intended to be a microcosm of the Church, idealized in the Witness of Religious Life / 665 Jerusalem community described in the Acts of the Apostles (2:44): "The faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and shared among themselves according to what each one needed." Religious community life is to be filled with pray-erfuines~ and with Christian service and love. Religious life is actually lived on the local level, in a pa.rticular house with specific women or men. The locai community takes on certain char-acteristics, principally because of the individual religious who live to-gether, and secondarily because of the apostolates in which they are en-gaged. The image or witness which they project will depend upon many factors, especially the expectations and experience of the people with whom the religious interact. If the religious are perceived as prayerful, charitable, joyful and generous in their community life together, their cor-porate or collective witness will evidence the Gospel ideal and they will be what the Church intends--living witnesses of Christian love. It may be well to recall the fact that a group is frequently able to wit-ness better than individual persons. An individual can be--all too easily-- simply dismissed as just an eccentric. However, a community of Chris-tian men or women, living a similarly dedicated lifestyle, cannot be so perfunctorily ignored or written-off. Moreover, the members of a relig-ious community can offer support to one another by their companionship and prayerfulness, especially when the Gospel values they embody are countercultural. Living witnesses are a powerful sign. Reflective people will be forced to examine the faith dimension and Gospel values which are the foundation of their own religious lifestyle. Those who do not share our Christian values may be led to a greater appreciation of them by the wit-ness of a vibrant, faith-filled religious community. In fact, it was just such an experience which led the famous~ agnostic, British commenta-tor, Malcolm Muggeridge, to become a Christian-- and later a Catholic-- after his experience in Calcutta with Mother Teresa and her Missionar-ies of Charity. Few people can remain totally indifferent to a corporate Christian wit-ness. Either they will reject it or accept it. That is why the Church pre-sents religious as living witnesses of Christ, as Lumen Gentium, 46, states: Let religious see well to it that the Church truly show forth Christ through them with ever increasing clarity to believers and unbelievers alike --- Christ in contemplation on the mountain, or proclaiming the king-dom of God to the multitudes, or healing the sick and maimed and con- 666 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 verting sinners to a good life, or blessing children and doing good to all people, always in obedience to the will of the Father who sent him. The Witness of Public Vows Religious profess the evangelical counsels as public vows in the con-text of their community lifestyle. Their vows cannot be properly under-stood or appreciated apart from the context of their common life. The Witness of Consecrated Poverty The public vow of poverty, as professed in religious institutes, would be better appreciated and offer a better public witness if it were presented as a vow of common life and goods. Too often the term "poverty" is judged by socio-economic criteria and religious are misjudged as lack-ing because they are not "poor" in that ordinary meaning of the term. Those of us who are educated or who live in comfortable houses, drive automobiles, eat three meals a day, and so forth, (and that is the vast majority of American religious) are sometimes even thought to be vio-lating our commitment. We are judged as hypocritical for professing a "vow of poverty," when it is obvious that we are not "poor." There certainly is a socio-economic dimension to how we are to live our religious life. Our lifestyle must be adapted to the particular cultural and economic situation in which we live, so that we do not give the appearance of being wealthy. Also, there are ascetical demands made upon us, personally and corporately, to live simply and avoid the dele-terious influences of the larger consumer society. Nevertheless, we are not, in fact, invited by our vow to embrace a debilitating, crushing, in-humane form of economic poverty as the ideal of our commitment. That is not religious poverty. That is not the purpose of our vow. Religious poverty can only be valued and offer edification if it is recognized as an essential aspect of community life and, where applica-ble, a dimension of an apostolate. Thus everything a religious acquires as a member of the institute is acquired for the institute. 19 The religious community, in turn, provides for the needs of its members so that they can fulfill the purpose of their vocation in that specific religious family.2° Ascetically, religious are urged to forego standards of comfort and conven-ience which may be legitimate for others and to exercise a certain re-straint in the forms of relaxation and entertainment they choose.2~ All of this is intended to promote the spiritual life of the religious and to help free us from the desire to accumulate things and, positively, to liberate our hearts for the things of God. Witness of Religious Life / 667 When religious undertake apostolates among the socio-economically and culturally deprived, they are required to adapt their style of living to the demands of their apostolate. This will often involve a style of life approximating that of the people among whom they live and work. Life on the missions is not like life at home. Life among the poor in the rural areas of Appalachia or in the inner-city of our large urban centers will bring with it many restrictions and the call for a special asceticism. Those religious can well be viewed as living "poorly" in the more ordinary sense of the word. Generally, if religious are seen as lix;ing a rather simple lifestyle, per-sonally and communally, this will be a source of great edification, espe-cially if they are serving others generously and unselfishly. The Gospel ideal of poverty and simplicity can be beautifully manifested by such a public witness. The faithful are reminded that superfluous goods are not necessary for happiness and contentment. The unencumbered life of reli-gious can help people to look beyond the present world. It can support the credibility of the Gospel° message which religious are to preach by their lifestyle. Religious poverty can be a reminder to every member of the faithful that we are all called to rely upon the Lord, and to manifest a loving concern for our neighbor, especially the needy and the .deprived, whoever they may be. The Witness of Consecrated Chastity If there is anything that is truly countercultural in our modern soci-ety, it is the value of Christian chastity and marital fidelity. A life of dedi-cated chastity and celibacy runs directly contrary to the pleasure princi-ple which is so dominant in our post-Christian western world. Our contem-poraries cannot ignore the witness of thousands of men and women who profess to live chastely and celibately out of love for God and in the serv-ice of others. Those who share our common faith and values, especially those who are themselves without spouses because of circumstances be-yond their control, find great support and consolation in the awareness that many of their sisters and brothers in the Lord live happy and fulfill-ing lives as celibate religious. The community lifestyle of religious provides them with their princi-ple support group.22 Their life shared in common with their religious brothers or sisters is a Christian and humane lifestyle that offers an ideal context for their vowed life. Apostolic religious especially benefit from a communal dimension to their dedication to mission. While their pri-mary orientation may be to serving others, their religious community set-ting on the local level should be the base to which they return for spiri- 668 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 tual ,and fraternal/sisterly refreshment. Again, the fact that a group can offer a better witness than individuals is an important consideration when it involves a chaste and celibate Christian lifestyle. Individuals find their commitment under assault or too heavy a burden if they live alone and apart. Living celibately in a communal setting can witness that religious do not live lonely and eccentric single lives, but live in a Christian faith community and in hope of complete fulfillment in the eschaton. The Witness of Consecrated Obedience Religious have willingly accepte~d,a pattern of life that is largely laid down for them.23 They follow a,rule or constitution and live in residence under the authority of those who have been elected or appointed as reli-gious superiors.24 Their vow of obedience has limited their freedom and their options so that they might pursue the cor~mon good and the corpo-rate mission of their particular religious institute. Ultimately, they seek, as women and men of faith, to discern the will of God in the commands they are given in holy obedience. This enalSles their institute to under-take corporate commitments and helps galvanize the personal investmeni of time and talent into a commhnity endeavor. ' The life of religious obedience requires a great sense of faith. The generosity that this clemands can help foster the spiritual maturity of re-ligious as they strive humbly to imitate the obedience and love of Jesus who sought only.to do the will of his Father. Certainly, jn a society and culture that exaggerates the importance of individual freedom, Christian obedience is truly countercultural. The obedience of religious is fre-quently denigrated as a "blind obedience" by those who do not share our faith values. However, our brothers and sisters in the faith often find it a rather Christ-like response and are disedified when they perceive the opposite in the lives of religious. All Christians are obliged to seek the will of the Lord. Thus the hum-ble example of obedient religious can only help to build up the Body of Christ. Canonical Consequences of the Public Dimension Appropriate Attire Since religious life has a public dimension to it, it seems reasonable, all things considered, that a distinctive style of garb might have some advantages, especially in many apostolates, and in our commitment to a simple lifestyle. It is quite common to find that people in "service" roles, even professional ones, are recognizable .by their uniform or pro- Witness of Religious Life / 669 fessional'attire. We tend to expect that these people will be readily iden-tifiable when we need their services. 'Indeed, the sign or witness dimension is referred to in the canon which concerns the garb of religious.25 While a religious "habit," in the strict sense of the term, is more appropriately a monastic garment, custom and tradition among many apostolic institutes has provided them with a style of dress which identified them as pertaining to a particular religious family. Often enough it was a form of dress suitable to another age or culture. Frequently, too, apostolic groups adopted the contempo-rary clerical dress, if they were men religious. While not adopting a habit, as such, they did choose a style of dress that gradually became a traditional garb that went unchanged and unadapted to times and circum-stances. It was for the most part a post-Vatican II phenomenon that, in-stead of guitably adapting the dress, as was expected, it was often dis-carded entirely in part because of the difficulty of deciding on something acceptable to all the members. Another purpose for wearing a religious garb is that it is intended to be a sign of simplicity of lifestyle and religious poverty. It is appropri-ate that a public witness to the Gospel should evidence a certain degree of Christian detachment and modesty. Experience has shown that it is difficult to,dress attractively and appropriately for every occasion with-out having to invest in a.rather extensive wardrobe. A simple garb which is modest, becoming and dignified solves this problem. However, the rules and regulations of each institute, the expectations of the local Church, the demands of the apostolate and the requirements of the particular culture and clime all have to be considered when it comes to deciding in concrete situations how one ought to be dressed. There is no requirement in Canon Law that the habit or religious garb be worn on every occasion, nor at all times, nor in all places. Indeed, the Apostolic~ See itself has stated that a secular style of dress, without any recognizable sign or symbol, can be permitted when a habit would be an impediment to the everyday exercise of activities which should be undertaken by the relig'ious.26 Mission in the Name,.of the Church All forms of apostolic activity are to be undertaken by men and women religious only in the name of the Church and in communion with it.27 The exercise of the apostolate by religious is never entirely a pri-vate and personal ministry. It is always, in some sense, a public and cor-porate one.28 The Vatican Council stated that one of the essential ele-ments of the Christian apostolate is that it be conducted in union with 670 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 those whom the Holy Spirit has assigned pastorally to govern the Church.29 It is the duty of the local bishop to coordinate all forms of the apostolate among his portion of the People of God.3° Religious are' al-ways to be subject to their own superiors and to the local bishop in the exercise of all forms of the external apostolate.3~ Unbecoming Activities Church law has always recognized that the public nature of the cleri-cal ministry and the religious life places certain restrictions on the ac-tivities in which clerics or religious may engage. However, what may be inappropriate at one time and place may not be so in another. Times change and so do the circumstances. As a result, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is both different and simi-lar to the 1917 Code. It is different insofar as some of the activi, ties which were considered unbecoming for clerics and religious, such as the prac-tice of medicine, especially surgery, are no longer prohibited by the re-vised code. It is the same in that a number of activities which were proscribed by the old code appear again in the new one-~especially the general prohibition that forbids religious and clerics to engage in any ac-tivity which is foreign to their way of life.32 No specific unbecoming are enumerated here. Such determination is be left to the good judgment and prudence of mature women and men religious as they con-sider the demands of the apostolate in their .particular culture, time and place. Of course, specific directives can be given by the proper religious superiors and by the local bishops. These would have to be observed. Public or Political Office The new code continues the prohibition of the old one that religious are not to assume a public office to which is attached the exercise of civil authority, such as the office of mayor, attorney general, governor, or sim-ilar offices.33 The reason seems self-evident--persons holding such of-rices confuse Church ministry with a civil role, and inhibit a Gospel and prophetic stance. Religious are meant to be°at the service of people as heralds of the Gospel in the name of the Church. Similarly, they are not to take an active role in partisan political par-ties nor in the management of labor unions, unless they have the permis-sion of their ecclesiastical superiors.34 Again, the reason for this general proscription is that the public image and identity of a religious is that of a representative of the Church community. When publicly dedicated Church-people become too closely identified with a specific ideology, any Gospel witness is blunted, and the situation often distracts people Witness of Religious Life / 671 from the various social justice and public stands which the Church may want to make through its pastors.35 Finally, religious are supposed to be agents of reconciliation, not division. They should foster peace and jus-tice as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.36 Secular Financial Responsibilities , Another general area which religious are wisely urged to avoid, un-less good reasons indicate otherwise--in which cases permission can be granted--is the acceptance of secular financial responsibilities or involve-ment in business and trade activities. The canons prohibit religious, gen-erally, from undertaking the management of property owned by the la-ity and from assuming any secular office which require financial accountability.37 However, today it is easy to envision situations in which a religious might be expected to do so. For example, the demands of a certain apostolate may require that, at least for the time being, a re-ligious administer the finances of an organization, especially when no one else is in a position to do so. Likewise, a religious may find himself or herself having to take care of the financial affairs of an incapacitated relative or friend. Charity and common sense may simply demand this. However, the general prohibition is a wise one and should force a relig-ious to consider alternatives. And having to explain a request to do so to the religious superior can help prevent an imprudent decision. The same type of consideration should be given to the matter of a religious becoming involved in business or trade, personally or on be-half of others.38 The present code is more lenient than the 1917 one and expressly indicates that permission to do so can be granted, presumably for good reasons. Again, it is not difficult to imagine situations where this may be necessary or beneficial, at least for a reasonable period of time. If, for example, a religious is an only child and inherits a small family business with which he or she had been most familiar before en-tering religion, the most prudent decision could be for the religious tem-porarily to oversee the business until other provisions can be made. The above prohibitions are, in general, completely consonant with the nature of the religious life. Yet it is eminently reasonable that excep-tions be permitted. The dangers present for religious, in becoming too hastily and imprudently involved in financial matters that have nothing to do with their community, are all too evident. It is especially fitting that religious not be burdened with financial involvements when they have responded to a vocation which requires them to develop an asceti- 679 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 cism of detachment and a life of simplicity. Military Service and Civil Exemptions Finally, since religious are followers of the Prince of Peace, it is par-ticularly incongruous that they volunteer to bear arms in times of con-flict, unless they are legally bound to do so. Therefore, the canons state that religious are not to volunteer for military service and they should take advantage of civil exemptions, if they exist, to avoid this and any other public or civic duty which is foreign to religious life.39 Certainly this prohibition does not apply to service as military chaplains or any simi-lar type of ministry. The prohibition would seem to apply to accepting jury duty in criminal cases also, especially if they are capital offenses, when an exemption is possible. It seems most inappropriate that a relig-ious be in a position of determining the guilt of citizens and playing part in their incarceration or execution. Again, canon law recognizes that there can be exceptional cases in which the proper religious superior and ecclesiastical authority can grant permission to a religious to act contrary to the general canonical norm that the above activities are to be avoided. Conclusion Ecclesial authentication of charismatic forms of the Gospel life ex-isted from the beginning. At first, ,such approbation was given unoffi-cially and implicitly. Later, it became an official and explicit necessity. The religious life is a charismatic and an ecclesial form of public conse-cration. Religious institutes are public agencies of the Church which pre-sents the members as public witnesses of Gospel values. The personal and corporate lifestyles of religious, as well as their apostolic activities, are at the service of the Church and are supervised by their superiors and the bishops. Since religious are iri apublic form of consecrated life, they are expected, all things considered, to be recognizable, and to avoid those activities which muddle or confuse their ecclesiai image. Above all, religious are expected to be living examples of evangelical values: chastity for the sake of the kingdom; Gospel simplicity in lifestyle; hum-ble~ and Christ-like obedience; and complete dedication to a loving serv-ice of people in the name of the Church. The counterculturai witness of religious is meant to speak eloquently of a deep faith conviction that Je-sus is the way, and the truth and the life. NOTES See Carolyn Osiek in Vatican H and Its Documents: An American Reappraisal, ed., Witness of Religious Life / 6"/3 Timothy E. O'Connell0(Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Delware, 1986), pp. 86- 87. 2 Perfectae caritatis, 1; canon 575. 3 Lumen Gentium, 39. '~ Mutual Relations, II (Henceforth MR). 5 See Raymond Hostie, The Life and Death of Refigious Orders (CARA, Washing-ton, D.C., 1983), p. 21. 6 See The Dynamic Element in The Church (Herder, New "fork, 1964) p. 62; Lumen Gentium, 43; canon 573, §1 and §2. 7 Canon 586, §1. 8 Canons 573, §2, 575-579. 9 Canon 675, 93. l0 Canons 710-730. I~ Essential Elements, 33. (Henceforth EE). ~z Papal Message to the Plenary Assembly of CRIS, March 1980; EE, 33. ~3 Canon 663, 91. ~4 Canon 663, §2, §4. ~5 Canon 664. 16 Canons 607, 92 and 665. ~7 Canon 674. 18 Canon 665, 91. ~9 Canon 668, §3. 20Canon 679; see David F. O'Connor, "Two Forms of Consecrated Life; Religious and Secular Institutes," REvmw voR Rv.~.m~ous, 46, n. 2 (1986) pp. 205-219. z~ Christus Dominus, 33-35. ~ Canons 599, 602 and 607, §2. 23EE, 34. 24Canons 601,608 and 665. 25Canon 669. 26See Canon Law Digest, 7 (1975) pp. 534-535. 27Canon 675, §3. 28EE, I 0. 29Apostolicam actuositatem, 23; MR, 9 (a). 30Canons 394, 91 and 680; MR, Chapt. II. 3~ Canon 678. 32Canons 285 and 672. 33Canons 285, §3 and 672. 34 Canons 287 and 672. 35 See George Aschenbrenner, "Currents in Spirituality," Rv.w~w voR R~L~o~ous, 42, n. 2 (I 983), pp. 183-186. 36 CRIS, "Religi6us and Human Promotion," Canon Law Digest, 9 (1983), pp. 379-410; David F. O'Connor, "Religious in Politics," R~wEw ~oa R~L~6~ous, 41, n. 6 (1982), pp. 834-848. 37 Canons 285, §4 and 672. 38 Canons 286 and 672. 39 Canons 289 and 672. The Religious as "Sentry": A Reflection on the Prophet Ezekiel James Fitz, S.M. Father Fitz is a member of the Provincial Administration of his congregation's Cin-cinnati Province. An earlier article, "Religious Life as Acted Prophecy," appeared in the issue of November/December, 1982. Father Fitz may be addressed at the Mari-anist Provincialate; 4435 East Patterson Road; Dayton, Ohio 45430-1095. [~uring my twenty-one years as a religious, I have attended many vow cer-emonies in support of brothers and sisters saying "yes" to their call from the Lord. At these liturgies the first reading has often come from the Old Testament prophets--the call of Isaiah or Jeremiah, for exam-pie-- to indicate that those making profession identify with the call Of these prophets. But, I have yet to attend a ceremony where the call of Ezekiel is the Old Testament reading. In fact, it is not even one of the optional readings in the Lectionary for the Mass of Religious Profession. Yet, I believe the call of Ezekiel as sentry is an apt model and image for religious life today. The Value of an Image In recent years, theologians and spiritual writers have used images and models to describe the mysteries of our Christian faith. In so doing they have imitated Jesus himself, ~who often used images to evoke understanding: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.; the kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour.; the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.; the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.; the kingdom of heaven is like a drag- 674 The Religious as Sentry / 675 net. " These images helped Jesus' hearers enter into the mystery of faith. The Second Vatican Council used images when it described the mys-tery of the Church in its Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium. Im-ages like "the People of God," "a sheepfold," "the edifice of God," "our Mother," "the body of Christ," "a pilgrim in a foreign land," "a kind of sacrament" help elucidate the mystery of the Church. Avery Dulles' book, Models of the Church,~ uses images and mod-els in a similar way. Images and models, then, can be helpful ways to penetrate the richness of a mystery of our faith, to evoke an understand-ing of some complex reality of our tradition. Images and models have been helpful also in the understanding of religious life. The authors of Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life,2 for example, have imagined religious in the different eras of religious life as ascetics, monks, mendicants, soldiers and apostolic servants. These images help elucidate the predominant understanding of religious life during the various eras of Church history. This article will explore the image of the prophet Ezekiel as sentry in the belief that it helps elucidate our contemporary understanding of religious life. The Call of Ezekiel In the third chapter of Ezekiel, we hear: "Child of the earth, I have appointed you as a sentry to the House of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me" (3:16). The third chapter continues to expand on this call. If God says to wicked people, "You shall surely die" (3:18), and Ezekiel does not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their wicked conduct, the wicked people will die for their sins but God will hold Ezekiel responsible for their death. If Ezekiel speaks out and the people do not change, then Ezekiel is not held responsible. Not only is Ezekiel to challenge the wicked but he is also to be a prophet to the virtuous. If virtuous people turn away from virtue and Ezekiel does not warn them, then God will hold him responsible for their death. However, if Ezekiel does warn them, then the virtuous will surely live and Ezekiel will also save his life (3:16-21). This same de-scription of the prophet's role is repeated in Chapter 33:1-9. In explor-ing the image of prophet as sentry as appropriate for the role of the re-ligious in the world today, this article will first examine the role of the sentry, and then how this role might illuminate the role of religious in 676 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 the Church today. The Role of the Sentry The role of the sentry has four characteristics which I believe help explicate the mystery of the call to religious life. Call to See. The sentry's first responsibility is to see, to be watch-ful. This seeing is twofold: to announce the signs of good news and to warn of coming danger. The sentry is to be watchful for the signs of good news. For exam-ple, the sentry on a ship watches for the sign of land; the sentry at the gate of a medieval city watches for the signs of the coming of a beloved monarch in order to prepare the people for this great event; or the sentry watches for the runner returning from battle to share the news of victory. The sentry also needs to be watchful of signs of danger. The sentry on the ship needs to be conscious of the signs of bad weather so that the crew can be prepared to respond; the sentry at the gate needs to be con-scious of the signs of an approaching enemy. Call to Discern. A second responsibility of a sentry is to discern signs. Is the approaching rider friend or foe? Is the moving wind the sign of an approaching storm or the advent of good weather? Is it land that is seen or a mirage, a trick of the imagination? This discernment is an important responsibility. If a sentry is fearful or shallow, then he or she will proclaim good news that does not come to pass, or give false warn-ings of events that fail to materialize. People will no longer take seri-ously any message of the sentry. Responsibility to Proclaim. Once the se~lt.r.y has discerned the signs, the next responsibility is to announce the good news or the approach of danger to the people. When he or she has completed this proclamation, the responsibility for action is no longer just the sentry's but the respon-sibility of the entire community--as we have seen in the call of Ezekiel. In fact, the role of the sentry may now become secondary to the role of others who move the community to ,action. One Role Among Many. A sentry is often on the margins of society, outof synchronization with the rest of society, even while interdepend-ent with them.~As the sentry is watching, others are busy about other activ-ities.~ To have a sense of security, the people have need of the sentry. However, the sentry cannot survive without the people who are doing other activities (e.g., producing food, clothing and the other necessities of life), The sentry is, then, one role among many---different, but nei- The Religious as Sentry / 67'7 ther more nor less important than the other roles in society. The Religious as Sentry How does the role of the sentry, and more specifically, the call of Ezekiel, help us to understand religious life in the Church today? I be-lieve that the four characteristics just described can help illuminate the mystery of religious life. Call to See. Religious are called to be attentive, to be watchful. They do this first and foremost as people of prayer. Prayer, of course, is not ¯ the occupation of religious alone--all Christians are called to pray. How-ever, one cannot be a good religious without prayer, without attentive-ness to the religious dimension of life. Contemplation (to see clearly) has traditionally been part of religious life, whether one speaks of the con-templative life as manifested in the monastic movement or contemplation-in- action as manifested in service-oriented religious orders. I believe this responsibility of being attentive and watchful is very important to relig-ious today. Clearly we need people to read the signs of the times. Prayer-ful religious can contribute this gift to the Church. Call to Discern. For the religious to see clearly, there needs to be discernment. The first step in this discernment is honesty with oneself in order not to project danger where there is none or to characterize as hopeful movements that are contrary to the Gospel. A sentry who is fear-ful or shallow will give false warnings and proclamations. Eventually peo-ple will cease to take his or her word seriously. The practice of self-knowledge (achieved through prayer, examen, spiritual direction, and similar helps) will be essential to the religious who hopes to see clearly and proclaim what is seen in a way that will truly build up the commu-nity of the Church and the world. Discernment is not an easy task. What is heralded as good news by some is seen as danger by others. We witness this, for example, in the various responses to the development of new technology. Some see in this advancement the liberation of humankind; others feel we are being enslaved and controlled by these same technological advances. Discern-ment is an important task in the Church today, a task in which religious clearly have a role. Responsibility to Proclaim. Once the signs have been seen and dis-cerned, the religious has the responsibility of proclaiming the message, that is, the word of the Lord. If religious are good sentries, they will be able to proclaim the good news (the signs of the reign of God) and warn of danger (signs of the counterspirit). Ezekiel is a good model for relig-ious in this proclamation. Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 First of all, Ezekiel, like all the prophets, denounces and announces; he afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. His book not only contains oracles that are warnings of danger to the Chosen People (4- 24), the nations (25-32), and the shepherds of Israel (34), but powerful statements of hope such as the vision of dry bones (37) and the raising of a good shepherd for Israel (34). Secondly, Ezekiel is a good model for religious because he proclaims the word of God in both words and symbolic action. His signs are par-ables in action. For example, Ezekiel performs acts symbolic of siege and exile (4-5); prepares his baggage and digs a hole in the wall of the city as an act symbolic of exile (12); groans bitterly to symbolize the city's coming fall(12); neglects the normal mourning customs at the death of his wife as symbolic of the fact that Israel will not be able to mourn when the city of Jerusalem is besieged (24); and, finally, joins two sticks as a symbolic prophecy of the new covenant people (37). These actions raise questions among the people which allow the prophet to proclaim the word of the Lord: "Will you not tell us what all these things that you are doing mean for us?" (24:19; 39:18). This proclamation of God's word by prophetic action is a valuable way of viewing our living of the vowed life. The vows are symbolic ac-tions that often open to religious the possibility of proclaiming a word of the Lord. Religious life is acted prophecy.3 The lived vows can warn of danger and proclaim good news. For example, the vow of poverty can warn of the dangers of consumerism and can challenge the prevailing be-lief that more is better. It can also proclaim good news. The sharing of common goods lived by religious, for example, can proclaim that shar-ing is a life-giving alternative to greed and exclusive possess!on. The sym-bolic action of living the vows will hopefully lead others to ask questions: "Why do you do this? . What does this mean?" Thus re-ligious will have an opportunity to further proclaim the word of the Lord. As I mentioned earlier, once the sentry has proclaimed what has b~en seen, it is no longer solely his or her responsibility to act. This is clear in the call of Ezekiel. The role of Ezekiel is to be the sentry, the watcher and proclaimer. The responsibility to act is the responsibility of the en-tire people. The important thing for the religious is to proclaim clearly the message of the Lord in our world today, even though religious can-not ¯ control the response to the proclamation. As Ezekiel is told: "And whether they heed or resist--for they are a rebellious house--they shall know that a prophet has been among them" (2:5). The call to religious, then, is to stand for certain values and to speak those values in word, The Religious as Sentry / 679 and especially in deed, so that people will know that a word of the Lord has been spoken in their midst. Would it not have a tremendous impact on our modern world if people would know that a prophet has been among them? One Role Among Many. Another characteristic of the sentry is to have a uniquely different role, a role that can be out of synchronization with the rest of society. The vowed life of religious often places them out of synchronization with others. In the past this uniqueness has been explained as a form of life superior to other Christian lifestyles. The im-age of the sentry helps us image the complementarity of different life-styles. To say that religious have a unique role in the Church and society is not to say that it is better or more important than the roles of others. By their gifts, religious contribute to the world, but they are at the same time dependent on the gifts and lifestyles of others. All contribute to the common good. In the past, to be a sentry often meant to live on the margins of soci-ety. Religious, too, have often moved to the margins of society. Relig-ious houses were set up on the fringes of the city or separated from the city in the desert or countryside. There is a need for this type of sentry today. But signs of good news and omens of danger are also in the midst of society. In our day, when we read about terrorist attacks almost daily, we know that the greatest danger may come from within the city gates themselves. Those who can harm us live in our midst. Therefore, there will be need for religious immersed in society to read the signs of God's reign, that is, the movement of the Spirit in the midst of the world. At the same time, they will need to read the signs of peril and danger, that is, of the counterspirit in the midst of the world. Conclusion I believe that reflection upon Ezekiel and his call as sentry can en-rich the vision of the prophetic role of religious in our day, can be for religious a new way of imagining their role. Many religious will ask whether they are worthy or capable of such a call. Most honest religious will feel unworthy, as did Ezekiel, who fell upon his face when he was called (I :28). To take up the challenge can only be in response to God's call. "Child of the earth. Stand up! I wish to speak to you" (2: I). The call of the religious will be a response to the Spirit moving within. This will be the source of the authentic voca-tion to be a sentry for God's people and for the world. Finally, since the call to be a sentry will be a call from the Lord, he will be with the relig-ious on the journey. "Fear them not," (3:10) the Lord tells Ezekiel. The 680 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 Lord tells religious today the same: He will be with the sentry today, as he was with Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and the other prophets. "I am with you always, yes, even to the end of time" (Mt 28:20). NOTES ~Avery Dulles, S.J., Mddels of the Church (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974). 2Lawrence Cada, S.M. et al., Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), pp. I 1-50~ 3See my article "Religious Life as Acted Prophecy" REvmw ~OR REt.mIOUS 41, n. 6, November/December, 1982, pp. 923-927. ,From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions I and II by Patricia Spillane, M.S.C. Address: Price: $1.25 per copy, plus postage. Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 The Fathers in the Office of Readings: St. Cyprian of Carthage Anthony Daly, S.J. Father Anthony Duly has been a member of the faculty of the Languages Depart-ment of Saint Louis University. He has published several of these descriptive and brief biographies of Fathers of the Church who have been used in the Office of Read-ings of the Liturgy of the Hours. His last contribution appeared in the issue of Sep-tember/ October 1983. He may be addressed at Jesuit Hall; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. The third-century writings of St. Cyprian, bishop and martyr, are impor-tant today because they furnish otherwise unknown details of the life of both the Christians and pagans of his day and because they provide an illustration, hard to interpret though it is, of third-century African epis-copal attitudes toward the Roman papacy, a topic, however, which is not treated here. More directly, the writings reveal the character of St. Cyprian him-self, an interesting man with qualities people of any era can admire and imitate and who has many things to say which will never go out of date. What follows is first a brief overall sketch of St. Cyprian's life and then a more detailed account of certain matters which seemed likely to be of interest to readers of the Liturgy of the Hours. Well educated in the secular tradition of his times, Cyprian was a man who actively and thoroughly integrated his knowledge and experi-ence within a completely Christian ideology. He appears as an effective rhetorician, a competent bishop and administrator, a practical leader who knows how to make the best of a difficult situation, and a man of great personal charm, courage, and compassion. But perhaps his most strik-ing characteristic is his ability to face martyrdom, that of others and then 681 61~9 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 finally his own, not only with equanimity but even with joy and satis-faction. ~ The selections from his writings in the Liturgy of the Hours com-municate a spirit of firm religiosity which is rendered more attractive by human charm and more realistic by a moderate cast of mind. His mar-tyrdom adds to his words the weight of tested sincerity and makes more telling his exhortations to hope, courage, and joy. Thascius Caecilianus Cyprianus (c.205-258) was an African, born per-haps at Carthage, of wealthy pagan parents. He lived at Carthage where he was an orator and prominent citizen, and, like the more famous St. Augustine who for a time, but more than a century later, also lived in that North African city, Cyprian was a teacher of rhetoric. In midlife he took stock of his own character and of the repugnant pagan society in which he lived. This led him in the year 246 to become a Christian. He gave his money to the poor, took a vow of chastity, was ordained a priest, and in 248-49 he was consecrated bishop of Carthage. The ideal of personal integrity seems to have been what first attracted Cyprian to Christianity, an ideal which he found fulfilled for him there as a gift from God. He seems never to have lost it again, and secure in it, he began to devote himself to helping others. This was especially true as he performed his episcopal tasks of encouraging the faithful, teach-ing sound doctrine, and governing well, always seeking to preserve and foster the unity of the Church. But his desire to help others seems to have accompanied his conversion itself, for one of the first things he did as a Christian was write To Donatus, the purpose of which was to convert to Christianity his friend Donatus and others. Cyprian's election as bishop was unusual in that it occurred not very long after his conversion to Christianity. That the choice fell upon him seems to have been due to his obvious sincerity, his high standing in the local community, his eminent personal qualifications, and the fact that he had already published at least one and perhaps as many as three of his Christian writings.2 Although the exact process of his election is not known, it is clear that it involved the agreement of a majority of the clergy, of the neighboring bishops who assembled to ordain him, and of the laity who were his strongest supporters. Confidence in Adversity His episcopal career was stormy right from the time of his election as bishop. There were some who opposed selecting him, and among them were a certain Novatus and some other elderly presbyters at St. Cyprian of Carthage [ 683 Carthage, who, although they may have had other motives as well, prob-ably were jealous of Cyprian. Soon, in 250, the Roman emperor Decius instituted the first truly sys-tematic and universal persecution of Christians. Commissions were set up throughout the empire which were to witness certain acts of worship of the pagan gods which were to be performed by everyone as a relig-ious test. Some of the Ch?istians complied; others were able to secure official certificates of compliance (libelli) even though they had not in fact worshiped; still others refused to comply and were subject to impris-onment, torture, or even death. Cyprian was among yet a fourth class of Christians who avoided the confrontation by going into hiding. He was criticized for this, but, as he explained it, when the edict against Christians was promulgated, the pagan populace at Carthage called for him to be brought forward. He fled not so much for his own safety, he explained, but in order to avoid a public uprising which he feared would endanger his flock. He further explained that despite his physical sepa-ration he kept in close touch with his people by letter.3 Some of these communications are included in the collection of his extant letters. In this, in other episcopal decisions, and in the general conduct of his personal life, St. Cyprian displays remarkable self-confidence. In this episode, he gives his reasons for withdrawing from Carthage, expects them to be accepted, and does not seem at all embarrassed to return, show his face, and even to admonish in certain matters those who had suffered or were still in prison for the faith, the confessors. Cyprian found it necessary to warn the confessors not to try to usurp the role of the bishop in granting ecclesiastical pardon to those who had given in to the authorities, the lapsed. Not altogether unreasonably, the custom was gaining ground according to which some of the lapsed were securing from the confessors requests for full and immediate reinstate-ment in the Church, and these requests, either written or oral, were gen-erally being honored, thus gaining quasi-hierarchical authority. In addi-tion to cautioning the confessors in this matter, Cyprian also admonished them not to give in to softness and vice once their trials had ended. Cyprian'.s is an attractive self-confidence, not haughty, a self-confidence based on truth and courageous love. One wonders if it en-tailed an inner struggle for Cyprian; if so, it is part of his private life and is not reflected in his writings. The Novatian Schism Probably because the severity of the persecution was unpopular with most pagans, and because the courage of the martyrs was probably at- Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 tracting enough converts to make the persecution self-defeating, it was ended early in 251. At that point Cyprian was faced with a controversy over how the bishops and clergy themselves should treat the lapsed, both those who had obeyed the edict and sacrificed to idols, and those who had obtained fraudulent certificates, or libelli. Cyprian, who adopted moderate and individualized attitude toward those who had lapsed in these ways, was able to make his view prevail'. His guiding principle was that those guilty of serious sin should be given an opportunity to achieve genuine repentance, a state of soul which he thought a sinner could ex-perience only through undergoing a suitable period of penance. But at the same time he insisted that sin can in fact be forgiven and that no re-pentant person should be deprived of hope, that each should be readmit-ted to the Church at the appropriate time. Against Cyprian were both those who wanted everyone readmitted to the Church without further com-plication and those who advised that reconciliation with the Church be forever withheld from those who had fallen. Chief among the proponents of this last course of action were the No-vatianists, so called because they were followers of Novatian, a rigorist Roman bishop who claimed the papal throne. Because his claim was re-jected by the Church at large and because of his rigorism, he and his fol-lowers became schismatic, and their rival church, widespread through-out the empire, was not entirely reconciled with Catholics until the end of the seventh century. Baptism by Heretics Under the Emperor Gallus (25 ! -53) a second persecution took place which was itself followed, in the years 255-57, by another major con-troversy, this time over the validity of baptism administered by heretics, chiefly the Novatianists. The difficulty arose over whether those origi-nally baptized by Novatianists and others not in communion with the Church should be rebaptized when they were accepted into the Catholic communion. Cyprian championed the losing cause, maintaining that the baptisms administered by heretics had no value. He appears still to have been of this opinion when, under the Emperor Valerian (253-60), a third persecution cost him his life. Although the Church later determined that baptism administered by non-Catholics is valid provided certain elements are present, on the un-derstanding that it is Christ himself who truly baptizes rather than the in-dividual who happens to be administering the rites, the whole matter was not yet worked out in Cyprian's day. Clearly he too would attribute the effects of the sacraments to Christ, but in his mind heresy and schism, St. Cyprian of Carthage / 685 since they involve separation from the Church, are tantamount to reject-ing Christ. How, he reasoned, could someone who rejects Christ bap-tize in his name? By the same token, such a person "shall not come to the rewards of Christ," even if he suffers martyrdom.4 His position on the matter underscores the importance he placed on unity in the Church. In the year 258 Cyprian ended his life in stirring fashion, boldly em-bracing his martyrdom. The account of his death forms the alternate sec-ond reading of the Office of Readings on his feast day. It is celebrated on September 16, along with that of Pope Cornelius whom Cyprian sup-ported against the rival claimant to the papacy mentioned above, Nova-tian. Writings Cyprian's treatise On the Lord's Prayer furnishes the largest single group of selections from his writings in the Liturgy of the Hours. These are nearly matched in volume by extracts from his Letters, and the ma-terial is rounded out by single samples from several works: On the D?ess of Virgins, On the Value of Patience, On Man's Mortality, and the Ex-hortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus. Finally there is the description of his martyrdom by an unknown author, taken from The Pro-consular Acts. There are eight other works by Cyprian not included in the Liturgy. Of these, To Demetrianus is a work similar to the longer, more famous City of God by St. Augustine. Both works deny that Christians are to be held responsible for wars and natural disasters, and attribute them instead to the vices of the pagans. Another title of Cyprian's often likened to a writing of St. Augustine, in this instance the Confessions, is To Donatus, mentioned earlier, which describes Cyprian's conversion to Christianity from paganism. Here Cyp-rian rejoices in his new life which he attributes to the cleansing of sav-ing water and the effects of "a quickening act of divin~ grace." Through power given by God he has been enabled to abandon lavish banquets, expensive clothing, and public honors in favor of a private life, simple clothes, and thrift. Although he once thought he could never be rid of his sins which he had come to indulge as "proper and belonging to" him, he had left hard drinking behind, together with exaggerated self-importance, anger, covetousness, cruelty, ambition and lust. He empha-sizes that his new way of life is not to be attributed to himself, but to God.5 As has been mentioned, because it recounts Cyprian's conversion from sin through the power of God, and because he wrote it to help oth- 61~6 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 ers experience a similar conversion, To Donatus has been compared to the Confessions of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, there are three sharp dif-ferences between the two works. Most obvious is their difference in length, Cyprian's work being much shorter. Second, Augustine is spe-cific in recounting his sins and the steps by which he became a Chris-tian, whereas Cyprian summarizes his experiences in general terms. Third, Augustine addresses God directly in the Confessions and always emphasizes his personal love for God. Cyprian addresses his friend Do-natus; he attributes to God his newfound mastery over himself, but he does not dwell on his relationship with God. Instead, his attention cen-ters on treasuring his newly purified way of life and on contrasting it with the wickedness of the pagan society which he has left behind. Cyprian pities the world and gives thanks to God for having escaped from it with its robbers, pirates, wars, and gladiatorial contests.6 He be-lieves the themes of the tragedies presented in the theater corrupt private morals: parricide, incest, and adultery which "is learned as it is seen"; and these things are all the worse because they are presented with the approval of public authority. Men make themselves effeminate on stage, and Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are depicted as unchaste, Jupiter even ad-vancing to "the raping of young boys . Ask now whether he who looks upon this can be healthy-minded or chaste. One imitates the gods whom he venerates. For these poor wretches sins become even religious acts. ' ' 7 Further evils in society include homosexuality, prostitution, litigious-ness, bribery and collusion, fraud, forgery, perjury, and the falsification of charges. In court the wicked fare better than the innocent. To secure a place of prominence in society, men become sycophants, spendthrifts on public spectacles, or they build up estates, dispossessing the poor, and must live in fear of thieves and lawsuits.8 Cyprian recounts all of this in order to show the goodness of God who saves us from becoming wicked or vain.9 The Christian way to live in such a world is to raise one's eyes from earth to heaven, to be next to God in mind, to ignore what is seemingly sublime and great in human affairs, and to be greater than the world, for a religiously oriented way of life is a greater prize than anything the world has to offer. Five other works not included in the Liturgy of the Hours have fairly self-explanatory titles: The Lapsed, The Unity of the Church, Works and Almsgiving, Jealousy and Envy, and That the Idols Are Not Gods, a work sometimes considered spurious.~° A final work not used in the Liturgy is To Quirinus: Three Books of Testimonies. This treatise, which seems St. Cyprian of Carthage actually to represent two separate works by Cyprian which were com-bined later, perhaps by someone else, lists scriptural passages designed to show that the Christians h~ve inherited the promises made to the Jews, texts which illustrate the mysteries of Christ, and passages designed to show how to live the Christian life. Interpreting Cyprian Three aspects of the life of St. Cyprian seem particularly significant for interpreting and appreciating his writings: first, he was a rhetorician; second, he became a bishop; and then finally, he died a martyr. As a rheto-rician he knows how to use words to achieve the result he wants; but he uses them in a less literal sense than does a philosopher or a speculative theologian, and he gives more weight to various ideas and attitudes than would a disinterested writer who is unaffected by the press of circum-stances. Thus it is often necessary to consider carefully the context in which he is writing, and to subordinate the literal meaning of what he says to the effect he seems to be trying to achieve,, A bishop's preoccupation with his duty to guide, instruct, protect, and correct his people permeates the writings of Cyprian. In this office, it is obvious that he is motivated first and last by his love of Christ and the Church, and that he views everything else from a Christian perspec-tive. Constantly he shows good common sense and a sane grasp of the limits and potential of human nature. Finally, the atmosphere of hostility to the faith in which Cyprian ex-ercised his episcopacy'and which finally resulted in his death shaped and sharpened his vision of the world and how it is to be approached; this may well be the most important factor influencing his strong emphasis on eternal life. He quotes the Scriptures, both Old Testament and New, with a natu-ral ease which indicates true familiarity; having made a thorough study of them at the time of his conversion to Christianity, he seems to have continued this study throughout his career as a bishop. Quotations are always at hand to reinforce and embellish the points he wants to make. Among his works are the To Quirinus described above, and another col-lection of Scripture texts briefly mentioned as a work quoted in the Lit-urgy of the Hours, the Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortu-natus. Here, under twelve headings, are texts bearing generally on mar-tyrdom which a preacher or writer could use to encourage Christians liv-ing under the threat of persecution. Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 Literary Style Cyprian's style is clear, orderly, and often ornate, marked by a lib-eral but tasteful use of rhetorical figures such as parallel clauses whose grammatical structures are similar, phrases ending in the same sound, and the strategic repetition of words. His love of metaphors, some of which are quite engaging, is not obscured by translation into English. Vir-gins, for instance, are termed blossoms;~ like the emperor or one of his generals, God watches us doing battle with evil;~2 "the commands of the Gospel. are the rudder for keeping us on the right course";~3 and the Christian victorious over "earth's torment and suffering" is com-pared to a soldier returning home in triumph after defeating the enemy. ~4 On the Lord's Prayer This treatise, more than a third of,which has been included in the Lit-urgy ofothe Hours, has been praised throughout history as a fine com-mentary, certainly among the best non-technical ones ever written. Three points from the material in the Liturgy seem especially note-worthy. The first is Cyprian's insistence that prayer should have a social dimension: "We do not say 'My Father, who art in heaven,' nor 'Give me this day my daily bread'. Rather, we pray., not for one in-dividual but for all. For the people of God are all one." ~5 Second, there is Cyprian's sober awareness that we all sin every day and stand in con-stant need of sanctification. 16 A third point is Cyprian's stirring expres-sion of Christian steadfastness. When he speaks of accepting suffering and even death with Christ who suffered for us, we are reminded of the terrible hostility which confronted him and his fellow Christians.~7 Portions of the work not quoted in the Liturgy show that Cyprian's caution about the world is remarkably well balanced. This is especially true if the pagan culture in which he lived is fully taken into account. For instance, despite superficial similarity between pagan Stoicism and his remarks about rising above the world, Cyprian clearly shows that he does not underestimate the value of material creation; on the contrary, he advises us to pray that by the help of God we experience a harmony between the flesh an°d the spirit, the earthly and' the heavenly; and he un-derstands that Christ renews and preserves humanity. ~8 ~;imilarly, in his warning about the entangling effect of riches, Cyprian may have been more emphatic than he would otherwise have been because he realized that the thought of losing property kept many from confessin~ Christ dur-ing the persecution. 19 Off the negative side, the work includes an embar-rassingly strong and wholesale condemnation of the Jews; Cyprian goes so far as to say that they can no longer call God their Father, since they St. Cyprian of Carthage / 689 rejected and killed Christ.2° On the Dress of Virgins The final work to be considered here is On the Dress of Virgins, ex-cerpts from which make up the second reading in the Common of Vir-gins. (There is an alternate second reading taken from the Decree on the Renewal of Religious Life of the Second Vatican Council.) In the excerpts (chs. 3-4, 22, 23) St. Cyprian describes virgins adorned with right conduct as beautiful, as "the image of God that re-flects the holiness of the Lord," and as "the most illustrious members of Christ's flock." He interprets the virginal life as beginning to be "now what we shall all be in the future," in the kingdom of heaven, he means, where there is no marriage. As a matter of fact, Cyprian's thought goes even further. He sees virginity as a part of the image of the heavenly man, Christ, to whom we are encouraged to conform ourselves. Virgins are "equal to God's angels." ~ Humbled by the thought of them, and not, he says, in a spirit of cen-sure or even of authority, but out of concern for them, he exhorts them to "persevere in chastity and virginity." Having renounced the pleas-ures of the flesh, "they should not strive to adorn themselves or give pleasure to anyone but the Lord." In this way, having passed "through this world without the world's infection," they "will receive a glorious prize" for their virtue.2~ The passages from this treatise which are included in the Liturgy of the Hours express sound and encouraging attitudes good for all time; some of the material not included sounds strange to modern ears. This material, because it is historically conditioned on the one hand or rheto-rically condemnatory on the other, is harder to understand. . Although the excerpts seem to concern women rather than men, else-where in the treatise Cyprian states that he intends .his general remarks for "men as well as women, boys as well as girls, every sex and every age."22 This does not mean, however, that he viewed men and women as equal in every respect, or even that he disagreed with the traditional Roman view of women as the weaker sex. For instance, regarding mar-tyrs in The Lapsed, he says, "Joining.~the victory of their men, come the women too, triumphing over the world and over their sex alike."23 So too, he uses as an. argumeht on behalf of virginity that it frees a woman not.only from the pains of childbirth but also from the dominion of a husband.24 On the warrant of Scripture Cyprian insists that physical adornments should be rejected by virgins, who should strive to please God rather than 690 / Review for Religious, September-October, 1987 men.25 Furthermore, women are to avoid being an occasion of sin for men.26 Even if a woman has wealth, it is false to argue that she should make use of it to improve her physical appearance; rather, things "that have been acquired in the world and will remain here with the world, should be despised (contemni) just as the world itself is despised."27 In-deed, virgins should be like martyrs in that they should avoid the "wide and broad roads" in favor of the "hard and steep path which ascends to glory," for the devil uses allurements and pleasures "that he may kill.' ,28 Today many would consider the judicious and modest use of makeup simply a part of formal dress. From this point of view Cyprian's invec-tive against necklaces, earrings, makeup, and red articles of clothing seems overdrawn. But for Cyprian such things are not innocent. Not only for virgins but for all women makeup and earrings are, to his mind, in-ventions of the devil: "the work of God and his creature and image should in no way be falsified;., everything that comes into existence is the work of God. whatever is changed, is the work of the devil."29 The difference between today's view and his seems to stem neither from licentiousness in us nor from prudishness in him, but from Cyprian's an-cient cultur

Issue 46.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1987. ; Self-Awareness and Ministry Gender, History, and Liturgy Humanity's Humble Stable God's Love Is Not Utilitarian Volume 46 Number 6 Nov./Dec. 1987 Rv:vw.w t:o~ R~,~olous (ISSN 0034-639X), published eve~ two months, is edited in collaboration with lhe faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Lx~uis University. The edito-rial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. R~vu-:w ~:o~ R~:.~.~t~ous is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. Ol987 by R~-:wt.:w ~:o~ R~.~.~ous. Single copies $2.50. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $11.00 a year: $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (surface mail); airmail (Book Rate): $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: R~:v~v:w roa R~:t.mmtts: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors Nov./Dec. 1987 Volume 46 Number 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to wm R~:t.t(:totJs; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from R~:vt~:w wm R~:tot~;totJs; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Four Ecclesial Problems Left Unresolved Since Vatican II Martin R.Tripole, S.J. Father Tripole is an associate professor of th.eology at St. Joseph's University; Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania ! 913 !. He,wrote "Suffering with the Humble Chi'ist" for the March,April 1981 issue of this periodical. Catholic scholars have been.talking about crisis in the Catholic Church for so long a time now that almost everyone has gotten used to it. In fact, too many people have been saying there is a crisis for anyone to ignore the situation. But not everyone uses the term. It depends on whom you tall~ to. Until recently, the higher you went in the Church, the less likely you were to find admission of crisis. For example, Bishop Ja~mes Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, former president of the National conference of Catho-lic Bishops, submitted a report to the Vatican in the summer of 1985 on the state of the Church. in the United States since Vatican II, a report made in preparation for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops that met in Rome November 25-December 8, 1985.:In his. report, Bishop Malone stated the Church in the United S(ates is "basically sound." The bishop made no mention of cri~is; instead he talked of "confusion" and "abuses" and "false ideas'" and "diffiC'ulties" in various areas of church life.~ While many praised th~report, it was also criticized as "looking at the Church in the United States through 'rose-colored glasses.' "2 But another high-level member of the clergy has no difficulty speak-ing of crisis. Joseph Cardinal' Ratzinger,. prefect of the Sacred Congre-gation for the Doctrine of the Faith, surely one of themost powe~rful of-ficials in tlie Vatican, made the ~tiscussion of crisis in the Church today 801 Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 the c.entr~l theme of his Ratzinger Report. This 1985' publicati6r~ of an exclusive interview given to an Italian journalist caught the attention of everyone and produced much controversy, in'view of the cardinal's strong views on the Church, as well as the fact that he published them just before the extraordinary synod was to be held. Ratzinger and his in-terviewer discourse at length on "a crisis of faith and of the Church," of "an identity crisis" in priests and religious, a "crisis of trust in the dogma," a "crisis of confidence in Scripture," a crisis "of the moral-ity. "In his summation of "the gravity of the crisis" in the Church since Vatican II, Ratzinger's tone is markedly different from Bishop Malone's. The interviewer cites views written by Ratzinger ten years earlier and con-firmed by him for the Report as still valid: It is incontestable that the last ten years have been decidedly unfavor-able for the Catholic Church . What the popes and the Couhcil Fa-thers were expecting was a new,Catholic unity, and instead one has en-countered a dissension which--to use the words of Paul Vl--seems to have pasg~d over from self-criticism to self-destruction . it has ended in boredom and discouragement . one found oneself facing a progressive process of decadence . [and] erroneous paths whose catastrophic consequences are already incontestable.3 Nevertheless, when the bishops came together at the extraordinary synod, they spoke of sharing in "mankind's present crisis and dramas" and of the "spiritual crisis., so many people feel" today, but not of an, y crisis of the Church as such. Less exfflt6d Catholic leaders, theologians, and publishers readily speak of crisis in the Church. The Rev. Robert Johnson, president of the National Federation of Priests' Councils, in 1985 stated: Priesthood is in crisis. The vocation of the ordained priest is not what it used to be. The data tells us that. Our own experience tells us that also. There is a crisis in numbers. At its zenith in 1970, the diocesan priesthood .in the United States numbered some 37,000. By the year 2000, it is estimated that this population will be 16,000 or 17,000. This would represent a declin.e of some 54%. i in the year 2000 we will have roughly the same number of priests we had in 1925. Meanwhile, the people we were ordained to serve will have quadrupled.4 Edward C. Herr, in a report on "The State of the Church," in 1985 stated that, whereas in a similar report in 1983 there were "hopes that a relatively stableoand tranquil period" was about to arrive in the Church, he must now report those hopes were "naive," that "the tensions and turmoil have increased and show no signs of ebbing."4A He reports the Four Ecclesial Problems recent findings of Dr. William J. McCready, program director of the Uni-versity of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC), that "a third of the 52 million Roman Catholics in America rarely or never go to church."5 Herr cites an article by James Hitchcock, professor of his-tory at St. Louis University, which lis~ed a catalo~g of ~'problems facing the Church in America" today: REligious orders openly pro.moting dissent Official Church agencies providing platforms for dissent ~"Radical redefinition of the traditional religious vows" Tolerance of "known violations" of chlibacy Growing influence of "militant homosexual network" in seminaries and religious orders Almost total collapse of seminary discipline "Probably a large majority of Catholic colleges hnd universities have become bffectively secular" Widespread deviations from "official liturgical norms" Majority of Catholic students no longer receive an adequate grounding in their faith Bishops and priests "largely refrain from teaching ,, disputed doctrines.' ,6 ~' Herr also reports the views of Richard Schoenherr, soc'iologist and asso-ciate dean at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1985, on "a cri-sis for the Church by the year 2000." Acc6rding to Herr, Schoenherr presents ~ a bleak picture of the Church-at the turn of the century. Opportunities to attend Mass will be fewer since each priest will have to serve 4,000 Catholics in a burgeoning Church; laity,.tired of a subordinate position in the Church, will withdraw from active leadership while those who do continue to serve will be laden with greater responsibility . There will be "an organizational crisis of immense proportion," accord-ing to Schoenherr, with an "ehormous youth drain in theministry," and with more "resigned" than active priests in the United States.7 Norbertine Father Alfred McBride, president of the University of Al-buquerque, also predicts a "ministry crisis" in 2000. He foresees a to-tal of 30,000 priests serving. 65 million Catholics.8 Finally., novelist Mor-ris West, author of many best-sellers on (~atholicism, is reported as see-ing the possibility of "a silent schism" in the Church of the future, as a result of "a defection of millioi~s by a-slow decline into indiffer-ence. ' ,9 Review, for Religious, November-December, 1987 The fact is: there has been talk of a crisis in the Church ever since the '60's--that per_iod which constitutes a kind of a turning point.in the life of the modern Church. That decade, from which date many of the issues whi~c,h 'trouble~the American Church today was equally a problemati~ decade for American society in gene,ra~l., and indeed for the world. In fact, the world is "officially" in a state of crisis---~f sorts. The bishops told us that at Vatican II when they stated the "human race is passing through a.new stag~ 0fits history" where it is undergoing "a true social and cultural transformation" causing a "crisis of gro~vth. "~0 The modern world is experiencing "new foLoas of social and p~sychologi-cai slavery" as well as "imbalances" that lead to "Mutual distrust, en-mities, conflicts, an~'hardships" (~audium el spes 4, 8). According to the bishops, this situation of crisis inevitably "has repercussions on man's religious life as~ well": it cause,s "spiritual agitation,"4"many peo-ple are shaken" in their convictions, and '~growing humbers~ of people are abandoning religion fin pr~actice" .(GS 5, 7). Later in the _same docu-ment, though in the context of a discussion on war and peace, the bish-ops speak of "the whole human family" as having "reached an hour of supreme crisis in its advance toward maturity" (GS 77). While the bishops at Vatican II did not go so far as to say directly that the Church was in a state of crisis, they certainly meant to say that the Church shared in the~crisis situation of the'world in ggneral. It was not long after, however, that writers.started speaking directly, of a crisis in the Church. We may note only a few. Father Andrew Greeley loudly proclaimed that as a fact in an important series of articles he published in diocesan newspapers in 1976; entitled "The Crisis in American Ca-tholicism" (and later in a book entitled Crisis in the Church),~ but the idea of ,the Church. in crisis had already quietly come into standard con-sideratiOn or was .soon to do so through the writings of such renowned historians, scrilSture scholars, and theologians as Raymond Brown, S.S. (B~blical Reflections on Crises Facing the C. hurch),~2 Richard P. McBr~en (he speaks of the "pre.sent crisis within the Catholic Church" in The Remaking oft~ Churcl~),~3 Avery Dulles, S.J. (fie sl~eaks of a "crisis of identity" in the Church in The Resilient Church), 14 and David J. O'Brien (h611spe~iks of the '~Catholic crisis," the "American crisis," and "an age Of crisis" in The Renewal of A. merican Catholicism).~5 Statistical~d~ta since the end of Vatican II--th~e latest reports of An-drew Greeley's National °Opinion Research Center in Chicago,~6 from George Gallup Jr.'s continuing analysis of the state of the Catholic Church in America,~7 and from the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Par- Four Ecclesial Problems /805 ish Life~8--provide overwhelming evidence, as far as statistical data is able to do so, that the American Catholic Church is in a state of crisis. ¯ Evidence: American Catholics no longer accept official teaching of the Church simply,on the basis of the fact that it is official teaching; Catho-lics no lbnger go to church, as much as ~hey used to, to fulfill their Sun-day obligation or from ~i sense of duty; they ~ai'e not contributing to the sti~iport of the Church.in a way consonant with their earnings; they are o~penly criticizing the Chui'ch in a way" that seems to i'epresent a new ¯ sense ol~ independence over agains~t the institutional Church" and its offi- Cial teachers. What is going on, and when will it end? Causes of Crisis Since Vatican II ,Numerous publications have been~ritteri since Vatican II seeking to determine the causes of the crisis Which has beset the Church since~that time. The fact is, the ca~iases are manifold, and only a, lhrge t0ine could hope to anal~,ze and cover them all thoroughl)~. What I attempt here is -'C0: fbcus on what I shall call four unresolved antinomi~ek which are re-flected in the thinking and practices of the Church since Va[i~an II. My point is to argue that the bishops at Vatican II not o~nly were aware o,f, but shgred in,. the theologically, antinomous viewpoints which have largely served to. polarize the Church sin.ce~ the end of the Council.° Though there is~ some exaggera~tion in categorizing these viewpoints quite simplyas conservative/traditionalist and liberal/progressivist, I shall do that for want of better terms, and also because the viewpoints do .tend to be of these two types. Though these terms have a political and ideo-logical connotation, their use here is not meant to imply that. What we,mean.by the use of these terms is that there are two oppos-ing movements working in the Church today. The first is inclined to want ,to preserve elements today which were also characteristic of the life of the Chtirch ~before Vatican II,-elements such as hierarchical authority, clerical priority, and institutional identity;~the second is more inclined toward~elements which arose in the life of the Church since Vatican II, elements such as democratic~procedures, equality of membership, unity based on shared convictions and shared authority. ,Neither group is. to-tally opposed to the values identified with the other, except at the outer fringes. Thus~extreme traditionalists---c~illed reactionaries wish no part of what~the Church since Vatican II has come to be identified with; ex-treme liberals~alled radicals--reject automatically whatever was promi-nent in the Church before Vatican II and yearn for a congregationalist type of community. For the larger membership in both groups, the prob- Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 lem is mainly one of emphasis: which set of values, which viewpoint should ,be the dominant one in the .life of the Church?. That question of emphasis is a serious one. In spite of the fact that it is only a question of emphasis, it leads in practice to polarization. Re-cent events in .the .life of the Church.have increased this experience of polarization rather than diluted it, mainly because the traditionalist camp, which had largely fallen into the ~silent majority in ~the Church .in the post- Vatican II peri0d, has gained a new sense of power in the last ten yehr~s. The struggle between these two, groups is now, in my opinion, at the most intense point of conflict the Church has felt since the early pp,s~t- Vatican II days of the Church. What, if anything, can be done to reduce this polarization? I wish in this article only to point to what I consider the four major areas of po-larization which were left unresolved by Vatican II. They continue to re-main largely unresolved by the post-Vatican II Church, even after the Ex-traordinary Synod of 1985, and they need to be resolved before the po-larization can b6 overcome:~I~ t me discuss each of these areas singly_, and at some length:. Saci~ed ~vs."Si~cular ' The" Catholic Church has had a strong sense of social responsibility throughout the modern era., as shown in a history of concern forrectify-ing inhumane workihg conditions, unjust wages, and unfair labor prac- .tices, starting at least with Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum: On the Condi-tioh of Workers (1891). Nevertheless, there is no doubt that a new and profound theological significance has been given to the role of the Church in regard to such matters since Vatican II. Prior to Vatican II, social activity was generally considered to be peripheral to the primary ¯ work o(the Church, to administer the s~icraments and preach the gospel of salvation in Christ. With Vatican II, the Church seemed to be saying that the .social apostolate was as important to the life of the Church as these two other activities. .A major transformation in the relationship of the Church to the world got underway at Vatican II. The .Chur~hnow saw itself not only right-fully but also dutifully bound to bring the insight and power of the gos-pel into the .arena of world problems, in the hope of changing th~ un-holy conditibns and direction of the life'of the world from within. Church concern for such issues was obvious ifi the countless conventions and publicat!ons on social, political, and moral issues that sprang up in the post-Vatican II era. Most notable was the conference by the Latin Ameri-can bishops at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, which registered a strong Four Ecclesial Problems / 807 commitment by Latin American bishops to Overcoming the problems of the poor and oppressed in their countries; and the international Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971, which published the historic document Jus-tice in the World, which, "Scrutinizing the signs of the times.ai~d seek-ing to detect the meaning of emerging history," concluded that "Ac-tion on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemp-tion of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situ-ation." 19 One of the 9learest examples of how important the new thrust into social and political matters would be forthe American Church may be seen from a 1981 publication of the U.S. Catholic Conference enti-tledA Compendium of Statements of the United States Catholic Bishops on the Political and Social Order. It takes 487 pages to cover the docu-ment~ ition from 1966 .to 1980, which includes statements on "war and peace, development, and human rights," as ~eil as "~tbo~tion, birth con-trol, Call to Action (the U.S. Bishops' Bic~htennial Consultation on So-cial Justice), crime'and punishment, economic issues, family life, free-dom of religion, housing, immigrants, labor disputes, minorities, race, rural America, and television."2° More recently the United States bish-ops have taken forthright and controversial stands ori the matters of war and peace and the American economy,'the former in their pastoral.letter The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise~and Our Response (May 3, 1983), the latter in their Economic Justice foroAll~" Catholic Social Teach-ing and the U.S. Economy (November 13, 1986). In each case the bish-ops argue to. the implications of the gospel message, singling out the im-morality of nuclear warfare or the scandalous operations, in the Ameri-can economic system. The full implications of these strong teachings have yet to be determined. ~, All of this would be cause fo'~ unmitigated joy, were it not for the fact that with. this new emphasis UpiSn the social implications of the Gos-pel, something transcendent in the' gospel teaching may have been lost. One :of the major problems in the life of the.Church since Vatican II, according to the bishops at the Extraordinary Synod of 1985, has been the lack of recognition and acceptance of a sacral or theological depth to the Churcti's life--what the synod calls the "mystery" of the Church. The bishops .take responsibility for the fact that this dimension of Churcfi life has been undermined, especially among young people, by a too secu-lar conception of the .Church as a mere human institution. The bishops assert: ~ I~Oll / Review for Religious~ ~November-December, 1987 , a unilateral'presentation of:the 13hurch as a purely institutional structure devoid of her mx.stery has been made. We~are probably not immune from all respon, sibility for th.e fact that, especially the young consider the Chur~ch a pure institution. Have we not perhaps favored this opinion in them by speaking ~too much of the i'enewal Of the Church's external struc-tures and too little of God a'hd of Christ? The bisl~ops admit ~that in their eagerness to open the. Church to the ~,orld they h, ave~qot suffici,ently di~tinguishe.d legitimate openness to the world from a secularization of the Church by the world: From time to time there has also been a lack of the~discernment of spir-' its, with~the failure to correctly distinguish between a legitimate open-ness of the council to the world and ~the acceptance of a secularized ¯ world's mentality and order of~values, . . . An easy accommodation that could lead to the secularizmion of the Church is to be excluded. /(ls0 excluded is an immobile closing in upon itself of the community of the faithful. Affirmed instead is a'missionary openness for the inte-gral salvation of the wo~ld.21 ~ Part of the problem has been the Church's eagerness to,enter the social arena with calls for social justice. While it is vital to the Church to em-phasize ~an active concern for social issues, the Church's concern for these issues should not become so great that it loses sight of .the fact that its deepest life is lived in "mystery" as the Church o_f God, and that the Church is ultimately made,up of the community"of the redeemed in Christ serving his mission of salvation: The primary mission of the Church, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, is to preach and to witness to the good and joyftil news of the election, the mercy and the charity of God which manifest themselves in salvation history, which through Jesus Christ reach their culmination in the fullness of time and which communicate and offer salvation to man by virtue of the Holy Spir.it. Christ is,the light of humanity. The Church, proclaiming the Gospel, must see to it that this light clearly shines out from her.countenance (ibid., p. 446). Social activism without that sacral 'dimension risks becoming purely secu-lar and human; such activity is totallymconsistent with the life of the Church, however good such acti~ism might otherwise be. To the extent that secularization in its various forms has happened in theChurch since Vatican II, something.inconsistent with what the Church should be arisen .in the community. To restore, a proper~balance, the Church .needs.to'reaffirm the primacy of its religious commitment, and to let that commitment shine before the Four, ,Ecclesial Problems, world.Only.,in the clarity of that commitment conveyed to the.world through its members is it able to seek effective ways of changing the world. These in turn must see themselves as having a primary mission to prove to the world the validityof the sacra~l o trranscendent dimen-sion of life as conveyed in the mission of Chrisi. ~n this respecti0ne not ov~erestimate the importance of Vatican II's and' the s~,nod's ne~ly developed and reaffirmed theology 6f the~ laity~ by Which thdrole of the laity in the.promotion of Christian and human values in.,the wo~ld is heightened ai~d theologically validated. Christians need also to find a way to counte~ract, the.increasing intru-sion ~of the power of the secul.ar into their. 9wn lives. To my mind, there is.no ,way for the Church more dramatically and decisively to restore the primacy, of the faith experience to Christian diving than emphatically to reassert its importance in the personal commi,tment to Christ. The "pas-sion"-, for Christ and the commitme~.t, to God's plan for the world in Christ .have too often been put on the back burner as we enter into the discussion of the problems of the world and seek to resolve them from within, using the naturalistic and,humanistic standards and instruments of action the world is often quite willing at least in,the~i~y to accept. But these are not enough for the Church. We must once again~become "p.as-sionately" committed to Christ and his purposes, and openly manifest to the world that it is primarily these for ~tii~h we stand, If the transcendent dimension, to life is rea!ly crucial to the well-being of the world and~therefore must bepreserved, it will have to come from deeply religiously-committed Christians. For them to be found in any great number, however, a new zeal for Christ and his purposes must be restored. The Church, and especi.ally its leaders both lay and religious, have no greater challenge today. Whether the zeal. necessary to restore the sense of the religious dimension to life in the,world chn be found, however, is not easily answered. Somehow we Christians shall have to enter more deeply into Ourselves, to find out if we really, share strongly a commitment tO Christ and his visi0fi °of the world and ~re willirig to make ~the sacrifices demanded o~°us as we enter into /~ ~riaarketplace al-ready increasingly intolerant of his vie~. W~"shall not~have the impact necessary to the success of the Christian vision merely,, by exporting Chris-tian values in a secularized form. The world does not need to know there is a need for justice nearly so much as it needs t6 kno.w that justice is a dimension of the faith experience in Christ.To seek to alleviate the cries of the poor in social action is really~not the, Christian~mission; rather, our mission is to bring to the poor the vision of~hrist, con- Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 sciously known and passionately calling all people to a commitment to him and to the consequences of that commitment in a life of faith and service. Innovation vs. Traditi6n Th~re is a second, inner-Church conflict to be resolved: between the new and the _old, between innovatidn and tradition. Vatic~'n II met at a crucial point in the life of the Church, when Catho-lic liberal~ were calling for reform while the conservatives wanted to stand by tradition. The bishops who came together represented both view-points. In the final documents they deliberately attempted ~ to draw to- . gether elements from th~ thinking 6f both. camps, hoping to blend their opposing viewpoints.enough to satisfy the desires of each. Apparently both sides were willing to accept compromise. Both also recognized that total consistency was impossible at that time there was simply not enough time to work out the niceties of perfect harmonization, nor was it necessarily desirable. It surely"was expected that the ongoing life of the Church, especially in the work of the theologians under the direc-tion of the bishbps, would work out any incongruities or inconsistencies in thought or prac'tice that ~ight be left over from the Council. And so the Council ended. But as one reporter put it: Yet the Counci'l's efforts to assimilate modernity and still be true to a 2000-year tradition also created the potential for vast misunderstanding. The Council called upon the Church to uphold, simultaneously, freedom and orthodoxy, culturalopenness and identity, change and continuity, modernity and tradition, hierarchy and participation. That is a tall or-der. 22 Avery Dulles, S.J~,.,asks the question that emphasizes the inevitability of the p~:o.b_lem.: Can a Church that simul.taneously moves in thes~ contradictory direc-tions. keep enough homogeneit~y to remain a single social body? . . . Can the Church adopt new symbols, languages, structures and behav-ioral patte .ms 6n a massive scale without losing continuity with its own origins and its ow.n pa~t? (ib!d.) Any break from tradition for any organization necessarily leads to con-fusion. But this would have been a problem even more for the Catholic Church because the break was so abrupt.and deep. Before the Council, many Catholics had~ accepted ex.aggerated acquiescence to unchange as a theological truism, with little or no sense of the role_of history in. the formation'of dogma and Church practice: Because all Church statements Four Ecclesial Problems / I~11 hadotended to be regarded as dogma unquestioningly to be accepted, obe-diential deference to authority was orthodox; freedom ofthbught, unor-thodox independence. Suddenly, after Vatican II, what had been consid-ered un-Catholic was espoused as good Catholicism. Whereas acceptance of lohg-standing traditions was the n~irm for acceptableoCatholic living prior to Vatican II.; now freedom of thought and openness to new ideas and individual conscience became acceptable. This break with tradition, l~owever, was not simply a break from the old frr the neff, but a rever-sal from standards recognizing something as unacceptable to standards recognizing the same as acceptable and even desirable.,Thus ~0nfusion, disagreement, and fallout were inevitable. Also, it is inevitable t'h~t all this leads to a deeper question: what does it mean to be a Catholic and to have the faith? ' There i~ no doubt a wide spectrum of viewpoints regarding'the theo-logica! role of innovatiori vs. that of tradition, and What, if any, the proper combination ofothe two might be. But in certain areas there is cr'rn~ mon consensus and in other areas a lack of consehsus. There is growing consensus that the break with past traditions ~vas too abrupt and that there is a ;need,to retui'n to some past symbols an'd traditions withou~ renouncing everything new. At the time of the Ameri-can bicentennial, John Coleman, S.J., called for an ""open-ended re-sourcement," a dialogue or "creative engageme,nt" between the tradi-tional Catholic sYmbols and new ones that wouldopen up. or adapt to "new purposes, experiences and questions" in an integrating "process of g~:owth."23 More recently, Greeley has also called for a return to the "experience~' and-"imagination" .ofoour "Catholic her!tage" so re-cently abandoned as either irrelevant or impeding ecumenism or incom-patible with the modem world. Greeley understands Catholicism .to,stress the "sacramental" presence of the divine in Christian living, and says that this sacramental "religious style" should now be recognized as of the "essence" of the Catholic "insight," andan invaluable feature of the Catholic approach to religio.n.24 ,~There is growing consensus that there is widespread ignorance of the fundamental teachings of Christianity, especially among Xhe young, and that the problem must be addressed quickly. In an effort ~to make Chris-tianityrelevant to our lives, we shifted too quickly from the rigorous for-malism of the catechism and the memorization of. its teachings to dia-log'oe about the lived experience of the faith. What we lost was a solid understanding of what that faith believed, What is called for today is not necessarily the catechism method, but wtiatever method(s) may be nec- Review for Religiousl November-December, 1987 essary .to restore'to its rightful place knowledg6 about the history of sal-vation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A common foun-dation'in,, faith teachings may make it. possible to fost.er conviction, com-mitment, and action. ~ There is lack of consensus on the role of authority in the Church; on the role of the clergy, as well as the Church itself, in social and political activity; and on the degree of freedom to be allowed to personal con-scienc.~ e, espec,ially in matters that do not pe~ain directly to formal dogma in the Church, such 9s moral theology and mattgrs of sex. However rig-orous! y.~,~.ne might uphold the tea, chings of the Church on artificial c~?n7 tracept~ion., few would consider the Church's teachings on the matter as infallibly proclaimed. If that is the case, what degree of disagreement. o if any, is per.missible? In such cases, how much room i~ to be given for private conscience, or for public teaching not fully in accord with offi-cial pronouncements of the Church? VatiEan II clearly gave great weight tO~the right of personal conscience and to scholhrsh!p regarding nonin-fallible teachings, but how far did it intend these°rights'to go? Innova-tors tend toward absolute freedom on noninfallible teachings, traditioii'- ~lists° toward compliance even there. Thes.e,ideologica! disagreements cofistitute adeep source of divisioff in the Chi~rch .today, and represent today's ~xperience of what it means wheri the old clashes with the new~ The Church has yet to come up with a~th~blogy thgt can provid6 an adequate e~clesiology to handle this prob- Compatibility Vs~ Contradiction with,,the World ° There is a third ,problem not adequately resolved by Vatican II; which returns once again to'th~e:relationship of the Church to the world: the prob-lem between compatibility of.the Church with the world ~ahd contradic-tian with it? Prior to VatiEan II, the Church had never published an official docu-ment expounding,a posiiive theology on the'r01e of the Church,-in the world. Traditionally, the world had been an arena of evil or temptation to evil. ISatholics were urged to.remove themselves from the.world if they wished to ,attain sanctity, and the priestly and religious life were com-monly acceptrd as means to that end. Those who needed to become, in: volved in the Wodd;~choosing to remain laypersons,' were allowed to ~be in the world, but .were expected to' be as unworldly as possible in0the midst of the world: Evefi though Christians learned very well how to, live in~ the world by accepting ,itk ~,alues,~ and acquired the world ~s commodi-ties as instruments of well-being and standards of0success,.this accom- Four Ecclesial Problems modi~tion was often done with a feeling of guilt. That the world Was bad was based on the clear teaching of Christ: his followers did~not belong to the world, the world hated the'm, Christ did not take them out,of the wbi'ld but asked the"Father to "guard them from the evil one" in' the world (Jn 17:14-15) until they would one day be united with the Father in heaveh. ~ Now with Vatican II, the Church turned toward the world and, in many ways, accepted th~ world for the first time. Th6 Council Asserted the Church's "sOlidarity with the entire human family," that "nothing genuinely human" is foreign to Christians, that the "joys and the hopes, the griefs hn~l the anxieties of the men of this are" are those of the fol-lowers ofChrist too (LG 1-3). The Council urged Christians to build up the world because "the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God's greatness dnd the flowering of His own haysterious design" (34). In a remarkable affirmation of the value of secular activity, the Cou0cil "ac-knowledges that human progress can serve man's true happiness" (37) and that, insofar as "Earthly progress., can contribute to~the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the kingdom of God" (39). The Council admits~ the world can be "an instrument of sin" and that a "monumental struggle against the power of darkness pervades the whole history of man" (37). Nevertheless, when all is said and done, the emphasis is clearly optimistic--so much so that, when~Karl Barth came back from his visit to Rome during the Council's first session, he expressed a fear the bishops were bbcoming too optimistically oriented toward the World and suggested they take a miare guarded position. And so the question remains: Is the world a good thing, to be ac-cepted and integrated inio the life of the Christian, or isqt to be rejected because it is infected with sin? The Council urged both; 6f course, but failed to indicate how both were possible, or how and where to draw the line limitinginvolvement~: More importantly, however, the new spirit bf the Coiancil had clearly left the impression that theworld a's a whole had been sanctioned as a .giaod thing :and that, with Christian and human co-operation and goodwill, there ~vas no reason why the Church and'the World could not easily become assimilated to each other. The question ofqntegration into the life of the world versus opposi-tion trthe world in favor of Christian values'is not a re'rent one. As.Ger-main Gri~ez recently pointed out, much of the history of Christianity can be seen in terms of a "tension between legitimate ~ispirations frr human and this-worldly fulfillment and God's c~ll to divine and everlasting life.'" Depending upon the emphasis that is greater at any 0h~ torment Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 in Christian thinking, the tendency may be to emphasize "disrespect for the 'merely,' human" and emphasize fulfillment in God, or, as seems to be. happening ~toda);, to emphasize a reaction against other-worldly spiri-tuality, a reaction which has '~crystal!ized into various forms of secular humanism." VaticanlI failed to take a stand on this issue, according to Grisez, or more precisely, not knowing how to resolve the tensign be-tween the two tendencies, glossed over them "with ambiguous formu-las." Instead of acknowledging their inability to resolve the problem and implementing a postconciliar process to work on it, the Council Fathers, caught up themselves in the spirit of optimism generated by John XXIII, chose to try to "maintain ,the appearance of unity" and solidarity on this issue and departed. Afterwards, liberals and conservatives began to read in the documents exactly what each had been looking for and ignoring the. opposite, and used whatever political means were available to have their own position dominate. The need now, according to Grisez, is to face up, to the divisions and try to resolve them.25 Others have stressed very pointedly that the orientation of the world today is strongly toward values quite inconsistent with Christian values. The world today is bombarded by powerful influences from the media, which emphasize for commercial purposes a humanism void of religious direction, which preach success in terms of materialistic values and goals such as accumulation of power and money, which proclaim fulfillment of self in terms of satisfaction of sexual drives rather than in love as per-manent commitment to the other, which evaluate persons in terms of utili-tarian norms, whiCh promote personal satisfaction as the criterion for the worth of all activity, which make the ultimate goal of life the achieve-ment of self rather than the donation of self. In such a ,world, there is inevitable contradiction between the values of the world and those of the Christian faith experience, where personal communion with Christ in a community of believers serving the well-being of all is. the standard of value. The humanistic orientation of a world without religious direction risks becoming ultimately a purely worldly humanism antagonistic to Christian values. For many, the opposition is so great at the .present time that, it seems to be moving toward total and absolute contradiction of the values of Christ. The Council Fathers, in recognizing the need to open the Church to the world, did not indicate strongly enough the nature or degree of this opposition, although it must be admitted 'that, even when they did indicate opposition, their words were largely ignored. But ~as Grisez indicates, the opposition is there and must.be faced. By failing to indicate strongly enough the contradiction between the values of the Four Ecclesial Problems / I~15 world and those of Christ, the Council Fathers unwittingly made accom-modation with the ways of the world that much easier. It is that accom-modation that the Extraordinary Synod of 1985 began totry to correct, but a clear theology of contradiction, is still needed. Active vs. Passive Church Life The last root cause of the problems left by Vatican II may be ex-plained in terms of Vatican II's failure to resolve the conflict between the active and passive dimensions of Christian life. A new spirit of involvement in social and political action, as we have seen, had been emphasized by the Council as an element intrinsic to the life of the Church. This spirit was highly attractive for many reasons: It was new and new things tend to attract; it was optimistic and people tend to like optimism; it was a free and open spirit cgnsequent upon the new theology of the laity, and .more appealing than the more traditional litur-gical and doctrinal elements in Vatican II; it spoke to a strong desire in the '60's to become actively involved in the processes of history rather ttrhaanns ftoor macaqtuioiens ocfe tihne twheomrld; itth naot tw oansl~y h purmovaindlyed e nthgeinoereertiecda,bl usut palpsoor jtu fsotir- a fied it as providing greater fulfillment of the human potential. In all these ways, this new element of "activism" contra~ted so much with the traditional call for restraint on involvement, and spoke di-rectly to many Catholics who were interested in joining the world in a combined divine-human creative.proje.ct. These were delighted to find there was theological justification and ecclesial approval for using one's talents in such a project. Personal involvement and responsibility for cre-ating one's own life in the world spoke more readily to the post-Vatican II age.than acquiescence in the decisions, actions, and authority of oth-ers. At least in the '60's, the mentality of the outspoken members of the Church was increasingly liberal, and the .idea of creating one's future rather than submitting to it was especially appealing to them. Vatican II sanctioned these ideas. It emphasized the theological importance of life in the world and active involvement in the cause of justice and equality, and was to give rise to a dominance after Vatican II of theological move-ments that stressed that same type of involvement. The Church was now also in a position to accept many currents rising in western Protestant cir-cles, such as the new theology of hope and political theology, the theol-ogy of revolution, and finally, in Catholic circles in South American, lib-eration theology. By emphasizing active involvement in creative transformation of the worid, Vatican II unfortunately seemed to downgrade th'e old and less Review for Rel~gious,~ November-December, 1987 captivating styles of spirituality, such as personal prayer, contemplation, and spiritual communion with God alone and in the quiet of one's room. It became increasingly difficult in modern Catholicism to justify a spiri-tual dimension to !ife unless it was translated into active change of the world. Spiritual terminology began to take on a purely active meaning: prayer, commitment to Christ, concern for the salvation of human be-ings '~ all these meant to be in active involvement in the world. Monas-tic theology and asceticism .were seriously questioned, for how could any-one iustify removing on~eself from the world when the only important thing wffs to change the world for the better? Those who dared to speak of contemplatio~n or asceticism in tli'e more traditional ways were often seen as outdated and to be pitied for their archaic ways. The new theol-ogy of spiritual activism slowly took over contrbl of the major or-ganizations in the Church: religious orders, diocesan and parish coun-cils, and other Catholic agencies~' and a new theology of social and po-litical activism translating most or all of Catholic spirituality into causes for peace and justice in the world held sway, The few who dared to criti- "cize these movements as one-sided were ignored. Ct~riously; the more this ~ctivism was promoted as the new and en-lightened foi:m of Christian living, the ~ore vocations to the priestly and religious life went down. The major exception to this trend~was in relig-ious orders, especially of nuns, where the stress On traditional piety was retained--here vocations continued to ~rise or remain stable. But few dared to suggest that this validated'in any way maintaining some room for more traditional contemplative and other-worldly forms of spiritual-ity. " Only recent!y has' it begun to dawn on many that activism without passivism is un-Christian. A spirituality that is t~otally activated tod, ard htlman creation of the world is inconsistent with Christian teaching, which, while s![essing human~involvement in God's creation 6f the king-dom; stresses even more that we are ~saved bec~iuse we have been saved in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We receive God,s kingdom far more than we create it. If that is the case, a Christian spirituality of ascetical contemplation is important to the Church because it lives as well as symbolizes the importance of this pass.!ve involvement in God's crea-tive process. Coleman ohce wrote: It is helpful to consider some of the cultural paradoxes in contemporary American Catholicism. In a nation n6ted for its one-sided, if not patho-logical, emphasis on activism, instrumental rationality, and opt'imistic pragmatism,, Catholic intellectuals seem to have suffered a bout of am- Four Ecclesial Problems nesia about their classic wisdom concerning contemplation, mysticism, pas.sivity, and receptive acceptance of inevitable and unavoidable lim-its. The Church. in its American incarnation has become almost ex-clusively masculine, with dominant concerns for action, success, build-ing the new e~trth and results (Coleman, p. 553). Christopher Mooney, S.J., argues that in America God rather than hu-man beings was always understood as "the power of our future," the one "from whom the nation had received its mission," and the one "~who works through the structures of society and manifests himself in publi~ affairs." Without that emphasis upon the centrality of God in his-tory, America will lose its sense of destiny.26 Dulles gives personal sup-port to those who argue that "the Kingdom of God is viewed in the New Testament as God's work, not man's," that the Church "is seen as ex-isting for the glory of God and of Christ, and for the salvation of its mem-bers in a life beyond the grave," and that in the New Testarfient it "is not suggested that it is the Church's task to make the world a better place to live in."27 Harvey Egan, S.J., argues that Christians today face "the serious temptation of worsh.iping political pressure groups, causes, move-ments, slogans, and ideo]ogies," and that their social involvement "de-generates into 'pseudo-activism' " unless it is built upon "authentic in-ner freedom, contemplative peace'; spiritual insight, the love born from prayer, integration, and inner transforrnati6n."28 " What we are asserting, then, is that Vatican II, in its effort to sanc-tion involvement in the life of the world as a legitimate dimensio~ of Christian living, unwittingly tended to downgrade the more contempla-tive, prayerful dimension of'Christian and Catholic spirituality. To that extent, Vatican II opened the doors too widely toward the world and pro-vided a gateway to the development of a secular humanism in contem-porary Catholic life. " Christian humanism without.a strong"spiritual foundation in a prayer-ful dependence upon God and his revelation in Jesus Christ is inevitably doomed to secularism. Once that stage is attained, it is inevitable that Christians begin to question whether there is any valid distinction be-tween Christianity and secular ac.tivism; andsince, once this aberration sets in, there is no real distinction between the two, it is only natural that many Christians find the faith experience unrewarding. It is only in the strength given Christianity by its passive dimension that its activist di-mension has any purpose or will to endure. Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 Conclusibn We have argued that at least in these four ways Vatican II left us a spirituality that is ambiguous, in conflict with itself, and undirected. This may indeed have been the Council's intention." To some extent, the Ex-traordinary Synod of 1985 served a valuable purpose in attempting to rec-tify these imbalances and ambiguities. It took twenty-five years to real-ize the bad effects and what needed to be corrected. Nevertheless, the ambivalences we have itemized .still reside in the Church and account for much of the conservative-liberal polarization of today. The next stage will be for the Church to reconvene and resolve the ambiguities. It will be an amazing and groundbreaking Council when it does. NOTES I "Vatican II and the Postconciliar Era in the U.S. Church," Origins 15, 15 (Sep-tember 26, 1985), pp. 225,233. 2 Vivian W. Dudro, "Toward the Synod: General Praise, Some Criticism of Malone Report," National Catholic Register 61, 39 (September 29, 1985), pp. l, 8. The reporter make~ reference to an expression used by Gerrnain Grisez, Professor of Chris-tian Ethics at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, MD. 3 Joseph Cardinal RatZinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report (San Fran-cisco: Ignatius, 1985), pp. 44, 55, 71, 74, 83, 62, 29-30. '~ In "The Catholic Priesthood," Overview 19, 10 (undated [August 1985]), p. I, citing a report in NFPC:News Notes, March 1984. aA Overview, May. 1985, p. 1. 5 Overview, June 1985, p. 1, citing a report in New ~'ork Times December 9, 1984. 6 Ibid., p. 2. The 'article was in National ReviewS" November 25, 1983. 7 Overview, May 1985, p. 5. Herr is citing an article by Mary K. Tilghman in The Catholic Review of March 20, 1985. The words are Tilghman's except for the quo-tation from Schoenherr on the "?rganizational crisis." 8 Ibid., p, 6. 9 Ibid., p. 3. 10 Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild, 1966): "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World" or Gaudium et spes sec. 4 and 5; hereafter, Latin titles used and noted in text. i1 Thomas More, 1979. 12 Paulist, 1975. 13 Harper & Row, 1973, p. 71. 14 Doubleday, 1977, p. 12. 15 Paulist, 1972, citing an article he wrote as early as 1967. ' 16 Greeley's first controversial conclusions were published in Catholic Schools in a Declining Church, with William C. McCready and Kathleen McCourt (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1976); his latest is American Catholics Since the Council: An Un-authorized Report (Chicago: Thomas More, 1985). 17 Gallup publishes yearly reports on Religion in Americh, and has just completed (with Jim Castelli) The American Catholic People: Their Beliefs, Practices, and Val-ues (Garden City: Doubleday, 1987). Four Ecclesial Problems 18 Eight reports from this invaluable study of "core Catholic" parishioners' think-ing and practices hav~ been published so far, appearing in Origins from December 27, 1984, to August 28, 1986. 19 In Justice in the Marketplace: Collected Statements of the Vatican and the U.S. Catholic Bishops on Economic Policy, 1891-1984, David M. Byers, ed. (Washing-ton, DC: NCCB/USCC, 1985), pp. 249-250. 20 Quest for Justice: A Compendium. , J. Brian Benestad and Francis J. Butler, eds. (Washington, DC: NCCB/USCC, 1981), pp. v-vi. 21 Synod of Bishops: "The Final Report," Origins 15, 27 (December 19, 1985), pp. 445,449. 22 E. J. Dionne, Jr., "The Pope's Guardian of Orthodoxy," New York Times Maga-zine, November 24, 1985, p. 45. 23 John A, Coleman, S.J., "American Bicentennial, Catholic Crisis," America, June 26, 1976, p. 553. 24 Andrew M. Greeley and Mary Greeley Durkin, How to Save the Catholic Church (New York: Viking, 1984), pp. xviii-xix, 35, passim. 25 Germain and Jeannette Grisez, "Conservatives, liberals duel over leaking barque," National Catholic Reporter 22, 5 (November 22, 1985), p. 14. 26 Christopher F. Mooney, S.J., Religion and the American Dream: The Search for Freedom under God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), pp. 35-36. 27 Avery Dulles, S.J., Models of the Church (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 94-95. 28 Harvey D~ Egan, S.J., Christian Mysticism: The Future of a Tradition (New York: Pueblo, 1984), p. 234. The Autumn Years: A Touch of God Joseph M. McCloskey, "S.J., and M. Paulette Doyas, S.S.N.D. Father McCloskey is Director of Shalom House-Retreat Center; P.O. Box 196; Montpelier, Virginia 23192. Sigier Paulette teaches at the College of Notre Dame; 4710 N. Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21210. Autumn colors stimulate our aesthetic sense. Leaves grown old are beau-tiful to behold, a truth of creation that gives dying its own color. In, our later years our activities are like autumn leaves before they fall to the ground; each one is a jewel in our crown, worn with pride but sometimes hard to see against the perspective of a cold winter. Winter follows autumn; it is the winter we fear. Winter allows us to view the forest of our lives without being lost. in details. The forest stripped of its foliage, our lives are open to scrutiny; unencumbered by duties, we have the chance to really see ourselves. But autumn, with its warnings of dying, allOws us to look at winter with a hope of new birth. Autumn brings a special brand of happiness which belongs to God and is worth reflecting upon. Our autumn years do not have to be unhappy ones if we appreci-ate the meaning of our lives. No one likes to think about growing older, yet the truth is, we have been aging since conception. There is no es-caping autumn; growing older can bring colorful changes into our lives even if we must yield to a certain amount of inactivity. Love frees the spirit. Alienation brings loss of heart and dims our ap-preciation of life. Passion for life belongs to love, yet the passion for life wanes and we yearn for something more when we feel ourselves no longer needed. The mid-life crisis is a taste of what is to come as we ex-perience doubts about our work and what we have been doing with our lives. Glory, honor, and power are perpetual temptations of life, even when we are not sure just what it is we want. We struggle to hold on 820 The Autumn Years / 821 t~J the possibility and potential of doing something wonderful. As We be-come tired of trying to'h61d on and despair cofifronts us, we finally real-ize that life has-a meaning--being in God. "When we finfilly face the meaning of life, the idea of sitting on a porch watc.hing the rest of the world go by.does not have to seem terri-ble. The autumn years are su~ounded by the storms of others' activities and the job still gets done even when we are no longer bearing the brunt of the heat of the-day. As 'we watch the jobget done, we cab laugh at ourselves for all the times we pictured ours61ves as indispensable. We db not have to identify who we are by what we do. We identify ourselves by not doing; we may be retired. The constant round of activities which ful~d Our lives'belongs to those who follow. ~The fruitful year~ of.prbd~ictio~ ~nd hyp~'activity seem unreal as we watch them'in others.The mystic in life touches us; we watch, like con-templatives in prayer sitting on our autumn veranda, the storm of God's love come up in the for.m~ 6f others' work. God bring.s beauty into our lives as we appreciate what others Ho. 'People need our affirmation a~ad appreciation. L'ife is not over because wecan no longer do, it is just be-ginning. Today is the first_day of the rest of our lives, no matter how old we are. Traumatized by thoughts of our past, we can miss the colors of now. Anxious ,about tomorrow, we are sometimes only half present to what we are dbing. E~;en as yesterday can dampen our enthusiasm in what w~ are doing, anxiety over tomorrow can keep us from being fullyi.nvolved now. We live in an age of. activity and our .minds resemble motor boats, chugging noisily over the wavesof what must be done. There has to be a po.int where we cut the m0tor, give up the noises we make, and just glide, delighting in the freedom of knowing that our work may be almost finished. As we grow older, spirituality can give meaning to the lessen-ing activity in our lives. Slowing down without feeling worthless is what spirituality can help us.do.,No ~matter how old we are, idleness can threaten self-worth. We become :victims ,of our own doing, as thoughts of What we could, do to make our lives worthwhile prod us to keep go-ir~ g: "If we stop, that magic momentof doing something great may be missed." Pushing ourselves t6 exhaustion, we do not have time for our-selves now. We fail to apigreciate what we are right now. Unusual are the autumn souls, really alive t6dayin the richness of yesterday's expe-rience, y6t still open to tomorrow's vision of life with new meaning. Many still search for the secret of iife--f6und in living wholeheartedly 822/Review for Religious, Novemb.er-December, 1987 the fullness of now--in some nebulous fountain of youthful actiyity. We need to open ourselves up to'where we are and who we are right now. Spirituality's ultimate goal consists in seeing God face to face. This means "being" with God. All of life, everything we have ever done, everything we have ever been, is a preparation.that we might "be." Be-ing does not imply vegetating. There is a responsibility to b~ for one an-other attached to being for Christ. Whatever. we do for the least one of our brothers or sisters, even when we are not aware of doing it for Christ, is accepted by, him as bei.ng done for himself. In identifying himself as the "I am who I am" God, God reveals himself as reachable in the here and now. The only moment in time truly real is now, touching the "Eternal Now." Living in the now, for even a moment of time, garners those nows of life when we opened our hearts to being loved. These moments become sacramental. We live the "Sac-rament of the Present Moment." 'There are seven sacraments that the Church recognizes as special moments in life where Christ wants to be present in our lives and is giving himself. In these sacraments of the Church, Christ does the work. In the sacrament of the present moment we can make a moment sacramental by our ~illingness tb make Christ present frr each otlaer.° Living in the present, with what good there is, frees us of what anchors us to the past. Because it only takes a moment to love for a lifetime, we have tliE poss!bility of being Christ lovers by giving of who we are to the least person we meet, in any moment of our lives. We are children of the Father. God takes us as his own because we are precious to him. The Psalms tell tls that.: "Before you were born, I knew you!" (Ps 139). We are loved because Of who we are even be-fore we had accomplishments to boast of. Saint Paul teaches us in Ephe-sians 1 : 1-13 that God' s love is deserved in the goodness of Christ. Christ is our Way and our Truth and our.Life. Saint John's first epistle on Love teaches us that .all of life is a preparation for the opening of our hearts, now, to the fullness of the Lord of Life coming into our hearts. All of life is a preparation for this very moment We are living! Wisdom brings knowledge of how to live in God's love, and the contemplative in action lives in God's love by letting God ,work one hundred percent. Doing in God's love becomes being in his love. What becomes of paramount im-portance is how much love we.can accept in Christ, and how much Christ we live for God and each other in return. ~ Being does not happen jus.t because we are old enough. Incapacita-tion is always a possibility when being is thrust upon us. Being is maxi- The Autumn Years mized by freedom and life, but a lot of dying has to take place in each of us before we are really free to love for the sake of Christ. Growing older is part of tile stripping process of b~coming free to let God do all he can in our hearts. Love needs time to mature. The Church says of the young saints that they fulfilled a long life in a short time, so that even th~ child saint can be old when considering years spent on earth. It only take~ a moment to love for a lifetime, andthe meaning of the greatest love of all is giving of one's life for the sake of a ne.ighbor. Giving can be done by being for another. If we think we can do things for ourselves alone, our whole life is wasted. Being in the autumn years can become adoing for others. Being is knowing how to love. Love is being present to the need of another ffhich sometimes in-volves pain. As humans, we would rather bypass the cross and get right to the resurrection. But we are unrealistic if we think the resurrection is possible without,the crucifixion. There can be no spring without the autumn and the winter. Resurrection portrays Christ reaching out to the hurt and pain of his disciples. Christ is our holiness, and the fruitfulhess of our lives in Christis found in how much of Christ's death we are will-ing to accept forbthers. The ultimate, decisive word of God, in the hu-manness of Christ, is Christ's dying on the cro~s. His suffering gives ~m~aning to our pains and our dying even When we do not relate it to our autumn years. Everything we did or woul~t have liked to do becomes as nothing in the light of Christ's suffering and death. He took care of it all. The ultimate, decisive word of God, sp6ken in the humannness of Christ, comes to us in his d~athon the cross. Counselors and sigiritual directors bften meet couples whose mar-riages have revolved around doing'for their offspring, and who now'com-plain about lack of meaning to their lives with'6ut~ their children. After the childi-en are growr~ and off on their own, these pai'ents have not learned how to accept each other, to be with each other. Many priests and religious brothers and sisters have the same problem. So many years found them in their work that they never learned to enjoy each other. So intense was the doing, the~ never discovered the secret of being, for them-selves or others. They ~vere all so busy doing in the spring and summer of their lives that they gave n~o thought to the autumn and winter that had to follow--when doing became more difficult. Working at accomplishing something involves the danger of making doing the meaning of life. The need of another opens our lives to the rush of the Spirit filling us with God's love. The second comings of the Spirit to the Church are pe6ple filled with love who reach out with their gifts 1~24 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 to the needs of others. The problem is no~ whether we did enough in our lifeti~ae, but whether we did~:.what we di~l-~vith love. We may complain that we have never had any.thing werth doing. Ye't each time we moan about not being satisfied with what we have done, or regret not hax~ing done enough, always w~tnting to do more with our liyes, we limit our love of God to wh~t.we are ci6ing noV, rather than bringing all we have done in our lives t~ ~,hat we do. Life teaches us toAive in God's love. We do not deserve God's love, but we can accept it. We waste love, think-ing of all we could have done or w, ould~have liked to d~o.~God.'s love frees us to giv~ ourselves.~ It brings the wisdom whichohelps us to ,put aside our accomplishments or hopes of achieveme.nt, and opens our hearts to be filled with God's love in Christ. The awareness of Christ in our lives frees us to live in the Father's love. ~ The victory won by:Christ when he "took captivity._captive," when he took away the scandal attached t6 our suffering and dying; allows us share in the resurrection when we take up our crosses and follow him. Christ calls us in our inadequacies, our brokenness, our nakedness, our need of others, to be part of the resurrection by claimiong~the foothold in heaven we have in him. Our needs bring Christ into our lives. We be-come other Christs by.-lett!ng him do in our live~s. Growing older ih a world with so many younger,~people frees us to be.in their love, even as we learn to be in God's love. If we were.really and truly competent enough to do it all by ourselves, we would never~ need God. Needing God and other's allows our captiyity to-be taken cal~tive by ~hrist. Aristotle, the great philosopher and teacher-some centuries before Christ, said that. a person could become a philosopher only after forty years of age. It is only When we have enough .experience of life that we begin to find the meaning of life, 19v.e, and values which have to do with being rather than doing. All of life's acc6mplishments are insignificant if we are unable to be in the love of God., if we are unable to be in the love of our brothers and sisters around us. Loye is God's relationship to us, and theGod Who gives all in our lives receives it back When we are able to offer our lives in Christ, when we try to be his life by our love for each other. We are called to be lov- ~ers. Even as the doing of our early years is the beginning of love, it is in the need for each other of our autumn years that love is completed, the love which allows us to~be in the f~ullness of Ch,r!st who lives.Eithin us. Our world needs us and we. should be proud to be aging ,in God's love, .basking in the autumn .years of life, content to be in his love for the sake of all who are still able to do'in his love. We are now like th'e " .,Th~ Autumn Years / 825 Eternal Word of the Trinity, always receiving from the F~ther, even as we are"i'eceiving from others who love us. We are created iri the image and likeness of the God who is Trinity. Trinity has its counterpoini in the mystery of indwelling, where G6d is found in the still point of our lives. Family and community are the outer reaches of this m~yst~ry of indwelling where God lives in the love of our hear~sl and in how we reach out to our brothers and sisters. We are told bY the first commandment of life to love God. We would not know how to do this if Christ had not told us he lok, ed us just as the Father loves him. Christ asks us to live in'his l~v~e, and tells us we love him by keep-ing the commandments which show us the ways we ~hould devil with one another and God. Faithfulness to the commandments is faithfulness to one another. How can ~ve lov~ the God we do not see, if we do not love the neighbo~ we do see? God' is love and we live in his lo~ve in the way we love 0n~ another. Wherever there is. ipve, G~I is. Lo~,e calls us to be like the G~d we image and brings us into commu.nity a~ men and women 6reated to lok, e 6ne another. Spirff~al life can be traced_back to T~rinity: in':-TTinit~,, being and do- !ng meet in the total giving and receiving,of the Father and th6 Son. The Father holds b~ck nothing of himself. The S,on, totally receiving of th~ Father, has nothing the Father has not given him. All of life i~ a combi-nation of these two forces, the active and passive 0"f life. The principles of life find in Trinity the °meaning and the sourceof love. Even if we have spent a. life totally, giv, ing all we are in order that the mystery of the Trinity m_ay be comple.ted in us, the autumn of our lives finds meaning in rec~eiving./~s the child needs parents to grow, so too we grow in those moments when our heart~ need each other. We ac-cept the richness o~each otl~r'~/~ifts when we are willing to need one another from the depths of our being.Then the beauty of life finds the special expression of th6oTrinity completed in the giving and~:eceiving which touches Being, and that very_ being i's love. Love is God's, relatioriShip ~to us, '~n.d the God whb gives ~11 lives in our lov~ when w~ are able,t0 ~J.ffer bin: lives in Ch~rist;.wfien ~.t~ry to live his life by our love for each other. We are called to be lovers. But most of all we are c~lled to be loved in Christ. Autumn years bring the kisses and the embraces of our.,Lord which are felt even in the hurts and the pains of our body's resistance to the call of our Lord .to our eternal reward. The warnings of sufferings do not have to be a threat, in our hope of the resurrection, as a lifetime of love and work in response to the call of God's love claims relationship to Christ. Our pains in letting Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 go of our work,:and our good health bear relationship to the ultimate word of God's love in the passion and death of Jesus Christ and offer the love of God in the resurrection. Even as the dping of our early years is the beginnin.g of love, the letting go of the autumn years completes our love as we feel the need for God and each other. The Christ who is in the least one of otir brothers and sisters is now in us, allowing us to be Christ in our need. We become the Christ to whom we have given hll our life, as all~the good we have done for others comes back upon us. Our world awaits a generation of people proud to be'aging in-his love, basking in the warmth of love which ~omes their way in the autumn of life. Mary is the ultimate model of being for Christ, being for God. She accompan'i~d the Church of theresurre6tibn by being present to their needs and helping them to remember her Son in the many ways of a mother's love, as she took care of h.er. children in the trust given to her by Jesus from the ci'oss~ Because Mary was so present to the needs of the Cl~urch before h_er Assumption, the early Church learned to respect her as mo(her, oA very significant part of the spiri.tuality of the autumn years in the lives of m_any is their devotioh to Mary by following her ex-ample in praying for the Church. The work of the autumn years is the same as Mary's; the" limits of that work ar'~ the size of oiir heart. Even as our autumn years are the time for being as much as we can be, they are the time for loving as much as we can love. Mary has taught us how to li~,e, h'ow to love, and how to be, both by her love for her Son and by the way she lived with the early Church. Just as Mary's autumn years were filled with the touch of God, her presence brought that same touch of God's love to the ea~:ly Church. Mary and God's touch would always be close. So too our autumn y.ears can have the touch of God strength-ening the Mystical,.Body of Christ. Mary is therole model of our autumn years and our patron as we pray: Heav.enly Father,.help us to understand the meaningof growing older in wisdom and knowledge. Allow us to gracefully accept the slowing down in the autumn of life. May we be as loving as Mary in her autumn years, presefit to the needs of c'bmpanions~ filled with I.ife and its inys-ter~, so that all will feel free to share your gift, to find your love within us. Open us, O Father, to a concern for.the liu~an race. Fill our hearts with living in the fulfillment of your abiding love every'moment of every day. Help us to be so resonant and filled with the meaning of the mo-ment that we may:be truly able to love,.as you.loved. May we eagerly look forward to the "being'.~'of the autumn years, reaping the golden rewards, fully open to the winter-that is to come, where all is wanned ~bY your love. ~ Community Dialogue and Religious Tradition Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. Father MacDonald is provincial superior of the Holy Cross Province. He may fie reached at Passionist Community; 5700 North Harlem Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60631. Dialogue is a common form of community experience today. It is an en-deavor which has the capacity of exposing the wealth of tradition latent in a community. Such tradition is often the unspoken element bonding a community together, the ineffable cementing relationships. It can be a mistake, of course, to uncritically commend the rgle of dialogue in religious life, Given the negative experience of it that many religi~us have encountered the past few years, citing its advantages must be balanced with recognizing its difficultie~ and disadvantages. ~'hese latter largely center about the conflict and division that often occurs among community members, as the~y encounter in one another ap- ¯ parently irreconcilable positions on often fundamental and basic aspects of religious life. Dialogue, as the publi~c articulation of these p~ositions, can add to an already~latent conflict. Once public positions are taken by community members, this may freeze a division that has always be~n there, but, here-tofore, private, and to that extent, potentially malleable. By enhancing the feeling elenaent, dialogue can be a further obstacle to community build-ing. II. An aspect of the problem which needs to be recognized is the often 827 828 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 ~restrictive or constrained, nature of community dialogue. At times it does not allow full expression of opinion on the part of all present, as when, should everyone address an issue, the frequent result is that the depth of conversation is shallow and glosses over deep feelings and heartfelt con-victions. This may result in one side gradually prevailing, in a community dif-ference of opinion. An unequal division occurs on an issue when the ma-jority silences the minority, or articulate spokespersons cause members who support an opposing opinion to withdraw in some way and possibly to absent themselves from community dialogue: If this happens, an unspoken element remains in the community, fu-eling even more the disagreement raised to prominence by the public dia-logues that have taken place. Just because ~something is unspoken does not mean that'it ce~ases to exist or exert its influence. lie " To offset this development, a full-blown community dialogue be-comes desirable, where each member has the opportunity, and actively utilizes it, of fully expressing himself or herself regarding fundamental issues of religious life, as well as seCondary but still importantelernents. '. Adults who live together for a period of time accumulate a rich de, posit of spirit and. tradition. Any community bonding that 'Occurs must respect that. richness. But where dialogue is restricted and constrained, and opinions go un, expressed, monologue prevails, not genuine dialogue. There may be an appearance of dialogue, as community members dutifully assemble ac-cording to schedule. But if they do so reluctantly and,. fearing r~ancor, sniping or misrepresentation, do not speak from their hearts on issu.es, then only a facsimile of dialogue is present, with peopl~ merely going through the motions of conversing With one another. Honest ~elf, expression is a duty and a respons.ib~ility, together with a willingness to listen to ~thers, who may voice positions in conflict with ~eeply held convictions. Th!s kind of community dia.logue is an art form riot come by easily, spontaiaeous!y or naturally. It has to be worked at with grace, balance and harmony to make the conversation helpful and productive. There is a rich mother-lode of spiritual exp.erience in religious com-munities that beg~ to be exposed, recognized and admired. It is a thing of beauty that often eludes written or spoken form. Congregational documents, such as Constitutions and Regulations, do,not always capture the "tradition" of a religious community which, Community Dialogue and Tradition / 1t29 in large part, is often inexpressible. But it does strive to see the light of day and to be ack.nowledged for what it is, a major cementing factor in a community's life and existence. .Religious life is one of faith. In our efforts to explain it in its com-munal form, we refer to other kinds of community living, especially the family. However, we know that these comparisons are only partially sat-isfactory. The physical bonding factors which account for the stability of communal units such ,as the familY explain much of the emotional and spiritual quality present there. ~ The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, however, are bonding factors of a different type, which must be described as intangibles. The ~faith quality and spirituality of religious community is intelligible only in their terms. Indeed, religious life is designed to witness to the kind of community living together based on such values. This witness is, hope-fully, given to one another, and to those who observe religious in prac-tice. The spirituality of the "apostolic community,'~' about which we hear so much today, consists of this faith witness on the part of religious bound together by such "intangible" vows accounting for their life and work together. Precisely because the "anchors" for the faith quality of religious life are intangible, it is possible they will be submerged, sliding beneath the surface and remaining invisible, unless they are consciously and delib-erately disengaged and exposed to view. Community dialogue is one way of allowing this to happen. IV. The fuller the attention and exposure that a tradition of religious life receives, the more promising the access it provides to building and unit-ing a religious community together. Tradition can be ineffable, or expressible only with difficulty for the reasons given above. If this .occurs, it is not acknowledged, responded to or accounted for, despite its important role in the community. Tradition often constitutes the very center of religious life in com~ munity. It can explain the reason behind who they are and the values they abide by. When these are not plainly evident to otliers, their lives as com-munity members can in large part go unappreciated by and even un-known to their fellow religious. Can this be community? Unwritten and unspoken tradition bonds a community together, but it needs to be acknowledged and dealt with. Practices regarding poverty, prayer, silence, fraternal relationships, and so forth, often refer to expe- Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 riences that flow deeply and silently, possibly never seeing the light of day, exc6pt symbolically and representatively. It is imperative that they emerge in community dialogue. Otherwise an explosive energy build-up results, driving co-existing lives in opposite directions, into inevitable collision. This is the hidden resistance so often experienced as divisive in community dialogue. It rep-resents the unspoken ground on which people take stands, inadequately explored and investigated with their fellow religious. Much of this tradition is rooted in religious and sacred ~aeaning, and concerns God himself. This adds a dimension of strength and power to values that weigh heavily upon a community that fails to discover them, unspoken and hidden in the depths of certain members who feel that the way they experience God in their lives is not esteemed by others. V. Tradition within the smaller confines of religious community reflects Catholic tradition within the Church at large. It is endowed with a ver-sion of catholicity in its capacity to bind together those who share it. On the other hand, a schism or division can begin among those religious who do not share a common tradition, or fail to appreciate or even perceive its presence. A religious community is like "a little church" in this re-gard. Community dialogue is at its best when it provides full scope to re-ligious experience. In this way it discloses a deposit of reasons and val-ues that give meaning to people's lives and make them real. If it suc-ceeds in this, it helps build community on a solid foundation of full, hon-est, and authentic exchange between people intent on sharing life to-gether. Conclusion Living by a largely unwritten tradition containing rich personal and communal experiences, we stand to benefit by an exposure of this "tra-dition" to others through, dialogue. Hopefully it will win their esteem too, and bind religious more ~closely together. God's Love Is Not Utilitarian William A. Barry, S.J. This is the final of Father Barry's series of four articles which began with a considera-tion of our resistances to God. He may be addressed at Saint Andrew House; 300 Newbury Street; Boston, Massachusetts 02115. A number of years ago---more than I care to remember--as a brash young scholastic I was° engaged in a spirited conversation with some other Jesu-its, priests and scholastics. We were discussing the reasons for being a Jesuit. During the discussion I found myself more and more dissatisfied with the reasons given. I had seen married and single lay men and women who were at least 9s dedicated to being,followers of Christ as any of us. My own parents were examples of rather remarkably unselfish lov-ers. I could not believe that God was more pleased with us than with them~ Nor could I accept the notion that God wanted me to be a Jesuit in order to save some part of the world. That just did not ring true to my experience and reflection. At one point I blurted out something like this: "I'm a.Jesuit because God wants me to be happy and productive. God"s love for me has led me to choose this life, just as his love for o~hers leads them to choose their way of life." I am not su.re I understood all the implications of what I said, nor was I sure that the implied theology would stand up to scru-tiny. But that outburst has stayed with me through the years, and I have pondered its meaning off and on. In the process I began to enunciate a conviction that God's love is~not utilitarian; i.e., God does not love me or anyone primarily in order to achieve some other goals. In this article I want to unpack some of the meaning of this conviction, impelled by a number of recent experiences of directing retreats and giving spiritual direction. 831 ~1~12 / Review for Religious, N~vember-December, 1987 My youthful outburst was occasioned by the realization that much of the reasoning that justified being a religious presumed that being one was a great sacrifice, indeed, even painful. So the life had to be justified or made palatable. But I did not feel that my life entailed any more sacri-fice than anyone else's. I was rather happy, all things considered, and would not have traded my life for anyone's. So I felt that the "call" to Jesuit life was God's gift to me, his way of loving me. To put the same thing in another way: I felt that God wanted me to be a Jesuit because that was the best way for me to be happy and productive. That convic-tion has not changed since. Over the years I have come to believe that all God wants of any of us is to let him love us. I hax;e also come to believe that one of the most difficult things for us to do is precisely to let God love us, to receive his love. We resist his advances, his overtures of love as though they were the plague. In three earlier articles I have tried to probe the sources of that resistance.l In this article I want to focus on what I have come to believe is God's desire in bur regard. Sebastian Moore,2 in his latest book, makes the point brilliantly: God desires us into being. Before ever we were, God desired us so much that he made us, and made us desirable and lovely. And he desires, that we find him lovely, that we love him. But that can only happen if we !et ourselves believe and experience that we are, as it were, the apple of his eye. To the extent that we believe and experience that God finds us de-sirable, to that extent will we be in love with him. People who have let God, demonstrate his love for them often affirm that it is a love without any demands, an3; strings attached. This is a diffi-cult point to grasp, so let us try to be clear. Often enough we are afraid of God's closeness because we fear the demands he will make of us. "He may askme to go to Ethiopia." As far as I can te!l, when God comes close, he does not c6rrie with a list'of demands or conditions for continuing to remain close. For example, he does not seem to say: "Yes, I love you, but I will only keep on loving you if you [fill in the blank]." Infact, he does not even seem to say: "I love you, but I will only keep on loving you if you stop this pai'ticular sin:" God seems to be just what the First Letter of John says he is, namely'love ,'and uncon-ditional love at that. All he seem~ to want is to be able to love Us, to be close and intimate with us. Does this mean that God has no standards, no values? By no means; but his Values are not perceived as demands by those who have let him come close. Rather they find themselves desirous of sharing his values, God's Love Is°Not Utilitaridn / I]~13 of being' like him--not because God'demands that they do so, butobe-causethey are happier and more alive when they live according to God's values. For example, I realize that I am happier, more alive and more purposeful when I can desire to forgive as Jesus forgives, to love as Je-sus loves. Married men and women have found themselves most fulfilled when they have:remained faithful to their marital commitments, even when the grass looked greener elsewhere. Religious have discovered that their great-est happiness lies in giving themselves wholeheartedly to the demands of their vows, even when the bloom seems off the rose, as it were. Many Christians have also discovered that they are most alive and happy when they give themselves as wholeheartedly as possible to living with and working with and for the poor. Of course, at times all these people weaken, and are helped to stay the course by some negative sanction, for example, fear of loss of face, or of sinning and disappointing God, or of hell. But at bottom the motivation for sticking to their lasts is the desire to imitate the God who has so unconditionally and faithfully loved them. In other words they want to be perfect as'their heavenly Father is perfect. Of course, they cannot .do this. Sin is an ever present reality which even the holiest of saints must contend with. However, those who have experienced God as lover do not experience him as contemptuous of their sinfulness but as compassionate and patient. In their best moments, when they are aware of God's love, they recognize that all they have to do is to ask forgiveness and healing for their lapses, and to desire to have their hearts made more like the heart of Jesus. And they can hope that continued contemplation of Jesus will transform their hearts almost by osmosis. Now, perhaps, we have come to the key that opens the last door to insight. Jesus is the perfect human being, we believe, the one who most fully realizes the potential of humanity. When all is said ~nd done, What is the central insight Jesus had? Was it not that Yahweh, the creator of the universe, the unnameable, unfathomable mystery, is "Abba," "dear Father," "dear Mother," Love itself? To the maximum extent possible for a human being Jesus knew God, and he experienced God as Love.3 Let us reflect a bit on Jesus' baptism in the Jordan. I realize that I am reading into the text, but I find it intriguing that the synoptics pic-ture God as saying that Jesus is his beloved in whom he is well pleased before Jesus has begun his public ministry. What has he done to elicit such praise? Perhaps "all" that he has done is to allow God to come ~134 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 as close as God wants to come; perhaps "all" that he has done is just to let himself be loved as much as God wants to love him. Perhaps Jesus is so dear to God just because he let God do what God has always wanted to do: reveal himself as our lover par excellence. It is also intriguing to speculate that Jesus' fundamental salvific act may have been, not dying on the cross, but rather accepting God's love as much as it is humanly possible to do. Then the following of Christ might mean not so much doing iheroic deeds, nor even wanting to love as Jesus loves, but much more fundamentally, desiring to let oneself be loved as much as Jesus was and is loved. PerhaPs the world will be saved when a critical mass is reached of people who deeply believe and expe-rience how much they are loved by God. What I have been saying may strike some readers as advocacy of a "me and God" spirituality. It is true that this can all sound very narcis-sistic. But in practice, it is the exact opposite. Those who let themselves be loved by God find in doing so that their own love and compassion for others is enormously increased. This trans-formation does not happen because God demands such love of them. In fact, these persons know that for years they tried to be loving in response to what they took to be God's demands: they made resolution after reso-lution, and failed miserably. Now without effort, almost, they find their hearts going out to others, and especially to the neediest. They are sur, prised themselves at what is happening to their hearts. The more they al-low themselves to be loved unconditionally by God, the more loving they become. And the love of these persons, like that of Jesus, is a tough love. They speak the truth, but it is a truth that is not contemptuous, nor an-grily demanding--at least while they are aware of being loved. This last aside is a necessary nod to realism. For even the holiest of saints has days he or she regrets. Moreover, as they become or are made aware that they are socio-political beings, i.e., constituted at least in,part by the social and. political institutions into which they are born or freely enter, they begin to undergo what Father Gelpi calls a socio-political,conversion, and take steps to make these institutions more just' and caring through organizing, networking, lobbying, and protesting where necessary.4 Moreover, people who let God come close realize, without self-contempt, how far they fall short, and always will fail short, of being like Jesus. They know. from experience why the saints protested so strongly their sinfulness. They feel over and over again how much God loves them and how much God desires to shower them with his love, and God's Love Is Not Utilitarian they see themselves turning their backs on him, resisting his advances, refusing his invitations to intimacy. They find themselves to be enigmas because the experience of God's closeness fulfills their deepest desires, yet they fight him off. In spite of being such sinners they know that God still loves them. Hence, they view themselves and all human beings more and more with the compassionate eyes of God. I have begun to suspect that the notion of God's love as utilitarian is a defense against God's love. IfI convince myself that God loves me for the sake of other people, then I do not have to face the enormity of being' loved for myself alone by God. Many people shelter themselves from the full implications of God's love by seeing themselves as the ob-ject of that love only as part of a group. In other words, God loves all people, and I am included under the umbrella,,as it were. Now there is a truth in this notion, but I can use it to keep God's love very impersonal and distanced. So, too, God'is kept distanced if I conceive of tiis love for me as utili-tarian. "He loves me for what I can do for the people of Ethiopia." It is a very subtle way of keeping God at a distance: he does hoi loveme so much as Ethiopia. It is also subtly Pelagian: God loves me for what I can do for him. Interestingly enough, it is also a subtle way both to puff up my ego, and also to make sure that I am never satisfied with my-self. On the one hand, I am aware of all that I am doing for Ethiopia; on the other hand, I am constantly reminded of how much more there is to be done, and may also be reminded that others have done more. One person on, a retreat, for example, felt that if God really loved her, then he would be using her in more important ways. She discovered that such reasoning was making her unhappy and keeping God at arm's length. Perhaps the burden of the argument thus far can be summed up in an experience of another retreatant. He had experienced deeply that Je-sus knew he was a sinner and would always be a sinner. Jesus commu-nicated to him in a gentle, loving way how he had betrz'yed him in the past, and that he would do it again in the future. Yet he looked at him with enormous tenderness and love. The retreatant felt that Jesus said to him: "I love no one more than I love you--but I love no one less than I love you." God does not love some people more because of what they do, or what they will do. He is just greatly pleased that anyone lets him come as close as he wants to come. If God's love is not utilitarian, does this mean that it is meaningless to ask whether God has a will for me apart from letting him love me and Review for 'Religious, November-December, 1987 loving him in re~urn? If God will continue to love me whether I become a doctor, a carpenter,.a social worker, or a Jesuit, does 'it matter at all to God which I become, as'long as I am happy? To take the question one step further: if God will continue to love me even if I~ continue to sin, does it matte~r to God whether I stop sinning or not? In other words, if we say that God is unconditional Love and that he is not utilitarian in his love, do we not eviscerate of meaning such traditional Christian and Catholic notions as the discernment of God's will, the exist~ence of hell, the call to co.nversion from sin, the person as.God's instrument and vo-cation? Perhaps John was addressing some of the ~same questions when he has Jesus say; For'God so loved the world that he gave'his only Son~ that whoever be-lieves in him should not perish but hav6 eternal life. For'God sent the Son into the world, nbt to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not b.elieve is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has ~ome into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every .one wh6 does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his' deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, thi~t it may be clearly seen that his~deeds have been wrought in God (Jn 3:16-21). A comment by Raymond Brown on this passage and others in John, may show us a path out of the, dilemma: We believe that the translation of krinein as "condemn" in these pas- .sages (also in 8:26) is clearly justified by the contrast with "save." Nev-ertheless, the statement that Jesus did not come to condemn does not ex-clude the very real judgment that Jesus provokes . The idea in John, then, seems to be that during his ministry Jesus is. no. apocalyptic judge like the one expected at the end of time; yet his presence does cause men to judge themselves.5 In other words, Jesus does not condemn, but his presence brings out what people really are like. He, the human presence of God on earth, loves people and wants their good, indeed their absolute good, which is union with God, and he continues to love even those who spurn the of-fer, They condemn themselves. Let us see where this path leads us. When we love people unselfishly (insofar as this is possible for a hu-man: being), we want their good. We want them to be as happy, fulfilled, right with God and the world as possible. We want them to fulfill all their God's Love Is Not Utilitarian / 837 potential, "to be ttie best that they can be," as the commercial for the Army dins into our memories. At our best ~ve do not demand all this as a condition for our love, but we want it because we love. If this is the case with us, we can imagine what God desires. In his ',~'Contemplation to Obtain Love,'? Ignatius of Loyola tries to help us to imagine all that God's love wants. In an almost poignant line he'says: "I will ponder with great. affection how much God our Lord has done for me, and how much he has given me of what he~ possesses, and fi-nally, how much, as far as he~ can, the same Lord desires to give.himself to me according to his divine decrees."6 God creates a world that he sees is "very good" (Gn 1:31) for his loved ones to live in. He wants them to be co-creators with him of this evolving world. The Garden of Eden image in Genesisl is awonderful symbol of wl~at.Gbd wants for those whom he lo~,es into existence. He °wants us to li~,e in harmony ~vith, and with reverence for the universe and all that is in it, because that is the way to ou~r greatest li~lppines's and fulfillment both as individuals and as brothers and sisters. Moreover, he wants to giye himself to us "as far as he can"; limita-tion comes not just. from our fin.itude, but also from our perversity. God, however, will not compel us to accept what is for. our good. Does GOd puni.sh us for our perversity? It is an age-old tradition that ascribes natural disasters to God's wrath. The Old Testa.ment is~ replete with such ascription~s, beginning with Genesis 2. In the New Testament Jesus is asked: "Rabbi, ,whq,sinned, this,man or his parents,~ that he was born blind~?" He a.nswers: "It was not that this man sinned, or his par-ents, but that the works of God might be made,manifest in him" (Jn 9:2- 3). To say the least, this answer is enigmatic, but it does belie the as-cription of disasters to God's wrath ~at sin, On the hypothesis that God is Love I want to say that we punish our-selves by turning away from God's love. God remains steadfast in his love. But hatred, suspicion, prejudice, fear--these and other emotions-- are the product of our sins and the sins of our forebears. And they are not emotions that are for our peace. In other wor.ds, God made us broth-ers and sisters and desired us to live in harmony and mutual love, but we human beings have brought on ourselves the disharmony and distrust that now threaten the world as we know it. And if anyone does remain willfully and perVersely turned away from God's love and the love of neighbor to the end, then he or she chooses eternal unhappiness. But ~God's love does not change into 'something else. Review for Religious, November-De~cember, 1987 But what abgut the man born blind? What about the child with Down's syndrome? What about natural disasters such as the eruption of the volcano in Colombia which destroyed.~a town and took 20,000 lives in one day? We want to know why such things happen. It lies close to hand to ascribe such events either to the punishment of God, or fate, or to the stupidity of the victims. Social psychologists speak of the ."just world hypothesis" in .describing such attitudes. According to this view, everybody believes the world is a place where people generally get what they deserve and deserve wffat they get. To believe that our own good deeds and hard work may come to naught and, indeed, that we can encounter a calamity for totally fortuitous rea-sons, is simply too threatening to most of us. And yet we see people whose lives have been shattered and who seem like us in every way. Are these paraplegics, blind people, sufferers from cancer really innocent vic- .tims, and are we, therefore, candidates for s~ffering the S~me fate? The just world hypoth.esis posits that in these circum~stances we are likely to reject that possibility as intolerable and to conclude that those stricken individuals ~re really wicked, or at least foolish, and deserve their fate.7 Some of these calamities may be caused by human sinfulness or stu-pidity at some time in history. In the United states and in Latin America people still experience the effects of the evil of slavery and of greedy colo-nization. Other calamities may just be random events in a finite world; e.g., some Of the effects of genetic disorders. Others may be caused by someone else's perversity, but the victim is seemingly picked out at ran-dom: for ~xample, the drunken driver plows into John Jones' car, hav-ing just barely missed ten others, and out of the blffe John is dead~ and his daughter is maimed ~for life, through no fault of theirs. The "just world hypothesis" reminds us of the friends of Job or the disciples who asked Jesus about the sin that caused the man to be born blind. It will not work in the case of innocent victims of either random events, the pre-sent sins of others, or the effects of historic evils. How do we square the unconditional love of God with such calami-ties? In experience, people who engage God directly in a relationship, and who look at the world realistically, have the "just world hypothe-sis" pulled out from under them. They see that Jesus, the sinless, be-loved Son, died horribly, and that no bolts of lightning took vengeance on his killers or saved him. As they develop their relationship with God, they may find themselves raging at him for.the seemingly needless suf-fering they ,undergo or see others experience. Somehow or other they dis-cover a God who is beyond what we conceive as justice, a God they can God's Love Is Not Utilitarian hope in and live for, No more than the author of the book of Job can they explain it; but for sure it i~ not the answer proposed by the "just world hypothesis." People who have de'0eloped such a relationship with God experience the deep m~ystery of creation and co-creation. God loves into existence not only the stars that so bedazzle us in the night sky but also the vol-cano~ that erupts suddenly and engulfs a whole city killing 20,000 peo-ple, 'and he loves those people into existence. God not only loves into existence Jesus and Mary, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and the lovely people who have lok, ed us in our lives, but also Herod and Hero-dias, Genghis Khan, Lucrezia Borgia, Hitler and the torturers of politi-cal prisoners:of our day. People who meet this God at a deep level sense a bottomless ~compassion and pain at the heart of the world, yet a vibrant hope for life. They become more compassionate--and passionate-~ them-selves. Perhaps they can understand that it was not bravado that kept the martyrs joyful in their s.ufferings and dying. Perhaps, too, they can un-de¢ stand how the poorest of the poor still are capable of tremendous acts of generosity toward their fellow sufferers, just as they can understand the great cruelty o.f which the poor are also capable. Thus far we have threaded our path oiat of the seeming dilemma of the coexistence of God's unconditional love and-punishment for sin and hell. We have also seen a way'of explaining the call to conversion from sin. God wants the best for us and that best includes our turning away from sin and toward living a life that is consonant with a relationship of mutual love with the Lord. Sin does not produce happiness or harmony or peace of mind. Nor does it create harmonious relationsh~p.s between people, or political and social and religious institutions that work toward such harmonious and just relationships. So God's love for us desires that we be converted on all the levels postulated by Gelpi, the affective, the intellectual, the moral and the socio-political.8 Note, however, that God does not make such'integral conversion a condition for continuing to love us. He desires it b~ecause it is for our good; bu~ he does not demand it as the price of his love. Now let us mo4e on to the issue of the discernment of God's will, especially as this regards the question of a vocation to a way of life. Traditionally Catholics have believed that God has a plan for each per-son. He 'calls some to the religious or priestly life and others to the mar- ,ried state. It is true that the term "vocation" was most often restricted to the religious or priestly life. "He-hasa vocation" was shorthand in Catholic circles for saying that an individual felt called to religious or Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 priestly life. But a. more careful use oftanguage:also,saw married life as a calling. A further problem, of course~ is that this language left in limbo those who remain single (and not religious or priests) either vol-untarily or involuntarily. At,any rate, does God call people to a particu-lar way of life? And if. so, how is this calling consonant with the non-utilitarian nature of his love? ~ 0 Again we return to the idea that the lover wants the good of the be-loved. I will use the case of Ignatius of.Loyola to illustrate a way of under-standing God's call in terms of his~love, without~making that love. utilitar-ian. 9 ~ Inigo (his original name) was a hell-raising, ambitious, vain, coura-geous man, a'.man who dreamed of doing great exploits. At Pamplona, according to his own account, he was the rallying point, in resisting the French attackers. When he. was severely wounded in the leg, the defend-ers immediately surrendered. God seems to have used this crooked line to write straight. During his 10ng convalescence Inigo continued his dreaming. He dreamt of doing great knightly deeds to win fame and honor and the favor of a great lady. These daydreams.would absorb him for up to four hours'at a time. The only books at hand for him were a life of Christ and a book of the lives of the saints. When he read these, he began to dream of doing what Dominic and Francis did, and again he would become absorbed for hours. Notice that in both cases ~his ar-dor, ambition, bravery, and even vanity were operative. Finally, after some time of alternating daydreams, he began to notice a difference. When he was thinking about the things of the world, he'took much de-light in them, but afterwards, when he was tired and put theha aside, he found that he was dry and discontented. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem, barefoot and eating nothing but herbs and undergoing all the other rigors that he saw the saints had endured, not only was he con-soled when he had these thoughts, but even after putting them aside, he remained content and happy. He did not wonder, however, at th~s; nor ~:. did he stop to ponder the difference until one time his eyes were opened a little, and he began to marvel at the difference and to reflect upon it, ~ realizing from experience that some "thoughts left him sad and others happy)~0 ~' This was the beginning of Ignatius' own discovery of the discernment of spirits, a discernment that eventually led him to found the Society of Jesus, with enormous consequences for the Church and the world--and for not a few individuals who in almost four hundred and fifty years have joined this Society. God's Love Is Not Utilitarian How are we to understand this story of a vocation? I would maintain that ~God's 10ve for Inigo involved his desire that Inigo use his great ener-gies, his ardor, his ambition in ways that would make. him most happy, most fulfilled, and most useful to others. I believe that it mattered a great deal to God how Inigo used his talents, for Inigo's sake first of all, but also"for the sake.of others .whom God loved. However, God would not have loved Inigo any the less if he had missed the opportunity for dis-cernment, and had ~ontinued on his course toward "worldly" achieve-ment. But he might have been greatly saddened that Inigo did not choose what was for his greater happiness and peace. Later in life Inigo himself might have felt the sadness as he pondered how his life had gone since his recuperation. Only God could so love us that he would allow us the freedom to turn away from receiving all that he wants .to give us, and still keep loving us unconditionally, even when we so chopse. ., It seems to me that a consi.stent cleaving to the central insight of the New Testament, that God is "Abba," does not force .us to give up any truths of.faith and has several distinct advantages. The preceding pages have shown some ways of understanding traditional truths that hold in the forefront that" God is unconditional love, a love that is not utilitar-ian. Su(h an understanding demonstrates an intrinsic connection between the love of God and the search for his frill. Because God loves me, he wants the best for me. Because and insofar as I love God, I want the best for him, which is that he may give.himself to me as much as he can. The way of life God wants for me is the best way for me to receive his love and to be a co-creator with him. Hence, in my better moments, I try to the best of my ability to discern wfiere his love leads me. I do not try to find his will for fear that he will punish me, but rather for fear that I will miss the way that would allow him to give me more of him-self. I also try to find his will because I.know that his love desires more good for all those whom I will touch in my life. Perhaps we can understand in a slightly new way an axiom attributed to Ignatius (and often put inversely). Loosely translated the saying goes: "Pray as if everything depended on you; work as if everything depended on God." 1 ~ It is very important for me to pray in order to know how and where God wants to love me, how he wants to gift me. It is important not only for me, but also because of others. The more I let God give him-self to me as far as he can, the more "sacrat~entally" present he is to others with whom I interact. And once I have discerned God's way, I can work without ambivalence and self.concern, trusting that God will accomplish whatever else he intends. Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 One final question occurs. Suppose that Inigo's eyes had not opened up during his convalescence, and that he had gone on to worldly exploits. Would he have been given another chance? That is, of course, an unan-swerable question. But God would surely continue to love him and, we presume, continually offer him a call to a radical conversion of heart. ~If, later in life, he were to have his eyes opened, he'might have to come to terms with those earlier missed opportunities. Repentance would be in.~order, but a wallowing in his "spilt milk" would not be an appropri-ate response to the God of love. Conversion'means to accept my past pre-cisely as my past, i.e., both mine and past, and to surrender in freedom to the new and mysterious future offered by God's love now. But an historic moment surely would have been lost if Ignatius had gone an alternate route instead of the one he did take. There are conse-quences to our choices. Hence, it is incumbent on all of us who minister to help people who stand, or soon will stand, before serious life choices to become discerning Christians. Historic consequences may be at stake. -And now a final word. For the past year and a half I have been com-ing at the same issue from different angles. At first I was intrigued by a strange resistance to God's initiative, a resistance that clearly was a run-ning from a positive experience of God'~ presence. My curiosity pro-duced the three articles for this review mentioned earlier. Then a few experi,ences with direcfees prompted this article. I want to end where I began, with the first article. We need to be mind-ful that there is a force within us ~hat does hate the light, that seems to want to thwart all God's loving desire to give us of himself. We need to be on the alert to discern the presence of that force, but also to rely on thos~ various sayings that have given people hope through the ages, sayings like: "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God" (Mk 10:27) or "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made per.fect in weakness" (2 Co 12:9). NOTES 1 William A. Barry, "Resistance to Union: A Virulent Strain," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 44 (1985), pp. 592-596; "The Desire to 'Love as Jesus Loved' and its Vicissitudes," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 44 (1985), pp. 747-753; "Surrender: The Key to Wholeness," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 46 (1987), pp. 49-53. 2 Sebastian Moore, Let This Mind Be in You (Minneapolis: Seabury, 1985). 3 After I had finished this article I came upon Francis Baur's Life in Abundance: A Contemporary Spirituality (New York/Ramsey: Paulist, 1983) who uses process the-ology to develop a spirituality based on the definition of God as love. While some- God's Love Is Not Utilitarian what hortatory and at times polemical, the book can serve as a theological underpinning for the more experience-based assertions of this article. 4 Donald L. Gelpi, "The Converting Jesuit," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, XVII, no. 1 (Jan. 1986). 5 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: I-XII. The Anchor Bible, vol. 29. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 345. 6 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. trans. Louis Puhl. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1951), no. 234, p. 102. 7 Edward E. Jones, Amerigo Farina, Albert H. Hastorf, Hazel Markus, Dale T. Miller, and Robert A. Scott, Social Stigma: The Psychology of Marked Relatiohships (New York: Freeman, 1984), pp. 59-60. 8 Gelpi, op. cit. 9 What follows is based on The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. Joseph F. O'Callaghan. ed. John C. Olin (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). 10 lbid, p. 24. ~ The Latin version can be found in "Selectae S. Patris Nostri Ignatii Sententiae," no, II, in Thesaurus Spiritualis Societatis Jesu (Roma: Typis Polygiottis Vaticanis, 1948), p. 480. Gaston Fessard, in a long appendix to volume I of his La dialectique des Exercices Spirituels de saint Ignace de Loyola (Paris: Aubier, 1966), traces the historical background of the saying. He demonstrates that although not from Igna-tius' hand the saying does express the dialectic of his spirituality. Vocation She said she wished to be a shrub And sit in silence, lost, obscure In some dim woods where no one ever comes and she could muse and watch the quiet winds go by. But He who long ago observed a brambled bush Looked at her once among the ferns. He looked but once; the winds became a storm And now she burns, she. bu.rns! Ruth de Menezes 2819 D Arizona Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404 Novitiate: Captivity or Liberty? Mariette Martineau Mariette Martineau, a novice with the Sisters of Mission Service, had recently com-pleted sixteen months of formation at St. Albert, Alberta, when she wrote these re-flections which she hopes will benefit others in novitiate life. She may be reached at Box 2861; Merritt, British Columbia; VOK 2BO, Canada. ~l~hat are the realities of being a novice in a religious community in the Church today? Since the exodus following Vatican II, communities have been growing smaller and older. Novitiates have been created and re-created to meet the ever changing formation needs of both the commu-nity and the candidates. How often have novices of today heard this com-ment from one of the older members of their community, "How for-tunate you are to have such a novitiate, full of prayer and study! In our days . " Come and journey with me as ! reflect on my novitiate experience. I am on the last Stretch of that journey ~as I am presently completing a six-month apostolic experience before returning to Edmonton in June for immediate preparation for vows scheduled to be, celebrated in August. I have often asked myself, particularly in the early months, "Is this no-vitiate experience one of captivity or liberty?" When I first arrived at the novitiate I experienced what I like to call the "honeymoon" phase. Life was fairly flexible as time was granted to unpack, to explore the h6use a6d neighborhood, and most importantly to meet the new commuriity and ito become comfortable with the direc-tor. The excitement of not knowing exactly what to expect and of enter-ing into the newness of activities energized me and I felt that I had made a good decision. Reality soon set in, and the struggling began. Before I entered, I prom-ised myself that I would give me, the community, and God a year to dis- 844 Novitiate: Captivity or Liberty cover if this was truly the way of life for Mariette to grow fully alive. I am thankful for that commitment for there ~vere many times during th'ose first few.months that I was ready to pack my ba~s and leave~. My director was also aware of that commitment and when times were rough she gently reminded me of it. The challenge to let go of one's independ-ence- socially, financially, emotionally, and so forth---can be a painful one. If I had chosen to leave at this stage in the novitiate procesS, I would have been leaving not because I had chosen the wrong way of life but because I was unable to release certain things in my life and give all to God. The second phase or reality of novitiate after the honeymoon phase is this ti~e of purification, of letting go. Tears can be an enriching and cleansing experience! One's schedule soon seems to become another's schedule as 'the director sets her expectations before you and challenges you to integrate and balhnce your time between formal classes, prayer, spiritual reading, community, household chores, writing papers, and per-haps weekly apostolic experiences andthe ~ccasional weekend work~ shop. Your life no longer seems to 15e yoOr own; anger and depression sometimes become an everyday experience as you strive to fully enter into the year. One has usually left a job behind and now feels like a "non-producer," dependent on the community for food, shelter, recreation. Suddenly you have to keep an account of the money you spend and have to ask someone for that money. You now have to ask permission before disappearing in the community car or going out with a friend. In some ways you feel that your personal autonomy is being threatened and you no longer have control over your life. You do not understand all the things that are being 'asked of you. In fact, some of the requests make no sense at all, This calls for trust--in tile community and in the forma-tion personnel. Trust that they do know what they are doing and have your growth as their priority, while attempting to see if you do indeed have the charism of this community. The Yes I said when I ei~tered soon grew into a series of "yeses" that were not always easy to say. I must point out that it was not a "yes" to°having things done to me but a yes that said, "I will enter into the process that you have set before me." During this phase the novices may find themselves projecting a lot of anger at their director. It is they who are setting down the guidelines, they who are enforcing them. The director is the one called to tell the novice, "This year is a time to place some relationships on the back burner, a time to get in touch with who you are, your relationship with God and the community in which you have chOsen to live out that rela- Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 tionship." The director is the one who has been given the sometimes pain-ful responsibility of making the novices aware of areas in their lives that need growth. "I do not feel that you are using your time properly--Do you realize that you snapped ~at Suzanne during supper last night?--You are too,much of a perfectionist." A novice, like anyone; finds it painful to look at her brokenness. I sometimes found myself saying in response, "What about Sister Perpetua? I look great beside her and she has been in the community for twenty years." It is much easier to focus on some-one else's areas of growth rather than your own. In the midst of all of this is the fear of reje6tion: One can begin to foc~s entirely on the nega-tive while neglecting to hear the affirmation that is also present. During the novitiate phase one journeys closely with the director. The goal is to have someone to process the year with you, to guide you, to challenge you,. to affirm you, to see if you do have a vocation to religious life. I found this aspect of my journey difficult. As. much as I wanted to dis-cover if I was in the right place, I feared rejection and wanted to appear as someone who had it all "together," I wanted to be an instant relig-ious, comfortable with poverty, celibacy, community, and obedience. Simply put, I wanted to be perfect and got angry with myself and: others when I was not. Directors often tell their novices to be prepared for a time of regres-sion following their initial entry into novitiate. One can hear this with the mind but the heart sometimes gets in the way. One cannot understand why she feels depressed, angry, without energy, and without the finesse she had when she entered. Insecurity may be another reality, but doubt is always good because it challenges one to dig deeper. The gift during this time of grieving and regression is the realization that, "Hey, I am not going crazy! I am just striving to say good-bye to some excess bag-gage. I am feeling the loss of many things and many people. I am spend- .ing so much energy on being angry, I need some way to deal with the anger in a more creative way. I want to grow and become me fully alive, but that hurts and I just cannot seem to grow fast enough." A novice was asked one time, "When did your novitiate start?" She replied: "Nine months into it!" Another reality of novitiate life is the focus on community. One no longer, has the freedom to skip supper when she feels like it and go shop-ping instead. Recreation often takes place in the community context, and outside contacts can be limited and are often with other religious. One may get the sense of dead air--I need to.see other people! The challenge is to enter into the times of community and group activity while remem, Novitiate: Captivity or Liberty / 1~47 bering to also enter into moments of aloneness. We all need some de-gree of personal space. In relation to community, the novice who enters and places before herself the goal of reforming the community will find herself in conflict and perhaps will receive an invitation to leave. It is similar to marrying someone with the intent of changing that person into the person ~hat you think he or she should be. Those of us novices who are still young when we enter often bring with us our youthful idealism. This idealism is not wrong, and may indeed carry with it challen.ges to the community. But we must remember that novitiate is a dialectical proc-ess; both the community and the individual have so.mething to leai'n from each ot~her. Neither is perfect and neither should be expected to be per-fect. A line from a friend says, "I love you as you are in the middle of where you are." How does one know when to leave? After haying earlier stated that I had committed myself (t° myself) for a year, what would have caused ~e to leave? If at any point in that year the person of Mariette completely disappeared, I think it would have been time to pull out. If I had to die to all that I was, I think I would have been in the wrong place, perhaps simply at the.wrong time, or forever. Dialogue with the director is ex-tremely important during this discernment.' She is an objective observer, trained to help one make such decisions. Naturally the decision is always our own, and one always has to keep before herself the freedom to stay or to leave. Again I would say, trust the formation personnel, as it is easy to get entangled in one's emotions and make a decision to leave for the wrong reasons. I would not encourage anyone to leave while in the mid-dle of the grieving process. One can expect to say some good-byes to journey companions dur-ing novitiate. Some people will be with us until the end of the journey, others are called to different places before then. Good-byes can be pain-ful, especially if you have shared a deep relationship with the person leav-ing or if you have difficulty accepting the reasons for leaving. Each time someone left, it was an opportunity for me to reexamine my own rea-sons for staying or to find some good reasons to leave. Usually new life followed these reflections especially if I had been given the opportunity to sa~, good-bye to the person leaving and/or to ritualize her departure with the community--whether it be my own or the intercommunity no-vitiate of which I was a member as I was the only novice in my own com-munity. I strongly encourage and invite novices who have decided to con-tinue their journey in a different direction to realize the importance of saying good-bye to their directors and their communities. "848 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1987 The happie,st phase of the novitiate seems to come too late. You feel ready to enter into the process, you have develop.ed new relationships, ygur, anger and depression no longer seem to have control over you, the journey inward has become a challenge that energizes you. And guess what? It is time to move on, perhaps to an apostolic experience or fur-ther studies or even vows. It is gratifying at this time to look at how one was at the beginning and how one appears to be now. Signs of growth are evident and as you reflect back you. feel yourself wondering,. "Was I, really like that? Did I make life that miserable for others in the house, especiall3~ my director? . . ." Now may also be a time of increased heal-ing, reaching out in love and forgiven, ess in a deep and meaningful way to those wh6 have journeyed so f,,aithfully with 'you. One still does not haveit ~11 "together" bu~'acknowledges the joys and pains of being a pilgrim. Is novitiate a time of captivity or liberty? It can be a time of captiv-ity, ofimprisoning one's self in anger, loneliness, schedules, pride, in-security, or one's past, But it is designed to be a time of liberty. A time to spend kvitli,y.ourself and God, journeying towards wholeness by being -given the gift to leave behind many of the earthly cares that can take over our existence. It is a time to begin to d~velop the"skillS and behavior pat5 terns that a religious needs to integrate her life choice of prophet into the world" and the Church today. Community in Religious Life and the - Church: Some Reflections Angelo M. Caligiuri Monsignor Caligiuri is Episcopal Vicar for Religious in his diocese. His reflections here represent his part in dialogues between bishops and religious in several areas of the country and discussion with various religious superiors and other vicars. He may be reached at the Office of the Vicar for Religious; Diocese of Buffalo; 100 South Elmwood Avenue; Buffalo, New York 14202. During the final months of 1985 and the first months of 1986, through-out the dioceses of the United Sti~tes, diocesan bishops met with their re-ligious to dialogue about six areas of mutual concern. These areas of in-terest and concern surfaced from the series of listenin~ sessions held the previous year under the leadership ~nd guidance of the special Pontifical Commission established by our Holy Father, under the chairmanship of Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco. As a result of these listening sessions, .each diocese prepared a writ-ten report on what was heard and these reports were sent to Archbishop Qtiinn and his committee. From a reading and evaluation of the many reports, the committee saw the following subject areas surfacing as mer-i

Issue 45.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1986. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REVIEW [-'OR REI.IGIOOS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single,copies: $2.50. S(~bscription U.S.A. $ I 1.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor Jan./Feb., 1986 Volume 45 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR REt.tGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department ~Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindeli Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. ~Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Review for Religious Volume 45, 1986 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63i08-3393 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S~M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, September, and N6vember on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion:of each issue of REVIEW FOR REEIGIOOS is also regularly available on cassette.recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. The Price of Poverty Donald Macdonald, S.M.M. Father Macdonald is well known to our readers for.his frequent contributions. He continues to reside, and may be addressed at ,.St."Jo,seph's; Wellington,Road; Tod-morderi, Lanc.; OLI4 5HP; England. /~ n elderl~ lady came to the sacristy after Mass and gave (f9r her) quite a large sum of money to the priest "for shoes.for that poor man whoread at Mass,today." The reader was in fact a Unive.rsity lecturer with an income, way beyond anything the lady .hadever known, who chose .to" dress shab-bily with down-at-heel sandals. He had more choices ,as ,to lifestyle than the lady who pitied him. Similarly, one has heard a religious conducting a seminar on poverty, forcibly arguing that if one is to be true to the Gospel and the founder's charism, rootlessness i~ really what is meant. The word poverty is too weak to enshrine the concept. He himself wasoenjoying a prbfessional salary with his own bank-account, not one penny of which ever went to his congregation. ~ It is not just .or even,chiefly a matter of human fallibility, but of unreality which is an ever present risk in discussing evangelical poverty. So often the appearance bears no relation to the fact. Even the possibility of discussing poverty argues a degree,of unreality, as most people are either born into or forced into the poverty trap by. circumstances. One can see this in. a third-world context where, paradoxically, evangelical.poverty is almost impossi-bly difficult to live since the blistering reality is so obvious, and the main thrust of.society is to .race away from it. Perhaps G. K. Cheste_rton offers a way into the discussion in suggesting that humanity is the basis for under-standing poverty. He believed that a man ought to know something of th~ embtions of an ihsulted maff, not 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 by being insulted but simply by being a man. And he o.ught to know something of the emotions of a poor man not by being poor, but simply by being a man. Therefo~'e in any writer who is describing poverty, my first objection to him will be that he has studied his subject. A democrat would have imagined it.~ Statistics obviously have their place, but are no substitute for fellow-feeling. Religious,_ asked "to be poor both in fact and spirit" (Perfectae Caritatis 13) can, therefore, consider a genuinely poor person in the con-temporary world as a touchstone of reality. Contemporary Poverty A young woman, a soldier's wife was counting the hours until her husband came home on leave. He did come. He had a woman with him whom he sat-.on a settee while he went upstairs and packed a suitcase. He came down and said to his wife: "Well, that's that then; I am off." Such w~is the end of her married life. The biblical type of weakness, vulnerability and poverty is often seen in a woman on her own. 1 cannot see that.the pattern is fundamentally different today. The religious who wants the feel of poverty could do worse than examine her experience. Ratherothan spend days and dollars in meetings discussing th~ topic, much better siarely to visit such people who, regrettably, are to be found within walking distance 6f so °many religious houses. Why talk when we can walk and meet the reality in person?-Poverty is first felt, not discussed. ; That woman is truly poor. She loved her husband and wanted his childre~n i~n a lifetime together, but she was told in the crudestpossible way that her love was worth nothing. She was .nobody to him. "In practical terms she had ceased to exist. She did not even rate,.a letter.or word of understanding or explanation. Yet he was everything to her. One can glimpse'~the emotional-poverty in a person with an immense capacity for love who is unable to express it as she is unwanted and rejected. She is, therefore~, porr in her very identity as her love, which is essentially herself, is apparently woi-thless. ~ As a married woman growing into the ~role, she ~knew who she-was. It was no part-time occupation she had chosen, but a full-time:life to which she had given herself. In view of her particular rejection, inevitably ques-tions must surface as:to her personal worth. Who amq now?Is the best I liave to give worth nothing? Failure. of any kind c~in bring humiliation. Here is a woman who could not keep her husband'. Friends who 6nee welcomed her into their homes as a married woman are now less keen as she is on her own. People will talk about her, scarcely handicapped .by knowing tittle of the true situation. The , ~e Price of Poverty self she once saw and recognized is now seriously shattered, and it will take more than cosmetics to put the pieces together again.-Could she~be worth less? Clearly emotionally impoverished., she is, too, almost 9ertainly econom-ically poor.:.Can she continue living in her ,house? Once budgeting with her husband's income as together~, they tried to build a home, now the home which she helped furnish~ and in which she may have expreSsed her own ta,ste, has ,to beobroken up. Perhaps even the physical fabric in which, to a degree, she~had invested herself will have to go too. She has been literally .uprooted. Her future is a lottery. Have her career or work prospects been handicappedin marrying? How ~nd where is she to five? What is she to do? C~ntemporary Questio.ns _ For anyone seriously wishing to understand poverty with~a, view-to .living it, inevitably the q,u, estion must arise, if this is poverty what am I living? Arriving at that woman's house what would I say to her? Is~the level of religious poverty such that, without ~iving a personal history, one can communicate with her at quite a deep level? Does the religious have expe-rience of rejection and failure? Has the ~reoligious ever felt worthless? Ever lived inca loveless house? Ever been~unable to express love? Has the religious ever been lost in the pre,sent and afraid of the future? By the same token, has one received such warmth, love, affection and security that one can ,,only feel for someone ,who quite ol~viously has not? " Self-respect might suggest that.if she is a poor woman What am I? On the deeper level of~emotion where all of us fu, nction, does religious p, overty sugges, t.that ! came from Sinai with a tract or from life.with fellow-feeling? The religious who has attempted to live "poor both in fact and spirit" will speak the POOr w.oman's language owit.h an immediacy which is first felt rather than~expressed. Poverty means limitation. In aworld where destitution is rampant the meaning of poverty may be obscured. De~stitution means absolutely no choice, and is indefensible as a wa~y of life. Poverty implies limited oppor-tunity. The former has no choice, the latter hasAittle. ~o Chesterton, in the essay mentioned earlier, felt it necessary to say that -"a poor man is a man who has not go~ much money." This seems self-evi-dent to the point of banality, butJif it is su.ch a truism why does it appear to have escaped the lifestyle of so many religious? If that was taken as a rule of thumb, possibly much of the rat!onalizing of evangelical poverty might go. "If a poor persbn can afford it I can consider, it. If not, I can't." It may be that a limited budget with a need to count the pennies should be built into any realistic framework of poverty as a way of life, which, of cours.e, is not 6,/ Review for Religious, Jan:Feb., 1986 .the same.as penny-p.inching. If'circumstances'don't dictate it,.those who freely chorse such'a life should. -.- With whom does one identify? Whatever "evangelical" means, it cannot mean otinreal. The link between religious life imd poverty should be pro-gressively instinctive fo~ the mature person. It was a young married woman caught in the poverty trap who 'summed it all up! "You get to the point that you" doh't.think about things you can't afford." Horizons inevitably narrow. °A poor person with limited opportunity has presumably little choice as to the people be4ives among. He cannot choos~ his neighb0rh~0od, as many testify ~ho would give heaven and .earth to get out of a district if only to give the,children a better chance, "but cannot. For those who find work it is often a dead-end job. Educational and culiural opportunities, vacations and recreations are .similarly limited. If such is not bifilt irito the fabric of evangelieal~poverty we geem to have missed much of the point. Poor people tend to be marginal people in terms of statm, influence 'and opportunity. One bf the gt:eatest tragedies of poverty, it has been noted, is the'inability of'so many people to make afy contribution to society since so m.u.ch potential ig never given the chance to develop. This does not just disqualify many from co.mpeting in whatis called "the rat race," Where the prizes, however won, are strictly personal,-but limits their contribution to life in general and their family and neighborhood iia partic-ular. "Why, therefore, should the religious gibe at being subject to'such limitations, perhaps iffbeing i/~nored, used or patronized? Poverty feels like" that. The very insecurity of contemporary religirus life could be a chance to identify with such marginal people. There are so mar~y marginiil people even in the affluent sqcieties of Western Europe and theUnited Sta'trs, and surely the religious should not leave them behind. InSecurity is in the air. Li~,ing within such limits; the religious will be treated as such. In any case he can do no other. He has no choice. If his place in the pecking order determines how he is treated, in choosing poverty hr'ha~ chosen (o be last. Wh3~ should anyone choose such a~qife? To play at it is one thing, but to choose to live permanently within such limits is something else:~ After all anyone who has ever lived in India, for ekam~le, will have se~n there many "MotherTe'resas," as no doubt they'are to be found all over the globe, but. it can still be puzzling as to why the average ~:eligious might choose that road. Most people,,sensibly, want to widen their horizons, so whychoose limitation in t~rms 'of relationships, lifestyle, dress, travell OlS~orttinity? When poor people used to say that "pove'rty's no disgrace, but 'tis a great inconvenience," someone wh'o grew up as one of them thought the com-ment too rriild for what was ih'fact "a hampering drag upon them.''2 Most resist being pushed to'thb mai-gin so why. would anyone want to live there? 1he Price of Poverty It is hard to see a.nyone choosing this, oti~er than as'a voluntary, short-term contract, yet, apparently, religious have chosen this frr life. Unless this choice is und~rpinned by an integrating vision which can give it worthwhile meaning, any such lifestyle wilLsurely fragment under the age-old tension of catering to champagne tastes on a beer income. It is not in unredeemed human nature to choose less arid be content. There is in much of religious poverty as lived today a close analogy with Parkinson's Law,3 ih as much as affluence expands and is seen to be necessary,as goods and money, become available. Yet if one lives on a figed income in an economic climate of inflation, one cannot spend money.as if there is no tomorrow. I cannot entertain as perhaps I .would like. Not can the°main consideration of "tra'Jel abroad" be a valid .passport. Limitation will be Written into whatever I do. Basically the choice of this lifestyle is made because the.religious choose Christ who chose a stable in preference to a palace and consistently l~eld to that even in death.-It is said that the best fighter.is the hungry fighter, and whoever really wants 'God in Christ must train.to sacrifice anything that gets in the way. The point of poverty, then, is to remove the clutter and tension which would tend to crowd God out. The Methodist sbholar Gor-don Rupp underlined this in a general point: "Never had so many men so" many great possessions as in our modern affluent societies, and what Jesus said about these things no Bultmann has ever been able t0 demythologize. If these things blind the spirit, and if the pure of heai-tsee, then I should find a thousand within the Church on the road.to perfection for every hundred outside."4 The outlook of the consumer society can suffocate feeling for God. The point of evangelical poverty is made more'specific in-an instructive misprint in my copy of the breviary, where St. Paul is m.ade to say of, Christ that "rich as he was, he made himself poor for your: sake in order to make you rich by means of his property (sic)" (2 Co 8:9). This is undoubtedly the logic which appeals to the printer andthe rest,ofus;.but what St. Paul said, of, course, was that it,was in his total poverty that Christ enriched us. "Here everything has been lost in translation. ,In an at.tempt to make sense of the text, nonsense has been made of the Gospel. To see the influence, of this insight on St. Paulqn that same second letter to the Corinthians can be of immense practical help in assimilating, the reason for evangelical poverty and~so nourishing its continuing dynamic. First Put On Christ Invariably Paul~ begins with Christ. Seeing him in his conversion, bap-tism and daily life--"even if we did once .know Christ in the flesh, that~ is I! / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 not how w6knox~.him'now" (2 Coo5:16) he isso enthralled by what he sees that he can only, compare its effect on,him to the creation of light: "For it is the God ~who said, "Let light .shine out Of darkness,'~vho has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of:God on the face of Christ" (2 Co 4:6). He knew his world and himselLto be literally re-created anewin Christ:~ Reality,- no matter how it presents itself, now comes to him in the face ooLChrist, _so he comes to see what God is like in a sacramental world and,progressively, becomes lik~ what he sees. Whatever happens to ,Paul is always in Christ. So illumined, life is shot' through with Christ as he sees God giving himself in the happenings of every day. The more he reflected on God giving .himself to us in Christ the more he was possessed .by what he saw: "For the love 6f Christ overwhelms us when we reflect." (2 Co 5:14). To think that Christ had givenhis life for Paul.in the absolute poverty of crucifixion and death! He,could refuse;Paul nothir~g. Living in such a world, helogically believed that the response of Christians.should be "to. live no longer for themselves but for ,him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Co 5:15): In other words, the selfish, self-centered core in all of us, which can imprison us in self as cruelly as a child in a ~chbol playground without an adult present, has now been broken up. In Christ, one moves from self to selflessness: Onelives now for Christ as the wholeness of his sacrifice registers, and one comes to realize what an enthralling discovery one has in this unprecedented gift. Even atomic calculations cannot quantify this: So seismic ig the effect on one who.glimpses the reality that Paul can only see .the person given that insight as a wholly new type of being, since, "for an~,one who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new .one is here" (2 Co 5:17). One's outlook, value-sys-tem and life itself are now a response to God giving himself.in Christ. That this can take place in the ordinary, everyday world of pagan-Corinth Paul is assured, since.~'for our sake God made the sinless one into~sin, so that in him we mi.'ghi become the goodness of God" (2.Co 5:21). In human nature at~lts worst seen in the,cruclfix~on and death of the s~nless Christ, our-Lord plumbed the depths of human evil and weakness insofar~as one person could, and so enables Paul to see that everything is redeemable in the death and resurrection_of Christ. Nothing can hold .us in Christ. CruCified as his° Mother stood and watched, and buried in ,another man's grave, this it is~ that roots the experience of Christ in the humanity of every age, not least our own. What of course was h.appening was "God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men's faults against them. : ." (2 Co 5:20). Glimpsing this, Christians like Paul become "ambassadors for Christ :. as The Price of Poverty / 9 though God were appealin~ through us" (2 Co 5:20). The message, of course, is,simply to "be r~conciled to God" (2 Co 5:20). Ideally the Christian reaches the point of so assimilating Paul's o]nsight that he/she can do no other 'than share it. For the religious, poverty is part ofth6 price paid t,o'preserve that insight. AllLelse gradually falls'away, no longer seen as having any real claim on us in'the light of Christ: "And we, with our. :. faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of th~ Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect" (2 Co 3:18). All of this takes place not in some Gnostic, esoteric enclave, but in the streets of wherever the Christian happens to be, since "this is the work of the Lord.who is Spirit" (2 Co 3:18). The first and continuing step for anyone who would live genuinely evangel-ically poor, therefore, is to ~put on Christ. Contemplation is clearly primary. First recognize what it is to be christened, and poverty for the sake of Christ becomes a logical necessity. Whatever obscures that vision must go. In Everyday Life While it is true that Paul "was caught up into paradise and heard things which must not and cannot be put into human language" (2 Co 12:4), the second letter to the Corinthians makes it all too plain that' he does'not stay there. It is in the present, in the unpredictability of everydaY life that he sees Christ, and this is marvelously encouraging for anyone attempting to.live poor for Christ. Rich as he was in Christ, people and circumstances will so often combine to subject Paul to an experience not unlike that of the contemporary poor woman mentioned earlier. So often he will be stripped of. everything but his faith (see 2 Co 1:8). -For some, Paul's "all would not be enough. He invested not just the Gospel but his self in Corinth "For my own part, I will gladly spend and be spent on your sohls' behalf, though ~you should love me too little for loving you .too well" (2 Co 12:15). The man wh'o brought Christ to them at such physical and emotional cost is i'educed to writing them a letter in an attempt, to-establish himself again (see 2 Co "3:1-3). "Someone said, 'He writes powerful and strongly-worded letters, but when he is with you, you see only half a man and no preacher at all" (2 Co 10:10). It is not just gratuitous rudeness nor personal dislike, but Paul's nonacceptance as a genuine apostle that is at issue, sohe is afraid that "your ideas may get corrupted and turned away from simple devotion to Christ" (2 Co 11:3). Paul and his Christ are not accepted. His very identity, therefore, is questioned. In an attempt to try and reestablish some lost status he is humiliated into having to give something of his own'record to show that he was not in it for himself, as was suggested neither a naive, misguided 11~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 convert nora "con-man" taking advantage of them: "lashes. beaten. stoned.:., shipwrecked., false brethren., sleepless., hunger, thirst. cold., anxiety for all the churches" (2 Co I 1:23-29). Was all this for nothing? He gave everything, yet had not made first base with an influential, articulate group in the Corinthian church. He has deceived no one, yet if a man's good faith is questioned, as was Paul's, he is really poor, for, without that, he, has no currency left. Corinth and life generally.taught Paul that,.such paradox is of the essence of an apostle's life: "We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and ~behold weolive; as punished, and yet .not killed; as sorrowful, yet always .rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Co.7:8-10). Read as experience,and not liter.ature, in these passages 9ne will come close to the mind and life of a poor Christian man. Integrity, reputation, achievement, personality, wealth and so much more that can give a. person self-respect and a worthwhile life are so often taken, and the individual is then dismissed as worthless. Even obvious achievement is seen as a mirhge. To be poor feels like that, seemingly unable to make a contribution though one gives one's all. Paul is so aware of the power of the Gospel and the'powerlessness of the Christian as he tries to communicate it, that it would almost seem a contradiction in terms had not his life followed that pattern since first he gave himself to ~Christ. Perhaps he was never closer to his Lord than in this powerlessness. If the Christ he preached, the faith they received, the life he lived does not suggest integrity, he has ,nothing to offer except an appeal: "Open your hearts to us; we have taken advantage of no one" (2 Co 7:2). . To be reduced to speaking like that, one must be poor indeed. Against that background, too, incidentally, Paul is trying to collect money to help the impoverished Jerusalem church! (see 2 Co chs. 8-9): Part of the cost of becoming a Christian in those da~s may have meant, for ma.ny, broken family and community ties resulting in real poverty at so-many levels. Paul was also economically, poor in Corinth:. "When I was with you and ran out of money I was no burden to °anyone" (2 Co 11:9). For whatever reason he judged it best not to accept help from the Corinthian church. This led. to further misunderstanding, not least.in leading some to assume that his message must .be as ,cheap as its presenter. As so often with the really poor person it seems to be "heads you win, tails I lose," whatever way the coin falls.- Whenever he could ,t~oVmake ends meet, "I robbed other churches by accepting Support from them in.order to serve you" (2 Co. 11:8): These were the other communities in Greece Paul had set up on his way south to ¯ 7he Price of Poverty Corinth, and it must Surely have been an additibnal burden when he was aware of being helped by people who had little enbugh themselves, since "the troubles they have been through have tried them hard, ~,et in all this they h.ave been so exuberantly happy that from the depths of their poverty they .have shown themselves lavishly openhanded" (2 Co 8:2). Evidently poor themselves, they were so eager to help the poor in the Jerusalem church "begging and begging us for thefavor of sharing in this service" that in so doing, "they offered their own selves'first to God and, under God, to us" (2 Co 8:4-5). Such are the people helping Paul; so at one with the mind of their Lord ~that.they, too, from'their poverty, are helping to make others rich. ~' Think ~of the effect oon Paul of such behavior--the bread~he e~its he owes to ~them, ~is also their faith builds up him and so many. They have learned much in a short time. It must be the experience of so many religious across the world that it is largely because of the faith and generosity of such people today that they are able to,live and work. Sucl~ support should.have a marked effect on the way we live. Personal Limitations Emotionally and ecohomically poor in a world in which any religious can. find himself; St. Paul also works within the limits of a ~human frame. The most individual of:men, he is always recognizably himselL Even those who tend to lay all that~is wrong with Christianity at. Paul's feet might acknowledge~that there is something, much or little, in their own characters that they might wish to change, if only to be more effective witnesses to Christ. Paul knows this too. One of the greatest benefits of time spent in Paul's company is to see him operate within the'limitations ~of a genuinely human personality - which is just another expression Of the intrinsic poverty which everyone shares. After each one of us was made they broke the mould. Paul is ever conscious of "a thorn in the flesh" which so bothered him that he pleaded ~;ith God to remove it (see 2 Co 12:7-8). Whatever~ it was, Paul knew he woifld be:.so mhch more effective if only he could b~ rid of it. His .prayer was notanswered. Instead, he was given one of his greatest, most encour-" aging insights, which can help anyone conscious of the poverty of his or her . own resources: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Co 1~2:9). Paul was fine as he was. The fewer his reserves the more must God supply. The~greater his personal inadequacy the ~more pressing his claim on God: So the ultimate paradox for Paul was that when he looked at himself in 12 / Review for-Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 the mirror of his apostolate and saw much that he could wish changed, he saw what was really there, a poor individual man with all his limitations, loved by.God in Christ. His obvious weakness was a claim on God's power. So he could relax and learn contentmeht at a very deep level: "and t.hat is wh~ I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hard~hips, persecuti~ons, and the_ agonies I go through for Ch_rist.'s sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Co. 12:10).~ The religious inevitably oware of some of his limitations would do well to assimilate that insight. As someone yowe.d to. poverty, he can even integrate his own limitations within,the co~mforting simplicity of that Gospel perspective, perhaps coming to see why Paul could s~y "No wonder we do not lose heart~ T]3o~ugh our outward.humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly ren~ewed" (2 Co 4:16). As ever, the o~,erriding.belief in God gi.'ving himself in Christ in.the present moment is the dynamic of evangelical pove~y. o Repeated experience w.as to teach Pgul this, even when he felt shattered as his identity as a .genuine apostle is queried, pioneering a way for the Gospel, or facing the growing pains of an expanding Church. Often he finds himself as a leader withotit an army, let down by people from whom he had expected support. Because of his fighting polemic Paul ran the risk, not always successfully avoided; of being unfair to others and no doubt had the chance to repent at leisure ,The physical and emotional strain at times must have been severe~ but it is again all part of carrying the treasure of the Gospel withinthe heart of a poor man. So,he saw that "we are r~o better than pots ofearthenware to contain this treasure, and this proves th~it.such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God's alone" (2 Co 4:7). o~What is attractive is that in circumstances which would liave discouraged ¯ many of us, or have us return home to lecture, write our memoirs, or dine. out on our experiences for Christ, Paul never gave up.-He went forward into the situation, and there found God in Christ with a security,given only to those who give up everything for. him. His life as glimpsed in this letter. shows that "human indeed we are, but it is in no human strength we figlit, our battles" (2 Co 10:3). He expresses this superbly when he admits that "we are in difficulties on all sides, but never concerned; we see no answer to our problems, but-never despair;., persecuted, but never deserted; knocked down but never killed" (2 Co 4:8-9). Again, one should not let the literary construction mask the human reality. Paul is not some superman (canonization is invariably posthu-mous), but a man in Christ, which is why problems, mistakes, anxiety and fear never ultimately crush him since they are seen as reflecting Christ. He ~he Price of Poverty / 13 is always in Christ and so in circumstances where our first move might be to the doctor, the bottle, the cotinselor or the return ticket, Paul's is always to Christ. So when he is in trouble, he sees what is happening to him." ~Always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus" (2 Co 4:9). He lives in Christ as Chrisriives in him, not least in suffering and heartbreak. So real is this that "the sufferings of Christ, it is true, overflow into bur li~,es~," and in that.very experience as Christ is there, "there is overflowing comfort, too, which 'Christ brings" (2 Co 1:5). Up against it, seeing no way through, Paul believes Christ to be an indwelfing presence not a distant model. He shares the experience, often nailed to Christ through people and circumstances beyond his control. So a man, who, like his Lord and so many on earth, knew much of failure, tears and poverty, at the same time, in the pow.er and love of the r~sen Christ,'sees that in his suivival~ though so powerless, "the life Of Jesus; too, may al.ways be seen in our body" (2 Co 4:10). The poverty-stricken Paul~is enriched, in Christ, even using suffering and failure to help reconcile him and his world to God. -,; . ~ Nothing in his experience, therefore, is pointless. Successive centuries have no doubt learned more from the failures of Paul and his Lord than from the successes of their commentators. So a poor man, with at times scarcely a hold on life--"we were so utterly, and unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself" (2 Co 1:8)--learned to rely on the richness of God. He must have found much time for prayer and reflection or he could: never have read so much into the poverty of the human condition, these passages do not read .as emotion recollected in tranquillity so much as the discovery of the presence of God in Christ when all seemed lost in a harsh, uncaring world. Under God, Paul learned that lesson well. And so, from his own experience of poverty, at many levels, he was anxious and able to pass on what he had found, thanking "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any. affliction, ,with the.comfort with which we ourselves are comforted byGod" (2 Co ! :3-4). Paul seems hypnotized by the word comfort, since the experience was so real in the.middle of his at times frightening poverty~ The religious lookingfor the vision and stamina to be "poor both in fact and spirit," would do well ~to spend time in the company of such a man who found so much of richness in his own poverty: "For what we preach is not ourselves, but J~us Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servant for Jesus' sake" (2 Co 4:5). In any consideration of the vast topic of evangelical poverty there is both a community and an individual dimension. This article is simply meant 14 / Review for Religious, Jan,-Feb., 1986 as an aid to personal reflection. The Benedictine histbrian David Knowles, in the epilogue to.one of his classic studies of English medieval monasticism, was of the opinibn that property and wealth were contributory factors in its decline. No groups nor individuals could do much about it, as wealth "clUng like pitch." This is surely a human development, not especially a medieval one: If a corrective cannot be found for the individual religious in the Gospel,.a founder's manuscript ru!e, and a contemporary poor person, it is doubtful if le~slation and discussion wiil make it real. It is for the individual to see. , o NOTES -~G. K. ~hesterton, "Slum Novelists and the Slums," in _Heretics LondOn 1905, p. 277. 2Florri' Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford Penguin Books 1973, p. 31. ~C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law: "W0~k e~pan'ds so as to fill the time available for its completion." 4Gordon Rupp, The Old Reformation and the New, Epworth 1967, p. 60. On Silence There is the silence that nurses a sleeping child and the silence that is violence without equal. There is the silence that purifies the notes of birds and the silence that betrays the noise inside our lives¯ There is the silence that comes wrapt in a piece of sky .and the silence that is overcast and threatening. -There is the silence that nourishes our sensitivity to life and the silence that is shattered by soul-destroying work. There is the silence in the dew drop's other world and the silence'thff( is manufactured and pressure packed. ~There is the gilen~ that is tl~e gentlest of friend~ and the silence that is filled with loneliness. There is the silence that takes us by thb hand and: leads us deep into the heart of'Peace. "~ N0el Davis 257 Abercrombie Street Red fern EO. Box 130 Chip~aendale, N.S.W. Australia Harvesting Silence: A Desert Spidtuality Anthony Wi.eczorek, O Praem, ~Father Wieczorek writes: "The very times when life and prayer seem to have fallen apart may well be God's attempt to get our attention and make us face the sort of ~hings we all too easily hide from with our busy and carefully structured lives." His previous article, "Cominitment: Dying and. Ri~ing to S~lf," appeared in the issue of July/August, 1985. Father Wieczorek may be addressed at St. Joseph Priory; 103 Grant Street; De Pere, Wisconsin. 541.15. How does a person go about harvesting silence? The question is an impoflant one to people who find themselves standing amid acres of the stuff. How does a pe~,son gather' together silence," emptiness, and stillness? They creep up.so unobtrusively that their coming is unfioticed until, that is, it is too late. The life that had been so filled with purpose:and people and things to do has .grown distant, separated by a moat of 'silence. But no watery moat is this. It is a moat, rather, of sand and arid wastes, of emptiness and stillness, for silence grows only in desert conditions. What is there, then, to harvest in a desert? . What ,grows there? What value, what purpose can it have? These questions are more pragmatic than they sound: What is. to be: made of life that had been lush with' activity, that has been filled with.purpose when suddenly the activity is gone o seems meaningless and unnecessary? What value has an existence that has lost the art of awareness? What can be made of a life whose dreams and plans and goals have all shriveled up in a blast of desert air so that life seems lost and out of control? The desert, though, is not a punishment to endure. The silence and stillness is a gift that must be received, a crop that must be harvested. 15 16 / Review for" Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 I I have never been in a real, geographical desert but the image of one that pictures provide and that emerges in my imaginings is that of an endless expanse of sand and sky. In the desert that I imagine and inwhich I make my anchorage, there is literally nothing to see. Oddly enough, that is its whole point. A desert is a most carefully constructed work of art. Nature, and God, have taken great effort and artistry fo create an empty backdrop, a single sandy sheet. From the looks of it, it was time well spent; for a desert is not only beautiful, it is functional as well. The desert has an anonymous function that is carefully hidden. In the desert's emptiness there is nothing to hide behind, nothing to conceal; there is nothing to distract. By the very fact of its emptiness, the desert is a perfect place for revelation, a perfect place for confrontation. Hosea spoke of God luring Israel back into the wilderness so that it would once again have to deal with God's revelation. What makes a desert is precisely its paucity of distractions. There the silence is both vocal and visual. It was to such an environment that God called Israel. God called Israel to the desert lJecause it is a place of confrontatitn. = A desert is not geographical; it is an attitude, a cond.ition, a state of the soul. Nor are deserts fixed areas of terrain. Deserts-lie waiting beneath the sarface of skin and sou!. They bubble up, from time to time, like springs of sand that rush out and flood into life. Deserts can appear overnight or sometimes in a~single, often climatic, moment. We close our eyes one unsuspecting night to the lush greenness of our lives only to awake., to nothing, to a howling empty expanse of sand and sky. Deserts are works of art, created not without some little effort. They do not appear randomly or-by accident. God creates deserts in our lives whenever God's patience runs dry. God creates deserts out of thelushness of our lives to force an issue we have otherwise avoided. M~ike no mistake, our lives are indeed lush, not with vegetation, but with things to do, thoughts to ponder, problems to solve, people to meet, greet, to make love and war with. Duti.es, tasks, responsibilities, projects are the trees, plants, shrubbery that have been planted within our lives but which have grown and multiplied at a rate and in a density that isall their own. Many of us, however, have allowed them to grow out of control. The lush foliage that .fills our days and lives~is our alibi. There is so much to perceive, so much to do, so much to read and consider and wonder at, can anyone, human, or divine, blame.us for atleast being selective with our attentiveness? For missing,something here and there? We have so many revelations to deal with in even a single day, how are we to know which is the most impOrtant, the most necessary? We have attempted, though, to cover, not only our Harvesting Silence / 17 tra.cks ~with all our foliage,but God's as well. Prepare ye, then for the dr~ught Whereupon God shall create:in and a~ound us,-from the chaos of our lives, a single, simple desert from which shall emerge in bold silhouette the real, the. true, the ,necessary. Dfteo when I am in a. desert there are two passages that frequently come .to mind. One passagd is from Ursal Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. It is a story about a young man struggling to become a wizard. At one point in his training he. is given this sage bit of advice: ¯ ~ You thought, as a boy, that a mage is on6 who can do anything. So I , thought, once: So did we all::And the truth is that as a man's real power . ~grows and his khowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows nar-or. ower:- until at last he chooses n~thing, but does only find wholly what he must do . ,~ The trick, it would seem, is to find that must do. It is easier said than done. But difficult though it may be, it~ strikes me as being nonetheless true. ~The key to the finding seems to revolve around getting in touch with limitations, the paucity of resources and talents wherein lies our realistic avenue of . growth.-The desert seems a fitting place for recognizing one's limits, the truth about oneself. ." ¯ .The other.passage that comes'to mind treats the same theme, this one from Annie Dillard's Teaching a ~Stone to Talk: I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. W.hat a blessing it would be "to ~asp your one necessity," if only, that is, one knew what-it was. To speak of doing what one "must do" is the same as sp6aking of what is "necessary,"~ and both require the same str~uggle, namely, hacking thr6ugh the jungle of options, choices and aliernatives in ~vhich ~we find ourselves. Times of decision, be they 'great or small, would be so much easier if only we could, perceive the necessary from all the possibiliti.es. There are simply too many choices, too many ways. In such times it is important io disentangle the seemingly necessary from the truly necessary. The de,eft is an excellerit place to do so; the desert is a refuge from the unnecessary. In the.desert one learns quickly what is involved .in returning to riecessity. One of the fi~'st things discovered is l~recisely how necessary the desert is. In the silence and starkness of the desert the unnec-essary has a way of shriveling up a.nd falling away or, in its self-ordained has~tb, of passing usoby. And when it does so, when all is finally quiet and deserted, when we stand surrounded by void, then look and listen well. What emerges from the stillness is that which we seek. I sit in my desert and watch a parade go by. There are clowns and 111 / Review for ,Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 bands, important people in convertibles smiling and waving, Each one wants those on the sidklinesto join them, to take up ranks bohind them, It is the parade,of the unneceskary. Right now I am watching it pass by. I am waiting for"the still, small voice I've heard follows, behind." Sometimes amid: all the noise it goes by unnoticed. Clowns, bands, and crowds make almost as mubh~ noise as winds,, earthquakes and fires. T6 hear it, .then, one must wait and listen attentively. : ~ ~ " ~ ~. ~ . While I wait I notice something about the parade; Us~ually parades move along slowly, butnot 'this one. I ~vonder if it doesn't resemble more a race, a marathon,'than a parade. It reminds me of the joke ab6ut the airline, pilot who was hopelbssly lost but making excellent time:° I wonder ¢vhere the parade/race ends? I don't think it does. It looks a little funny but obviously it isn't~ Everyone heems so serious. I'm beginning to feel guilty and irresponsible just sitting here. ~But l haven't heard the yoice yet, the. still, small one. Actually, I'm:rather glad they ~'e rushing on. They all make me nervous., ~ Gradually the parade moves on. And still I sit, silently waiting. I think the voice is also shy. lt figures; small, still things usuallyare. There are two possibilities: one, it's watching me to see whether l'm safe b~efore it,co, mes out; or, two, it doesn't know that I'm here. Either way, I'll.wait. It will be along sooner or lat.er, that is, if it's necessary. A desert is anything but empty; despite all appearances t9 the ontr~ary, it is filled with an i~i~ense silence. It is so silent and Calm and stilithai~every breath, every heartbeat booms. It is incredibly difficult,oif not impossible, to be uhawat~ in a desert. The sparcity of gcen~ry seems somehow to cleanse the senses. The silence that is both vocal and .visual! Washes over the eyes an~l ears and all the'other senses. In fact, so acute does sensing become that, it can assume an alfiaost paranoic nature. The irony is that.';vhile we imagine things that' are not there, we tend to deny whak is. We struggle in the intense desert silence,~struggle with wafiting to believe with all our hearts "it is'only a mirage," yet haunted by the question "Was it real? Is it~iteal'? The desert silence makes~us realize that, havir~g been so dulled by the Sens6ry:"blitz of life, we hav~ 10st the art of l~erception. There is so muchto see and hear and behold that we noqonger.know.how: Either We have learned to sc?eeh so effectiv~ely, the noise and pace of our lives orwe are blinded an~i:deaf~ned by it all: in either event, once in'the'desert' with so little to sye'and hbar we find we really do not know h6w {o do ~either; But then, that is the°poini"of being in the desert. Harvesting Silence / 19 The desert is a place for not. only confronting things divine; it is first, and perhaps primarily, a place for encountering things human. In a desert wh~t first.is confronted is consciousness. What better way to appreciate sight and Sound than to have,them takenaway. In the desert., where there is nothing, to .see, we learn again how~ to see. In the desert, where there is nothing tohear~but the howling of the Wind, we learn how to listen to ~the spirit. But what" we see and .hear first with our rediscovered senses is ourselves. In the°desert~ in becoming Conscious of ourselves, we paradoxi-cally discover that self-consciousness is the antithesis of consciousness. I do not mean by self-corisciousness the knowledge and recognition of the truth ~about~ourselves. The Christian tradition is adamant about self-knowledge as the starting point in-the search for God. Hear, for example, the iestimony of St. Isaac of Syria, a sixth-century desert father: i~' Enter eagerly into the treasure-house that'lies within you, and so you will see the treasure-house of heaven: for the two are the same, and there is but one single entry into ihem both. q'lie lhdder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within you. Dive into yourselfand :in your soul you will discover the rungs by which to ascend. ° Or, for example, ten centuries later,Teresa of Avila writes in a similar vein: It is no small pit~; and'should cause us little shame, that, through bur own fault, we do not .understand ourselves, or know who we ate. Would ~it not ¯be a sign of great ignorance, my daughter, if a person were asked who he o o was and could not say, and had no idea who his fatheror mother.was, or from what country he came? BecOming conscious of ourselves, both for its own sake and as a means to union with God, is indeed well aitested in theChristian~traditi0n. What is not as-well documented, or.at leastnot as talked about; is the adverse effect self-crnsciou~ness has on ou~ i~bility to be conscious and aware, to perceive not 0nly God, but~the world in which we live. It takes great ignorance, great childlikeness to be consciously aware. On the other hand it is quite impos~sible to be both self-crnscious and child-like at the same time; people are'either one or the other. For example, a child does riot care how he or She looks to oth(rs. This unself-cohsciousness so characteristic of children 'we call innocence. 'It is innocence. It is inno-cence that allows a child to be enthralled when an adult's self-conscious concern for propriety and dignity would compel them to be less conspicu-ous, though'also less perceptive. Annie Dillard-calls innocence "the spirit's unself-conscious state at any momenl~°of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness .and total concentration." How.many adults have ¯ the freedorri, the unself-co'nsciousness it takes to coricentrate with recep- 20 /~Reviewfor Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 tiveness and devotion? Those, to be sure, who are most childlike in attitude and orientation. And is this not the point behind the command to :'die to self" in order to follow Christ? Can Christ live in us if we are filled with our self?. Perhaps, too, only children.can enter-the kingdom because it takes a child's unabaslied ability to see and hear to perceive it. Children are life's tourists. They walk about gaping and gawking at every thing and eve.ry one. We permit:.them to do so, to look foolish because they are, after all, only children, who don't yet know any better. But we_ deprive ourselves of the same ability and freedom to stand and behold the ordinary and extraordi-nary things in our lives and in our selves. We let self-consciousness interfere with satisfying our thirst to be truly conscious and aware of the hidden mysteries of life, hidden because to see them we must get down on our hands and knees with our backsides exposed for all to see and crawl about or simply sit motionless for minutes and hours and wait as life unfolds according to its own whim or inner law. To be ~ruly ~ware, truly, conscious of any thing°or any one, let alone God, we must be willing and able toleave ourselves and enter into the reality of the thing or person we are with. Counselors call it attending, the rest of us call it listening, the ability to truly be with another, to share that person's experience; to enter into that persoi~'s life. To attend, toe listen, like any form of consciousness, takes self-emptiness. The desert,s unself-conscious silence is paradigmatic of the emptiness we~need to emulate in order to be aware. We cannot find the. emptiness to be truly receptive, truly devoted, truly conscious, if all our senses are already filled to overflowing with se/f-consciousness. ~ Outside my window and down a little hillside, used to stand se.veral ~trees and different sorts of unruly shrubs. When the trees had bee~n cut down and .the shrubs cleared away, lo, there all at once appeared the river that had hid behind them. In a similar sort of way, self-cons.ciousness comprises much of the lushness that blocks off our ability to see beyond ourselves, to perceive the almost insanely mysterious world we live in. The desert, though, is much too hot and dry to produce much vegetation. The aridity of the desert similarly bakes away our own self~onsciousness. We sit and sweat in our deserts until our senses open like pores and we once again can perceive the horizons we obscured ~with ourselves. ~ In the desert we learn unself-consciousness through a form of sensory deprivation. ,There is so little to see and hear in ~the desert, so little to do that we become deadly bored, even with ourselves. As a result., we launch out a ravenous hunt for something or,~anything to see or hear. For ex~ample, fa:sting cleanses t.he palate. After even a~day 9f fasting.e.ven~ the simplest broth tastes remarkably good. So in the desert, when our senses fast, we Harvesting Silence rediscover the beauty of the little and unnoticed things of life, thingS otherwise lost in all the lushness; ~ III There is another quality to deserts, they are excellent places to get lost. There are very few land' marks in a desert. Ev6n the sand dunes shift. That is why people who iraverse the desert wastes often do so at night, when they can at least rise the stars as navigational guides. All of' this is quite distressing, especially to those exp~e~'ienced with desert lifel IQlost of us have lives With Paths well worn from da.ily routines, habitg, and regul~roPatterns of behavior. We seldom stray from those paths and so'seldom face the reality of gettirig lost. For all our-fi~eedom of will and actionl most of us are likg trains committed to a given track. BUt at least that way. our lives are fairly stable, regular, an~ predictable. At ~uch and such a time we do this and that, and th6n the next routine is followed-- a.nd God help those who try to disrupt the pattern. And so we mbve quite confidently and assuredly ~tirough our lush little jungle lives. At any given moment we~kno~v where we are and what comes next. One way of knowing that we have b~en spiritually teleported ~nto a d~sert is when ~the old routine no longgr works. The stability has become ihstead sterility. Or we may find ourselv.es ina degert as a resultof_some "derailment," some experience or event that thro~vs-us off the carefully laid pattern of our lives. Our first response to this is¯ frequently anger, then panic. The anger is a response to the realization of how thin the veneer is to the ¯ iJlusion that we are in control of bUt lives, that we indeed are not the masters ~t:bur destiny. Then come~ the ~anic when we find our lives are increasin.gly Without purpose or direction. The former goa!s no longer seem as satisfying or even worth the effort. The sense of aimlessness grows and deepens until we rffust adfiait that we, our lives, are lost. The trumpets have all died nbw. Their ruckus.was only to set the stage, .like the wihd, earthquake, ahd fire, for "what is to follow. Before the duthority of the trumpets all other sounits quail. Before their power all else stands dumb in awe. The silence of the other sounds forms an open fieldo that draws all attention.to a sblemn, solitary figure. Bravely and boldly I shout out, "The ti~e has come! I hi~ve grown up. Now I am¯ ready to go oui in ~earch of my destiny! I am going out in search of myself to myself. I am laundhing'an expedition whose ~oal it is to discover and encounter ~ / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 God!? Secretly and equally as silent, the ramparts surrounding the king-dom of heaven make ready for this new assault. But don't mistake the actions, they do not raise new battlement, nor do they send out patrols and war parties. Rather, they assemble and make ready the rescue crews that will search for this new expedition's survivors. Many o~us, at one time Or another, do strike out in search of our lives. Our main goals are past exp~.riences of mastery over earlier tasks and duties. Ultimately, these expeditions, sooassured of success, all wind up in the ~me pla, ce~ h.opelessly lost in some or another desert. Our prey, whether pu.rpose, mea0~ ing, desti ~ny, br God had led us.on unexp~ectedly to a place we never intended to go. We followed it fearlessly into l~he desert and sud.denly find it is too late, too late tO go back, too lost to go ahead. Our careful plans, otir former experience~ had not pl:epared us for this. We are lost, empty, alone; well do we fit into the environment of the desert. At times when we mhy feel this way, lost and empty, without meaning and control, in desperate need of guidance and direction, we should not lament, for the strategy is Working. Th~ strategy of ~ear~hing for God is simple: get yourself so hope.lessly lost that God fias nochoice but to go out and find you~ This much is simple, and most p.eople accomplish it without even trying. Unfortunately, it is only half the str.ategy. The rest is much more 'distas~teful but becomes easier to swallow the longer and more hope-l~ sly we. remain lost. The remainder of the° sti'ategy is this: we must be willing ~0 be found'and (this is the clincher) we m~t agree to being found~i on God's terms. The whole magnific~'nt adventure, whether we entered upon it willingly or found ourselves thrust into it, has this as its purpose: agreeing to God's terms for being found, recognizing and. accepting our dependence upon God. I've wandered around in circles for a longtime ~ithout wanting to be found. It's not that I like being lost, it's just that I'm not ready to accept the terms for being found. Don't forl yourself, God's magnanimity is not without its own sort of conditions. God's conditiOns, however, arise not out of stubbornness; they are mediated by necessity. If, for example, a person wants to become an Olympic athlete, one of the conditions that must be met to fulfill that dream is submitting to the rigors of training and practice. Faced 'with those conditions, that person may opt to observe the games rather than participate in them directly: It's not enough to. wants.to be found; one must need it so m~uch that he or she is wilting to le.t go of other things and embrace willingly. ~he ~necessary conditions. 0.ne of the hardest conditions to accept is letting go of the way I would like to go and follow instead the way ! feel led. The reason mhny peoPle get. Harvesting Silence lost to begin with is because they didn't follow the directions they were given. I want my life to lead in this direction but by following it the feeling of hopelessness and aimlessness only-continues more strongly. My alterna- ¯ tives are two: keep going the way I want even if it means staying lost, or giving in and following with greater commitment the way I feel compelled to go. In my ingenuity I present to God a third plan: "Couldn't we both wander around my path together? That way I could go in the direction I want and you would be with me so I wouldn't feel lost. It may not be the waY home but at least it's easier and more scenic than the way you want to go." No,l don't think so. When we find ourselves in a desert, it may be that we need to reassess the path that led us there to begin with, the routines and habits we so blindly foJlow, that we assume are so necessary. The desert silence and emptiness are not a punishment; they are created as the location for finally confronting the truth about our lives. In the desert, God lives and acts and interacts accord!rig to God's own rules and pace of life. The harvest the desert offers may well be a different,'more spontaneous; a freer and more conscious way of life. It may not be as stable and predictable or as important as one of our own choosing, but it may be more conducive for perceiving clearly the necessary presence of God speaking and poking through our well-~orn paths at unexpected times. The ironic thing about deserts is that they are excellent places to be found. In contrast to our often harried lives, deserts are so bleak and stark that God has no trouble finding us.o ° Waiting for Warmth: A February Poem The water's running cold as 1 stand before the mirror waiting for it to warm before I wash and shave and comb my hair. l'm waiting, too, for something else to flow, for a coldness in me to go, warmed in the light of a love that won~ run out as 1 grow,o.ld. ~Neath my winter stillness something stirred. My eyes pooled with melting fears. A quiet spring cleared my doubts away whi!e.washing "my f~ce with tears. Jerome Schroeder, O.EI~I. Cap. Martin Fraternity 843 West GarfieldBlvd. Chicago, IL 60621 Toward a Theology of Health Care Robert A. Brungs, S.J. Father Brungs is Director of the Institute for Theological Encounter with° Science and Technology; His article is based on an address delivered to a meeting of the Health Care. Province of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration on the occasion of a week-end of prayer and reflection. Father Brungs may be addressed through his office: ITEST: 221 N. Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. There is always a temptatio.n, when speaking about the role of a specific group in a larger group, to become quite general, or even utopian. I am deliberately trying to turn my back on that temptation to.day. I cannot and will not adequately address the "role of women in the Church"; the most significant reason for this incapability is that I am not a woman. What I hope to do is to set up a rough framework really a set of boundaries --that should be determinative in any discussion of the role of anyone in the Chin:oh. There is an easy language now in vogue. We glibly speak about our "role in the Church": the role of men, the role of ttie women, the role of the priest, and so on. I would submit that the language is inexact, blurring the reality and therefore dangerous to, and possibly even subversive of, our service to God. We do not "play" or "fulfill" roles in the Church; we live our lives in the Church. The Church, as we ~would all agree, is the developing kingdom of God~ It is that seed 'of the final, blessed kingdom which as St. Mark tells us "is sprouting andgrowing;how he [we] does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then. the ear, then the full grain in the ear" (Mk. 4:27-28). "Sh6 [the Church] becomes on earth," as Vatican II states, "the initial building fbrth of that kingdom [of Christ and of God]. While she slowly grows, the Church ~trains toward the consum-mation of the kingdom and, with all her strength, hopes and .desires [italics 24 Toward a Theology of Health Care mine] to be urfited in glory with her King" (Lumen Gentium, 5). I am stiggesting here that our relationship in and withthe Church is absolute. "Our life in the Church" is precisely and only that, namely, our life, our only life. The Church. is not an association of people in which we fulfill some function but which we can leave to perform another function in some other association. It is not like a man or a woman working in a business, and aiso living apart in a family. The Church demands as she must demand--total commitment and total dedication. Once we have put our hand to the plow there is no turning back, no alternative except betrayal. "Role-language," I fear, can finaliy obscure that rock-bottom, basic commitment. Our lives as religious are intrinsically apostolic (and therefore "service") lives 'not roles. That is the promise we have made to God and to which we have bound ourselves by'vows. Having said that, let us look again at our world, our universe in Which Church is, in which we live. We live in a real universe that has (God-given) boundaries. The universe, created and redeemed by God, has a structure, and structure impliesdimit. This universe in which we live, of which we are a part, is limited, even though what we see as its limits may not be the true ones. °We live, because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, in a new creation: "And for anyone who is in Christ,'there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God's work" (2 Co 5: 17-18). That world in which we live is created in and through the 'Word of God, and the world and all mankind finds its end and goal in the fullness of the Word-made-flesh. This first fact offaith°~bsolutely undergirds and specifies our understandir~g of ourselves/as-human as men and women since that meaning is found'in, and founded upon, the meaning of Christ's humanity. ~ ~. To understand the meaning of our lives in 'the° meaning of Christ's lifr, we must also.understand the meaning of the Christian community, of the Church: "Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we-know him now" (2 Co 5:16). We now know Christ~ sacramentally, in the Church which° is his body. Thus, an understanding of the Church is necessary, along with a spirituality that consciously, prayerfully, and lovingly recognizes the communal aspects ofour lives as Christians. In this community of God's people we undergo the transformation frorri self-absorption (doing our own thing for our own ends), through the cross (the painful death to our own desires), to the resurrection (the loving conformity of our wills to that of.the~Father). Our life in the Church is.the uneven, painful.but joyous response to that most fundamental commandment Christ Jesus hasgiven us: "You must therefore be perfect just as y~ur heavenly Father is perfect'~ (Mt 5:48). Jesus Christ as Lord is the goal, the 26 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 destiny of the entire race as an interpersonal community. The community of Christ's people of which we each are members .in union--is not merely a sociological grouping; it is the sacrament of Christ.present in the world, a prix;ileged community sacramentally, symbolically, representing, fulfilling, and manifesting the goal to. which .we are all directed, namely, the fully established kingdom of God. "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 P. 2:9). A second fact of fait.h is our membership in a chosen people, in a community set apart to serve and praise the Lord. There are many w.ays of approaching the mystery of Christ and its meaning for an understanding of.our humanity, and, of course, our sexuality. Since we live in a fallen world redeemed, indeed, but not yet t.otal!y so the best we can do as humans, and that haltingly, is to live sacramentally. The authentic human is integral; and we are not. Much of our search for a meaning of the human is a search for an integrity not given us. here. Our physical reality, as sacramental, as symbolic, points to a reality~that it does not contain. We live not in terms of fruition but in hope. We.cannot now co.reprehend the truth of the fully human; we can only live toward it. To seek a non-fallen expression.of ourselves as human in a yet-to-be-fully-redeemed world is to seek for that which will not be given. This, t~en;js a third fact: we are dis-integral, still seeking our fulfillment as human in the full and final kingdom of God. But, looking ahead.to that final kingdom, there are some things we can say. The~ Scriptures offer us no systematic definition of the human, nor.do they intend to do.so. Full unders~tanding of our humanness is to. be had only in that final kingdom which is still shrouded in mystery. But we can say some things even though their full meaning eludes us. ,.They ca~ at least serve as. guides~. For e.xample, in the fulfilled kingdom of God we shall be integrally human. We don't understand what human integrality is, but we do know some things it is not. We shall not be beasts, nor shall we be angels. The Catholic doctrine is that we shall have bodies, identifiably and recogniz~ably our own and, therefore, specific. We shall remain enfleshed. The imperfections and disabilities that are ours in this world will fall away. We have no detailed knowledge of the risen body, and both Saints Paul and A.ugustine remind us of the futility of speculation in this realm. Biat we know that we are not seeking a return to some "golden age'--back to the Garden of Eden in .order more fully to understand ourselves. Adam and ¯ Eve are not the models of our final humanness. Rather, Christ and.Mary the second Adam and second Eve as integral humans, integrally related and united, contain all the meaning of our authentic humanness. Toward a Theology of Health Care Thus we have a fourth fact: our fullmeaning will be found in Christ.and Mary integrally united with each other. In summary: in any discussion of our lives in the Church, we must remember some facts of faith: (l) our understanding of ourselves is to be found in the meaning of Christ's humanity; (2) that.~neaning includes our membership in a community set apart to serve and praise God, as he wills it; (3) in the present course of salvation history, we are disintegral and seek ¯ our fulfillment elsewhere, in the final Kingdom of God; (4) our full meaning as humans--as individual specific human beings incorporated into God's community' -is to be found in Christ and Mary, in the integral unfallen r~lationship between them. At this point, you might well be asking if I have indeed avoided the tempta~tion I mentioned at the beginning. These are general statements, it is true. But I believe they are necessary to locate our discussion. What they say, essentially, is that we do not live in a vacuum. Our lives, our options, and our meaning are not unlimited. There are precise, significant limita: tions in ourattempted service of God. These limitations are summed up in that term we use so often: "The Will of God." Yet the Will of God most often remains mysterious as it must, Since it is only in fulfillment that we shall know as we are known. But the mystery is not one of total ignorance. The boundaries in which that Will is to be followed have been :revealed to us, and the four facts I have mentioned above are a part of that boundary within which.~ we are:to act. Still, we must get more specific. You are not just women; you are Consecrated women. More, you are not just consecrated women; you are members of" the Franciscan Sisters Of Perpetual Adoration, and then, laboring in their Health Care Province. These facts also act as:bouridaries within which your .service of .Christ and of his Church occur. They are not restrictions in that service; rather they are charismatic delineations of your promiseit service. They represent ybur response to the needs of the community of God's People, a response prompted by the Charism of your foundress. That spirit is a determining factor in how you face the future of your apostolic commitment to ~the growth of God's kingdom qn the Church. But as we all know a charism is given to an individual for the good of the community, for the growth and' strengthening of the Lord's Body. And within that Body ~ there is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of services to be done, but always to the same Lord;oworking in all sorts of different w.ays in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is ,28 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 for a good purpose. One may have th, e gift of preaching with wisdom given him by the Spirit; another may have the gift of preaching instruction given him .by the same S.pirit; and another the gift of faith given b~- the same Spirit; anot ~her again the gift of'healing, through this one Spirit; one, the power of miracles; another, prophecy; another the gift of recognizing spirits; another the gift of tongues and another the ability to iiaterpret them. All these are the work of ofie and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different'people just a'~ he chooses" (1 Co 12:4-11). St. Paul goes on to discuss the Body of Christ, and says: "Now you together are Christ's body; but each of you is a different partof it'(12:27). We are each of us unique, a unique gift of Godto his Church and finally to his fulfilled kingdom. Each of, us I, you, each human .being has a unique, irreplaceable, never-to-be-repeated history with God. Each of us has been given an unrepea~ble set of talents and lack thereof, perfections and lack thereof, strengths and concomikant weaknesses. And each of us .has responded to God out of this being which is ours alone. Each.of us has lived in a perfectly irreproducible history, with relationships to other humans, to other segments of creation and to God. Each, in brief, brings to the Church and to God irreplaceable, unique gifts that cannot be substituted for by anyone else. And it is as individuals that we live in and help make up the commun, ity of God. We live in that community, bear responsibility in it, live out our love in it so deeply that our being a member of that community becomes an irreplaceable part of us and we of it. Although it may seem paradoxical, we are finally "communal individuals." As with each of us as ,individuals, so with those consecrated families of men and women within the Body of Christ. Each religious family--as with each Christian family has its own unique history in the Church, and unique gift to the Church, and unique service to the .People of God. In discussing our role in the Church, we must combine our'individual gifts and history with ~the mission that our religious family has offered to the Body of Christ and which that Body has accepted. We cannot, in brief, deny our gifts nor our history. This weekend you will be praying and Speaking fromoyour own history as a religious comm.unity and from your own gifts particularly your gifts of being women--and there I can be of no help to you. But I believe I can say some things of value with regard to your apostolic charism. And it is to a discussion of this apostolate that I intend to move now. It would be well to consider the place of the healtti care apostolate in the life of the Church. The Health Care Al~ostolate In the ninth chapter of thb Gospel according to St. Luke we. read: Toward a Theology of Health Care / 29 ~He [Jesus] called the Twelve together and ~gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. ~ This gives a clear link between proclaiming the kingdom of God and healing. Thus it is very important for us to articulate and specify the reasons for the Church's institutional presence in and through you and your partners and helpers in the apostolate of health care, or bett~r, of heating and caring. If the Church is going successfully to face decisive changes in health care, and if you are goings,to continue, and deepen, your service to the Church in caring and curing, it is necessary for us to understand as fully as possibie the Catholic dimensions of health care. What are the reasons for the Church's long and deep involvement in health care an involvement that has been so eloquently witnessed by the Work of your community for a century? Is health care--or let us say it better, the care of the sick, the aged, and the weak--is this care something that the Church entered upon historically because no one else was doing it? Or is there something in the very heart of Christian reality that calls forth no, demands such activity? I believe that each one of us here wouldin.stinctively, and rightly, respond that the care of the sick, the weak, and the aged is not peripheral 'to the Gospel. Rather we instinctively know that it is a duty imposed on us by the Lord. There are at least three central reasons for the Church's emphasis on the healing.apostolate that I would like to mention today. They are not exclusive in the sense that there are no others, nor are they cleanly separable from each other. But each of them is very important to our fuller understanding of what the. health care apostolate means to the Church. And each may be helpful as you discern your role of mission in, to, and for the Church. Tl~e ;Great Commandment .First, we have the "second greatest" commandment that our Lord passed on to us: to "love our neighbors as.we love ourselves." This, as we all know, is given a very concrete specification in chapter twenty-five of St. Matthew's gospel:. "For I vbas hungry and you gave.me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and yo.u made me welcome'; naked and you clothed me, sick and'you visited me, in prison and you'came to see me . Insofar as you did this to one of the leasLof these brothers of mine, you did it to me.~ The care of the ~sick, then, is one of the ways in which we Christians ~ / Re?iew for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 carry out that new and solemn command of Christ, given to .us on the night before he died to heal us all: "This is my commandment: 'love one ~nother as I have loved you." Before it is anything else, then, the care of the infirm is an immediate, direct response in charity to the love that our Lord has shown to us. In itself, this would be reason~ enough for the Church's presence in health care. But there are at least two other important aspects basic aspects, really to her involvement in this apostolic work as well. Messianic Sign The first of these'other-reasons can be found in the seventh chapte.r of St. Luke's gospel. The pertinent passage is solemn enough to permit a rather long citation: ,~The disciples of John gave him all this news [the healing of the centurion's servant and the raising from the dead of the.son of th~ widow of Nain, which Luke mentions immediately prior], and John, summoning two of his disciples.~, ~ent them to the'Lo'~-d to ask, "Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait° for someone else?" When the men ieached ~Jesus ¯ they said: "John the B~aptist has sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one °°°who is to come or have we'to wait for someone else?" " It was just then that he cured many people of diseases and afflictions and of evil spirits, and gave the" gift ~of sight to many ~. who were blind. Then he gave the messengers their answer: "Go back and tell John what you have seen and .o heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are Cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimedto the poo.r an.d happy is the man who does not lose faith in me." In this passage Jesus is, in effect, telling John the Baptist that he (Jesus) is doing that~work which Isaiah foretold would accompany the presence of the Messiah among his~ people. Thesd acts of healing were the oOnly credentials he would give to the one Who was to go before him. The blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, and so on, all these are witnesses to the presence of the Messiah among his people. Th'ey are the living witnesses to the da~vning of. the messianic times--the only witness John would receive. But now the Messiah arid Lord is still present to his people sacramentally in the Eucharist. And the Church~the .Bride in her health~ care apostolate, in her working to heal the sick and care for the infirm, witnesses to that eucharistic presen~ of the Lord. In her work to help~the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers be cleansed in all that-~-she says to us, and to the world, that the Messiah and Lord is still among-us. Thus, caring for: and healing the sick is a quasi-sacramental, witness .to the continuance of the messianic times inaugurated by Jesus Christ and continuing in the Church until he finally returns to us-in glory to make all Toward a Theology of Health Care things fight. The distress in the world illness~ decay, and death--which revelation tells ug is the result of sin, is slbwly being overcome in the Church, and will indeed be overcome completely in heaven. It is the task of the Church to witness to the life of him who is her life. By her existence she witnesseg to'his existence. By her involvement in the care for and healing of the ill, the oppressed, and the poor-:through your commitment and your devoted work--she says both that the Lbrd is still with us sacrfiment~illy, andthat; when he returns to us in all his glory, we shall all be healed of all our infirmities. Your work in hospitals, then, is a profound statement of our belief that the Lord is with rus still. Thus, on this score as well as that of a direct response in charity, the health care apostolate--since it witnesses to the messianic presence of Christ and to the sacramentality of the present age is central"t6 the faith, to Christian living. It is one of the mbst important .~iays we have to say that "ther6 is a new creation, the old creation has gone, and no~ the new one is here." A Church, that did not witness to the presence of the healing Christ through the~'caringfor and°curing the sick, would be radically unfaithful in her proclamation of the Good News of God's saving presence to his people. SO, let no one disturb you as to the importance, to the centrality to the faith, of your ~apostolic commitment. witness to the Last Time , Thirdly, through you who are engaged in health care as well as in other ways, the Church witnesses to her faith that.°ur bodies will rise to glory through God's powerful gift to us. The resurrection of ohr bodies is one of the great truths entrusted to the Church. It is also one of the truths that we h~,i,e great difficulty'~with, as did the Jews and Greeks. The Jewish Sadducees rejected the notion of the resurrection of the body, and the Greeks were content to.snigger and mock it. In the aftermath of St. Paul's speech in the Areopa~gus in Athens (Ac 17:30-33) we see this nonbelief: God overlooked that sort of thing [thinking that the deity looks like anything in gold, silver, or stone that has been carved and designed by a man] when men were ignorant, but now he is telling everyone everywhere that they must repent, because he has fixed a day when the whole world will be judg&d, and judged in righteousness, and he has appointed a man to be the judge. And God 'has publiciy proved this by raising this man from the dead.- At this mention of rising from the dead, some of them burst out ~ laughing; 6thers said; "We. would like to hear you talk about this again." But it is that ill, corruptible, even corrupting body in the doctor's office ¯ or in the hospital bed that will ris6 into glory! It is that body which you ~2 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb:, 1986 wash or soothe or treat that will be with God forever. There is a serious need right now for the Church to make her instincts on the meaning and significanc~e of the human .body !n our salvation and glorificatio.n more But even now, despite our ignorance, there'are still some things we can s.ay, though not as ~well as we should b~ able. We are not, for exam~ple, saved and glorified in g.eneralities, but in our particularities. We shall, be saved~and glorified as men or. women, as white, black, yellow, or red, as persons of a definite time and place and ethnic background. Our glorified bodies will not be some kind of "generalized matter." These bodies of ours mine and each of yours--are the only. way in which our spirits are manifested in created reality. Our bodies are, and will continue to be, the unique material signature 9four spirits in creation. My spirit,.y0ur spirit., cannot manifest themselves in any old body, but only in my body, on.ly in your body. The union of body ~and spirit that is I--that unique harmony that alone is I is very specific, now and in heaven. This conclusion comes directly from the Church~s dogmati~ position that we shall rise phy.sic.ally, and recognizably ourselves. The health care apostolate--the care of specific people with specific problems, real people who.hurt is one of the most impo .r?tant ways that the Church, the Bride of Christ, has of proclaiming the truth that our bodies, in all their particularities, are sig0ificant, are good, are holy, are-to be saved, are to be glorified. We shall return to this ~notion later on, but for now let us merely say that this belief in, and witness to, the resurrection of our own bodies gives a further intrinsic meaning to the (~hurch's institu-tional concern with and commitment to the healing of the body and caring for the sick. You are saying, by your touch, that this body is significant to salvation and glorification. Changes in Mi~dical Practice ~o ~ It needs no stating here that, as in many other areas of Catiaolic life, there are quite severe stresses in the Catholic health apostolate. This should corrie as no surpris~ to any of us. In fact, if these stresses were not present, we could only conclude either that our health institutions were not providing modern health care, or .that these institutions were no longer Catholic. Since neither conclusion is true, stress is inevitable. Tensions and problems arise from many sources: from profound changes in medical practice itself; from a growing shortage of nuns in ~the health care apostolate; from. a.loss of control of hospital administration and policy; from increasing governmental intervention in health care; and, finally, °from some of the same confusion that is present in the rest of Catholic life. Toward a lheology of Health Care Here, I shall consider only some of the profound changes in medical practice that have occurred in the last quarter century, Even within that relatively narrow area I intend to mention only two aspects, hardware and attitudes. We are aware of the growth of technological medicine which has placed so much new hard~vare between the patient and the doctor, and has raised the cost of medicine so much. This does not imply that technological medicine is bad or is inappropriate, merely that it is different. But the new technology does tend to separate the doctor or nurse from the patient. It tends to emphasize "cure" as "care." It can make the practice of medicine seem more .mysterious and less tiuman to the "patient.' Finally, the proliferation of hardware could (although not necessarily Will) lead the health care professional to an unconscious, indeliberate attitude ~that~the patient is some sort of a "thing" to be "repaired." The growth of this kind of attitude toward patients is but a part of the growth of a technological point of view foward human beings that is occurring in almost all phrts' of western societY. A question for health-care professionals, as for all of our society, is whether or not we are beginning to "lo0k oh human beings as some,things, to be manipulated at whim. The increase in medical technology,.of "hardware," between the patient and the health-care professional demands our attention, but it is not the greatest change inthe practice of medicine in the past twenty-five years. ,Up till now, the greatest impact of this increase in medical technology has probably been in the realm of cost. But the attitudes that can be engendered should not be overlooked. We cab leave this for~a moment so as to look ata far more'profound, and far less discussed, change in medical practice. A ,New Def'mition of Health 0 . Several years ago the ~World Health~Organization (WHO) developed ~and promulgated a new definition of health that reflects a significant shift in 'medical practice. To an extent, this shift is the source of much of the stress in the health-care apostolate. I used a relatively, neutral term--~ reflects--to describe the activity of WHO. To say that the WHO definition caused the shift would be an overstatement. Probably it would be more accurate to state that the WHO definition reflected a Change in attitude already well begun. Whatever cause and effect may be, there is a significant difference between the WHO definition and what most of us lay people think medicine (and health care) has been and ought to be. WHO defined "health" as a state of complete physical mental and social well-being. With a new definition of "health" can new definitions of .34 /.Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 "health care" be far behind? There are several key words in the WHO definitio~n th.at ought to be looked at carefully since ~hey imply a shift even a radical shift in our understanding of health care. The first word that needs consideration is "complete." "Complete" contains a very c.urious notion indeed. This word would have us believe, against all available evidence, that complete well-being is available in °this life. If one were so inclined, one could find in the concept of complete well-being a.denial of many Christian beliefs, from a denial of original sin to a denial of the existence of heaven. Christianity, through its teachingon original sin, warns us against expecting complete well-being on any level, in this world. It is only in heaven that total human justice and well-being will be achieved. The WHO definition, at this level, becomes a salvational statement, premised on the notion that salvation (complete healing of our ills) is achievable somehow through human knowledge. But let's not pursue this aspect any further here.Just on the pragmatic level, we all live with the knowledge that we are all going to die sometime. That knowledge in itself is incompatible with "complete well-being." Perhaps the word "complete" was thrown, into the definition just to make it look better. Still, in a world where health-care resources are at best gravely limit~ed, and where costs are. extremely high and getting higher, the notion of "complete. well-being" is nonsense. More, it is, as has been stated, anti-Christian if it is taken seriously. Health as Social Well-being Perhaps the most significant concept in the definition, insofar as it impacts on Catholic health care, is the relation of "health'~' to "social well-being." This statement reflects probably the greatest single shift in medical practice over the last thirty years, and the one of most immediate concern to the Catholic understanding of health care. It is centered in ttiose "medical" practices that have most agitated Catholics in health care;. the wide-spread dispensing of contraceptive medications and mood-altering drugs, abortion, and contraceptive sterilizations. They all find their rationale in the phrase "complete. social well-being." Most dispensation of contraceptive pills, IUD's, and so forth, have had very little.to do with the physical state of the women to whom they were given: The same, of course; can be said of abortion, contraceptive sterilization, and of course, the pervasive use of mood-expanding and mood-depressing drugs.¯ More often than not, the contraceptive and abortive technologies are resortedto for socio-economic reasons, or simply because the "patient" (or should we say "client"?.) did not~esire another baby. The use of these technologies, in by° far the largest number of cases, .does not serve the-pursuit of physical Toward a Theology of Health Care health, but rather the woman's (or her consort's) quest for convenience, the absence of distress, material possessions, and so f6rth. In a word, the health care profession has efitered--with seemingly little reflection into the "happiness-business." "This means," as George Will has stated in an article in The Washington Post, "that happiness is a medical commodity; happiness is the doctor's business. That, in turn, means almost everything is the doctor's business, so. medicine becomes a classification that excludes nothing, and hence does not classify." This change of attitiade in medical practice is of enormous implication" and concern for Catholic health care. Is the Catholic health concern to be directed exclusively to the removal of pathological barriers to good health and/or to 'the alleviation'of physical painand distress? or is it to be directed to "happiness," to "complete. social well-being"? This is~an immediate and very seribus question. And it is a questi.6n that is going to grow even more urgent in~,the future. Here, it might be well to look ahead just a bit to get a wider perspective of what these questions imply for Catholics, both individuals and institu-tions, in the rest of this century. . Future Questions There is a very good chance that the notion of"health" as "complete. social well-being': could easily become, within the next twenty-five years, the "complete. :. well-being of society. "This is not atall as farfetched as it may seem at first blush. Letus look at this carefully because it will have an almost unimaginable effect on the Church herself and, hence, on her institutional health care apostolate. We are now facing the greatest technological (as well as cultural and especially religious) challenge we human beings have ever know~f: the growing capacity technologically to master ourselves: For the first time in human history we.face a technological Challenge so powerful that it will have to be met primarily in terms of human ends; not merel3~ in t~rms of' techniques, means, and instrumentalities. These new techniques are so "powerful that any overreliance upon "bioethics," or even medical-moral theology, will be misplaced. The grave problem both for society and for the Church is one of meaning, not one of means. Among other things, any understanding of medical practice--in the light of emerging biotechnologies and bio-industries--must include the contemporary scientific-technological frame of mind out of which value judgments are most likdy to be made. The scientific-technological frame of mind is basically instrumental, since it has grown out of a mathematical worldview. That frame of mind looks on all things, human beings included, as essentially quantifiable and ~16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 manipulable. Michael Zimmerman has stated it most succinctly: "For us [contemporary humanity] to be means to be re-presented, or transformed and rearranged, according to. our desires and projects." As science and technology increasingly turn. toward knowledge of and power over the human., this spirit of transformation, applied to society on a broad scale, will become increasingly worrisome. Will our society feel that these new technologies will achieve their l~otential on an ad hoc, individual level? It seems doubtful. Rather, it seems° more likely that it will be decided that the full potential of biotechnology and bio-industry .can. be achieved only through systematic application across the society, i,e., by a methodical and methodological application. A~ .systematic technological intervention into the human requires some con-trolling ideological consensus of what it means to be human. These new p0we~, to be applie~d systematically on a society-wide basis, must be tied to some dominant notion of the human. It is important to discover which systdm is likely tO be dominant. With biotechnological capability, the dominant notion of medicine will no longer be returning people to some generally accepted norm of health, but rather the creation of new norms of health. That is to say that these new capacities will be directed finally to building new human beings. Th~ principal reason for any society-wide application of biomedichl or biogenetiC technologies is more order, less randomness, in the human situatibn. In consid~ering changes in the human to be passed on to future generations in order to develop new norms of health, one is really talking about eugenics. It is necessary for us to realize that the proposals being made for the use of biotechnological power will be directly aimed at buildi~ng a eugenic, society. Any.s0ciety-wide advance in improving the human stock will inevitably demand new criteria for social (and medical) judgment. As we move from con~ei'n for the physical health of individuals to the well-being of society, br 6f the species, what criteria will be applied to the medical use of bio-scientific discovery? It is most likely one is tempted to say necessary that the criteria for the social applications of, bioscience will be,the basic canons of-experimental science0wedded to the desires and demands.of the dominant cultural system. The three canons of experimental science are simplicity, predictability and reproducibility. In the. technological mode, "simplicity" becrmeso efficiency. Any rational attempt at eugenics demands a "predictable" product. Without such a predictable result, one might as well be content with what we have now. Moreover, if these predictable results are not "reproducible,~' eugenics must remain a fleeting dream, because random- Toward a Theology of Health Care ness will not have been overcome. As the philosopher, Charles Frankel, has stated: The most astonishing question of all po~ed by the advent of biomedicine, . probably, is why adults of high intelligence and considerable education so regularly, give themselves, on slight and doubtful provocation, to unbounded plans for remaking the race . Wight unites the Puritan radicals, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and the Maoists is the deliberate intention to create a "new man," to redo the human creature by design [italics mine] . The partisans of large-scale eugenics plannings, the Nazis aside, have usually .been people of notable humanitarian sentiments. They seem not to hear themselves. It is that other music that they hear, the music that says that there shall be nothing random in the world, nothing independent, nothing moved by its own vitality, nothing out of keeping with some idea: even our own children must not be our progeny but our creation. This "nothing random," "nothing ind.ependent" is the hallmark of experimental science. In the laboratory, the. system under investigation must be as tightly closed as possible. No random variations can be tolerated if the results are to be,reproducible. If the variables cannot be accounted for and controlled, no valid experimentation is possible. The systematic social application of biotechnology based on the canons of experimental science demands the closing ~of the social system and demands that no random, uncontrolled variations take place. In brief, the social system will have to become :the laboratory. Laboratory science is necessarily based on quantification and requires complgte freedom to transform and rearrange the 15asic structure of matter. If such science is to be applied to human beings in any kind 0f a collective fashion, it will demand the unrestricted control of social life. Judging from proposals now being made by many social planners not .to be confused with sociologists these technologies will be used in such a systematic fashion. We,can already see an example of this in the "culling process" in the widespread practice of abortion for :'fetal indications" to remove the burden of the care of such persons from society. The widespread socially orientate°d application of biotechnology~ will not be directed toward individual therapy, as medicine has been in the past. At best such application can be said to be "therapeutic" for society, for the "good of the species," or for some other abstraction. The notion of "nothing random in the world, nothing independent, nothing moved by its own vitality, nothing out of keeping with some idea" should alert us immediately to the source of the dominant social ideal being presented to us as the basis of the social use of these novel technologies. We have here~ ~11 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 in fact, a Gnostic salvation scheme that is essentially anti-Christian: "Gnostic" is taken from the Greek word for knowledge and refers to all those heresies that would provide salvation through human knowledge. Here we have anothel in a long list of salvation schemes oriented toward that final state When justice, .achieved solely through human effort, ~ will pervade the eiirth in historical time. It postulates the temporal perfectibility of the human and of creation. Biotechnology ra.ises questions that have to do with ends and purposes,~that depend on a deep understanding of the human. !n recent "advances," the question has always been set by the "innovator." The question has always been posed in favor, of the specific short term goal of the innovator; usually in a sentimental form. Take the three great reproductive ~technologies of the last twenty-five years: contra-ceptibn,~ abortion, and °"test-tube babies." In none of the issues has the question been posed beyohd short-term individual effects. Thes~ questions (with the answer almost~given) have been: "How can you think of denying people the techhology available to regulate and control the number of children they will have?" ',How can you deny a woman the ~right to those technologies.that will guarantee her control over her own body?" "How can you deny a~marfied couple, deeply in love,.a biological child of their own?" There is a thread common to each of these questions. They ignore history. They take for granted that individual acks of people ("between consenting adults, and so forth") are self-contained and have no relevance either for society or history. Nonetheless, the broadei" questions, must posed. The. meaning of the technology involved in things like contraception, abortion, and in vitro fertilization is critical in any approach to Catholic health care. Across the biotechnological spectrum we have moved from "sex without babies" (contraception and abortion) to "babies without sex" (in vitro fertilization and cloning.) ~ ~ The separation of sexual union from procreation (through contracep-tion and abortion) was, and is, necessary to build a social attitude willing to consider a~ human being as a product of technological achievement, as we now have with the successful birth of a "test-tube baby.," We 6annot allow ourselves to look at these new technologie.s only in themselves, without connection either to What has come before and what is most likely coming in the future. To treat them only in-themselves is to forego qiving in history,~ As has been stated several times, the essential question facing us in' the advance of biological science, technology, and industry (along with its implication for rriedicine) is ~-what it means to be human. We must face squarely whatever costs to human freedom and dignity that might be Toward a Theology of Health Care involved in these new technologies. In vitro fertilization, for instance, is not only some benign new technique that' will be used only to help"~ some Unfortunate, infertile couple have its own biological child. It can provide such an opportunity, but it is also the linchpin in the construction of a fully orchestrated eugenics program. We would be naive, even blind, if we ignore the eugenic probabilities thus opened up. o : Our society and this is especially needed in the Catholic approach to medicine--still has the opportunity to decide what description of "the human" it wishes to call its own. A society based on:laboratory models and techniques is not inevitable unless'we choose either the description of the human as essentially malleable, tO be transformed; to be rearranged, to be disposed of at Will, or else choose not to. think about these things at all; There is already sufficient momentum built into biotechnological advance to arouse serious anxiety unless we clearly and cleanly face ~in issue whose outcome is so momentous to our society and especially to the Church. To do nothing in:this matter-is a powerful statement in favor of'this momentum. And the apostolate of health care will be the first to feel this challenge. '~ ~ What Now? :When St., Paul was dragged before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, he exclaimed: "It is for our hope in the resurrection of the dead that° I am on trial'~ (Ac 23:6). And it is for our belief in the resurrection of the body that we are .on trial today. And nowhere does this trial have a greater impact than on those religious whose life is dedicated to the care and cure of the sick and the infirm. As was mentioned earlier, one of the faith-bases of our health care apostolate as an institutional involvement of the Church is the witness to ther meaning, the significance and dignity, 6f the human body in our salvation and glorification. We are not spirits using a body that we will some day leave behind, nor bodies merely moved by a spirit. We are the harmonious union of body and spirit. Neither "aspect of that union can be enhanced at the expense of the' other; neither can be mutilated 'for the sake of the other. Much of our .medical. (and social) attitudes toward the body are at least implicitly dualistic. We speak and act as though we were "persons" (somehow really disembodied) using a body. Often enough we seem to consider our personality as purely spiritual. This simply is not true! Our personalit3~ is spiritual-material. We are not,: nor will we ever angels. We cannot treat our bodies merely at whim without inflicting severe damage on ourselves. Many (if not all) of the reasons given for the nontherapeutic practices in medicin are couched in terms expressive of the 40 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 dualism of "using my body" or having "control over my body.", This is true, by the way, even of the majority report of the Papal Birth-Control Commission prigr to the issuance of Humanae ~Vitae. Despite its overwhelming concentration on the body, the modern attitude, even the medical attitude, is basically spiritualistic. This is seen even in the use of "person" in. liberation rhetoric. In essence, it is a call for "neuterization.'. There are no "persons"~ in this sense in which the word is so often used. There are rather on.ly womenoand men~ Persons are by nature specifically bodies, as men or women, as black,° yellow, red, or white, with a specific ethnic backgrgund, and so on. We are not,going to be saved and glorified as a "human~_nature.'' We are going to be saved as ourselves and this includes our accidents as well as our substance. The Catholic Premise It is n_ecessary for us as Catholics to develop a deeper,, more explicit u~nderstaiading of our bodies. This burden of enriching the Church falls on cache.of us, but most urgently on theologians (the~ theoreticians) and on those health-care professionals (the practitioners) working together in a communal defense of the Church's very profound instinct about the holiness and sacramentality of our bodied existence. It is in the area of ah explicit doctrinal understanding of that.sacredness and sacramentality that our approach to, such~questions as technologies of contraception, abortion, contraceptive sterilization and laboratory conception must be made. Here especially, male and female, practitioner and theoretician, we must all work together in a fruitful, enlightening, enriching defense of the sacramentality and holiness of bodied life. Together,-we must recognize~ defend, and enrich the Church's instinct that we worship God only as the bodied creatures he made us. Continually the Church i~ accused of "physicalism" in her understanding of sexual morality .--~-~ and, let's face it squarely, most of the complaints raised about the Church's, position on many medical practices are concerned with reproductive technologies of one kind or another. ~VCe hear very few, if any, complaints about the Church's position on the use of prosthetic devices artificial limbs,:pacemakers, or (sometime in the future) the implantation of microprocessing chips in the brain to enhance our calculational ability. No, the .real arena, of struggle is reproductive medicine. And here the Church is.accused--both by doctors and moral theologians, or ethicists as they like.to be called now of physicalism because it defends "the natural.,," But what is really involved in this "defense of the natural" is not a blind anti-technological stance, nor is it prudery, nor is it physicalism, nor.is it some kind of old-fashioned nostalgia. Rather, it is the Church's realization Toward a Theology of Health Care / 41 that, male and female, we are in the image of God, and that our sexuality is absolutely tied to our worship of God. The Church's stance is not anti-technology, but it is pro-worship. This has many :more doctrinal ramifica-tions than we can go into here, but it at least means that we cannot technologically interrupt or short-circuit the woi'shipful communication of life-giving potentiality. This is not some old-fashioned "physicalist" view, as some moralists would have us believe. The Church's view is rather hopeful proclamation that we spiritual-material creatures can escape the narrow-ness and absurdity that comes from the consideration of our bodies as "secularized," without sacramental, life-giving, value. Thus, both on the level of dedication to health care and as women, you have the burden and opportunity of enriching the Church's understanding of our bodied life. This is one very significant aspect of your lives as women in the Church. Your vocation places you at the point of conflict on two whole sets of issues. The first is the true exaltation of the feminine both in the Church and in society. The second is health care: The world is telling us that the prime function of the body--and especially of a woman's body---is pleasure. It is saying equivalently that it is an elegant toy. But as Christian men and women, we must say that it is far more than that. Apart from anything else it is a vehicle of the sacramental imparting of the Holy Spirit. Not even God can affect us without some, bgdily medium--(though perhaps 1 had better be careful about saying what God cannot do!) Mar~ ~s Model In terms of your lives in the Church, I would venture only one suggestion, andl I will cast that in a paraphrase of St. Paul's statement to the Philippians: "Let that heart be in you that w.as in Mary." I believe this is tremendously important. The place of Mary in salvation history has not been as fully developed as it can be; It has not been sufficiently pondered. She has, on the contrary, been treated in a very shallow, even if chivalric fashion--"One just can't say enough nice things about Mary." So much of the writing (and praising) of Mary could .almost be summed up in the words of the song "Oh, look at her; ain't she pretty?" But the Mary I'm suggesting to you is one with a terrible, vocation; to stand at the foot of the cross and accept that horror and pain into,her life, There was nothing sweet or sentimental.about it. She had to accept that her Son, part of her,~ was dying. In a sense, she had to ratify in her life the fulfillment of Christ's life on earth (death and resurrection) as she had ratified his humanity (in the Incarnation). Let us look to Mary. As the Fathers of Vatican II have stated (Lumen Gentium, nn. 55-56): 42 Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 She stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently await and receive salvation from him. With her, the exalted Daughter of Sio.n, and after a long expectation of the promise, the times were at length fulfilled and.'the new.dispe~nsation established. All this occurred when the Son of. God, took a human nature from her, that he might in th~ mysteries of his flesh free man from sin~ ~ ° The Father of mercies willed that the consent of the predestined mother sliould precede the Incarnation, so that just as a woman contributed to death, so also a woman should contribute tO life. This contrast" w~ verified in.outstanding fashion by the mother of Jesus. She gave to the world that very life which renews all things, and she was enriched by God with gifts befitting such a role. The unity inherent in the "two-in-one flesh" theme (see Gn 2:14 and Ep 5) is the unity of Christ and-his mother at the moment of the Incarnation the unity by which the Holy Trinity is truly present in history. That unity is the creation of the Church at Pentecost in which the Holy Spirit is truly given. The Church is constituted, as Mary is constituted, by the~presence of the Spirit which is the gift of Christ, a creative Spirit. That unity is constituted also in the worship of the Church in. which the Church comes to be by the presence of her Risen Lord in that sacrifice by which he saves. That statement may seem on a first.hearing to be somewhat vague and abstract, so let'stry to make it clearer. Mary's place in'God's saving history was to be asked to accept God's New Covenant with his people. She said "Yes." And that New Covenant that God offered was the Son of God-made-flesh.' Mary's accepta~nce was not merely passive. Her receptivity was creative; the.humanity of Christ was her gift--remember the Council's words "The Son of God tOok a human nature from her. "' At that point Mary and Christ enter into a relationship of the masculine and the feminine that is integral (both are sinless), total, and which will endure forever. It is that relationship (again of masculine and feminine), that "two-in-one-flesh" unity of Christ and Mary, which provides the meaning of the fully redeemed creation. Please note several things here:°we are not putting Maryand Christ on the same level, either as though Mary were divine or Christ"only human; we are not talking about a relationship that we Understand ° it is a union that is integral, i.e., fully redeemed. We don't understaiad this, but we can make some statements. Mary is the ideal and exemplar (see Lumen Gentium, n. 63) of the Church now and of the whole creation ultimately perfected. Mary is the true and full splendor of the created order. She stands in a relationship with Christ in terms of her femininity. Because she is the mother of God, Toward a Theology of Health Care Theotokos, she is understood as the model and archetype of the Church. If creation in Christ (creation fully reestablished and conformed to the Father's will) is the meaning of creation, then Mary is the one complete creature ever created. Her constitution as immaculate expresses the truth not only of the feminine but also of creation and of the Church, a °truth summed up in the term "Mother of God." Or again as Vatican II says (Lumen Gentium, n. 68): In the bodily and spiritual glory which she possesses in heaven, the Mother of jesus contihues in this present world as the image and first flowering of the Church as she is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, Mary shines forth on earth, until the day the Lord shall come (see 2 P 3:10), as a sign of sure hope for the pilgrim People of God. Finally, .let us note one more thing. We usualJy associate Mary's virginity with God himself being the Father of Christ; that is to say, the fact of no human male intervention in the birth of Christ accounts for her virginity. But that is merely a factual explanation that does. not even approach the depths of this mystery. It is of enormous importance for us to note that Mary's virginity is fruitful in a child. This is something that we less-than-integral, sinful, creatures cannot yet understand. But if Mary is indeed the exemplar and splendor of creation--and as the mother of the Body of Christ in all its aspects, she is--then somehow fruitful virginity will be the final human posture in the perfected creation. Somehow or other, as fulfilled in Mary, the splendor, the fullness of creation is feminine. Please remember that what I have been talking about is terribly mysterious, and none of us knows any detail, nor, indeed the full reality. In a sense, I have been. discussing poetry rather than a well worked out theology. But that theology has to come; the truth of the feminine depends on it. And it has to come from the prayerful, feminindy devoted lives of women in the Church. Conclusion Well, then, where does all this leave us? Particularly, where does it leave women in the Church who have promised their lives to Christ in the mission of healing? It leaves them precisely where most of us would rather not be, namely, at the intersection of those two lines of severe conflict that I mentioned earlier. They stand with, and in some way as an extension of, Mary, at the foot of the cross. This was her sublime call, to accept within her life first that child whose Incarnation in her was the will of the Father. Then she had to accept within herself the death of that one whose life she had spent her life serving. 44 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 I do not believe that it is old-fashioned or wrong-headed to state that women's love is especially creative. It is the life of the woman to accept, and having accepted, to nurture new life. We are waiting for that continuing new life in the Church. All that I have offered here is another invitation to the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. All I can say about this is that there is a good precedent for the offer. To fulfill their lives as women in the Church committed to the service and healing of the ill, the aged, the infirm, religious women in the health-care profession witness to the radical importance and significance of womanhood and the healing love of God. On both accounts they will be reviled by the contemporary world. God offered the First Covenant and the Last Covehant to women: to Eve who refused to nurture it and so brought no new life to the world, and to Mary who did accept it and brought forth and nurtured that new life who is the Christ. Adam's ratification of Eve's refusal brought death; Christ's ratification, of Mary's ac~ceptance brought life. (Note that both the male and the female are involved in both covenantaloffers). The cross! I remember vividly one of the.episodes that Fr. Teilhard de Chardin wrote about in one of his books. He was writing of his life as a chaplain in the French army at Verdun in 1916. On one afternoon there was a more than usually brutal battle for a small hill called Froideterre. Shortly afterward in a moment of quiet, Teilhard reflected in his diary on the battle of Froideterre. He mentioned the total absurdity in which all these young men died. Then he thought to himself that someday the French government would erect a monument on that hill and wondered what that monument ought to be. It occurred to him that, in view of the horror and absurdity of that battle, only a cross could memorialize that battlefield; only in the Cross could such absurdity be redeemed. In our own lives, too, the absurdity can be redeemed only in the cross. Only there shall we find any meaning for ourselves. The Lord God never promised us anything in this world save a share in his Cross. I hope I have intimated that there are enormous riches embedded in the Church's demand that we consider our bodied lives as worshipful and worhipping--that we take ourselves, spiritual-material creatures, as seriously as God. Our bodies are not toys; they are temples of the Spirit of the living God. There are no answers presented in these statements. The only real answer we can give is our lived response to God's offers to us. It is here, and only here, although it requires much faith and effort, that we can base the health care apostolate and your womanly lives in the mission of healing this sadly abused world and its people. Unoriginal Sin and the Grace of the Ordinary Rachel Callahan, C.S. C. In the issue of March/April, 1985, Sister Callahan contributed her article, "The Grace of the Ordinary." Now she takes up the theme again. Sister may still be addressed at the C.S.C. Consultation Center; P.O. Box 1521; Adelphi, Maryland 20783. Sin and grace. There is a paradox in how these two separate, not only distinct but apparently contradictory realities are so enmeshed in the human experience. This article is written out of a profound sense of grati-tude that everything, including our sinfulness, can be "grace" because of the transforming touch of a God who calls himself Love. When I was a child growing up in a small New England town which still had its ethnic parishes, one of my Irish aunts always used to go to the Italian parish for confession. I asked her why she did this. She laughed and told me that no matter what she said to the old Italian pastor he always listened and said in his still broken English: "Now for you penance, once the beads--and go and sin some more." The man was legendary in town as a down-to-earth, holy person who reached out to everyone. While his send-off from the sacrament might at first sight :seem a little unorthodox, it was profoundly real. My aunt never thought it was broken English but only good human sense. When we stop to reflect on the human experience, sometimes it's hard to separate sin and grace. My most gracious actions which genuinely further the kingdom are tainted by motives of selfishness or pride. My most secret or frightening sin carries seeds of grace. Human motivation is so complex that to try to sort out categorically all the sin from the grace can sometimes lead to an inward-turning self-absorption so that energy for 45 46 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 the-kingdom gets lost. This is in no way meant to deny the reality and efficacy of discernment of spirits but only to suggest that in the complexity of human experience we try not to be too judgmental even witli ourselves. The Lord reminds us that the wheat and the chaff grow together till the harvest. Becoming a grim reaper of the weeds will also damage the wheat. In a splendid little book, What Are They Saying About the Grace of Christ?, Brian McDermott, S.J., offers this observation: we need to acknowledge in our quest for social justice and systemic change that to eradicate sin completely from the social structures would in all probability destroy the structure with whatever limited capacity it might contain for good. This doesn't suggest any less dedicated commitment to social justice but simply the reality that in human experience sin and grace are often embedded together. In order to look at this a little more closely let's examine the notions of grace and sin as developmental phenomena. McDermott looks at grace through five vantage points which might be considered developmental stages, certainly not static events. The first moment is grace as accep-tancemi. e, that bed rock, deliciously wonderful good news that God loves us unconditionally, just as we are, no strings attached. This quite over-whelming good news is from our beginning but often our awareness of this is gradual. The deepening, ongoing realization of this reality is the lifelong gracious project that our faithful God has for us. ¯ The second moment of grace is conversion. When Jesus came to his public ministry, the people that drew his special attention were the sick, the sinners, and the Pharisees. Wonderful news he ate with sinners, with the outcast! McDermott points out two foci of conversion. The conversion that we ordinarily think about is Jesus' offer of gracious liberation to the sinner to be converted from his/her sin and the guilt which weighs down, demeans, focuses in on self in condemnation. McDermott highlights another kind of invitation to conversion,-one quite startling. Jesus offered to the Pharisees the invitation to be converted from their goodness. The Pharisees are portrayed as preoccupied with their own goodness, claiming it as their own, and profoundly self-absorbed in their own righteousness. It is a somewhat jarring notion to consider being converted from our goodness. After all, isn't that precisely what we are called to become: more and more "perfect'--(only Lk 6:36 says "compassionate"). But the point is that our focus needs to be on the good God. We are invited to let God be God, i.e., Love, and not be terribly pre-occupied with our spiritual bank accounts. God's grace can never be overdrawn! Both of the movements, the conversion from sin and the equally important conversion from good-ness move us away from self-absorption towards un-self-focused celebration. Unoriginal Sin / 47 God ,saves us and sets us free from both our sin and our goodness. The next three moments of grace ar6 closely linked--discipleship, community, and service. Being learner, student of Jesus, listening, hearing in n~w ways is never finished. As the gracious God works with me I become a "we" person, ministering to and being nourished by the most ordinary kinds of human interactions so that finally the good news of how much I/we are loved gets fleshed out in service. What is amazing is how patient God is in all of this and how impatient we can be. We often try to "run" in his service before we let ourselves "be held" by his acceptance. Early experience of call and vocation often appeals to the desire to serve at a time in human development when we dream great dreams of doing great deeds. And years later, as we live into our limits and learn more and more that all is grace, we learn that God's love is what counts more than our own generosity. Now how does sin fit into this picture. Do we dare think even meta-phorically about sin as grace? First of all, I am using the word "sin" in the biblical sense. One common biblical notion of sin means essentially "miss-ing the mark." Jesus knows how proficient we are at missing the mark. We are by very reason of our human-ness "missers-of-the-mark." Each of us carries not only the generic woundedness of being sons and daughters of Eve and Adam but we ~lso carry what I observe as a psychologist: our own "personalized original sin"--those deficits or traumas in our back-ground that predispose each of us towards brokenness and missing the mark. Let's look at a few examples. Early deficits in parenting, not because of parental malice but because of parental limitations, .or circumstances such as death, illness, or poverty can leave a person bruised or perpetually "hungry." Ordinary needs for nurturance and attention are experienced more intensely, leaving a person feeling very vulnerable or very entitled. Unconscious wishes to make up for deprivation in this area can lead to difficulties in relationship. Either clinging, "take care of me" behaviors or an "I don't need anybody" stance can create interpersonal~problems. And until a person understands and works through this he or she is somewhat captive to these unconscious pulls. Another example of this personalized original sin is genetic makeup. The longer that I work with individuals in therapy the more respectful I become of genetic realities which impact personal!ty as well as hair color. Some persons are more predisposed towards depression, which is a psy-chobiological reality, not simply an emotional state. Studies show a famil-ial pattern in this which suggests both nature and nurture at work. We know that how we think can influence how we feel, and that persons suffering from depression often have to do some work to correct crooked 411 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1986 thinking, But we also know that this phenomenon is a chemical reality and often needs chemical intervention, much in the same vein that a person with diabetes or malfunctioning thyroid needs medication to balance the system. Anyone who has ever struggled with the day in, day out miasma of a real depression knows that it is not only very painful but also that, despite the fact that many people carry on their lives reasonably effectively, when depressed, one often feels himself or herself to be no good, doing nothing right. Since sometimes we make the mistake of confusing feelings with reality--e.g., "I feel like a bad person, therefore I am a bad person"--these negative feelings about self produce guilt and hopelessness, and it's easy to magnify one's sense of sinfulness in ways that are paralytic. Fortunately combinations of cognitive therapy, exercises and medication, if needed, are very effective in reversing this condition which has a genetic

Issue 45.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1986. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REview ~oR RELIGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1986 by R~v~w ~oR RELiGiOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U,S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $11.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVtEW FOIt RELIGIOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. 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Our Lady of Wisdom Donald Macdonald, S.M.M. ,, Father Macdonald's "The Price of Poverty" appeared in this year's January/February issue. Last May/June saw another Marian article by Father Macdonald entitled "Mary: Our Encouragement in Christ." Father's address rdmains: St. Joseph's: Welling-ton Road: Todmorden: Lancashire OLI4 5HP: England. ~ recall being kindl~, received in a convent, but the longer I stayed there the more uncomfortable I felt, because for apparently aesthetic and liturgical reasons ~there was no room in the chapel for a statue or picttire of Our Lady. It was frankly embarrassing to pass Our Lady presiding over a hymn-board ~n the corridor outside while i was free to go into the chapel without a blush. It°made no sense. One should not exaggerate the place of Our .Lady but neither should she be underrated. So, in a generally compli-mentary book-review, the reviewer remarked that while the author rightly spol~e of devotion to Our "Lady as inseparably part of Christian life he "rather overstresses the idea of Marian m'~sticism." One wonders how he knows that, since mysticism touches levels of e~perience much of which must be left unsaid. Can anyone throw a tight ring around personal expe-rience particularly at those depths? On the day his engagement was announced, G. K. Chesterton wrote the woman he was to marry that "I think it is no exaggeration to say that I never s~iw you in my life without thinking that I underrated you the time before." t This is a superb compliment for anyone to receive, especially from a mindsas rich as Chesterton's. Clearly he saw depths in the girl 321 ~122 / Review for ReligiouMs, ~Iiy-June, 1986 unseen by her butcher or dressmaker. Lo~,e, presumably,' gave him the necessary insight: Such God-gi~en insight is needed to understand anything of Our Lady in the providen.~e of God, particularly if we accept that "insight is an attempt to think in the present a. .breakthrough requiring much intellectual d~smanthng a, nd dislocationa .c.c.ompanied by a sense of surprise., genuine perception . He who thinks that we can see the same object twice has never seen. Paradoxically, insight is knowledge at first sight." 2 This is surely borne out by experience. Father Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, knew more ,of the faith than Bernadette Soub~rous, just ¯ as the superiors of the novice Catherine Labour+ had a wider experience of religiouslife than did she. NO ldoubt, too, biblical scholars in the time of Th~r'ese Martin knew more al6out Scripture than she did, but who today among the contemporaries of!those three girls could claim to approach their insights into the ways of God? Can anyone quantify their subsequent influence for God and for g~od? One spoke patois, another not 9t all publicly .u.ntil shortly before she died; while the third wrote of what she knew in three note-books onl~ because she was as.ked to. Eacti of these women's lives was illumined by a vision of Our Lady who left her distinctive mark on all three, not least in their wholly sane, understated, selfless lives. What Bernadettelsaid of herself could be said of all of them including Our Lady "When 3~ou have finished with the brush you put it behind the door"--except th~at God has other plans. Their influence widens. The risk for thee c,ontempor~ry religious might be in leaving "the brush behind the door." What has been called "chronological snobbery" can obtain here to3. The insights of the latter part of the twentieth century are assumed to be superior to thos~ of peasant, country or middle-class ,y, oung women in nineteenth~entury France. Following the sam~ ~qogic, Our Lady can be dismissed as possil inevitably~limited by her lack today, and by her geographical God is present in each life. It is tliese women are to be conside ~ly a Galilean peasant girl whose insight was of formal ~ducation,~as this is understood locafion~ That assumption should be tested. this that makes the difference and by which red. Of each of the four women it could be said: "She was a woman uprig, ht, outright." "Her will was bent at God'](G. M. Hopkins, "Margaret Clither'ow" an unfinished poeo). The strengthl,.vulnerability and powerful pulse httracting them can be felt in that last monosyllabic line. There is no need of any Cultural baggage in order to sl~are what they see. Neither the water-tables feeding the wells of Nazareth n~or the politics of nineteenth-century France m.atter. Anyone in the company of these~ women may.be drawn by what Our-l_ady of Wisdom / 323 they see, glimpsing in each cage~perhaps "the Christ-ed :beauty of her mind" (G. M. Hopkins op. cir.). They travel light. The will of God is the point: "Let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). Perhaps we cannow consider Our Lady as a reflection of the presence of God. The Gift of Wisdom It has always been difficult to speak of the presence of God not least because a finite mind is trying to express an awareness of transcendence. One biblical, tradition which attempted this was the ~Wisdom literature (includihg Job, Proverbs, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, Wisdom and some Psalms), Beginning in cultures outside Israel as basically advice to the young man Who would make his way in the world (a "Young, Upward Mobile Man's Guide to the Galaxy" perhaps), when taken into Israel it was inevitably recast through belief in the underlying presence of God as the basis of reality. So "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" (Ws 9:10), that is putting God first as against the practical atheism .of the person for whom '~'there is no fear of God before his eyes" (Ps 36). From this standpoint, God's presence was seen in creation, the history of Israel and in individual lives under the guise of wisdom, latterly personified'in a. female figure. God's presence as expressed in Wisdomwas to be seen everywhere:' "She herself walks about looking for those who are worthy of.her . in every thought of theirs coming to meet the~m" (Ws,6:16-17). "Wisdom is quicker to move than any motion; she is so pure, shepervades and.perrfieates_all things. She is a breath of the power of'God . untarnished mirror of God's power, image of his goodness . Herself unchanging, she makes all things new" (Ws 7:24-27). "l resolved to have her as my bride, I fell in love with her beauty" (Ws 8:2). "My counselor in prosperity, my comfort in care and sorrow. I love those who love me; those who seek me,eagerly shall find me" (Ws~9:17). Slowly to reflect on those lines is to glimpse the intimacy and reality of God's presence in a sacramental world. Such insight is a personal possession. They know of whatthey speak. So in the creation of the universe by God: "I was by his side, a master ~craftsman delighting him day by day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere in his world, delighting to be with the sons of men" (Ws 8:30-31). Such a universe, then, is no alien, monolithic force hostile to mankind but a place in which God is present, delighting to be with his creation. Experiencing life in this way, God's presence is seen as delightful, as life now obviously has meaning since it is underwritten by God. "I came forth from the mouth of the Most .High and I covered the earth like mist . Then the creator of all things instructed me . He said, 'Pitch your tent in Jacob'. I have breathed out a scent like choice myrrh. I am like a 324 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 vine putting out graceful shoots. ApprOach me you who desire me, and take your fill of my fruits, for memories of me are sweeter than honey, inheriting me is sweeter than the honeycomb. They who eat me will hunger for more., they who drink me will thirst for more. Whoever listens to me will never have to blush, whoever acts as I dictate will never sin" (Si 24:38, 13, :17, 19-30). Again, such reflection on life in the light of faith findsGod's presence everywhere awesome and mysterious, yet beautifully attractive. As the figure of Wisdom is now personified it might be dismissed as yet another imperfect image, a crutch to lean on when looking for God's presence in the mystifying world. But surely there is no need nor is it intended to imagine anything at all. This is no television commercial with a female figure ,cavorting across the screen advertising some product. The insight given by Wisdom and remember, following Abraham Heschel, that insight is to see for the first time--is so much richer and nuanced and is to be understood on another plane: Insight not eyesight, and imagination is wanted now, to see beyond and above the imagery. The gift of Wisdom is meant to give just this taste for and insight into the presence of God in every aspect of reality. God is there in every moment eager to make his presence known. Having "pitched" his tent among us, his presence is such that once tasted one can only "hunger for more." Obviously:for the Christian this. speaks of Christ in every line, particu. larly as Paul and John present him, but, traditionally this was seen too in the person of Our Lady of Wisdom. Such Wisdom writings were to be found in the liturgy of her feasts. The personified figure of Wisdom was seen in'her, and as expressed in the liturgy, the faithful were invited to delight in her as a. supreme expression of God's presence among us. Cen-turies of meditation on the Wisdom writings instinctively suggested Our Lady. It was a delightful, pleasant, accessible world combining the world of transcendence with the encouraging familiarity of a faithful mother. God's presence as reflected in her indicated that potentially there were no heights we could not scale even though our insight was at best imperfect. It was a lovely atmosphere she brought with her as she was seen among us as one of us, rejoicing in God her Savior (Lk 1:47), and we with her. Few would deny that that is less so now. The atmosphere has changed. In Catholic liturgical, literary and devotional life the lovely, wondering, ever reiidy to be surprised insight of an earlier time seems to have been replaced by the prim, puritan regimentation of an old-fashioned school-room. Instead of an ever-deepening insight needing all the resources of Wisdom literature to try and express what was felt and experienced, today one has the impression that not afew of our pastors, teachers and cate- Our Lady of Wisdom / 325 chists who occupy the commanding heights and lower slopes of everyday teaching in the Church, have seen Mary once--and seen her "plain." They might have come ashore from The Mayflower yesterday. The approach to Our Lady today reeks of the catechical-center and schoolroom. It is all reminiscent of a certain type of teacher so accurately sketched by Charles Dickens, who asked a girl who had spent her young life with horses and knew and loved them, to describe one. She was incapable of coming up with the only answer he would accept: "Quadruped. Gramini-vorous. Forty teeth~ namely twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring . Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks' in mouth. Thus (and much more).''~ How many of those who flock each year to the Kentucky Derby would recog-nize that either? Though the teacher is perhaps overdrawn, it does not mean that the point is overplayed. The issue was real and perhaps still is. To present Our Lady chiefly in terms of Model Christian or Model of Believers is not wrong but deadens a relationship. To speak of anyone in such categories isolates them from the rest' of us. Models automatically distance themselves. They are to be looked up to, rarely made part of oneself. To speak principally of Our Lady in such terms is to put her on a pedestal in a most damaging way: apart from, static, of yesterday rather than today; whereas traditionally within the Catholic community she was of God and of us, truly a present inspiration as we delighted in her com-pany. So Mary, Model of the Church, while true, is of the classroom not of life. It is, too, not unfair to remark that when she is spoken of as "Woman of~Faith" or "Model of Believers," this carries strong overtones of the contemporary defeatism wherein faith, before it can~be reckoned as authentic, is laced with a strong solution of doubt. None really sees, so the best that can be done is to pool. insecurities, as even the best of us are in the dark. Our Lady, by association, is correspondingly diminished. Yet faith in biblical terms was never the vague hope that Someone might be there to make sense of life in an at times frighteningly puzzling world. Rather was it the bedrock assurance that God is there and we are real to him, even though often unfelt and unknown by us. Trust, therefore, is at the heart of the biblical reality, and on this the Jewish and Christian communities were built. The best of both communities enfleshed it. Our Lady too embodied the prophetic vocation, helping us in the task .of realizing that ~we live in the universe of His [God's] knowing, in the glory of attachment" (Jr 1:5).~ So the community enjoyed her company, welcomed her and delighted to hear anyone speak well of her. She could appeal to anyone, whether from the cachot of Bernadette, the countryside ~126 / ReviewJ'or Religious, May-June, 1986 of Catherine, :or the middle-class household of Th6r~se. Today the colors are subdued, a pale reflection of what they once were. The use of the 'W, isdom writings to express what was felt about her has given way to such warmth as there is to a winter's sunlight. Now she is almost exclusively spoken of as "Mary," and one cannot help feeling that much has been lost in the contemporary would-be organized Church that was freely available to everyone in an earlier, possibly more untidy home. The wonder of insight is missing. ~.It is, of course, explained that one owes it to non,Catholics to be careful in the way we speak of/to her. This is true. Yet it should be recognized that there are real differences between .us both in faith and atmosphere, stemming from faith as a way of life not an academic code. The ethos of the evangelical Protestant, for example, is not easily expressed in terms of Greek Orthodoxy's devotional life. Both are valid traditions, but they are undeniably different. Yet if one has the good fortune of belonging to The Ecumenical Society of.the Blessed Virgin Mary it may prove a revelation to see and hear how easily Christians of every denomi-nation speak of her. I, too, very much value the invitation given me some years ago to belong to the Methodist Preachers' Fellowship, and find within its integrity, respect and support that it is possible to speak of Our Lady. (The Methodist Neville Ward, it will be remembered, wrote in Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, a very fine book on the rosary). It is "megaphor~e diplomacy"---publicly shouting at one another--tliat is to be feared, not in expressing how one genuinely bdieves and lives within a context of respect and understanding: I wasat a Protestant school until I was twelve and have,the highest regard .for what I was taught there, The local minister would drive us in his car to Mass, unasked, on really_wet wintry Sundays--and he later became moderator of the Church of Scot-land. So perhaps I may claim first-hand experience of the Protestant ethos and .am far from unsympathetic to it. It is a strange paradox.that while the eighth chapter of Lumen Gentium and the later Marialis Cultus, to say nothing of the present Holy Father, express a recognizably Catholic feeling and continuity, so unlike much of current teaching and. devotional life, somehow there has been a break from what once was, and the person of Our Lady has been almost lost in the concept. To see Our Lady then reflected in the feminine figure of Wisdom is to see in her a transparent reflection of the transcendence and immanence of God's presence, She is n6where and she is everywhere. This may puzzle some who consider in so broadening her significance that it may somehow Our Lady of Wisdom / 327 lessen her value in the'community. This might be so if she is seen as just. one specific piece on the chessboard, somehow .to be welded into aft'overall strategy. But the reality of theoChurch, of course, is of a community created and indwelt by the Spirit of the living God. It is a living organism in which we each relate to'one another in 12hrist through grace-enlightened knowl-edge and love. Our Lady; supremely orie with the will of God, is therefore an influential channel of ttiat life: "And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped .in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy. Spirit" (Ek 1:41). Seen in this light; therefore, coming from the heart of the Christian community, she is never an inquisitive aunt, obtrusive neighbor nor cling-ing friend. Nor is she a static figure with. her own particular niche in the wall, to be referred to now and agai'n. As th6 lovely feminine figure of Wisdom Owing more to insight than eyesight or imagination is lost in the wonder of what she suggests, so too Our Lady. Sowhen G. M. Hopkins in a well-known poem comparing her to the air we breathe, spoke to her as, World-mothering air. a'ir wild . Fold home. fast hold th3~i'child. he is talking of life and limitless freedor~ not limitation. He is not-advocat-ing a stranglehold distancing one from God, caught up in Mary's apron strings in'a state of permanent adolescence. Rather does she, as ~lid Wis-dom, mediate the presence of God that perhaps has to be experienced to be understood. The traditional prayer, "Virgo respice, Mater, adspice, audi nos, O Maria. " perhaps.puts it at its simplest. One scarcely needs a translation to feel that prayer convincingly suggesting on her part atten-tion, anticipation, concern, fellow feeling, x+hich, while relishing her company, is at the same time an act of faiih in the underlying reality that "He who is mighty has done great things for me. and holy is his name"(Lk 1:49). Gift of The Spirit Perhaps the °point may~be further underlined by considering God's presence as expressed in the experience of Spirit,, A thesaurus could find many words to 'express it life, breath, wind describing an intangible reaiity. As an expression-of God's presence it indicates that it can be experienced everywhere but never held. The Spirit of God brought this universe into being, and the: same creative Spirit was responsible for the existence of the community of Israel, inspiring within it particular individ-uals to, perceive the presence and guidance of God~ So "God would speak with Moses face to face, as a man ~peaks to his 'friend" (Ex 33:11). As a result of this intimacy he was instrumental in helping to build the commun- ~121~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 ity. Similarly, on receiving the prophetic spirit, "Elijah arose like a fire his word flaming like a torch" (Si.48:1), empowering.,him almost single-handed to hold ca'fly Israel together against colossal! odds. This influence of the Spirit of God suggests that a man is taken out of himself, often despite himself. As Amos, probably the first of the writing prophets, put it: "The lion roars: who can help feeling afraid? The Lord God, speaks: who can refuse to prophesy?" (Am 3:8). Enlightened by the Spirit of God .withinthe community of Israel, such people were given such insightSnto their own age that in the name of God they felt compelled to speak and act. The eyesight of most of their contemporaries was blind to what their God-given insight enabled them to see in a world illumined by~ God's spirit. As the Spirit of God dwelt within the heart-,of Israel so no less emphati-cally says St.~-Paul. was the Spirit present within the Christian cgmmunity. As God was present in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple so Paul tried to open the eyes of the Corinthians to the° wonder of his presence among .them: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you. God's temple is holy, and that temple you are" (1 Co 3:16-17). God present among s~uch people individually and collectively points the wonder of it all in view of who they we?e: "not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful., of noble birth" (I Co 1:26). Nondescript, marginal people for ~he most part--as was said of the unfortunate boxer. '~not even a household name in his own house'--God evidently "chose what is foolish . . . weak . . . low and despised" (I Co 27-28). Enlightened by the wisdom and Spirit of God as a member of that community, Paul does not apologize for its surface crudi-ties as his insight enables him to see within to the Spirit's indwelling presence. It is a creation of God, and like all his gifts "can only be under-stood by means of the Spirit" (1 Co 2:14). Reflecting long and often as he must have done on what was being created in and around himself, Paul comes to see that "the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God . . . Now. " . fie have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us" (1 Co 2:10-12). This is a phenomenal insight as Paul wrestles with the almost inexplicable to aid the Corinthians' self-under-standing. Their lives are radically touched and empowered by God, mo~Jing from the depths of his Spirit to theirs. Meaning little to others in view of their lack of status, they mean everything to God. And it was this same Spirit. which enabled Paul never to be quite beaten by the constant bread and butter inconsistencies, and. to see the reality beneath._ It is all, Paul reflects,, ~eminiscent of the wisdom of God which so often seems to stand logic on its head. lts linchpin is the crucified and risen Christ "whom God Our Lady of Wisdom / 329 made our wisdom" (1 Co 1:30) in the face of a disbelieving world. Such insight~does not come from the schoolroom or marketplace. It is a gift from God enabling "those'who are called. [to see] Christ thepbwer of God and the~visdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men" (I Co 1:24-25). This same pattern is true of Our Lady. She is to be understood ihen from within the community. An ostensibly nondescript person from unre-markable Nazareth if one considers the circumstances of her calling, yet the inner reality can only be gauged insofar as one is given to see what is meant when "The Holy Spirit will come upon 'you, and the power of the Most Highs:will 6ve'rshadow you" (Lk 1:35-36). The creative spirit of God which once brought this universe'into existence, now through her willing co6per-ation (see Lk'l:38), brings to birth a new creation in her Son. Such is the effect of the Spirit's power and presence that "the child to b~ born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Lk 1:35). This is the defining feature of her life: Mother and Son are inseparably linked. One with him at birth, home and crucifixion, she is found within the early Christian community pray-ing. So it has been for centuries as she ~is seen among us preeminently lovable and faithful, empowered by wisdom and the Spirit. The Christian community has responded accordingly, as in every nation under heaven all generations have called her blessed (see Lk 1:48). Today in much contemporary .teaching and practice, the brush appears to have been put back behind the door. It is not without significance that this has happened at a time when the values of the numinous, transcend-ence, silence and worship are under severe pressure. Mainstream liturgy, teaching and devotion have virtually nothing to say of the contemplative. Such a need is fostered from the edge, not the center. When influential numbers of our pastors, teachers and opinion-formers generally, seem to lack any obvious feeling for the contemplative, it may beno surprise that they display or encourage little warmth for Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom. ~Vhen meaning has to be on the surface and immediately comprehended, it is perhaps inevitable that so rich and varied traditions of the Church, not least as regards Our Lady, have given way to a subdued monochrome world. : Let Your Gaze Become My Prayer Perhaps all of this may be finally summarized in a few lines from a prayer of St. Anselmto St. John the Evangelist, asking for the love of God: "Ifthen, sir, your gaze has more good in it than my prayer has devotion, let your gaze become my prayer."5 This is a very fine expression of the role of Our Lady, the saints and our fellow-Christians in the Church, one person 331~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 in Christ. with ourselves (see Ga. 3:25-28). The individual Anselm asks the aid of the evangelist .John, whom he sees in faith to be now wholly caught up in G6d:.So he asks th~it his own self in his prayer be taken up into sharing what St, John sees. °He speaks to John but looks beyond him following the evangelist's gaze. Love has been described as two people looking in the same direction. What they see draws them togetherenabling them to live as one in a new reality. This we have here. Anselm's prayer is felt to be inferior to John's vision so he asks that "your gaze become my prayer." This, inthe main, is what is meant by Our Lady's patronage. Filled from her conception with the ~,isdom and Spirit of God in vieW of her voc~ition as Mother of God, her whole being reflects the Orie who has mad~ her who she is as she rejoices in God her Savior (see Lk 1:47)i One person in Christ with her, the Christian; and anyone genuinely.asking her he!.p._;'_w.a.n._t.s_t_.o~be taken into her being and held by what she sees "Let your gaze become my prayer." So easy to relate to, inviting, the individual to come in his or her own way, her life is givenomeaning by her Unflinching attachment to the will of God in good days and bad. Such a person is no obstacle between us and God if her gaze becomes our prayer, as the words and images drop away before the holiness of God. One can, of course, with the apophatic tradition, which maintains that it is impossible to say anything of God other than that he is, try to put everything that is not God into a "cloud .of forgetting" leaving only a naked intent for God. So our Lord, sacraments, Our Lady, Scripture, saints--:-~ everything must go. "If you see the Buddha kill him." Well yes, but even the Engiish mystic who expressed this so supremely well, giving as the bottom line between oneself and God, "Worship God with all you have got. All-that- you-are-as,you-are worshipping ail-that-he-is-as-he-is," has his reality first defined in Christ, and must recognize therefore that "it is God for his own loving purpose who puts both. the will and the action into you" (Ph 2:13):6 Whether he adverts to it or not, the ontological reality underpinning his:every movement and prayer is Christ in whom "all things were created. :. He isb(fore all things and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the Church,' (Col. 1:16-18). Reality is thus held in the overarching Christ who reconciled us to God by "making peace by the blood of his cross., by his death" (Col 1:20-22): Blood and death together are irrevocable, costly and messy (so much so that the sensitivities of the Jerusalem Bible translators cause them to omit "blobd"), ~butit was precisely in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection that he can now "present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him [God]"(Col 1:22)? We are unforgettably marked with the sign of the cross, In Christ, therefore, is found 'the very oxygen enabling us to breathe the air Our Lady of Wisdom/~ 331 of God. One admires the climber attempting Everest, but one knows that he could not set foot on the lower slopes, far less reach the summit without-oxygen. It is never seen but it is always there, and in Christ we are sup-ported by a whole ~loud of ~vitnesses, prophets, apostles, saints among whom is preeminently the Mother of God. They interact with us in Christ in every moment of every day whether we are conscious of it or not. There is no need of mental images of Paul, Our Lady, or even Christ himself. Attachment to Our Lady in this context should not be seefi as a limiting form of prayer. To see her so is possibly to have a fixed, static view of Christian reality not unlike the wooden, materialist outlook of popular nineteenth-century science. The truth of science as glimpsed today is so wonderful and mobil~ that much of it cannot even be imagined, yet its beauty clearly enthralls many, light years away from the earlier approach. Immaturity ~s the problem. We are, for the most part, too pedestrian. But in this lies our salvation. Everyone in Christ is for us. It may be a sign of the times that in an .age full of self-assertion we find it hard to believe that anyone can be self-effacing. But the GOspel reality is just that, "For all things are yours." whether Paul, Bernadette, Catherine, Th~rEse or Mary, "or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's" (1 Co 3:21-23). We are, perhaps most of us, infants in Christ, with at best an.imperfect, grasp of God loving us i.n Christ, unable without wisdom and the Spirit to see the simplicity of ,Paul's insight, holding all of reality in the present moment in-Christ. But we know the claim that the child has on Christ. And in this above all, surely he is at one with his mother. NOTES tMaisie Ward, Return to Chesterton, Sheed and Ward, 1952, p. 34. 2A. Heschel, The Prophets Vol. 1, Harper and Row, 1971, p.x6. 3C. Dickens, Hard Times, Chap. 2. 4A. Heschel, op. cit. Vol. 2, p. 267. 5B. Ward, The Prayqrs and Meditations of St. Anselrn--Pfayer to St. John the Evan- 'gelist (2), Penguin, 1975. ~ 6C. Woltors, The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works and The Epistle of Privy Counsel, chap. 4, Penguin, 1978 . 7C. A. Anderson Scott's plausible observation with regard to St. Paul in general is instructive: "The allusion to the blood of Christ, here (Rm 3:25) as in other passages~in Paul, is probably connected with.the overwhelming impression which Paul had received as a spectator of the Crucifixion." Footnotes to St'. Paul (CUP, 1935): Personality, and Religious Adjustments in Older Candidates Matthias Neuman, OS.B. Father Neuman, well known to our readers, whose latest contribution, "The Holiness of Saint Francis: Spiritual Vision and' Lived Suffering,, ~appeared in the issue of September/October, 1985, contin'u6s to teach at Saint Meinrad Seminary; Saint Mein-rad, lndiana :47577. For the past four years my primary occupation has involved directing the pre,theology program in our s.,eminary. This special year-long program ffims to prepare a certai:n group of young men for entrance into a regular course of theological studies for priesthood. These are candidates who already possess their college degrees but who have had no course work in philosophy or theology--or any exposure to a regular spiritual formation program, The very existence of college-graduate or pre-theology years in seminaries bears witness to a significant shift in recent vocational patterns. Fifteen years ago my first-year theology course would have had one or two "older" individuals; they were routinely mixed in with the students who had graduated from various college seminaries. In a decade and a half those one or two have swollen to better than half the first-year classes in many theologates around the United States. This means that a significant portion of today's priesthood candidates are waiting to "test" their possible ~voca-tions until after the college years and after some significant work and societal experience, A similar phenomenon appears among applicants for religious orders of women and men. Almost any meeting of formation personnel deals with some issue or problem concerning "older vocations." Indeed it is not uncommon for a formatiOn directress to be younger than several, of her charges. 332 Adjustments in Older Candidales / 333 While many observers applaud this shift in vocational process, and both priestly and religious recruiters have begun to plot ways of casting their nets in these newly-discover6d waters, the formidable challenges of providing a solid and effective regimen of formation should not be glosse~l over quickly. These men and women come to seminaries and religious houses at a considerably different stage in life than do graduates right out of high school or college. It will not suffice to merel~ ~transfer previous spiritual, academic and social formational methods to ~this new wave, for they bring quite different problematics for spiritual formation, academic programs and general adjustment to religious institutional life. The first year of formation in particular needs to pay.close attention to: l) the backgrounds of these people, 2) the life transitions they are experiencing, and 3) the adjustment problems they will most likely encounter. The first three sections of this article ~ill address these topics in more detail,~and the concluding section will offer some suggestions for helping the candidates themselves to manage this initial transition period more effectively. Backgrounds The ages of these older vocations may range from the mid-twenties to the mid-seventies. (Several were even ordained irf their 80s!) However the bulk of such callings has been in the 25-45 age bracket and I will focus most of my comments on that group. *~- ' 0 Perhaps the first major item format.ion personnel should~-~recognize is that these people-~'even at age twenty-five generally possess a somewhat. solidified personality structure. This doesn't necessarily imply that their personality structures are well-shaped oreven healthy, but simply that they have been hardened to an extent by the pressures of work, societal survival and recreational interactions. Educational research has tended to show that the first two years after college exert, a significant hardening, and even. a temporary halt, to attitudinal and conceptual growth. This can be seen as a natural result of mov~ngfrom the more fluid world of college into a societal context where work-pressures demand a~more fixed cast to one's goals, plans and attitudes. Thus, these individuals differ from the far more malleable candidates trained in the seminary or academy systems of years past. Even though they are obviously considering a major career shift by investigating a priest-ly or religious calling, they usually retain a good deal of .their solidified personality structure. They may not-even be aware of how habitual they have become in. patterns 9f relationship, daily routines and general atti-tudes. Those who have lived alone for even two or three years have devel-oped private habits of socializing and personal recreation which mayclash 3~14 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 strongly with the regular demands of community living. These st~rongly formed !ife-patterns also emerge in the realm of spiritu-ality,. It is not unusual for these men and women to have already expe-rienced in a variety of ways a verY powerful presence of Godin their lives, a Eresence that has been both sustaining and nourishing, a divine presence that has been greatly responsible for calling them to a switch of life-tasks. Many older candidates attest to some kind of "conversion experience" that brought them to this new way .of life even if they had been "possibly considering it." for years. This conversion experience and presen~c.e of God usually has shaped.their personal .spiritualities to a great extent. In particu-lar, the styl~es o.f prayer they favor are generally associated.with the qualities of that particular presence of God, e.g., God in nature~and an individual mystical prayer, God° in a conversion from sinfulness and a prayer of penance, God in~ .familial tradition and a structured devotional prayer. Without. being reflectively aware of it,osuch reasong have usually con-jured up an image of either priesthood or religious life that is primarily an intensification of their personal spirituality. (For example, one young man, age 30, who was converted by his reading of the New Testament~defined the primary task of the priest as teaching the Bible to people.) A formation direct_or may find these candidates to have imperceptibly meshed together~a particular style of prayer, a favored presence of God, and an implicit image of priesthood or religious life. The tight interweaving, of these factors .can cause average to severe problems in the adjustment to a formation pro-gram; the tampering with one item (e.g., teaching different prayer styles or a v.ariant image of religious life) may be perceived by candidates as a threat to the spiritual background and religious experience that gave them their new spiritual impulse. Perhaps the most-common example of the above dynamic occurs in trying to instill a sense of the value and importance of common prayer. Few of my priesthood candidates come with much appreciation or experience of the Liturgy of the Hours. Living as individuals in society, they have usually forged strong patterns of private prayer. Introducing them into the common morning and evening prayer of the semin.a.ry occasions a crisis for some each year. Common prayer does not,meet their "personal needS"; it co~mpetes with private prayer; their former sense of closeness to God gets worn away. Some begin to feel very hostile toward the seminary for ruining their intimacy ,with God:and thus threatening their vocation. It will have to be a sensitive formation program that can "deconstruct" a. person's reli-gious background, i.e. break it into its compon.ent parts, so that the indi-vidual may assimilate'in a healthy~way.the spiritual components of a sound priestly, or religious-order spirituality. Adjustments in Older Candidates 335 People who have worked for even a few years at a competitive job in the societal labor force will accumulate some, highly fixed patterns of routine daily life. The schedule of most jobs mandates some regularity. Daily and weekly habits of work, r~creation and friendships give rise to a network of personal supports that soften the challenges of life. These supports, or "strokes" in the recent psychological lingo~ help to carry a person°through ~the down times of regtilar living. Similarly persons who in an-intefise occupational setting, such as a social case worker, personnel rfianag~r or teacher, may have silently linked part of their adult identity to these supports. - One of the standard planks for a personal identity is the positive affir-mation we receive from the,. significant individuals in our lives (family, friends, mrntors, students).We call on this affirmation regularly~if the pressures ~of our job consistently erode bur well-being and identity. The entranize into a seminary or religious house removes persons from both the comforts of their habitual routines and the necessary strokes of signifi-cant others. This abse~ce may give rise'to a profound gense of loneliness or even abandonment. Perirds of confusion and depression soon compliote matters even more. An insightful formation program needs to be con-stantly alert to these possibilities, and d~velop ways of ?egularly informing and assisting candidates to understand and' process these and similar experiences. A report from a meeting of Midwest seminary rectors in 1981 summa~i"- ized nicely a g,bbd numbef of additional background issues which these priestly candidates bring to the seminary (and religious life). ,. Experience indicates that the can~didate who has made applicatipn for theology school without previous seminary experience possesses all or some of tile following characteristics: he has little or~' no experiefice, in community living; he has not had or.has had little experience of spiritual direction and is concerned about his ability to use the direction offered him; he perceives' himself as very much an outsider in the seminary com-munity; he is unfamiliar with the special language employed both in the professional life of the seminary, e.g., academics and liturgical practice, as well as commufiity living experiences; often he is a man of practical expe-rience. with varying ability to deal with issues on a speculative level; if he is older, he might well have an exaggerated sense of his age; he is more conservative in his spirituality particularly if a recent "conversion expe-rience" has led him to ~hear the call to priesthood; he has high anxiety conceriaing the de~cision which he has recently made to enter the seminary.1 Although much more could be said about background, I will limit my observations to the preceding comments. Formation personnel should 356 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 remember that these older candidates may be more mature and worldly-wise than ~th0se fresh .o~ut of college: but they bring their ~unique bevy of problems with them. Many of these difficulties are frequently connected to a hardened personal and religi6us identity and the unconscious manner in which various factors get meshed (e.g., prayer style, validity of conversion, and expectations). Frequently these problems boil to the surface when candidates get fitted into the regulated worlds of the ~eminary or religious community. (NB. Seminaries and religious houses may ~be psychologically highly regulated even without minute daily schedules. Long periods of the day may be free and unstructured, but those hours are also 7"filled" .with pow.erful academic, ministerial and spiritual expectations. Such a day is regulat.ed not by schedule but by official expectation.) None of the above.problems should be considered insoluble. In my experience the great majority of candidates can successfully negotiate these personal and religious challenges. But the formation program as such needs to positively assist.,these men and women to identify accurately what is happening in their lives. These transitional adjustments are not usually vocational crises, and sudden hostility toward the seminary, religious community or individual superior is not always a problem with authority. To understand what is happening emotionally a clear presentation to them of the range of personal transition going on needs to be conveyed. Multiple Transitions As the previous section mentioned, a young man or woman coming to seminary or religious community after several years of work and societal experience will confront a variety of transitions. Usually the candidates are somewhat aware and a bit apprehensive about the challenges ahead and they are ~bgnizant Of what they have "given up." Howeverl up6~ arrival at their new place of r~sidence they can be overwhelmed with the thrill of a new religious start.Having left the world where one struggled to survive religiously in a secular and cynical culture, they begome exhilarated in the environment of a supportive, like-minded community. Even the most dis, tant hopes of spirituality and ministry suddenly seem possible. (Every year each new group ,of candidates within .the first two weeks wants to add even ¯ more prayer services to the school's. Eucharist, morning rand evening prayer.) Thus the man~, transitions of life get forgotten ina tidal wave of religious fervor, but the transitions are still going on silently and relent-lessly. In time they frequently turn that tidal wave into a scorched desert of barren feeling. The transitions' are frequently more complicated and subtle than the Candidate realizes. The first transition is the move from a secular world Adjustments in Older Candidates / 337 with its pockets of popular religiosity into an encompassing ecclesiastical religious world. In the former situation faith and religious practice have served as powerful, value-laden forces ttiat supported, protected and nour-ished the individual; in the latter situation religious practice is :a constant, pervading element of almost every waking activity. An ecclesiastical reli-gious world often fails to separate the trivial and the important, the special and the ordinary, the cynical and the solemn. It's religion twenty'four hours a day! One ~young man said, "I've talked more God-talk in the last six months than in my previous twenty~six years combined. It's blowing my mind!" This religious overload takes its toll on the psychic system: the young man or woman may begin to feel he or she has lost that "something special" which faith provided. When all'is religious, nothing is religious! They may become distressed by their first in-close dealings with religious practices that are, routine, cynical and sometimes blatantly hypocritical. Their inexperience at differentiating motives and practices within a total ecclesiastical world can make them feel that the only way out is global rejection. The formation program needs to regularly help the candidates express and process their feelings towards the total religious community. Individuals obviously vary, but my students generally show signs in three weeks to a month of inner turmoil over their newfound ecclesiastical world. ,The transition to an ecclesiastical world will slowly induce other nega-tive ramifications. Young ,adult candidates begin the initial year with an amount of confidence they have built up in maintaining their faith com-mitment against diverse social presst]res. It is not unusual for some to have had to justify their vocational change to family, friends and coworkers; repeated justifications build in them a certain sense of well-being about their commitment. Other people publicly acknowledge them to be more religiously oriented for going to a seminary or convent. But upon entering the total ecclesiastical world, they soon perceive themselves as complete novices in more.ways than~one, They listen to conversations or classes filled with" church jargon and they soon judge themselves to know practically nothing about faith or religion. Liturgical customs befuddle them and they are embarrassed to ask names of objects, vestments or devotions that ¯ everyone else seems to know"intimately. Three months ago they were explaining many aspects of the Catholic faith to' coworkers; now they can easily perceive themselves as religiously dumb or incompetent. This partic-ular transition may contribute to their conservative stance, which is really a means of salvaging some vestige of religious dignity from their past. This transition, likeo all of them, can be jolting, but it can also be worked through. ~i31~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 Another key transition is the movement from one fixed social setting to another. Seminaries and religious communities tend to be enclosed, regu-lated societies (by laws or general expectations or both). Daily schedules and societal routines, such as meals, common prayers and social relation-ships can be vastly different from the social style that older candidates have become accustomed to. The-predominance,of same-sex relationships causes real hardships to some; the absence of children or family settings may be bothersome; the lack of free, unstructured evenings or weekends or the lack of a car and its freedom disrupt.the previous.ways that individuals had dissipated tension. That tension now accumulates and begins to boil within. ¯ I have found that on6 of the largest and most troubling transitions for young adults is the entrance into a trainin.g'program where theend is preparation for a. public role, along with the public evaluation that role requires. The priesthood as public leadership in the Chtirch and the eccle-sial witness of a religious community both demand evaluations of, persons seeking to enter those positions. Many older candidates have never thought of their religious pursuit through this lens,~-having confined their religious practice to a predominantly interior, individual and privatized realm (as is the fashion ofmost religious practice in the United States).2 The communal environment of seminaries and religious communities is saturated by the air of evaluation. Evaluation procedures are everywhere in current practice: academic, personal, spiritual, and so forth. All individuals must evaluate themselves (and others).on an annual basis. Each priesthood candidate will undergo an overall evaluation by faculty, and formation personnel on such matters as intellectual competence, social skills, pastoral abilities and spiritual growth. Externalization of what has often been a highly privatized religious realm can be terribly upsetting for the young adult. Some simply cannot see that,such matters should be evaluated publicly; the intense individualism of their religious background and expe-riences reacts strongly. Others become oversensitized, fearful. They worry about expulsion for unknown: reasons or accusation .by some Grand Inquisitor. Still others .may become hesitant because they°'fail to separate the realm of public behavior and standards from interior faith and direc-tion. A criticism about their lack of social abilities~can be "understood" as a criticism about °the integrity of theif~faith. A good. formation program should work with candidates to help them both understand and interiorize the meaning and demands of assuming a public leadership role, or the public demands of community~belonging. One young man said, "I just don't ~want to. be ste.reotyped~." I responded. "Sorry, it comes with the job." Many of these young adults who grew up in Adjustments in Older Candidates / 339 the age when traditional Catholic distinctions had slipped into shadows do not know the distinctions between "internal" and "external" forum. This must be carefully spelled out, and repeated from time to time. Even with all this, the appreciation of what a public religious leadership role demands does not occur without prayer, struggle and guidance through spiritual direction. The appreciation and interiorization of a public religious respon-sibility (beyond that of a private, personal spirituality) possesses all the elements of a significant conversion experience in life.~ To truly recognize the priestly ministry or the vowed religious life as constituting an ecclesial figureis also to accept thgse lifestyles as embodying~a responsibility to the whole Catholic world and Catholic tradition; this reaches considerably beyond a personal arid private" religious obligation. It requires an accep-tance and interiorization of public behavior, skills and attitudes which relate as much to the community of the Church as to my personal relatiom ship with God. Life transitions do pile up on the young adult who arrives at a seminary or religious community and seeks to discern a prssible calling to priest-hood or vowed life. We have considered several of the major ones: into an encompassing ecclesiastical world, from one fixed social setting into a quite different one, arid into a ~climate of higlfiaiablic evaluation. The anxieties generated by these transitioris can become severe, as the rii~xt section will show. For the l~resent fie simply need to note them and recognize that a Victic of directly addressing these transitions needs ~to be a constant com-ponent of both the formational and spiritual-direction program for these young adults. The Trauma of Transition For more than a decade the Alban Institute in Washington, D.C.I has studied the dynamics of "transition technology" in ministerial situations (e.g. from seminary to par!sh; from associate to pastor,,from one parish to another)) Leaders of the°institute recognized that those occasions when a person moves from one "known" social setting into a new and relatively unknown social setting constitute some of the most ~vulnerable periods in an individual's life. Although many organized-church traditions have fre-q uently moved, individuals from place to place as a matter of policy, little has been.done to help them make effective transitions to their new ministry or enable them to manage the sometimes severe traumas which may occur. (Th'e "grace of obedience"~was thought to effect the desired rebalancing:) The research of the Alban Institute has shown tl~at beginmngs in a pastoral situation are important; that the first months of adjustment frequently determine one's long-range adaptation and effectiveness in a new setting. 340/ Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 (In fact, more and more dioceses and religious houses are coming, to recognize the incredible influence of the first full-time placement.) Much of this research on transition technology becomes extremely relevant to young adults entering seminaries and religious communities for the first time. My particular seminary program deals with about thirty youngmen a year. l.would say it is.common for better than half of each group to feel some uncomfortableness over the transitions the$, experience. Their dis-comfiture may range from mild annoyance to severe personal upheaval. It is not unusual for an enthusiasm of the first weeks to slowly diminish and give wayto a growing diso'rientation. Some begin to.worry that they made a mistake, and the seminary .becomes a fearsome, t~rapping situation because their previous job has.been discontinued and their housing sold or leased. Others just ask over and over, "Why am 1 here?" and can't seem to find a satigfactory answer. A few may worry that their entire faith is crumbling; they can't explain sudden doubts which appeared where only months before there was absolute conviction. This time of doubt and dejection is frequently accompanied~by physical symptoms. Nagging illnesses like colds or upset stomachs pop up; physical weariness becomes the order of the day. Changes in bowel habits or sleep-lessness can increase anxiety. A transition experience cuts across all dimen-sions of life: physical, psychological, social and spiritual. We must understand the effects of social transitions on all these human areas,,and be ready to help people negotiate them. Psychologically, in a period of transition, by definition a young adult coming from secular societal life to the seminary or religious community, his or her daily patterns of life have all been removed, and new patterns do not immediately emerge. In certain aspects these individuals are like.immi-grants, slowly searching and experimenting for new roots. This time change may cause strong internal feelings to erupt. Some individuals Who previously held positions of authority and responsibility in the societal work force now feel the disorientation and worthlessness that lack of authority and status may bring. And there is no work or service in their new life to compensate. The sudden displacement of responsibilit.y may spark feelings of worthlessness or humiliation. (~Karl Marx had a valid insight in saying that a good deal of our personal identity comes from the socially significant work we do.) Lastly, the h~avy outpouring of psychic energy that goes with meeting new people, places and routines day after day leaves everyone tired and feeling a bit drained, and that weariness usually compounds the other negative feelings. This trauma of transition is not unusual, neither is it .a test that will, Adjustments in Older Candidates / 341 necessarily overwhelm a certain percentage of candidates. If these persons understand the probability of its occurrence at some time ~n their first year, do some preparation, and know some techniques of personal management, they are~able to handle it with a modicum of discomfort. One last point.should be watched: there it a quite normal dynamism of expectation which may w6rk havoc in situations of transitions, and I have frequently noticed it in pre-theology candidates. These young men often come from societal settings where they have been able to exercise some Christian service and engage in personal spirituality projects on a limited scale (perhaps in a parish volunteer setting or a Christian social-action group). When they enter the seminary and begin formal preparation for priesthood, their expectations escalate and they "assume" an immediate increase in Christian serviceand spirituality practices. But with full-time classes and school activities they are soon doing less actual ministry than before, and their personal prayer gets mixed up by the communal obliga-tions mentioned before.4 Psychologically their expectations are "gunning" the spiritual motor, so to speak, but socially they are in Park, and they find that they are grinding themselves down. This dynamic needs to be watched and worked with by formation personnel and spiritual directors. Older candidates need to formulate sl6~vly and patiently a "plan of identification" just as the Alban lfistitute counsels new ministers to work gradually towards formulating a plan of ministry for their new pastoral assignment.5 Just as six months is a recommended period of grace bef6re initiating parish changes, it is p]-obably a reasonable time-allotment for new-candi-dates before they attempt to assess (and escalate) any personal expectations they place o'n themselves. Suggestions for Personal and Spiritual Management The perception that older priesthood and religious candidates require qualitatively different kinds of formation programs is an ,idea that has already taken deep root among vocation and formation personnel. Signifi-cant strides have been made in many areas like course instruction and communityqiviiag requirements. I fiaerely hope to add a bit to this growing body of knowledge b~ suggesting some tactics and strategies to assist these individuals working through their initial adjustment or transition phase. These comments are more often applicable within the first six months of entry into seminary or religious community. The first strategy, in the line of preventive medicine, is quite simply knowledge, an awareness that some transition-anxiety will probably occur no matter how fine and enthusiastic the first weeks may be. There will undoubtedly be a great diversity in how individuals manage transitions; for ~149 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 some the adjustments may be slight, but few will have no problems what-ever. Simply to have in one's awareness a basic grasp of the multiple transitions, and how these transitions produce p~rsonal stress will provide guidelines for interpretation and action. To diagnose a difficulty ~icc.urately. is the first essential task in any kind of counseling. In this instance it may offset the further anxiety that can result if the young persgn feel.s that his or her vocation or faith is disintegrating. A second level o.f strategy would articulate a set of tactics that °might assist the young adult inthe midst of transition stresses to cope with these pressures. These tactics are similar to managing any "survival situation.TM They can be briefly summarized: 1) Lowe.rpqrsonal expectations. Instead of escalating their demands upon themselves to pray more fervently, work harder and do more service to others,, efforts should be made to cut back on these eoxpectations temporarily. The key here is to conserve physical and psychological energy for the tasks of psychic self-preservation. These indi-viduals are already operating at a reduced, energy level (due to the drain that social transitions exert), and there is no way they can successfully meet escalatedexpectations. Repeated failures merely compound guilt and nega-tive feelings, 2) Increased rest. The bodily systems are the foundation for psychological and emotional health as well as for making accurate judg- ¯ ments. When emotions are depleted, the body needs rest to coalesce strength and rebuild proper balance. For a time one may have to sacrifice other elements in the daily schedule in order, to get some additional rest time. 3) Pay attention to building daily routines. One of the reasons for high energy drain in transition times is that ever~h.ing is. ne,.w (people, places, schedule, social expectations). An inordinate amount of attentive awareness goes into "meeting" new people and performing even simple daily tasks. Habit or routine is Of value precisely to relieve that constant outpouring. Seek to regularize daily work-times, eating .and rest habits, companions, and so forth. 4) Spiritual direction and counseling. It always helps to talk tlirough problems, especially with a person who can provide a wider frame ~of reference. It does take some humility to asks. for help, particularly when one wanted so much to get off to a fabulous start in a new career. 5) Remind yourself that perserveranc.e is a Christian virtue. The young adult might remember that he or she has ~already made a very significdnt personal decision (to seek a testing of priesthood or religious life) and that decision should be stuck to "in good times and in bad," as any promise ought to be. A third, strategy would be to:recognize that a dynamic similar to the grieving process needs to tran_spire in the person. For many of these older candid~ites there is a break and removal,from friends, supports and joys of Adjustments in Older Candidates living. A sense of loss may strike them~ sharply as the first bloom of seminary or religious-community life wears off. The classic stages of the grieving process denial, anger, bargaining,,depression, acceptance cab find analogues in this context: fighting the onset of discouraging feelings, anger at the institution or superiors, bargaining to find some accomodating way, and so forth. Formation personnel should help candidates to realize that such feelings may be part of the natural adaptive process and not simply a rejection or d~nial of their vocations to priesthood or religious life. At particular moments it helps to say clearly ~hat one must give oneself permission to be discouraged or angry or depressed. That~acceptance may be necessary if an individual is to work the grieving process to a resolution and a newfound balance. Finally, a major theme of the pre-theology or novitiate year, which can be successfully introduced when the candidates are a couple of months into the program, is that of Christian conversion. A goodly number of older candidates arrive at their respective ecclesia~stical institutions as the result of some form of conversion experience, and so they often feel that the major part of the conversion process is behind them. The theological understand-ing of conversion as lifelong, process, with the tougher steps still ahead, becomes more graspable as the first sheen of the year wears off and people settle into the long haul Of personal and ministerial formation, lndeed conversion becomes more challenging the deeper it penetrates into our hearts and souls. Later people may look back and realize-that the expe-rience which brought them to seminary or religious community only cracked the surface. The more difficult and richer stages lie yet in the future. The preceding strategies are some helps I have found in aiding candi-dates to grapple with and conquer the onset of transition anxieties in their first year of seminary or religious community. By no means are they meant to be complete and exclusive. The formation literature that deals with this new form of religious and ministerial candidate grows steadily in breadth and depth; these reflections are intended to be one voice in that continuing conversation. NOTES ~"Candidates Entering Schools of Theology Without Prior Seminary Experie.nce," Report of Midwest Catholic Seminary Rectors (Duplicated Copy-1981), pp. 2-3. 344 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 2John Coleman "The Situation for Modern Faith," Theological Studies 39 (1978), pp. 601-632. 3AIban Institute materials 'include a series of pamphlets and workbooks by Roy M. Oswald: Crossing the Boundary Between Seminary and Parish; The Pastor as New-comer; New Beginn(ngs: Pastorate Start-Up Workbook. 4A similar process can transpire in religious community candidates even though they experience common prayer as a part of their ideal. This happens when an individual has so meshed his or her religious self-identity with a particular form of private prayer, that they are perceived as inseparable. It can be more difficult to unravel these situa-tions in religious community settings because of the difficulty of finding some "sabbati-cal time" to do the rettiinking and revaluing. 5Ro3/M. Oswald, New Beginnings: Pastorate Start-Up Workbook (Washington, D.C.: Alban Institute Publications, 1977), pp: 33-65. 61 have dealt with these dynamics further in " 'I'm Just Making It': Survival as a .Spiritual Value," REVlEW FOR R E~.~G~OUS 37 (1978), pp. 277-278. From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions land II Address: by Patricia Spillane, M. S~ C. Price: 151.25 per copy, plus postage. Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. SL Louis, Missouri 63108 Extremism in Ignatius of Loyola Tad Dunne, S.J. Father Dunne, who previously taught systematic theology at Toronto's Regis College, is now Director of Novices for the Detroit Province. He may be addressed at Loyola House: 2599 Harvard Road: Berkley. Michigan 48072. Retreats can be deceptive. Wewithdraw from our daily0meanderings and ascend to some lofty point from which we can see, from a spiritual perspec-tive, where our journey has taken us and where it is going. We may feel a need for an outlook quite opposite to oar culture's, even extremely so in some sense, if we are to live a vibrant spirituality in the midst of the world. From that vantage point, we search the gospels for some absolute ideal against which to test our everyday activities. And usually we come away with a vision simple and uncompromising. Then we come down from the heights, and before long we start work-ing on a balance between these opposites: not too talkative, but not too silent; not a workaholic, but not lazy; don't jump to conclusions, but don't accept everything mindlessly either. We look back on our retreat from quite a different perspective than we had while we were in it. Then we saw ourselves as refusing to com, promise with the world; but now we feel maybe just a little more faithful or a little more loving, and we count that small gain as our humble best. IS this retreat desire for some spiritual extreme an illusion we amuse ourselves with while p.erc.hed far above the harsh realities of the city? Or is the opposite true: that our adaptations to everyday realities compromise something in us that is precious in the sight of God? Ignatius of Loyola was one person, among many others in our history, who pushed for the no-compromise attitude: ~6 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 Just as people of the world who follow the world love and seek with such great diligence honors, fame, and esteem for a great name on earth, as the world teaches (hem, so those who are progressing i9 the spiritual life and truly following Christ our Lord love and intensely desire everything oppo-site (GE 101).~ This sounds impressive, but many doubt that we can make such a ¯ black/white distinction today. Unlike Ignatius in his day, we perceive a certain continuity between religious values and secular values. Our society's hospitals, its welfare systems, our efforts to eliminate poverty and to estab-lish political grounds for world peace all point to a growing convergence of what "the world" and what Christians intensely desire. Indeed, a case could be made that it is chiefly because of Christian values that the Secular City is gradually taking on humane, even spiritual goals for the human race. So should we regard Ig.natius' contentious approach to life as just a temporary stance made necessary by the chaos of the Church and of society in his time? I would like to argue a strong "No!" Strong, because unless we see some practical usefulness to an "everything opposite,, attitude, we would lose our sense of what is radidal about being Christian. We would gradually grow accustomed to "the world" as it is, and lose our critical 'sense. We w6uld have no razor-edged criterion for weighing practical alter-natiVes in ourapostolates. But what exactly does Ignatius mean by "everything opposite?"Para-doxically, he also counseled balance in many areas of life. So we can legitimately ask in what sense ought we be spiritual extremists, and in what sense men and women of prudent balance? Although I focus m~inly on Ignatius, I have no doubt that most°of the spiritual giants in human history would know what Ignatius was talking about. A Dialectic of Desires First of all, this "everything opposite" attitude does not refer to external social or cultural realities. It does not mCan that we should be opposed to all modern institutions just because they are "of the world." In any cage, these are always a mixed product of intelligence and ~aliqe, of good will and stupidity, and so in their regard we try not to throw out the baby with the bath. What Ignatius is talking about is rather ~ithe inner realities of consciousness. The "everything" which ought to 15e opposite to the "world" means inner desires. The disciple's desires ought to be completely opposite to the worldly penchant in us to "love and seek with such great diligence honors, fame, and esteem for a great name bn earth,~as the world teaches." Let me explain this more .fully. On the one hand, we revel in praise, we take pains to protect our Extremism ih Ignatius of Loyola/347 reputations, and we easily pour our energies into making a name for ourselves. On the other hand, rebukes chasten us, insults sting us, and injuries humble us. However, even when these humiliations are unjustified, we do have to admit that the shock to our pride does have a therapeutic element in it. In some small way, we need a come-uppance now and then. To be "put in one's pldce" can shatter self-defeating illusions we cherish about ourselves. What is very important to notice here is thatwhat honors do to ore: sense of ourselves, and what put-downs do, "are completely opposite. It is these opposing senses of'ourselves, I believe, that Ignatius means°by "everything opposite." Wl~at Ignatius gives in the General Examen, he expands upon in the meditation on the Two Standards (SE 136-148).2 There he shows how different acquired tastes about lifestyle usually lead to quite deep and quite opposite longings abo~t one's self-awareness. On the one hand. the taste for m0ney'leads to a desire for a great name. On the other, the taste for poverty usually leads to a longing for a certain anonymity the kind that frees a person to live without crippling self-concern. And beyond the great name anti th~ little name lie the r~al objects of one's deepest love what Ignatius calls either a.life of pride or a life of humility. Learning the Dialectic of Desires ~ Now few people recognize that, in faCt, they long either for pride or for humility. In"one's everyday choices,, most things seem morally gray, with-out serious consequefices., And yet they do add up to a direction in one's life, a direction that sooner or later reveals whether a person is self-centered or not. So it takes some reI:le~tion to real'ize for oneself that underneath a great number of apparently harmless concerns there lurks one's fundamen-tal inclination to pride. Likewise it takes some measure of self-reflection to notice the interior movements that in fact are a person's desire for humility. Once both these movements are recognized,° we can see that they are entirely opposite pulls in consciousness. Moreover, we can then begin to recognize that this dialectic of desires fihderlies our every activity, and see how it profoundly determines the person we become and the stamp we leave on our world. Given the'importance of this self-education in inner movements, it is no wonder that Ignatius prescribes more meditations on the Two Standards than on any other in the Exercises. ~ Still, we must admit, despite repeated meditations on the Two Stan-dards and nur~erous exhortations on the value of resisting the pull to ownership and to be held in high esteem, even the spiritually mature do not easily maintain.such a dialectical attitu.de toward their inner movements. And so we must ask why an "everything opposite" attitude is so difficult to 348 / Review.['or ReliL, ious~ May-June, 1986 live out. One reason is that we have failed to see the point of the Two Standards meditation. We may shave "done it" during a retreat and felt we got the point. Perhaps we understood Ignatius' view of the spiritual struggle very well and saw its connection toomaking choices in life. So we act as though it is enough to grasp the concept of spiritual struggle; we sincerely hope to bring the concept to bear in our everyday situations. What we forget is that life is concrete, not abstract. The people and the situations around us are a profoundly mysterious jumble of grace and malice, requiring in-depth reflection every day. Mediiation is .not analysis. Nor is =t simply ar~ appreciation of an abstract vision. Rather, meditation should be an ongoing and strenuous exerc=se in understanding the interac-tion between our concrete surroundings and our inner struggles. Ignatius, in fact, appeals very little to the concept of struggle. By that I mean that he does not analyze the meaning of "acting a, gainst" considered as a principle from which actions can be determined. It is one thing to acknowledge that life is a struggle, but quite another to name exactly what we are struggling with each day. In his practice and teaching of discernment Ignatius seldom appeals to an abstract rule of life. Instead, he appeals to imagination and to history to show that life is essentially a dialectic of desires, because he wants us to realize it in our own lives. For example, in the General Examen, he asks that the candidate for the Society of Jesus "ponder" how helpful it is to imitate the humiliated Christ. Does "ponder" mean conceptualize and ar~.lyze here? Not at all. The candidate is asked to imagine spiritually advanced men and womer~ and to notice how in fact they "intensely desire" to be clothed exactly as Christ, because of the love they bear him. lgnatius does not tell the candidate to imitate Christ humiliated and poor. He directs him only t,~ im.agine what the loyal disciple desires. Likewise in the Two Standards, the retreatant imagines the "servants and friends" of Christ, how they are naturally attracted in the direction opposite to pride, and how they attract others in the direction of h~mility.' I believe that ~Igriatius is trying to help the retreatant distinguis~h between several otherwise nameless, interior experiences. By focusing on the disciple instead of the Master, Ignatius clearly means to have us consider which Of our inner experiences, among the many that occur, corresponds to that particular attraction to Christ which the true disciple experiences. In other words, he wants us to discriminate among inner desires, not apply some facile, clean-cut rules about behavior. I said that Ignatius appeals also to history to teach us about these two pulls in consciousness. He does this in two ways. First, he directs a~tention Extremism in Ignatius of Loyola to the purposes which motivated Jesus in his work on earth so that we might better imitate him. True disciples "desire to resemble and imitate our Creator and Lord Jesus Christ. since it was for our spiritual profit that he clothed himself as he did" (GE.101 ). Notice that lgnatius calls Jesus "our Creator." This makes the choices of Jesus for poverty and humiliations a deliberate revelation of how we can best fulfill the purpose of our creation. Our Creator, Jesus Christ, came with this express purpose--to "give us an example that in all things possible we"might seek., to imitate and follow him, since he is the way that leads us to life" (GE 101). For Ignatius, God desired to enter human history in person, taking on the only condition that truly gives life, a condition of poverty and humility. If there was any doubt which inner desire one can depend on, now we see clearly that Jesus Christ freely and wisely chose .poverty and humiliations. History now has a model-member to guide it~ Jesus Christ, not just Lord but Creator as well, in imitation of whose interior .desires we find real life. Ignatius appeals to history in another manner which;although it is less obvious in the texts, underlies everything in the General Examen and the Exercises. Like St. Paul, he boldly sets his own historical experience and that of his first companions as the measure of what abnegation means in the concrete. In Chapter. Four of the General Examen, which Ignatius wrote with the overall intention that novices accept the idea of abnegation,3 we find this reason given: "For where the Society's first members have passed through these necessities and greater bodily wants, the others who come to it should endeavi~r, as far as they can, to reachthe same point as the.earlier ones, or to go farther in our Lord" (GE 81). In other words, the candidate is told that he is entering a community which is not leading itself; it is being led by God. Like Israel, the Society's founding historical expe-rience is normative for the Society's continuing style.Therefore for the simple reason that God moved the early companions to love poverty and humiliations in order to achieve the humility of Jesus, so too shOuld the later companions, because this is not just human work but the very labor of God nbt only in our psyches but in our history too. Isee two kinds of meditations which these reflections should prompt. First, we should learn for ourselves how to recognize when ~we are pulled toward humility and when towards pride. To do this, it may help to compare our~own inner experience to that of deeply spiritual persons. Their outwardly simple and self-effacing lifestyle is a manifestation of a militant obedience, to a deep and steady love within. Authentic people avoid applause, not because they are shy but because they are courageously maintaining a spirit which is very precious to them. Second, we should meditate on the various stories in which God acted ~ / Review for Religious, Ma.v-June, 1986 for the Church through Ignatius, or through any of the men and women who understood the struggle within. Their story is part of our history, and our story draws its meaning from that shared history. God indeed has entered history permanently, not only in the person of Christ Jesus but also in the hearts of our spiritual ancestors. Ignatius and his companions, in particular, recognized that their experience of begging and mockery gave them great joy. And why? Because they felt a concrete share in the expe-rience of their~Creat0r and Lord. Once they decided to form a community, they wrote constitutions with the purpose of structuring, as far as possible. a continual reenactment by its members of their'often difficult yet greatly joyful desires. We can read Scripture in the same way. By attending to the inner experiences which lay behind the texts of Scripture, we can recognize the two pulls of consciousness and the meamng of each, For example, when Jesus heard the woman cry out, "Happy is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursedyou!" he replied, "Not as happy as those who hear the Word of God and keep it!" (Lk 11:27-28). As I read it, this text says that the ~hief concern of a happy consciousness is inner obedience, not family loyalty nor pride in the fruits of one's labor.- For another example, we hear the reading from Wisdom, "I esteemed her [wisdom] more than scepters and thrones:. I loved her more than health or beauty" (7:8-10). What else is this wisdom but, the constant desire to live with ,the regular humiliations that come with living in the truth? Once we understand that what we call "salvation" is in fact the outcome of a tension in consciousness, we can read any scriptural stories and recognize familiar inner movements in ourselves. In this fashion, by seeing our pres-ent experience in the light of the gospels, we can grow to love the humble, self-transcending path. An Empirical View of the Dialectic Having said all that, there .still remains a nagging question. Many deeply spiritual men and women in fact have meditated in this way, have lived in actual poverty, have been stung by the insults, and know the joy that can accompany these experiences, but they regard this as a persono! asceticism only. They possess only vague notions of what the humble way has to do with peace in the world and the ongoing struggle of cultural and political leaders, to achieve it. Perhaps they believe in the~principle that pride pulls down nations, but they have no mental frameworkfor under-standing how it does so. Nor do they perceive how anyone~'s humility might everbuild up a nation. As a result, while they may live out a dialectical attitude ih their personal.lives, they can make no connections between it Ertremism in Ignatius of" Loyola / 351 and contemporary political science, psychology, sociology and economics. And so they seem to ache for the world but know nothing about how to improve it. Our world, after all, is thoroughly empirical, unlike Ignatius' world. which it seems, doted more on eternal verities. Were Ignatius alive today, 1 believe that besides appealing to imagination and to history, he would add a functional explanation of how the dialectic of desires underlies social progress and decline. That is, he would seek to explain how an inner penchant for doing without funds or fame works to bring about a redemp-tion in Christ Jesus that would mean something to this world. Or. to use his terms, he would explain what role ',discernment of spirits" plays in "redeeming" the world: To work out that functional explanation of how discernment of spirits facilitates redemption, we have to express the movements of the good and bad angels in terms that the average person can find in experience; °There are two experi.ences in particular which we must point out. each repr_esent-ing a pull or drawing in consciousness on the side of Christ's standard. First- is the experience of intending the truth. This experience relates to an extremely broad range of objects, and yet, as experience, it is quite distinct from many other kinds of inner experience. To "intend the truth" means to want to know reality, to search for answers to questions, and to respect the truth when we find it. This intending, this search, this respect, pulls against a counter-drift in us which settles for simple answers, for impressive words, for tricky, solutions, and for comforting illusions. Second is the experience of intending the good. This too relates to a ¯ broad range~ of objects and yet is quite a distinct feeling in consciousness. We ;'intend the good" when we weigh options for the sake of discovering what is objectively the best choice. In doing so, .we pull against ~ counter-tendency which seeks the merely satisfying, the subjectively comfortable. To want the truly good often means to choose a more painful path, but a better .one. And the criterion we use .to tell which is better is not only an examination of pros and cons.but also and chiefly, I believean expe-rience of fulfilled,or frustrated desire in our hearts. With these two experiences in mind--the intention of truth and the intention of good we can analyze how an "everything opposite" attitude works redemption in concrete situations, and how a failure to be strongly contentious prevents redemption from taking over. Let me illustrate this in several different areas of life. Some Illustrations To a great extent we all have difficulty with our feelings. Speaking for 352 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 myself, whenever I meet a stranger at a party, I seem to listen to our conversation with one ear and to my inner apprehensions with the other. It doesn't work very well because I often say things I immediately feel foolish about. Just when I hope to make a good impression, 1 feel I make a bad one. This happens because my mind was not fully on what we were talking about. I was also thinking about how to feel accepted, and so I blurted out things unrelated tothe topic of our conversation. Things are not much better with friends either, particularly when it comes to dealing with anger. When a friend gets angry with 'me, I want to strike back or at least defend myself. But neither reaction helps me under- 'stand what has gone wrong, and this failure to understand only makes it that much harder to work out an amicable solution. The ideal, of course, is to be able to acknowledge the truth of my own feelings and the feelings of others. This means workifig both to name the feelings and to pinpoint what the feelings are focused on--not an easy task for anybody. Negative feelings in particular are often repressed, and yet they are our best indicators that something of value is going ~ wrong. Because they are meant to alert us to harm, we should take them seriously, making every attempt first to acknowledge them and then to understand what they are all about. But this requires a no-compror~ise attitude towards those, pulls inside us which spring to "defend our poor egos. Those pulls create illusions which seduce us and cushion us against taking the sometimes painful responsibility~of facing the truth and doing our real best. For another illustraton of how dedication to reality and to objective worth helps bring order and sense into an ot.herwise ch~aotic situation, consider how communities tend by nature to be self-centered. As a com-munity we may be very realistic and quite responsible where each other are concerned, but this does nothing to prevent us from being aloof and oblivious to outsiders. Every community tends to reinforce its owri biases, to congratulate itself on its victories, and to speak a language full of value judgments 'that no one questions. Members seldom wonder whence its resources come and where its garbage goes. They seldom question whether or not its enjoyments are paid for by the sweat and malnutrition of foreigners. Unfortunately, for all the values inherent in community, there is very little in community itself that directs it beyond itself. These powerful gravi-tational forces toward self-centeredness can be found in communities of all sizes: couples in love, large families, ethnic groups, labor unions, nations-- and even religions. But all such communities live among other communi-ties. They contain subgroups, and they belong to larger groups. Wittiout some cultural commitment to the larger, more common good, subgroups Extremism in Ignatius of Loyola / 353 cut back their good will and limit their creativity to what benefits them-selves alone. So the normal demand for large-scale cooperationis regularly sacrificed for some small-scale gain: first for this and then for that faction. Sadly and ironically, once this game of competition between groups begins, none of the groups benefits as much as each of them might have, had they all shared their wits and their good will with one another. Historically, self-centered communities have enlarged their vision and commitments only when they have been provoked from within by a prophet. Usually.the prophet gathers a select community of like-minded people together to become the leaven in the dough. But before the prophet speaks a single word or calls a single disciple, he or she bbeysan inner pull toward truths and values that run counter to the prevailing attitudes. Prophets have reputations for being contentious. They get that way because they already fight an interior battle between illusions that are familiar and truths that are strange, between old, accepted ways of treating people and new, more dignified ways. So they cry out to the people they love, calling them to realize that they are playing a no-win game with other groups. When prophets are successful, a reform movement will get under, way only insofar as it deals with the community's concrete relations to other groups. The measure of its success will be the degree to which it demolishes any self-centered myths which its own authorities may propagate in the name of community strength or unity. But its members have to wake up intellectually. Only when they recognize these myths in themselves and wage an interior war against them will this peaceful revolution be~in. For my final illustration, I want to highlight the inner struggle that takes place in what we call the deep thinkers--scientists, historians, philo-sophers, and theologians, both the professional and the amateur. Contrary to popular opinion, deep thinkers often do not have an astronomically high I.Q. They work slowly but steadily. Nor are they born "bright;" they become aware of long-range implications and complex problems only by a steady fight against their minds' drift toward the easy answers. Again, you can see my point. On the one hand, we all experience a pull " toward a bogus form of knowing; the kind that relies on memory, rhetoric and bluffing. On the other, we also experience an "entirely opposite" pull towards asking honest questions, and searching for the best explanations, fighting against any worry that someone else .might beat us to a solution. We all have felt the desire to belittle intellectual inquiry and to disregard journals of opinion; even as we secretly wish we had the staying power to work for a more than surface understanding of the world around us. We cannot excuse our anti-intellectualism on the grounds of mental 3~4 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 dullness. The so-called "dull" can be extremely bright when it comes to practical and immediate concerns, Here lies the road to pride again. On its own power alone; our intelligence would n~ver stop asking questions about anything, no matter how remote. But when, the fruits of our reflections are not immediate and palpable, then a prideful concern for our own welfare forces its way in and compels our intelligence to surrender. We yield to the forces in our consciousness that move us toward easy answers, silly responses, and. make-believe solutions. While we all recognize these pulls in ourselves, we should notice what happens when psychologists, histbriians, political scientists, economists and the like give in to them. Their shortsighted solutions to human crises 'make life more miserable not just for themselves but for countless other human beings. Yet no jury indicts them for malpractice. No preacher denounces them from the pulpit. Instead, we give them the benefit of the doubt that ~'they did their best." But upon their interior obedience to the canons of truth--an obedience monitored by themselves alone--hangs the future of anyone whom their theories, and policies' touch. From this large-scale perspective, we can see better that every time someone settles for'merely partial answers to problems, he or she usually introduces a solution which itself needs fixing by someone else. Of course, this is only a general explanation of how bad situations get worse, but it does explain how a contentious spirituality can work to better the world we live in. Only an "everything opposite" attitude towards this downhill intel-lectual slide will regularly bring about .intelligent and long-range solutions to the problems that beset God's people. Conversion to the Dialectical Attitude "Everything opposite" means a conversion--one that requires some-times anger but often gentleness to maintain. It means recognizing that oners interior is a battleground of two opposing kinds of movements, whose :outcome has direct manifestations in one's psychic health, one's prophetic spirit, and one's intellectual freedom. These, in turn~, have a direct .effect on:family harmony, social justice and on the broad philosophies and theories that shape out: human institutions. The conversion ought to be total,.because there is no event in our everyday lives which does not derive its meaning from how we responded to it. As Christians, we stand in a peculiar relationship to.~this conversion to a dialectical .attitude. The functional explanation givrn above, of how dis-cernment of spirits works to create a better world, could stand on its own without any~reference to Christ Jesus. This is an asset insofar as Christians can share a vision, a language, and a praxis with non-Christians--which Extremism in Ignatius of, Loyola we must certainly do if we are to tackle issues of social justice with any seriousness. Such cooperation can even be the beginning of a dialogue about ultimates in truth and goodness leading to the Good News of Christ Jesus. But a functional explanation by itself is also a liability insofar as Christians might forget to name just who it is who moves the soul to face the truth and do one's true best. So it seems incumbent upon theologians and catechists to express the age-old doctrine of redemption in Christ Jesus and the Spirit in functional categories drawn from the dynamic~ of con-sciousness and the workings of history. This is a large order, but fortu-nately one already, being taken up by many today. A final word of caution: Such an "everything opposite" attitude is not learned overnight. It takes time to name which inner experiences corres-pond to "intending the truth" and which to wishful thinking; which to "inte,,nding the good" and which to securing the merely comfortable for ourselves. And we learn by our mistakes. But Without the slightest exag-geration we can say that in this matter there should be no compromise. Only an extremism about our inner movements can give us the day-to-day balanced judgment and love that redeem the world. ~ NO~ES ~ General Examen. This document was written by Ignatius for the purpose of teaching candidates for the Society, of Jesus what Jesuit life Would require. It was meant to be given:in a retreat setting, requiring some serious meditation. See George E. Ganss, ed., The Constitutions of the ~Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970) pp. 75-118. My references above refer to paragraph numbers. 2Spiritual Exercises. See Louis 3. Puhl, ed., The Spiritual~Exercises of St. Ignatius (Wes.tminister, MD: The Newman Press, 1959), References are to paragraph numbers. 3Joseph de Guibert, The Jesuits: Their St~iritual Doctrine and Practice (Chicago: Loyola UniverSity Press; St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1964) p. 141. The Spirit of Holiness Living in Us E. A. Ruch, 0 M.L Father Ruch teaches philosophy, at the National University of Lesotho (P.O. Roma 180; Southern Africa). He has just completed a study leave in France. Spiritual theology distinguishes three stages in our progress towards holiness: The purgative (cleaning) stage which consists essentially in a breaking-away from sin, not merely out of fear of divine punish-ment, but out of a God-given awareness of God's love for us; The illuminative stage in which we grow in a personal understanding of who God is, an awareness which always culminates in the realiza-tion that "God is love"; The unitivestage which is a personal love-response to God's love for us and thus a gradual transformation of ourselves into true children of God sharing in his divine nature. Holiness is infinitely more than just being a good man, someone who meticulously obeys the law of God. We live in a redeemed world, a world already reconciled with God, but in which we are called to "become the goodness of God" (2 Co 5:21). This is why the standards of holiness which Christ sets us are much higher than those of "the Scribes and the Pharisees" (see Mt 5:20-47). Jesu~ has come to complete the law, to raise it io a level which we cannot attain by our human strength. Indeed, he expects us to be "perfect as (our) heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). He wants us to become "fully developed, complete, with nothing missing" (Jm 1:4). He wants us to "be holy in all [we] do, since it is the Holy One who has called [us], and Scripture says: be holy, for I am holy" (I P 1:IS). We must not, therefore, confuse a high standard of moral purity with holiness. Moral purity is only the starting poittl on our way to holiness. The Spirit of Holiness / 357 Beyond our human struggle for justice and goodness, there is a gift from God which transcends all human limits. Let me try to exploin this by means of a parable. Let us suppose a diver who, having stripped off his everyday clothing, is preparing tb plunge into the pool. Undressing does not make a diver. It is only when he has left terra firma and confided himself tothe new element, viz. water, that his life as a diver begins; for it is only a beginning. Let us now follow the diver's experience under water. He begins to discover the marvels of the underwater flora and fauna: a truly new world opens: to him. True, he also begins to discover the dangers of this life, but the beauties he discovers are more than a match for the risks incurred. More and more he finds pleasure in diving and in exploring this new world. And yet, every once in a while he has to return to dry land to refill his compressed air cylinders and to take a rest in his own, more familiar world. Let us now imagine such a diver being gradually transformed into an "aquatic animal," i,e, into a kind of new man, capable of living, breathing and working under water in perfect ease, not even wishing to return to his formerly familiar, yet highly toxic atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Life under water has become a "second nature": it is now his "real" life and his original one would be considered as "abnormal." He is now a new creature "fully developed, complete, with nothing missing" who no longer wants to leave his newly acquired mode of existence, and who finds "life outside" meaningless, boring, heavy and poisonous. He now "lives and moves and has his being" in God. He has "become like him, because he sees him as he really is" (1 Jn 3:2). We have here a neat image of growth in holiness. First of all, God, through his Spirit living in me, prompts me, urges me to "take the plunge" and to be '~baptized in the Spirit." He then begins the long process of revealing the beauties and risks of life in and with God. Finally he initiates that transformation into his own life which will only be completed in eternal beatitude, but which is already partially shared through faith in the joy of discovering the life of God in us. I would now like to show the role of the Holy Spirit in these three stages. The Purification When John the Baptist preached the metanoia; q.e. the "turning-around," the "about-face" which is required in our sinful life, he strength-ened his preaching with the effective symbol of immersion into the water of the Jordan as a sign of personal cleansing. But John also knows that he cannot achieve more than mere moral purity. He is still a man of the Old ~1511/ Review for Religious; May-June, 1986 Testament ("The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Mt 11:11))~ We are called to much more than moral purity and John proclaims his role as Precursor of the one who will baptize "with the Holy~Spirit and withfire" (Mt 3:11). The symbol of fire a~ an element of purification is well known throughout the Scriptures: More effectively than water, because it goes to the hearvof the matter and not only to its surface, fire cleanses from within. It burns away the impurities as one,burns the chaff after winnowing (Mt 3:11-12).~ .~ Fire as a ~ymbol of the Holy Spirit is, of course, well known from the Pentecost event and the "tongues of fire." Another purifying force in spiritual life is the loneline.ss, suffering and silence of,the "desert experience." Like the people of Israel who have to be purified of their Egyptian habits through their forty years of wandering through the desert, so also Jesus himself was "led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to-be tempted by the devil" (Mr 4::1; Mk 1:12 and ~Lk 4:1). The Spirit will invite us too from time to time to retire into solitude and silence, because this is the precondition for hearing the voice of God which would become inaudible in. the hustle and bustle of our daily, life in our,~nervous and tension-filled world. And just as fire is painful when it burns away impurities, so ~the solitude of the desert is frightening. St. Teresa of Avila insists very strongly on the importance of "the grace of quiet" for spiritual life (Way of Perfection, ch. 33). St.John also points at another necessary purification: to bring the desires of the flesh under th~ control of the spirit: Unless ~ man is borfi through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. What is born of the flesh is flesh; what is born of the ,.Spirit is spirit (Jn 3:5-6). Thus purification is part of a p(~ocess of acq~iiring a new life (see v. 3). "l:he real life is not the one given by the flesh; only'"the Spirit. gives life" (J~n 6:63). Above all, purification from sin is a condition for receiving the gift of ¯ theo~Holy Spirit. Therefore Peter announces to the people at Pentecost: You must repent .and everyone of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus 'Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Ac 2:38). In reverse, the Holy Spirit is specifically given to the Apostles to,enable them to forgive sins: Receive~the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive they are for-given; ofor those whose sins you retain, they are retained (Jn 20:22). ~' We are fighting a running battle against the forces of evil. We are the The Spirit of Holiness / 359 accused in an endless courtcase in which Satan is "the accuser of'our brethren., who accuses them day and night before God"(Rv 12:10). But this a~:cuser has been "thrown down" (ibid) by the Holy Spirit who is our Advocate. Because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth while the devil is the "spirit of disorder" ( I Jn 4:6) and of "falsehooi:l ~ind murder" (Jn 8:44).~ In our fight with the spirit of evil who tries to turn us away from God. the Advocate "will be with you forever, he will be continually at your. side. he will be m you" (Jn 14:17). ~hus the Holy Spirit appears also as the one who sustains us in our temptations, who provides us with arguments to beat the devil. Even when we fire facing evil earthly powers, we need have no worry, because "ttib Spirit of your Father will be speakir~g in you" (Mt 10:!8-20). Like a good advocate he will prove the "opposition" wrong(see Jn 1~:9-11), by convict-ing the world ofits sinfulness and consequently of the fact that without Christ's victory the world is meaningless and lacks all ultimate purpose. In his epistle to the Romans St. Paulexplains this purifyi~ng role of the Holy Spirit by stating that the Hrly Spirit takes people who are living by "the law of sin and death" which is characterized by "the misdeeds of the body" (Rm 8:1, 13)and he makes them "spiritual": Your ~nterests. however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual. since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In 'fact. unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to hire. Tl~ough your ¯ body may be dead it is because of sin; but if Christ is in you, then your spirit is life itself because you have been justified: and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you (Rm 8:9-10). The Spirit does not only transform our soul and cleanse our mental habits our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions he also "spiritualizes" our bodies to prepare them for the resurrection. Our bodies became mortal "because of sin"; the cleansing from sin through Christ's "Spirit living in us" is the cause of our immortality.~ What are the spiritual transformations which the Spirit operates in our souls? St. Paul opposes the spirituality and holiness of the Old Testament and that brought about by Christ's Spirit living in us. The Spirit transforms our "spirit of slaves" livingin fear, into a "spirit of.sons" who have been "set free"(Rm 8:14-23; see 1 Jn 4:17-18). It is a new attitude with regard to the law that takes hold of us: we do right not because_ we are afraid, but because we love. On the other hand, and for the same reason, i.e. love, this freedom is never licentiousness, because we are living in the Spirit: If you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to 360 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit . . (Ga 5:16). In other words: the presence of the Spirit in us does not justify bad behav-ior, but should enable us to avoid bad behavior. Hence also Paul's claim to the Corinthians that no on~ can curse Jesus and be in the Spirit of Jesus (1 Co 12:3). Paul's whole apostolic life was dominated by his struggle to make the new converts realize this new dimension brought about by faith in Christ: an externally imposed Law is replaced by the promptings of the Spirit from within (see Ezk 36:26-27; Jr 31:33). The true Christian is doing good because the Spirit moves him from within his very freedom. Even our faith in the Gospel is the work of the Spirit and it is this faith, rather than outward observances that justify us (Ga 3:2). It is a pagan (or an Old Testament) attitude to do good or to refrain from doing evil out of fear of hell, or in order to curry God's "favors," rather than out of inner convic-tions growihg out of love. A Christian attitude stems from the Spirit within us and from our readiness to let the Spirit become active and effective in us and through us. Since the Spirit is our life. let us be directed by the Spirit. We must stop being conceited,, provocative and envious. (Ga 5:25). The Spirit which he sent to live in us wants us for himself alone (Jm 4:5); (literally: 'The Spirit. yearns, earnestly for our love'). No one who has been begotten by God sins: because God's seed remains inside him. he cannot sin when he has been begotten by God (1 Jn 3:9).2 But God will not sanctify us without us. It is from within our freedom that God acts and lives in us. We must collaborate with his promptings, for God has an infinite respect for our free will. Nor is it sufficient to have received, the Holy Spirit once and for all, like some kind of seal, medal or honorific title. He has to live in us. We have to grow in him by letting his influence in our lives become more and more continuous and pervasive. It is precisely this growth which supposes an inner cleansing. We cannot serve two master~; at the same time: one must diminish if the other is to grow. As long as our life is cluttered with worries, with sins, with ourselves, with the world, with pleasures and so forth, there is little room for God to grow in us. He is not going to sneak into our life, as we gradually clean out the house just ahead of him. We have to make a clean sweep before God arrives. But we are afraid of the apparent spiritual poverty, of the empti-ness, of the echoing hollowness within us. The Spirit gives us the courage to empty ourselves (see Ph 2:7) so.that we might experience God making irruption into our life. The blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God The. Spirit of Holiness / 361 through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God (Heb 9:14). In short: the first level of the Spirit's action demands, but also produ-ces an inner cleansing, a reorientation of our lives, an openness to the guidance of the Spirit and a readiness to be transformed. Without this there simply cannot be any.growth in spiritual life, because without it we are not capable of putting ourselves into a listening attitude towards God, and without_ this listening attitude there will not be that inner enlighten-. ment whereby God wants to make' himself personallY known to us. Enlightenment and Learning Si. John presents us the Holy Spirit as the'Spirit of truth: "I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate3 to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive since it neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, becauSe he is with yo.u, he is in you. [he] will teach you everything and remind you of all 1 have said to you" (Jn 14:15-16, 26). This theme of the "world" which cannot see God ,recurs often in John. The world is blind to God because it is too much concerned with other, rela, tively unimportant things. The Word of God is the true light which many people refused to receive (Jn 1:9-13). But there are also those whb, throughout the history of salvation, have let themselves be enlightened by the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit inspired the prophets (see Lk 1:67; Ac 21:4; 28:25;.) and the writers of Scripture. He guides the lives of those he inhabits (see Lk 2:25-26) and he leads Jesus himself through his ministry (Lk 4:14, 18)oand makes him,utter prophetic words (Lk 10:21). Indeed it is the Spirit who, in the form of a dove, points at the Messiah as the voice of the Father is heard at.Jesus' baptism (Mt 3:16-17; Mk 2:10; Lk 3:21-22i Jn 1:32-34; ~1 Tm 3:16). It is by the Holy Spirit that Jesus performs his m.iracles (Mt 12:28). In short: the Holy Spirit makes us become aware of Jesus,as the Messiah and of his redemptive role. This is why the Gospels are so 6utspoken against those who "sin against the Holy Spirit" (Mt 12:32; Mk 3:28; Lk 12:10) because this sin blinds us to the revealing and illuminating role of the Holy Spirit without which we cannot reach God nor pr.ogress in holiness. ("No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" 1 Co 12:3). In other words, the sin against the Holy Spirit makes God's essential work in our life, viz. our sanctification, impotent. Jesus has proclaimed the Good News to us: he is the Good News, but we are incapable of fully grasping what this means unless the .Spirit opens our eyes: It is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate 369/ Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 will not come t6 you; l~tit if I do go, I will send him to you . I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too' mucfi for you now. But " when'~the Spirit of trt~th comes he will leadyou to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himselfbut will only say what he has learnt . Jn 16:7-15 (passim). ~ " ~- We clearly see the effect of the Spirit on the apostles at the moment of the Pentecost event!~ Now, the coming of the Holy Spiritdoes not imply the revelation of neff doctrines, but the creation of an inner receptivity and capacity for underst~hding the Good N~ws of Christ in a more personal way:. You have been anointed by the Holy One, and have all recei'bed the knowledge'., you do not need anyone to teach you; the anoiming he gave you teaches you everything; you are anointed with truth, not with a lie. (1 Jn 2:20, 27). Thus the Holy Spirit generates faith, the ability to listen and to hear, in us and she convicts the "world" of its basicsin of unbelief (see Jn 8:21, 24, 26; 15:22). In reverse he convinces the believers of Christ's divinity (see Jn 10:33; 19:7) because l~y returning to the Father in his human bo.dy, Jesus shows that his true home is in heaven (see .In 13~ 1; 20:17). Finally the Spirit gives to the believer the unshakable confidence in the power of God who has overcome the empire 6f evil. Thus, by revealing the glory of Christ and enabliiig us to b~elieve in Christ, he makes us listen to him who reveals to us the glory of the Father. The Acts of the Apostles have been called the "Gospel of the Holy spirit." They are full of incidents in which the Spirit illuminates the minds and heart~of~the apostles and of the believers. Let us me~'ely'mention a few of them almost at random. He gives to the believers the gift of speech in foreign tohgues (Ac 2:4), he inspires the words of the apostles (Ac 4:8.31), he gives Stephen an, irresistible power of argumentation against his detrac-tors (Ac 6:10) as Jesus himself had predicted (Mk 13:11; Lk 12:H-12). On several occasions the Spirit gives people the ability of predicting the future (Ac 21i,~; 11:28); he guides the decisions of the Church in admitting pagans (Ac-8:29, 40; ~10:19, 44-47; 11:12-16; 15:8),'in limiting the relevance of the Jewish laff (Ac 15:28) and in determining the mission of Paul to the pagans (Ac 13:2 sq; 16:6-7; 19:1). Occasionally he gives very precise g~uidelines for th~ apostolate (Ac 8:28). But ~bove all the Holy Spirit reveals himself internally to those who receive him, usually in baptism, by giving them the power of praising God in words-inspired by God himself [the gift of tongues](see Rm 8:26-27; Ac 9:31; 10:44; 19:1-7.). Indeed one could say that the Holy Spirit was clearly the power behind the expansion of the ~early Church. The Spirit of Holiness / 363 This power is usually revealed and released in a prayerful atmosphere. Throughout Acts, one gets the impression of a people moving about in an inner spiritual dynamism, open to God, ready to expect any kind of mira-cles. Of course they are_ ordinary human beings like you and me. They sometimes become almost obsessively enthusiastic (like the Corinthians), while others (like the Gala~tians) remain fearfully attached to traditions. In this they do not differ all that much from the Churchof today! But there does seem to be a genuine desire throughout the early Church to let the Spirit rule the life of the faithful. St. Paul himself tells us that he is not bothered by his weakness, precisely because he" knows that he can always let ttie Spirit and the power of God Speak and pray in and through him (Rm 8:26-27). He knows that he is not preaching his own ideas nor by his own power, but by the power of God (1 CO 2:3) and that "the Spirit reaches the' depth of evet:ything, even the depth of God" (1 Co 2:10). This is why he chides Timothy for his timidity: God's gilt was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love. and self-control (2 Tm 1:7).~ And~just as the Spirit give~'to the preacher the words to preach, to the prophet the message to proclaim and to the teacher the doctrine to teach, so also he gives to the listeners the inner .power to understand with heart and mind, and the wisdom to apply what has been taught in their personal life: May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of ~lory, g~ve you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him (Ep 1:17,). Out of his infinite glory, may he give'you the power through his Spii'it for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ .may live in you through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love. you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth . (Ep 3:16-19). By thus gradually growing, in God's wisdom, we will be filled with the '~utter fullness of Ggd" (ibid v. l~J). ,, But God ca~ only fill us with his wisdom, !f we have let ourselves be emptied of the wisdom of the "~orld." Hence,the purification stage.must precede and will itself grow in _proportion to the gradual~growth in "enlightenment." We can only grow "little by little" (Ws 12: !-2). Secondly we mus~ play our fa,irt by taking a humble, listening and receptive attitude in sile~ace ~nd. patience. And thirdly, the Holy Spir!t comes to each one of us personally, but always within the context of and for the sake of the whole Church, the Body of Christ (see 1 Co 14), because "God is Love" and v~hatever he does in us and through us,~in on13~ take place within a 364 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 love-relationship, This is why love is the greatest commandment, but also the greatest of all gifts of the Spirit: the gift which not only includes all others, but also the only one which is to remain forever (1 Co 13). We 'do not receive the Holy Spirit for our exclusive personal enjoyment, but for sharing him with others through apostolic action. As Jesus says to his apostles: You will r~ceive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and t~en you will be my'witnesses (Ac 1:8). More than half the passages in the Acts which speak about the Holy Spirit mention him in a directly apostolic context. This is also why the Holy Spirit is presented in such an intimate relationship with the Church that Peter can say: "It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves." (Ac 13:28), while the Book of Revelation affirms: "The Spirit and the Bride [= the Church] say: 'Come'"-(Rv 22:17). A final point worth mentioning in the present context: If it is true that the illumination by the Spirit is proportional to our emptying ourselves of our own ideas, then it is easily understandable why the poor in spii-it are given preference in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:3),~ why "these things" have been hidden frrm the worldly wise and revealed to children (Mt 11:25) and why only children can enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18: !-4). Union in Love The Christian religion is not merely an ethics, i.e. a list of actions to be done or avoided. Jesus' struggle with the Pharisees (see Mt 5:17 sq and 23:13-32), as well as St. Paul's arguments to show the powerlessness of the Law to save us (e:g. Rm I-7) are proof enough of this. Nor is Christianity merely a beautiful doctrine dogmatically proclaimed a~d faithfully but blindly accepted: If I knew all the mysteries and all science, and if I had the fullness of faith. but without love, lam nothing (! Co 13:2). God wants to call us to a new life. I~e wants to change our identity from within, not merely our mode of external behavior. He wants us to be reborn "through water and the'Spirit'' (Jn 3:5) so as to enable us to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is through the Spirit of Goal that this "rebirth" as children of God takes place: The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, sharing his 'suffering so as to share in his glory (Rm 8:!4-17; see Ga 4:6~7). The Spirit is our passport for our new. "ciiizenship," because we have been The Spirit of Holiness / 365 stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit of the promise, the pledge of our inheritance which brings freedom to those whom God has taken for his own to make his glory praised (Ep 1:13-14). Of course in this life we still know God only "dimly, as in a mirror" (1 Co 13:12), and yet e~,en in this limited way, God already reveals himself to us from within, from his presence in us through the Spirit: We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us (! Jn 3:24). We can know that we are li~ing in him and he is living in us, because he lets us share his Spirit (! .In 4:13). The Spirit is .an" experienced reality. Even the places and buildings where the early Church was gathering "were shaken" when they were "filled with the Holy Spirit" (Ac 4:3 I) and the Holy Spirit is often described as "falling on" people (Ac 10:44; 11:15). It is like falling in love: it is an experience difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it. The kingdom of God is therefore not merely something to be expected in the life to come. We are already living in this kingdom, which can be identified with equal right with the Holy Spirit and with the Church, provided the Church is not merely seen as an administrative structure. St. Paul refers to our transformation into children of God as something already realized: We were buried with [Christ] in baptism [and we]'have been raised up with him" (Col 2:12-13). However, this new reality demands, right here and now, a new mode of life: Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life. and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God iri true righteousness and holiness (Ep 4:22-24). We are incorporated into the Spirit (Rm 8:1, 9. We are "temples of God"( 1 Co 3:16; 6:19). We have been 'Zraised up with Christ" (Col 3:1). It is for this reason that all "Paul's moral instructions are so severe. Moral instructions and calls to holiness are one and the same for Paul, and they center, as .one can expect, on the two commandments of love of God and~ love of neighbor. Because of the Spirit dwelling in us, we are able to love God and to love our neighbor with the same kind of love with which God himself loves us: The love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us (Rm 5:5). The first thing that changes in our new, Spirit-filled life, is our relation- ~166 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1986 ship with God in prayer: The book of Genesis tells u.s .of Enoch~ who was livinga life of such 'intimacy with God that he was absorbed into God, that he vanished in him (Gn 5:24). The original familiarity with God as des-cribed in paradise is re,stored. We learn to relate to God truly a~ our Father because ,"God has Se.nt the Spirit of hi~ Son into our hearts crying 'A~bba! Father!'" (Ga 4:6; .see Rm 8:26). Our ~vorship is no longer tied to places, times, rituals, and'words, but becomes "worship in0 spirit a.n~d in truth (b~ecause) God is °soirit" (Jn 4:24). Above' all, our worship ~s no longer dominated by fear because ° love will come ~o perfection in us when we can face the day of judgment without fear; because eVen in this worm we have 'become as he is. In love ~there is no fear', but fear is driven out by perfect love" (1 J'n 4:17-18; she "~ Rm 8~21~29)~ So to pray in the Spirit of God (see Ep 6:18) means to pray in an attitude of fearless love: God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him (l Jn 4:16).~ This means thaLGod lives in us-and we live in him, but also that as a result weare transformed into God's essentially loving nature. This transforma, tion will not only reveal itself in our relationship with God, but also in our relationship with our fellowman. We are living a lie if we claim to love God, to be a child of God, while not loving our neighbor: We can ,be sure that we are in God only when the one who claims to be living in him is living the same kind of life as Christ lived (1 Jn 2:5-6). Now God's love for us was revealed when God sent into ,the world his' only Son so that we could have life through him . Since God loved us' so much~ we, too should love one another . As long as we love one another, God will live in us ~'nd h~s love will be complete in us. (I Jn 4:10-12). This whole,newdoving relationship is planted inu~ by the Holy Spirit living in us and e.nabling us to grow in him and thus to become more and more ,like Christ whose .Spirii he is. ¯ If we live by the truth .and in love, we shall "grow in all ways into- Christ ~, who is the head by whom:the whole body is fitted and joined together. "~ So the body grows until it has built itself up in love (Ep 4:15-16):~ . This body,,building itself up and. growing in love, is the Church. This is also why the gifts and charisms are to be used for "the common good" (see 1 Co 12:7; 14:3r4, 26) and are of no account without the cha,rity which~gives The Spirit of Holiness / 367 them meaning (1 Co 13). Jesus wanted us to be perfect "as our heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48) and he summarizes the whole Law and the Prophets in the commandments of love (Mt 22:40). Our growth in perfec, tion can therefore only be a growth in this twofold, love and this growth is essentially God's work because we have been chosen by the prox)ident purpose of God the Father to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled by his blood (I P 1:2). The lives of the Saints are beautiful illustrations of this powerful and effective dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul. In all their differences, they have struggled through these three stages of growth in holiness. Some have put more emphasis, on their sinfulness and on the need for inner purifica-tion; others have spent most of their life trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into the knowledge of the mysteries of God, not only with their intellect but with their heart and their whole being: All have been led towards a life of intimate

Issue 45.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1986. ; Direction and Reconciliation The Prayer of Being Responses to Rape The Key to Spiritual Direction Volume 45 N umber 6 Nov.IDec. 1986 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REVIEW FOR REt.IGIOOS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1986 by REVIEW FOR REL~OOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $11.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVtEW YOn RELIGIOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. 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The World Synod of Bishops: The Extraordinary Session of 1985 The Ordinary Session of 1987 Jan Schotte, C.I.C.M. Archbishop Schotte is General Secretary of the World Synod of Bishops. This article is based on his address to the Catholic Press AssOciation Convention, June 7, 1986, the text of which was first published in its The Catholic Journalist, July, 1986, pp. 5-8. ~n this article I will deal with what I have learned, during the past~months since my transfer to the office of Permanent Secretary, about one of the youngest institutions of the Catholic Church, the World Synod of Bishops. When in the course of my remarks I intend also to say a few words about the relationship between the Synod and the media, please accept my contribu-tion as the expressio~n of a deeply held conviction that the media have a major role to play in the mission of the Chm:ch, and especially with regard to the Synod of Bishops. This conviction is based on my experience as a priest and missionary who has been privileged to serve the Gospel of the Lord and his Church in many different functions. I worked with the media as the briefing officer for French-speaking journalists in the 1980 and 1983 Synods of Bishops. In those days, I was somewhat biased in favor 0f media people. Today, as Secretary General of the Synod, I dare to hope that I still carry within me that same favorable bias. I will confine my remarks to.three areas. In the first place, I will share some insight into the preparation, the process and the final product of the Extraordinary General Session of the Synod of Bishops, held in 1985. 801 802 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 Secondly, I will brief the reader concerning the next Ordinary General Session of the Synod of Bishops on the theme "Vocation and Mission of the Laity in the Church and the World, Twenty Years After the Second Vatican Council," which is scheduled to take place from October 1 through 30, 1987. Finally, I will offer some very tentative comments on the relationship between Synod and media, telling what the Secretary General of the Synod expects from the media, and at the same time expecting to hear from the media professionals, what they expect from the Synod Secretariat. I. The Extraordinary Synod of 1985 The Extraordinary Synod, which received more media attention than any of the previous synods, was first and foremost a Synod of Bishops-- just that, but totally that! What Is the Synod of Bishops? It is not easy to give a brief reply to this question. It becomes especially difficult when the person asking the question expects an answer in terms of civil or political administration. Is it a parliament, a Church senate, a private council of the pope, a mini-ecumenical council? Each of these bodies has some analogy with the Synod, but none is apt to explain the true nature of the Synod. The Synod is explainable only in terms of the interior logic of the Church, from within her structure and her life. Dealing with an ecclesial entity, a juridical-institutional explanation is not sufficient, but it is necessary to have recourse to the notion of the Church as mystery and as communion. The Synod of Bishops has become part of the life of the Catholic Church; we accept its existence as normal, undisputed. From 1967 onwards we have witnessed the synodal assemblies treating topics and arguments of great importance and attracting the attention not only of Catholics but also of many others. The Synod of Bishops has become one of the propulsion centers of the pastoral activity of the Church, introducing into its life the more important reforms called for by Vatican I1. We recall the 1967 Synod which discussed several topics: the basic orienta-tion for the New Code of Canon Law; orientations for the reform of semi-naries; mixed marriages; and institution of the International Theological Commission. The first Extraordinary Synod of 1969 contributed to the clarification of the role of the bishops' conferences their relationship to the Holy See. The Synod of 1971 againdiscussed two fundamental topics: one on the identity of the Catholic priest and the meaning of priestly celibacy; the other on The World Synod of Bishops / 803 social justice. The 1974 Synod was dedicated to the theme of evangeliza-tion. It was followed in 1977 by the Synod on catechesis. The Synod of 198Odiscussed the Christian family. The Synod of 1983 addressed the issue of reconciliation and penance. The Second Extraordinary Synod of 1985 evaluated the implementation and impact of the Second Vatican Council. Truly an impressive list for only twenty years of activity. Such fundamental and vast themes together with their links to the Council and the post-conciliar period suffice to show the growing importance of the Synod of Bishops in the life of the Catholic Church. It is an institution with connotations of universality, agility and topicality, which seeks to fulfill its role as Syn-odos, the "walking together" of bishops for the benefit of the universal Church and all humankind. The Synod of 1985 It is necessary to understand that any .session of the Synod of Bishops is a fruit of the Second Vatican Council, and an expression of collegiality and communion in order to fully grasp the meaning of that special event that was the Second Extraordinary General Session of the Synod of Bishops, which took place from November 24 through December 8, 1985, on the theme: "The Second Vatican Council on the Twentieth Anniversary of Its Closing." In recent years, the Church has been subjected to surprises: the death of the smiling Pope John Paul I after only thirty-three days in office; the election of the first non'Italian Pope in four centuries; the vitality and charm of Pope John Paul II who travels to all continents and keeps drawing massive crowds of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In some way, we have become used to such surprises. Despite all this, when John Paul II made his announcement of an extra-ordinary general session of the Synod of Bishops to evaluate the impact of the Second Vatican Council, the Church and the world were not prepared for this new surprise, so much so that immediately a full-blown debate started in the news media about the purpose Of the Synod, about the intentions of the Holy Father, to say nothing about the feasibility, of calling the bishops to Rome with only eleven months of advance notice. Yet this announcement was fully consistent with the personality and style of the Holy Father, and more especially in accord with his deepest faith convictions. It is no secret that John Paul II has a deep sense of his mission, and that he is constantly looking for ways and means to confirm in the faith his brother bishops and the whole people of God. We also know that he attaches great importance to significant gestures and symbols. We have learned that he is not afraid to face reality and tO assess situations with 804 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 utmost lucidity. All these factors taken together would have been sufficient to explain why he deemed it necessary to convene on short notice an Extra-ordinary General Session of the Synod of Bishops, But there is more. John Paul II is a firm believer in the collegiality of the bishops and he is a convinced defender and promoter of the Second,Vatican Council. The Holy Father has always believed and continues to believe in. the Council, not for strategic ~r.easons but for reasons of faith. Vatican II was for him, who participated in all its sessions as a young bishop, an experience which deeply marked .his entire episcopate and pontificate. A faithful analysis of the unwavering support of the Pope ~for the Council seems the only serious and objective method for interpret!~ng the reasons behind the convening of the Second Extraordinary Synod .without falling into the trap of putting the Pope's intentions on trial or of expressing purely subjective judgments. The Pope could not have stated the objectives~of the Synod more clearly: to celebrate,and re-live the extraordinary spirit of the Council; to verify what has been done to implement the Councilteachings; to promote a deeper awareness of the Council and the application of its principles to present and future problems. To look again at the Second Vatican Council and to assess its implemen-tation was, for the bishops at the Synod, a massive program. Yet it was unrealistic to think that the Pope intended to review every single Council document in a comprehensive way within the twelve ~working days that were available. It was equally unlikely that the Holy Father had a further agenda, a hidden one, to throw into reverse the process of renewal initiated by the Council, or to use expressions from certain journalists, "to bury the Council," "to put the brakes on renewal," "to set the clock back," "to roll back the tide," or "to let theprophets of doom back in after they have been banned from the Church by John XXIII." Preparation of the Extraordinary Synod After the surprise announcement by the Holy Father, the General Secretariat of the Synod began immediately the preparation of this unusual event. N,Iy predecessor, the then Archbishop, now Cardinal, Jozef Tomko initiated a series of consultations with a number of bishops and theologians who had participated in all sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Some of those had played a role of primary importance, either as officers of the Council or as participants or experts involved in the drafting of the Council documents. They were asked to react to the three objectives indicated by the Pope and to formulate guidelines for a consultation of all the bishops' conferences. The World Synod of Bishops / 805 The fifteen members of the Council of the General Secretariat were called to Rome for a two-day meeting, March 14-15, 1985, to examine the answers to the preliminary consultation. It was then decided to mail a questionnaire to the patriarchs and metropolitans of the Oriental Churches, to the presidents of bishops' conferences, to the Union of Supefiors General and to the heads of the various departments in the Roman Curia. This questionnaire Went out on April 1, 1985, with a covering letter in which strong emphasis was put on the necessity for a consultation that would reach as many persons and levels of the Local Church as was feasible in so shol~t a time. It was felt that the opinions should be sought not only of the bishops and the experts of the Conference, but also of the priests, religious and laity at large. It was further stressed that the inquiry should try to focus on the major documents of Vatican II, without excluding any of the others. Th6re was no doubt that the debate in the Synod should focus on the nature of the Church and its mission: what is the inner reality of the Church? How does she see herself and, in the light of that perception, how does she organize herself? How does she relate to the complex structures and needs of the world? Such had been the original and genial inspiration of Vatican II itself; any evaluation twenty years later had to concentrate on those same questions. The answers were expected at the General Secretariat by September 1, 1985. However many factors contributed to delays so that the deadline was not respected. The General Secretariat had received only eighteen answers by September I. In the end, however, the result was quite satisfactory: 73.75°70 of the answers'(out of a possible total of 141) were received in time to be incorpo-rated in a summary which reflected the different regional realities, cultures and problems and which~ represented in an objective way the situation of the Church twenty years after the closing of Vatican II. Not every single response to the questionnaire had the same value or authority; some were very detailed while others remained rather schematic; some reflected the thinking of the bishops while 0thersdrew on a large grass-roots response; some had been fully discussed and formulated by the bishops in conference, while others were the work of experts or the secretariat of a conference; some replies reflected rather local concerns while others definitely attempted to see the problems at the level of the Universal Church. All taken together, however, gave a true image of the situation in the Church. I want to share with you a particular observation with regard to this consultation: the formal answers which we received were not the final answers! After the national hierarchies mailed in their submissions, reflection and discussion continued at the level of the single bishop or layperson as well as in the circles of experts, theologians and ecclesial groups or communio 806 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 ties. Many bishops arrived thus at the Synod with different ideas than those expressed in the answers of their respective Conferences. The Final Product The 1985 Synod issued two documents which I am sure you are all familiar with. I feel therefore dispensed from recalling the content of the "Message to the People of God" or of the "Final Report." I only want to clarify a few points. In the media, the fact of the immediate publication of the Final Report was highlighted as an unusual event. Some saw it in terms of a victory of the bisl~ops who wrested this concession from the Pope. The truth of the fact is somewhat different. Every Synod transmits the result of its exchange for consideration to the Holy Father in the form of a report or a list of proposals, or even by entrusting all relevant working papers to the Holy Father, who then decides in what form the results of the Synod will be made public. After the Synods of 1974, 1977 and 1980, the Pope published an "Apostolic Exhortation" in which he presented the results of the Synod. After the 1983 Synod on "Reconciliation and.Penance" however, John Paul II enlisted the collaboration of the bishops elected to the Council of the General Secretariat in preparing a "Post-Synodal Exhortation." During the preparatory phase of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod, many different possibilities for coricluding the Synod had been examined, and the Holy Father did not exclude any, postponing his decision until the Synod had finished its task. When the reports of the small language group~ were presented to the assembly halfway through the proceedings, it became clear that they contained a very rich material, reflecting a large consensus among the participants in evaluating Vatican II's impact and in proposing ways to promote its further implementation. It was then decided to ask the Rappor-teur to .try drafting a final report that would reflect the consensus and the richness of the contributions. This report was debated and finally voted upon. Separate votes were taken on eighteen different sections of the report, and the approval of each one was almost unanimous. In his closing r.emar~s, which followed immediately after the proclamation of the results of the final balloting, the Holy Father stated: Right from the beginning of this Synod, it has appeared clearly how much all those who. were called to participate in it truly shared in its objectives. The results of your work--contained in the "Message" and in the "Final Report"--are witness to your clear-sightedness and your diligent care as well as to your fine ecclesial sense . Therefore, with joy and with sincere gratitude I accept from your hands the "Message" and the "Final Report" which demonstrate this sense of communion: with my consent these docu- The World Synod of Bishops / 807 ments will be rendered public. May the Lord see to it that they bear abundant fruit. It is now your task to ensure that the great force and the awareness of the importance of the Council penetrate deeply into the Universal Church, into your particular churches, and into the various communities. With these words, the Holy Father indicated his approval for the publica-tion of the "Final Report," and manifested at the same time his profound sense of mission and of collegiality. What the "Final Report" makes especially clear is that the Second Vatican Council is the most important event for the Church in the twen-tieth century. The Council offered orientations and answers not only for the questions of the last twenty years, but for the problems of the future as well. The total richness of the documents of the Council, taken together and not separated one from the other, consists in that it explains what the Church is and how she must be Church in the world. The Extraordinary Synod exploded as it were a number of myths which got hold of the minds of many Catholics in the years after Vatican II, and which conditioned the implementation of the Council teaching. Allow me to list just a few. 1. The myth of the primacy of the pastoral over the doctrinal. The "Final Report" affirms: "Special attention must be paid to the four major Consti-tutions of the council, which contain the key for the interpretation of the other Decrees and Declarations. It is not licit to separate the pastoral character from the doctrinal vigor of the documents." 2. The myth of presenting the Vatican Council as a mere historical event, to be left behind as soon as possible in order to work towards Vatican III. The teachings of Vatican II, although looking at the Church and her mission in the light of the prevailing situation, remain valid because they recall funda-mental tenets of the faith and of the Church. 3.The myth of the contradiction between the teachings of Vatican I and Vatican H. The 'Final Report' states: "The Church is one and the same throughout all the Councils." 4. The myth of the preeminence of the spirit over the letter of the Council. The "Final Report" affirms: "It is not legitimate to separate the spirit and the letter of the Council." 5. The myth that pluralism in doctrine o f faith is the way of the future. The "Final Report" states: "The pluralism of fundamentally opposed posi-tions., leads to dissolution, destruction and the loss of identity." 6. The myth that human development is to be promoted without reference to the mystery of the Chu, rch. The "Final Report" says: "It is. necessary to put aside the false and useless opposition between the Church's spiritual mission and diaconia for the world." 81)8 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 7. The myth that any meeting of the world episcopate dissolves auto-matically into opposing camps of North versus South, of East versus West, of liberals versus conservatives. The openness of the debates and the fraternal spirit that was evident from the very first days of the Synod made manifest that there was complete unity. 8. The myth of the intended "'restoration, "" The Bishops affirmed: "The Synod has been for us an occasion which has allowed us once again to experience communion in the one Spirit, in the one faith and hope, and in the one Catholic Church, as well as in the unanimous will to translate the Council into the practice and the life of the Church." We leave to history the final assessment of the Extraordinary Synod of 1985. However it is not presumptuous to state that it was, in many ways, a truly extraordinary event in the life of the Church. The Ordinary Synod on the Laity, 1987 The Synod of Bishops reconvenes in 1987, in ordinary general session, to discuss the "'Vocation and Mission of the Laity in the Church and in the World Twenty Years After the Second Vatican Council." Inevitably the bishops will return yet again to consider the nature of the Church and the responsibility of all baptized for her mission and ministry. The 1985 Extraordinary Synod has provided us with the right theological context in which to prepare for the Synod on the Laity. As you know, the Synod on the Laity was originally scheduled for 1986, The announcement by the Holy Father of an Extraordinary General Session of the Synod in 1985 made it advisable to postpone by one year the con-vening of the Synod on'the Laity. In so doing, the Holy Father acceded to a suggestion that was made by the many bishops' conferences who feared not to have sufficient time for a thorough preparation and consultation with the laity. The deadline for the submission to the Synod Secretariat of con-tributions by the bishops' conferences was therefore extended by six months to May 1, 1986. Not the First Synod on the Laity? The coming Ordinary General Session of the Synod of Bishops will not be the first that deals with the laity. A simple enumeration of the arguments discussed at the past Synods readily demonstrates the continuing and signi-ficant attention which the Synods have devoted to th& theme of the laity. Thus we had the 1971 Synod with its double theme of "Justice in the World" and the "Ministerial Priesthood." Both topics had a particular relevance for the laity: the first in that it touched upon the role of the Church in society--a privileged field of activity for the Christian laity, and the second The World Synod of Bishops / 809 which explored the ministerial priesthood in its connection also with the common priesthood of all the faithful. The 1974 Synod on "Evangelization" recognized and explicitly promoted the specific mission of the laity. It stated: "Lay people, whose particular vocation places them in the midst of the world and in charge of the most varied temporal tasks, must for this very reason exercise a very special form of evangelization." While the 1977 Synod on "Catechesis" stimulated further appreciation of the role of the laity, especially with regard to youth, even more so did the 1980 Synod in its presentation of the Christian family as the primary and basic form of secular vocation and mission in the Church. Finally, the Synod of 1983 recognized and promoted the task of lay people in the work of Christian reconciliation, which finds expression not only within the ecclesial community but also within human society. Reconciliation is not only a personal challenge for each Christian, but a corporate task for the laity. This summary listing of the topics of the Synods amply demo0strates how the Church, through one of her more important institutions, has taken to heart the deepening of her understanding of the vocation and mission of the laity. It could not have been different, since it was one of the major thrusts of the Second Vatican Council to enhance and promote the partici-pation of the laity in the mission of the Church for the salvation of the world. How Was the Theme for the 1987 Synod Chosen? After twenty years of existence, the Synod of Bishops has developed its own procedures and methods, which are all specifically "synodal." This applies also to the selection of a theme for the Synod. At every Ordinary Synod, towards the end of the proceedings, an open debate is organized on possible themes for the next Synod. The Synod Fathers then express their preferences, indicating at the same time why they propose one topic: rather than another. Already at this stage some themes emerge as being especially timely. Immediately after the closing of the Synod, the General Secretary con-tacts all the patriarchs and metropolitans of the Catholic Oriental Church, the heads of the departments of the Roman Curia, and the presidents of national and international conferences of bishops, inviting them to indicate a theme of their choice. This step is necessary since an Ordinary Synod con-sists only of a relatively small number of bishops, and it is imperative to hear from all bishops through their respective conferences. When all the replies have been tallied, the fifteen members of the Council of the Synod Secretariat are then convened to examine the material and 810 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 to formulate more adequately the themes that seem to emerge. Such a further step is necessary because many suggestions from the bishops' conferences will sometimes deal with the same general topic but under different aspects. The top three themes are then prepared for presentation to the Holy Father, who, as the President of the Synod, sets the agenda and determines the topics to be discussed. Up to now, the Holy Father has always been able to honor the results of the consultation, and has steadfastly chosen the theme that emerged as number one. "Vocation and Mission of the Laity in the Church and in the World, Twenty Years After the Second Vatican Council" was requested. The Holy Father, acceding tO this request, told the members of the Council of the General Secretariat on May 19, 1984, the following: It is not difficult to grasp the motives for such a convergence of opinion. In reality, the mission of the laity, as an integral part of the salvific mission of the entire People of God, is of fundamental importance for the life of the Church and for the service which the Church herself is called to render to the world. Among the different motives which have been presented in favor of the theme, the following can be singled out. Within the context of the specifically secular vocation and mission of the laity, there have been numerous posit.ive results and achievements, such as the commitment of many lay men and women in the area of human development, social justice, human rights, peace and international solidarity, politics, human labor and culture. There are also in this area a number of problems which require critical evaluation. Two tendencies which are prob-lematical and raise questions cannot be ignored. A first tendency concerns those among the laity who are so influenced by secularism and by the values, or non-values, of the world that they no longer see that their whole activity in the temporal order is necessarily linked with their faith. This is the case of those men or women who engage in social, political, economic or cultural activity and feel that the inspiration and motivation for their commitment must be found outside their faith. It is the case as well of Catholic public officials who in order to serve all their constituents assume that they must promote positions or norms of behavior which are in contradiction with their faith and their Catholic identity. Another tendency exists where Christians believe that they can carry out their mission by abstaining from any involvement in the problems of society. They withdraw into a purely spiritual or devotional world and close in upon themselves or upon the very private circle of any group or movement to The World Synod of Bishops / 811 which they belong. The Council has very clearly stated that "by reason of their special voca-tion it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in the temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will." The same Council also noted that "the laity can be called in different ways to more immediate cooperation in the apostolate of the hierarchy" and that "they have the capability of being appointed by the hierarchy to some ecclesial offices with a view to a spiritual end." In accordance with this conciliar doctrine, a more direct and wider participation of the laity in the pastoral activities of the Church came about. But together with this positive develop-ment, there exists also on the part of some of the laity a far more extensive and stronger demand fo~: access to various "ecclesial ministries." Not all lay participation in ecclesial ministries is without problems. In some local churches, one notices a tendency to restrict the mission of the laity to ecclesial ministries only. This can involve the danger of confusion with regard to the correct understanding of the respective missions of the clergy and of the laity in the Church. We thus see in some situations a real attempt at "clericalization of the laity," while at the same time we assist at the phenome-non of the "laicization of the clergy," when the latter take over the specific mission of the laity in temporal affairs by becoming merely social workers, or p61itical activists. These and other phenomena derive from a particular interpretation given to the vocation and mission of the laity in the Church and in the world presented by Vatican.II. If that interpretation is not correct, the vocation of the laity will not be ~ruly lived out, with the result that harm is done not only to individuals and groups but to the entire ecclesial community. The latter's credibility is impaired and its pastoral efficacy is restricted. It is therefore clear that the doctrine of the Council on the participation of the laity in the mission of the Church and on their own specific mission in the world must be studied in depth at this time. The Preparation of the Synod As soon as the theme of the 1987 Synod had been established, the Secretariat of the Synod invited the bishops' conferences, the Pontifical Council for the Laity and other representative bodies to submit their views on how to approach the theme. The answers were examined first by a task force of theologians, and afterwards by the members of the Council of ti;e General Secretariat. Following the indications contained in the answers from the bishops' conferences and the guidelines elaborated by the fifteen members of the Council, the General Secretariat then produces a preliminary paper called Linearnenta or "outline of the theme." 812 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 The Lineamenta has been sent to all the Hierarchies, not as a working paper for the Synod, but as a help for further study of the theme and for wider consultation in all Local Churches. The outline document is in no way--nor does it pretend to be--a complete and logically ordered treatment of the theme. Neither is it an outline or a draft of a possible future synodal document. It aims to offer a point of departure for analysis, discussion and reflection on the laity: on the doctrinal and pastoral aspects of the question, on values and needs, on achievements and diffict~lties. Its main aim is to stimulate discussion and help the Local Churches deepen their own thinking in. the matter. In the covering letter which accompanied the Lineamenta, the General Secretary insisted that the consultation not be limited to the bishops or to specialized commissions of the bishops' conferences. The letter strongly emphasized that the very nature of the theme, as well as the direct experience of those who fully live their vocation as lay Christians, demand a large scale consultation of the laypeople themselves. This consultation should not be limited to comments on the Lineamenta only, but should continue up to the opening of the Synod itself, so that the participating bishops can truly reflect the situations and expectations of the laity in their particular Churches. Past experience has proven that such a consultation can be a truly bene-ficial event for the Church. It can initiate a process of deeper awareness of all the faithful concerning their own baptismal vocation. In preparation of the 1980 Synod on the Family, the Bishops' Conference of France was able to collect fifty thousand answers from groups and families. Prior to the 1983 Synod on Penance and Reconciliation, the Bishops of Chile gathered twenty-five thousand answers from parishes and small ecclesial communities. The very process of the consultation cannot but have d profound impact on the life of the Local Church when it is carried out at all levels. In order to facilitate a consultation at the grass roots level, the Lineamenta was published in seven languages, and bishops' conferences have translated the document into many more local idioms. It has become one of the most widely distributed texts. At the end of the three chapters of the Lineamenta some questions have been formulated. The answers to the questions, duly synthesized at the level of the bishops' conference of each nation and supplemented by any con-sideration which the bishops themselves might add, will then serve as the basis for the "working paper" which we hope to forward to the future par-ticipants sometime before the opening of the Synod. As of May 1, the cutoff date for the submissions from the particular churches and bishops' conferences, the Secretariat had received answers to the questionnaire from a grand total of three conferences of bishops! The The Worm Synod of Bishops / 813 Extraordinary Synod has certainly interfered with the preparation of the Synod on the Laity. But I also feel that Synods which follow too closeiy must allow sufficient time for a thorough preparation in a way that the whole People of God can feel involved. When I left my office some days ago, the submissions had begun to arrive in larger numbers. Within the next month a Task Force of experts--priests and laity-~will study all the responses and prepare an outline for the working paper (Instrumentum laboris). The fifteen cardinals and bishops, members of the Council of the Synod's General Secretariat, will discuss and finalize ~the outline at the next Council meet-ing, October 8-11. It is clear that the preparation, of the Synod constitutes a unique chal. lenge but also a sterling opportunity for lay men and women to undertake an assessment of their own involvement as baptized Christians in the Church and the world. For the whole Church, it will be an occasion to deepen the understanding of the true nature of the Church on the eve of the Third Millennium of her history. It is an occasion that the Church cannot afford to miss. For Catholic professional media people, the coming Synod offers the possibility to look at their own involvement in the Church and in society, and to assess the role they are called to play as Catholics and as communi-cators. But at the same time the whole People of God, pastors together with the laity, must reflect on the sacredness of the communic~ator's vocation, charisma and ministry. I hope that the following remarks may somewhat contribute to this process of reflection on your part. The Synod and the Media The surprise announcement of the Extraordinary Synod and the relatively short time allotted for its preparation attracted right from the beginning an unusual amount of comment and speculation. Within the Catholic Church, some seemed to fear that the Synod would be used to point the Church in a new direction, signaling a kind of retreat from the principles and attitudes of the Second Vatican Council. Some, on the other hand, saw the Synod as providing an opportunity to identify and correct what they judged to be the mistakes and abuses of the past twenty years. Most however--and this contrary to the impression given by the mass media in the months preceding the Synod--accepted the Synod gratefully as an oppor-tunity to deepen their understanding of the Council, while others, of the younger generation, hailed it as a welcome occasion to discover for the first time in a deeply personal way the message of Vatican II. In spite of the clearly stated intentions of the Holy Father, a debate con-tinued to rage well up to and into the time of the Synod itself. Taking into 814 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 account that some media people have difficulty not to inject into their report-ing their own perceptions and biases, the future debate at the Synod was presented erroneously as a battle between liberals and conservatives. Some seeds of misunderstanding concerning the aims of the Synod may also have been found in the polarization which exists today within many sectors of the Catholic community concerning the nature of the Church and her role. Not a few h~ve retained a position which has not moved beyond the First Vatican Council, and see the Church almost exclusively in structural, institu-tional terms. They have not given enough weight to the work of the Second Vatican Council. They have failed to recognize the essential truth that the Second Vatican C6uncil does not contradict the First Vatican Council, but complements it. The primacy and infallibility of the pope, defined at the First, are not contradicted but developed further at the Second Vatican Council by a fuller consideration of the role and ministry of the bishops. The Second Vatican Council lays emphasis, then, on the collegiality of bishops, on their respon-sibility for their own dioceses and for the good of the Universal Church, on the true nature of the diocese as the Church of God in each locality, and on the dignity and calling of all the baptized. Part of the Church's task in the past twenty years has been to try to find ways of expressing these complementary truths of the First and Second Vatican Councils in struc-tures and attitudes that do justice to both. Inevitably we have failures as well as successes to look back on. But some people have never accepted that that effort had to be made. Others have failed to see how the Church relates to the modern world. In the past, some Christians saw nothing but threat and danger in the world. According to those, the Church stood apart from the world and tended to oppose, reject and condemn it. The Second Vatican Council taught that the Church must be open to the world, its aspirations and struggles, and seek to provide it with a soul and a conscience. Because of those and similar factors, some Catholics came to view the Extraordinary Synod as a moment simply of crisis or conflict. They failed to understand that there is a very real sense in which the life and work of the Church, of a Council as well as of a Synod, can only be seen through the eyes of faith. Many, however, and towards the beginning of the Synod they were a majority, acknowledged the true intentions of the Holy Father. This progres-sive acceptance of the objective and of the true nature of the Extraordinary Synod was the result of many converging factors. The Holy Father himself spoke repeatedly, on the occasion of the Angelus prayer on Sundays, of the teaching and orientations of Vatican II. Bishops, bishops' conferences, The World Synod of Bishops / 815 theologians and lay people engaged, everywhere in a process of further reflec-tion about the Council. Each in their own sphere and field, they began to take stock of where they stood and what ,they had done to implement the Council. And so it could be said that even before the Synod convened its objectives had already been partially achieved through a greater awareness of the total richness of Vatican II for the Church of today. The media interest during the Extraordinary Synod was exceptional. Over and beyond the two hundred fifty journalists with permanent accreditation to the Holy See, some four hundred ten correspondents from thirty-four countries came to Rome for the sole purpose of covering the Synod event. The media of the whole world followed the 1985 Synod with more interest than any of the preceding Synods. Never had the Church attracted so much attention since the days of Vatican II, not even during the Conclaves of 1978, nor even on the day the Pope was shot. The large majority of media professionals.~faithfully reported the true content of the proceedings and of the concluding documents. Wherever I went after the Synod, I was truly amazed at seeing how most of the people that I met had a correct knowledge and understanding of the Synod. And yet, some publications still keep hammering away at the so-called secrecy of the synodal process, at the insufficient briefings or press releases, at the reluctance of Synod officials to talk, at the exclusion of the journalists from the Synod Hall during the meetings, and so on. I will not endeavor to give a deta!led account of all that was done before and during the Synod in order to improve the flow of information. I can only pledge that Archbishop Foley and myself are determined not to put aside any legitimate suggestion that will contribute to better and more objec5 tive information. Today, I only want to share some general observations regarding the relationship between the media and Synod, hoping that those of you who will cover the next Synod may be helped in their task. 1. A Synod of Bishops is an event that must totally and specifically be seen in the context of the Church. Information on ihe Synod has to do with the image of the Church. When one speaks of the image of the Church, there is more at stake than "image" understood in a public relations sense. Something far more fundamental is at stake, namely the self-understanding on the part of the Church of her very nature and mission. Upon that self-understanding or "image" so much else depends, and, in the case that con-cerns us here, on it depends the understanding of the nature and functioning of a Synod of Bishops. 2. The Synod of Bishops is not an ecumenical council where all the bishops of the world, together with the pope, exercise directly and collegially the supreme authority in the Church. The Synod, as set out in the Code 816 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 of Canon Law, is a limited group of bishops who have been chosen from different regions of the world, and who meet at stated times with the pope-- normally every third year. The scope of such meetings is threefold: to fos-ter closer unity between the Roman Pontiff and .the bishops; to assist the Roman Pontiff in safeguarding faith and morals and in strengthening ecclesiastical discipline; to consider questions concerning the Church's activity in the world (Can. 342). It is the role of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the questions on the agenda and to formulate suggestions, but not to decide the issues or to issue decrees, unless the Roman Pontiff in certain cases has endowed the Synod with deliberative power, and even in this event, it is the pope's prerogative to ratify the decision (Can. 343). It is most important to be clear on this point. 3. It is important to realize that the Synod of Bishops is directly under the authority of the pope, who convenes its assembly, ratifies the election of its members and appoints other members, determines the agenda, presides over the Synod and brings it to conclusion (Can. 344). The Synod, then, is not to be seen as a kind of constitutional "check and balance" to the authority of the pope; it is most certainly not an alternative or rival authority; it is one means by which the bishops of the world are given an opportunity to collaborate with the Holy Father for the good of the whole Church. The bishops gathered in Synod together with the pope are not called to promote their own priorities. In listening to and in exchanging with their brother bishops from all continents, they try to achieve a consensus regarding specific recommendations which they wish to propose to the pope. While aware of the needs of their own particular Churches, they must view all questions from the perspective of the universal good of the Church, and thus give equal consideration to the situations prevailing in their own dioceses or nations, as to those of the most distant regions and peoples. 4. The synodal process is unique and cannot be compared with any other process of group dynamics. In a Synod, bishops come together in function of the episcopal mission which they received through sacramental ordination. A Synod will therefore always be first and foremost an event with a spiritual dimension. All through the days of a Synod, bishops open their hearts and minds not only to their brother bishops but to the voice of the Holy Spirit. They allow their convictions to be shaped by human reasoning, by speak-ing out and by listening, by dialogue and discussion, but above all by their willingness to accept the message of Jesus Christ, while together they fathom its depth and relevance under the inspiration of the Spirit. It is therefore normal that at the end of a synodal process bishops approve proposals and express ideas which they did not hold at the beginning, or which differ from what had been stated by their own conference of bishops before the Synod. The World Synod of Bishops / 817 The process of discernment is so essential to the Synod that it should not be made dependent on the ebb and flow of public opinion. That process would be hampered or even distorted if bishops were concerned more with posturing for the media back home than with the collegial search for insight and consensus. 5. Religious editors and correspondents are by and large professionals in the true sense: they know their business and they have a thorough under-standing of the business of the Church. However, time and again some media send to the Synod correspondents who have earned their kudos on the polit-ical scene but are mere apprentices when it comes to Church activities and religious events. The editor of a serious national newspaper or wire service would not dream of sending one of the staff to cover the tennis open unless he or she had demonstrated a solid grip of the intricacies of the game. Nor would a network dispatch to the Pentagon a reporter who has never heard about military strategy, tactics and hardware. And yet, at every Synod we meet media people who see in the Church nothing more than just another political convention or parliamentary assembly where all results are produced through a majority vote. They do not know that the magic of the majority vote does not work when it comes to the formulation of theological principles or moral doctrine! It is not fair to the professional integrity of journalists when they are put in a position of having to relate or interpret events and statements that are totally outside the scope of their qualifications. Goodwill and hard work are not always substitutes for expertise, knowledge and com-petence. A lack of knowledge about religious matters or Church affairs may lead a correspondent to discard whatever news or issue cannot be reduced to "material" or "secular" or "political" categories. 6. A Synod is also a good place to observe trends that are developing in the Church. The last Synods have clearly shown how the presence of bishops from Third World countries is becoming stronger and more influ-ential. Their voices are listened to with greater interest, all the more so since the churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America often present a picture of dynamic growth and joyful celebration that we so sorely miss in many of the churches in the Western world. The Church is no longer Eurocentric or Occidental. Yet among the journalists and correspondents at the Synod, the overwhelming majority comes from Europe and North America, a situa-tion that accurately reflects the distribution of media power in today's interna-tional community. As a consequence, churches in the Third World are almost totally dependent on secondhand information from western sources, except in the case of the few diocesan bulletins that have the good fortune of receiv-ing reports from their own bishops, faithfully composed at the end of each week during a Synod. 818 / Review for Religious, November-Decetnber, 1986 The situation of the Third World churches merits our attention. It is important, therefore, to become more fully aware of the information needs of the younger churches. Media persons should ask themselves whether some-thing more could be done by their publication, by their diocese, at the level of the national Church, particularly of such entities as the Catholic Press Association. It should not be too difficult to come up with some truly imaginative projects, such as sponsoring a religious correspondent from a Third World Church to theupcoming Synod, or organizing internships for young'journalists from Africa or Asia or Latin America who could accom-pany a Western staff to the Synodl These have the means, and I am sure also the motivation, to find a solution to a problem that cannot be solved by them alone, but that will never be solved without their help. I conclude my remarks. Every Synod of Bishops deals with some aspect of the truth of the Church, and always with the entire truth of the Gospel message. The service which the communications media render is, to use an expression dear to John Paul II, "service of truth." In the realm of religious information, the medium cannot be separated from the message of the Lord. We live in an age of increased complexity, confusion and helplessness. In a time of great change and upheaval, there is always, in the Christian com-munity, the human urge to withdraw in a Church-under-siege mentality, to become obsessed with difficulties and dangers, or to suffer paralysis from too much analysis, In the Church we always have a fair share of prophets of doom, those that pull their hair and wring their hands in lament for the loss of faith in our society, while in their own lives they fail to witness to the truth of the Gospel message. Such prophets of doom deny the power of Pentecost and the working of the Spirit, and go forth to proclaim the Good News. In a very special way Catholic media people must be the bringers oftruth, the heralds of the Spirit and the witnesses of love of the Father as revealed in Christ Jesus. The streets and the squares of our cities and villages are teeming with people who wait to hear the truth of the Lord Jesus. We cannot fail them. Pilgrim and Penitent: Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation Shaun McCarty, S.T. Father McCarty writes in his covering letter: "It seems like ages since I've sent in any-thing . A stint on our general council broke the flow of writing." Actually his last article was in 1978, and was entitled: "Religious Roots: Knowing and Owning Our Own Story." He may be addressed at Holy Trinity Mission Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. The emergency call from my niece came early one Friday last winter. Her seven-year-old was balking at the prospect of first confession with her class several weeks hence. Reassurances seemed of little help. But Heather was willing to talk with her great-uncle. Faced with the formidable task of meeting with a seven-year-old (I'm used to dealing with grown-ups!), I agreed to come over after school that day for., what? Was it to be penitential catechesis? Spiritual direction? Pastoral counseling? Talk about intimidation! In my own mind I settled for just an avuncular chat! Some hours later, I found myself in peripatetic fashion sloshing through the melting snowbanks at a local park. In between kicking her patent leathers into every icy puddle along the way (and stopping to watch a freight train pass), Heather's predicament unfolded. (It's O.K. to write about this. She said I could tell.) Yes, she was clear about the meaning of the sacrament (she called it "reconciliation" !) and about the ritual involved. Yes, her God-image was in good shape (God was her "friend"). No, she didn't have trouble telling God she was sorry when she didn't behave properly (though she did have some trouble telling her brother!). No, she wasn't afraid of the priest (he was "real nice" with the kids). What her hesitation came down to was: (a) she didn't want to have to 819 820 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 tell all her sins to anyone (at least no one "outside the family!") and (b) she was afraid that, if she did, the priest would tell her parents (apparently they didn't count as part of "the family"!) After some reassurances that lots of grown-ups had difficulties with confession (she was surprised that grown-ups had to go too!), but many I knew found it very helpful. I asked if she thought she might give it a try. Her response: "I'11 have to think it over." By that time we were back to the house. It seemed right to end this avuncular chat at this point. There is a certain irony in what appears to be a simultaneous rise of interest in prayer in the United States~ and a sharp decline in the number of sacramental confessions by "grown-ups" in the last two decades.2 Nor is the latter decline limited to the United States. Church-wide concern was manifest at the Sixth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops which addressed "Reconciliation and Penance in the Mission of the Church.''3 At the close of the synod, Pope John Paul II called for a "contemporary penitential catechesis." With personal prayer "up" and sacramental confessions "down," there has been correspondingly an increased search for spiritual directors and a decreased demand for confessors. Perhaps it would be mutually advantageous for both the sacramental ministry of reconciliation and the non-sacramental ministry of spiritual direction to see them in relationship to one another. That might be one step toward a contemporary catechesis, hopefully leading to a deepened understanding and appreciation of both ministries. It is my purpose here neither to analyze the reasons for this simultaneous rise and decline, nor to trace the historical development of either ministry to any great extent. Rather, I shall explore some distinctions'and similarities between the two; weigh the comparative merits of keeping them together or separate; and, finally, suggest ways in which the two ministries might be kept correlative and complementary in the lives of Christians called to be both pilgrims and penitents. My two basic premises are: (1) it is generally helpful and sometimes necessary to talk about one's experiences of both grace and sinfulness; (2) spiritual direction and the sacrament of penance are two distinct, but not necessarily separate forms of pastoral care providing forums for such sharing. The choice is not to be pilgrim or penitent; it is how, when and where to assume the modality of each. I use the term pilgrim in a symbolic sense to indicate a person's graced movement towards God which often leads to spiritual direction; I use the term penitent in a symbolic sense to indicate a person's movement away from sin which often leads to confession. To expand the symbols somewhat, a pilgrim might be described as one Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation / 821 who chooses to embark on an intentional faith-journey. The journey becomes intentional to the extent that a person makes a commitment to give serious and consistent attention to the quest for holiness of life as a disciple. Life becomes a faith-journey to the extent that one believes in and acts as though there is a transcendent dimension to all reality and belief in a God who con-tinues to provide for and to guide creatures as they move through life. There is an outer dimension to this journey as the pilgrim interacts with people, places and events that occur in providential sequence and become part of one's sacred geography. There is an inner dimension to this journey as the pilgrim follows a path that leads to deeper union with the divine. Above all, the pilgrim style is prayerful in that, it provides for uncluttered space for reflection so that the people, places and events of the journey can become revelatory of God's beauty, design and call. For help with this discerning prayer, pilgrims often seek out spiritual directors who act as companions, counselors, guides for the journey. ,. As a symbol, a penitent might be described as one involved in an ongoing process of conversion as a sinner loved by God who shows a spirit of true penitence in seeking forgiveness of sin and reconciliation within the community of believers. Conversion is a lifelong process of allowing the grace of God to unify and to free our divided hearts for perfect love. It is a movement away from self-absorption and towards self-surrender to God's designs. True penitence involves knowing and owning the reality of one's sins, being sorry for them and seeking forgiveness. This inner disposition of penitence becomes outwardly manifest in acknowledging one's sins not just to God, but to another who, as an agent of reconciliation, can enable the process of for-giveness. This mediation can happen in both sacramental and non-sacra-mental ways. Sacramentally it can occur in baptism, anointing and Eucharist as well as in penance. Non-sacramentally, it can happen in a variety of ways including healing services, therapeutic counseling or just a talk with a trusted confidant. There is a splendid example of this latter means in the Fifth of Alcoholics Anonymous' Twelve Steps which states: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and. to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.''4 Prescinding from any canoncial necessity, A.A. attests to the efficacy of confessing to another human being: This practice of admitting one's defects to another person is, of course, very ancient. It has been validated in every century, and it characterizes the lives of all spiritually centered and truly religious people. But today religionis by no means the sole advocate of this saving principle. Psychi-atrists and psychologists point out the deep need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his own personality flaws and for a discussion of them with an understanding and trustworthy person. So 822 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 far as alcoholics are concerned, A.A. would go even further. Most of us would declare that without a fearless admission of our defects to another human being we could not stay sober. It seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our destructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.5 Finally, a penitent seeks reconciliation within the community of believers. Since one's sins break or fray the bonds of relationship and tend to alienate or isolate the sinner, there is need to seek at-oneness with others who have been affected by one's dark deeds, words or omissions. And this applies to societal as well as personal sin. For help in seeking forgiveness and recon-ciliation, penitents often seek confessors and confidants with whom they can share their failings and seek absolution. Distinctions Between Spiritual Direction and the Sacrament of Penance Before drawing distinctions between the two ministries, a brief historical sketch of the roles of confessor and spiritual director may prove illuminating. In the tradition of the Eastern Church, there has always .been a clear distinction between confessor (parish priest) and spiritual director (starets). According to P. de R6gis: One confesses to his parish priest, and does so by way of an ecclesiastical obligation. He thus accomplishes a duty of community life. However, he goes to the starers solely with the pure desire for personal perfection . A second trait sets the starets completely apart from the confessor. He is chosen not because of his priestly character, but solely because of his charis-matic gifts which people think they see in him. This situation, without doubt, has always existed everywhere, and it was St. Francis de Sales who recommended that we choose our director carefully from "among ten thousand . ,,6 In the tradition of the Western Church, spiritual direction came to be increasingly combined with sacramental confession, a development that paved the way for the later "confession of devotion.''7 A significant influence in the development of Western sacramental prac-tice has been that of St. Alphonsus Ligouri who, in explaining the duties of a confessor, declares that one of the most important of these duties is that of "directing devout souls.''8 B. Haring reflects this strong Alphon-sian tradition of uniting the role of spiritual director with that of confessor: The confessor must also form the conscience of his penitent to an awareness of the obligation to grow in the love of God . The confesso~:'s role is to guide the penitent through the various pathways to holiness, lighting the way to Christ by helping him to develop a fuller prayer life.9 Others who highlight the liturgical role of the confessor tend to separate Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation / 823 more the ministries of spiritual director and confessor as, for example, L. Hamelin: Nor is the priest I encounter in this sacrament primarily a director of con-science. All the better if he is this, since such direction is a felicitous pro-longation of confession. But it is not essential to the sacrament of reconciliation that the confessor be a good director. The important thing is that he is charged with a mission, namely, the proclamation of the world's salvation. ~o Notwithstanding a variation of stress on the confessor's role as spiritual director, certain distinctions between the ministries of spiritual direction and the sacrament of reconciliation can be made on the basis of purpose (why), minister (who), content (what), process (how), time (when), place (where) and recipient (for whom). These are not meant to be sharp distinctions. Often what happens more properly in one forum occurs also in the other, but in a more secondary way. For example, healing can happen in direction; prayer does occur in the sacrament. Purpose (Why?): Spiritual direction aims primarily at enabling growth in a person's relationship with God and with others in Christ. In addition to proclaiming the world's salvation, the sacrament of penance aims primarily at mediating God's forgiveness and a person's reconciliation with God, self and others. As A. Von Speyer says, "To put the matter simply, we may say that the main function of the confessor is to set free from sin, that of the director to foster growth in divine love.''~ A further distinction should be made within the sacrament itself -- that of penance as a sacrament of necessity, following mortal sin and that of devotion, useful for spiritual progress. This classical distinction is repeated in the revised Rite of Penance (1973) in numbers six and seven, yet, as L. Orsy points out: Strangely enough., it seems that these two distinct operations of penance are lost from sight; the very term "reconciliation" is used indiscriminately for both, although in its proper sense it should be used for those who "have left the house of their Father," not for ttiose who have remained there.~2 Minister (Who?): The present complex practice of the Church is that confessors be ordained priests with faculties granted by an Ordinary for the administration of the sacrament to specified individuals or classes of people. Spiritual directors, on the other hand, do not hold formal office in the Church. Ideally, they are those charismatically gifted and who have the requisite knowledge, experience and skills to enable spiritual growth, and who are sought out by the community. Content (What?): The focus of content in spiritual direction is on the God-consciousness in a person's life and how that person is responding to 824 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 what is heard/seen/felt. The ministry of direction embraces the entire range of a person's religious identity. Key are the questions: Where is God and his offers of grace in the experiences of my everyday life? What are God's desires for me? What am I doing about it? In the sacrament of penance, the focus of content is on a person's need for the forgiveness of sin by an all-loving and merciful God. Key are the questions: What is the shape of my sinfulness for which I am sorry and seek forgiveness? Can I experience God as merciful and myself as a loved sinner? Process (How?): Confession takes place in the internal sacramental forum according to a prescribed rite and is governed by specific laws. In the revised Rite of Penance, there are three modes of sacramental celebration: two com-munal, one individual. For individual, auricular confession, there are pro-visions for praying with and for the penitent, sharing of texts from Sacred Scripture, listening compassionately to the confession of sins on behalf of God and the community, helping to discern the spiritual situation of the penitent, conveying the forgiveness of God by absolution, expressing the exigence of God's call to conversion by the imposition of an appropriate penance and possibly offering counsel as it seems fitting?3 Spiritual direction takes place in the internal, non-sacramental forum, does not follow any set ritual, noris it generally governed by specific legis-lation beyond the basic norms of moral conduct. Direction involves an inter-personal exchange helpful in discerning God's action in the life of the directee. It proceeds according to a style congenial to a particular director and direc-tee, though there are dynamics foundational to all healthy spiritual direction. Time (When?): Spiritual directors meet with directees on a regular basis determined by a working alliance/contract/covenant mutually agreed upon. Penitents are obliged to receive the sacrament of penance as soon as feasible following mortal sin. For confessions of devotion, frequency rather than regularity seems to be the norm suggested for current Church practice. Place (Where?): The ordinary setting for sacramental confession is either a confessional with screen between priest and pentitent, or a reconciliation room specifically appointed for a more personal and informal exchange between the two. (Heather calls the first "the old way" and the second "the new way"! She likes "the old way"!) There is no designated place for sessions of spiritual direction, though consideration should be given to a discreet setting that provides the requisite comfort and confidentiality for a fruitful exchange. Recipient (For whom?): The sacrament of penance is for Christians assuming the modality of penitent.s. Sp.iritual direction is for those assum-ing the modality of pilgrims. Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation Similarities Between the Two Ministries Just as there are differences I~etween spiritual direction and the sacrament of reconciliation, so are there similarities on the bases of purpose, minister, content, process and recipient. Purpose: Both are concerned with the spiritual condition of the pilgrim/ penitent; one stresses the turning away from sin, and the other, the turning towards God -- two sides of the same coin, conversion. Minister: Both confessor and spiritual director see their roles as instrumental, with the Holy Spirit as the principal agent of both forgiveness and spiritual growth. Their instrumentality is enhanced by many of the same qualities and dispositions like prayerfulness, a listening heart, fraternal exchange, respect for the freedom of the other, observance of confidentiality, Christlike love. Content: On the one hand, matters of spiritual growth often receive attention, especially in confessions of devotion. On the other hand, matters concerning forgiveness frequently are dealt with in spiritual direction. A report to the 1983 Synod of Bishops indicates several ways in which this happens: ". certain forms of spiritual direction are of the nature to redeem sins, as, for instance, the revision de vie, the capitulum culpae, a talk with one's spiritual director, confession to a starets in connection with monastic practice." 14 Process: Many of the activities and dynamics that enable effective com-munication with each other and fruitful mutual listening to the Spirit are the same, These would include: prayer with and for the pilgrim/penitent; sharing of texts from Sacred Scripture; affirming grace; challenging growth; occasional instruction; co-discerning the spiritual condition of the recipient; observing periods of silence; gestures communicating God's prodigal love manifested in Christ. Recipient: Pilgrim and penitent are modalities of the same person. Both modalities build on a foundational awareness and acceptance of being a sinner unconditionally loved by a graciousand merciful God. The qualities that dispose one for a more fruitful use of both spiritual direction and the sacrament of reconciliation are much the same: honesty; openness; trust; humility; gratitude and not least of all, the ability to keep one's gaze up and out towards God, and not down and in on one's feet! Together or Separate? There are some notable advantages in combining spiritual direction with the reception of the sacrament of reconciliation: (1) This situates spiritual direction within a liturgical/sacramental context, thus lending it a more visible ecclesial dimension. To the extent that sacramental celebration brings a 826 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 deepened and broadened sense of Church, one can experience more solidarity, support and nourishment in the twin tasks of reconciliation and spiritual growth. J. Sudbrack goes so far as to say: As Catholicism sees it, the most initmate transactions between man and God become authentically visible in the sacrament of the Church. Now as a matter of fact spiritual guidance has often taken place, historically, in the sacrament of penance. The modern practice of consulting the priest in confession is a revival of an old tradition. Even when confession and spiritual guidance cannot be one and the same., it is desirable that such guidance culminate in sacramental confession.~5 (2) Combining both can lessen the tendency to dichotomize one's growth in prayer from the moral attitudes and behaviors of one's life; (3) The for-giving, healing, reconciling action of the Holy Spirit is particularly evident in the revised Rite of Penance. It would seem particularly appropriate that these issues so inimical to spiritual growth -- alienation, isolation, selfish-ness, woundedness -- be dealt with in the same context as one's growth in the Spirit; (4) With keener discernment in "naming one's demons," in being specific about the shape of one's sinfulness, a person is likely to see more clearly those factors as they dull one's sensitivity to the Spirit; (5) Com-bining spiritual direction and confession can become an occasion when one can catch a fuller glimpse of self, both the sin-side and the grace-side. With such fuller perspective it would seem less likely that a person would fall prey, on the one hand, to a self-absorbing remorsefulness over sins or, on the other hand, to hubris (spiritual pride) over spiritual progress; (6) The penitent/pilgrim might see more clearly that God saves and sanctifies right in the midst of one's sinfulness, using even sinful acts and attitudes to lead to deeper union. G. Croft has expressed this well: Like the father with his prodigal son, God permitted Israel's waywardness of old in order that his chosen people might experience what it meant to be separated from their Father, and thus recognize afresh their need of him. So, too, our Lord's consciousness that he had come to save the lost sheep is reflected in knowledge of him as savior, particularly in the moment when the sinner experiences separation from God and the need of his love and mercy. This moment of grace and of conversion each one of us has experienced . not once but many times; so that even when we cry "out of the depths," our seeking is fraught with thanksgiving as we remember his past mercies.~6 (7) The sacrament is a humbling reminder that no one can grow a whit spiritually on his or her own initiative; (8) As both guilt and giftedness are brought to the same session, it can be seen more clearly that both need con-version, lest one become' self-absorbed in either guilt or gift; (9) Coming Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation / 827 at once as pilgrim and penitent can bring a more genuine realization of St. Paul's observation, ". power is at full stretch in weakness" (2 Co 12:9); (10) Finally, having the same person for confessor and director seems more conducive to the integration of these two valuable outside helps to holiness in that one person hears the whole story in the same context. Difficulties in Combining Roles On the side of the confessor/director, the most obvious difficulty is that this limits the ministry of spiritual direction presently to celibate, male clerics. With increasing demands on time and ministerial skills along with decreasing numbers of priests, it seems hardly likely that they could even begin to satisfy the rising need for spiritual directors. Besides, not all priests have the charisms for this ministry, not to mention the knowledge, skills and experience that facilitate the use of the gifts. Confessors who feel called to and who are willing to give a priority to spiritual direction for their penitents need adequate preparation for it. The commission's report to the 1983 Synod expressed this strongly: It is true that today the authentic form of private confession needs to be profoundly renewed in its spiritual aspects, and this in connection with the revised Ordo paenitentiae. Without such a renewal the Church will not be able to cope with the crisis of the sacrament of penance. For this a better spiritual and theological formation of priests is required, in order that they be able to deal with what is now demanded from confession, viz., the latter should contain more elements of spiritual direction and of fraternal .exchange. Under this aspect the so-called confession of devotion retains its importance.~7 On the side of the pilgrim/penitent, unless care is taken, the integrity of the two distinct ministries can become clouded. There may be some danger, too, that by locating spiritual direction within the context of confession, the project of spiritual growth could become too sin-oriented. At times, a person's sense of sinfulness ~can become so humiliating and/or immobilizing that open and honest exchange is flawed. Or the preoccupation with sin can so capture a penitent's consciousness that there is little room or energy for dealing with matters of spiritual growth. When Distinct But Not Separate In practice, the two can be kept distinct, but not necessarily separate. This is more likely to happen when both confessor/director and pilgrim/ penitent are clear about the distinction and habitually differentiate between the two ministries. If a choice is made to combine them, certain considera-tions may prove helpful: (1) Every session of spiritual direction need not 828 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 occur in combination with the sacrament of penance; (2)Especially appropriate times for combining them might be the seasons of Advent and Lent as well as periods of retreat; (3) In preparing beforehand, the very nature of one's examen can be such as to lead to a reflection not only on sinfulness, but also on graced invitations for further growth. For example, the Beatitudes might provide such a growth-oriented examen for pilgrim/ penitents. D. Barry makes this recommendation: The Beatitudes immediately recommend themselves as a blueprint for an updated, life-affirming ethical spirituality especially suited to the Christian mission of healing and reconciliation. Since they summarize the essence of Christlike living in a form that makes for easy recall, the Beatitudes offer a particularly rich source of meditation or conscience examination matter for the maturing Christian . They readily lead us to questions about our attitudes and conduct that get right to the heart of what contemporary discipleship is all about.~8 (4) If the penitent chooses to combine both, there should be some indica-tion of this intent at the beginning of the session. The penitential ritual might then be celebrated by itself at the beginning or the end of the time together or the penitent might indicate a desire to use the entire time to open before God his whole spiritual condition, graced and sinful, with a view to abso-lution at the end. As alluded to previously, one can develop a sensitivity to God speaking in the midst of one's sinfulness showing a side of self not otherwise open to awareness and conversion; (5) It would seem appropri-ate, on the occasion of confession/direction, that a pilgrim/penitent, in addi-tion to expressing sorrow for sins, also express gratitude for the graced times that have occurred. This, too, is with a view to keeping the more complete self in perspective as one considers his or her relationships to God, self and others. When Distinct and Separate Though the 1983 Synod of Bishops was primarily concerned with the sacrament of penance and, consequently, the role of the priest-director, the theological commission's report to the Synod did give recognition to extra-sacramental direction: That form of confession of sins, which is tied to spiritual direction, is a' very ancient treasure of the Church. On the one hand, it belongs to the very structure of the Church. On the other hand, as can be seen in the mg.nastic and spiritual traditions, it also has a place outside the sacrament. Both these data are factors in the development which is guided by the spiritual experience of the Church.~9 In the increasing likelihood that more spiritual directors will not be priests, Direction and Sacramental Reconciliation / 829 it would seem appropriate that the ministries be kept correlative and comple-mentary to the sacrament of penance. Some provisions that might help this happen are: (1) Alert and resourceful confessors might recommend qualified spiritual directors to those whose confessions indicate they would benefit from such further help; (2) Both directors and confessors might alert those who come to them to issues that might be dealt with better in the other forum. For example, a director may uncover some significant area that needs sacramental healing. Even if the person feels more comfortable in dealing with the issue in direction, there is the further possibility of celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation later; (3) The relationship between director and directee should be such that the latter will feel free to confide his or her sinful as well as graceful side with a director, lest either side get compart-mentalized; (4) Confessors and directors would do well to cultivate a mutual understanding of and respect for each other's ministries so as to see them-selves not in competition, but in collaboration with each other in their care of souls. Summary In the preceding pages, using the symbols of pilgrim and penitent, I have attempted to further such an understanding and appreciation of the ministries of spiritual direction and sacramental reconciliation by indicating some dis-tinctions and similarities between the two; by weighing the comparative merits and deficits of keeping them together or separate; and, finally, by suggesting some ways in which they might be kept correlative and complementary in the lives of Christians who are called to be both pilgrims and penitents. I close with some verses from the heart of one such pilgrim/penitent who has been on the journey somewhat longer than Heather (by about ninety years)! They are entitled, "Confessor-Director": And then above the dark horizon of my night There beamed a star that bathed my soul with light And beckoned me upon my pilgrim way. My spirit soared to meet the guiding flame That traced a path illuminated by His name And led me on to greet the dawning day! The Day that dawns to span Eternity. P.S. By the way, Heather did join the class for the sacrament of reconcilia- 83!1 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 tion! It seems that Father offered them the option of sitting in his lap. I forgot to ask if she opted for the "new" way! NOTES ~K.A. Briggs, "America's Return to Prayer," New Yoi'k Times Magazine (November 18, 1984), pp. 107-18. 2T.P. Sweetser~ "What Ever Happened to Confession?" New Catholic World (January-February, 1964), pp. 31-2. 3j. Ratzinger, "The Necessity for Personal Confession," Origins 13 (October 20, 1983), pp. 331-2. 4Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1953), pp. 56ff. 51bid, pp. 57-8. 6p. de R6gis, "Confession and Spiritual Direction in the Oriental Church," The Sacrament of Penance, C. de Vaux St. Cyr et al. (Paramus, N.J.: Paulist, 1966), p. 94. 7H.B. Meyer, "Confession or Spiritual Direction?" Making Sense of Confession, 0. Betz, ed., (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1968), p. 128. 8St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Praxis confessarii, nn. 121-27. 9B. Haring, Shalom: Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giraux, 1967), p. 140. ~°L. Hamelin, Reconciliation in the Church, M.J. O'Connell, trans. (Coliegeville: Liturgical Press, 1980). ~tA Von Speyer, Confession (New York: Herder and Herder), p. 214. ~2L. Orsy, The Evolving Church and the Sacrament of Penance (Denville, N.J.: Dimension, 1978). ~3See M. Hellwig, Sign of Reconciliation (Wilmington: M. Glazier, 1982), especially Chapter VIII which treats the role of the confessor. ~41nternational Theological Commission Report to 1983 Synod of Bishops, Penance and Reconciliation, Origins (January 12, 1984), p. 521. ~sj. Sudbrack, Spiritual Guidance (Paulist, 1983), pp. 24-5. ~6G. Croft, "The Sinner Finds God," The Way (January, 1968), pp. 34-40. ~TReport to 1983 Synod, supra, p. 522. ~SD. Barry, Ministry of Reconciliation (New York: Alba House, 1974), p. 111. ~9Report to 1983 Synod, supra, p. 520. Freed for Life in the Spirit -- Together Romans 12:1-8: A Meditation Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. This biblical meditation on Christian life and community was presented at the assembly of the Jesuit New England Province on June 12, 1986. Father Harrington is professor of New Testament at the Weston School of Theology; 3 Phillips Place; Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. In an extraordinary act of boldness, Paul addressed at great length the Chris-tians of a church that he had not founded. He was bas.ically asking for a room in which to stay before moving on in his mission to Spain. Even before that, he had to bring the proceeds of the collection to J~rusalem, and perhaps also explain his activities to the Christian leaders there. Meanwhile he was hearing reports about frictions within the Roman community, chiefly with regard to divisions between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. With all these situations in mind, Paul wrote what has come to be recog-nized as his theological masterpiece -- his letter to the Romans. I find an uncanny parallel between the dynamics, of Romans and of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. Paul first establishes the need of all persons -- Gentiles and. Jews alike -- for something or someone beyond themselves if they are to find right relationship with God. Then he roots the person of Jesus and his followers in the tradition of salvation history reaching back to Abraham. Next he reflects on the difference that Jesus has made by freeing us from sin, death and the Law, and by freeing us for life in the Holy Spirit. These first eight chapters laid the foundations for reflection on the mystery of Israel in chapters 9-11, and for addressing problems within the Roman com-munity in chapters 12-16. Romans 12:1-8 presents Paul's vision of life within the Christian com- 831 832 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 munity. That life is first and foremost a response to the difference that Jesus has made. That life is communal, the task of persons freed from sin, death and the Law as potential masters of their lives, and freed for life under the prompting of the Holy Spirit. That life takes a variety of forms with the clear recognition that all the tasks undertaken within the Christian com-munity are important. "Freed for life in the Spirit -- together" -- that was Paul's understanding of Christian life. Perhaps he can help us as we try to give shape to our life as religious together. A Response Paul begins his exhortation in this way: I appeal to you, brothers, through the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by renewal of mind so that you may discern what is God's will, what is good and pleasing and perfect (vv. 1-2). With these words, Paul provides us with a way of understanding our-selves and our brothers and sisters in Christ. Calling upon familiar terms associated with sacrifice and temple worship, Paul insists that genuine worship of God takes place not merely in a designated place at a set time but rather in all that we do and whenever we do it. Everyday life is the "place" in which the Father of Jesus Christ is worshipped. The sacrifice that we offer to God is ourselves, no more and no less. In this framework, when we Christians do come together in a designated place at a set time, we are simply making concrete what happens throughout our 'lives. All our life is an act of worship, a time for praise and thanksgiving, a sacrifice holy and pleasing to God. Our Christian lives can be a continuing act of worship precisely because of the difference that Jesus Christ has made. Even though the kingdom of God, or the age to come, is not yet here in its fullness, we believe that in some way it has been inaugurated in Christ. Therefore we need not be con-formed to what Paul calls "this age"; that is, we need not be dominated by sin, death and the Law. Christ has freed us to live in the age to come, which he has already begun. And because Christ has freed us and invited us to share in the inaugurated kingdom, we can discern God's will. In Paul's perspective, discernment is not simply clear thinking coming to closure. Rather discernment has been made possible by what God has done for us in Christ. Discernment is our way of living in the inaugurated kingdom, in the age to come. Discernment is the way in which we shape our response to the freedom won for us by Christ. Freed for Life in the Spirit / 833 Christian life as continued worship, as living in the kingdom, as dis-cernment in response to Christ's gift of freedom -- these are the chief ele-ments in Paul's understanding of Christian life. Paul's exhortation continues: For by the grace that has been given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith God has assigned to him (v. 3). Paul speaks sternly here. He wants the Christians at Rome to be more modest and realistic. He wants them to put an end to factionalism and com-petitiveness. He wants to deflate their pretensions. Nevertheless, Paul's way of deflating the Romans' pretensions is amazingly creative and positive. He does not downgrade them or criticize their abilities. Instead, he reminds them about the real source of their powers and indeed about the real source of his own power. In appealing to his own apostolic authority, Paul describes it as "the grace that has been given to me." In urging a more sober estimation of their own intellectual power, Paul tells the Romans to recall that whatever spiritual gifts they have were portioned out to them by God. So in the process of calling to task the Roman Christians, Paul insists on the gift that gives shape to all of Christian life. The fundamental gift of God is Jesus Christ. The ways in which that fundamerital gift is made concrete are themselves gifts. Thus the Christian community is the gathering of gifted persons, who all bear witness to God's most basic gift in Jesus Christ. On the one hand, Paul's doctrine of grace encourages humility, does a~ay with factionalism and competitiveness, and deflates pretensions. On the other hand, Paul's doctrine of grace underlines the "gift" character of Christian life, allows us to look on one another as gifted persons, and helps us to see our lives together as reflections of God's fundamental gift of Christ. No one can boast, precisely because all is gift. Life Together Paul continues: For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, members each one of the others (vv. 4-5). What coach, what director of a play, what overseer of a trip has not used the body analogy in order to urge greater cooperation among individuals? People of Paul's time were surely familiar with this analogy from a famous fable about the city as a body recorded by Livy. Thus our 834 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 own term, the "body politic." Indeed, there is no need to search for prece-dents or ancient parallels since the analogy is so easy. We all have bodies. Our bodies have many parts. When all the parts work together, each per-forming its proper function, we can accomplish our goal. When one part hurts or fails to function, the whole body suffers. The body analogy is so obvious that we could pass over it quickly if it were not for the small qualifying phrase "in Christ." We are one body in Christ. That is an enormously important qualification. What makes us a body of Christians is not a desire to win a game; or put on a play, or go on a trip: Christ makes us into a body. We become the body of Christ. The life that runs through us all, the spirit that animates us, the force that enlivens us is Christ. Therefore, as we live out our Christian lives as religious, we do so as members of the body of Christ.We are conscious that God has called us to this form of Christian life with other members of Christ's body. We have been called together as a way of responding to God's gift to us. As we work side by side, what we should try to see first and foremost is the life of Christ expressing itself in one another. Service Having laid his foundations about the nature of Christian life and having insisted on Christ as the 'basis of our communal life, Paul now considers the proper response to God's gift of freedom. For what have we been freed? We have been freed for service. In one Of the most tightly packed and meaningful sentences in the entire Pauline co~'pus, Paul says: "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them . . ." (v, 6a). This dense sentence summarizes Paul's approach to the place of service iri Christian life. In addressing the Romans, he assumes that all Christians are gifted ("having gifts"). The word for "gifts" here is charismata, the singular of which is charisma. But Paul does not use the word charisma as we do in our own day when we talk about charismatic politicians or movie actors -- those who have that certain undefinable something, that magic that makes them attractive to us, whose power comes from some unknown source. Paul knows the source of the Christian gifts. It is the Holy Spirit. Paul knows why Christians can do what they do. It is through the Holy Spirit. Paul knows why Christians do what they do. It is to build up the body of Christ. These gifts (charismata) are according to the grace (charis) given to us, By making this qualification; Paul reminds us that charisms flow from the fundamental grace, which is Christ. Charisms make concrete the grace of Christ. They are the means by which the grace of Christ expresses itself Freed for Life in the SpMt / 835 in our place and in our ~ime. These gifts differ. What sounds like an obvious statement on the logical level is not so easy to recognize in practice. Just as in a body the different members have different functions, so in the body of Christ there is astonishing variety.But sometimes variety is intimidating or frightening, and we want to shape others according to our own conceptions of what is good for them. Paul says no to all such attempts at imposing uniformity on the body of Christ. Variety must be respected not because it is refreshing or interesting but .because it witnesses to the marvelous power of God that can work through so many different instruments. "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us . " All of us are gifted. Our gifts are rooted in God's fundamental gift to us. Our gifts differ. The next and, indeed, necessary step is to use our gifts in service. God's gifts are not our personal possessions to be polished and stored away. They are not occasions for pride or boasting. God's gifts are to be used in free response to Christ our Lord~ Unlike most people today who understand freedom as the absence of any restraint upon them, Paul looked upon freedom as service under the only master worth serving. Whereas for many of our contemporaries "free-dom's just another word for nothing left to lose," for Paul freedom meant putting aside false masters for the sake of serving God and his people. Paul gives us some examples of service: ¯ . . if prophecy, according to the proportion of faith; if service, in service; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who shares, in simplicity; he who presides, in zeal; he who is merciful, cheerfulness (vv. 6-8). The list illustrates concrete ways in which God's gifts are made manifest. The'list includes prophecy, service (diakonia), teaching, exhortation, sharing, presiding or administration, and acts of mercy. I will not comrfient on each of these gifts.Nor do I suggest that we can bE satisfied with merely transferring them into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the list is instructive fo? us on several counts. The emphasis is on activities rather than offices or the persons who hold the offices. Also, there is no discernible hierarchy in the list, unlike 1 Corinthians 12. All the activities are important. Moreover, there is a stress on the spirit in which the activities are carried out -- moving backward on the list, in cheerfulness, in zeal, in simplicity, and so forth. Paul reminds us that actions are more important than status or office, that all the charisms are significant and help toward the health of the body, and that much depends on the attitudes with which we carry out our activities. Prayer of Being: Intimacy at the Center David Hassel, S.J. ,, In this article Father Hassel continues his study of prayer and intimacy. The work he has done on this subject, much of which has appeared in our pages, is being gathered into a book entitled Dark Intimacy; Hope for Those in Difficult Prayer published in the near future by Paulist Press. Presbntly, Father Hassel, as Research Professor, is devoting him-self fully to writing, primarily in the area of philosophy. He may be addressed at Loyola University of Chicago; 6525 N. Sheridan Road; Chicago, Illinois, 60626. People lose heart when God is drawing them into prayer of being, prayer of simple presence. Here is where people feel most useless to God and to themselves, most empty and unworthy of God. For this prayer is quite silent, ord!narily dry, sometimes hollow, angry-fearsome, briefly joyful, and lacking many former certitudes. If ever a praying person feels far from intimacy with God, it is at this critical growth-point of developing union with God. Here, then, such a person needs reassurance against diffidence. Perhaps assurance will be gained if this prayer of being is recognizably described within one's prayer experience, if its nature is revealed in Scrip-ture, if the disciplining action of this prayer can be sketched accurately, and if the way of living in this prayer can be clearly depicted. All these "ifs" form the strategy of this article. How to Recognize Prayer of Being Prayer of being, lying hidden underneath, at least three layers of expe-rience, has paradoxical features. Probably this is because the depth at which prayer of being occurs makes it describable only in limit-statements. The latter plot out the extreme boundaries of any mysterious experience; 836 Prayer of Being / 837 they do not offer a clear X-ray picture of its inner structure. For example, the first feature of thisprayer of being is its silence. It is gestureless, wordless. When one prays, there seems tobe no response, no sense of God's even hearing one's attempts to reach him. The silver arrows of one's petitions seem to hit the tabernacle and to fall shattered at its base. Praying becomes like the mocking echo of one's own voice when. shouting across.a river to a great bluff on the other side. At the same time, paradoxi-cally, the prayer may be noisy with distractions. One's mind feels like a huge warehouse at which gigantic "semi's" are unloading fresh cargoes of distractions on the warehouse dock and forklift trucks are delivering the boxes of distractions to the center of one's attention. Naturally, such distractedness is accompanied by dryness, the second characteristic of prayer of being. One feels no ready satisfaction, no lifts of the heart with joy. One gains no splendid insights to light up one's path; not even the tired insights of past years arise to illuminate the desert darkness. There is little or no heartfelt attraction for Christ, for Gospel reading, or for generous actions; there is only a certain blankness of mind and a wrinkled leathery feeling in the heart. Yet at the same time, after one has weathered the time given to this prayer (e.g., early in the morning) and started towards breakfast, one experiences a quiet worthwhileness and even a restored strength for the day's duties. These qualities are palpably missing when one omits this prayer; instead, one knows an indefinable seine Of loss and a certain lethargic heaviness. Of course, such experience seems somewhat hollow, the third feature of the prayer of being. The absence of satisfaction felt inside oneself is matched in one's outer activities. Hobbies, entertainment, daily work, favorite diversions--all seem strictly routine, not attractive, and rather superficial as though the silence and dryness of prayer had seeped into one's more exterior doings. Yet in the prayer of being itself and in these activities, there is a remote sense of fullness, as though through the deepest caverns of one's praying/working self there runs a great underground river. This remote fullness expresses itself indirectly when the praying person finds himself or herself saying: "Where else would I want to be than here? Nowhere else. What else would I rather be doing? Nothing else." What is this peculiar sense of rightness amid silence, dryness, and hollowness? Because the person now doing the prayer of being has already lived faithfully with the Lord not a few years, there is the fear that he or she is backsliding, is caught in a web of self-delusion. And yet the person may also feel deep anger towards God at the "unfairness of it all." This is the fourth feature of theprayer of being. For the individual begins to question: "What am I doing wrong that the Lord should be so distant?" And then 838 / Review for Religio'us, November-December, 1986 begins some rummaging around in the past for a disastrously wrong deci-sion, a fatal flaw of character, a refused grace of strategic importance. For example, a retreatant was asking these questions of himself from the fifth to the nineteenth day of his. Ignatian thirty-day retreat and came upon this answer on the nineteenth day: "This retreat is a fraud; your life leading up to this retreat has been equally fraudulent; in fact, you've been embezzling yourself from adolescence till now." On recounting this dazzling insight to his director, the latter said to him: ''Be sure to keep up this type of question-ing. And don't for a moment trust yourself, others, me, or God." This response shocked the retreatant into recognizing both the superficial evi-dence that provoked the questioning and the serenity he experienced deep at the center of his being--paradox of paradoxes. Even as he felt whirled about in swirls of confusion, he also knew that in the depths of his being he was resting at home with the Lord in the center of the universe. He felt like the weather-pilot who had been fighting a bucking plane through the tornado and now has suddenly broken into its quiet eye. But where there is fear, there is often also an accompanying anger. Frustrated with my work, my family, my own self, and embarrassed by my anger at God for all this frustration, I am restless, eager to break out of this suffocating cocoon of self. 'Repulsed by, my negative mood, by the stark vision of my sins .and limitations, by my own littleness compared to God's greatness, I experience a profound, but false sense of guilt. For I have forgotten that one gets most deeply angry only with those one loves best and that to be angry with God is to take seriously his goodness and his providence. Anger with a friend (even with God) can be a secret compliment. ~ Thus the angry Jeremiah felt free to call God to his face "a treacherous brook" (Jr 15:18) and to accuse the Lord of duping him (Jr 20:12). For this reason guilt at my anger is a false guilt, which acts like a suit of armor so that I cannot feel God's touch. Even if I did feel his touch I would deny it, because "what god would want to deal with me." Yet eventually, as a fearful, angry person who is doing the prayer of being, I find myself repeating the words of the fiercely angry prophet in the Book of Lamenta-tions: "The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent. They are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness" (3:22-23). Amid all this confusion, there are occasional leaps of the heart at God's dim presence. They are very brief and widely spaced, with only.a rare moment when he seems to take over completely. Prayer of being, then, is not one long, monotone bore, A person can, however, overlook these quick touches of the Lord. Once a directee confessed: "If I had not kept a daily diary of this dry prayer Prayer of Being / 839 of mine, I would have complained that God was completely absent these past fifty days. But when I read back, I found four or five spots where the Lord made his presence felt for a few moments." Of course, this informa-tion makes quite a difference not only to the directee but also to the director. Soprayer of being is not a state of prayerlessness; its fifth feature is the Lord's quiet signaling of his companionship in our fears and anger. There is, nevertheless, in this prayer of being a gradual loss of youthful certainties. This constitutes the sixth characteristic of the prayer of being. One feels quite uncertain about so many things: political issues, the nature of holiness, the future of the United States, theological schools of thought, personality theories, economic cure-alls, long-standing family arguments, the proper raising and education of one's children, and so on. This deep wondering issues not so much from tired cynicisms as from a new sens( of mystery. Too often the failure of simple solutions has proved the myste-rious complexity of a person or of a situation, or of some vast plan of social improvement. Sometimes the praying person mistakes the deep wondering at such failures fora faith-loss---especially when a glance at the vine of one's apostolate seemingly reveals only shrunken grapes. A compelling temptation can then arise to find new works to do, new people to consult, new plans to promote. There can be even tears at this point though one is not sure why they come frustration, hope, self-pity, consolation? The most acute sufferings occur when the praying person feels seating doubt about whether he or she can love anyone fully, or be lovable to anyone else. And yet as the praying person descends deep into the self without knowing what lies ahead, there is no desire to go back up, even though the darkness seems to be heavier, for one experiences a strange contentment with the, situation--because one feels loved intimately. Does Prayer of Being Deny Intimacy? These six characteristics of prayer of being: silence, dryness, hollow-ness, fearsome anger, rare inbursts of joy, and loss of certainties would seem almost to deny the presence of any intimacy in this prayer. But the opposite is true. First of all, only by going through the various stages of prayer which require deep intimacy (one-to-one prayer, forgiveness, sinful-ness, apostolic more, and powerlessness) can one enter into the prayer of being. To declare that these stages of intimacy lead only to non-intimacy is to join the absurdist philosophers in stating that the human person is a living contradiction for self-destruction. In fact, the state of dryness charac-teristic of prayer of being is normal to all prayer, just as it is the normal 840 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 condition of any human relationship. It is the state lying between the extremes of consolation and desolation, just as the dryness in marriage or in work is the normal feeling between the ecstacy of love or of high success and the despair of lost love or bankrupt business. Dryness in prayer is the balanced state for enduring well everyday living. It is a secret strengthening joy; it is that sustaining intimacy which arises out of suffering well the everyday routines of prayer and life. Indeed, dryness is very instructive for the praying person. It forces the one who prays to distinguish the various levels of human experience, to enter their depths, to learn, more accurately what passive prayer is, and finally to develop a faithfulness to God which is more independent of consolations or desolations, of elations or depressions, and of subjectively estimated successes and failures. Let us glance at the levels of human experience so as to better under-stand dryness in prayer. There is, first, a superficial level, which consists of pleasures and pains present to our awareness like the constant purr of an air conditioner, the heavy perfume of lilacs, the irritation of a skin rash or a raspy voice, the comforting warmth of a May.sun or the soft touch 9f an April breeze and shower. The first level, then, is a constant stream of sensual impressions, the context of life. Underneath this is a second level of deeper experiences, such as the constant ache of neuralgia, or the deep pleasure of loving interchange, or the delight of solving a perplexing business problem, or the lyric leap of an evening at the symphony, or the exuberant planning for the first baby, or the panic fear of a flashing knife. This second level is more meaningful, and it lends depth to the first one. But underlying both these levels is a still more profound set of expe-riences which make up the third level. It is on this level that one experiences the enervating worry at not having a job, the satisfaction of affectionate family living, the sorrow of watching the alcoholic spouse struggle for respectability, the fulfillment of a project successfully completed which demanded ten years of one's life, the sense of worthwhileness in the costly sacrifice for one's beloved. At this third level, a person's deepest hopes are raised or dashed, a person's finest joys are brought into full bloom, a person's crushing sorrows test the stamina of one's very being. Believe it or not, there is also a fourth level, which is the dynamic basis of the three higher levels of experience. Although the top three levels are directly knowable to the subject, this fourth level is discovered and known' only indirectly, that is, only in contrast with the other three. Thus, a woman can be in good health on the first level, can enjoy a full family life on the second level, can see her role in life as richly meaningful on the third Prayer of Being / 841 level, and yet be restless and pain-filled on the fourth level. If it were not for this dramatic contrast with the top three levels, .she could not possibly come to know the fourth level as part of her experience. This revealing contrast can also occur in the opposite manner. A man may be suffering from a fourteen-day cold on the first level, may feel misunderstood by the family on the second level, experience sharp doubt on the third level about his ability to handle his new and complicated position in the corporation--and yet be peaceful at the fourth level, under-neath the disturbing events of the top three. He could well find himself asking: "What's wrong with me? I should feel depressed and desolate, but I don't. Am I becoming schizoid? Or have I lost interest in my family and my career?" But this startling contrast lets him know, if he reflects on it, that there is a fourth level of his experience, one known only by contrast with the upper three levels. This long explanation is meant to lead to the conclusion that great dryness of prayer at the top three levels of experience can be accompanied by a serene peace and sense of personal worthwhileness lurking underneath at the fourth level. Such a discovery lights up prayer of being, since such prayer happens at this fourth level where one comes into contact with one's being, one's fullest identity. Here, too, is the best rendezvous-point for meeting God. As any prayer which leaves us feeling powerless indicates: God is the one doing the praying in us; and he starts it at the fourth level, then lets it percolate up through the other three levels. In prayer of being, however, God may shut off this percolation into the top three levels. When this happens, one can find God only indirectly, through the contrast of the upper three levels with the fourth-level. At this point the praying person finally recognizes that he or she is totally at the mercy of God's initiative. Again, he or she more sharply appreciates the need to be more pa~ssive under God's action. Most of us, nonetheless, fight hard to be the active senior partner in prayer, and so we struggle mightily On the top three levels to keep control. At the first level we may try new vocal prayers, new Zen techniques, new spiritual reading books; at the second level we may try to pump up old emotions we once felt and duly inscribe in our spiritual diaries, or we may review magnificent panoramic insights of our personal salvation history. On the third level, we may investigate our motivations for being good family people, for becoming career enthusiasts, for entering the life of religious vows, for being unmarried or married, for being lazy or aggres-sive, for being liberal or conservative, and so on. In other words, to avoid the passivity of prayer, we strain to climb the sheer glass mountain of mystery by our fingernails. Inevitably we end up at 842 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 the bottom of the mountain, looking at our bloody hands. Slowly it dawns on us that maybe only God can lift us to the top of the glass mountain, that we have to rest passive in his hands as he lifts us gently and gladly, that only after we admit our total dependence on him, will he lift us to the top of the mountain. We learn, then, what the passivity of prayer is: letting God do the praying in and through our four levels of experience, while we simply furnish ourselves--and some basic conditions for prayer, e.g., time carefully set aside, some reading of Scripture and other spiritual works, a reverent body-position, a readiness to go in prayer wherever the Lord leads, and so on. These conditions God can use or not use as he sees fit. There is a third result of recognizing thi.s fourth level: because of dry7 ness at the upper three levels, one develops a faithfulness to God which is more independent of consolations or. desolations, of elations or depres-sions; one becomes aware of the constant presence of God in this fourth level. There, likea great underground river, he quietly nourishes all one's activities on the top three levels, rendering the praying person serene in the sure direction of the fiver, and letting the person know that he or she is never alone, never far from the center of the universe. This quiet reas-surance can occur in the midst of the most joyful, or the most sorrowful happenings on the upper three levels, and thus it nurtures the wholesome independence of the praying person. So it is no surprise that the person finds the edge taken off deep fears, fierce angers dampened down, and pestering doubts stilled. Thusprayer of being is never a lonely experience, since it is a constant, indirect awareness of God at one's deepest level of experience, at the center of one's being. In this way, divine being speaks within the individual person's being. Paradoxically, such communion is wordless at this silent depth. It is a simple presence to each other like that between long-married partners who have great mutual devotion to each other. In this one-to-one awareness, God and the praying person have, by a kind of osmosis, an underlying, indirect appreciation of each other rather than a direct face-to-face meeting as in the beatific vision. Their co-pres.ence is more by being than by insightful action or by tangible feeling. It is as though the praying person reaches behind his or her back to touch God. For each affects the other by pure presence of being, as happens when people are aware of each other even though separated by oceans and mountain ranges. Because this presence is so deep and subtle, it takes long years and much experience for the average praying person to recognize its potential for intimacy. Such mutual awareness is a beingrfor-the-other. This has a rema~:kable effect on the human partner. He or she finds greater empathy for other human beings at a deep level of experience, namely, that of being, of Prayer of Being / 843 radical person-hood. It is this which enables the praying person to enter more profoundly into the routinized lives of God's marginal people, to feel more deeply the emptiness of their sometimes meaningless lives, and the gestureless silence of their listless suffering. As a result the person in prayer of being becomes more ready to sacrifice, more apostolic in intent, in order to fulfill the needs of the Lord's anawim. Perhaps this is the cosmic com-passion of which Christ speaks: "Love your enemies, pray for your persecu-tors. This will prove that you are sons of your heavenly Father, for his sun rises on the bad and the good, he rains on the just and the unjust. In a word, you must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:44-48). Because this prayer of being issues in close union not only with God but also with his marginal people, it leads to a dynamic compenetration of the two great commandments: to love God is to love neighbor and vice vers~a. In this way, prayer of being becomes like the background music permeating my consciousness as I wait for a client or work over financial accounts or have my teeth cleaned or do housework and gardening. It is a quiet, strengthening, enlivening presence which I may even take for granted until its temporary shutoff leaves me cold and bereft. Perhaps better, it is like a long-term friendship highly prized yet often taken for granted because it has always been the~:e to guide, envigorate, and challenge me, and, finally, to assure me of a happy future in serving others. Thus prayer of being, if it is anything, is a new depth of intimacy not only with God and self but also with all other human beings. Prayer of Being in Scripture Prayer of being is profoundly embedded in Scripture. Among the multiple translations of 'the divine name Yahweh in the Old Testament is: "he-who-is-for-others." Since Yahweh is the continuing creator and perdur-ing animator of all things, he clearly lives up to his name. He literally brings all things into being out of nothingness and then remains in them to pulse their existence constantly lest they sink back into nothingness. He is being for all other beings. It is no wonder, then, that in theprayer of being, the praying person becomes so sensitive to nothingness or emptiness at the same time as he or she notes the fullness of being around and in him or her. Yahweh, nonetheless, is not satisfied with this degree of intimacy within all created beings. Out of all the nations, he selects the weakest, that motley throng of mixed breeds from Egypt called the Israelites, and begins to form them into his people. To do this, he makes a covenant with them; they are to be his people and he, their God. Actually, it later becomes a marriage covenant since he comes to consider the Hebrew nation his bride. To 844 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 demonstrate this, he even tells Hosea, who had unfortunately married a woman turned prostitute, to remarry his bride. In this way is symbolized Yahweh's remarriage with his adulterous Israelite people, and so drama-tized the intimate relationship which Yahweh wants with the Hebrew peo-ple-- a relationshipfar beyond, yet built out of, the intimate relationship of creator and creature in being. Thus any turning of the Hebrew people to another or false God is considered nothing less than adultery--to be pun-ished, for example, by the great exile of 587 B.C. Such being-for-others (Yahweh himself) makes understandable why the second person of the Trinity would be sent into the womb of Mary to become the Jesus of history. The Christ intimately immerses himself in the being and life of his Jewish family, his town of Nazareth, and his country of Palestine. Jesus becomes. Jewish from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Thus he literally is the wedding covenant of Yahweh with the Hebrew people; his very flesh and all his historical actions are divine and human, Godly and Jewish, inextricably. In this way, the God-man can enter into and share our gestureless, wordless silence in the hidden life of Nazareth, our dryness from routinized lives in his daily handyman tasks, our felt hollowness from self-emptying sacrifices for those dear to us (Ph 5:2-7), our fears ("My soul is troubled now, yet what should I say-- Father, save me from this hour?" [Jn 12:27]), and our angry frustrations ("What an unbelieving and perverse lot you are! How long must I remain with you? How long can I endure you?'[Lk 9:41]). He also shares our rare leaps of joy ("At that moment Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit"ILk 9:12]), and our hollowness felt at the center of our beings (Jesus sleeping the sleep of exhaustion in the storm-tossed boat). He knew all the ingredients of being human; he, too, did theprayer of being in relation,to the Father. In his bones and nervous system Jesus felt his being-for-others at the three upper levels of his experience. This being-for-others is best seen, however, in his joy at the fourth level underneath his passion at the upper-three levels. The seven last words of Christ express an exquisitely beautiful and expensive intimacy. When Jesus said: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children" (Lk 23:28), could he have been other than a being-for- others amid terrible dryness and felt fear? When he cried out: "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing" (Lk 23:34), was he not a being-for-others amid the deaf silence of his crucifiers? When he turned his head towards Dismas to say: "This day you .will be with me in paradise" (Lk 23:43), was he not a being-for-others in the brief joy of this moment? When he looked to Mary and John and said: "Woman, there is your son; [son,] there is your mother" (Jn 19:28), was he not a being-for- Prayer of Being / 845 others emptying himself of his last possession? When he screamed out: "I am thirsty" (.Jn 19:28), was he not revealing that his being-for-others felt hollow and dry in its helplessness? When he spoke to the Father appeal-ingly: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Lk 15:34), was he not a being-for-others feeling the loss of cherished certainties? When in a final burst of profound trust he shouted: "Father, into your hands I com-mend my spirit~' (Lk 23:46), was he not a being-for-others stripped down to nothing but trust, having given over to the Father all that was dear to him: Mary, the apostles, Mary Magdalen and the other loyal women, his work of the past thirty-five or so years, and the whole future of his Church? Underneath this crush of even~ts commemorated by Jesus' seven last words, underneath the excruciating agony of the physical, psychological and spiritual levels of Christ's ex.perience, is the fourth level of his joyous strength in the Father's love for him, and in the beautiful "background music" of the Father's tender, caring affection for him. For the death of Christ on the three top levels was simultaneous with the subdued resurrec-tion on the fourth level. This was Christ's continual prayer of being within the Paschal mystery. Has there ever been such intimacy in suffering and joy as that of Christ with the Father and with his people? Thus is revealed dimly the structure of the prayer of being beneath its previous paradoxical features. As Letter,to the Hebrews notes: "For the sake of the joy which lay before him he endured the cross, heedless of its shame" (12:2). The Terrible Liberating, ~iscipHne Of the Prayer of Belng Theprayer of being, therefore, carries within it a terrible, yet beautiful, discipline: the willingness to suffer for what is right and just, true and good. The author of Heb~rews put~ ihe meaning of discipline .bl.untly for us:~ "Endure your trials as the discipline of God who deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you do not know the disciplineof sons, you are not sons but bastards" (12:7-8). Evi, dently God disciplines his people out of affection by allowing them to suffer. As a result, aware of powerlessnes.s, they can be endowed with his power without any fear that th, ey wohld claim this power to be their own. Chapters six to nine of Deuteronomy illustrate how a ,terrible discipline prepares for intimacy with God, for prayerof being. There God declares: "You shall not put the Lord to the test" (6:16), that is, demand that he act in your way at your time and place. Clearly, "It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of nations. It was because the Lord loved you" 846 / Review for Religious, November-December, 1986 (7:7-8); in your littleness you do not set the music of the dance with God. "For forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments" (8:2); ". the Lord, your God, disciplines you even as a man disciplines his son" (8:5); ". [lest] you become haughty of heart and unmindful of the Lord" (8:14). God's guid-ance through the desert (of prayer of being) may seem directionless to us and may seem to undermine our certainties. But our trustful following keeps us from the crazy deviations of pride and of secret contempt for God's providence. This discipline of the prayer of b'eing is necessary because "otherwise you might say to 3)ourselves, 'It is my own power and the strength of my own hand that has obtained for me this wealth'" (8:17). "No, it is not because of your merits or the integrity of your heart" (9:5). This last statement is strangely reassuring for the person doi.ng prayer of being and feeling virtueless, angry, fearful and empty. Such a person has reason to hope because Christ anticipated this: "Son, though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (Heb 5:8-9). There is, therefore, a scripti]ral basis for the discipline found in prayer of being. This discipline itself, though painful, is actually a liberation produced by the prayer of being. This liberation, however, is not a secret contempt for the bodily and the sensual; such would be a disincarnation, not an incarnation, of Christ. Nor is this liberation the ability to leave a beloved person or a f~ivorite place-possession-job-ambition without suffering regret; this would be more a cold self-centeredness that is ready to detach itself only in order to grab something or someone better. Rather this liberation is: 1) a willingness to be separated from what one loves for the sake of the beloved without ever ceasing to love this beloved' (seeing off the mis-sionary friend withoUt hope of ever meeting again); 2) a'willingness to let someone dear grow freely without trying to control, even though this means great suffering for both (the parent letting the stubborn twenty-year-old make a d(astic mistake in choosing a job--for the sake of his growth in wisdom); 3) a willingness to risk everything to put God or another person ahead of one's business, sporting succesg, work, comfort, or career, even as one continues tO pursue these ventures; 4) a willingness tO choose the good consistently, i

Issue 44.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1985. ; REVIEW FOR R ELIGIOUS(ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis,-MO 63108-3393. REVIEW FOR R ELIGIOOS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1985 by REVIEW FOR R El.IGlOOS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $10.00 a year: $19.00 for two years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For subscdpllon orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOOS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor Jan. / Feb., 1985 Volume 44 Number 1 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELtGIOOS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REvlEw FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Review for Religious ~,'olume 44, i985 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 . Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.~.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, September, and November on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS isavailable from~University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1985 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion of each issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is also regularly available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Religious Life as Unchanging in a World of Change John E Whealon Archbishop Whealon of Hartford addressed the Fall Meeting of the Consortium Perfectae Caritatis in October, 19.84. He may be addressed at his office: Archdiocese of Hartford; 134 Farmingtoh ~v~nue; Hartford, CT 06105. he theme of your meeting, my dear sisters and brothers, is "Religious Life as Unchanging in a World of Change."Th~ medieval~scholastics taught us that distinctions are necessary for ~good thinking, for good logic. So I make a necessary distinction here between the essentials and the accidentals of the religious life. As a Father of the Second Vatican Council (andotherE are precious few of us left :as active bishops these days), I point,out with sortie authority that the council did call'upon religious to change--or at least to consider.changing --the accidentals ofiheir religious life. The operative text is Paragraph 2 of the council's decree Pe~fectae Caritatis, which lays in effect: "The: appropriate renewal of religious life involves two simultaneous processes: (1)'a continuous return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original inspiration behind a given community;, and (2) an adjustment of the community to the .changed conditions of the times." ~ " So the council expected every religious community to fix one eye on the Gospel and on its founder, and the other eye on the modern world, and to update those accidentals which no longer made sense in the modern world. I do think that all communities, nineteen years after that council decree, have done what they were asked to do. The real question is whether some communities have lost some of the essentials as well in their efforts to update. Returning, then, to that basic distinction, I am thinking now of religious life as "Unchanging in E~sentials in a World of Change." 3 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 I wish to do twothings this afternoon: first, to speak about these essentials; second, to read to you some quasi-private correspondence. What are the essentials for us in our living out of the Christian life? Forgive me, not a religious, for listing her~ some of the items that are essential in my life--I suspect, though, that they are quite essential in your lives as well. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew gives us the Lord's teaching about the person whose house is built on rock. It is a useful metaphor to describe the person who has certain fundamental convictions which carry through the years. Let the tides and eddies and swirls and winds come, the rock-foundation of these convictions is there, unshaken, unmoved, unaffected by what goes on around. So you and I should be solidly based on the rock of our certain convictions, on the essentials of our lives, so that we are not really shaken by what other people say or do, by the spirit of the age, by the shallow currents of our shallow times. I will now list for you five unchanging elements in this world of change. They have carried me through some years which have been very difficult for any bishop. Perhaps the listing of them will find an echo in your own lives as well. The first essential is God. As the years go on, I "become even more convinced that the incredible design in nature, the intricate and intertwined design of the human body and psyche, and the very continuation in being of this world and of us humanbeings in this world and in.life must be explained by God. How a person can go through, life and not accept a Designer, God, who alone explains life, the world, and the universe, I fail to fathom. The second essential is JeJus Christ, the climax of Revelation. By Revelation I mean that truth from God which we know frrm Scripture and the Spirit-guided Tradition of the Church. From Revelation there are many things God had not ~old us and which we can only wonder about and theorize about in theology. We know so little about heaven and ~hell and purgatory, about what Jesus Christ knew,~ about what the Blessed Mother knew, about how she came to the end of her life, about the Apostles, But we know all that we"need to know to save our souls and to lead a good and fruitfully human life --and whatwe know is summed up in one word, because it is the Word-- Jesus, our Lord. Our life isto be the imitation of that Perfect.Life: Our life is to be our acceptance of the One who is the Way, the Truth, the Life. So, as St. Paul said, life is Christ and death is Christ. In thefirst reading, from Galatians, of today's Mass we have the same lesson: we are baptized into Christ, we live totally in Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch over eighteen centuriesago described Christ as "our inseparable life." This is what it means to have Jesus as our Lord. For us the ~iimax of God's Revelation is Jesus Christ: in what Jesus was and is, and in, what Jesus has taught us and teaches us. So this is a.second solid essential on which to base a life: Jesus Christ, after God. The third essential for living is prayer, mainly personal prayer, but also Religiou~ Life as Unchanging public or liturgical prayer. One of the standard definitions for prayer is -conversation with God. In my life prayer has not been a. conversation at all with God. My prayer is a poor, one-sided effort to speak to the Almighty and to praise the Almighty. I trust and I believe that God is listening. Prayer is a necessary dimension of living,. I believe, so that a day spent without an attempt at mental prayer, a little move towards contemplation, minutes spent in praise and thanksgiving, would be a ,day somehow lost spiritually. I know that prayer does more good for me than I will ever know, and so prayer is the third foundation for living that I list. A fourth essential is community with others. I am not a religious, but I would have a' very difficult time living alone as an anchorite or a hermit. I need to be with others who think and pray and live as I do, and that is why I live with a community of priests. It seems to me that for much the same reasons the religious life is an element in the Catholic Church that will be present until the Lord comes again. So long as the faith is strong, some will want to live out their Christian lives in a community form of life. Some will be called by God to put themselves under vbw in order to live their lives in Christ more fully, in order to do more for Christ and for his Church. So in .a world of change--and I suspect that the prominence of the electronic, media in our society will make inevitable an atmosphere of continuous change in the: years ahead--religious life will be a constant, an ever-available way of life for those with a vocation. A fifth essential element for any Catholic is the Church itself--the Catholic Church possessed, of a teaching authority or rnagisterium that is a part of the Christ's Church. We are the Church, we People of God. But we are also a Church which has a teaching authority. The Lord Jesus gave a universal shepherd and other shepherds to guide his flock. The Lord Jesus, who taught with authority, told his apostles to use his authority and to teach and baptize all nation's, even to the ends of the earth. One of the dominant characteristics of the Catholic Church is its magisterii~m. We have in the Church an authority to tell us what is right and " wrong, what is true and false, what is to be done and what is not to be done. The test of theomagisterium, and of Our acceptance of it, occurs precisely when we are told to believe something or to do something that we personally would prefer not to believe or not to do. The "obedience of faith," then, calls for some humility. And in a proud and indulgent age, neither the concepts nor the words "obedience" and "magisterium~ are very popular. So, specifically by reason of the magisterium in the Church, the Catholic today should know and hold clearly that racial discrimination is wrong, abortion is wrong, contraception is.morally wrong, liberation theology is in some forms dangerous, and ~o forth. I do not see how a person can live the Catholic life fully without following the magisterium. In saying that, I fully realize that there are distinctions which have to be made about the voice 6 '/ Review for Religious, Jan.-~eb., 1985 expressing: magisterial teachings, the clarity and loudness (so to speak) of that voice;, the.topic taught, and so forth. But my point is that the gentiine ~Catholic is to follow the teaching of pope and bishop, and not turn Somersaults so as to avoid accepting magisterial teaching. It is in the context of this acceptance, of magisterial teaching that I see the various reactions (really only two) to the Holy'Father's letter of April 3; 1983, addressed to the diocesan bishops of the United States. The Holy Father asked the bishops to: give special pastoral.service to religious in their dioceses, with a view to express gratitude for all that religious mean for the Church and also to convey concern over the future of this charism in the Church because of the decline in vocations. The papal letter mad~ reference to the Ten Essential Elements .of Religious Life and to their further explanation in an accompanying document drawn up by the Sacred Congregation for .Religious and Secular Institutes. ,, There.,has been much voiced opposition by some U.S: religious to that document and to the Ten Essential Elements. 1 have heard presentations, that go. into a lengthy exegesis of the document, that anal~,ze the mind,set, the limited world-outlook and limited theology o~ its authors, that criticize the ten points for this or that reason. I can only say to such criticisms that it seems to me to,be improper to attempt to separate the document or the Ten Essential Elements from the Holy Father. In September of last year, in company with~a hundred U.S. bishops, I made the obligatory ad limina visit to Rome and presented a quinquennial report~ on the archdiocese. In talking to me, and to,each of the.other U.S. bishops, the Holy Father asked with concern and worry about.the religioias in our dioceses and about their reaction to :his letter. On the basis of my experience, then, it seems tome that the way to read and interpret this letter is to see that the Lord's Universal Shepherd is'worried about a most.important part of the universal flock, the ireligious in the U,S.A., and wants to tell them what religious life should be: in the past, and now, and in the future. A hypercritical or narrowly analytical reading of that letter will offer, I believe, a wrong interpretation and, in view of the magistegium, not a fully Catholic reaction to it. This question of magisterium is of critical importance today for Catholics seeking to understand more fully the dimensions of their faith. During the past twenty years the underlying question in many news stories relating to Catholics has really been about magisterium. And magisterium is the real question un~derlying the recent discussion regarding two Catholic legislators and their pro-choice stance concerning abortion. I conclude this presentation by summarizing the :several points which we need to hold to as basic for living, as Christians and Catholicsand religious, in an ever-changing world: '1) God; 2) Jesus Christ as Lord; 3) prayer,or our aRempts at prayer; 4) religious community; 5) the magisterium' of~the Catholic Church Religious Life as Unehanging / 7 Come what may in future years, may we hold to these essentials and find strength as. we base our lives, build our house, on them; My second purpose this afternoon is to read to you, for whatever wisdom it holds, my answer to the Holy Father's request for special pastoral service to the Leligious of the archdiocese. A copy of this letter has been. sent to Arch-bishop John Quinn for~reference to the Pontifical Commission which he heads and the committee which he appointed. ~ , My answer was dated August 14, 1984, and reads as ~follows: Most Holy Father: This letter is in response to the request of Your Holiness to the U.S.A. diocesan bishops, asking each to give special pastoral service to the religious in the dioceses. After receiving the letter of Your Holiness, I met with either the provincial or council or community of each of the ten communities of religious with provincial houses in the Archdiocese of Hartford. With each group I discussed the esteem of Your Holiness for these religious, your concern for their future, and religious vocations, and their experience of renewal after the Second Vatican Council as seen in the light of the ten "Essential Elements." ~ I learned that of the ten communities, seven [and here I list,,their names] see the ten essentials as expressing their religious life. Most of these have already had their constitutions approved. Of the ten communities three have experienced renewal in. a different way. In general they have experienced a reduction of centralized and local authority In favor of a more collegial approach, an openness to difference and individual apostolates, a willingness to permit smaller groups to live apart from the larger community, and.a replacement of religious garb with a simple secular dress. In these three.communities, however, a minority of the community has kept the religious garb and traditional customs. These are mainly older members of the community. From these interviews, and from meetings with religious outside the Archdiocese, I conclude: 1. We have today in the U.S.A. two sharply different approaches to religious life. The one approach follows the Ten Essentials. The other approach follows some of the Ten Essentials, but has adopted a noticeably more democratic approach to authority, work, living arrangements and religious garb. 2. These two approaches' are irreconcilable. There is a painful division between the two groups, and a more painful division within a community in which the leadership and most younger members have followed a progressive approach to renewal, while most of the older members have remained conservative.* 3. Some; not all, consei'vative communities are growing. The more progressive communities, our largest communities of women, are Review .for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 showing no growth. 4. Because of these two different approaches to religious life, there is widespread confusion about the identity of religious life. 5. The progressive group,, includes many of our best, brightest, most dedicated religious. Their lifestyle and works of religion are to the credit of their community and Chui'ch. And that they are not growing in numbers is cause for lamentation. 6. The progressive group is concerned that its approach to renewal will be judged as not valid, and they will lose their status as religious in the Church. One answer to this is that they have .already effectively ~ converted the community to the status of a secular institute. The picture is extraordinarily complex. My best thinking is that the Holy See could respond in two possible ways: 1. Following the Gamaliel~principle, do nothing. In fifteen years, a brief time in the life .of the Church, the picture will be much more clear. At the end of the century a decision can be made. 2. Designate the religious following the Ten Essentials, including individuals in progressive communities, as "religious. of strict ob-servance," and designate the others by a different terminology. The conservative in progressive communities should be given special consideration.~ ' ~ My conclusion is that there is in the long run little difference between these two approaches. But, for the purpose of identifying the religious in the. Church' and for encouraging religious vocations, the second approach is probably preferable. With respect and fraternal affection in the Lord. That is the end of my letter tothe Holy Father, and end of my presentation to you. And I am grateful~ for your attention. *In response'to a listener, Archbishop Whealon offered the following clarification: By the terms .progre~ssive and conservative 1 intend nothing other than the more or less conventional way used to describe different extremes in the body p~61itic. I am consciously irying pot to use loaded terms in any way, and so am open to any more successful way of expressing these differences. Future Directions in Ministry Barbara Kraemer, 0 S. E Sister Barbara Kraemer is Vice-President of the School Sisters of St. Francis. This article is based on a presen~tation delivered to the, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the course of their.Assembly (August 6, 1984). Sister may be addressed at her generalate: 1501 S. Layton Blvd.; Milwaukee, Wl 53215-0006. Our future directions in" ministry are rooted in our history and in our current context. We are members of apostolic communities in the United States. Our spirituality is rooted in our western culture. The experience of growth and renewal these past years has been basically positive for Changes have not been made lightly, nor have they been made without mistakes and difficulties. Renewal is an ongoing process. My community was founded at a time when ~Catholic schools were being established to teach religion and to giv~ people the skills they needed in an irfimigra~society. Over the years, the needs have changed and also our responses ~m ministry. Todaywe must ask: "What is our unique contribution in education?" Today the descendants of~the German immigrants are members of the middle and upper classes. Do we continue to have a mission to them? What is its new focus? Do we have a mission to new immigrants from Southeast Asia, from Latin America and the Caribbean? There are several areas of blatant need in the U.S. today that help to direct out: efforts in ministry. They are the real needs of real people and they must be part of our consideration as we shape our present and future responses. First, Poverty. Not the t:oncept, but thepeople who are poor. How can we keep in touch with the devastating reality of the poor people around us?.How can we keep our hearts open to them? What can we do so that the distribution of wealth and opportunity will be more equal? "~ ,. Second, .Violence. There is a lack of respect for life in our country, and I'm not speaking only of abortion or capital punishment, but also about child and 9 10 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 spouse abuse, prison conditions, war-making. Are we aware of the violence within us? What steps can we take so that in the future our country and our people stand for a nonviolent world? Third, Inequality of Women. Women in our country receive contradictory messages. Are we convinced that further changes need to be made? What is my or your personal commitment to equality for women? Fourth, Economic Exploitation, There is the philosophy that says we should have more because it's available, that we should sacrifice nothing and enjoy our abundance. And there is the undeniable fact that someone can make a living by exploitation, later beginning a respectable enterprise, made more respectable by donations. People are happy to accept the money because they need it. Playboy Enterprises now has a charitable foundation. Do we scrutinize the source of donations we accept? The response we make to these and other needs is important not only in terms of the what but also the how. The value of our future contributions in ministry depends as much on how we live out our beliefs and values, as it does on the work itself. Therefore, I would like to emphasize three characteristics of ministry that are extremely important for the future: insertion into the lives of people; public witness; and effective use of resources. Insertion Insertion simply means that .we must be part of the people we :serve, part of the society we live in, identifying ourselves as much as possible with the people. Sometimes that seems easy, especially when we come from the same class and a similar background. It is harder when a person with ~a middle-class background goes to teach in a wealthy suburb or to work~at an inner-city shelter for the homeless. It takes careful looking and searching to see the people around us and to recognize what they have to contribute to our lives. Not many, if any, of us rea!ly know what it is to stand in a line at a government office waiting'for an unemployment check,.to personally face the question of abortion or divorce. But iLwe let people teach us, our ministry will not be superficial and it will not be judgmental. Recently,someone. questioned the priorities of a small group of our sisters living in a village in Guatemala. "They spend so much time buying food and " preparing the meal," she said. Their work is basically with the .women of that village and the surrounding area. What better way to understand the life of those women than to identify with how they spend their day! And whose time priorities do we use to measure the value of our presence with these people? Henri Nouwen has spoken about how difficult it is for us to receive from people; we 'always want to give. He pointed out: a servant doesnt decide how h~/she is going to serve. He/she comes to work for people and observes and graduall3i learns how to serve them.~ It.seems that this is something we learn slowly in life. New teachers believe that everything depends on them. They prepare and prepare, presenting a day's work in the first half hour of class and Future Directions in Ministry then wonder what they will do the rest of the day. With time they learn that they don't even know what to prepare or what to give until they learn from the students what they need. Teachers must receive from their students in order to be of service to them. There are some consequences to the approach to ministry: We can't as easily deceive ourselves, believing we are in control. Not to be in charge can be very frustrating! Neither should we be an elite group in the Church anymore, on a pedestal, separated from the rest of the faithful. There is no work religious do that laity cannot do. And maybe the laity can do some things better. We may learn that lay leadership can be far more effective than our own in a parish or a school. We may need to stay for years in an area before we are really accepted by the people. This is often true in places like Appalachia where people are suspicious 6f"here-today, ,gone-tomorrow" outsiders with projects. The people we work with who are poor, who have little, help us examine our own lifestyles. We see what we actually need and what we have accumulated because consu-merism has crept in. One sister, speaking about the poor she encounters in the cour~ system, said; "They keep me honest." In our society and in our wo~:ld, the values that are a.ccepted and carry weight are: competition, power, domination, control--what we would characterize as "masculine" values. What our world needs is an alternative vision: not domination, but in,terdependence; not control, but freedom; not individualism, but collaboration. Within the Church, as religious persons, we already bring many gifts. We have the potential to do more. Sometimes lay women see sisters as rivals .for positions or recognition, rather than seeing them as sisters working with them to make the Church receptive to the contribution of women. Collaboration requires us to leave our ghettos, wherever they are, however comfortable. We need to stretch ourselves, to be with those who are different from ourselves and who can complement the gifts we have to bring. For such collaboration, coalitions can be formed so the power of action for good can be strengthened, i have belonged to the Central America Solidarity Coalition in Milwaukee since I returned from Nicaragua in 1980. ~.There are Catholics, atheists, Lutherans, students, union workers, socialists, democrats, medical personnel and many others in that coalition. It takes us time to come to agreement on directioqs or actions. But there, is respect for the differences, which is cbnstantly an example to me. I ~m convinced that it is worth the effort to make the coalition work because we can reach out to more people. We are not only talking to ourselves, to those convinced of the need to stand with the peoples of Central America. We also talk to the Catholics who are indifferent, to the union workers who want to see the relation of Central America to their jobs, and to many others. Our mission as a coalition is served by our diversity, even though this same diversity can be an obstacle, because people tend to categorize others by their associations. That may be what we are afraid of in taking such a step. 12 / Review for Religious, Jan,-Feb., 1985 To summarize, insertion into people's lives calls for a ministry with them, a -ministry which is reciprocal. It calls us to collaboration with other religious, with laity, with people who have the same goals as we, no matter what their background. There is one other point to be considered, and it is a sensitive one. Why would a musician take a practical nursing course and work in a nursing home? Some would say she is wasting her talents. Why would a Ph.D. go to work in a refugee camp or in a Catholic Worker house when~ she could be teaching? Most often these changes occur because the ministers have inserted themselves into the lives "of the people around them, and are listening to the needs of these pepple. Most often these.people are poor. We continue to hear the phrase, "the preferential option for the poor," and it has a foreign ring to it. The expression comes from Latin America, not from the United States. What does it mean? This preferential option for the poor basically is not about the type of people w~e work with, or where, or what type of work we do. It has to do with our hearts and with the values that inform all we do. It has to do with our priority concern in ministry. The term "preferential option for the poor", does. come from Latin America. The Latin American Conference of Religious-(CLAR) has explained its meaning, declaring a priority for certain poor, those who have these three characteristics: (l). they have nothing, no opportu, nities, no resources (2) they can do nothing, i.e. they have no power, and (3) they struggle in faith and love for justice and for a better world.2 The Church in Latin America has made a preferential option to accompany this group of people. And these are the poor 'who evangelize, who convert us. The question is: can We p~rsonally, can our religiou~s-institutes, make such an option in ministry? Can we support those who make this option? Public ~Mi~ "nistry For'some missionaries the preferential option for the poor has led to their persecution, torture, even death, the same consequences that the poor face in their daily lives. By thifir choice these missionaries give public testimony to Gospel values and to their following of Christ. This'is a second characteristic of ministry, public witness. In the United States our bishops have exercised a public ministry through their positions on racism, the threat of nuclear war, abortion, capital punishment and Central America. They' have not been persecuted, but they have been criticized and wooed. They have generated opposition and reaction. J. Bryan Hehir in the commencement address at Catholic University this past year coffcisdy presented.the meaning of public witness for us in the U.S. Church: In the.end a public church is a community which stands for something--indeed, which Future Directions in Ministry v stands f9r many things. It is the product of people who shape their personal lives in such a way that they make a public d~ifference. In concrete terms, that is the challenge of a public church: to live with a vision which makes a difference for the world.3 In this country we have a unique opportunity to 19e a public church. We are guaranteed freedom of expression and freedom from religious persecution. But many times Catholics do not understand this role for themselves or for the Church. Our tradition of separation of Church and state, designed to guarantee freedom of religion and prevent the establishment of any one religion, has been interpreted to mean that religious concerns are private, and that the Church should stay out of public life. The spirit of the Second Vatican Council is just the opposite. Gaudium et Spes calls the Church tO be a permeating rather than a parallel presence in the world. The mandates of Vati.can II must be carried out in the market place, in political cgnventions, in schooi~, in nursing.homes, in international meetings. To move in this direction is a risk. Bishops, Church people, may lose support and privileges. Religious institutes might lose their tax-exempt status, especially if the message they.speak is a threat to the status quo. Yet how ¯ important it is to hear Church representatives and organizations say no, as Bishop Hunthausen and others .have, to weapons production; ~ say no, as Archbishop Weakland has, to the deportation., of Central American refugees. More and more the Church must be known for upholding the vision of a better world and thus announcing the Reign of God on earth. It is unfortunate that at times we hear more from .our bishops than from our parish priests. There is such a need to awaken a consciousness of injustice. Who is doing it? Are we? Just as we say an institution has a mission or a sponsored program has a mission, so the total religious community or institute has a mission and can make a corporate response to the needs of the world. The community can take a public stance on certain issues, not because they are fads or the latest cause, but because of the values that we believe in as religious persons, as Catholics, as Christians. Furthermore, the leaders of a religious community, by their writing and other.actions, can call attention to injustices and to needs in society and in the Church. For years, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, have been using a corporate reflection process in their community. They reflect in small groups and then in larger groups on a certain need or concern, for example, racism. Most of their sisters are located in the south. Publicly they are known as a community tha~ stands against racism. What are our communities known for publicly? How can the Gospel affect the world through our 9ommunities? Another dimension is the public witness of individual members of the community through writing, public appearances, participation in demon-strations, lobbying for reforms, holding prayer vigils, even civil disobedience. Our beliefs and values as a religious community, stated in our documents, are a guide to us as members examining the need for public witness. Increasingly, 14 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 this area of action l~as become more controversial within the Church. as we face the question of public office. It may not always be appropriate for individuals to speak publicly or take political stands. One of.our sisters in'Honduras, Maria Rose Leggol, directs a program for orphaned and abandoned children. The success of her efforts depends on support from all sectors of society and from the Government. Another ' sister in Central America works in a refugee camp. If she wants to continue to work there, she cannot criticize or even complain about anything that happens. This is especially difficult for her because of her background in union organizing in the south, but she makes this choice in order to continue her ministry. What is important is that some of us are present in the public arena--as legislative aides, as members of UN commissions, as writers for national publications and as artists who call to mind the beautiful in this world. Through some of our members we can be present where decisions are made, where values can be influenced. One caution in all of this: we must avoid dichotomies. Rather, we must see the connections. There is not only one way to look at anything. So, we are not all ptiblic figures or writers or artists. But some of us are. And weare all called to be leaders and prophets in our own ministry. The choice is not between direct service and structural change, between education and social justice, between the individual and the corporate. The choice is between cooperation and competition. The challenge is for us to see the connections among all of these types of ministries, and to be a public witness in the spirit of 1 Co 12:4-5: There is a variety of gifts but always the same spirit; there are all sorts of services to be done, but always to the same Lord . Effective Use of Resources As members of religious institutes Wer share in their personal, financial, institutional resources. We do have some money at our disposal and perhaps, as religious communities, more money than many individuals in our society, because the money is held in common. At the same time we also have needs within our-communities, including retirement needs. Therefore, there has to be a balance between the use of inonies to meet those community needs and to respond to ministry needs. A question to ask, as a community, is: What are the ministries that we believe in so much that we are willing to make sure that they continue? We can make sure that they continue in different 'ways. One is~by giving personnel, maybe even sacrificing someone we would like to see in internal community work so that ministry needs can be met. Another by allowing our members to work by contributing services, that is, working for a stipend or lower salary. A third is giving real money, on a one-time or an ongoing basis. Maybe those earning more can contribute or be assessed a certain amount annually to support those who do not earn enough. Future Directions in Ministry ] 15 An example of how to insure an ongoing program, in this case one that meets the immediate food needs of the poor, is the St. Benedict Meal Program in Milwaukee. This program has been organized citywide with many parishes and organizations providing the meal one day a month for the people who are poor and homeless. It is a program that does not drain resources, because different parishes and groups sponsor one day a month. They can afford to do that. It is a program that is systematized so that people are fed every day of the month. Therefore, it is a program that is ensured a long life and is a real service to people. St. Benedict the Mror Parish also had the idea for,the project now known as the Benedict Center for Justice, which helps women in jail through a program of v!siting, of education, and of job counseling. This program is dependent on outside financial resources to be able to continue. There are limits to financial commitments, and the parish may not be able to do much, but they have established a brainstorming group to consider the long-term. Over the years, our religious institutes have made some institutional, Commitments. We must evaluate these to determine whether they continue to respond to the fieeds of people, and whether we have the resources, personal and financial, to maintain them. Institutions can give a service that individuals cannot. Because of the size of an institution and its very existence, it has a certain amount of clout, or power. An institution can have an effect on a political issue, for example. We have been looking at this questirn in relationship to our health care institutions in the United States. We have one rehabilitation hospital, one nursing home, one psychiatric hospital and one general hospital. We have been asking whether we should maintain the one general hospital, and until now the answer has been "yes" because having a general hospital allows us to speak in a forum that would otherwise be closed to us. . An alternative tO owning and operating an institution is to sponsor an institution or a program. For example, our community sponsors the LaFarge Lifelong Learning Institute, a separately incorporated organization, serving the needs of over one-thousand elderly people each semester by providing classes, a place to visit, h.chapel, and a hot meal at noon. The community has no financial obligation to this institute, but some of our sisters, active and retired, work within it. Another example is a project our community sponsored some years ago in the Walker Point area of Milwaukee. It is still bearing fruit, even though the project as such has ceased to exist. A small group of sisters researched the needs of the Walker Point neighborhood community. Three of them began to live and work there. One worked with a handicraft cooperative, another helped to establish a neighborhood newspaper. They all served within a local parish. At the present time, only one of those sisters remains, but now there is a tri-college outreach project, with our college, Alverno, participating, to help women in that area of the city who have not had the opportunity to continue in school, to complete their basic education. So needs change, responses change. If there 16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 is some ~commitment to an area, sponsorship ofa new program, even though that program h~is a time limit, m~y be one way to serve people, Many of us are familiar with discussions about the meaning of "corporate th.rust~ or ',corporate commitment." Institutions and sponsored programs and parish schools are clearly ',corpora, te" commitments. But there are other ways of serving ,that amplify :our undei'standing of the corporate dimension. For example, the Capuchin priests ~nd brothers have some intentional communities, In one the priests are in different w.brk but they are all committed t~ being part of the inner-city neighborhood the~ live in; and they share the same values and concerns about justice. Another w,ay of looking at the corporate dimension is to see it present in each member,of the community. One member may say about another, "Oh, she is just going off to do her own thing." What that person may not know is that this itnd~vldual may have internalized v~ery well the vision of her foundress and theigoals of her community. Se.eing a need, she might, respond as an individual but very much as part of the community Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, MI, said to the religious of his diocese that the measure of the val,ue of religious life is the impact of our lives upon others. He says, ~ ' Today your witness is more individuali Today we notice how each of you prays. Today we notice how each of you finds ways to :live out the vow of poverty. We notice how celibate commitment is expressed through your own person. We notice your attempts to be obedient to the Lord's call, to the work of your community, to the needs of the Church. Your respo~nse unfolds in ma~ny different ways . You are aware, I'm sure, that this p~laces different demands upon ~ou. It is One thing to be a member of a community whose Collective life makes an impact. It is quite another thing to make an impact through your own individual life. The Church needs both . 4 If this trend is true, and we know from our experience that it is, then it continues to be exceedingly important that each one of us develop ourselves, our own resources through study, reflection, education and through other ways :of ~keeping ourselves open, to learn more an~l to become more. Experiences of people very different from ourselves can be broadening if we are open to them. One of our sisters, participating in our mission exchange program, went to Peru to develop her Spanish and her understanding of Hispanic people. She works with learning-disabled children in Aurora, Illinois, many of whom.are Hispanic. This year she is back in Aurora, her h~art opened to the pastoral needs of the Churc~h in another part of the. world. We are all aging and though x~e might be happy with .the work we are doing, we have less choice about, what else we might do. The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in LaCrosse .~ponsored a hostel last summer for their sisters age fifty'five ~nd older. It ~;as a program of theological reflection, in which participants looked at their own futures and possibilities for new directions in their lives, recognizingithat with aging come physical Limitations. The contribution of new members also needs to be drawn out and appreciated. When we think about~lspecific ~vorks, we need to recognize that new members are not necessarily in education or health-care fields in which Future Directions in Ministry many of us have worked. What do they bring? What kind of ministry directions do they point us toward? We had a meeting of all our formation directors from different countries during December, 1983. One of the points mentioned at that meeting was that the new members help to form the community. If we really believe that, we have to find ways of putting it into practice. Sometimes they are so new that they do not take much initiative, or they are drowned out by the initiative of other members. We need to look for ways to hear their voices so that they can really shape the community, which is theirs, in the future. Each one of us must: Consider the treasure that w~ arer the gifts and skills and abilities we possess. We must recognize our own freedom or lack of freedom to make changes, to start on a new path, to "let go." We must take into account our limitations, our personal needs. The deeper our awareness of our own selves, the more we can be in ministry. We, in the United States, in the Catholic Church, have a unique opportunity to be prophetic. We belong to a Roman-based Church that, at the present moment, emphasizes hierarc~iy at the exPense of the prophetic dimension, and the Church needs both. We know that at times our contribution is not recognized. Thdt does not mean that it is not valuable. The Church needs the dimension we bring just as the body needs both arms, each finger and toe. To be prophetic in ministry may mean nothing more (or less) than that each of us and all of us pursfiE our goal as members of our communities, which at root is the goal of the Church and' ultimately of the Gospel, to transform the earth and promote the Reign of God. ' We express our fidelity to that goal through our ongoing willingness to reexamine our ministry priorities. As :we crntinue that reexamination, we must keep before us the people we serve. We must ask ourselves about our awareness of reciprocity and our efforts to collaborate. About the quality and the fearlessness of our public witness; individually and corporately. About the creative and effective use of our many-faceted resources. Then we will be prophets in the Chui'ch of today ¯ and tomorrow, true in our following of Jesus and fa'ithful to the heritage of our communities. NOTES t Henri Nouwen, "The Spirituality of Struggle," a presentation at the annual meeting of the U.S. Catholic Mission Association, May 6, 1984. , 2Cited by Anthony Bellagamba, I.M.C., "The Preferential Option for the Poor," Alba House Cassettes, Canfield, Ohio 4440~6, to be released in Spring, 1985. 3j, Bryan Hehir, "A Public Church," Origins, May 31, 1984, p. 43. 4Kenneth Untener, "The Rich Abundance Within an Earthen Vessel," Origins, June 7, 1984, p. 61. Focused Freedom: To, Someone in Formation Desmond O'Donnell, O M.1. ; Father o'Donnell, is a General Councillo~r of his congregation, and may be addressed at the generalate:~ Oblati; C.P. 9061; 00i00R o m~a-Aureh"o; Italy. His last article in our pages, "The Problem Member in Community;~ appeared In the issue of March/April, 1981. Agood friend confides in you that he or she is considering adopting a way of life which will guarantee reasonable security but no significant material rewards, in which Considerable mobility of residence may be foreseen, in which work-preference will not always be,given, in which marriage and family life ar~ forgone and for which a seven or eight year training period, will be necessary. What would you sa); to your friend? What sort of questions do you think he or she should consider? Is there~ one big question which your friend should face deeply? Before you read further, in this letter, it could be useful to jot down the sort of questions you think you~r friend should think about before he or she gets into this unusual way of life. t No deep reflection is necessary to discover that your friend is thinking ~bout giving up a great deal nor to see that the demands of this way of life are unusual. Can you do it? Is it worthldo~ng? Has anyone the right to ask all this of you? Why are you doing it anyway? What do you hope to get out of it? These are some of the spontaneoqs questions which might come to mind in responding to you~ friend. It is clear that at base there is question not merely of material prosperity, marriage or m~obility but of your friend's very self, of his or her core freedom. Your friend h~s to face the issue of exercising or of losing his or ~her freedom in a very radical way. You are aware~that I am talkin~ about your own respofise to priesthood or to the vowed life. Looking at either from this human point of view that of using.or losing one's freedom---can~,be a good starting point. The questions are 18 Focused Freedom / "19 important for you at this time and they cannot be answered theoretically nor by another person for you. Your own very personal freedom is at stake, The exercise of freedom at any level is personally demanding but at the level of priesthood or the vowed life, one's entire personhood is involved. 31,000 priests asked to be dispensed from their way of life between 1963 and 1978; 60,000 sisters have changed their way of life during approximately the same period. Did these sincere people have freedom? Did they lose their freedom? Did they give it away? 'Did they have it taken from them? Or did they find it only in later life? What does the fact of their presumably painful experience of staying, then leaving and readjusting to a new way of life, say to people life yourself? The failure to deal with this sort of question could mean that you become an additional statistic. Keeping Your Options Open There is a very obvious, and attractive temptation today to avoid the risk and exercise of freedom at any depth. It is to avoid completely all deep and permanent choices like marriage, priesthood or the vowed life. It is to sidestep all unconditional decisions. Besides being aimless, this if-perhaps-maybe-for-a- while exercise of freedom is purposeless, as we are~ reminded by Dag HammarskjiSld -- "The man who is unwilling to accept the axiom that he who chooses one path is denied the others must try to persuade himself, I suppose, that the logical thing to do .is to remain at the cross roads."1 We can understand and admirea married couple very fruii-fully renewing their choice of each other, at regular intervals, but constantly revising or reassessing their choice would hardly make for a deepening relationship any more than regularly uprooting a flower and replanting it would help it~ growth. As Karl Rahner reminded us, freedom is not exercised in the constant revision of choice but in the, ability to make one choice and follow it. Experiencing Freedom . 4, To be free is to be untrapped, free from han/~-ups which could hinder a chosen directioning of one's life. It presumes the ability to shake off anything which might limit the power to say yes in the direction of a deeply-chosen goal. More positively it is the power to surrender one's whole self, to lose oneself even one's life--for a chosen cause: It is the ability to bring oneself together, to collect one's frequently scattered parts, to point them and trigger them all in one important direction. Freedom at its best enables the momentous launching of one's life in a morally irreversible .direction. "Man is free when he is able to make up his mind in conformity with the highest values and the ultimate aims" (John Paul II to the Faculty of Frib~urg University, June I3; 1984, quoted in L'Osservatore Romano 2/7./84 p.3). Maximilian Kolbe was most frbe when he walked out of his cell in 20 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 Auschwitz to take the place of another prisoner about' to be killed:" .Dag Hammarskj~ild tells us about his '.freest moment--"To be free, to be able to stand up and leave every, thing bfhind--without looking back. To say yes" (p,88). ~ Jesus .summa~:izes his life thusT--"I~ lay down my life., no one takes it from me. I lay it down freely" (Jn 10: 17, 18). While this deepest exercise of freedom can sometimes be socially supported and encouraged by less than totally selfless motives, it can come ultimately only from someone who i~ rich indeed--a real adult. No wonder (Jordon Allport reminded us that only adults can commit themselves and that commitment and adulthood arrive simultaneously. Appreciating Freedom It seems to me that one blessing of this age of totalitarian regimes and mind-manipulating techniques is ttlat it is leading to an increased appreciation of freedom. In the past the conscious awareness of freedom was lower because it was less necessary, or less encouraged but now there is a growing sense of human rights and freedom everywhere. Some would see a need to recall St. Paul's words today even in the Church: "Some who do not belong tO the brotherhood have furtively crept i,n to spy on the liberty we enjoy in Christ Jesus and to reduce us all to slavery again" (Ga 2.4): To which he opposes the fact that "When Christ freed us, lie meant us to remain~free" (Ga 5.1). Paul surely appreciated hisfreedom agai.hst those who would limit it even within the Church. ', It is only in freedom that we c.an become our best selves by transcending ourselves in an act of kenosis and thus reflect the justice-fidelity of God by the power of his Spirit---"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Co 3:17). When we use our freedom toldo what w6 know is right or what we know we are called by God to do, we arellike God whose dabar was his word-event, his word-acted-upon in freedom. Our freely acted-upon word no~t only expresses us but it makes us what we are,. as Karo.l Wojiyla, later Pope John Paul II, emphasized in his Acting Person. Thus it is that freedom involves your deepest you. Your free acts express you, and they also make you---especially those rare acts of dedication which influence your life'~ direction deeply. While you can be forcibly limited by others whenexpressing it externhlly, this core freedom can be touched only, and used only, by you. The full and, fruitful exercise of this freedom calls for an ever-deepening appreciation of it. Conscious Awareness Since thefinal choice of priesth~aod or/and of the vowed life is. going to be an expression of your deepest freedom, it is important that you get the feel of this freedom now. You cannot lose yourself unless you have found yourself. It will only be when you have exp'ressed and felt the satisfaction of lesser Focused Freedom / 21 :freedoms that you can gradually appreciate the deeper ones. and finally the deepest one of being "ready at any moment to gather all into one Simple sacrifice"2 as Hammarskji51d put it. -~, Have you recognized yet that every choice is a little death; that every choice makes you in a way that can never quite be unmade? Or have you ex;er thought and reflected upon how prominent people in the Chuich, in your own congregation or in history have exercised their freedom? Why not organize a seminar or write a paper on one of these people and then line it up with the oarticioants' own experience of freedom? And to flex your~own freedom muscles in the exercise of everyday actions such as eating, drinking, fasti~g, going to bed, getting up, keeping to study or prayer exercise/schedules can be a revealing and helpful exercise. This recognition of' the primacy of the practical--just doing it--will add authenticity to the reading and reflection you do on the subject. Your failures to be free can teach you as mu(has your hard won victories. From these you can discover and list--it is good to write them down--the areas of your freedoms and unfreedoms and what it is that contributes to'each. Your freedom to finally choose the vowed life or. to accept priesthood will be on sand or on solid ground depending on the type of soil you have prepared over these early years. The fact that. you fail or succeed in exercising your smaller freedoms could be less important than ~,our discovery of what motivated the success or failure. That iswhy the habit of monitoring your.freedom in a daily examen of consciousness is important. Heightened physical and mental aware-ness has great benefits for richer living: Try to grow in a similar awareness of your freedom by learning to look at it reflectively. Discerning Freedom , ~ To help you in monitoring your freedom-efforts as you grow into~your vocation, may I offer you a guideline or norm? As you find yourself growing in peacefulness, ease, harmony or even enjoyment of your way of life, you can know that you are moving into real freedom in your vocation, This, of course, allows for rough spots and moments of doubt but not for a constant series of such. You will grow into thefeeling that paradoxically you are beco .ming less free to choose outside that way of life as a happily married couple becomes less free to part, with the years. In a way, your growing vocational choice can be compared to an onion with its many layers~ If the core is sound, then each layer originatingfrom the core fits around it and strengthens' it~ As time passes, the healthy core becomes safer with its close-fitting layers protectingly around it~ And a time comes when the core cannot be touched unless the layers are gradually and destructively removed and the entire organism destroyed. That is why. it is difficult to lose a genuine vocation and impossible to lose it suddenly or without gradual and long infidelity. If a person's vocational choice has been sound in the beginning and 22 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 succeeding choices emerge from it and fit it, then what is called loss of vocation has tb be more a partial disintegration of the personality than a departure from something which was part of it. If, !on the other hand, the core has been poorly motivated, the later layers are more like wrapping paper which can easily be removed b~cause ~they do not really belong; they, were put on rather than having emerged from the core. Thee vocation was not lost; it was never there. So it is vital in these early years to beaware of your core freedom, to reflect on it and to relish it.~Each day of ygur life over these early years cannot be a review, a revision nor a momentary rejection of your basic choice just as the layers of a healthy onion cannot be !removed even for constant clinical analysis. On the contrary, each~act is a renev~ing and deepening of what you know was a healthy initial choice. It will help you perhaps in ~onltonng your grdwth into freedom to consider Ivan Illich's question about schooling--,'Is it a place where the child . is~,chasing knowledge or where knqwledge ~s chasing the child?" In these early years, do you increasingly get the feeling that this way of life is something you are pursuing more comfortably eac.h year or do you have the feeling that it .is something clumsily pursuing you and with which you are increasingly less than comfortable? Or to put it another Way, can you see and feel yourself enjoying this way of life freely in, say, tweniy years' time? Is this way of life becoming more "good news" to ~ou each year? If you answer these questio.ns in a clear no or with a hesitant yes, you have reasons to doubt the presence of freedom in your present way of life. . I ~ Spiritual directors now exercise their role less as directors than as someone who accompanies--a sort of spiri.tual friend. And who better to help you monitor your growth in freedom? ~With this friend, you can, as it were, take your freedom out to look at it in the only way possible--how you use it from day~to-day, In the presence of such~ friend, you can bring yourself to account gently and even ask him or her to do it for you. Formators, too, have an important role to play in our growth in the external use of freedom. You can 'r.easonably ask, then, that they fulfill their contractual role- that of leading you into a life'form which they themselves are already living. In recent years .,there may have been a sort of suicide of leadership in reaction to an earlier bver-authoritarian model. But laissez-faire leadership is not a Christian model and if your formators use this, they do you an injustice. If you feel theyare faili,hg you in this way, yo.u can reasonably ask them to encourage, challenge and confront you on your external behavior in such matters as presence at commgn prayer, availability to the community, academic results, interpersonal behavior and pastoral work. Both your spiritual guide and your formators are important, in helping you find your response-ability in freedom. ~ ~ Focusing Freedom ,~ .~ It seems very significant that s~]ch a diverse group as a Dutch spiritual Focused Freedom writer, a Jewish psychiatrist, a French philosopher and an American psychol-ogist stress that focusing is an indication of adulthood. Van Kaam says that permanent commitment is entrance intopotential maturity after the indecisiofi and dispersion of adolescence, while Viktor Frankl stresses that the human person actualizes him or herself only insofar as he or she becomes committed to life's meaning. Gabriel Marcel adds to this by reminding us -- "Man can know himself only if he is committed and only the man who knows himself is ready for ~ommitment." Gordon Allpo~t seems to summarize it by saying that it is only when youth begins to plan for life that the sense of self is complete. Like a river which gathers force when it is channeled, freedom is at its best when it is focused. A man is never so free in his relationship with women as when he deeply chooses and marries one. Freedrm is maximized when. it 'is purposefully pointed in one direction. Because all freedom is ultimately situated in a pla,ce, time'and activity, it must be focused to be full and fruitful. You are now looking seriously at one life-form on which you consider it worth centering your freedom. Your diocese with its people, its structures and its leaders or your congregation with its charism, community living and mission, offer you an opportunity to express yrur freedom in and through them. The question before you remains -- "Is this the structured life-form in which and through which I can freely b~come my best self?. Is this where I want to focus and express my deepest freedom unconditionally?" Hume said that reason must always serve passion and Lonergan described emotion as the mass and momentum of human existence. True, to follow feelings or to be driven by emotions is not necessarily to find one's vocaiion, but feelings and emotions experienced over a time can help us find our personal truth." Despite-the partly foreseen sacrifices entailed in your con-sidered way of life, do you feel that this is where you want to express~our personal gifts;' that the mission of this diocese or congregation is increasingly getting hold of you? Do you feel even somewhat driven as St. Paul expressed it in speaking of his own mission: "It is for'this that I struggle wearily on, helped only by his~' power driving me irresistibly" (Col 1:29) or lik~ Jeremiah: "You have seduced me, Lord, and I allowed myself to be seduced"or like Jesus when he said: "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already" (Lk 12.49)? Do you feel a conviction that something important will remain undone if you do not do it because,no one else can make your unique and irreplaceable contribution?' While. this experience has come to some people in one momentarily very strong impulse, it comes~to most of us in a calmer and more prolonged way. But come it must and pres~ent it must be, if you are to launch your life freely into the life-form you are now consideiing. Freedom Through Community One good way to determine the quality of your choice now and throughout your life will be your attitude towards and your actions for or 24 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 against the community you join. ~her.e will ever be a healthy tension between your individuality and the community. Dialogue and discernment will have to ¯ be a permanent part of this interdction but from the point of view of the new member like yourself, he or she can reasonably ask: "Will this presbyterium or c~ngregation give me the experience of a community of believers so that the exercise of my freedom in faith arid love will be supported or am I just being invited into a busy bachelors' club or into a same-sex group of social workers where interaction is generally SUl~erficial and mostly for the sake of smooth interpersonal relationships?" On 'the other side of the dynamic, a modern Jewish scholar poses questions t6o: "The proper use of autonomy begins by repudiating the self as a monad! I am individual and unique but likewise inseparably part of all mankind. More, by my finitude I am necessarily more intimately linked to some of its vast number than to others. I am therefore morally obligated to live my life,in community with them and exercise my personal autonomy in terms of them . I understand that to mean that my community .may reasonably demand of me that 1 discipline my will so that the community can function and persevere . It can also legitimately expect me to sacrifice my conscience when its promptings conflict with central affirma-tions of my group . .Our com¯munities and traditions bear a wisdom far more profound and embracing an,d certainly more enduring than anything we could create on our own. In conflict with it we must often bow to what, against our private judgment but in due humi.lity, we accept as.its superior understanding.'3 I have consciously omitted mtich explicit reference to God in this letter so far. I thought it best to isolate the ~,experience of any focused freedom without naming the central motivation which would inspire it in our case, namely faith in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ. To return to your im~ aginary friend of the first paragraph, sure!y the deepestland most inclusive question for him or her will be: "Why are you doing this?'? Because priesthood and the vowed life are meaningless without faith and a real experience of God. the choice of these vocations without faith would beiself-destructive and ~]ltimately harmful for others also. It is not easy to define priesthood or.~ the vowed life with theological precision but one t6ing remains clear, namely that a deep experience of God must be the motivating force. Even positive motives such as preaching good news or changin~ political structures for the sake of God's poor, will not sustain these life-f0rms. While this faith-motivation does not usually come to us as it did to Paul en route to Damascus, it must be there just the same, despite the often-present doubts which are part of any adult faith. "Father, if it be possible." was i .fiamediately followed by nevertheless spoken in faith and freedom by Jesus. Freedom and Uncertainty The .quest for total certainty iis self-defeating whether it is about hang gliding or about God, whether it i~i abou.t someone we love or the significance Focused Freedom of our own lives. Caution cannot be a substitute for action; it can only accompany it. We must beware of theorizing too much about certainty and freedom in a veiled attempt to eliminate the risks of action. Lot's wife was almost persuaded to leave Sodom and Gomorrah; Agrippa was almost persuaded by Paul to become a Christian and the rich young man was almost persuaded to leave his wealth and follow ,lesus. Their search for certainty paralyzed them. Again, Dag HammarskjSld helps us: "Once I answered yes to Someone or Something. And from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-surrender, has a goal.TM He acted in freedom despite the uncertainty expressed in his "Someone" or "Something." It is surely important to be as free as possible before making important life decisions but this is not to say that we must await the chimera of perfect freedom. Carl .lung reminds us: "Life itself flows from springs both clear and muddy. Hence all excessive 'purity' lacks vitality. A constant striving for clarity and differen-tiation means a proportionate loss of vital energy, precisely because the muddy elements are excluded. Every renewal of life needs the muddy as well as the clear. ''~ Muddy freedom will become clearer #s it is exercised just as the str~earia gets clearer on its journey from its muddy source. Conclusion I find that Robert focused' freedom: Frost offers people like us an ideal, as we grow in But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation as my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one and work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever re.ally done for heaven and for future sakes. NOTES ~Dag Hammarskjtild. Markings Ed. W.H. Auden: Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1966. 2Dag Harfimarskji51d. op. cit., 1. 3Eugene Borowitz Theological Studies. March 1984, "The Autonomous Self and the Commanding Community." 4Dag Hammerskji51d. op. cit., 1. 5Carl .lung Psychological Types Bollington Series (Princetown), 1974, p.244. Trusting in the Providence of God Mary Ann Fatu~a, 0. P. Sister Mary Ann is well. known to our readers by reason of her earlier contributions, the most recent of which was "Catherine of Siena on the Communion of Friendship" (March/April, 1984). She may be addressed at her office as Chairperson of the Theology Department of Ohio Dominican College; 1216 Sunbury Roadi'Columbus~ OH 43219. "Cast all of your cares upon the Lord, for he cares for you" (1 P 5:7). A key figure in the political and dcclesial crises of her day, the fourteenth-century Dominican and doctor of the Church, Catherine of Siena, lived a' spirituality which embraced this radical trust in the providence of God. In her Dialogue she expressed with unique insight a central truth experienced by men and women of faith before and after her: far from providing an escape from the reality of human life, it is precisely such a trust which provides the focal point for a key human conversion. It is a conversion to placing one's trust not simply in one's own limited resources and efforts, "but" in the abundant and intimate providence of God. Paradoxically, it is also this conversion which founds a spirituality capable of nourishing an authentic personal autonomy and mature interdependence. Early in Catherine's life the Lord pledged that he would make her his concern if she would make him her concern. Experience of her helplessness in situations which her efforts proved powerless to change faced Catherine daily with the same choice 'which in some way confronts every human being: either to trust or to despair. "Which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his or her life? If then you are not able to do even this, why are you anxious about the rest?. Yo~.ur Father knows your needs. Seek first his kingdom, and these things shall be yours as well" (Lk 12:25-26, 30-31). Toward the end of her life, Catherine reflected on the Lord's faithfulness to his promise made in her youth. The result is the section in her Dialogue which stands as a hy, mn of praise to the infinite mercy of a provident God. Her close friend and 26 Trusting in the Providence of God / 27 biographer, Raymond of Capua, wrote that this chapter was an explication of the very foundation of her spirituality, the experience of the frailty of what is Created, and the absolute power of the love of God. °The Choice~to Trust In life's most precious experiences there is perhaps the wordless recognition of,.the fruit of trust. It is the paradox of security in the presence of what we cannot ,unequivocally verify. Around us are alluring traces of the kind of trust which makes human life possible at all: in the vulnerability of a child asleep in a parent's a~:ms; in the secret shared between friends; in the vow that is said and then lived, to love faithfully until death. But life leaves also its scars. Those who know what it is not to trust or to be trusted, who know what it is to be betrayed, recognize also the fruit of distrust in the sense of worthlessness which eats away at their identity, in the anxiety and fear which rob them of peace. ~For each of us, in the face.of what life has held out to us, a deeper question and choice inevitably presents itself in the decisions of everyday. Has life ultimately been gracious to us, or has it cheated and betrayed us? To ask this is to ask the meaning of our life experiences taken as a whole, an6 holy vve will choose to live out the future in the light of that meaning. More than most, Catherine knew what it was to live through the bitterness of life. She knew what it was tO have those for whom she had poured out her life energy turn against her. And yet Catherine made her choice. In and through the weak and often twisted ways of the human heart, she found the reality deeper than all others and which she learhed to trust absolutely. For Catherine, the entire universe is ruled not by forces' which rob and deceive us, but by the provident mercy of God. She learned to trust that all of creation is made for humanity, and it is this fragile and precious work of his hands with whom God ~has fallen "insanely" in love. He has given everything with love and care: every facet of creating, every gift and faculty of our unique persons. In every event of history he has unfolded his mercy, until finally, he did not spare even his own Son. What he wantsqs only our good, and having provided for our every need in the past, he will continue to do so to the end.* Catherine realizes that it is only those who see with eyes of faith and hope, who make the radical choice to trust in God'sprovidence, who are able to receive its fullness. The God who infinitely respects the human persons he has authored will not force his love on .their freedom. His providence will never fail those who place their hope and trust!in him (280): But it.is a trust Which cannot exist side by side with a contrary hope. To trust in oneself is to trust in "what is not." To trust in God is to cling to the one alone "who is." The choice to trust is finally the choice to let go, to entrust oneself, to receive the gift Contained in *The Dialogue: 136; in Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue, translation and introduction by Suzanne Nofke, O.P. (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 180-181. Other references to this work will be cited in the text by page number. 211 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 every moment of life. Yet how can one receive with love and reverence the tragedies which life holds and which evoke in us only :anger and bitterness? Are not '~life's experiences of disappointment and pain empty of the providence of God? ~On the contrary," the Lord tells Catherine. "No matter where they turn those who trust in my providencewill find nothing but mydeep burning charity, and the greatest, gentle, true, perfect providence" (290). It is not that his providence causes tragedies. Rather, even in life's inevitable tragedies, his providence is great enough to bring life from what is material for death. Itis not that we are to deny or repress human feelings of anger in the face of pain. But working through anger and pain is meant to bear fruit finally in the peace and even joy " which recognize the gift of God given in every event. The Wealth ltidden Within Catherine's experience taught her that what human beings find particularly bitter is the discovery that all that is created will eventually~fail us. The temptation then is to cry out against the God whose providence has .abandoned and deprived us of what our plans had fashioned. We "lift up our heads against the goodness of God," writes Catherine, and draw death from what was intended to give life, because we "do not recognize the wealth hidden within" (219). How is the "wealth hidden within" every human experience to be discovered? One dimension of sin is the human resistance to change,-the unwillingness to grow. "How can you lift your head .against my goodness? Because you do not see that all things except my grace are changing and. because you . are constantly changing, I am constantly providing what you need at any given time" (282). The refusal to olet go of a present and yet outgrown security is so. strong a temptation in us that unless it.is removed from us, it can become an obstacle to the deeper security which alone founds human maturity and autonomy. God permits what is created to fail us so that, in the absence of previous supports, we may cling to the one alone "who is," and so be given the means for deeper growth. The "troublesome thorns" of life God permits not out of hatred but love for us (290). In this way we are forced to learn what we would rather not: that what is created can never be God for us. In the collapse of hope in what is created, we are given .the invitation to see and to turn to the one who will not fail us: "I wanted her to learn that although everyone else might fail her, 1 her Creator would never fail her. and that with or without the help of another person, in any situation or at any time whatever. I know how to and can and will satisfy her in wonderful ways" (296). Those who place their trust not in themselves but in God, eventually experience the fruit of this trust. God himself becomes their provider and gives them his "merry," the Holy Spirit, as their mother to nurse them at the breast of God's love (291). Gradually their fear and insecurity starve for want of food. Trusting in the Providence of God / 29 The Spirit, their mother, feeds them with the milk of gratitude and love. The ones so nourislied become with time strong and confident, able to see life with new eyes in a light given by the Spirit. Slowly they learn to hold "all things in reverence, the left hand as well as the right, trouble as well as consolation." Even in painful situations they learn to reverence the gift "hidden within" as the material for deeper growth. Thus, the Lord tells Catherine, in situations 0f great labor, he gives the gift of even greater strength (292). The "Holy Tricks" of Providence In order to make his people "drunk" with his providence, the Lord devises "holy tricks" perfectly suited to meet their needs at any particular moment. To those caught fast in sin he gives his providence by "plucking the rose" from their thorn. One kind of "thorn" is an enslaving sin; the rose, the lack of satisfaction he gives in the experience of that sin. "They set their affection on something,., but they find nothing there" (297). This gift of his providence is meant as an enticement away from the emptiness and pain of sin by means of the sweeter gift of peace and freedom (297): In other circumstances, the Lord employs still other "holy tricks" of his prowidence. He finds ways to humble the pride which bears fruit in judging others, gossiping, and using the tongue to complain and "spit out hurtful words." As healing, the Lord permits emptiness in a person's feelings, darkness in her mind, and temptations which besiege the senses. "Why do I keep her in such pain and distress? To show her my providence so she will trust not in herself but me." The person who is humbled through these struggles will learn the contrast between her own weakness and the provident love of God for her. In these struggles is contained her liberation, for the Lord himself eventually will free her in deeper ways than she could have imagined. Serenity and peace come unforeseen, not through her own effort alone, but through the Lord's "immeasurable charity, which wanted to provide for her in time of need when she could scarcely take any more" (301). The struggles which humble are in fact the gift of God: "The soul comes to perfection by fighting these battles, because there she experiences my divine providence, whereas before this she only believed in it" (302). For those formed in virtue, the Lord provides in still other ways by using a "pleasant trick to keep them humble.," Often, after they have borne the weight of burdens and sufferings with patience and gentleness, he allows them to feel passion or rage at a mere trifle: "In something that really is nothing, that they themselves will later laugh at, their feelings are so aroused that they are stupefied." At other times, his providence leaves his servants a "pricking" as he did with Paul: "I left him., the resistance of his flesh." Is the Lord able to remove the weakness of his servants? Certainly, he tells Catherine, but his providence leaves his loved ones "this or that sort of pricking" so that they will become humble and "compassionate instead of cruel to their neighbors." For those who suffer from their own weakness will have cause to be all the more 30 / Review for. Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 compassipnate toward the weakness of others (305). .- The Chain of Charity According to Catherine, the most tender means which the provident God has designed to care for us is one anothi~r. The God who in his being is trinitarian communion of love has fashioned us in his image. The inescapable truth etched into our own beings is that we are made by love, and we are made for love. We are, in fact, made to need and care for one another. "In this life I have bound you with the chain of charity. 1 in my providence did not give to any one person or to each individually the knowledge for doing everything necessary for human life. No, I gave something to one, something else to another, so that each one's need would be a reason to have recourse to the other" (31 l). Could he have given, everyone as an individual all that he or she needs? Yes, he tells Catherine, "But in my providence I wanted to make each of you dependent on the others,'so that you would be forced to exercise charity" (312). Thus, for example, the poor who place all their trust in him will experience for themselves his providence.Sometimes in their .need they are brought almost to the brink of despair, only so that they may see all the more clearly the miracle of the Eord~s care for them (314). Sometimes the provident God acts directly, as he did with Dominic, causing bread to appear for his brothers who had nothing to eat. Usually, however, he inspires his loved ones to pray for and to come to the assistance of the poor themselves. In many ways he touches his servants' hearts to provide' for those in need. Even those dedicated to solitude cannot escape the chain of charity with which the Lord has bound his people together. Thus, he inspires a hermit to leave his or her solitude in order to giqe help to another hermit (324). He "stretches out" his providence to his poor by inspiring his servants with compassion for the needs of their brothers arid sisters (315). "The whole life of my gentle poor is thus cared for by the concern I give the world's servants for them" (314). In still another way, the Lord cares for our deepest needs through one another. He tells Catherine that he uses a ~holy trick" of his providence to inspire people with a "special love" for another. It is this "special love" which eventually brings to light hidden insecurity, jealousy, possessiveness, manipula-tion, selfishness. The inner struggle uncovered through the pain of these relationships is meant to lead to humble self-knowledge and dependence bn his healing. As a person grows through these struggles into deeper personal autonomy and inner freedom, "a greater and more perfect love for others in general will follow, as well as for the special person my goodness has given her" (303). Thus, his providence has inextricably bound and woven itself into our care for one another. Our 'own~ persons are the lixJing sacrament of God's providence given to us in one another. As his friends grow more and more one with him in prayer, they become identified with him and live out the Trusting in the Providence of God / 31 experience ofPaul: "It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). And as with Jesus, those whose love grows will know both deeper joy and deeper sorrow. The pain of the friends of God is not finally that of offenses done to them, but rather the grief they feel for sin against, the Lord and the destructiveness of sin for the sinner. Those who learn to love "know how ineffably I :love my creatures., and so they have fallen in love with my creatures' beauty for love of me." Through the chain of charity with which the Lord binds his people together, he provides in a marvelous way at one and the same time for both sinner and those his love inspires to intercede for them, The sinner's heart is touched through the prayer of his servants, and these latter are in turn all the more united to the Lord through their p~rayer~ Through their love and yearning for others' salvation, "they are another Christ crucified ,. they have taken his task on themselves" (306-307). Catherine compared God's people united in charity by his providence to an orchestra. The Lord is the "maestros" and each person is an indispensable instrument. Without each of the otl~ers, no instrument,alone is sufficient. The more sweetness with which each one plays his or her instrument the gift of each one's own unique life--the more those who hear are allured by this music to the Lord. "Consider the glorious virgin Ursula," writes Catherine of the legend of Ursula and her companions. "She played her instrument'so sweetly she caught eleven thousand from the virgihs alone." The entire orchestra together is meant to grow more lovely in its sound, swelling to make this music worthy to fill heaven and earth with the praise of God. For those who trust in him, everything which happens in their lives is a gift f~rom God as a way of refining their instruments and rendering the music they play more beautiful. It is his infinite providence which cares for each one and all together, teaching each one what and how to play (311). The chain ofcharit~ with ,which the provident God has bound us to one another will not be loosed even in death. The life of heaven will be a rejoicing not only in him but in one another, and this very joy.will be a continual praise of his providence~ "I have so brdered their charity that no one simply enjoys his or her reward in this blessed life that is my gift without its being shared by the others." The joy of all adds to the joy of each, and the joy of each is the joy of .all (312). ~ To live one's life in trust is a gentle ~'0retaste on earth of the life of heaven. The fruit of trust in the proEidence of God is a joy and peace more secure than what human missteps and failures can destroy. The One who trusts learns to rejoice "in what she sees and experiences in herself and others," and finding joy ~in God's goodness to l~er, she learns to rejoice without jealousy in the goodness of God to others. She "is not afraid thaf she will lack the lesser things because by the light of faith she is guaranteed the greater things" (293). Conclusion For Catherine, trusting in the providence of God is not a spec~c kind of 32 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 "spiritual exercise,~ but the entire content of a life lived in 10ve. The more one lives in hope and trust, the more lavishly will God's providence in fact provide. To live in trust is not something mere human willing can attain; it is rather a gift the provident God most deeply wants to give, and for which he wants his people to ask. Catherine learned that what best nourishes trust is a good memory, a heart and mind that have learned to remember and to reflect upon the experiences of one's own life, and to find there the indisputable evidence of the personal and intimate providence of God. In this way, one's own unique life story becomes the inspiration and encouragement to ask for even deeper trust for the future. To trust in this way is not imprudence nor immatu(ity. It is, rather, a depth seeing which increasingly frees one's energies from inner forces inhibiting personal autonomy and mature interdependence. It entails the paradox of a radical inner poverty and inner contentment. To trust, in fact, is to live secure in the care of the one who can be trusted absolutely. It is to have the peace and freedom and courage to dare, to take risks inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is, ultimately, to have the heart to let go. It was not the fourteenth-century Catherine of Siena alone who had the personal call to live a life of trust in the providence of God. Today also, it is the witness of lives lived.in the maturity of trust in the one who alone is Lord over all, which perhaps will be the most radical statement a contemporary world will hear. From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions I and II Address: by Patricia Spillane, M.S.C. Price: $1.25 per copy, plus postage. Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Christian Conversion: Suffering Out of Love John Navone, S.Z Father Navone is well known to our readers. The idea of this article is developed at much greater length in his recent Gospel Love: A Narrative Theology (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, Inc.). Father Navone is professor of biblical theology at the Gregorian's Spirituality Institute, where he may be addressed: Piazza della Pilotta, 3; 00187 Roma, Italy. In the seventeenth century, Samuel Crossman wrote that Christ in his passion has:° Love to the 16veless shown That they might lovely be. The passion story is both the good news of God's unconditional love for us as well as the mirror by which we can judge the authenticity of our own life and loves. It changes us from being °unlovely to being lovely (and loving) by showing us what true loveliness could be. Christ is the author and communicator of authentic communion with God. His claim that all authority belongs to him (Mt. 28:18; .In 17:2) and his communication of that authority to others are based on his power to transcend the limitations imposed by human desires and feelings to suffer freely and gladly out of love, When someone truly loves us, we respond to that love by investing our lover with the authority to initiate elements in our life story. When that love is absolute, as in the love of God for us, the absoluteness of that love claims an absolute authority. The story of Jesus reveals that God is Love, and it summons us to share in God's dynamic state of being-in-Love.I The trinitarian imagery of Scripture presents us with the symbolism of transcendent and unrestricted love where the persons are persons by virtue of their relationship to one another. ,iesus is the human incarnation of that loved and loving reiationship to God and the Spirit. Being-in-Love (Father) with 33 ~!4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 Jesus Christ (Son) entails our accepting a relationship to the Love that transcends every human Ioye.2 We, however, do not establish that relationship; it is given to us. We do not possess it by nature, so it cannot be taken for granted .3 Our self-deception is the failure to accept the gift of God's love and the call to be transformed into God's children in the Son. We merely pretend that our communion with God is authentic, that we share his being-in-Love, if we are not willing to undergo the suffering that is entailed in meeting the demands and total claims of Love. In meeting the demands of L6ve, suffering demonstrates our authentic acceptance of the gift of God's love. The sovereign transforming power of God's love, as opposed to self-love, is manifested in the sufferings of the just. The Drama of Suffering Love The Synoptic Gospels tell the story of Jesus as a drama in four acts. The first act prepares us for what is to come (Mt 3:1-4, ll= Mk l:l-13 = Lk 3:1-4:13); the second act tells the story.of Christ's ministry in Galilee (Mt. 4:12-18:35 = Mk 1:14-9:50 = Lk 4:14-9:50). In the third act Jesus journeys to Jerusalem (Mt 19:i-20:34 =. Mk 10:1-52 = Lk 9:51-18:43) while the fourth act tells the story of Christ's passion and resurrection. As in every good drama, the story invites the onlooker to join in the dramatic action. We are called to become actors within Christ's dramatic story rather than to remain as onlookers marveling at the drama of what is happening to someone else. The evangelists want their hearers to be trans-formed by authentically sharing Christ's life and his Spirit by dying and rising with him. The life of the Spirit is a sharing in the whole life of Jesus, his dying and rising, his self-emptying and his self-fulfilling glorification in God. We cannot be filled by the Spirit unless the self has been emptied to make room for the Spirit's gifts. The mystery of the Cross and resurr6ction expresses the true nature and power of Jesus' being-in-Love, the power and freedom to .be able to love to the end. The disciples, who share their Lord's de~tiny, are also called upon .to suffer. As his ,followers, we must expect suffering, rejection and persecution (Mk 8:34-35; Mt 10:24-25; Lk 6:22; 14:26-27; .In 12:25,26), for the kingdom of God that comes to us in the myster3) of Jesus Christ's dying and rising is a sign of contradiction. Fidelity to the Master means that the disciples must enter into the same struggle that Jesus entered to fulfill God's plan for creation. Opposition to Jesus is manifested within all his human contexts. Mark structures his Gospel to underscore human resistance to the arrival of the kingdom in the person, work and ministry of Jesus Christ. Society resists Jesus (l: 14-3:6)~ Pharisees and scribes, the leaders of the people, engage him in five controversies (~2:1-3:5) and decide to destroy him (3:6). His family, relatives and townspeople are disturbed by him (3:7-6:6), and they fear for his sanity (3:21). Despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own Christian Conversion / 35 house, he could work no miracle there (6:4:6). Jesus meets with the incompre-hension of his own disciples (6:6-8:33), and he rebukes them for not understanding the miracle of the loaves (8:17) or the necessity of his passion and death (8:31). Fidelity to the will of God meets with human resistance and incompre-hension. If the kingdom of God was ours by nature, Jesus would not encounter incomprehension, hostility and.rejection. His harmony with the will of God entails his disharmony.with all that is opposed to it. His being-in-Love entails his suffering and death out of love that all persons might be-in-Love. He loves his people, fami]3i, disciples and all others with whom his life, vision and mission are in conflict. He suffers out of love for them with the compassion that leads to his passion and death, in order that all might have the fullness of new life in the kingdom. Especially in Mark's story of Jesus, we see that as God's will for Jesus is being progressively fulfilled, he becomes increasingly unpopular until he dies alone--rejected and abandoned by all. Mark's narrative structure makes the theological point that God alone is the fulfilling origin, ground and destiny of Jesus Christ's living, dying and rising out of Love. The coming of the kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ is the ,revelation that God is in love with all human persons and summons them to become a new creation in God's Love. What is demanded of us is repentance and faith in his love given to us in his Beloved Son (Mk 1:11, 15; 9:7). Such repentance and faith entail the suffering out of Love which the Beloved Son himself experienced i.n his prayer at Gethsemane (~Mk 14:36). Jesus experiences suffering out of Love in every human context, the intra-personal as well as the interpersonal; this is evidence for the community of faith that the integrating center of his life transcends every human context. God's lordship in love is a creative goodness which makes others good. When God begins his reign as Father in Jesus Christ, all things are made new in his love,.all things are possible (Mk 10:27; 11:36; Mt 19:26; Lk 18:27). Conversion: Becoming Persons-in-Love Through the example of Jesus' being-in-Love, ~he Christian community sees that God compassionately demands all persons to find and accept their true fulfillment in the gift of his Love so that all might forever be persons-in- Love. God is not indifferent to what weare and become. To accept his love for all is to learn to suffer with his compassionate and passionate love for all, ¯ overcoming our intrapersonal and interpersonal tendencies to remain impersonal. The new life of the kingdom that is given to us in Jesus and his Spirit entails the suffering out of Love for others that manifests our being-in-Love with others. This new life transforms us by making us willing and glad to suffer for others in the service of the kingdom. In the context of the Last Supper, John's gospel implies that Jesus gladly and voluntarily lays down his life that his friends might know the joy of being able to do likewise. ~16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 True disciples love as the,Master loves. They share a life that is rooted'in God's community-creating love for all, the only love that constitutes the community of divine and human persons which lasts forever. True disciples have solidarity in that invincible love which, despite suffering and death itself, makes them glad to pour out their lives for others. They do not consider themselves to be martyrs or victims; rather, they suffer for others (divine and human) as true friends in the power of that love which alone grounds the eternal friendship that is life in the kingdom, Central to the notion of Christian conversion as suffering out of love is the fact that God wants all human persons to enjoy his life as their own. The gift of God's love is not so much a giving away as a sharing. In loving, God shares himself and all that he is. Jesus Christ enjoys the life and love of his Father; therefore, he is glad to suffer out of that love so that all human beings might share what he most cherishes. But what is perfect in the Master is imperfect in the disciple. The life that Jesus Christ fully enjoys is the life that his disciples are learning to enjoy. The disciple knows the Master to the extent that he or she enjoys the same life and is glad to suffer out of love to secure that life for others. The. solidarity of Master and disciple in suffering out of love for others consists in their enjoying and cherishing the life that they want others to enjoy. Christian conversion is not only an event but also a process that deepens this solidarity through fidelity to the grace and demand of God for responsible lives. Christian conversion, both as event and as process, is participation in the befriending love that Jesus Christ received and accepted from his Father as the integrating center of his life, mission and death for 6thers. Lived Christian conversion entails suffering out of a befriending love that affects all our conscious activities, directs our attention, pervades our imagination, release~ symbols that penetrate to the depths of our psyches, enriches our under-standing, guides our judgments, reinforces our decisions and motivates 0tii~ actions. To enjoy the transforming, benefit of God's befriending love in Jesus Christ and his Spirit implies a gratitude that actively accepts it and makes a religious and moral commitment to sharing it with others. Gratitude for the gift of God's befriending love reflects a humility that takes nothirig for granted. Such humility'brings an appreciation of others and a commitment to them, even when they are superficially unattractive. If we truly appreciate others, we are glad to suffer out of love for them and to befriend them as disciples of ~the Master who lived and died to make his joy ours and to make our joy complete (see Jn 15:11). Some Principles and Practical Points of Reference 1. Being-in-Love is the motivating power for suffering out of Love. 2. If, as Jesus reveals, God is befriending Love, being in befriending Love is the motivating power foi" suffering out of befriending Love for others. It makes us glad, despite difficulties, to befriend others. Christian Conversion 3. Suffering out of befriending Love for others is the self-transcending activity that frees us from self-absorption, self-pity and self-idolatry (i.e., from being impersonal). It frees us for the fulfillment that is being-in-Love with others (i.e,, for being personal). 4. For human beings to be fully personal is, ultimately, for them to be-in- Love befriending others. Sin is the refusal to be personal, the state of the impersonal subject. 5. In lived Christian conversion, suffering is not sought for its own sake; rather, it is embraced only when it is a condition for commitment to the grace and demand of God's befriending love. 6. If lived Christian conversion entails suffering out of befriending Love for others, suffering is not a univocal sign that something is wrong with a person. It may be, as the teaching of the beatitudes implies, the sign that something is profoundly right with a person. 7. We are not committed to persons or values for whom we are unwilling to suffer. We cannot suffer out of love for others when we have no love for them. 8. Being-in-Love is the efficacious ground of self-transcendence required to live responsibly and to be responsible to the pursuit of the truth, however difficult it may be to discover or to accept. It motivates the will to be responsible and to pay the pric.e of responsibility. 9. The fact that Jesus Christ was willing to suffe~ and die for us grounds the primary dogma that God loves us~ To sense that we are loved is to sense something that is true. It may be that imagination is involved in our sensation, but the truth of the dogma will stand. Being-in-Love and willing to suffer out of love for others should never be identified with the presence or absence of any particular feeling or sensation. Our faith and hope is in God, not in our feelings. 10. Because human beings leave something to be desired that God alone can fulfill, suffering out Of love is the condition for the possibility of friendship. Friendship (marriage, community, society, and more) disintegrates with the refusal to endure limitations arid deficiencies in others. Our incapacity for friendship is related to our unwillingness to be committed to others who do not fully gratify, support or console us. There is no lasting commitment to others apart from the willingness to suffer out of love for them. 11. Having time for others is a form of suffering out of love for them. Religious conversion implies that we are living in God's time, that we have the gift of his time for welcoming and listening to others. Consequently, we do not see others as taking or consuming our time; we are free for them to the extent that we are free from the illusion that the only time we have is our own. Prayer is a form of enjoying God's time and transcending our own. Some seldom find time to pray because they are living in their own time and do not want to lose it for life in God's time. The call to pray always is the call to be-in-Love and to live in God's time forever. Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 12. Sufferingout of love for others is a form of our self-investment in them. Inasmuch as communities are formed and held together by a common faith and hope, there is a community-creating and community-sustaining power and value in suffering out of faith, hope and love for others. 13. Inconveniencing ourselves for others is perhaps the most basic form of suffering out of love for others. Unwillingness to inconvenience ourselves for others is a reft~sal to be personal; it is the failure to befriend others at the most rudimentary level of everyday life. No possibility of a lasting commitment to others exists without our being willing to inconvenience ourselves for them daily. 14. The New Testament demand for human transformation through following Jesus' way of the cross should warn those who are tempted to reduce God to their own measure. The self-abandonment that God's befriending love required of Jesus Christ should correct our tendency to manipulate God. 15. Tothe extent that we are convinced that our importance is in God, as opposed to the illusion of an independent self-importance, we are equally convinced that all others have the same importance and are worthy of self-sacrificing and befriending love. The conviction that we exist because God loves us implies that we-find security and a sense of personal worth in God, rather than in the approval that others may choose to give us. 16. If God's will is done, all human persons will be in his kingdom. Our finite, limited, human love is inadequate to the challenge of loving all persons, apart from the gift of God's all-embracing, all-encompassing, all-sustaining, all-forgiving, all-reconciling and all-fulfilling love. His community-creating love for all is the origin and ground of life in the kingdom. 17. Love takes others seriously. How seriously we take others, according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, reveals how seriously we take God. It is the conviction of Jews and Christians that God takes all human persons seriously. How seriously God takes us is implied in the Christian affirmation that God is Love. We know that God is Love because he sent his only Son to live and die for us: We know that such Love transcends words because it embraces human living, suffering and dying. We know that we are truly loved and taken seriously by those who willingly share our living, suffering and dying. We discover the reality of our love for others in willingly doing likewise. NOTES ~See Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology. (London: Darton, Longrnan & Todd, 1971), passim, esp. pp. 105-122, 2Although Being-in-Love is the existence of the Father and Son and Spirit, I pareaihesize Father to highlight the filial relationship of Jesus as Son. 3See Charles Hefling's lntrduction to Frederick E. Crowe, The Lonergan Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1980), p. xvi. A Clump of Lichen and Me Kathleen Gallas, OS.B. Sister Gallas is Food Service Director at the Sacred Heart Convent and Conference Center, where she may be addressed: P.O. Box 488; Cullman, AL 35056-0488. What ig contemplative life? Why the nuclear arms race? Why the environ-mental devastation? In the aftermath of "The Day After" my reflectivd moments pondered these seemingly unrelated questions. A combination of spiritual reading, n~ws magazines and discussions on the American Catholic Bishops' Pastoral On Peace surfaced this assortment of questions. While pon-dering the last two questions there eventually came over me a sense of futility. What can any one p.erson do to change the course of events toward possible destruction of life and environment? It can even be questioned as to what will destroy what firs!! Even if there' is a nuclear disarmament it will only be a matter of time before life is destroyed through our irresponsible use of environ-ment and our exploitation of peoples around the world as though they were so many pins on a chart. The question of contemplative life I pondered as an altogether different kind of issue. Ordinarily when one speaks or hears of contemplative life and of contemplative prayer, it is understood in terms describing activities limited to a select few. Contemplative life involved Contemplative prayer, and anyone experiencing contemplative prayer was undoubtedly living a contemplative life--which usually meant living a vowed religious life. Neither combination is necessarily true, nor the total meaning. My own convictions saw a distinction between contemplative life and contemplative prayer. Mother Mary Clare, S.L.G., in her book, Encountering the Depths, gives a difference. "Contempla-tive prayer can be experienced, if God wills it, in any such circumstance as he sees fit to bestow, while contemplative life is the life so directed in its simplicity, and separated from the normal distraction of the active world, that it provides the best preparation for carrying out the work of contemplative prayer." How- 411 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 ever, as Thomas Merton said, "Not all who are vowed contemplative religious experience contemplative prayer." After a while I found myself considering the word contemplative as separated from the terms life and prayer. By itself I couldn't limit the meaning of contemplative to a few but asked the question if being contemplative wasn't a dimension of being human, and therefore per-taining to everyone. What is it to be contemplative? This assortment of questions unexpectedly came together and found its own kind of answer in an experience 1 had on a January afternoon. Everything I had been meditating within the context of each of the three basic questions surfaced and synthesized an experience with a clump of lichen. I had been pondering these questions separately without any thought of relating them. However, my experience of lichen gave me the insight that in actuality the answer to the question of what is contemplative life was the foundation to answering the other questions--and all other questions concerning peace, justice and harmony in our relationships with each other and our environment. I am standing at my special place on a particular hillside with an Alabama version of mountains before me evoking the line: "I lift my eyes to the moun-tains from where comes my help--the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth." At my feet is a clump of gray-green lichen with red dots. Flowers? To see them eye to eye I have to lie on my stomach. Then do I see. The lichen grew finger-like projections and each finger tip is painted red. There am I on the ground "eyeballing" a lichen's painted finger nails! At first I laugh at myself. Then at us, the~lichen~and me. I talk to it. "Aren't we a crazy pair? Somehow, this is a fun moment, isn't it? We share a secret, you and I. Others might question my sanity if I were to tell them of our secret delight in each other. However, there must be others like us, for Goethe back in the eighteenth century said: 'Tell no man, tell wise men only, for the ~vorld might count it madness'," My deepest intuitions say that I am not mad in having fun seeing and listening ~ith a clump of lichen. After a while the humor of the situation shifts in mood to a sense of wonder, fascination and appreciation of so tiny a bit of color on a January day. In this Garden of Eden setting comes the urge to pick up this clump of lichen and bring it home to the prayer room--a winter flower for the Lord. But no! in my position of lying stomach flat to th~ earth comes the awareness that I am hugging great Mother Earth who in Greek mythology was named Gaia--a name personalizes and effects a deeper relationship. Gaia and I became one in this°moment--a moment of union. She and I are gift to each other from our God, the maker of heaven and earth. There is the vista before me, t_he clump of lichen below me, and myself. We are responsible to each other and for each other. So, I am one human being and this under my eyes is roughly a 3 x 4 inch clump of lichen. Yet this clump of lichen and I represent a microcosm of life on planet earth. On the one hand it could be said what harm done to pull up this clump +sp~cially with the motive of offering? But how thoughtless and insensitive to Gaia who needs this clump of lichen to maintain nature's balance A Clump of "~chen and Me / 41 so that I might live comfortably. To be fruitful and multiplyr fill the earth and stibdue it doesn't mean that I ravage it, pollute it, coerce it for my own selfish needs and even worse, under the guise of something good. Whose good? How often our God voiced that he spurned such offerings. Some would say that I have done no harm to another human being in pulling up this clump. But I have. Even if it is in innocence, the innocence of thoughtlessness; I have harmed another in contr!buting to making earth an unfit place to live. Gaia is upset. Mother Nature reacts and there can eventu-ally come a separation, a divorce. I could be a contributing cause in the erosion of this hillside. In being responsible to Gala and for Gala I am also responsible to all other human beings. Each of us is responsible to the other for maintaining a harmonious relationship with Gaia who will respond accordingly. In this total economy of life no one human being is insignificant. Neitheris this clump of red-dotted lichen by my side. Just now 1 suddenly recall a long-forgotten story, The Little Prince. The fox is explaining to the prince what it means .to be tamed. "It means to establish ties." "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world." We were asked to subdue the earth, Wouldn't "to subdue" mean "to tame'~. To establish ties, to create a need for each other? To instill a reverence for the uniqueness of each other? In lying flat on the ground face to face with a clump of lichen, I felt an. interrelatedness. The lichen and I were one. My body pressed to the body of earth were one. As far as the eye could see there was not another clump of lichen to be seen amidst the variety of winter-colored plant life. Yet there was the awareness that while this was so on the immediate level, there was also an awareness on another level that the earth was populated with the likes of me and the likes of this lichen. Each was one in the many and the many in the one. I knew an interrelatedness with all in the universe that was human. The lichen would'feel the same with its kind. However, the sense of harmony, the expe-rience of0neness-and-manyness wasn't limited to recognizing this in our sepa-rateness of plant and human, for at the same time there was the feeling of Oneness with each 6ther. The lichen and I knew a oneness with each other as well as a oneness in the manyness of us. Lichen and me. Plant life and human life. Mother Earth Gaia and me, Gaia and the manyness of me. Each and speaks of union. Each and speaks of a union that is life-creating, life-giving, life-supporting. This life with a small "1" could only be because of the gratu-itous, unfathomable love that is Life with a capital "L." It is from the Life and in this Life that the lichen and I have life. We are gifts to each~ other, responsible to each other from the Gift that is Life--maker of heaven and earth. A dialogue from another story, The Farthest Shore, by Ursula LeGuin Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 speaks of this responsibility. The wise magus explains to his young companion the meaning and responsibility of personal choice. "On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the .gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole. But we, insofar aswe have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility." When did we become responsible for each other? In the beginning of , creation Life hovered over the darkness of the deep and breathed over the waters of the abyss. God said, "Let there be . " With each word of God, each breath of Life a living being was created. Gaia is a living being. This clump of lichen is a living being. I am a living being. Within each resides the breath of Life uniting us as one. Gaia and this clump of lichen act unconsciously accord-ing to their nature. The breath of Life that brought me into being included the freedom of choice. But "having choice, we must not act without responsibility." However, if I am not awakened in eye and heart to that breath of Life within me then my actions are likely to be irresponsible and contrary to the nature Life intended me as a ruler of myself and of the earth. Only if I am awake to this Life breathing within me will I be able to make responsible choices that will be in harmony with all other beings until All is in all, a union of One, a oneness in the manyness. Frederick Franck in his Book of Angelus Silesitis says: "For the awakened.spirit there is no longer a split between 'I' and 'other'." Meister Eckhart asks, "When is a man in mere understanding?" "When he sees one thing as separated from another." "And when isa manabove mere under-standing? . When a man sees All in all, then a man stands beyond mere understanding." Until one is awakened to the Life within there is no unfolding, no con-sciousness that this clump of lichen and I are responsible to each other, gifts to each other for all others in our oneness. Thoughtlessness, insensitivity, ihgrati-tude to the gift of oneself and the gift of each other have compounded to the magnitude of global disaster at the exp.ense of all that represents the lichen and me. In our insecurities and lack of appreciation of each other's unique gifted-ness-- everything that makes up heaven and earth--we have become envious and greedy. In our drive to be number one in whatever area of life, individually and nationally, we have lost sight of our interconnectedness. We have forgot-ten that the world is round'and not fiat. In our linear vision of life we have forgotten that there is a Center that links us as spokes in a wheel. In our fears and insecurities we can be likened to the schoolyard bullies easily provoked when our power position is threatened. In the global schoolyard we clench nuclear warheads. ° A Clump of Lichen and Me / 43 Or? I was about to pull up the clump of lichen to use as an offering and a decoration but I didn't because ~of an awareness that each of us is connected to a Center and interdependent. But on a global level we have those who thought-lessly, selfishly ravage the earth's peoples and places as so many clumps of lichen and for a variety of reasons--least of all, offering and decoration. On the other hand, when done out of offering and decoration it is far more devastating. It is said that greed brings out the animal in us but that isn't true. Animals act according to their nature as designed when breathed,into life. ,~ dog gnawing on his bone is not envious of the dog next to him chewing on a steak. Each is content. Humans in their greed that becomes exploitation of all living beings act contrary to even animal nature in wanting both, their own and what others have. ~ I feel that my experience with the lichen spoke to the fundamental ques-tion, what is contemplative life--what is it to be contemplative? Am I off the track? I don't think so.-It is for each of us to live life moment by moment deliberately, reflectively, consciously, reverently; awarely, thoughtfully, prayer-fully. The majority claim that this isn't possible. But why not? Walter Burg-hardt in his book Season that Laugh and Weep_:quotes his friend William McNamara in defining contemplative as "a long loving look at the real." Burghardt goes on to explain the "real~" Reality is living, pulsing people; reality'is fire and water;~reality is the sun setting over the Poconos and a gentle doe streaking through the forest; reality is a ruddy glass of Burgundy, Beethoven's Mass in D, a child lapping a chocolate iee-crearn cone; reality is a striding woman with wind-blown hair; r~ality is Christ Jesus. Contemplation~is not an abstraction "where a leaf is no longer green, water no longer ripples, a woman is no longer soft, and God no longer smiles." He goes on to say, "This real I 'look' at. I no longer analyze it or argue it, describe or define it; I am one with it. I do not move around it; I enter into it." When one enters into it one becomes one with it. I am that at which I give a long loving look. Sense of separateness disappears.in the embrace. I am convinced that this capacity is within each of us.As I am writing and ponder-ing this (now a summer morning) I'm aware 0fa buzzing fly. The window has a space between outside glass and .inside screen. The fly flew in by the open middle section. It is now buzzing and frantically dashing itself at the top section of panes. This has been going on for over an hour. If it would just stop long enough to take a long loving look at the reality of its situation, it would come to know that the next set of panes is open. The fly would be free to become one with all that is outside the barrier of closed upper-window panes. To be contemplative is a dimension within each of us that must be responded to in order to live in harmony with one's self, with each other, with Gaia. That dimension is there enabling us to be free, but like the fly we frantically dash our lives on window panes of our own choosing. In all the ceaseless buzzing and frantic dashing about we fail to "see" that the next set of panes is op.en which would free us to be one with all we see but interact with through the glass of 44 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1985 fears and insecurities. We are gifts to each other.~As human beings breathed into existence each of us is endowed with gifts we hold in common as well as those unique to each. Gifts can remain latent or be 'used intelligently ~nd responsibly. But this is an unfolding and a growing that starts from a beginning. In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. In the beginning was the Word. In the begin-ning life breathed. The very words "in the beginning" suggest that there is a past, a present and a future. We all have beginnings and are now in process toward endings. But life is a spiral of beginnings and endings gradually open-ing us to greater circumferences. Beginnings proceed to endings only to find that endings become new beginnings. Life is breathing, bringing us to an expanding awareness and fullness. However time past and time future ismean-ingful if I live the now moment attentively, patiently, caringly, lovingly. Other-wise the clump of lichen is just a clump of lichen to be trampled on or pulled up indifferently, carelessly--for there are no established ties. Again, theqittle prince and the fox: "What must I do, to tame you" asked the little prince? "You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day." In my experience on that January'day, the lichen and I tamed each other. Ties were established revealing secrets visibly to the heart. As I was walking back home filled with the fullness of Life, pain and sorrow entered. I could identify with St. Francis who cried because Love is not loved. Along the roadside was the trash 6f beverage cans and fast-food restau-rant containers. This marring of the creation of heaven and earth is evidence of a lack of awareness of the meaning of life breathing within all created things. Most of the trash along our highways are food containers betraying the pace and emptiness of our lives. Many people claim they are too busy to eat' reflectively, appreciatively, companionably and as an undivided activity. Too busy to take "long loving looks at the real." Busy-ness reflects an emptiness or a fife lived in qu~intity not quality until it becomes a frantic dashing about. There is not the patience to live the now moment attentively, undividedly. From just considering the kinds of trash I saw along the way, it seems that eating has become something we do while in the process of doing something else, on our way to somewhere else--all activities of another kind that are not entered into fully either. Our attention is fragmented; when the activities of each moment are multiple and experienced indifferently and randomly, as a ¯ necessary activity to get over with, it is a natural consequence to open the window of the car and carelessly toss out the trash on the landscape which goes unnoticed. The fox upon saying goodby to the prihce imparts his secret. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." "It is the time you have wasted for another that makes this tamed one so important'. Men have forgotten this truth but you must not forget it. You A Clump of Lichen and Me / 45 become responsible forever, for what you have tamed." What is it to be contemplative? Whether described as "a long loving look at the real" or "time you have wasted for another," it is a time consumption that a pragmatic materialistic society rejects because for them time and life are mea-su~- ed in terms of money--cash and flow. The contemplative dimension that enables us to be truly human is there but lost. From still another source, Tom Brown, a woodsman taught by an Apache Indian, describes in his book, The Search, his conviction of the contemplative dimension. There is a place I know where everything lives in harmony. Nothing is envied, stolen, or killed. Instead, everything is shared. The land is everyone's and no one's. Life is sacred there. A dweller in this place thinks highly of human life because he lives so close to the earth. He understands his part in the scheme of nature and is not lost or searching for himself. Where is this place? Does it really exist? Yes. It is within me and can be within you. It is a state of mind; it is an awareness; it is an appreciation; it is an understanding; it is a commitment to life. It is the realization that everything I described is all about us every day of our lives, but we miss it. We are blind to the beauty of a sunset, deaf to the music of the wind, callous to rough bark and soft grass. We speak of salaries and war instead of singing songs of life. We taste the bitterness of pollution and miss the sweetness of wild honeysuckle. We smell bus fumes but never the apple blossoms or clover flower. Life is manufactured and marketed. It is, for many of us, something to be bought or sold, and the more we pay, the better off we feel we are. Empty, untamed and fragmented lives are not awakened to the Life within. There is no awareness of interconnectedness, of taming and being tamed. There is no awareness that the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth and everything therein, is at the center of his universe and the center of each of us. One indifference leads and escalates into another: trash out the window by individuals, pollution and exploitation of land, sea and sky by industry, oppression of people around the world by political systems. If lives were lived contemplatively to what is essential and visible to the eye of the heart, then it would be realized that no being is insignificant because each o

Issue 42.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1983. ; Notes on LitUt~!y REVIEW FOR REIAGtOUS ( ISSN 0034-639X~, published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. REVU-:W FOR REI.IGIOt~S is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO, © 1983 by REVIEW FOR RE~.~G~O~JS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S,A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW I.'OR REI,W,~OtrS: P.O. Box 6070:, Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor May/June, 1983 Volume 42 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELtGtOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW t'O~t RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and attic, s not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart Paul J. Joncas Rev. Joncas, whose M.Div. is from the Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary, is pres-ently pursuing doctoral studies at Fordham University. He describes this paper as an exposition of Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing in which each discourse carries a consistent theme of Complexit'y and Simplicity as opposing modes of life. Tracing each of these modes through the book provides a picture of the style of life that Kierkegaard regards as exemplary. Rev. Joncas may be addressed at 102 Washington St.; Morristown, NJ 07960. When a woman makes an altar cloth, so far as she is able, she makes everyflower as lovely as the graceful flowers of the field, as far as she is able, every star as sparkling as the glistening stars of the night. She withholds nothing, but uses the most precious things she possesses. She sells off every other claim upon her life that she may purchase the most uninterrupted and favorable time of the day and night for her one and only, for her beloved work. But when the cloth is finished and put to its sacred use, then she is deeply distressed if someone shouM make the mistake of looking at her art, instead of at the meaning of the cloth; or make the mistake of looking at a defect, instead of at the meaning of thk cloth. For she could not work the sacred meaning into the cloth itself, nor could she sew it on the cloth as though it were one more ornament. This meaning really lies in the beholder and in the beholder's understanding, if he, in the endless distance of the separation above himself and above his own self, has completely forgotten the needle-woman and what was hers to do. It was allowable, it was proper, it was duty, it was a precious, duty, it was the highest happiness of all for the needlewoman to do e~brything in order to accomplish what was hers to do; but it was a trespass against God, an insulting misunderstanding of the poor needlewoman, when someone looked wrongly and saw what 321 322 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 was only there, not to attract attention to itself, but rather so that its omission would not distract by drawing attention to itself.1 The needlewoman of this story serves as an example of what Kierkegaard sets out to develop in his book Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. In her concern for the work that is set before her the needlewoman approaches it with a reverence, straightforwardness, unity of thought and purpose, and simplicity that speaks not of her, but of the duty which she was fulfilling. The viewer who looked on her work as something more than she had intended is the example of what it is to be guilty, as we all are, of double-mindedness and thus unable to see the beauty of what lies before them. It is my purpose in this paper to examine the guilt of the viewer in terms of a life of Complexity. This life is filled with double-mindedness, duplicity, evasion, attention to "the crowd," and a denial of the self. All of this is set up by pride which presents the person with many difficult pitfalls. There is also another side to what Kierkegaard has to say in his book which will be discussed in this paper. That is the story of the needlewoman, or the person who wills one thing. This is evidenced by a life of Simplicity. This life unfolds as one which is a unity, through which the "individual" is capable to "will one thing" and have a knowledge of self that enables the person to take risks. The result of this life is a sense of humility which is transparent, pointing to the "Good." I will discuss these two opposing modes of life under the titles 1 have assigned to them: Complexity and Simplicity. After describing how they each have an influence upon us, 1 will conclude with some more general observa-tions about the two categories and their relationship to one another. Complexity Throughout his book, Kierkegaard remains true to the Lutheran notion that humanity by nature is sinful. This sinfulness is lived out within the tem-poral order of the creation, and has a natural resistance to the "Eternal." In resisting the Eternal we are confronted with a multiplicity of life choices that may give the appearance of leading us to the "Good," but they are only delusions and actually hide the true, the Eternal from the seeker. We are led down the blind path of complexity that cuts us off from that for which we were created and we attempt to postpone what we know to be inevitable in our journey toward God. Alas. the temporal order and the press of busyness believe that eternity is so far away. And yet not even the foremost professional theatrical producer has ever had all in such readiness for the stage and for the change of scenes as eternity has all in readiness for time: all--even to the least detail, even to the most significant word that is spoken; has all in readiness in each instant--although eternity delays? Busyness, the continual search for meaning in the temporal order, the continual search for permanence in what is only transitory, the constant run- Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart ning in search of what is already before the seeker. It looms over the entirety of life and "clouds the heart, keeping it ever unknowing and bound to the tem-poral. We look on the procession of life and see the changes that occur in relation to the temporal. The fear that feeds the life of Complexity reminds us over and over that we are approaching the end. We turn in upon ourselves and try to find the key to not changing. We live with the false hope of delaying that which, in view of the Eternal, never happens. "For in relation to the Eternal, a man ages neither in the sense of time nor in the sense of an accumulation of past events."3 In.relation to the Eternal we are set free from the burdens of temporal existence and begin to see the Good and in turn the Good becomes visible through us. This temporal life is characterized by double-mindedness which draws us into an endless maze of dead ends that prevent us from apprehending the Good, the Eternal. Kierkegaard calls this double-mindedness by many names: pride, passion, denial of sell fear, cleverness, self-deceit, despair, impatience, the "crowd," evasion, and false humility. They are names of conditions we all know intimately. Kierkegaard shows us his magisterial knowledge of the human condition by naming those things which we all share in common, those things which tie us all together in our state of sin, and lead us down the path away from God. In order to understand the gu.ilt of the above mentioned viewer, and ourselves, we need to take a close look at the life of Complexity and the conditions that define our human situation. Pride 1 begin with pride because it appears in Kierkegaard's system that pride sets us up to fall into the other traps of double-mindedness. Once we have established what we consider to be our worth in the world we can begin to evaluate all our other actions in light of this worth. In this fashion the lazy man always has a disproportionate power of imagination. He thinks immediately how he will establish himself, and how fine it will be for him when now this and now that is done: he is less given to thinking that he should do this and that. And in reflection this logks very inviting, but when he must step out upon the road (for reflection is up above the road) then all is changed.4 Once the road is entered upon and the true demands of the journey are seen, as prideful people we begin to reassess our position and conclude that the course we are undertaking is act.ually beneath us. Pride plays to our predilec-tion to overvalue ourselves. It whispers to us ever so quietly, "Oh, you poor soul, just see what the world is asking of you. You have more important things to be involved with. Why go about wasting your time on what is trivial?" In listening to this voice we become further enamored with ourselves and we fall prey to grandiose dreams of what we can give to the worl~d, as if we had anything of our own to give. He wills that the Good shall triumph through him. that he shall be the instrument, he 3~4 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 the chosen one. He does not desire to be rewarded by the world--that he despises: nor by men--that he looks down upon. And yet he does not wish to be an unprofitable servant. The reward which he insists upon is a sense of pride and in that very demand is his violent double-mindednessP We exhibit our sinfulness since we do not just want to be an instrument of the Good in the world, but we want to be the instrument. We insist that God's will should be our will, his way should be our way--and we stretch the dis-tance separating us from God even further than before. That is the only power we have. The power to drive ourselves further away from God and think that we are drawing ever nearer. Kierkegaard does not let up in his insistence that the greatest damage we do is, above all, to ourselves. The grandness of our dreams, to be more than what we actually are, is the banner of our sinfulness that we carry into eternity. Pride widens the gulf between humanity and God by its pervasive nature: It creeps into every facet of our existence and tricks us into thinking how right we are when we are actually wrong. This is the self-deceit which pride leads us toward, and after we have already turned our backs on God, we begin to turn the tables on ourselves. For when hate, and anger, and revenge, and despondency, and melancholy, and despair, and fear of the future, and reliance on the world, and trust in oneself, and pride that infuses itself even into sympathy, and envy that even mingles itsdf with friendship, and that inclination that may have changed but not for the better: when these dwell in a man--when was it without the deceptive excuse of ignorance?. This ignorance is called self-deceit. : And to be ignorant of the fact that there is one thing and only one thing, and that only one thing is necessary, is still to be in self-deception.6 Self-deceit exists as a precipitate of pride. It is the only thing that is left after the ashes rendered by pride are sifted. Self-deceit has a way of turning everything upside down and it tries to give us the excuse we need when our efforts come to nothing. This overturning by self-deceit is much like the words of St. Paul "For the good that 1 wish, I do not do; but 1 practice the very evil that I do not wish" (Rm 7:19).7 This self-deceit has a way of masking our efforts so they may appear noble to ourselves when they actually bring about harm. Not only harm to others, but harm to ourselves. We are open to the suggestions of the world and hear a voice that appeals to our pride and thus we deceive ourselves again. But there is a wisdom which is not from above, but is earthly and fleshly and devilish. It has discovered this common human weakness and indolence; it wants to be helpful. It perceives that all depends upon the will and so it proclaims loudly, "Unless it wills one thing, a man's life is sure to become one of wretched mediocrity, of pitiful misery. He must will one thing regardless of whether it be good or bad. He must will one thing for therein lies a man's greatness.TM It is in the willingness to do even what we know to be bad that we start the process of selling out to whatever whim or fancy the world throws before us and we enter deeper into the self-deception that has already grasped us. The greater our self-deception the more we become oblivious to the "Good" and we enter into the next realm that dominates our earthly life--fear. Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart / 325 Fear And spiritually understood there is a ruinous illness, namely not to fear what a man should fear: the sacredness of modesty, God in the heavens, the command of duty, the voice of conscience, the accountability to eternity.9 Our pride and self-deception have led us to the point of forgetting the things which we know to be desirable and the absence of these elements in our lives is not viewed as a great loss. The eternal element of our life is gone and we no longer understand what true fear is all about. Our concept of fear becomes entangled with what we perceive to be punishment. "For punishment is indeed not what a man should fear. He should fear to do wrong.''~° The concern we have is not for our eternal life but for our temporal life. "Yet double-mindedness seldom dwells on eternity's punishment. The punishment it fears is more often understood in an earthly and temporal sense."~l How often do we find ourselves doing things, not out ofthe goodness of our hearts, but out of fear for the punishment that may be inflicted upon us if we do not do it. This type of fear seems to be inbred from childhood when parents gladly point to the threat of punishment in order to get even a small degree of cooperation from the child. A full life cannot be lived from a defensive posture and God's attempts to break through our self-protection fall on ears that are deaf. Kierkegaard is trying to show that in taking away the will for the "Good" the person lives a second-class life that inhibits the individual in all rela-tionships with and in the world. What a terrible existence it would be to fear every action we take not knowing if we will receive accolades or be stoned. Kierkegaard rightfully puts this condition into the category of illness. But then, in a spiritual sense, there is another illness, a still more destructive one: to fear-what a man should not and ought not to fear. The first illness is defiance and obstinacy and willfulness. The second is cowardice and servility and hypocrisy.~' We are slaves to our fear and jump to its command. We are cowards in our actions, afraid to take any risks that may bring about punishment. We are hypocrites who smile in order to disguise our fear, thinking that we are being judged by the world while at the same time we are judging and condemning it. Kierkegaard wants to make clear the incredible power that sin can have over us in this world, it has a way of creeping into our lives silently, and just as silently tears our lives apart. We soon start to exhibit another means of self-defense which is not to risk anything. Another says, "1 have not the strength to risk all." Again evasion, an evasion by the aid of the word "all." For the Good is quite capable of reckoning and computing its demand in relation to the strength that this man has.~-~ We are unwilling to take risks because we cannot adequately judge the scope of the task. We do not truly know the risk that we are called upon to take since we stand in fear of what may happen to us if we do take the risk. Our lives are paralyzed by fear and that which is in us to lead us to the Good begins to atrophy. The result is to take even more desperate measures that lead us further away from the Good. 326 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 Cleverness The above mentioned evasion is not solely a device to escape risk but also starts us on ihe road to thinking we are very clever. By the help of evasion, namely, one does not come into danger, and neither does he lose his honor by running away in danger--on the contrary one does not come into danger--that is one advantage. And one wins great honor as being especially clever-- that is a second advantage.~4 In our cleverness we have the ability to weave a complex of schemes that isolate us from the world. We are able to construct an ivory tower out of our plotting and slowly raise ourselves up in the eyes of the people who see us. Our cleverness allows us to look down upon the world below and gives us the illusion of achievement. The other poor souls we look down upon are seen as a threat, but as a threat that is a long way off. These same schemes also play into one of the primary traps of cleverness. Alas, there is in every man a power, a dangerous and at the same time a great power. This power is cleverness. Cleverness strives continually against the commitment.~5 Since we are not committed we give the appearance of being free but that is all we have, the appearance of freedom. We have no idea of what we may have lost in exchange for this appearance. We are not free as a true Christian enjoys freedom. We live in a cloud that, like a drug, keeps us temporarily sedated until it dissipates. The lack of commitment through cleverness does not affect the temporal life alone. Kierkegaard sees an even greater danger ahead. If he uses cleverness to hinder commitment to the Eternal, he is double-minded. He is and he remains double-minded, even if temporal help did come and he did revel in the Cleverness by which he managed his shrewd escape: yes, one should still believe that it was a calamity that he cleverly managed to evade commitment to the Eternal. Com-mitment to the Eternal is the only true salvation.~6 We have now achieved the dubious distinction of having temporarily escaped from a moment of danger and at the same time cutting ourselves off ¯ from salvation. What is left for us? Do we simply wander aimlessly through time being free from any commitment or does something else arise to take the place of this commitment to the Eternal? Kierkegaard would say that there is something else that fills in the gap created by lack of commitment and that is the passion that lives inside each of us. For if passion continues in a man, it changes his life into nothing but instants and as passion cunningly serves its deluded master, it gradually gains ascendancy until the master serves it like a blind serf.17 We are now slaves to our passions and are led about without regard for the people around us. Our passions consume us like a ravenous wolf that leaves the refuse behind. What could be left for us once we have descended to these depths? It seems that we have lost the last thread of our humanity, but there is still something more towards which Kierkegaard points the reader. Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart Despair Now that we have been blinded by our passions we no longer see what lies before us. We are now ready for the final descent. We have left the world behind and our attention is turned to the only place left for us, that is, totally into ourselves. When the attention has been focused within, it brings with it the danger of not being able or willing to accept what is found therein. It is as if our attention has been focused to the point of a laser and it holds the potential to destroy. In our nonacceptance we find that we are "at variance with our-selves." Kierkegaard uses the.following example of the gravity he sees in this moment of "variance." ¯. at each man's birth there comes into being an eternal vocation for him, expressly for him. To be true to himself in relation to this eternal vocation is the highest thing a man can practice, and. as that most profound poet has said: "Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting." Then there is but one fault, one offense: disloyalty to his own self or the. denial of his own better self.~8 We have now reached the point where there is nothing else to which we can turn. We have reached the point in our "double-mindedness" when we can go no further. We have reached the point of despair. "Is not despair simply double-mindedness?'n9 In denying ourselves have we not abandoned ourselves, who we are, our purpose for existence? Will you in double-mindedness of mind despair? Have you considered what it is to despair? Alas it is to deny that God is love! Think that over properly, one who despairs abandons himself (yes, so you think); nay, he abandons God!20 There it is! The terminal point for the life of complexity, the abandonment of God! There is nowhere else to turn. We could turn to the "crowd" but that is just a delaying tactic., a dead end. "For many fools do not make a wise man, and the crowd is doubtful recommendation for a cause.TM In Kierkegaard's estimation, to follow this mode of life is to take the path to eternal death, to be forever outside of the love of God. Now that the discussion of the life of Complexity has been finished as Kierkegaar&has outlined it in his book it is possible to look at the opposing mode of life--Simplicity. Simplicity It would be a dangerous mistake to think that the life of Simplicity is a life characterized by naivete. There is no room for an unsophisticated meandering through life. That would only serve as an invitation to the elements of double-mindedness in the world, alerting them that a pigeon is on the loose. A life of Simplicity has many facets to it bht it is "simple" in the fact that all of these facets are present for the cause of the' Good. The Good is the all-consuming goal of the person who lives a life of Simplicity. Our every atten-tion and energy is directed toward the Good and finds its telos in eternity. The move from Complexity to Simplicity is not just a shifting of gears but rather: 3211 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 It is indeed like a changing of raiment to lay off manyness, in order rightly to center down upon one thing: to interrupt the busy course of activity, in order to put on the quiet of contemplation and be at one with oneself. And this being at one with oneself is the simple festival garment of the feast that is the condition of admittance. The many-hess, one may see with a dispersed mind, see something of it, see it in passing, see it with half closed eyes, with a divided mind, see it and indeed not see it. In the rush of busyness, one may be anxious over many {hings, begin many things, do many things at once, and only half do them all. But one cannot confess without this at-oneness with oneself.22 Kierkegaard in giving his advice for preparation to confess points out that it is necessary to leave behind the manyness that presses in and confuses us in our moment of examination. It is necessary that we become focused, simple in our thoughts, in order to come to our confession as whole persons. His notion of "a changing of raiment" is not merely to do so for the moment, but rather, in the fashion of metanoia, it is a complete change of direction. Life is trans-formed and our life takes on the same shape as that of the above-mentioned needlewoman with all of its attendant expressions, The life of Simplicity is not as easy to dissect as that of Complexity. The categories that exist in this life overlap a great deal, with each one helping strengthen the other. Since they all combine to form a unity, a oneness of purpose, a simplicity of expression, any attempt to categorize wouid be arbi-trary and would not remain true to the method of presentation used by Kierkegaard. In view of this, the life of Simplicity will be dealt with as a whole. It is a mode of life that stands in opposition to the life of Complexity and as such it does not exist as a positive response to a negative stimulus. It is a distinct mode that stands on its own without need of outside impetus beyond the call of God to the sinner. In Kierkegaard's schema of the life of Simplicity it becomes clear that the style of life we live reflects the internal unity or disunity we are currently experiencing. True Simplicity reflects an attention to life and the things that are necessary to be done and it does not allow us to be overcome by the miasma of Complexity. We are able to stay in the world without needing to be exclusive in our relationships. We find what is good in life and participate in it fully. Do you live in such a way that this consciousness is able to secure the time and quiet and liberty of action to penetrate every relation of your life? This does not demand that you withdraw from life, from an honorable calling, from a happy domestic life. On the contrary, it is precisely that consciousness which will sustain and clarify and illuminate what you are to do in the relations of life. You should not withdraw and sit brooding over your eternal accounting. To do this is to deserve something further to account for. You will more and more readily find time to perform your duty and your task, while concern over your eternal responsibility will hinder you from being "busy" and busily having a hand in everything possible--an activity that can best be called: time-wasting.23 As we have seen, busyness for Kierkegaard is another expression of double-mindedness. This double-mindedness captures our will and makes the will captive to its perceptions of time available and the talents that we have at our command. We have a distorted view of the task at hand and soon think we Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart / 329 do not have the time needed to do the Good. The life of Simplicity will not stand for this sort of distraction because it is God who calls us to this life and it is God who is left behind in pursuit of the manyness of life. But to will one thing, genuinely to will the Good, as an individual to will to hold fast to God, which things each person without exception is capable of doing, this is what unites.24 Unity is important in order for us to continue in willing the Good. Without this unity it is not possible for our life to become a reflection of the Good nor is it possible for us to "unconditionally serve the Good in action." As persons who are united, there is an awareness of the freedom in our lives for service and commitment to the Good. We no longer fear for what may happen to us since we are now united to the Good, and our concerns have been turned from the temporal to the Eternal. "He that wills the Good in truth even hopes for the punishment;"~5 and this serves as an indication that we have beenset free from the fear that has prevented service and commitment to the Good. Once freed from fear we are empowered to act in a manner that is consistent with our new understanding of duty in relation to the Good. If, then a man in truth wills the Good, then he must be willing to do all for it or he must be willing to suffer all for it.~6 Our commitment to the Good is visible through action or suffering. Suffer-ing in this context does not have the same power it holds over the double-minded person. Suffering is understood in a different way because we now live in a new relationship to the world. It is not something thrust upon an unwilling victim. It is accepted in the knowledge that what happens to us in this world is insignificant when viewed in relation to the Good. When the sufferer, on the other hand, willingly takes up his appointed sufferings, he is willing to suffer all for the Good, that is, in order that the Good may be victorious in him.27 Suffering is not a badge worn before others in order to win accolades. It is worn as a simple garment, It is quietly endured and quickly forgotten." When we suffer for the Good we know deep within ourselves that it is the Good which is being accomplished through us and that our God is right here with us in our suffering. ~ Oh, you sufferer, alone and abandoned as you are by the generation to which you belong, know that you are not abandoned by God, your creator. Everywhere you are surrounded by his understanding ~,hich offers itself to you at each moment. In it you unite your will to the Good. And the edifying contemplation is always ready to remind you of that presence; and its very existence is a source of security to the living.28 As sufferers who "will one thing" we live in the world knowing that what we are experiencing will be long forgotten in ~he realm of the Eternal,, and in this knowledge we receive consolation while still in the temporal order. This is the only reward we are willing to accept because the "understanding of God" is sufficient. There is nothing more necessary since, in time, everything will be 33[~ [ Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 finished for us in the temporal order. If we are forgotten by the world, that is no problem. If we are rejected by others, that is no problem. If we lose all that we have in service to the Good, that is no problem. For this world's memory is like the moment: a series of moments. Eternity's memory, that he is certain of. When he leaves the world, he leaves nothing behind him, he takes all with him, he loses nothing, he gains all--for "God is all to him.'~9 The total focus of energy is toward God and God alone. The will is a complete unity with itself and with the Good which resides in the Eternal. We have now reached the point when our unity also reflects a purity of thought and desire. When this point is reached, Kierkegaard begins to talk about the roles of hope, faith, and love in light of "death's decision." And it is here that the evidence of a life that is truly Christian may be seen. Yet sad as it is with the wish, how joyful it is with hope! For there is a hope that is born and dies; a shortlived hope, that tomorrow is forgotten; a childish hope, that old age does not recognize; a hope that one dies away from. But then--in death, in death's decision, a hope is born in death. By this hope the sufferer, under the pain of the wish, is committed to the Good. So it is with the hope in which the sufferer, as though from afar off, reaches out toward the Eternal . With faith it is still more joyful. For there is a faith that disappoints and vanishes; a faith that is lost and is repented of; there is a faith, which, when it droops is like death. But then--in death, in death's decision, a faith is won that does not disappoint, that is not repented of, that does not die: it seizes the Eternal and holds fast to it. By this faith, under the pain of the wish, the sufferer is committed to the Good. So it is with faith in which the sufferer draws the Eternal nearer to himself . But with love it is the most joyous of all. For there is a love, that blazes up and is forgotten; there is a love, that unites and divides--a love until death. But then--in death, in death's decision, there is born a love that does not flame up, that is not equivocal, that is not--until death, but beyond death, a love that endures.~° All of life is understood in terms of the Eternal and the very being of the individual is grounded in eternity. All of the trappings of this world are seen for what they are in their impermanence. A new permanence is given to be understood by us in our new found unity and depth of being. We no longer seek for anything for ourselves in this world and it is that which seeks nothing for itself that is truly transparent and pure. The Good alone is visible in and through us. The entirety of our being is bonded with the Good. For commitment to the Good is a whole-souled decision, and a man cannot, by the craft and the flattery of his tongue, lay hold of God while his heart is far away. No, for since God is spirit and truth, a man can only draw near to him by sincerity, by willing to be holy, as he is holy: by purity of heart. Purity of heart: it is a figure of speech that compares the heart to the sea, and why just to this?. On this account we compare the heart with the sea, because the purity of the sea lies in its constancy of depth and transparency)~ To achieve true depth of mind, true depth of will, true depth in unity, is to be transparent as Kierkegaard regards the true Christian to be. Everything is done for the sake of the Good ~ind it is, at the same time, a complete uniting of the will with the Eternal, and the will has reached its telos with the Eternal. This is the end point of the life of Simplicity, bringing us to wholeness in the Kierkegaard on Purity of Heart / 331 presence of God as opposed to losing "self" in the manyness of the "crowd" as in the life of Complexity. Conclusion Kierkegaard wrote his book as a collection of addresses which could be read at different times, with the reader still finding them of value. The result is that many of the same themes are used over and over. Although each section has a distinct flavor, it is also connected to all of the others. This makes it difficult to identify any clear line of development from the beginning to the end of the book. However, general comments about both styles of life can be made, now that the pattern within each mode has been made clear. For the life of Complexity there is a general shape that could be described as an inward and downward curve. This characterizes a concern to find mean-ing within the person. There appears to be a reliance upon the natural abilities of a person as a means of self-justification. This self-justification is indicative of the notion that everything a person needs for life can be found just by looking inward hard enough to locate it all. Schleiermacher could be used as an example of a theologian who placed a great amount of emphasis on the person being able to find God by looking inward. This mode of life is dependent on the belief that there is an intrinsic value to the person as a separate entity. Once the search is conducted and, as Kierkegaard believes~ the person comes up empty in the inward search, there is a sudden reversal of direction, and the search continues by looking to other people. It is hoped that what could not be found within the person may be found in the "crowd." Once again the empha-sis is on what human beings are capable of doing for themselves, and to Kierkegaard that is unacceptable. The natural shape of the life of Simplicity would be outward and upward. This time there is an emphasis on God, who is outside of humanity, as the basis of movement on the path toward the Good. God provides all that is necessary for the journey and God gives the person value in his sight and at the same time in the eyes of the world. There is no need for justification beyond that which God has given. In the life of Simplicity God is sufficient for the person who "wills one thing." Movement toward the Good is a long, slow process since it is not natural to humanity. On the other hand, movement toward double-mindedness comes easily since it does not fit our sinful nature like a well-worn glove. The tension between the two of them is intense because Complexity has a way of imitating expressions of the Good. Life is not looked upon as a black and white matter. Life has immense areas of grey that the person depends upon God to be led through. There is another contribution that Kierk.egaard makes in his book. There, he preserves the integrity of what it is to be human and, at the same time, acknowledges the absolute sovereignty of God. We do not need to be more than what we are as persons. There is no call to greatness beyond the greatness 339 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 that we have as creations of God. The holiness of our existence is a gift of God to us. We are attracted to God because of the love he has shown for us through his Son. Our humanness has been blessed, and yet God has not been com-promised in any way. Many of the theologians of Kierkegaard's day looked for justification within humanity or within creation as represented by the natural world, but this was not something Kierkegaard could accept. He took on the difficult task of pointing to God who stands over and above all creation, and to humanity, which held a special place in the created order. Kierkegaard was clearly Lutheran in all of his basic presuppositions, and remained consistent in this position. I would suggest that an area for further study would be to see how these modes of life carry over into Kierkegaard's other writings and perhaps into his own life. NOTES ~Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. trans. Douglas V. Steere (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1948), pp. 27-28. 21bid. p. 107. 31bid. p. 38. 41bid. p. 116. 5Ibid. p. I00. 7New American Standard Btble. 9Ibid. p. 80. ~2Ibid. p. 8 I. '~Ibid. pp. 126-127. ~81bid. p. 140. 2~Ibid. p. 191. 241bid. p. 206. ~71bid. p. 148. 3°Ibid. p. 150-151. ~Ibid. p. 52. SKierkegaard, Purity of Heart. p. 63. ~°Ibid. p. 79. '~Ibid. p. 88. ~31bid. p. 129. ~4Ibid. p. 127. ~6Ibid. p. 168. ~71bid. p. 51. ~91bid. p. 61. "-°Ibid. p. 151. nlbid, p. 47. "-31bid. p. 197. ~lbid. p. 93. ~6lbid. p. 122. 2Slbid. p. 158. ~91bid. p. 147. 311bid. p. 176. Withstanding Sunbelt Sectarianism David K. O'Rourke, O.P. Father O'Rourke is Associate Director of the Family Life Ministry for the Diocese of Oakland, CA and Adjunct Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley. He may be addressed: 2446 Estand Way: Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. In recent months two of America's leading scholars have made statements that bring the current direction of education for religious life seriously into question. Both of them, professors at the University of California at Berkeley, speak out of personal scholarship and accomplishments so respected that their comments merit a hearing. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges in Boston, Professor Charles Muscatine, a Chaucer scholar and, from our point of view even more important, one of the most respected university educators in the United States, noted that American education has abandoned its proper role of teaching students how to make ethical judgments in favor of a concern with technical skill teaching. Speaking of the bachelor's degree, Professor Muscatine said it has become a "marvelous convenience for a mediocre society, putting passive acceptance.ahead of questioning, and propagating the danger-oias myth that technical skills are more important than ethical reasoning." His address received favorable comment in a New York Times editorial.~ The editorial continued "What am lherefor? is the student's and the teacher's perpetual question. To gain and give life skills and a glimpse of life's larger possibilities seems an appropriate answer to each of them." in a recent article in Commonweal~ Robert Bellah, Ford Professor of Sociology and Sociology Department chairman, described a structural change in American religion. Using categories of Ernst Troeltsch, which are com-monly used by students of religion, he notes that there has been a shift from the "church type" of religion, which ". we may briefly characterize as an 333 3311 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 organic conception of the religious institution for which the defining metaphor is the Pauline image of the Body of Christ," to the "sect type" which ". views the Church primarily as a voluntary association of believers." and which sees itself"., primarily as the gathered elect and focuses on the purity of those within . " This shift, he says, parallels other shifts. There is a shift from the civic and religious ideals which provided the underpinnings to the social ameliorization we saw in our past history in the United States to an "ever growing dominance of bureaucratic individualism." There is the shift in American political power from the eastern establishment to the sunbelt capitalists of Texas and California. And there is the shift in importance from the heavy industries of the north and east to the "technologically innovative industries of the south and west." I believe that we can synthesize the statements of these two scholars into a picture of a culture, both religious and civil, that is changing the religious life we see herein the west. It is also producing the candidates for religious life we are receiving here. And because of California's influence through its control of the media it is influencing the entire United States. The dominant influence in religion is a view of church life that is religiously subjective, personally pious, politically uninvolved, technically skilled and culturally unlettered. I believe that this view can be summarized as sunbelt sectarianism. Living, teaching and ministering in Berkeley for the past fifteen years, I have had the opportunity to see the rise of this new phenomenon. In October of 1966 I joined ten other Dominicans in establishing the first Catholic com-munity at Berkeley's pioneering Graduate Theological Union. Since that day hundreds of other men and women have come here for studies. The Berkeley venture has, itself, become a model for religious, theological and pastoral studies and formation. Those studies and formation, I believe, are more and more becoming a mastery of those same technical skills that Professor Musca-tine described, and less and less a development of the art of ethical reasoning which he sees as the goal of all education. Make no mistakeabout it, the level of skills he is referring to is high, in-deed. The University of California has few equals in its ability to train men and women in the scientific, social and professional skills that make our society run. However, as the Times editorial suggests, it is far less well equipped to teach its students how to answer the question "What am I here for?" The ministerial skills we are teaching in our pastoral training centers are also of high caliber. The art of working in the community as an effective leader and on the one-to-one level is taught at least as well as in other professions, like medicine and law. Current understanding of Scripture is well taught. Tech-niques in liturgical design and performance are also taught. The broader questions, however, like the one posed by the editorial writer of the Times are not explored in a way which allows the Church's traditional answerings of the question to be brought into the discussion. 1 do not dehy Withstanding Sunbelt Sectarianism / 335 that they are answered. I suggest that they are answered from within the context of sunbelt sectarianism. They are not explored within the context of church as Body of Christ. The questions are answered in light of the individual's personal religious experience, frequently an experience that led to entering into religious life. They are not explored in the light of the Catholic theological tradition to which the individual is exposed after his or her arrival into theological educa-tion. The latter may be used to establish some theological foundations for ministry. It is not really used, in my experience, to establish the theological foundations for the minister. These remain what they were when the man or woman arrived. Professor Bellah points out that each of the definitions of church that he uses in his article, including the idea of the organic church and sectarianism, has found a welcome within the Christian tradition. That is true. But within the Roman Catholic tradition the view of the Church as the Body of Christ comes closer to the religious and theological tradition that lies at the heart of the Church's life than do any of the other views of church. I am suggesting, it should he obvious, that we religious have followed much the same route as the universities. In our case, however, the deviation from what we should be about is more serious. An argument could possibly be made for universities devoted to transmitting technical skills. Less°argument can be made for Catholic religious orders that are not concerned, first and foremost, with answering the question "What am I here for?" and trying to answer that question, at least in part, by drawing on the Church's theological tradition. I would like to look a bit more into the situation described by Professors Bellah and Muscatine, especially as it can be related to education for ministry and religious life, by examining three sets of opposed values drawn from their statements. The opposed values are skill mastery versus life purpose explora-tion; creativity versus passivity; ethical reasoning versus affective moral intuitionism. 1 will begin discussing skill mastery versus life purpose exploration by illustrating the differences with a story. When I first began my theological studies many years ago I was taught by one of the country's leading moral theologians. Nearing retirement age, he went on instead to become editor for the moral theology section of the Catholic Encyclopaedia. In his years as a teacher he was respected for his ability to bring speculative principles to bear on concrete issues. We were all gathered in the lecture hall for the first class of the year, and he entered the room and climbed the three steps to the large platform from which the professor lectured. Since this was the first day of class we were all waiting for him to outline the course of lectures he was to deliver. Instead he did something quite different. After walking back and forth, and pausing to look out the window obviously thinking about something, he turned and just looked at us. Then he began to talk. "Increasingly in profes- 336 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 sional education, and commonly in seminaries, it is the practice to give the student enough training and adequate skills so that he can go about his work with competence and confidence. Here," he added, "we are trying to do some-thing fundamentally different. We are trying to provide you with a framework, conceptual and personal, within which you will be able to make sense of your own lives. Then we hope that you will be able to go out and help others do the same." And then, without further comment, he began his lecture. The difference between mastering a curriculum and making sense of life can also be seen as the difference between fitting into a world of someone else's design and establishing the moral and ethical parameters of your own world. I believe that this difference is also the difference between a skilled technician and a religious leader. 'Within the context of religious education it is the difference between accepting someone else's priorities for life and recognizing the need to establish your own, and ~oing this not as a duty but as a real, personal need. Professor Muscatine's statement, translated into the context of pastoral training and religious education, would say that specialization as a self-defini-tion has replaced religious and ethical probing as a means to self-definition. And skill training for ministry has replaced learning the art of making ethical judgments as the model for education itself. The second set of opposed values, passivity versus creativity, follows from the first. The individual learning technical skills begins his learning recognizing that what he wants is the possession of another, the mastery of a technique. What is of value, the particular skill or technique, is in someone else's hands, and the student works to gain what he does not yet have. The message communicated by the learning medium values the technical master's knowl-edge, not the student's lack of that knowledge. Life-purpose clarification, on the other hand, values the student's ability to probe and explore, and assumes that, here and now, he or she possesses creative abilities. In the process of trying to make sense of life all are equal participants. While some are further along in the attempt, and the teacher, in principle, has achieved some mastery of these human arts, all have the oppor-tunity to be creatively involved. The third set of opposed values is ethical reasoning versus affective moral intuitionism. Learning to reason ethically, as opposed to an affectively directed intuition of right and wrong, let it be said, is a supremely difficult task. Deciding what to do through a rational process of assessing the proper goals and the means to those goals is a far cry from deciding, based on feelings. In effect, it means abandoning a non-effort--intuiting right and wrong, based on how the individual feels about it--for the difficult effort of establishing internally coherent and systematically logical principles of human action. 1 submit that this is an effort of prime intellectual and personal asceticism. I believe that in our education for religious life and pastoral work we are institutionalizing affective intuitionism in the place of ethical reasoning, passiv- Withstanding Sunbelt Sectarianism ity in the place of creativity, and skill mastery in the place of life-purpose exploration. I am not so naive as to suggest that the replaced values were realized goals in the past. What I am saying is that they were stated values. Further, I believe that we are moving from these stated values to the newer ones in response to the influence of the current view of the Church as sect. We are living with a view of church in which it is effectively defined, as Professor Bellah describes it, as a voluntary association of believers. The difference between the two views can both be pictured and symbolized by the differing means of entry into each. In the Church seen as the body of Christ new members are baptized into a community of believers and become members of Christ. They are members in the root meaning of the word, a physical part of an organic body. In the Church seen as sect the new members make a decision for Christ, and are members in virtue of that decision. The membership is not organic as much as voluntary. The new values we are institutionalizing in our training for ministry and religious life fit comfortably within the definition of church as sect. They are at odds with the view of church as an inclusive body, the Body of Christ. The values being replaced fit comfortably within the view of church as Body of Christ. They do not fit within the functioning of a church defined as sect. There are obvious advantages to the view of the Church as sect. It draws clear lines between those who will live by its values and those who do not. So it is equipped to judge those who belong and those who do not. And in an age of clashing values, it helps to know who is with you and who is not. The function-ing of the Church as sect fosters clarity of values. Greys are washed out to the advantage of the stronger blacks and whites. There are also disadvantages. A church which distinguishes between the elect and the sinners will leave the sinners behind. Placing a value on the process of making that distinction will also surface a means to do so. Since the traditional theology of the church maintains that the distinction cannot be made, an extra-theological means will have to be found, like an affective in-tuitionism. And such systems, like a zealot's hunches, can prove unreasonable. The organic view of the Church, the Church seen according to the Pauline model of the Body of Christ, has many disadvantages. It is an inclusive Church, and an inclusive church is morally muddy. Combine this moral muddiness with the emphasis on moral decision making which I advocate, and which I admit is an art very difficult to master and beyond many people, and it can be a disheartening combination. It means that we will live beset by the suspicion that our moral decisions may not be definitive. But it is also quite possible that it is this very suspicion which has led religious leaders in the past to stress the importance of learning how to make ethical decisions. Technical skills can be mastered in a way that ethical decision ' making cannot. And this fact may lead some to see skill mastery as a more worthwhile goal than moral decision making. Our current education for reli-gious life and ministry seems to embody this view. But 1 would suggest that 3311 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 religious leadership can be,benefited more by an emphasis on moral decision making, an emphasis that is more at home in the Church seen as Body of Christ than in the Church seen as sect. NOTES I Jan. 22, 1982 2Dec. 3, 1982 The Coming Down ~Going up to Jerusalem . . ." I got used to-- There was such a dearness to it. A digging-in, yes-- A putting-t he-face-to-t he-wind . Going up to Jerusalem had its hardness. But, oh, the coming down . Coming down from Jerusalem The purpose is gone And even the trees forget their bareness and bloom again As if my journey had not been-- As if I did not leave my Love to the wind and the stars Under the snow--on a hillside . "Going up to Jerusalem." had its price, But, oh, the coming down (alone) Is beyond the counting . Sister Ann Maureen, 1.H.M. 11201 Academy Road Philadelphia, PA 19154 Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education: Some Tentative Theses Michael J. Buckley, S.J. Father Buckley gave this as a paper at the annual meeting of Jesuit academic vice-presidents in 1982. This year Father Buckley is Barman Scholar in Residence at the University of Santa Clara, on leave from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Introduction In the pages that follow, 1 have tried to suggest certain reflections around the general and troubled topic of the Jesuit, Catholic university. I do so because 1 suspect that a central problem for many administrators of such institutions lies within the vagueness or even chaotic understanding of this governing issue: what it is that they are administering. What do you mean by a "Jesuit university"?. Is it basically the same sort of thing that any Catholic university is--something clear enough in purpose, however imperfect in reali-zation; but at the same time something variant, in that the Jesuit university is staffed in part by a different religious coterie and marked by a particular historical tradition, so that one speaks primarily about "Jesuit presence" when one talks about these institutions? Or are we talking about something that is radically different when we talk about a Jesuit university? Are we talking about a university with a cultural orientation and a peculiar set of emphases that make it profoundly different from other Catholic universities, granted any number of similarities among them all--differences and similarities which the administrator should be at pains to foster? Or is there something in between? When one assumes administration of such an institution, it is not unreas-onable for such questions to be asked. Especially in a university, there is a unique value in knowing what you are doing! 339 ~141~ [ Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 Appropriate as such a set of questions is, however, it presupposes too much. It presupposes that the content of "Catholic university" is itself already determined--a "cluster concept," at least, which all can recognize, agree upon, and discuss within. I think, though, that this presupposition is false. I think that "Catholic university" is as much of an ambiguity as "Jesuit university," and that many of the problems in understanding the latter stem from an incoherence in this more fundamental premise. Since that is my conviction, 1 have structured the theses of this article accordingly. 1 have first set down a series of statements which I think are true about Catholic universities in general, and then I have stated how I think these either have been or could be realized in the Jesuit university. The normal difficulties of such a task of description or definition are increased enormously for American Jesuits by a second fact, one which also touches the presuppositions for a series of questions on the nature of Jesuit higher education: American Jesuits are almost universally unaware of, or indifferent to some central foundational documents in their tradition. A strik-ing example of this was provided by a remark of Father George Ganss~ on the initial options posed byProject One:2 The second feature of Project One (Volume 4) which strikes this writer is the virtually total lack of references to or use of Part IV of Ignatius' Constitutions, the locus where he most succinctly, clearly and authoritatively enshrined his educational theory or rationale. That theory is his own application of the dynamic and apostolic world view towards which God led him . In Part IV of the Constitutions, he applied it to the formation of Christian persons in the secondary schools and universities which he founded and administered.3 In a subsequent discussion with Father Ganss, a prominent Jesuit educator remarked that the Fourth Part of the Constitutions was not only absent from the written reports of Project One, but from almost all of its discussions as well. It would be instructive, perhaps, to discover how many Jesuits have some knowledge of the characteristic elements which Ignatius placed in the Fourth Part of the Constitutions, as distinct from those which subsequent Jesuit educators specified in the Ratio studiorum.4 If Jesuits do not know the unique genius of their own origin in education, they cannot define a present stand for themselves in education by "dialoguing with their tradition." They are left to follow in their adaptations: (a) usages within their own memories and (b) the patterns and directions they find in American secular education. Perhaps the reason for the repeated failures of commissions, conferences and programs for Jesuit higher education is that these have represented individual or collective initiatives at particular periods, but initiatives without continuity with the organic development of the Society. Isolated from this continually evolving tradition, these initiatives lived briefly and died. Whatever be the accuracy of this reading of our present awareness of our Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education / :341 historical meaning, 1 have tried to formulate the theses of this article with one such central foundational document in mind--the most important document, in my opinion: the Fourth Part of the Jesuit Constitutions. 1 do so, not because 1 think that American Jesuits of the twentieth century can or should copy or repeat these individual provisions, but because these spell out in the concrete Ignatius' view of higher education. Perhaps by looking at what might seem, at first blush, quaint or antiquated, the contemporary Society could sketch more perceptively an outline of what it is about today and enrich its self-understanding by drawing from its tradition some of its unrealized possibilities. The difficulty of any de~nitional inquiry is that its language must be prescriptive as well as descriptive, i.e. it must say something about what this thing is to become as well as describe what it de facto is. Consequently, any discussion of the idea of a university will always suffer from the accusation of irreality. But the value of such prescriptive discourse is that it can present something of a vision of what the institution might become and a goal towards which human beings might marshall their efforts. Finally, these theses are insistently entitled tentative. They are my first attempt to do something along these lines, and I am anxious to obtain modifi-cations, corrections, and suggestions of alternatives. The value of the Renais-sance "thesis method" was that positions were laid down which reflected a serious judgment and were stated with a precision and in a common language which made discussion and disagreement possible. The liability of the thesis method was that it tended towards defensiveness, polemics, and inflexibility. Let me attempt to allow for these deficiencies by positing these theses as "exploratory," as being a number of statements that I think are true and which are stated as directly as possible in order to invite the reflections of the reader. Hence, to speak again from the customs of an earlier time: "salvo meliore iudicio . " 1. The Nature of a Catholic University Thesis 1: The problem of the Catholic university is falsely stated if it is framed as if this university and the Church were two distinct, though inter-connected institutions. Counterposition: Father Timothy Healy, S.J., in "Belief and Teaching," Georgetown Magazine (January-February, 1982), p. 3: How does the Church live within a university? How do the two institutions interact on common ground?. The Church also lives here [in a Catholic university] in two distinct ways: first, it leads its own life on our grounds; secondly, the Church joins in, shares and influences the life and the work of the university itself. Comment: Such an understanding does not do justice either to the historical nature of the Catholic university or to its intrinsic uniqueness. Father Healy's "two distinct ways" could describe the presence of the Church within any major secular society, such as the City of New York. Catholic universities, in 342 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 contrast, are institutions founded by the Church, supported by the Church, and oriented to a unique service of the Church. Such a university is "Catholic" in a way that no city or state could be. Thesis 2: The Catholic university cannot be defined simply as a university where there is a strong Catholic presence. Counterposition: Father Ladislas M. Orsy, S.J., "A Catholic Presence," Amer-ica, (5 April 1969), p. 397: A human institution is not transformed into a supernatural one; it simply offers an opportunity to persons with religious belief to share the life and the work of a university community--in freedom and sympathy that supports them . The quality and intensity of their presence will make its mark on the university . To have a Catholic university, then, means to have a Catholic presence at the university. Comment: The same cricitism could be offered of this understanding as of the first, with the added remark that it is actually a description of a secular university with an active and influential Newman or Catholic Faculty Club. Both this and the previous descriptions attempt to determine the Catholic university as being a university in which the Church is one important element. Thesis 3: The Catholic university cannot be described as Catholic simply through the activities of campus ministry, the presence of religious and Catholic lay faculty, and a requirement in religious studies. Counterposition: "Goals and Guidelines of the University of Santa Clara," January, .1979: If we are to honor our heritage, we must assure that Santa Clam remains a Catholic and Jesuit university in more than name only. We do this now in many ways: the activities of the Campus Ministry Office: the involvement of Jesuits and campus lay people in all areas of campus life: the presence of spiritual counselors in the dormitories; the com-mitment of men and women in the Christian Life Community to service of God and mankind; the exposure of all undergraduate students to courses in the Department of . Religious Studies; and the role of the Mission Church as both the symbol of Santa Clam's heritage and a dynamic focus of Christian activity. Comment: In this understanding, the purpose in the Church which the Univer-sity of Santa Clara is to serve is not articulated. Most of the presence of the Church is assigned to campus ministry and segregated off from the formally academic integration of the university and its more general intellectual life. The university exists for mental culture, but, aside from religious studies, Catholic reflection and theology are allotted no pervasive place within the development of such a culture. Thesis 4: The Catholic university is one form of the Church, one of the communities which are integral to the universal Church, as much a Catholic community as is the parish, the monastery, the family, a secular institute, a communidad de base, and a diocese. These differ radically among themselves, each having its own members, constitu-tion, government, origins and purpose. Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education / 3113 Comment: "Such an ecclesial origin of the university cannot have been fortui-tous. Rather it seems to express something more profound. But why does the Church need the university?. The reason for this need should be sought in the very mission of the Church. In fact, the faith which the Church announces is a tides quaerens intellectum: a faith that demands to penetrate human intelligence, to be thought out by the intellect of the human person. Not by placing it alongside what intelligence can know by its own natural light, but by permeating from within this same knowledge" (Pope John Paul II, "The Church Needs the University," March 8, 1982, L'Osservatore Romano, Eng-lish edition [3 May, 1982], p. 6). In the same address, the pope refers to these institutions as a necessity for the Church. Thesis 5: The Catholic university is that Catholic community in which the Church "strives to relate all human culture to the gospel of salva-tion" (Gravissimum Educationis, no. 8). This relationship is con-cretely to be realized both in the development of its students and in the advancement of this integral knowledge by its faculty. Another way of making this claim: "Secondly, the university is Catholic in its deliberate determination to render the Church this unique service: to be a forum where in utter academic freedom the variant lines of Catholic tradition and thought can intersect with the most complex challenges, contradictions and reinforcements of contemporary thought, moving towards a unity of world and Word, that all things be assimilated into the Christ. No other institution within human culture can render this critically important contribu-tion to the Christian community (as a whole), and without it the commitments of faith disintegrate into sectarian polemics whose only strength lies in their isolation from contradicting contact" (Michael J. Buckley, S.J., "The Catholic University as Pluralistic Forum," Thought 46:181 [June, 1971], p. 208). Comment: The Catholic university, then, essentially includes within itself the presence and the unique contribution of non-Catholics as well as the academic freedom which makes open discussion possible. Without the presence of vari-ant tradition it would be impossible that the Church could sponsor this rela-tion of the Gospel with "all human culture." Both Catholic and non-Catholic faculty have an appropriate contribution to. make to the advancement of the life of the Catholic university, and what is asked from faculty and students is not a particular credal affiliation, but that they be willing to enter into the conversations about those questions which constitute the formal academic character of the Catholic university (theses I 1 and 12 below). This integration of the Gospel with .culture demands especially the presence and contribution of non-Catholic Christians whose perspectives p~sh the radical questions about what Christianity really is, and what it really means, in the contemporary world. This means that the Catholic university is not the Church nor a microcosm of the Church nor even a community composed only of believers. Such a 3l~l~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 university is, however, rather one modality or form which the Church in-ternally develops in order to reach its full stature, in order to become what it must be. It is an assimilative sub-community of the Church, i.e. one that assimilates into the reflection consequently upon the Gospel the vast pluralism of persons and persuasions representative of"all human culture,"a community whose institutional determination is to render to the Church universal this unique service. The autonomy of the Catholic university from controls that would be properly exercised over a diocese or a parish is essential. This academic freedom from external controls is essential not only for its authen-ticity as a university, but for that comprehensive, free discourse which alone can offer the Church serious, disinterested, and uninhibited inquiry. Thesis 6: Hence, the Catholic university as a unique Catholic community is, like any Christian communit.v, essentially sacramental, i.e. that community which, with historical continuity and tangible percepti-bility, makes present for all human beings now the realit.v of Christ drawing all human culture to himself. Another way of making this claim: It is in and through the Catholic university that the mission of Christ to draw all human culture to himself is given historical continuity and visibility in the twentieth century. Comment: The Catholic university is not a university in which the Church has a strong presence. The Catholic university is itself, and as a whole, a presence of the Church. Thesis 7: The manner in which this understanding of the university is mani-fested in the Jesuit Constitutions is by (1) stipulating that the entire college[university is a residence of the Society, i.e., the entire college/university is a Christian, religious community (Formula of the Institute (5), (8)," Const. 289)," (2) orienting both the schools of humane letters and of natural science to their integration with theology (446-452); (3) insisting upon the Christian service for which these studies are undertaken, often concretized as .future teaching, and generalized as "the glory of God and the good of souls" (Const. 440; 289-290; 351; 446; 622). Comment: This orientation towards service received striking expression by Ignatius on December I, 1551: From among those who are now merely students, some in time will depart to play diverse roles--one to preach and carry on the care of souls, another to government of the land and the administration of justice, and others to other occupations. Finally. since young boys become grown men. their good education in life and doctrine will be beneficial to many others, with the results expanding more widely every day (Monu-menta Historica Societatis lesu. Epp. Ign. IV. p. 9). II. The Administration of a Catholic University Thesis 8: The academic leadership or administration within a Catholic uni- Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education / 345 versity is essentially a religious ministry. By "religious ministry" is meant something quite specific, namely that it is the. responsibility of the administration that the sacramental finality of the Catholic university be realized: the integration of human culture and the Gospel. This ministry is intellectual leadership, but that does not make it less religious. It bears directly upon the intellectual service of God, a pervasive ministerium verbi (Ministry of the Word), in which the Word is translated into varying cultures, in which a more accurate understanding is gained by its encounter with and advancement of these cultures and in which a new synthe-sis is obtained between faith and all forms of knowledge. This ministerium verbi is the first ministry which the Formula of the Institute lists in its enumer-ation of Jesuit apostolic commitments. The universities have a unique function in this ministry: to advance and to synthesize the Gospel and all forms of human culture. Comment: Thus the president, the academic vice-president, the deans, the provost--whoever de facto preside over the life of the university have a pro-foundly synthetic religious leadership as their primary task. Their leadership is not "religious" as opposed to "academic" or intellectual"---that is precisely the dichotomy that the university is to deny. But it must be stated that if the leader of any Christian community--be it a Catholic university or parish or family or monastery or hospital--is not persuaded of the appropriately religious charac-ter of his or her leadership, then the community drifts into secularization. Thesis 9: The manner in which this understanding of university[college administration is manifested in the Jesuit Constitutions is by the insistence upon the personal religious character of its rector (423) and upon the religious quality of his leadership, with learning and Christian life placed as a single finality (424, 490). Comment: There are no grounds for asserting that separate incorporation removes the essentially religious nature of Jesuit university leadership. It is not the case that the division of functions between rector and president meant that one was religious and the other secular: The rector of the community is the religious leader of the Jesuit commu-nity, and his function is to govern it in such a way that it is Jesuit in its life and supports this apostolate to which it is committed. The president of the Jesuit university is the religious leader of the univer-sity, and his function is to administer it in such a way that its life promotes that intellectual and moral integration of all human culture with the Gospel which is its purpose. See Pedro Arrupe, S.J., "The Image of the Jesuit University President," (August 8, 1975) Documentation 27/2. III. The Formal, Academic Catholic Character of the Catholic University Thesis 10: The formal character of any" university is not constituted by the 346 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 elimination or by the presence ~f any particular discipline. Comment: A university, to be a university, should include whatever passes as serious and disciplined knowledge. The exclusign of theology from a particular university does not mean in itself that it has excluded religious commitment; per se it means that it has fallen that short of being a university. On the other hand, the presence of Catholic theology on a university campus does not necessarily indicate that the university is Catholic; it indicates that it is just that much more a university. Thesis 11: The formal, academic character of any university is constituted by the order of the questions which are entertained and by the kind of knowledge which is considered most worth having. Comment: One would not expect restrictions upon discourse and study at the University of California at Davis, or at MIT, or at the University of Santa Clara. But the priorities in the issues to be investigated or the knowledge considered either fundamental or most important will be different in these different institutions. This trait will constitute the difference among them. " Thesis 12: The Catholic academic character of a university will be constituted by the quality and the influence of its theology, i.e. by the depth, rigor, and thoroughness with which theological inquiry is con-ducted and by the integrating influence of theology upon all of the other disciplines taught in the university. A Catholic university is one in which Catholic theology acts as an architectonic wisdom, one which draws the arts and the sciences and the engagements of the professional schools into an ongoing conversation about pre-suppositions, consequences, and common themes. Thesis 13." The Constitutions exhibit this understanding of the Catholic aca-demic character of the university primarily in the principal empha-sis which they give to theology (446). Literature, natural sciences and philosophy are oriented to this theological wisdom: their study prepares the students for the serious engagement in theology; theology unifies knowledge into a single understanding of the world, into a wisdom; the orientation of all learning tends to the same end ultimately as theology (447-451). Comment: The place of theology given by the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus is really quite different from that allotted to it by, say, Newman's Idea of a University. In Newman, theology would be one element among others in a circle of knowledge which forms the "philosophical habit of mind." In Igna-tius, theology is the principal and governing discipline in which the humane letters and sciences reach their natural completion (446, 450). Thesis 14: The formal academic curriculum of a Catholic university must be sustained by the surrounding presence of a more general Catholic culture that makes the daily life of the university itself. Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education / 347 Comment: Examples of this "more general Catholic culture" would be found in the quality and seriousness of its worship, the character of its collective morality and social concerns, the pastoral care of one member for another, the seminars and general lectures which it fosters, the atmosphere of intellectual and religious interests, and so forth (see Const. 481-489). IV. Agents of Integration of Faith with Culture Thesis 15: Granted this integrating function as the primary work of the administration, the principal administrator must be aided in his responsibility by subordinate officials whose ministry it is to see that this integration permeates the intellectual life (the Academic Vice-President), the social life (Vice-President for Student Affairs), and the religious life of the university (the University Chaplain). Thesis 16: Such an integral view of the Catholic university can never be realized if "campus ministry" is only or principally composed of those who are not part of the academic community and who confine themselves to the ob.viously liturgical and pastoral en-gagements of the university, i.e. if campus ministry confines itself to a "sacristy" or even to an "activist "function. Thesis 17: "Campus ministry" should be that interdepartmental committee whose function it is to assist the president in some aspects of his religious ministry to the Catholic university, i.e. the integration of faith with culture/life. Such a staff or committee is necessary because too many of the possibilities for such an integration can-not be realized in the present departmental divisions: members of the various departments should be invited to become members of this interdepartmental staff, composed of the University Chaplain and members of the university faculty, and full-time staff members. These are some implications and possibilities envisaged by this thesis: 1. The head of "campus ministry" should be the University Chaplain of the school, with the rank of vice-president to assist the president in his general religious ministry of the integration of faith and culture. 2. The majority of the members of the "campus ministry" committee or staff would also be members of other departments and schools. 3. Areas of religious integration which are open to such a "campus ministry" would be for example: a. Sponsorship of a religious/academic bookstore which would be a cen-ter of regular discussions, lectures, and seminars on the integration of faith and culture. b. Introduction into the campus of the great range of prophetic and intel-lectual movements within the Church, such as the Catholic Workers, Charis-matics, liturgical groups, Pax Christi, Rural Life Conference, Christian Family Life, Jesuit Volunteers--for the possibilities both of critique and of assimila- 341~ Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 tion into the life of the university. c. Sponsorship of prolonged engagements in Christian service which would be planned, supervised and reflected upon for their Christian elements and which would be of such an academic quality that the theology department could recognize them as legitimate courses. d. Through the presence of campus ministry on various academic commit-tees, planning groups, and other representative bodies, a continual source of the questions about the integration between these plans or programs and the purpose of the university. e. Through their presence within placement offices, career planning and counseling centers, a challenge to the university community, that the teachers would understand their lives and the students plan their futures as vocations rather than simply careers,.i.e, as a way of life and service within the world which is a response to the call of God in their lives, rather than a positive evaluation of obvious and secularly justifiable options. f. Organization of a rich and full liturgical life, which embodies such possibilities as the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church, a eucharistic liturgy which follows the variations and harmony of the liturgical year, a series of "university sermons," etc., and which so integrates the university as a whole at certain solemn occasions that it is the university, as this form of the Church, which is at prayer. Thesis 18: To act as an architectonic wisdom, Catholic theolog.v must be restored as an integral discipline, distinct both from the more gen-eral "religious studies "and from an eclectic amalgam of disparate courses in Scripture or ethics or spirituality. "Theology "is here understood as an inquiry into the natu~'e, influence and claims of God as revealed in Christ, and "religious studies "as an investiga-tion of the nature and varieties of religions or confessions which have emerged in human history. Comment: As the architectonic discipline which integrates and marks a Catholic university, theology should be in constant interchange with the other sciences and arts, with the other schools, studies, and activities of the univer-sity. Theology gains in content and in method in its encounters with other disciplines; the other disciplines are drawn beyond themselves into a general academic unity by their discussions with theology. What kind of presence or curriculum-order is necessary to obtain such a dialogue can only be deter-mined by experience, but it should be of such a character as (a) to maintain theology as a serious and systematic study and (b) to constitute it in a synthetic unity with all the other aspects of the university. Thesis 19: Thus both theology and "campus ministry" have an integrating function within the university. Everything within the university is the object of the theological faculty as it attempts to move towards a synthetic vision which is a Christian wisdom, and of "campus Jesuit, Cathofic Higher Education Thesis 21: ministry" as it attempts to introduce that vision into practice and expand it in areas not under the purview of various departments. The manifestation of the sacramental nature of the Catholic uni-versity, i.e., of the historical presence of Christ drawing all human culture to himself, is to be found in every aspect of the university: in the priorities among the questions investigated and in the knowl-edge thought essential," in the quality of the intellectual, moral and religious life on campus; in the criteria by which decisions are reached and investments made; in the kind of recruitment informa-tion, of students admitted, and of faculty hired, and so forth. The Jesuit community is that local community of Jesuits who both collectively and individually minister to this kind of university. How it does so would be the subject of another twenty theses,t NOTES ~The Reverend George E. Ganss, S.J. is the distinguished translator and editor of the English version of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. 2Project One was an attempt of the American Jesuits, initiated in 1973 and extending over the next four or five years, to identify and evaluate their goals and efforts in the apostolate of education. 3Project One, Volume #5, pp. 194-195. 4The Ratio Studiorum is the successively revised Jesuit plan of studies, an organization of curricula and of instructional methods rather than an exposition of educational theory. "What Should I Wear Today?" Thomas Ryan, C.S.P. Father Ryan is associate director of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism. He is the author of Fasting Rediscovered: A Guide to Health and Wholeness for Your Body-Spirit and Tales of Christian Unity (Paulist Press). He may be addressed at the center: 2065 Ouest, Rue Sherbrooke; Montreal H3H IG6; Canada. I got up this morning and stood before my closet and asked: "What should I wear today?" Not so long ago the question felt like a helpful freedom; more and more it is feeling like a bother, and I frequently find myself resenting the loss of time and energy as I stand there in morning grogginess trying to answer the question. Where 1 live we probably face it more than would be the case elsewhere, yet Quebec is certainly not the only place in North America where the religious uniform has been traded in for secular dress. The history here is unique, but some of its consequences are shared with the rest of the continent. Some twenty years ago in a cultural revolution in Quebec, Canada, the Church was perceived to be too friendly with a government that had permitted the English to keep the key positions of economic influence and kept the French down on the farm. Both the Church and English economic dominance were thrown off like unwanted and resented yokes by the increasingly nationalistic French majority. Education and the university became the new place of worship and the leaders of the Parti Qubbbcois, the new high priests of the society. In the period of anticlericalism that followed, the French clergy traded in their clericals for ties and turtlenecks, and the sign of contradiction was reduced to a cross on a suit-coat lapel. "The anticlericalism was so pronounced," explained one sister who lived through it, "that at any public meeting we would go to, we were condemned by our apparent association with the Church before we even opened our mouths. We priests and sisters began dressing in 350 "What Should 1 Wear Today?"/ ~151 civies just to get a fair hearing and have what we were saying evaluated on its own merit." Among the English clergy in Quebec, there are enough "ties" or enough "collars" present to leave one genuinely feeling free in either direction. In other words, there is an unpressured climate for each person to sort through the value questions involved and make a choice, knowing the "tie" will not mean "radical" nor clericals mean "conservative." When I said jokingly to a confrere this evening that 1 was going to submit an article to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS entitled "What Should 1 Wear Today?" he immediately responded, "Oh, you mean, 'Who am I going to see today?"' He was quite right, and that's part of what bothers me. When l'm going to be meeting with Orthodox clergy, I wear black. When l'm going to be meeting With Protestant clergy, ! wear a tie. When they're both going to be there, 1 find myself playing one off against the other in my mind in a kind of who's-more-important- to-me game. What I am uncomfortable with is that it's my projection of the other's reaction to me that guides the decision. Where are my own convictions in the matter? 1 was thrown back on that question because I caught myself feeling like l'd made the "wrong" (political, not moral) decision. One day I put on a suit and tie to speak at a clergy study-day in the neighboring province of Ontario. When I arrived and saw all the collars and religious habits I was reminded again of what a different world Ontario is from Quebec. "Are you a local minister?" (he meant Protestant) asked one clerically-attired person who turned out to be a permanent deacon. The irony was rich. So I asked myself on the way home, "What are your values on this question?" Some years ago I was in an identity group of seminarians as part of a training program for counselors at the Center for Religion and Psychiatry in Washington, D.C. We spent a few sessions on the question, "What does it mean for me to wear or not wear a collar?" It's certain that not all of the participants drew the same conclusions from those discussions, but the operating principle that evolved for me from our reflections was a variation of "The habit does not make the monk." Dress that identifies me as a religious person is a means. If it will be likely to help advance some pastoral situation, use it. If it is likely to get in the way (as may be the case on college campuses with university students), don't use it. During that formative period, the important thing seemed to be secure enough in my own identity that I didn't need the collar as a crutch. Satisfied that my identity as a priest and religious was anchored within, and not in what I wore without, I proceeded to live these past years with no consistent external mode of dress. Yet, the question is not settled with me. Where the above rationale breaks down is in the presumption that I can always accurately project which mode of dress will be a pastoral asset or liability. In our secularized society, there is a growing Catholic consciousness of our mission for evangelization. We are becoming more aware of the importance of each of us witnessing, according to 359 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 our occupation and way of life,to a faith-centered existence. This awareness is perhaps renewing our appreciation of sacramentals and their potential to be an occasion of reflection for the casual passerby. To the extent that a mode of dress conveys a religious meaning, it qualifies as a sacramental. On this question of sacramentals, Sacramentum Mundi notes that "the statements of the Constitution on the Liturgy point to an emphasis on their character as a sign. But they do not answer the fundamental question, whether the sacramentals are not part of a special religious world which may be outdated by. the present-day experience of existence in the world. This [question]. has particularly far-reaching consequences for the usage of the sacramentals and hence for their theology, which must concen-trate fundamentally on their apt and proper use . Religion must not be seen in purely transcendental terms or merely as a dimension in depth. It must be classified in the category of a sphere of religious manifestations . The difference between nature and grace, and between the present and the coming age, justifies the existence of an order of sacred signs which express and manifest this difference." The habit, the collar, the cross, have not lost their power to be a sign of transcendence or of contradiction, a symbol that casts a question. But I do not always have the courage or the desire to stand apart. Or sit apart, for that matter. When I'm on the bus, I've noticed people will generally not sit next to "a collar" if there's another choice. On a plane, where people don't know who they're choosing to sit next to, 1 often feel more-than-the-usual hesitancy on the part of the other to normal social discourse. Or the reverse happens and one finds oneself in a not-so-private counseling session. And on the street corner while waiting for the light, I try not to notice the out-of-the-corner-of-the- eye glances that indicate one is being coolly appraised: "Hmm! What is a young (median clergy age today: 50!), intelligent-looking (well, at least my sister says that my receding hair line makes me look more 'intellectual'), athletic (I confess: it is getting harder) person like that doing in the priesthood?" When 1 was living for a time with a family in France, the mother said to me one day, "If you catch our guests kind of staring at you sometimes, don't take it personally. It's just that for us a young priest is, well, a very curious beast." What I'm coming to recognize is that there's going to be a negative reaction on the part of some people whichever way one dresses, and a positive reaction on the part of others. Furthermore, the guideline, "What will help or hinder my pastoral effectiveness in any given situation?" seems more and more presumptuous to me. Who can ever really know what happens in the hearts and minds of people when they see a priest in his clericals? If presumptive guesses about what others want, will be pleased by, or will derive benefit from are unreliable, then what is there to guide me? My answer is: my desire to make my life an articulate sign of the gospel I am trying to live. I am closer now than 1 was five or seven years ago to seeing how religious symbolism in dress can be an effective concretization of that desire. But as long "' What ShouM I Wear Today?"/ 353 as religious garb is connected with actions or life-styles that do not clearly reflect gospel living (which will always be the case to some extent), clericals or a religious habit will never be an entirely reliable symbol of communication. Thus it is that my choice on any given day is made with a certain flexibility and tentativeness, and with a sense of its built-in limitations in either direction. I was recently in a conversation with a group of priests and one of them told a story on four of the others that illustrates the point. "When I met you at the port on the first stop of your Caribbean cruise, 1 was surprised to see you were all wearing clericals," said the recounter of the tale. "Ah yes," one of the four affirmed, "we were not pleased with the cabins we'd been given, so we were trying to influence the ship's captain." "And?" "Oh it worked quite nicely. For the rest of the trip we were given any available suite." That's why many of the priests in. Montreal have switched to ties and coats. But I wonder sometimes on the buses and subways and street corners whether anybody sees that little cross on their lapel, and I wonder if we're using all available means of witnessing to the presence of God in a society hungering for meaning and ready to respect people who stand for something. If you and I should meet, what will I be wearing? Well, I'll probably be wearing the question inside and wondering if I made the best choice that day! The Incarnation and Chariots of Fire Halbert Weidner, C.O. Father Weidner published an account of the spirituality of the Oratory in our issue of November, 1979. He continues to reside at South Carolina's Oratory, the mailing address of which is P.O. Box 11586; Rock Hill, SC 29370. The Liturgy of the Hours has been enriched with an appendix of poetry and among the most recent poets represented there are the remarkable British pair of Edwin Muir (1881-1959) and Kathleen Raine (born in 1908). Muir is a poet much admired by such different writers as T.S. Eliot and Thomas Merton. Kathleen Raine's work on William Blake remains current and widely read. Her poetry, autobiographies, and critical works have drawn much praise and attention. Both authors are religious writers in the most profound sense of the term and, as poets and pilgrims, have something to say to both believers and unbelievers. Muir is relatively unknown in this country despite a sojourn at Harvard and, with his wife Willa, being established as the first and most popular translator of Franz Kafka. Muir is not a consciously modern poet. In fact, his devotion to tradition and accessibility may put off the professional literati. Still, T.S. Eliot said of him: He was first and foremost deeply concerned with what he had to say--and by that l do not mean that his purpose was ever didactic or that he was striving to convey a "message." But under the pressure of emotional intensity, and possessed by his vision, he found, almost unconsciously, the right, the inevitable way of saying what he wanted to say.~ The best introduction to the poet is his own story, An Autobiography. He was born in the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of Scotland, and so is claimed by Scots. Muir himself says his native language was really a mixture of Incarnation and Chariots of Fire / 355 Norse, Scots, and Irish. Indeed, such words as creels (fishing baskets), bannocks (a fiat, unleavened bread), and byres (cow-sheds) are evenly woven into the narrative of his childhood. For Muir, the islands were not on the edge of the world, but were the "heart of civilization." The seasons nurtured each their own phase of an ancient culture. The Winter gathered us into one room as it gathered the cattle into the stable and the byre; the sky came close; the lamps were lit at three or four in the afternoon, and then the great evening lay before us like a world: an evening filled with talk, stories, games, music and lamplight? This winter time gave Muir his first introduction to poetry. The early ballads sung in the home came from an oral tradition about James V and Sir James the Rose. These songs were sung with full voice and personal confidence. Other ballads, late in the tradition, were "chanted in a literary way, in honor of the print in which they had originally come, every syllable of the English text carefully pronounced, as if it were an exercise."3 Spring carried the sacred rituals of breeding and killing--both aspects of farm life his mother tried to prevent him from seeing. He made sure, of course, that he saw both--though the activities of the bull and cow were not understood and the excitement was all in the activities of the men directing the affair. He did not, in the slaughtering, pity the animals, but somehow touched the terror and the need which were inextricably bound up in the process. "There was a necessity in the copulation and the killing which took away the sin, or at least, by the ritual act, transformed it into a sad, sanctioned duty.TM The spring, a series of vivid happenings, gave way to the summer, its opposite: a "motionless blue" in which "nothing happened." This nothingness demanded acceptance as the pivot marking the time of growth. This in turn gave way to the hard work of autumn and the feasts that defined the line between harvest and the winter. And so it went with each winter being favorite season of the farmer's child because it was the family time for play and song and story. The family religion was a fundamentalist Calvinism which combined early baptism with the stern demands for a later conversion and personal claim to being born-again. Muir's conversion, under severe pressure from his family, was sincere, but barely a prelude to his lapse from Christianity. His disbelief was, moreover, also the result of pressure. This time the strain came from the deaths of his parents and of two of his brothers when the family moved, in hopes of better employment, to the industrialized city of Glasgow. It was as if the Muir family in a few short years had been required to pay the price of the industrial revolution's whole century of devastation. "All that time," Muir remembered, "seemed to give no return, nothing but loss; it was like a heap of dismal rubbish in the middle of which, without rhyme or reason, were scattered four deaths.''~ The great city of free enterprise could not replace the agricultural community that once bridged birth and death with faith and ritual. As a young man forced out early on his own, Muir moved just south of 356 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 Glasgow to earn his living in what might have been the Checkpoint Charlie of hell: a bone factory. "The bones," he tells us, "decorated with festoons of slowly writhing, fat yellow maggots, lay in the adjoining railway siding and were shunted into the factory whenever the furnaces were ready for them." There was only one major problem: "There were sharp complaints from Glasgow whenever the trucks lay too long in the siding, for the sea gulls could gobble up half a hundredweight of maggots in no time, and as the bones had to be paid for by their original weight, and the maggots were part of it, this meant a serious loss to the firm."~ Thus necessity introduced the factory's most important ritual: a shotgun blast into the air over the trucks each half hour. It was in this atmosphere that Muir began a ferocious personal quest which included reading philosophy seriously. This led to Nietzsche and to a kind of socialism. He abandoned the tough Christianity of his family for a soft belief in "process." "Be hard' was one of Nietzsche's exhortations," Muir tells us, "but I was not hard enough to give up Nietzsche." Muir's hunger for ideas, as well as for communicating them, attracted the attention of A.R. Orage, editor of the New Age and a genius for gathering talented, left-wing, and sometime elitist writers. Muir had a high opinion of Orage, but a low one of his own work for him. Muir's column, "We Moderns," revealed, said Muir, that "whenever I hit upon a paradox which lay conveniently near the surface I took it for the final truth."7 Still, Muir was the rarest of twentieth-century beings: a non-university educated revolutionary. A marriage, "the most fortunate event of my life," led to a move into London for economic reasons. Eventually journalism and translation work allowed them the adventure of moving to Prague. This city became for them what Paris was for American expatriates: a city riding the crest of a billowing tradition and arriving at the edge of revolutionary changes. Now in his mid-thirties, Muir began writing poetry. "I had no training; 1 was too old to submit myself to contemporary influences; and I had acquired in Scotland a deference towards ideas which made my entrance into poetry difficult. Though my imagination had begun to work I had no technique by which I could give expression to it." He was a poet in the middle of life caught between a change in poetic consciousness. "There were the rhythms of English poetry on the one hand, the images in my mind on the other. All I could do at the start was to force the one, creaking and complaining, into the mould of the other."s In Muir's case, the distance provided by his experience of Prague as the far country, and some early psychoanalysis and dream work, led to a recovery of the childhood geography and the roots engendered there. If poetry incarnates meaning, as Muir believed, then this geography literally provided the ground for Muir's poems. He acknowledges this in his life's last poem: I have been taught by dreams and fantasies Learned from the friendly and the darker phantoms And got great knowledge and courtesy from the dead Incarnation and Chariots of Fire / 357 Kinsmen and kinswomen, ancestors and friends But from two mainly Who gave me birth? This healing recovery of his roots and reconcilation with much of his unconscious gave birth to his poetry at the very time that Europeans were destroying their past: "They were lost and on the road to greater loss, and ready to accept any creed which would pull their lives together and give them the enormous relief of finding, even under compulsion, a direction for their existence, whether it had a spiritual meaning or not.''~° Muir saw the political left and right taking over the violent spirit of his native country's religious past: they were like the old Scottish covenanters who went into battle with banners reading "Christ and No Quarter." During the time of no quarter, Muir returned to Britain and began his eight-year association with the British Council, an organization promoting British culture. Prior to the war, Muir's office in Edinburgh set up houses for refugees and introduced them to British life. During this time Muir wrote more poetry in the midst of administration and the central issues of the day than he had in previous and more solitary jobs. British Council work eventually led him to Rome and his first major encounter with cultural Catholicism. It was here that he had his encounter with the Incarnation: During the time when I was a boy I attended the United Presbyterian Church in Orkney. I was aware of religion chiefly as the sacred Word. but nothing told me that Christ was born in the flesh and had lived on earth. [But in Rome] that image was to be seen everywhere, not only in churches, but on the walls of houses, at cross-roads in the suburbs, in wayside shrines in the parks, and in private rooms. I remember stopping for a long time one day to look at a little plaque on the wall of a house in the Via degli Artisti, representing the Annunciation. An angel and a young girl, their bodies inclined towards each other, their knees bent as if overcome by love, "tutto tremante," gazed upon each other like Dante's pair; and that representation of a human love so intense that it could not reach farther seemed the perfect earthly symbol of the love that passes understanding.~ Before Rome, a friend had pointed out to Muir that he was Christian in his images and his metaphysics. It had not occurred to him, but he accepted it. What the encounter in Rome did for Muir was to support him in his conclusion that mystery was at the source of life, that it lived and touched us, incarnate in what were not "mere" symbols, but the final reality. Symbols, which Yeats said united the "sleeping with the waking mind," also unite us to each other and to the generating reality that cares for all, past and present. Incarnation was a delight and good news to Muir, for whom nothing airy and abstract could hold the truth: "A religion that dared to show forth such a mystery for everyone to see would have shocked the congregations of the north, would have seemed a sort of blasphemy, perhaps even an indecency. But here it was publicly shown, as Christ showed himself on the earth."12 In the conclusion to his autobiography, Muir anticipated the theologians of our time in their interest in the theology of story: ~1511 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 As I look back on the part of the mystery which is my own life, my own fable, what 1 am most aware of is that we receive it from the past, on which we draw with every breath, but also--and this is a point of faith--from the Source of the mystery itself, by the means which religious people call grace.~3 When we read of this mystery in Muir's poems, we are struck by the plain language. But the poems demand rereading before the light that comes from the depths of human experience begins to dawn. One poem in the Liturgy of the Hours is called "One Foot in Eden" and may be taken as an example. It is composed of twenty-nine short lines of ordinary words~ but in it Muir has communicated a highly developed reflection on the necessity of choosing experience over innocence and then given depth to the Easter cry of O Felix Culpa.t Muir's Eden is both a place of innocence which must be given up and an impossible Utopia which must not be succumbed to. The world outside Eden awaits a judgment for its failings, but also attention to its special value: Blossoms of grief and charity Bloom in these darkened fields alone. What has Eden ever to say Of hope and faith and pity and love. Strange blessings never in Paradise Fall from these beclouded skies.~4 The other poem in the Hours collection is "The Killing." In it there is a remarkably graphic description of death that reaches back to Muir's childhood memories of farmyard slaughters. Muir suggests in the poem that an incarnate God is not what people want, and they will kill in their disappointment. The Incarnation, rather than being an easy myth that a longing humanity desperately creates, is really an affront and a capital crime. The poem ends with the question of an agnostic, a stranger, who wonders if, in the very act of dying, an incarnate God crossed his path. The wonder is a real enough grasp of the mystery and a crack for grace to move through. Muir did not come to a church and an orthodox form of Christian faith. But his insistence that meaning can only reach its fullness in the real world of flesh and blood, and his embrace of the world in beautiful language can certainly help us ordinary Christians to remain orthodox. Muir's acceptance of limits and his belief in their necessity so that there can be both definition and a grace that can take hold is a challenge to any spirituality that wishes to escape the human condition. This poet from the North Sea islands could, then, help us to purify and enrich the language of our prayer and our pulpits and lead us to embrace, and be embraced by the Word made flesh. Kathleen Raine If Muir i~ the poet of the Incarnation, Kathleen Raine writes of the Transfiguration. She is a pilgrim like Muir and now a stranger to orthodox Christianity though she had joined the Catholic Church for some years. She presents an interesting problem. Her experiences have led her to believe more rather than less, and so she moved away from Catholicism: Incarnation and Chariots of Fire / 359 To me it seemed absurd to find one aspect of a total symbolic event less acceptable than other parts: mythical events (so I thought) are not to be verified (did they or did they not take place) but rather to be understood, as is poetry. If anything, I still continued to find the Christian myth, as comparett with the pagan richness of symbol, too meagre, and welcomed any addition.~5 She means here, of course, no denigration of the Christian faith by calling it poetry and myth. For her, the truths of existence cannot be expressed any other way. This is a position that she fought to get to and promote all her life. To get to it, she had to overcome the assaults of a narrow Christian upbringing and an even narrower philosophy at Cambridge University where she studied science. Writing of the Christian poet Vernon Watkins, who came to Cambridge at about the same time, Raine says: "Years later Vernon Watkins wrote a ballad on Abram and Sodom; but at the time acted like Lot and quickly left a town past praying for. He was not deceived by the prestige of ignorance in high places."~6 The scientific materialism prevailing in the university spilled over into a Marxist politics in one direction and into an analytically dry and thin literary criticism in the other direction. While at Cambridge, Raine began to write poetry that was in a romantic and mystic vein, twin heresies, which Cambridge literary leaders tried to tear out. She did have two great privileges in her time in the scientific Sodom. She was in the audience when Virginia Woolf came to read her manifesto for feminists, A Room of One's Own, and, because he was unpopular and unread there, she discovered T.S. Eliot on her own. Kathleen Raine's poetry is obviously based on her experience of the sacred, and in her three autobiographies, she is plain about some of these ecstatic and enlightening encounters with nature. What is reassuring to Christians is that her hints of the transcendent are not limited to impersonal experiences, but are also to be found in encounters with other people. What is constant in both is her belief that poetry and imaginative truth are intimately related in both experiences of nature and persons. Her devotion to the imagination as a voice and a revelation echoes a favorite quotation from William Blake, whose works Raine has really helped to make popular in our own century. Blake tells us: If the Spectator could enter in these Images in his imagination, approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought . . . or could make a Friend and Companion of these Images of wonder, which always intreat him to leave mortal things (as he must know), then would he meet the Lord in the Air, then he would be happy.~6 Raine quotes Bede Griffiths, now a monk in a Christian ashram in India, to the effect that "the function of art is. to evoke the divine presence."17 She not only quotes the insight, she believes and preaches it fervently in her criticisms of much modern literature. Materialism and naturalism, she says, betray the material and the natural. She believes that the peasant had it right when he answered the question, "How can bread be God?" by replying, "What else would it be?" Of course, the difficult side to Raine is the superfluity of belief. She 360 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 remembers with joy the seriously considered polytheism of her old friend and Nobel prize winner, Elias Canetti. He told her, "If I believed in one God, I should be obliged to hate him." He would, she says, "rather watch supernatura supernaturans than relegate the supreme gods of all the ages from gold or stone to iron and the machine, to the ethnological section of any museum, or the files of case-histories."~8 Perhaps Cardinal Newman's dictum that the superstitious are infinitely closer to the truth than the rationalists might help us understand Raine's extremism. Extreme or not, in the poem "Word Made Flesh" is captured some of Raine's ability to convey an experience that uses Christian symbols well, even if they spill outside of Christianity. "Word" is described over and over in eight short stanzas: "Word whose breath is the world-circling atmosphere. Word traced in water of lakes. Word inscribed on stone. Grammar of five-fold rose and six-fold lily, Spiral of leaves on a bough, helix of shells. Instinctive wisdom of fish.and lion and ram. Flash of fin, beat of wing, heartbeat, beat of the dance." And finally: Statement of mystery, how shall we name A spirit clothed in world, a world made man?~9 The descriptions are all authentic application of the word or "logos," and challenge the Christian to find a more beautiful poetic expression of the Cosmic Christ of I Corinthians 15:28. Another test of authenticity is Raine's real ability to conjure the evocative power of language, not in the mechanical control of formula or the mystification of gibberish, but in the power which comes from the choice of images that resonate with the inner nature of things around us, including all and excluding nothing. One of the poems in the Liturgy of Hours comes from the 1952 collection called The Year One. The book title comes from a friend who said the historical applied only to humans and their toil because for nature "it is always the year one." The title of the poem is Northumbrian Sequence IV. Northumbria is a border county of wild weather, moors merging into seascapes and the site of Hadrian's wall built by the Roman emperor to keep out the barbaric Scots. The poem offered as possible food for prayer begins: Let in the wind Let in the rain Let in the moors tonight. The storm beats on my window-pane, Night stands at my bed-foot, Let in the fear, Let in the pain, Let in the trees that toss and groan, Let in the north tonight. The evocation continues to the heart of the matter: Let in the nameless formless power That beats upon my door. Incarnation and Chariots of Fire / 361 Let in the ice, let in the snow, The banshee howling on the moor, The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside, Let in the dead tonight. The poem continues to link individual aspects of nature with even more powerful figures symbolic of various dark sides of humanness. Then there is a question and a short response: Oh how can virgin fingers weave A covering for the void, How can my fearful heart conceive Gigantic solitude? How can a house so small contain A company so great? Let in the dark, Let in the dead, Let in your love tonight. The answer must be a gentleness and pity that understands the immensity of the forces at hand and does not shrink from them: Gentle must my fingers be And pitiful my heart Since 1 must bind in human form A living power so great, A living impulse great and wild That cries about my house With all the violence of desire Desiring this my peace. Whether an interior demand of self or of others, here is a promise of a presence that cannot be articulated or tamed, but is full of promise. The poem concludes with this stanza: Let in the wound, Let in the pain, Let in your child tonight. This conclusion is at once crushing and comforting: the alien forces so powerful, so destructive, so all-inclusive are nevertheless one child to us in need of father-mother. These forces, these other presences are not us, and yet are as close to us as possible, and so we need to claim them. The spell Raine invokes brings them home as one child. As in Muir, the acceptance of all promises pain. Raine is, in fact, afraid of anything that would take away the pain: "Buddhism;" in her view, ~"offers'release from suffering;~C- hristianity the Cross, heavy with all the anguish of the world, to be lived arid known as the very heart of a Mystery. I wished to understand that mystery, not to be freed from it."~0 In the other poem to be found in the Hours, we read: Sorrow is true for everyone--a word That illiterate men may read By divining in the heart God's human name, and natural shroud. 369 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 In that last image, perhaps we have the echo of the hard-won wisdom of another woman of sorrow, Cornelia Connelly, who saw in "accepted suffering" that "one simple remembrance of his presence that unwraps all the windings of the heart and makes us true as he is true." Kathleen Raine's poetry is grounded in earthliness and suffering, but she also sees more burning bushes than we do, and she seems to be constantly taking off her shoes in awareness of the sacred and the spiritual. She is a reminder to those with other vocations about the nearness of the transcendent and how the Word evokes its presence in a terrible beauty. NOTES ~T.S. Eliot, Preface to Selected Poems by Edwin Muir, London, 1965, p. 10. 2Edwin Muir, An Autobiographov, London, 1980, pp. 30-31. 3Ibid., p. 30. 4Ibid., p. 36. ~lbid., p. 104. 61bid., p. 130. 7Ibid., p. 151. Slbid., p. 205. 9Edwin Muir, Selected Poems, p. 96. ~°An Autobiography, p. 229. ~lbid., pp. 277-278. ~21bid., p. 278. ~31bid., p. 281. ~4Selected Poems, p. 80. ~SKathleen Raine, The Land Unknown, New York: 1975, p. 183. ~6Kathleen Raine, Defending Ancient Springs, London: 1967, p. 55. tTQuoted in Kathleen Raine, The Lion's Mouth, London: 1977, p. 25. ~81bid., p. 49. ~gKathleen Raine, Collected Poems: 1935-1980, London: 198 I, p. 20. ~°The Land Unknown, p. 188. Currents in Liturgy Notes on Liturgy Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Father Diederich has been professor of liturgy at St. Louis University School of Divinity and at Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He is presently an associate pastor at St. Francis Xavier Church; 3628 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. I want to offer a service in the area of liturgy to the readers of the REVIEW by furnishing them with a survey of current literature not easily accessible to them. I intend to focus on issues which are likely to be of greatest interest, namely, those dealing with the relation of present day liturgical practice to the forming and nourishing of Christian piety and spirituality. In the present survey in addition to calling attention to the themes of the national and international liturgical meetings of 1983 about which I have information at this writing, I have focused on articles and books dealing with concerns which have arisen around what I might call our post-conciliar, popular eucharistic practice and interior spirit. Unless I have overlooked some significant articles, I found in my reading that almost all the articles on the Eucharist were something of a critique of present popular eucharistic practice and theory, sometimes imply-ing, sometimes stating explicitly that it is somewhat unbalanced. By way of introduction to the survey of the articles on the Eucharist, I have summarized current evaluations of the overall liturgical reforms and their effect. I have also included a very brief, perhaps overly simplified sketch of the eucharistic piety and practice of the last one hundred years. National and International Liturgical Meetings of 1983 December 4, 1983, will mark the twentieth anniversary of the Constitution 363 364 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1983 on the Sacred Liturgy. This has set the spirit for some of our national liturgical meetings. From April 19-22, 1983, the Sixth Annual Pastoral Musicians' National Convention took place in St. Louis, Missouri. The title given to the convention was, "Remembering Into the Future." It was intended to help ". musicians and clergy of the United States and Canada to step back and look at the past twenty years--the changes, controversies, and developments of the American musical scene" (quoted from the program). A special feature of the program was a survey of the history of American liturgical music for the last twenty years, with presentations in five different sessions by a liturgist and a musician. The Notre Dame Liturgical Conferences are well-known for their uniform high quality presentations. The Twelfth Annual Conference, June 13-16, 1983, has as its theme, "Renewal! Perspectives on Twenty Years of Liturgical Change." Boston College is sponsoring a National Liturgical Consultation, June 19-22, 1983, with participation by invitation only. "The purpose of our meeting, expressly called a "Consultation," is to appraise the present liturgical situation in the light of (I) the pioneering efforts of the "40s and '50s, (2) the directives of Vatican 11, and (3) the experience of the last twenty years, with an eye to those measures that might be adopted in the immediate future" (from the program). The names of 16 participants appear on the pages sent with the program. It promises to be an important gathering, with a significant number present who were involved in those "Pioneering efforts of the '40s and '50s." The theme of the International Congress of the Societas Liturgica, August 18-22, 1982, in Vienna, Austria, is "Liturgy and Spirituality." When the topic for the 1983 Congress was discussed in Paris in 1981, the need was expressed for greater prayerfulness in our liturgical celebrations. We need to identify the spirituality of the liturgy because, "Spirituality, the life of grace in those who seek to live anew in Christ, finds communal expression in patterns of worship, ministry and service--in a word, in liturgy . In short, worship and piety, liturgy and Christian life.are tightly interwoven" (quoted from the program for the Congress). The 1983 Synod of Bishops is not a liturgical meeting, but its topic should have important consequences for the liturgy. The topic is, "Reconciliation and Penance in the Mission of the Church." The Synod Secretariat at the Vatican sent out a kind of working paper to all the bishops on the theme and invited the national bodies of bishops to reply to some questions which were enclosed. The paper deals explicitly with sacramental penance but does this within the broad context of the Church's mission of reconciliation. We can expect a good bit of writing on the topic after the Synod.~ It is clear from the themes of the national meetings that there is a strong pastoral urge to evaluate our experience of the liturgical reforms, We remember the vision given us through the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Notes on IJturgy / 365 The active participation at which it aimed is now in place in all the major sacramental rites of the Church. The changes have given us a new house of prayer. At least it has been renewed, remodeled, and rehabilitated. The ques-tion in the minds of many is whether the post-conciliar liturgical reforms are really renewing the Church. We were very optimistic that it would twenty years ago. We had hoped that the renewal of the liturgy would be the renewal program for the whole Church. Now the existence of so many different renewal programs in parishes in our country makes us doubt that it was. A possible answer, of course, is that we are not giving enough energy and effort to the liturgy. In 1980 the NCCB Committee on Parish Development reported to the U.S. bishops. The Committee stated, "The central responsibility of parish leadership is worship and the spiritual development of the people . In spite of this, the parish activity least often directly addressed in the parish development programs we have reviewed is liturgy . It appears that we do need to adopt a more direct approach to the development of liturgy and preaching."z Pope John Paul II still thinks that liturgical renewal should renew the whole life of the Church: "A very close and organic bond exists between the renewal of the liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church" (Letter to All the Bishops of February 24, 1980). The Societas Liturgica Congress should be a stimulus to all liturgists to take a second look at how the promoters of the liturgical movement in the first decades of our century tried to make the celebration of the liturgy the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit, as St. Pius X said that it was. His pastoral judgment that active participation in the liturgy is the pri-mary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit, spoken near the beginning of his pontificate, November 22, 1903, has proved to be the most durable of all authoritative pastoral judgments made about the liturgy. It inspired the beginning of the liturgical movement in 1909. It seems to challenge us still. The theme chosen for the Societas Liturgica Congress bears this out. Evaluation of the Liturgical Reform There has been a significant trend in the liturgical journals during the last ten years to evaluate the ongoing experience of the liturgical reform. An Italian liturgist, Domenico Sartori, C.S.J., has done us the great service of making a brief summary of each of these evaluations.3 After summarizing them he identifies their converging points. First, he says that the writers agree that the enthusiasm and pastoral fervor with which the reforms were received in their first stages has waned and that now we find a certain weariness, routineness, and even downright regression in the communities which have implemented the reforms. Secondly, all are basically positive in their evaluation of the reforms themselves. There is convergence around what their positive elements are. These are the emphasis given in the reforms to salvation history and to a dialogical conception of the liturgy, to its ecclesial dimension, to the principle of adaptation, and to the relationship between faith and sacrament. They also ~166 / Review for

Issue 38.3 of the Review for Religious, 1979. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published bl-monthly (every two months), is edited in collaboration with faculty members of the Department of Theology of St Louis Umverslty The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. © 1979 By REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A.: $8.00 a year; $15.00 for two years. Other countries: $9.00 a year, $17.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070~ Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor May, 1979 Volume 38 Number 3 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manuscripts and books for review should be sent to REVIEW FOtZ REL~C~OUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. "Out of print" issues and articles not re-issued as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 North Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Principles of Prayer Robert F. Morneau On February 22, 1979, Bishop Morneau was consecrated to serve as auxiliary bishop of the Green Bay Diocese, His latest article for our pages, "Spiritual Staying Power," appeared beginning p. 664 of the September, 1979 issue. He wrote: "'As of December 19th my writing career has been threatened." On that date he was appointed bishop-designate. Growth in all forms of relationships, be they with God or with one another, calls for an ongoing communication process. Prayer is one such process involving dialogue between God and the human person. In order to be meaningful that process must be grounded on certain principles de-scriptive of universal conditions, consequences and causes of meaningful prayer. This paper culls out several principles of prayer as articulated by various spiritual authors. These authors, experiencing prayer at different levels according to the uniqueness of their personality structures, share in written form some truths that provide an explication of prayer experiences in general. These truths when understood in context may well enlighten our own experiences or at least cause us to desire them as we journey to the Father. In so doing we can grow in our dialogical relationship with God. A three-step method will be used: 1) a statement of a principle of prayer; 2) a series of quotations from which the principle was drawn, or of quo-tations used to demonstrate the validity of the principle; and 3) a com-mentary developing some implications buried within the principle and/or quotations. Though principles are significant and advantageous in providing a perspective and pointing out a direction, experience itself is the central concern. Hopefully, as the reader journeys beyond the principle into the 321 322 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 197913 experience which it ~luciidates, he will find deeper meaning in it and be able to come into contact with the principal Reality underlying all real princi-ples. Ten Principles of Prayer 1. Prayer is Essentially Loving Attention1 Thus the individual also should proceed only with a loving attention to God, without making specific acts. He should conduct himself passively, as we have said, without efforts of his own, but with the simple, loving awareness, as a person who opens his eyes with loving attention,z Attention animated by desire is the whole foundation of religious practices? shall not dwell upon this because I want to say something about the way in which think those of us who practice prayer may profit, though everything is profitable to soul that loves the Lord with fervent desire, since it instills into it courage and wonder.4 Two essential elements of authentic prayer are contained in the defini-tion of prayer as loving attention: awareness of the presence of the Other and a h.eartfelt, concerned response. Distraction within consciousness and indifference of the heart are obstacles to meaningful communication with God. If, on our part, we are called to love with attention, this is consequent upon God's loving attention toward us. God made us; he is attentive to the smallest detail of our lives; he loves us completely. An affirmative answer must be given to Blake's deeply religious question: ~'Did he smile his work to see?" The Father's loving attention has been revealed in Jesus, the Word incarnate. A coming-to-visit verifies God's love and awareness. Further verification is found in the sending of the Spirit into our lives, the Spirit of love and knowledge. Because of this personal Grace we are enabled to truly pray. The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows per-fectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.? Defining prayer in terms of loving attention is simple but not simplistic. Its simplicity lies in its directness and succinctness; it is not reductionistic ~SeeJo 17;Ro 11:33-36. ~The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, (Tr., Kavanaugh, and Rodriguez, Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1973), p. 622. 3Simone Weil, Waiting for God, introduction by Leslie Fiedler (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1951), p. 197. 4The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (London: Sheed and Ward, 1944), Vol. I!, p. 363. ~Ro 8:26-27. Principles of Prayer / 323 because neither love nor attentiveness is easily attained. Prayer, like all great acts, defies full analysis because it contains too much mystery. Only knowledge of prayer from the inside, i.e., through experience, allows for even surface knowledge of such a powerful event. 2. Prayer is Proportionate to the Qualit~ of One's Love6 Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who Ioveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who Ioveth us, He made and Ioveth all.7 He knew that without prayer true love was impossible, and he learned from living that without love prayer became self-centered and barren.8 I repeat that if you have this in view you must not build upon foundations of prayer and contemplation alone, for, unless you strive after the virtures and practice them, you will never grow to be more than dwarfs. God grant that nothing worse than this may happer~for, as you know, anyone who fails to go forward begins to go back, and love, I believe, can never be content to stay for long where it is.8 The spiritual life demands balance. How one relates to God in prayer is intimately related to how one encounters his neighl~or. Scripture is trans-parent on this point: he who says that he loves God and at the same time shows hatred to his neighboris a liar:1° The person who spends an hour in prayer while fi~glecting the obvious needs of people close at hand must seriously examine the authenticity of such prayer. Indeed, the reality check for one's prayer life is fraternal charity.~1 Prayer and love are ~ymbiotic. Since our God is Love, we must be in close contact with him if we are to share that gift with others to its fullest. The reverse is also true: unless we share the love given in prayer, the gift dries up or simply engenders pride. As in all provinces of life, the principle of interdependence applies directly to the spiritual life, too. Integration of prayer and' love, contemplation and virture, liturgy and the apostolate are called for. Isolation and fragmentation here create a false spirituality visible to everyone except their possessor. A vision of integrated spirituality and a discipline of courageous action is true imitation of Christ. 81Jo 2:9-11; Lk 4:42-44. 7Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'" SMurray Bodo, Francis: The Journe~ and the Dream (Cincinnati: St, Anthony Messenger Press, 1972), p. 64. 8St. Teresa, II, p. 347. ~°1 Jo 2. ~Spiritual Renewal of the American Priesthood (Washington, D.C.: Publication Office United States Catholic Conference, 1973), p. 48. 324 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 3. Genuine Prayer Demands Some Self-Control of Body and Spiritt2 ¯. we shall not fail to observe the fasts, disciplines and periods of silence which the order commands: for, as you know, if prayer is to be genuine it must be reinforced with these things--prayer cannot be accompanied by self-indulgence?'~ Oh, who can tell how impossible it is for a man with appetites to judge the things of God as they are.j4 We shall have overcome a considerable obstacle when prayer and penance condition each other, for their unity will be able to become the guarantee of their orientation. If it is necessary to deprive oneself of food and sleep, it is not to establish a perform-ance or glorify oneself over an exploit, but to allow the spirit to give itself freely to prayer, since, if it is less strongly captivated by the things of earth, it will be able to give attention to what is above it.15 When the body or the spirit is not free but addicted to various sub-stances or objects, the process of prayer is threatened. A body satiated with food and drink becomes listless and weary; a mind constantly filled with the flood of stimuli is so preoccupied as not to be receptive to other realities. Prayer is premised upon the ability to say '~no" to one level of reality so as to be able to say "yes" to the workings of the Spirit. Asceticism is a condition which creates space and time for dialogue with God. Certain exercises, such as fasting, periods of extended silence, volun-tary mortification, are means by which that space and time become real. The "if-then" principle applies to spirituality as it does to all of life: if the farmer wants the fall harvest, then he must willingly do the spring plowing and planting; ira person wants to listen and respond to the Lord, then time and space must be created for the encounter to happen. Strong and deter-min~: d desire lies at the root of such discipline. Self-control extends one step beyond asceticism. Once the emptiness has been created through exercises done out of love, then the soul must wait on the Lord who will come in his time and in his manner. Waiting for God is at the heart of prayer and is already a deep form of prayer; self-control makes that waiting possible and grace makes it sacred. Although not speaking of prayer, C. S. Lewis describes well this aspect of what is, after all, part of the human condition: "Then came the worst part, the waiting." ~ 4. In Prayer, 1 Must Bring This Me to the Living and True God~7 I enter into the presence of God with all my load of misery and troubles. And he takes me just as I am and makes me to be alone with him?~ ~ZGa 5:16-26: Mt 4:1-17. ~3St. Teresa, I1, p. 16. ~4St. John of the Cross, p. 364. ~Fran~ois Roustang, S.J., Growth in the Spirit, (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966), p¯ 232. ~nC. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1956). p. 13. ~rjg 6:13: Ro 7:14-25. This principle of prayer was presented in a gu.ided retreat by Fr. William A. M. Peters, S.J. ~SRaissa's Journal, presented by Jacques Maritain (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1974), p. 225. Principles of Prayer / 325 If you're approaching him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching him at all?9 I can testify that this is one of the most grievous kinds of life which I think can be imagined, for I had neither any joy in God nor any pleasure in the world. When i was in the midst of worldly pleasures, I was distressed by the remembrance of what I owed to God; when I was with God, I grew restless because of worldly ~iffections.z° Any genuine conversation requires that each participant have an ade-quate level of self-knowledge and is familiar with the content under discus-sion. Where either is wanting, communication breaks down. Prayer, which is essentially a form of communication, contains the same requirements: we must know our real self and have some notion of who God is as well as understand the experience that is being ~;hared. Because of a drive to come off 'qooking well," it is difficult to bring the true, real self to God without a kind of editing. Because God can be conceived in ways that are distor-tions of his true nature, it can easily happen that we attempt to pray to gods that do not exist. One of the greatest causes for sterility in prayer stems precisely from a misconception of God and a failure to be in touch with our true identity. Psychologists are helpful in depicting for us a variety of selves with which we must deal: Each of us seems to have three self-concepts. The personal self-image is how the individual pictures his most inner self ("how 1 really am"). The social self is how he thinks others see him, and the pattern of responses he learns in order to be a social being. The Meal self is made up of the goals set by parents, the culture, and other sources ("how I should be"). Often, these three conflict, creating problems for the individual trying to satisfy them all.z~ Each person must examine which of these selves is operative not only in the interactions of one's daily life but also as one comes before God. To play a role or function in the presence of the Lord prohibits encounter with our deepest self. To demand that the ideal self be actualized before its due season (perfectionism) leads only to a guilt trip every time we must turn to prayer. God says to us, "Come as you are"--no need for formal dress here. C. S. Lewis knew that God cannot be captured by our finite reason: "My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has .to be shattered time after time.''z2 Yet we can come to some knowledge of the living and true God. As Christians we attain to this through faith and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In Jesus our God is made visible. Gifted with the Spirit, we make our journey to the Father in and through Jesus. His life, death and resurrec-tion is a summary statement of the Father's love and forgiveness. Thus all ~9C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. 1955), p. 21. 2°St. Teresa, I, p. 48. 2~John H. Brennecke and Robert G. Amick; Psychology: Understanding Yourself(California: Benziger Bruce & Glencoe, 1975), p. 43. "~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: The Seabury Press, 1961), p. 52. 326 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 197913 of our prayer passes through and is enriched by the Lord as we speak to and listen to the Father. .Authentic prayer demands authentic, real persons. Our real self must be continually ferreted out; our real God must be longed for and awaited in silence and solitude. Only when real people meet can dialogue take place; the dialogue of prayer is no exception. 5. Prayer's Primary Focus Is on God, Not Self or Events2:~ I get nowhere by looking at myself; I merely get discouraged. So I am making the resolution to abandon myself entirely to God, to look only at him, to leave all the care of myself to him, to practice only one thing, confidence; my extreme wretchedness, my natural cowardice leaving me no other way to go to God and to advance in good .24 it is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.z~ You could, if you wished, deny that Mister God existed, but'then any denial didn't alter the fact that Mister God was. No, Mister God was; he was the kingpin, the center, the very heart of things; and this is where it got funny, You see, we had to recognize that he was all these things, and that meant that we were at our qenter, not God. God is our center, and yet it is we who acknowledge that he is the center. That makes us somehow internal to Mister God. This is the curious nature of Mister God: that even while he is at the center of all things, he waits outside us and knocks to come in. It is we who open the door. Mister God doesn't break it down and come in; no, he knocks and waits.2n Focusing and centering are concepts and experiences that are empha-sized in spirituality and psychology. Through this activity we realize that what is at the core of our consciousness radically affects our thoughts, feelings and actions. Often, a violent struggle takes place deep within our interior as various persons, forces, and things vie for centrality. Prayer deals directly with centering. Oi)r experience indicates how easily self-centeredness moves in or how daily anxieties and worries can become so strong as to exclude any awareness of a loving, caring God. Self-transcendence is no easy task; trust that the Lord will provide is more easily thought than experienced. Only in grace can the obstacles blocking encounter with God be removed. Jesus' prayer and life were centered on the Father and the doing of his will. Often in the early hours and before major events we see Jesus explicitly turning to the Father in deep, familiar communication. These explicit moments were indications of an implicit, hidden life of union. How else explain the intimacy of the last supper discourse? Yet Jesus, in his humanness, must have struggled at times to keep proper focus. We need but ponder the agony in the garden to realize that the struggle we have with ourselves and our fear of suffering were part ~aPs 23: Ga 2:17-21. Z4Raissa's Journal, p. 83. Z~Waiting for God, pp. 50-51. ~nFynn, Mister God, This is Anna (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), p. 174. Principles of Prayer / 327 of our Lord's experience as well. The lives of the saints are the records of people who struggled to center on God in spite of their own selfishness. Augustine's ongoing conversion, Teresa of Avila's admission that for years her prayer was superficial, John of the Cross' constant challenge to mortification lest the self dominate--all manifest the eternal conflict between the ego and divine love. Marvelously God has withheld rest so that we can never be at full peace unless we center on him. George Herbert saw this and recorded it magnificantly: When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let us (said he) pour on him all we can; Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span. So strength first made a way; Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honor, pleasure: When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay. For if I should (said he) Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature: So both should losers be. Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, if goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.~7 6. Silence, Solitude and Surrender are Conditions for Pra~er2s When it happens, therefore, that a person is conscious in this manner of being placed in solitude and in the state of listening, he should even forget the practice of loving attentiveness I mentioned so as to remain free for what the Lord then desires of him The beginning of integrity is not effort but surrender; it is simply the opening of the heart to receive that for which the heart is longing. The healing of mankind begins whenever any man ceases to resist the love of God.n° Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer, if they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered,n~ ZrGeorge Herbert, "'The Pulley." 28Lk 22:39-46; Mt 6:5-6. ~°St. John of the Cross, p. 623. n°Caryll Houselander, quoted in Maisie Ward, Caryll Houselander: That Divine Eccentric (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), p. 279. n~"Circles," Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: The Book League of America, 1941), p. 106. 32~i / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 This SSS Principle (Silence, Solitude, Surrender) establishes the dis-positions allowing for union with God. Simply by looking at their opposites we realize how important they are. Constant chatter impedes prayer ("In your prayers do not babble as the pagans do." Mt. 6:5); crowding our lives with activities and people stifles the inner agenda; clutching desperately to our own wills thwarts the realization of the Father's will. In a culture that is activistic and grasping, the qualities of silence, solitude and surrender are not easy to come by. We must recognize the influence of the external environment on the internal milieu. Diligence and discipline are required if we are to grow in a rich, interior silence; courage and trust, if we are to dwell alone with the Other; love and generosity, if we are to accomplish the Lord's will freely. The attainment of a given end necessitates using an appropriate means. The house of the Lord is attained by traveling the path of silence, solitude and surrender. The path is narrow, perhaps peopled by few. Desire for union with God provides the enthusiasm to set out and continue on the journey. The greatest tragedy is to ignore the voices that call us to love, to dwell with many and not to have the One, to retain a false freedom at the cost of life. 7. The Tone of Prayer is One of Reverence and Awe:~" Then prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills, and it eases the conscience and fits man for grace. And so he teaches us to pray and to have firm trust that kve shall have it; for he beholds us in love, and wants to make us partners in his good will and work.3'~ Earth's crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes-- The rest sit round and pluck blackberries?4 First, therefore, I invite the reader to the groans of prayer through Christ crucified. through whose blood we are cleansed from the filth of vice-- so that he not believe that reading is sufficient without unction. speculation without devotion, investigation without wonder, observation without joy. work without piety, knowledge without love, understanding without humility '~21s6:1-9: Ps 118:5-7. :~Julian of Norwich: Showings. translated from the critical text with an introduction by Edmund Colledge. O.S.A. and James Walsh. S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 253. '~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Aurora Leigh.'" Principles of Prayer / 399 endeavor without divine grace, ¯ reflection as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom?5 A personal attitude toward a particular person or object is known as tone. Hostility, lack of openness and prejudices are negative attitudes creating an atmosphere (tone) of fear and discomfort; gentleness, respect and affability are positive attitudes promoting a climate (tone) of warmth and joy. The interior manner by which we approach God is of great impor-tance in prayer. Julian of Norwich writes that, when one is comfortable in coming to the Lord, deeper experiences of prayer are possible: And so'prayer makes harmony between God and man's soul, because when man is at ease with God he does not need to pray, but to contemplate reverently what God says.3s Though our tone is important, of greater significance is the manner in which God comes to us in prayer. God's attitude flows from his nature, a nature which is summarized in the word love. And love's cousins are reverence and awe. What mystery here !--that our God is so gracious and courteous in his visitations to us. Julian of Norwich shares her experience of God's tonality: Of everything which I saw, this was the greatest comfort to me, that our Lord is so familiar and so courteous, and this most filled my soul with delight and surety?7 When entering into prayer it is of great profit to ask for the Spirit of reverence and awe, that same Spirit which empowered Jesus as he ad-dressed the Father in silence and solitude. Reverence and awe are essen-tially gifts and are to be asked for. When gifted with these gentle attitudes our prayer takes on an entirely different quality. Without these gifts our hearts are stifled and our service cool. The reverent feel deeply and serve generously; the awe-filled see with wonder and hear with trembling. 8. God's Activity in Prayor is Fat" More Important Than Out" Activity:~s ,, Prayer is a personal response to God's presence. It is more something that God does to us, rather than anything we do. This means that God first makes himself present to us. Prayer is our awareness of and then response to God?~ In this interior union God communicates himself to the soul with such genuine love that no mother's affection, in which she tenderly caresses her child, nor brother's love, nor friendship is comparable to it. The tenderness and truth of love by which the immense Father favors and exalts this humble and loving soul reaches such a de-gree-- O wonderful thing] worthy of all our awe and admiration--that the Father himself becomes subject to her for her exaltation, as though he were her servant and :~SBonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, translation and introduction by Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press. 1978), pp. 55-56. a~Showings, p. 159. arll?id., p. 136. asPs 138; Jo 6:44. a~Fr. Armand Nigro,-Prayer" (source unknown). 330 I Review for Religious, Volume 38, 197913 she his lord. And he is as solicitous in favoring her as he would be if he were her slave and she his god. So profound is the humility and sweetness of God!4° In the first place it should be known that if a person is seeking God, his Beloved is seeking him much more.4~ Self-sufficiency is a trait much admired by our culture. Nothing happens unless we make it happen; being responsible implies the to~al management of our lives, including the spiritual domain. Control is the goal. With such a mentality it is not surprising that God's invitations and graces fall on deaf ears and are unseen because of our blindness. We simply are not open to outside motivation; we are dancers who must always lead. The conse-quence of such a disposition is tragic: "A person extinguishes the spirit by wanting to conduct himself in a way different from that in which God is leading him.''42 While acknowledging both the necessity and health of self-reliance in its deepest meaning, complete self-motivation leads to stagnation and death~ Faith tells us that God always takes the initiative, that Christian life is a radical response to what God speaks and calls us to do. In no way does this deny the principle that we are challenged to make things happen, not just let them happen. But it affirms that our "making" is consequent upon the word of our Father. The Christian heart, in wisdom, seeks simply to please the Father, whatever is asked. Though the request may be sur-rounded by darkness, though his thoughts and ways differ from our own, the challenge will remain the same: "Our task is always the humble and courageous one of listening obediently and acting boldly.''4:~ Hopefully our activity flows from that deep listening to the word of God. The day begins with a listening disposition; it ends with a review of our response to the Father's word. Thus, prayer is dialogic. Aword is spoken in love and answered out of love; the answer itself becomes the substance for the next movement in the warm, mutual relationship between God and his creature. The familiarity here is profound; its absence creates an incredible loneliness and a haunting restlessness. o There is no One Way of Praying: Pluralism in Prayer Must Be Carefully Safeguarded44 If while the soul is meditating the Lord should suspend it, well and good; for in that case he will make it cease meditation even against its own will. I consider it quite certain that this method of procedure is no hindrance to the soul but a great help to it in everything that is good; whereas, if it labored hard at meditation in the way 4°Sl. John of the Cross, p. 517. 4tlbid., p. 620. 4Zlbid., p. 232. 4aRomano Guardini, The Life of Faith, translated by John Chapin (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1961), p. 106. 44Col 3:12-17; Lk 4:42-44. Principles of Prayer / 33"1 I have already described, this would indeed be a hindrance--in fact, I believe such labor is impossible for a'person who has attained greater heights. This may not be so with everyone, since God leads souls by many ways, but those who are unable to take this road should not be condemned or judged incapable of enjoying the great bless-ings contained in the mysteries of Jesus Christ our God.45 I do not say this without reason, for, as I have said, it is very important for us to realize that God does not lead us all by same road, and perhaps she who believes herself to be going along the lowest road is the highest in the Lord's eyes. So it does not follow that, because all of us in this house practice prayer, we are all perforce to be contem-platives. 46 God leads each one along different paths so that hardly one spirit will be found like another in even half its method of procedure.4~ Uniqueness of personality structure helps to specify what form and style of prayer is most appropriate for the individual. God works with and through our individuality. How dangerous, therefore, to simply adopt someone eise's manner of praying. Sheer imitation is not only foolish but can be injurious to one's spiritual life, leading to frustration and discourage-ment. A popul~tr expression states: "Different strokes for different folks!" So in the spiritual life: different prayers for different cares. Prayer is as varied as people with the commonality coming in the wor~d-.responsp pat-tern underl~,ing all communication between God and his pe6ple. Just as p.rayer varies from person to perso~n, prayer also varies within each person's life. During certain periods of faith developme'.~t'~, Vocal and formal pray.er may well be the best form of prayer for that time; at other stages, meditative or contemplative prayer may be in orde~r. Further, prayer styles may change within the course of a single week, even in the course of a single hour of prayer. Form and style is not the heart of the fiaatter; what is of essence is personal encounter with God. Once that experience hap-pens, we simply rest in his presence. "As soon as God's word makes its impact, we must leave all the rest and follow it."48 Prayer is a means to an end; the end is union with God. The paths to union are multiple. The necessary pluralism is threatened by stereotyping and rigid con-formity. Granting the validity, indeed the necessity, of a certain measure of uniformity in public prayer, the principle to be followed in personal, private prayer is that of freedom. Only the individual knows the context of his/her own life; it is the context that sets {he parameters for the form and style of prayer. Because our context is cbntinually changing, prayer forms must adapt themselves accordingly. Thus pluralism becomes a principle neces-sary for spiritual health and growth. ~sSt. Teresa, II, pp. 307-308. 46lbid., p. 69. 4TSt. John of the Cross, p. 633. 4~Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, tr., A. V. Littledale (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), p. 108. ~ / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 10. Prayer Leads to Intimacy With God and to Solidarity With All Creation4~ It should be noted that until the soul reaches this state of union of love, she should practice love in both the active and contemplative life. Yet once she arrives, she should not become involved in other works and exterior exercises that might be of the slightest hindrance to the attentiveness of love toward God, even though the work be of great service to God. For a little of this pure love is more precious to God and the soul and more beneficial to the Church, even though it seems one is doing nothing, than all these other works put together.~ In prayer ! can enter into contact with the God who created me and all things out of love. In prayer I can find a new sense of belonging since it is there that I am most related We are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love:52 Activities find their meaning in terms of their goal. The end of the spiritual life is union with God and by means of this unity we are myste-riously united to all of creation. Oneness is attained by love; prayer is a central Iove-act'in our lives. Through the ongoing communication with God, we grow in mutual knowledge and respect until one day we awake to an intimacy incapable of description. The bonding here is subtle and myste-rious, powerfi)l and challenging. The Lord stands at the door knocking and a choice t]as to be made. Following our "Fiat," God comes to dwell with us and our homes are never the same. Prayer's unifying power does not terminate in intimacy with God alone. Authentic prayer necessitates ever deeper union with our brothers and sisters. To be united to the Father means to be united to his children, the entire family of God. The closer we are to the cross of Christ and the power of the Spirit, the closet" we are to all of life. By touching the fountain of life and holiness, we touch all creation. Thus, without prayer a sense of aliena-tion and isolation invades our hearts. Separated from the source we cannot come into vital contact with the created world. Prayer gives us entrance not only into the heart of our triune God but also into the mystery of his loving creation. Because prayer fosters intimacy it is not uncommon for fear to block our communication with God. Intimacy means to know and to be known whole; such radical sharing implies the possibility of radical rejection. Perhaps we are not sure that we are all that lovable. Thus it is in faith and trust that we approach our God, believing that he loves us unconditionally; it is with humility and courage that we approach our brothers and sisters knowing 49Ps 139: Jr 31:31-34. ~°St. John of the Cross, p. 523. ~Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (New York: Doubleday & Company. 1976), p. 51. ~2George Herbert, -The Little Black Boy." Principles of Prayer / 333 that through grace we can accept them and that they can accept us. Prayer involves revelation, acceptance and humility; it demands faith, trust and courage. Gifted by the Spirit, we enter the land of prayer and therein find our happiness. The Journey and the Map In discussing any one aspect of the spiritual life we must view it con-textually. This paper points out ten signs on the road to union: prayer as loving attention, prayer's relationship to love, prayer's need for discipline, prayer and proper identity, prayer's focus, the conditions for prayer, prayer's tonality, source of prayer, the principle of pluralism, and prayer's goal. A corresponding set of principles marking out other aspects of the terrain in the spiritual life could easily be worked out and these would provide meaning in such areas as ministry and asceticism. The map is large; we have considered but one aspect. Regardless of the principle and its specification, the destination is always the same: the experience of Love. That experience comes alive when we move from the map to the land it describes. Contemplative Prayer: Many Are Called William Meninger, O.C.S.O. Father Meninger is a monk of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, MA 01562. ~n the foreword to his beautiful treatise on contemplative prayer, the unknown author of the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing describes the kinds of persons who should, and those who should not read his little book. He swiftly eliminates: worldly gossips, flatterers, the scrupulous, busy-bodies, hypocrites, and those who are simply curious--whether they are educated or not. Then he goes on to describe those whom grace has pre-pared to grasp his message. These are people who, every now and then, taste something of contemplative love by way of the action of the Holy Spirit in the very center of their souls, exciting them to love. This ought to include, at some time or other of his or her life, every Christian. That is to say, contemplative prayer, in some form or other, really is for everyone. Instead of speaking of the "extra6rdinary" grace of contemplative prayer (the beginnings of which, at least, we are here equating with Centering Prayer), we should speak of the extraordinary grace of prayer itself. Given the great miracle of prayer itself, contemplative prayer, as well as every other degree or intensity of prayer, ought to follow naturally, as it were. Origen, one of the earliest of the fathers of the Church, in his com-mentary on the Our Father, says that the most marvelous thing about this prayer is not any particular phrase included in it, but the very fact that we can say it at all. The extraordinary grace lies in our God-given ability to bridge the infinite gap between God and man and to converse with him 334 Contemplative Prayer: Many Are Called / 335 face to face, in a word, to pray. Once we understand this, the place con-templative prayer can and should have is no longer a problem. Prayer differs from prayer, not in essence, but merely in its degree of intensity. Basically the simplest recitation of the Our Father in faith, hope and love by .any child is the same as the most profound communion in a silence beyond words of the greatest mystic. The difference can be found in degree or intensity but not in the nature of prayer itself. In any prayer, of whatever type or intensity, the one praying so enters into the triune life of God that he becomes one with the Holy Spirit pre-cisely as the Spirit is the fullest expression of the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father. The one who prays becomes, as it were, the H01y Spirit, and ,this prayer activity becomes the trinitarian expression of God loving himself. What then is contemplative prayer? How does it differ in intensity from other degrees of prayer? To answer these questions we have to look at prayer as a human relationship. For this, indeed, it truly is: a relationship with God, of course;but because it is the relationship of a human person with God it must, as are ~ali his relationships, be a human relationship. A simple' understanding of this obvious fact will take us a long way in understanding prayer. The man-to-God relationship is human. Obviously it is a graced rela~ tionship, but, nonetheless, it is still human. A man-to-man relationship is also human, and it is by understanding this kind of relationship that we can come to a deeper understanding of the man,to-God, or prayer re]ationship. Let us take a concrete example of a human, man-to-woman relationship and see how it helps us to understand our prayer-,relationship with God, 'At some .social gathering, let us say, a party, John meets Mary. And, of course, Mary meets John. The hostess introduces them in typical fashion: "John, I would like you tomeet my good friend, Mary. Mary, I would like you to meet my cousin, John. John, you will be happy to know that Mary is also a rabid baseball fan!" The hostess then walks away, leaving them together. Now, if John and Mary simply stand there awkwardly staring at nothing and saying nothing, the relationship will end before it really begins. However, this is why the hostess, conscious of her role, has indicated their mutual interest in baseball. It provides them with enough background to pursue their acquaintanceship. And so, with so superficial and external a beginning, John and Mary enter that level of human relationship that we call acquaintance. It is not a deep relationship. Even so, should they find it difficult to continue the conversation, the ensuing silence would be uncomfortable, even embar-rassing. Still, at this level, such personal things as deeper aspirations, peak experiences, intimate feelings, or life goals are not shared. This, then, isa human relationship on the first, most primitive level that. of acquaintance. The couple meet, introduced by a third party who gives 336 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 them some mutual background, and they pursue the relationship from there--or allow it to die. Understanding that our prayer relationship is simply a human relationship with God,. it, too, must have an acquaintance level. And it does. This began for most of us in early childhood when a third party, perhaps our mother or father, introduced us to God, gave us some background (as the hostess did to John and Mary), and told us that God loved us and would answer prayers. "This is Jesus. He is God. He loves you and will answer your prayers." And so we began our first level of relationship with God, the level of acquaintance. This level expresses itself mostly in the simpler prayers requesting favors or in memorized prayers said without any profound comprehension. We have many relationships on this first level--we have many mere acquaintances. The tCagedy is that for some, the relationship with God never develops beyond this level. Their prayer life is limited to periodic appeals for divine help in times of trouble. But let us return to our example of John and Mary. As a result of the small talk characteristic of their acquaintance-relationship, each begins to recognize in the other certain qualities which make their relationship worth pursuing. Each desires to get to know the other better. In order to do this, they make a "date," they make arrangements to get together, just the two of them, so they can share and become further acquainted with those attractive qualities they are beginning to recognize in each other. Now they begin to reveal more and more of their personal feelings, experiences, ideas and goals in their conversation. Perhaps John tells Mary things about himself that he has never before revealed to anyone. And her response is more sympathetic than any he has ever found before. Some-times this response is merely a comfortable, accepting silence; for no longer is silence between them awkward and uncomfortable. It is no longer a negative thing but as they get to know each other better and better, what had been just a void becomes filled with one another. They have now entered, not into a different kind of human relationship, but into a deeper, more intense one. We will call this deeper level the relationship of friend-ship. Remembering that our prayer relationship with God is also a human relationship, we willexpect to find the same thing happening here. After we become acquainted with God, on the first level, we begin to recognize that He has qualities worth pursuing. And so we do just what John and Mary did--we make a "date" with God! We go apart with him in order to learn more about him and also to reveal to him intimate, personal thoughts and concerns. This is done in many, many different ways. We may attend some form of religious instruction where we learn to know God better. We may read and meditate and listen to the Scriptures where God personally reveals himself to us. Whatever the source, we begin to allow his truths to form our Contemplative Prayer: Many Are Called / 337 lives. We talk over with him our successes and failures, our new begin-nings. We internalize his truths and live his life of grace as we witness them in others or as we read the reflections of others about them. In other words by reflection or "discursive meditation," as we call it, we become ac-customed to speaking with God on a personal level, revealing ourselves to him, and, at the same time, learning about him from the truths of his revelation. Our acquaintanceship with God has deepened to the level of friendship. It would be well here to emphasize one point. The friendship between John and Mary is going to endure only as long as~ in some way or other, they continue to find interest in sharing with one another, to '~date" in some fashion or other. They must, even if it is only by telephone or by mail, keep up contact with one another. We have all experienced the strangeness of an old friendship which, after years without contact, descends once again into the awkwardness of mere acquaintance. And so it is with God. If we are to continue with him, we must per-severe in our spiritual reading, in our reflective meditation. Friendships do not remain stable. Either they are cultivated and grow, or they lessen. God, by reason of the free, bountiful bestowal of his grace, is always actively encouraging a growth in our friendship with him--Imagine! He finds quali-ties in us worth pursuing! It remains for us to cooperate. Let us look now at the third level of a developing human relationship as we see it in John and Mary. 'As they continue to grow closer to one another, the relationship be-tween John and Mary takes on physical overtones. They desire not only the intimacy of shared thoughts, but also physical closeness. This is the time when they are hardly ever seen alone. Walking arm in arm, holding hands, embracing--all these manifestations emerge now. This level of relationship, sometimes called romantic love or affection (the affective level), when it has been preceded by a genuine friendship, represents an authentic growth in John and Mary's relationship. If it has not been preceded by friendship in some way, it is merely an animal relationship. This affective relationship will develop most completely in marriage where the sharing of both per-sonalities and bodies find their fullest expression. But how can this human relationship on the physical, affective level express itself in our human, prayer relationship with God? It must do this somehow if, as we have been insisting, our prayer-relationship is a human one. And it does! Spiritual masters have given us many descriptions of this level of prayer. Some even refer to it as "the honeymoon period'~ because of its brevity, its place early in the prayer-relationship, and because of its emotional (physical, affective) elements. During this period, prayer often takes the form of intimate conversations with God, not infrequently accompanied by tears~ profound, emotionally felt sorrow for sins and a lively joy at the 33~1 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 realization of God's love and redemptive activity. This period (as well as the earlier friendship level) may often be interspersed with longer or shorter periods of dryness or aridity as God leads us into a deeper, firmer relation-ship. One o.f the most obvious forms of this affective prayer-relationship with God is seen in the charismatic renewal. When someone is prayed over for the anointing of the Spirit, he is not infrequently "zapped," as it were. This is often accompanied by tea~s, intermingled with expressions of joy and a desire to express and to share with others the abundant overflow of graces. More often, perhaps, it is a quieter experience which serves to fill and inform the basic prayer structures presented by the Church for our worship. This affective level has a great deal to do with the effectiveness of our formal prayer. In the liturgy, for example, the priest is given a structure (readings, prayers, canon). The power in grace that this structure is able to communicate depends in great part (though not entirely) on the depth, of faith, hope and love of the minister. On the part of the participant, the level of his affective prayer-relationship with God will determine to a great extent how much he will grasp of the readings and prayers. In other words, our affective prayer-relationship with God is dependent on our friendship with him. If we do not keep faithful to our periodic "dates" with him, going apart with him for a while, then our affective prayer relationship, as well as our friendship, will degenerate to mere acquaintanceship. Now for a final look at John and Mary. Picture them, if you will, after many years of a long, sometimes difficult, but still happy marriage. Their children are grown, married and gone. John and Mary are back where they began--just the two of them sitting alone of an evening in their home. John perhaps is reading the sports page. Mary is knitting booties for a grand-child. Neither is speaking. Indeed, Mary knows by now just how John feels about everything under the sun. John is equally aware of Mary's thoughts. Yet there is a deep communion between them that does not require words. They are happy just to be in one another's presence. This is what we call the relationship of love. Verbal expressions, words and symbols are no longer necessary or even adequate for John and Mary to communicate. Their deepest relationship is known, felt and expressed by something much more complete than the partial, inadequate attempts to verbalize it. Presence to one another without words or other external signs can be the fullest expression of this human relationship of love. And so it isqn our developing relationship with God. The fourth level of our prayer is the relationship of love, or, what we call "contemplative prayer." It is a simple, quiet, peaceful abiding in his presence, One old man who spent hours daily in the church was once asked by St. John Vianney what he did during all that time. "I don't do anything," he replied. "I just Contemplative Prayer: Many Are Called / 339 look at him and he looks at me." This is contemplative prayer! Contemplative prayer is a very natural, very simple, albeit graced thing which is lived rather than taught. It is a quiet, loving gazing on the face of God (with the eyes of the soul) who is recognized, often even felt by his touching the soul, as present. God is known now, not through the medi-ation of words, or thoughts, or things. These have been used in earlier relationships and have served their purpose. God is seen now with and within the innermost center of the soul, not in light but in darkness, a darkness which is not the mere absence of light but the blinding effulgence of infinite light. He is heard now, not in words, but in the Word who cries "Abba, Father" in the Holy Spirit in a profound and filled silence. One other thing ought to be mentioned in regard to all of the levels of our prayer relationship with God. We must respond in accord with each level of relationship to the voice of God as he manifests his will in our lives. This involves a genuine attempt to make central in our lives the Great Commandment of love, a wholehearted and generous response to the guid-ance of his Church, a frequent and informed participation in 'the sacra-ments, and a continued effort to carry out the duties of our particular vocation in life. Eventually these things will themselves be seen as part of our prayer-relationship also. The distinction between prayer and activity will become less and less significant until everything we do becomes a response to, and thus a part of, our prayer life. It is important to stress the normality of these relationships--both with others in our daily life and with God in our prayer. The progression from acquaintanceship to love is a natural one (and only because of this is it able to be a supernatural one--grace builds on nature). We are all called to love God. And as Saint Bernard says: "The measure of our love is to love without measure." The precise manner or tradition or school of spirituality which we em-ploy to develop and express this love will vary with various individuals. There are many ladders of ascent to God. Each has to find his or her own way. Nonetheless, it remains true that in our day, the approach to God sometimes called Centering Prayer" or "the work of love" (as it is termed in the, fourteenth-century Cloud of Onknowing) has proven helpful to many either as an introduction to contemplative prayer or as a simple, system-atic approach which clarifies and facilitates contemplation. Centering Prayer i:loes presuppose, in some way or other, that we are ready for the love-relationship with God, that we have already passed through the levels of acquaintanceship, friendship, and affection, that we do feel, as the Cloud of Unknowing says, "every now and then a taste of contemplative love, by way of the action of the Holy Spirit in the very center of their souls, exciting them to love." Old Wine and Old Lovers: Hope for the Human Personality in St. John of the Cross Joyce Hampel, C.S.J. This article is an outgrowth of a graduate course followed by Sister Joyce at Gonzaga Univer-sity in Washington. She resides in Star of the Sea Convent: 4350 Geary Blvd. : San Francisco, CA 94118. ~t begins, according to St. John of the Cross, with a certain burning Jove. God reaches down, takes your hand, and guides you along the way to a place you know not (N 2, 16, 7*). There you no longer understand by means of your natural light, but by means of the divine wisdom to which you are united. You no Iong.er love in a lowly manner, but with the strength and purity of the Holy Spirit. Your memory, too, is changed into presentiments of eternal glory (N 2, 4, 2). Having reached the end of your journey of love, you and your beloved are one. "Happy is the life and state," declares St. John of the Cross, "and happy the person who attains it" (C 28, 10). John of the Cross images the human personality as participant in the life of the living God. For the person seeking God, it is God who communicates himself. And it is in the transformation of the person in God that the two become one, "as a window united with a ray of sunlight, or coal with fire, or starlight with the light of the sun" (C 26, 4). Throughout John's writings, *Symbols: A, The Ascent of Mount Carmel N, The Dark Night C, The Spiritual Canticle" F, The Living Flame of Love 340 Old Wine and Old Lovers: Hope in John of the Cross / 34"1 the human person is challenged to a process of awakening and purification, making him more and more capable of God. This transformation is par-ticularly emphasized as a growth into freedom realized in fourareas of human life: stillness of spirit, radical simplicity, authentic love, and intimate knowledge of Christ the Word. Essential to each of these is the new life of God rooted in the soul, comparable in John to the perfected evolution of aged wine and tried lovers. In his Spiritual Canticle, John's bride-soul sings: In the inner wine cellar I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad Through all this valley I no longer knew anything, And lost the herd which I was following (stanza 26). The image of wine is for John a helpful one in instructing spiritual persons. It suggests all the stages of spiritual growth, and parallels the relationship between lovers. "New lovers," says John, "are comparable to new wine. They are beginners in the service of God" (C 25, 10). While in the process of fermentation, wine is incomplete; its good qualities and value are uncertain, and its taste is sharp. New lovers are also in a process of fermentation. They often rely on exterior fervor, finding strength in the "savor of love" alone. Such love cannot be trusted; in fact, it carries such anxieties that the lovers are more often fatigued than refreshed. Just as this fervor and the warmth of sense can incline one to good and perfect love, and serve as a beneficial means for such love by a thorough fermentation of the lees of imperfection, so too it is very easy in these beginnings and in this novelty of tastes that the new wine of love fails and loses its fervor and delight (C 25, 10). On the other hand, old wine offers transformed refreshment. Its fer-mentation is complete, its good quality is evident, its taste is smooth. The strength of aged wine lies not in the taste, however, but in the substance. "Old !overs," reflects John, "~hose who are exercised and tried in the service of the Bridegroom, are like old wine" (C 25, 11). The souls are at rest, afflictions of love no longer burden the sense of spirit. "Spiced wine" flows in them from the "balsam of God" (C stanza 25). Such love is based not on sensible delights, as is th~ love of new lovers, but settled within the soul, in spiritual substance and savor, and truly good works (C 2~, I I). John's hope for the human personality is reflected in this example of tried love: the person is still and rests in his Beloved; sensory delights and dangers no longer affect him, for he loves only One; the essence of the " person seeks a quality of love that is purged of selfishness and hardly ever fails the Beloved; and knowledge of God clothes the person with a di~)inity that, as we shall see, is fastened on Christ alone (A 2, 22, 5). 342 /Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 In reflecting on the perfection of the human personality, we so often think of human capabilities as powers--powers that men and women use to control, 6r at least influence, an external force. John of the Cross, however, speaks not so much of power.or amassed capabilities as he does of sur-render. The person chooses, having already experienced the infinite love of the Lord, to hand over to him all his powers. Human perfection rests, then, in allowing another, the one who is totally other, to move him. It is a process of holding back desire~, of permitting another to enter your life, of losing some of self in order to become gr~eater. This first movement toward stillness of spirit is described in John's Ascent of Mount Carmel. "Renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God" (A 1, 13, 14); "enter into complete nudity, emptiness, and poverty in everything" (A 1, 13, 6). Such a self-emptying will bring the stillness that one desires. John's diagram of the ascent speakseven more clearly: In this nakedness the spirit finds its quietude and rest. For in coveting nothing, nothing raises it up and nothing weighs it down, because it is in the center of its humility. When it covets something in this very desire it is wearied.(A 1, 13, 11). The mark of a person who has achieved this spirit is that he is able to "abide in quietude" (A 2, 12, 8). He can give loving attentiveness to the Lord because he has learned to be empty. Like the wine that has stopped effer-vescing, he is still. The journey that is ahead of him will surely bring darkness and pain, but trust in God effects its own inner peace. It is significant .to mention the underlying attitude that accompanies a still heart. The' person must be able to see himself in relation to God, and to exercise the patience that will allow transformation in God to happen. This is one of John's hopes for the human personality, but not everyone achieves it. Many "would rather want all to be perfect, but God finds fe~v vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work" (F 2, 27). Waiting is the first act of love. "God usually does things, not so there will be an immediate understanding of them, but that afterwards at the proper time, or when the effect is produced, one may receive light about them" (A 2, 20, 3). God knows what he is doing. It is we who do not know how to be still in his hands. The second characteristic John anticipates is radical simplicity. In the darkness of its cask, wine becomes mellow when the lees of the grapes settle. The liquid has taken into itself the deep color of the skins and drawn from the pulp its delicate flavors. But the wine must be purged of the sediment before it can exhibit the valued clarity. So too with the spiritual journeyer. Old Wine and Old Lovers: Hope in John of the Cross / 343 To journey to God, the will must walk in detachment from every pleasant thing, rather than in attachment to it. It thus carries out well the commandment to love, which is to love God above all things; this cannot be done without nakedness and emptiness concerning them all (F 3, 51). Such poverty requires radical denial and convergent vision. For John, this implies a todo-nada approach to the search for human fulfillment in God. You must want nothing and have nothing in order to possess everything: :For to go from all to the all you must deny yourself of all in all. And when you come to the possession of the all you must possess it without wanting anything. Because if you desire to have something in all your treasure in God is not purely your hll (A 1, 13, 11). All sensory desires, all thoughts,oall imaginings, all passions must find their satisfaction in the mercy of God alone. At the same time, the person must consider the life God offers him his only treasure. To rely on appre-hensions, natural or supernatural, would be to hold God in less esteem than we should. "God makes the ~soul die to all that he is not, so that when it is stripped and flayed of its old skin, he may clothe it anew., and thus this soul will be a soul of heaven, heavenly and mor.e divine than human" (N 2, 16, 7). The human person becomes more than the limitations of his appetites formerly allowed. The person becomes divine. "God loves us," writes John to one of his directees, "that we might love b~ means of the very love he bears toward us" (Letter 33). Embodied in this statement is John's third hope foi" human growth, authentic love. It is not enough to love what is good and to'avoid what is evil. An investment must be made of all that is truly human. Every passion, e~,ery hope, must be purified and directed toward the Lord of all ~reation. John admonishes 'the spiritual person to Rejoice only in what is purely for God's honor and glory, hope for nothing else, feel sorrow only about matters pertaining to this, and fear only God (A 3, 16, 2). Joy,, hope, sorrow; and fear are worthy of human attention only insofar as they are bound to God. "My every act is love,'? says the bride of the Spiritual Canticle. "Everything I do, I do with love, and everything I suffer, .I suffer with the delight of love" (C 28, 4). Authentic love immerses the total person in a self-effacing commitment. One loves with one's bodyand with one's spirit, with emotions as well as intellect. The will seeks only to love with the love of God, to "reach the consummation of the love of God" and the "essential glory to which he predestined her from the day of his eternity." (C 38, 2). In reflecting the gift of the whole person, authentic love brings the sensitive and the spiritual parts of the person into conformity with each other. The "sensory faculties ¯ ~.'. share in and enj6y in their own fashion the spiritual grandeurs which God is communicating 'in the inwardness of the spirit" (C 40, 5). To refer 344 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 once again to the quality of aged wine or old lovers, individual elements intermingle to become essentially one creation, new and ever fulfilling. Union with the Beloved requires stillness, simplicity, and authentic love. Consummation of that union requires an intimate knowledge of Christ the Word. "Fasten your eyes on him alone," instructs God the Father, "because in him I have spoken and revealed all, and in him you shall discover even more than you ask for and desire" (A 2, 22, 5). Left to his own, the human person cannot know God. Echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah~ his eyes have never even seen the things that God wills for him. Christ came to reveal to mankind the Father. It was in his humanity, in his life of human joys and disappointments and hopes and pain that Jesus calls us to our human perfection. "I have now called you my friends," he says, "because all that I have heard from my Father I have manifested to you" (Jn 15:15, see C 28, 1). To imitate Jesus in all that one does is John of the Cross' teaching; to live with Jesus in union with the Father is his hope. Even though this happy night darkens the spirit, it does so only to impart light concerning all things: and even though it humbles a person and reveals his miseries, it does so only to exalt him; and even though it impoverishes him and empties him of all possessions and natural affection, it does so only that he may reach out divinely to the enjoyment of all earthly and heavenly things, with a general freedom of spirit in them all (N 2, 9, 1). Do not seek Christ without the cross, John writes; let Jesus be in your soul (Letters 22 & 23). It is Jesus who is the true wine of life. He is the one who brings the person to intimate knowledge of Father-care and Spirit-love. The wine cellar is .the last and most intimate degree of love in which the soul can be placed in this life (C 26, 3). It is filled, relates John, with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in perfection "according to the soul's capacity for receiv-ing them." Even here the gentleness of the all-consuming God allows for differences in the human personality, and brings to each person those gifts that will best fulfill him. Bridegroom and bride "mutually communicate their goods and delights with a wine of savory love in the Holy Spirit" (C 30, 1). How gently and lovingly You wake in my heart, Where in secret you dwell alone; And by your sweet breathing, Filled with good and glory, How tenderly you swell my heart with love! (Living Flame, stanza 4) It begins with God. God reaches down, takes your hand, and guides you along the way to-a place of ineffable love. He teaches you to be still and to await his touch. He strips you of all that is not himself. He draws forth love that is like his own. He gifts you'with the life of Jesus his Son. There are Old Wine and Old Lovers: Hope in John of the Cross 345 two kinds of life according to John of the Cross. One consists in the v~sion of God, which must be attained by natural death; "the other is the perfect spiritual life, the possession of God through union of love" (F 2, 32). This union is John's ultimate hope for the human personality--total transforma-tion in the immense love of the Triune God. REPRINTS FROM THE REVIEW "A Method for Eliminating Method in Prayer," H. F. Smith, S.J . 30 "An Apostolic Spirituality for the Ministry of Social Justice," M. Oliva, S.J . 50 "Celibate Genitality," W. F. Kraft . 50 ¯ "Celibacy and Contemplation," D. Dennehy, S.J . "i. ¯ .30 "Colloquy of God with a Soul that Truly Seeks Him" . . 30 "Consciousness Examen," G. A. Aschenbrenner, S.J . 50 "Hidden in Jesus Before the Father," G. A. Aschenbrenner, S.J . 50 "Institutional Business Administration & Religious," Flanagan and O'Connor . 30 "Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Formation" S.C. for Religious . 35 "Prayer of Personal Reminiscence," D. J. Hassell S.J . 60 "Profile of the Spirit: A Theology of Discernment of Spirits," J. R. Sheets, S.J . 50 "Psychosexual Maturity in Celibate Development," P. Cristantiello . 60 "Retirement or Vigii," B. Ashley, O.P . 30 "The 'Active-Contemplative' Problem," D. M. Knight .75 "The Contemporary Spirituality of the Monastic Lectio," M. Neuman, O.S.B . 50 "The Four Moments of Prayer," J. R. Sheets, S.J . 50 "The Healing of Memories," F. Martin . . . 35 "The Nature and Value of a Directed Retreat," H. F. Smith, S.J . 35 Orders for the above should be sent to: Review for Religious Room 428 3601 Lindeli Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63108 St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience Francis X. J. Coleman Dr. Coleman is Associate P~'ofessor of Philosophy at Boston University; 745 Commonwealth ¯ Ave.; Boston, MA 02215. When picturing Christfin the way I have mentioned, and sometimes even while reading, I used to experience a consciousness of the presence of God of such a kind that I could not possibly dotibt that He was within me or that 1 wgs wholly engulfed in Him? On September 27, 1970, Pope Paul VI conferred the title of Doctor of the Church on St. Teresa of Avila, thereby placing her in the ranks of such giants as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In his homily delivered at St. Peter'.s Basilica," the pope. spoke of Teresa as "the reformer and founder of an historic and eminent religious order,'~ a prolific writer of great genius, teacher of the spiritual life, an incomparable contemplative who was tire-lessly active." The pope went on to speak of "the holiness of her life. a value which was already officially proclaimed as early as March 12, 1622---St. Teresa died 30 years before--by our predecessor Gregory XV." The pope enquired concerning the source of Teresa's doctrine: :'And we might mention another particular point, the charism of wisdom, which ~AII quotations from St. Teresa's writings are drawn I~rom The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, tr. and ed., E. Allison Peers, from the critical.edition of P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, O.C.D. (Sheed and Ward, London and New York: 1950). This citation is from Life, chapt. X. 2The Italian text is in L'Osservatore Romano, Sept. 29, 1970. 3He is referring to the Order of Discalced Carmelites. 346 St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 347 makes us think of the most attractive and at the same time most myst, erious aspect of St. Teresa's title of Doctor: the flow of divine inspiration in this prodigious and mystical writer. From where did the wealth of her do°ctrine come to Teresa?" ~ After mentioning Teresa's cultural and spiritual education, her conver-sations with great masters of theology, her singular sensibility and ascetic discipline, pope Paul asked whether ther~e was not another sourc~ of her "eminent doctrine: . Ought we not re~zognize in St. Teresa acts, facts and states which did not come from her but were undergone by her, things both endured and suffered, mystical things in the" t'rue sense of the word. '~" Pope Paul was sensitive to the grea~t difficulties involved in mystical experience: "'The originality of mystic'ai.adtion is one of the'most delicate and complex of psychological phenomena. Many factors can play a part in ~t, and they oblige the observer to rnaint~ain the severest caution," though he went on to imply that there are som+ who would deny the very possibility of mystical experience itself: ". 15sychoS_nalytic exploration is breaking down that frail and complicated instrument that we are, in such a way that all that can be heard is not the sound~i~f mankind in its sufferin~ and its redemption, but rather the troubled h~utterings of man's animal subcon-scious, the cries of his "disordered passions and of his desperate anguish." What, .then, were the "'acts, facts and states" which did not' originate from Teresa but "were undergone by her"? What are "mystical things in the true sense of the word," according to the first woman doctor of the Church? In this paper i shall attempt some.'answer to these questions. In the first part I shall give a broad survey of the varieties of mystical data to be found in Teresa's writings. These data fall into three main categories: locutions, visions and ecstasies. Then I shall describe how Teresa first reacted to her experiences, what was her reflective doctrine con~zeining the methods of distinguishing demonic deception and/or self-decepti~)n from authentic mystical experience. Next I shall turn to a contemporary of Teresa who recorded his own thoughts concern'ing the supposedly super-natural events in her life. And, finally and ver~;'briefly, I shall attempt a tentative conclusion regarding her value and a method of approaching her .for readers of today. Before beginning,' however, 1 believe it is essential to define the proper place of mystical experience within the Catholic faith. When my,stical ex.pe-rience is construed as some merely private revelation, or when it is con-strued to be irrational, insidious errors inevitably ensue, both of a doctrinal and of a personal sort. Mystical experience must never be pitted against rationality; on the contrary, the immediate experience of the infinite and the transcendent is the ultimate expression of rationality. And, when mystical experience does entail privaie revelation, the sin of pride is always lurking: the mystic may affirm propositions at variance with the traditional and authoritative teachings of the Church, and contumacy is quick to follow. 341~ / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 As a highly intelligent woman, St. Teresa was aware of how readily people deceive themselves. She knew that there is a special temptation for religious.to delude themselves into believing ttiemselves to be the chosen recipients of some particular revelation. She was especially suspicious of the Alumbrados, or llluminists.,., The Alumbrados were in.many ways the sixteenth-century counterparts of some types of charismatics and other seekers of special gifts in our own day. The Alumbrados were not a sect of Catholicism, but rather a collective term for small groups of priests and lay persons who practiced what they thought to be a new and interior form of Christianity. Opposed to cere-monial liturgical celebration, t.hey placed much emphasis on mental prayer, in the course of which it was assumed that the mind would be subject to a "kindling," a "spiritual flight towards God." Such experiences led to confidence in one's own salvation, the shedding of all fear. In this there were dangerous resemblances to some. contemporary forms of Luther-anism. Moreover, such experience, s were indications of the possession of the state of grace, and the absolute exclusion of sin. Teresa's suspicions stemmed not only from the taint of heresy in their doctrines, but also because the Alumbrados were publically extravagant, laying claim to direct access to the Holy Spirit. To Teresa, the ecstasies and visions of the Alumbrados were either unintentional self-deceptions or intentional deceptions wrought by others upon the hapless victims. Teresa knew, and heard of, nuns who had worked themselves into states that resembled mystical,experience by excessive abuses in the area of penances, with consequent deterioration of their health. In our own day, we know that so-called "hallucinogenic" drugs of various sorts have been used even delibera.tely to replicate the behavioral and bodily manifestations of mys-tical experience. But the result, then as now, is counterfeit. Teresa confesses that she had been influenced by the Alumbrados when she was twenty years of age and had read Fray Osuna. Yet, as her thought and her mystical theology mature, she places less and I~ss emphasis on the sensuous details of her mystical experiences, and more and more weight upon the ineffable and analogical knowledge that is part of such experience, The earliest vision described by Teresa occurred when she was about twenty-one years of age. It must be borne in mind, however, that the description appears in Chapter VII of her Life, the rough draught of which she completed when she was forty-seven years old. Teresa confesses that she had a friendship with a certain woman which was "not good" for her. Although Teresa does not go into details, she states that "Christ revealed himself to me, in an attitude of great sternness, and showed me what was in this that displeased him. I saw him with the eyes of the soul more clearly than I could ever have seen him with those of the body . ,,4 In Chapter X ofherLife, Teresa distinguishes the sort of experience just ~Life, chapt. Vll. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 349 described from the one that she describes as a suspension of the soul. She complains of her imagination, i.e., the ability to conjure up at will a mental image or picture of someone or something, that it was so feeble that if she did not actually see a thing, she could not use her imagination "as other people do, who can make pictures to themselves . "~ Teresa was conse-quently very fond of images and pictures. Although she tried to imagine Christ inwardly, no matter how much she read about him, she could never succeed. She compared herself to a blind person who knows he is talking to some6ne but cannot see him. "I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, of such a kind that I could~not possibly doubt that he was within me or that l was wholly engulfed in him.: This was in no sense a vision: I believe it is called mystical theology.''6 Teresa's description of this experience of"divine engulfment" may well have been deformed by the lapse of some twenty-five years when she wrote about it. At any rate, she does not want to call"such an experience a "vision" because the soul does not "see~' anything. "The soul is sus-l~ ended in such a way that it seems to be completely outside itself. Th~ will loves; the memory, I think, is almost lost; while the understanding, I be-lieve, though it is not lost, does not reason--I mean that it does not work, but is amazed at the extent of all it can understand . ,,7 Teresa's "visions," then, do not become rich and graphic until much later in her Life, beginning in Chapter XXXI. Even these, though, were not had by the bodily eye: they were not in a~ny sense objective, shareable, "out there." But neither did the visions consist in a series of merely mental images, for Teresa complains often of her extremely feeble eidetic imagina-tion. She describes these visions as "inward disturbances" and finds it impossible not to detect in them the hand of the devil.~ Teresa felt herself powerless to resist the devil at such times. She felt interior disquiet, but was afraid to ask the other nuns to assist her through the use of holy water (she had learned "from long experience''9 that holy water is the best method to put devils to flight). In one of her most dramatic and painterly visions,;Teresa beheld, while in a state of rapture, a great battle between devils and angels. At the time, she could not understandthe meaning of the vision. A fortnight later, she saw that it was an allegory of nuns, those who did not practice prayer, and those who did.~° In 1559, shortly before the decision to found her first convent~ Teresa had a vision which carried her spirit to a place in .hell. Her description assails each of the senses: "evil-smelling mud," "wicked-looking reptiles," and a claustrophobic sense of containment: "There was a hollow place scooped out of a wall, like a cupbgard, and it was here that I found myself 5Complete Works, I, p. 55. 8Ibid., p. 204. 61bid., p. 58. Slbid., p. 207. 7lbid. 1°Ibid., pp. 208-9. $$0 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 in clos%confinement.''n She suffered from "an oppression, a suffocation and an affliction so deeply felt, and accompanied by such hopeless and distressing misery''t=' that she could not describe it too strongly. Worse than the physical pains were the pains of despair and "interior fires." She felt herself being both burned and dismembered. She was stifled. She found herself in the blackest darkness, .yet she was able to "see everything the sight of which can cause affliction.''t'~ This vision must have occurred when Teresa was about forty-one. When she compared it to the terrible and painful paralysis which struck her at the age of seventeen, she~concluded that the vision of hell was incom-parably more painful. The vision "happened in the briefest space of time."14 Sometimes Teresa's visions were of holy persons who came through such visitations to give her advice. St. Peter of Alcantara, for example, a reformer of the Franciscan Order during the Counter-Reformation, ap-peared to her in a vision to reconfirm his admonition that her convents must not be permitted endowments)5 At other times, Teresa had visions of a dove fluttering over her head, albeit the dove was very different from those one sees on earth: ¯. for it had not feathers like theirs, but its wings were made of little shells which emitted a great brilliance. It was larger than a dove: 1 seem to hear the rustling of its wings. It mu~;t have been fluttering like this for the space of an Ave Maria. But my soul was in such a state that, as it became lost to itself, it also lost sight of the dove.16 According to Teresa's own testimony, the most sublime vision that she ever experienced recurred on four occasions. It involved seeing the Humanity of Christ in a greater glory than she had ever known. Teresa seemed to see herself in the presence of the Godhead.17 The vision, and its recurrences, had the effect of purifying her soul and almost destroying her sensual nature. Using one of her favorite images, that of a consuming fire, Teresa writes .that the vision, through excess, burnt up all her desires for vain things, such as worldly possessions and dignities. The vision made her hair stand on end, causing her "to feel completely annihilated.''is Once, when she was to communicate at-Mass, Teresa saw "with the eyes of the soul, more clearly than ever I could with those of the body, two devils of most hideous aspect,''19 who seemed to have their horns around the priest's throat while heconsecrated. Teresa understood that the priest's soul was in morthl sin, yet this fact did not invalidate the Sacrament. Although she makes no explicit reference to it, this vision gave to Teresa a direct, experiential disproof.of the Donatist heresy. Teresa wryly commented, after describing one vision with elaborate ltl'bid., pp. 215-16. ~';lbid., p. 281. rZlbid., p. 216. t:~lbid. 171bid., p. 273¯ ~lbid., p. 274: ~41bid., p. 215. ~91bid., p. 275. ~lbid., p. 257. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 351 ~ detail, one which was thronged with figures of angels and demons,"° that she does not mind writing all sorts of nonsense provided that she can write sense sometimes, and :bring people closer to God. In regard to the vision just:described, she says that it "will seem meaningless" until it. is seen as an allegory of the teaching that one should not put much trust in anyone, for there is none who never changes except God."~ ~Teresa's visionscan be of an extraordinarily"personal nature. In her Spiritual Relations, Teresa recounts how Christ revealed himself to her "in an imaginary vision, most interiorly," and gave her his right hand, saying, "Behold this nail. It is a sign that from today onward'thou shalt .be my bride . My honor is thine, and thine mine.'.'zz Later in the same work she describes how he gave her a beautiful rihg.with a stone like an amethyst, only brighter, as a pledge that he promised to grant all that she asked him. Yet Teresa quickly breaks off this account with, "1 write this foolish-heSS . ,,23 Even though the imaginary visions ceasedtowards the end of her'life, Teresa was still able to write a year before her °death, from Palencia, in the year 1581, that she still seems to experiencethe intellectual vision of the Three Persons of the Trinity and of Christ's humanity. She states very simply: "I realize now, I think, that the visions which 1 have had were of God, for they prepared my soul for the state in which it now is.'''4 I shall give a much briefer description of Teresa's locutions, mainly because she does so herself, even though they are no less important than her visions. Teresa speaks of her first locution in Chapter XIX of her Life. Finding that many of her sisters were only peripherally religious, Teresa wondered why so few of them.had a true calling, as she believed herself to have. Teresa heard: "Serve thou Me, and meddle not with this.''25 Later, at the age of 42, filled with self-doubt as well as doubts concerning certain friendships, Teresa, at the direction of P. Baltasar Alvarez, recited the hymn Veni Creator. She hea?d the words: "I will have thee converse now, not with men, but with angels.''2" Her locutions are usually brief but always of translucent clarity and distinctness. "Be not troubled; have no fear,"~r or, "1 have heard you; let Me alone.''2s Sometimes they are of a practical nature: "What dost thou fear? When have 1 ever failed thee? I am the same nowas I have always been. Do not give up either of these two foundations,' ,29 or simply, "That is the house for thee.'''~° And sometimes intensely familiar: "Now, Teresa, hold thou fast.''z~ The locutions sometimes seem condescending: "Thou wilt act very 2°lbid., p. 286. 261bid., p. 155. 211bid., p. 287. Z7lbid., p. 200. 2Zlbid., p. 352. ~Slbid., I1!, p. 130. Zalbid,, p. 353. 2~lbid., p. 167. 24lbid., p. 335. Z°lbid., p. 171. ZSlbid., p. !15. ~lbid., p. 194. 352 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 foolishly, daughter, if thou regardest the laws of the world. Fix thine eyes on Me . ":~" Sometimes the locutions instructed her~ why she must not have further raptures in public: "It is not fitting just now. Thou hast as much credit as I desire thee to have . 1 shall cite only one example of Teresa's ecstasies, because this well-known ecstasy suffices. Teresa's own description of the transverberation of her heart occurs in Chapter XXIX of her Life. The ecstasy and vision occurred throughout several days. On her left hand, an angel in bodily form, rather short and beautiful, appeared:with a long, golden spear in his hands. At the end of the iron tip was what seemed like a point of fire. The angel "seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire, with a great love of God.":~4 II It should not be surprising that when Teresa began telling friends and confessors about such extraordinary events, some persons were certain that she was. possessed,by the devil and should be exorcised?'~ Exorcism was as common, and believed to be as efficacious, in sixteenth-century Spain, as psychoanalysis is in twentieth-century America. In their later lives both St. Teresa and St.: John of the Cross were well known for their prowess in exorcising evil spirits. Teresa, however, was herself never exor-cised. Instead, her confessors commanded her to make the Sign of the Cross whenever she had a vision,, and then to make a sign~ of contempt?~ At one point in her life Teresa herself was afraid that all her spiritual favors might be illusions?7 We know from~a deposition taken from Teresa's niece that Teresa was greatly distressedl when her raptures came upon her in public, and embarrassed when she had to confess her spiritual favors to her confessors.an Teresa had a keen eye for religious fraud and excess. She writes that women are especially susceptible to ruining their health because of exces-sive prayer; ~igils and severe penances. Such women become frail and languorous, falling into stupors which they deceive themselves into think-ing are spiritual?9 She knew that many supposedly religious raptures were nothing but the result of inanition or bad health?° In her own convents, she 321bid., I, p. 338. 33lbid., p. 339. ¯ ~lbid., pp. 192-93. ~lbid., p. 188. a6See ibid., p. 165, n. 3 for the nature of this contemptuous motion. a71bid., p. 287. aSlbid., Ill, p. 366. The niece, also nam.ed Teresa de Jesus, was born in Quito, in present-day Ecuador, in 1566. a9lbid., II, pp. 245-46. For other spiritual excesses condemned by Teresa, see Gerald Brenan, St. John of the Cross, Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 16-18. ~°lbid. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 353 made certain that the sisters received adequate food and rest. Teresa could be as detached and objective about her spiritual favors as if they had been granted to someone else. Writing in the third person in the ' Spiritual Relations, Teresa begins by saying "It is forty years since this nun took the habit . ,,4~ Turning to the subject of her "supernatural visita-tions," as she calls them, Teresa writes in a matter-of-fact way: She never saw anything with her bodily eyes, as has been said, but always in such a sul~tle, intellectual way that at first she would sometimes think she had imagined it, though at other times she could not think so. Nor did she even hear anything with her bodily ears, except on two occasions, and on these occasions she could make nothing of what was said and did not know what it was all about.42 Without mentioning Pelagianism, Teresa nonetheless reveals a knowl-edge of that heresy and rejects it as an explanation of her rare experiences: The soul collects wood and does all it can by itself, but finds no way of kindling the fire of the love of God. It is only by his great mercy that the smoke can be seen, which shows that the fire is not altogether dead. ]'hen the Lord comes back and kindles it, for the soul is driving itself crazy with blowing on the fire and rearing the fire more and more. I believe the best thing is for the soul to be completely resigned to the fact that of itself it can do nothing, and busy itself, as I have already suggested, in other meritorious activities, for the Lord may perhaps be depriving it of the power to pray, precisely so that it may engage in these other activities and learn by experience how little it can do of itself.4'~ Regarding the imagination,Teresa argues that it can only recombine what the mind has already experienced, and that it is prey not only to the devil but also to emotions such as melancholy. To affirm or deny anything on the basis of the imagination is invariably to be misled. Teresa concludes that because her visions do not consist of mental images, her imagination or fancy is not the source of her spiritual experiences. Although the devil can give pleasures and delights which might seem spiritual, they are inevitably disruptive of the soul's quiet. The devil might present himself to the imagination in the likeness of Christ, but the mere fact that the devil is making use of the imagination proves that he is bent on deceiving. In a true vision of Christ, he is surrounded in glory; but glory cannot possibly be counterfeited by the imagination because it is a kind of intellectually perceived aura. ~2onsequently, the most that the devil can counterfeit is the flesh.4~ But since God will never give the devil the power to feign his glory--for this would involve the impossible, i.e., divine abdication--the devil can deceive no one when he assumes the likeness of Christ, unless one is willing to be deceived. Teresa calls the devil "a skillful painter.''~'~ But just as a very wicked man might paint a beautiful painting, and one that has good effects, so, too, the devil might conjure up a beautiful image from which one might profit. 411bid., IIl, p. 319. 4~lbid., I, pp. 324-25. "~albid., pp. 264-65. 441bid., pp. 182-83. 451bid., 111, p. 41. 354 /Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 "We should never allow the identity of the painter to hinder our devo-tion." 46 Similarly, a vision is not good or evil in itself, but in its effects upon the person who has it. Humility~ is essential to drawing profit from a vision: if the vision is of God, but the person who receives it lacks humility, then the vision is wasted; if the vision is from the devil, and the person lacks humility, he will be misled and become even more swollen with pride. Again, although the devil can give delight, he can never conjoin extreme physical or mental pain with tranquillity and joy in the soul. Both the pains and the pleasures caused by the devil necessarily bring restlessness and discord. "Secondly, this delectable tempest comes from another region than those over which he has authority.''47 And thirdly, pain and suffering in which the soul takes delight make one all the more determined to serve God and renounce the ephemeral pleasures of this world. True visions have a clarity and distinctness which prove that they could not be produced either by anything corporeal, or by one's own imagination, or by the devil. If one has any doubts whether or not one has experienced .a true vision, then one can be sure that the vision was spurious. When Teresa had her first mystical experiences, she did not doubt whether they were genuine, but she greatly doubted and feared what other people would say. A genuine vision comes when it is least expected. The content .is no more and no less than what appears to the person having the vision. One of Teresa's confessors tried to force her to fill out the description of Christ, in view of her claim that she had seen him. Teresa replied that when she tried to see the color of his eyes or how tall he was, the vision vanished. One can always be asked to add to a description of something in the phenomenal world; but if a certain quality is not given in a vision--e.g., the Color of Christ's eyes, then the assumption that the quality was in the vision but unobserved is a categorical mistake. The final criterion of a genuine vision is the great peace and tranquillity ¯ produced by it, coupled with a strengthening of one's moral fiber.4s Physical concomitants are also frequent: the soul faints away in a manner which one cannot resist. But these physical repercussions are of relatively minor significance. It seems as if my life is about to end, and this makes me cry aloud and call upon God: this comes upon me with great vehemence. Sometimes it makes me so restless that I cannot remain seated and this trouble attacks me without my havir~g done anything to bring it on . For Ifrom my yearnings] there can be no relief; the only relief for them is the vision of God, which comes through death,, and this 1 cannot obtaih of Him.4~ Much of'what has already been said concerning the differences between authentic and spurious visions also applies to locutions. A few points, 461bid. "~rlbid., II, p. 278. 48lbid., 1, pp. 262-63; il, pp. 296-97. 46lbid., !, p. 306. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience however, should be emphasized. Although clear and distinct, the words of a locution are not heard with the bodily ear; they are more strongly im-pressed upon the understanding than if they were so heard. When one does not want to hear something, one can close one's ears or attend to something else; "But~when God talks in this way to the soul, there is no such remedy: I have to listen, whether I like it or no . -5o The locution is the unique object of one's attention, canceling out all else. Teresa is well aware that persons sometimes "talk" to themselves and deceive themselves into believing it to be some higher, spiritual force communicating with them. But no matter how subtle the locution might be., when the understanding has made up the words itself, one must know that the mind is active, rather than passive and receptive, as it is in genuine, locutions. Spurious locutions always lack the clarity and distinctness of those from God; moreover, one always has the power to divert one's attention from self-spoken locutions. Lastly; counterfeit Io~:utions are empty vocables, effecting nothing. Gen-uine locutions, even if they are of reproof, prepare and move the soul towards greater love, and "give it light and make it happy and tranquil."5~ Sometimes locutions are so lengthy, even though they come in a flash, that one knows that it would have (aken a long time to make them up oneself. ' Teresa argues that one would have to court deception in order to be deceived about~ the true provenance of a locution.5~ Of course one may pretend to having heard a locution, and lie about its contents, but, then, one may lieabout .anything. Divine locutions "instruct us at once, without any lapse of time, 'and by their means we can understand things which it would probably take us a month to makeup ourselves.''5'~ Demonic locutions have only bad effects, and leave one ina state of aridity and. anguish. Teresa is emphatic on the point that no privately heard locution can be contrary to the publicly enunciated doctrine of the Church. If any locution is at variance with Holy Scripture or the teachings of the Church, it must be. from the devil or from one's own self-conceit.54 There emerge, then, three types of locutions: (1) those which are heard by the corporeal sense of hearing; (2) those which are received by the imagination alone but which give the impression of having been heard by the sense of hearing; and (3) those from God, which involve neither sound nor'voice, and which leave an indubitable, fecund, unforgettable and clear concept in: the depths of the spirit. Teresa recommends that anyone who seriously believes he hears locutions of the first two types should be treated like a sick person. He should be advised to pay no heed to the matter: "One: should humor such people so as not 'to distress them further. If one tells 5°Ibid., p. 157. 5llbid., p. 158. 521bid., p. 159. ~lbid., pp. 159-60. 541bid., p. 161. 3*$6 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 them they are suffer.ing from melancholy, there will be no end to it. They will simply swear they see and hear things, and really believe that they do."55 Teresa casts the same clinical eye on nuns who fall into swoons and call them raptures. Such women are of a physically debilitated nature and given to melancholy. Their swoons may last for hours, but nothing productive comes from them. Although swoons and ecstasies may seem alike in some aspects, they are profoundly different. Ecstasy or rapture, which involves the union of all the faculties, is wont to last a very short time. The.soul is enlightened and spiritual effects are produced.56 Rapture is the sign of spiritual betrothal, carrying the soul out of its senses. Sometimes rapture is brought about by God's having compassion on someone who is not actually praying, but "is struck by some word, which it either remembers or hears spoken by God.' ,57 The faculties, as well as the senses, cease to function; nonetheless, God reveals his majesty to the soul. "When the soul is in this state of suspension and the Lord sees fit to reveal to it certain mysteries, such as heavenly things and imaginary visions, it is able subsequently to describe these . ,,~8 But if the visions in the rapture are intellectual, they cannot be described in any earthly terms.5a Yet in the same breath Teresa says: "although after regaining possession of their senses they can often describe many of these intellectual visions.' ,60 Teresa is immediately aware that she is contradicting herself. She tries to get out of the difficulty by saying that Jacob was in a rapture when he had the imaginary vision of the ladder, but he undoubtedly understood greater mysteries and had an intellectual vision which he could only describe in part.61 Similarly, Moses, in his rapture before the burning bush, could describe some of what he saw, but not all; yet Moses must have been impressed with great and ineffable secrets, otherwise he could never have done what he did for the people of Israel.6'-' After an elaborate comparison between seeing the private apartment of a great lord for a few minutes, and God suddenly revealing the vastness of his secrets to the ~oul in ecstasy, Teresa grows impatient with herself and asks, "Is this tantamount to an admission on my part that lthe soul] has really seen something and that this is an imaginary vision?''6~ She wants to be speaking of intellectual visions, and we have already observed how suspicious she is of the imagination. Teresa gets angry with herself: ". I have no learning and am too stupid to explain anything . -64 She characteristically changes the subject, gives a prayer and a few admonitions,.then returns to one of the central themes of,the Interior Castle: the nature of rapture. She describes some of the physical signs: The hands and body grow cold,.breathing ceases, the senses 551bid., II, pp. 279-80. "°lbid. 5nlbid., llI, pp. 27-28. ~lSee Gn 28,12. ~rlbid. "2See Ex 3,2. ~81bid., I1, p. 288. ~Op. cir., 11, p. 289. 5albid. ~41bid., p. 290. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience no longer function. The ecstasy lasts for only a short period of time, then the bodily functions gradually resume while the "profound suspension liftS a little.''~5 For days thereafter, the person might wander about in a stupor, uninterested in anything that does not awaken the faculty of the will to love. The ultimate result of such an ecstasy is good: to work harder for the glory of God. But when Teresa returns to the philosophic problem of describing the nature of rapture, she writes: "To give a full idea of it . . . is impos-sible.""~ Teresa describes another sort of rapture which, though substantially the same as the one described above, causes the soul to become conscious of an exceedingly rapid motion, while the spirit is transported with great speed. Resistance is impossible, even though the person remains in com-plete possession of his senses. To resist only makes the transport more perturbing. One feels as though one is in another world, where the light is. brighter and of a different kind than the brightest sunlight. "In a single instant he is taught so many things all at once that, if he were to labor for years on end in trying to fit them all into his imagination and thought, he could not succeed with a thousandth part of them.''~r When the soul returns from this high transport, "to live on earth is a great affliction to it . That the rapture was caused by God's agency is proved by three effects: (1) a greater consciousness of the greatness of God; (2) a more deeply felt humility and sense of unworthiness; and (3) a supreme contempt for earthly things. Conversely, one might add, if the rapture were caused by a satanic agency, the effects would be greater contumacy, overweening pride and heightened greed. In rapture the body "remains as if dead and unable of itself to do anything: it continues all the time as it was when the rapture came upon it, "in a sitting position, for example, or with the hands open or shut.''69 One rarely loses consciousness altogether. One can still hear and understand, but only dimly: When the faculties are lost through being united to God, and the soul is transformed, one reaches the peak of the rapture. When the soul is thus in union, neither visions nor locutions can occur, because the facul-ties are wholly lost.r° In the Spiritual Relations Teresa gives a long descrip-tion of union, from which I quote a part: I understand that the spirit in union is pure and lifted up above everything earthly, and that there is nothing remaining in it that will depart from the will of God, but that the spirit and the will are in conformity with his will, and detached from everything, and occupied in God so as to leave no recollection of love of self or of any created thing,r~ II1 How did Teresa's contemporaries react to her descriptions of these rare ~51bid., p. 291. ~lbid., p. 292. ~91bid., I, p. 125. 671bid., p. 295. 7°lbid., p. 158. S8lbid., p. 296. 7~lbid., p. 348. 358 /Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 ¯ phenomena? I shall restrict myself to one contemporary, P. Pedro Ibanez, who commanded Teresa to write her Life. A Dominican, Ibanez was easily the most articulate and perceptive of Teresa's first commentators. In a statement written between 1562 and 1564, Ibanez explains that those who believed Teresa to be suffering from deception had excellent reasons for believing so.7z He gives five such reasons: 1. Good judgment requires that we judge in light of what normally happens; and normally, people who have claimed to be the recipients of locutions and revelations were deceived, lbanez sees fit to add: "These deceptions come principally to women, and very seldom tO men."r'~ 2. In trying to ascertain the truth in any matter, we must take the judgments of the experts as definitive, e.g,, we must consult theologians in questions of theology and captains in matters of war~ The saints have always taught that very few revelations can be accepted as ,genuine. Some saints have gone so far as to repudiate all private revelations, arguing that their faith is sufficiently strong without them. When so many visions and apparitions occur to one nun, the legitimacy of all or most ot~ them is highly improbable. 3. If Teresa~s visions were gen-uine, then they must be counted as miracles; but miracles are performed "in cases of great necessity,''74 and in order to confirm the Faith. Neither of these grounds for miracles applies to an enclosed nun. 4. Saints who have been granted supernatural favors always strive to conceal them, both out of the belief that God would deprive them of the favors if they made them public, and as a sign of humility. Teresa made her "favors" only too well known: she described them to a great number of confessors and lay per-sons, and wrote about them in all of her works. 5. The devil is the cleverest of all deceivers because he mixes so much truth with his falsehoods. It is most likely that Teresa's experiences were the work of the devil. Although Ibanez concedes that these reasons have great weight, he ~.nonetheless counters that some things considered by themselves seem bad, but "if some circumstances be taken into account, seem quite holy and virtuous.''r5 His example is the familiar one from Plato: taking someone's property is wrong, but if it is added that the thing was taken from its owner in order to prevent him from killing himself or someone else, then it is right. Ibanez's defense of the genuineness of Teresa's visions rests ultimately upon the following premise: We have also to consider that there has never been a time in the world when there have hot,been certain persons with whom our Lord has been on very familiar terms and to whom His Majesty has expounded and revealed many secret things which he has determined to do . In some ages there will be more of these than in others, but there will always be some, and as a rule they will be men given to prayer, contempla-tion and quiet~r6 721bid., 111, pp. 313-333. r~ibid., p. 317. ralbid., p. 316¯ r61bid., p. 318. ralbid. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 359 Invoking God's providential care of his Church, and alluding to the threats of the Lutherans, Ibanez claims a historical necessity for'the exis-tence of certain intermediaries between the world and the supernatural. Moreover, the fact that a person lives "in great Christian perfection" is a very relevant argument in favor of the genuineness of certain revelations. Even though complete ce~'tainty concerning the genuineness of revela-tions is impossible, there are "some ways and means which are very sure.''7~ In general, the tree i~ known by its fruit,just as physicians diagnose a disease by its effects. Given that revelations and visions must be either true and good or false and bad, a true vision must partake of the qualities of God,. and a false vision must show" signs of the wiles and subtleties used by the devil.''7s Ibanez gives eleven rules for distinguishing true from false visions: 1. Visions from God must produce a sense of humility and unworthiness; thosefrom the devil bring pride and a sense of self-importance. 2. Visions from God drive the recipient to shun the world 9,nd turn away from material things; those from the devil have the opposite effect. 3. Visions from God come only to those who are systematically give.n to prayer and who mani-fest a genuine love of God; the devil's chief aim is to entice one away from prayer and to suborn one's love of God. 4. Perso_ns who receive visions. from God invariably seek counsel from learned persons, holding nothing back from their confessors; persons receiving visions from the devil be-come furtive and self-opinionated. 5. Because scholastic theology is not sufficient to pronounce on the genuineness of mystical experiences, some- " one who believes that he is the recipient of such experiences must consult confessors who have personal experience of such things and who lead lives .~of great sanctity. 6. It is all the more likely that a person's visions are from God if he has patiently suffered all sorts of undeserved annoyances and tribulations. "Our Lord is not likely to reward our patience by sending us a delusion from the devil.''r9 7. If all of a person's confessors are convinced of his purity of conscience, then it is all the more likely that the revelations are of divine origin. 8. An empirical test is to ascertain how much help and spiritual profit people obtain from familiar converse with s.~ch a person. 9. The content of divine visions should be in complete conf6rmity with the Scriptures; demonic visions are replete with irrelevances, curiosities and thingsof little edification. 10. If none of a person's confessors detects any trace of vanity, then it is all the more certain that ~the experiences are genuine. Lastly, 11. The devil persecutes and torments the good, and ap-pears to them in a hideous form; but to persons whom the deyil has won over, his appearances are pleasant, and he cajoles and flatters them. Ibanez proceeds to apply each of these rules to Teresa. On the basis of 7rlbid., p. 319. 781bid. rSlbid., p. 324. 360 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 considerable documentary evidence, he proves that her experiences clearly pass each test. IV This is a difficult paper to conclude. One could of course change the entire mode and tenor of Teresa's experiences and delve into her medical history. As inte?esting as it might be to try to diagnose her early cataleptic seizures, her neurasthenia, and all the bodily, aches and ailments that she complained of throughout her life, I do not see how the content of her experiences can be reduced to physical causes. Of course one could attempt a psychoanalytic study of Teresa, examin-ing her very strong attachment to her father, her ambivalent friendships, her great attraction to Ft. Jeronimo, her self-flagellation and so on. But if one begins with the assumption that mystical experience is nothing but psy-chiatric disorder, Teresa's proper place is on the doctor's couch and not in the gloria so remarkably ~imbodied by Bernini. Again, one could fit Teresa's experiences into the long history of mys-ticism, drawing from Plotinus, Proclus, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, and many others. One could try to show how Teresa unconsciously drew on ancient Jewish, Sufistic or Hindu sources. All this would be fascinating to those who are interested in such things. Lastly, one is free to adopt William James' largely dismissive attitude expressed in The Varieties of Religiotts Experience: . confess that my only feeling in reading [Teresa] has been pity that so much vitality of soul should have found such poor employment.''~° James finds Teresa's reli-gious ideal "paltry. ,,81 But if the ideals expressed in the Interior Castle are paltry; I should lik~ to know which ideals may be called "high." It ig the conclusion of this article, however, that, in order to understand St. Teresa's descriptions of her experiences, one must construe them sym-bolically or analogically. When St. Thomas Aquinas addresses himself to the problem of speaking about God, given that no two beings are as unlike as the Creator and the created, he argues that language about God must be understood analogical-ly. In De Veritate, for example, St. Thomas reasons that there are only ¯ three ways in which one may predicate any term of a given subject: univ-ocally, equivocally, or analogously,sz He argues: "We must assert that we may not predicate anything univocally of the creature and God, for in univocal predication the intelligible nature that the name signifies is com-mon to each thing among those of which that name is predicated univocal-ly . Now,.no creature, regardless of how much it imitates God, can ever reach the point of having anything in common with God . We cannot say, 8°The Modern Library: New York, p. 339. 8~lbid. 8ZDe Ver., q. 2, a. 11. St. Teresa on Demonic Deception and Mystical Experience / 36"1 on the other hand, that whatever is predicated of God and creature is predicated purely equivocally, since, if no real likeness of creature to God existed, his essence would not be the likeness of creatures, and then he would not know creatures through knowing his own essence . "s'~ The conclusion, then, is that predication in reference to God can only be made analogously. In other words, if all language about God were equivocal, absolutely nothing could be said about God. The mystic's talk would necessarily be idle and utterly uninformative. His visions would have no substance or value. Yet mystics, as well as other religious people, feel driven to speak and to write about God. And they believe that their language has meaning. This language has to be interpreted, not literally, but analogously,s4 It is chiefly because readers, whether from their scepticism or their enthusiasm, mistakenly interpret St. Teresa's writings in either a univocal or an equiv-ocal fashion that this great saint's message to humanity is often misunder-stood and falsified. a31bid. a4See also ST, I, q. 13. Now Available As Reprint An Apostolic Spirituality for the Ministry of Social Justice by Max Oliva, S.J. Price: $.50 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Principles of Asceticism Richard J. Hauser, S.J, Father Hauser is an associate professor in the department of theology at Creighton University, and is currently its chairman. He resides in the Jesuit Community of Creighton; 2500 Cali-fornia St.; Omaha, NE 68178. There is probably no area in spirituality more difficult to discuss than asceticism. For many of us the term relates primarily to Lenten practices of mortification. Most of us were relieved when the legislation was altered, and we abandoned fast and abstinence with little sense of loss. I believe there are two major reasons why we did not miss these practices. Increas-ingly the practice of mortification was not functional in our spiritual lives. Spiritual concerns were moving beyond the traditional spheres of prayer and asceticism and focusing more directly on service to others in the world. The relationship between mortification and service was not clear. Secondly, we were becoming uncomfortable with the assumptions un-derlying these practices regarding the body. The body was frequently seen only as a source of sin and so primarily a barrier to spiritual growth. It had to be repressed to be kept submissive. This assumption was incompatible with a general cultural awareness of the importance of the whole person, including the body and its feelings, for leading a happy life. These practices were also incompatible with the growing emphasis in Christian circles on the dignity of the total perso~n flowing from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This article attempts to spell out some general guidelines for a meaning-ful asceticism today, and then to present some practical principles of ascet-icism. In doing this it hopes to respond to the church's admonition .to all Christians to find a personally meaningful rhythm of asceticism to replace the strict system that had previously been legislated for all. 362 Principles of Asceticism / 363 Functional: Asceticism The first demand of a valid contemporary asceticism is that it be func-tional, that it foster the goals of Christian living. We are called to b~ like Christ. The Gospels present Jesus as totally dedicated to doing the Father's will in union with the Spirit. Imitating Christ, we, too, are called to do always the Father's will, and to do this with the power we have received from the Spirit of Jesus. We know from the theology of grace that :the Holy Spirit is our sanctifier and that we can make no movement toward God unless we are drawn to him by the Spirit. So if asceticism is to be functional it must promote living in tune with the Spirit. We will understand asceticism, then, as our efforts, prompted by the Spirit, to live and act always in union with the Spirit of Christ in order to know and do our Father's will. The practical challenge of a contemporary asceticism will be to establish regular rhythms in daily life that enable us to live in union with the Spirit. The general goal of all asceticism is to provide the conditions in daily life th~.t facilitate living in tune with the Spirit. But this goal must be brought down t0~ the level of the individual. Each Christian must ask the question: What is God's will for me? .How is God calling me to serve his people and his kingdom? This question is central, for no two of us have exactly the sam6 vocation from our Father. And the question must be asked on two levels. First, what is the state in life and particular occupation God is calling me to? And second, how is he leading me on a day-to-day basis to fulfill my particular calling? For example, in my own person, ! believe the Lord has called me to serve him as a Jesuit priest, and, within this state of life, to teach college theology. In addition I believe the Lord is leading me each day to mak~e decisions within this vocation that will be for his greater glory and service. To know and to respond continually and energetically to the Lord's calling demands that I live in touch with his Spirit. My personal ascetical challenge is to put patterns into my life that enable me to do this in a daily schedule that is already crowded with classes, counseling, meetings, study and research. My challenge will obviously be quite different from that of a housewife or a businessman. But the goal for all of us is the same: to know and to do our Father's will. And it is reached in the same way: by living in tune with the Spirit of Jesus. ~ We have been stressing the fact that ascetical°practices must be func-tional, related to doing the Father's will. But it is crucial to emphasize that asceticism is not concerned simply with developing life patterns aimed at the conscientious external performance of our various callings. The real challenge of asceticism is to develop life-rhythms that :facilitate an internal quality of heart that reflects the presence of the Holy Spirit during the performance of our duties. Paul gives us very concrete signs by which we .can recognize this presence: ". love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Ga 5,22). Meeting :364 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 this challenge is the most difficult aspect of asceticism. Most of us find it much easier simply to get our jobs done and not worry about our internal quality of heart--we all know the empty feeling of getting through a day and doing everything we were supposed to, but realizing at the end of the day that there was very little Iove,-joy,. or peace. Though we have ostensibly done God's will, we have not served the Lord well because we have not lived in tune with his Spirit. The difficulty of this challenge ought not be underestimated. There exist immense obstacles to its attainment both within and outside ourselves, and it is hard to say which are the more foreboding. We are aware of our own internal dividedness, our habitual tendency to serve ourselves only, rather than the Lord and others. And just as Paul gives us a list of the qualities of heart indicating the Spirit's presence; he also gives a list indicating the Spirit's absence: ". feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy." (Ga 5, 20).And we also know .how regularly this internal dividedness is reinforced by our external situa-tion. We are continually moved away from a peaceful and loving service by the pressures of a busy schedule and anxieties from our work and personal problems. So from the very beginning the Christian who is concerned with totally loving and serving the Lord must acknowledge that the" task is impossible by personal effort alone. It is possible only by the Spirit's presence and power. Let me put it like this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing, and it is precisely because the two are so opposed that you do not always carry out your good intentions. (Ga 5,16-17). And there is peace in the realization that his grace will always be sufficient. We need only build rhythms into our life that enable us to live in contact with it. Respect for the Total Person I believe that a major reason traditional approaches to asceticism lost their hold on us was that they were not clearly related to living the Christian life. Ifasceticism is to regain its deserved place in Christian living, it must be functional: it must clearly facilitate greater love and service of the Lord and others. But I believe that there is a second major reason, why the traditional approach to asceticism lost its hold. I believe that the Christian community became increasingly uncomfortable with one of its major-- though not always articulated--assumptions, namely that the body is pri-marily a barrier to spiritual growth and needs to be repressed to be kept submissive. It was indicative of our attitude toward the body that we felt comfortable in attributing to it rather than to the whole person so much evil in the self. We are clearly not. denying the internal dividedness of the self, the tension between the Spirit in us and our lower human nature---ourself Principles of Asceticism / 365 outside the Spirit. Any approach to asceticism that underplays this fact of Revelation is obviously distorted. But we are insisting that the body, too, is good because it is part of the person that has been transformed by the grace of Christ. The conclusion for asceticism is that the body is not only a barrier to the Spirit needing to be repressed, but it is equally an aid to the Spirit and must be respected and treated as such. This view of the person is reinforced by current theological works on the nature of the self. Theologians today continually speak of the threefold dimension of the person: body, mind, and spirit. They stress that all our acts are combinations of the three dimensions; they are simultaneously phys-ical, psychological and spiritual. One dimension inevitably influences the other two. The conclusion for spirituality is that the way we use our bodies and minds will either help or harm our life in the Spirit. And so we must respect all'principles of good physical and psychological health. I believe these insights have crucial import for asceticism today, import not ade-quately acknowledged in our previous approaches to asceticism. The chal-lenge of a contemporary asceticism will be to develop rhythms for the use of the body and the mind that respect their positive and vital role in the service of the whole person. Perhaps a note should be added on the importance of the psychological dimension for spiritual growth. It goes without saying that if body, mind and spirit are interconnected, psychological health and maturity are crucial for spiritual growth. The challenge of ascetical practices in this area is to develoP rhythms in daily living that respect valid psychological principles of growth. It is clear how intimately related are psychological and spiritual growth. For instance, a generally accepted touchstone for psychological maturity is the ability to be in touch with our inner selves and to make decisions flowing from our own insights without being unduly influenced by outside pressures. This principle of psychological health is central for the Christian. Our goal is to know and do the Father's will. To do this we must be guided by the Spirit. And' t6 be guided by the Spirit we must be in touch with our inner selves, for it is on this very deep level that God can influence and direct us. This means we must develop daily rhythms that enable us to live in tune with our inner selves. Fr~)m the perspective of mental health and maturity psychologists can only concur. The Christian seeks always to know and do the Father's will in love. We cannot do this by ourselves; we can do this only with the Spirit. We seek then to develop rhythms in our daily life forthe use of our bodies and minds that keep them under the influence of the Spirit: "Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit" (Ga 5, 25). Thomas Merton's expression is perfect. The "spiritual life'" is then the perfectly balanced life in which the body with its passions and instincts, the mind with its reasoning and its obedience to principle, and the spirit with its passive illuminationoby the Light and Love of God form one ~i66 / Review for Religious, Volume 38, 1979/3 complete man who is in God and with God and from God and for God. One man in whom God is all in all. One man in whom God carries out his own will without obstacle. New Seeds of Conternplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), p. 140. ~ractical Principles: the Body What are these rhythms that foster our being directed by the Spirit? The most obvious place to begin is with the body--body is theterm we are using for ~he physical dimension of our existence. The basic question in this area is: What rhythms are necessary in daily living to keep the body responsive to the direction of the Spirit in energetically doing the will of the Father? There are two major principles: first, we must do whatever is necessary and possible to keep in good physical health, and second, we must do whatever is necessary to keep our sensual desires responsive to the Spirit and not to our lower human nature, that is, the part of our being that has not yet been transformed by the Spirit of Christ. The first we will ~:all the positive principle for the use of the body; the second, the negative principle. For me the first is